Kumbhpur Rising

by Mayur Didolkar

  Things started to go wrong in Kumbhpur around noon.

  It all began at the Education Minster’s meeting at the college ground, though what happened at the municipal school was almost at the same time.

  Constable Patode, who was among those standing guard at the meeting, was waiting for this moment for what seemed like a lifetime. He had Inspector Vinit Kamble, the fucker of his wife, squarely in his sight. The back of the Inspector’s shirt was making an admirably helpless target. Constable Patode licked his lips once and raised his rifle.

  At the same time when Constable Patode was preparing to take potshots at his boss, the standard sixth students of the municipal school wondered what their English teacher was doing alone with their classmate Savita Tamboli in the teacher’s room. True, Savita had not done her homework, but normally Sonawane Sir punished all the errant students before everyone. Now he and Savita were gone for more than ten minutes, and the classroom was eerily silent.

  Most of the students stood up almost simultaneously and walked out of the classroom. Before leaving their places, they all removed an unusual item from their schoolbag. It was a pick in most cases, though a couple of them carried their father’s razors, and in one case, even a knife in their bag. If someone had checked their bags in the morning and asked them to explain, they all would have been at a loss. The voices had instructed them in the night and they all got up, careful not to wake up their parents and packed their schoolbags with the weapons of murder.

  The teacher’s room was two doors from the standard fifth classroom. The students walked in a neat file to the room. The boy in the front was one Sachin Kamble. He very calmly moved a couple of paces away from the door, and then kicked the door open.

  As the students walked in, they saw Savita partially undressed pleading with Sonawane as he was trying to kiss her.His hands were fumbling with his pants zipper.

  Sonawane turned his head in surprise and saw his killers.

  The headmaster’s office was exactly beneath this scene of molestation. In that office, Wadale the shy, middle-aged music teacher was pleading with his headmaster for some concession.

  Headmaster Pendse had two sources of income. One was the salary paid by the state government. The other, and really the major source, was the monthly cut he received from each employee in the school. Right from the Assistant headmaster to the cleaning ladies, there was no one who did not pay him a part of their monthly salaries. Wadale had been doing so from his first month as a teacher here. In those years he had twice walked in accidentally, when Pendse was molesting one of the female teachers. Only on one occasion it was more of a rape than molestation. Wadale had walked in late one evening into the headmaster’s office to find Sushma, one of the young Marathi language teachers, struggling to break free from Pendse’s embrace. She was telling him he was like a father to her. Wadale had apologized, and closed the door again. But he had stood outside, listening the unmistakable rustle of clothes being taken off the body, and then the noise of bangles and the panting. Sushma had emerged out of the office half an hour later with her clothes barely rearranged, and walked out of the school for the last time. She had committed suicide by jumping before a train the same night. Wadale sometimes still remembered the look of hope that had come to her face when he had suddenly walked in, and then the light of life dying, as he had closed the door.

  Now Wadale was asking Pendse not to take any cut out of his salary for the next six months, knowing full well that he was barking up the wrong tree. Pendse, who showed every sign of a bad hangover, was just shaking his head and smiling infuriatingly.

  “No my friend can’t be done, oh of course there is one alternative” Pendse said rubbing the back of his hand. He was already imagining a few evening trips to his teacher’s house, where he could feel-up Radha. He remembered Radha as a schoolgirl, but he had also seen her at the temple a few times as a young woman and he had liked what he had seen.

  “Yes there is. I know what it is,” Wadale said reaching inside his jute bag at his foot.

  “Oh you do?” Pendse had not expected this to be this easy. He smiled and stood up. It was difficult to control his erection.

  He lost both his erection, and his smile, when he saw the instruments his music teachers produced out of his bag.

  “Yes I do. I am going to have to kill you,” Wadale said and attacked.

  Vinit Kamble stayed alive only because of a lot of good luck and intervention from one alert constable that afternoon.

  With a .30 rifle that Patode was carrying Vinit was like a sitting duck with his back squarely facing him and the distance between them less than twenty feet. Patode raised the rifle to his shoulders and squinted to take a good look at his Boss. He lowered the barrel of the rifle till it was pointing to the left side of Vinit’s back. A bullet at that distance will end up entering the heart and killing him instantly. Patode smiled and pulled the trigger, well almost. Before that he sneezed. On the relatively silent school ground, the sound of a violent sneeze was like a crack of the rifle itself.

  Vinit did not turn but Constable Vichare, another veteran on the force did and saw his old friend Patode pointing the gun slightly to his left. Vichare knew almost instinctively who the target was, and before his slow mind could come to terms with the whys of the act, his body, considerably faster, reacted. He threw himself sideways and knocked Vinit off his feet, pushing him away and below, from the line of fire. Vichare outweighed Vinit, and the unsuspecting cop went down like he was shot (ha-ha). The bullet went past him, without hitting either him or Constable Vichare, who was about to collapse on top of him. Vinit heard the shot of the rifle and then the breath was knocked out of him as the burly Constable fell on top of him. Vinit pushed him away and sat up. The place was in a state of panic.

  The SPG people immediately took the minister down from the podium and in less than a minute after the only shot was fired, the minister’s white Esteem was being driven off. Meanwhile at the back, about a dozen uniforms had piled themselves on top of Constable Patode. Patode seemed to offer no resistance but by the time Vinit regained his bearings and ordered his men to handcuff Patode, Patode’s shirt was torn off his body, he had a bleeding, possibly broken nose and a hand that was hanging limply by his side.

  Vinit felt physically sick again as the realization of being shot at, sunk in. Constable Vichare too had stood up and was telling everyone how he had seen that crazy man raising his rifle to shoot at Inspector Saab, and wasn’t the goddess gracious, that both of them were alive. The rest of the cops were looking at the man of the moment with suitable reverence.

  “Thanks Vichare,” Vinit patted his subordinate’s arm and walked to where four constable were holding Patode. Patode offered no fight, but his bloodshot eyes were burning with hatred.

  “Did you shoot at me?” Vinit asked him.

  Patode nodded. Vinit felt lightheaded and sick again. He fought the bile rising in his mouth and asked, “Why?”

  “You sleep with my wife; you think I did not know?” Patode said trying to break free again. The cops holding him promptly subdued him.

  Vinit shook his head and stepped aside, motioning the cops to carry the crazy constable to the station. He walked a couple of wobbly steps, and then crouched with his hands gripping his knees and threw up. As his head throbbed and vision blurred he heard some commotion coming from his extreme right. He turned around and squinted against the sun.

  A couple of kilometers away from the college, on the Main road, a mob was gathering. Though there seemed to be a lot of confusion, the mob was generally headed for the municipal school building.

  “This doesn’t look good,” He thought.

  The shock of being caught literally with his pants down was so great for Sonawane, that he instantly lost all desire. However, he was not scared the least bit. The students for some unknown reason had broken the rule, and they needed to be punished, that was all. After he was through with them, not one of them would enter their own house without k
nocking first. He shoved the whimpering Savita to one side and turned to face the children.

  “What are you boys…”he could only go so far before the first boy stepped closer and stabbed him with a pair of scissors just below his navel. Sonawane was too stunned to scream. As the boy pulled the half broken scissor, a jet of red blood spurted out, and the scream finally broke free. His subhuman howl was heard not only in the school, but also all the way to the mutton market that was doing brisk business across the road. Sonawane collapsed to his knees, and raised his eyes to see another boy walking up to him. The boy had a muddy shovel in his hand. The boy swung and planted the shovel on Sonawane’s head ripping his forehead wide open. With another scream Sonawane sprawled on the floor. As the boys gathered around him with their weapons, Sonawane through all his pain could feel someone else screaming in the school. Then his outstretched hands were met with a couple of knives and there was a fresh stab in his thigh with a pick.Then mercifully Sonawane lost consciousness.

  ***

  At the same moment when Sonawane was turning to face his killers, Wadale the music teacher was in the act of becoming Wadale the homicidal manic. He pulled out an axe from his bag and swung. Pendse, with some survival instinct, ducked and avoided the blow. But the movement also proved to be his undoing .In an effort to move away from the arc of the axe he managed to topple his chair backwards. Wadale was on to him in an instant. He straddled his headmaster and calmly swung the axe onto the prone form beneath him. The sharp instrument cut Pendse’s cheek and part of his neck wide open. The scream Sonawane heard in his dying moments came from the headmaster then.

  “Shhh it will all be over in a minute Sir, just lie still please” Wadale said, and stabbed him again, this time on the forehead and across the face. Pendse lay twitching there.

  Wadale stood up and wiped his blood-smeared face. Throwing his weapon aside, he grabbed the unconscious headmaster under his armpits and heaved him onto the table. With a single sweep of his arm, he cleared the table of all the files, paperweights and pens. The sound of paperweights crashing was strangely musical to his ears.

  “Here we go” Wadale said and withdrew a hammer and a set of six inches nails from his bag. He had absolutely no recollection of how all these weapons made their way into his bag, but that did not disturb him in the least. In life, it did not pay to look the gift horse in the mouth. Humming one of Bhimsen Joshi’s thumri under his breath, he extracted a wad of ten rupee bills from his kurta pocket. That was all the money he had left in the world at the moment, but something told him that it did not matter now.

  Inspector Vinit Kamble ordered his PSI Rajesh Ghate and two other constables to come with him. As they turned towards the municipal school, the commotion turned into a panic. Even as their jeep turned into the school, Vinit could see people running towards the building and then screaming. He jumped out of the jeep even before it came to a complete stop, and ran inside the building, knocking away a couple of bystanders.

  On the verandah women teachers were screaming hysterically, one lay on the floor apparently unconscious. All the classroom doors were open and students were running out as if the building were on fire. In fact that was the first thought Vinit had, that the building was on fire. But in a moment he knew it was nothing as trivial as that. Firstly, if the building was on fire, he would have seen smoke, secondly the teachers would not have been having hysterics inside the school, and thirdly the morning was too bad to have something as simple as a fire to explain all the panic. This was the morning of murder all right.

  Rajesh Ghate caught a peon by his shirt and asked him “what the hell is going on here?” The peon was shaking and sobbing, Rajesh slapped him lightly a couple of times before he answered “Sonawane sir… They killed him… oh god the children…”

  “Who?” Vinit asked.

  “Are the children in danger?” Rajesh asked the peon, shaking him.

  The peon suddenly started laughing in a loud crazy voice. Rajesh and Vinit exchanged glances. Then Vinit looked up and saw about a few children coming out of a classroom. Unlike other children they were walking slowly, in a neat single file. Unlike other children they were bloody, as if they all had a bath of blood.

  As Vinit ran towards the stairs he could hear the peon “The children are not in danger Sahib, they are the danger.”

  Vinit reached the top of the stairs just as the first of the bloody children started on his way down. Vinit caught the boy by his shirt and pulled him towards him.

  “What happened? Are you ok son?” he asked.

  The boy looked dazed, as if he was walking in his sleep. He absentmindedly stared for a couple of minutes, as the rest of his classmates joined him. Upon seeing the police officer, they came to a stop, again in a single file and stared at the cop.

  “What is going on here?” Vinit asked in frustration.

  “Why don’t you go and take a look?” the boy whom Vinit had stopped suggested and somehow it struck as terribly funny to all the kids. They all broke up laughing. Vinit shoved the children aside and ran. He knew where to look almost by instinct. He entered the classroom and fell down. In his half seated position, he watched the scene, his mouth issuing a silent scream.

  The reason he had slipped was the floor was wet and slippery with the dead teacher’s blood. Less than three feet away from Vinit, lay the torso of Amar Sonawane. Vinit could not see where the head was (it had rolled under a desk and would be discovered later). Sonawane’s groin was mutilated beyond recognition.

  “Sir please come down here,” Vinit heard his PSI shouting and felt another surge of terror sweeping over him. He heard the note of sick fear in his subordinate’s voice and knew that the worst was yet to come.

  The human mind has a limited ability to absorb fear, and by the time it was noon Inspector Vinit had long crossed that threshold. He was strangely calm as he came out of the headmaster’s office. His subordinates were looking at him with respect. They mistook numbness for courage.

  Headmaster Pendse was found naked on his table. His killer had killed him with a couple of slashes of a sharp weapon. After that, the killer apparently decided that it was too easy a way to go. So he had hoisted the dead man on his desk. The killer then drove 6-inch nails through Pendse’s head, chest, groin and legs. The nails were now poking out. Attached to each nail was a ten rupee note. The blackboard on the right side was smeared with blood, but the writing on it was legible

  “And death to all who sinned” it said.

  As Vinit came out of the room and lit a cigarette his hands were steady. His suspicion that something wicked was taking place was now a certainty, and now the horror he was feeling since morning, was replaced with a cold determination to set things right. This was his town and goddamn if a bunch of psychopaths were going to take it over.

  “Sir what the hell is happening here?” Vinit turned at the sound and saw PSI Ghate as close to tears as he would ever be. The big ruddy face was almost white with fear and terror, the cigarette dangling between his fingers was shaking violently.

  “I don’t know Rajesh but one thing I do know is, we are going to take charge” Vinit said and stubbed out his cigarette.

  “Looks like it is going to rain” Vinit said. The crowd followed him with glances over their shoulders. The fist droplets of rain had begun to fall. Vinit stared for a moment, and then turned to his jeep. He wanted to radio the district headquarters for more manpower.

  He knew he was short on manpower and time here.

  ***

  The group that was to mount the rearguard defense against the invasion was enjoying the virgin beach of Kumbhpur for the moment. Rani, more specifically, was enjoying a seaside lay with her husband.

  It had begun with their walk on the beach and the swim later on. Throughout Alok was fixing her with that dreamy gaze of his. When the reached the beach for a post meal walk, he started suggesting some action by grabbing her skinny bottom now and then; and now here they were, hidden by a boulder from the rest
of the group. “Oh Alok it was so lovely, just like old days”

  Alok smiled weakly and looked up the sky; now dark like a midnight. He allowed a couple of raindrops to hit his face and then turned to his wife “Nothing is like old days Rani and nothing ever will be” he said calmly.

  Chapter 6

  While the villagers and lawmen were discovering the horros at the municipal school, and while Alok was telling his wife that nothing was going to be like old days, Neeraj Joshi the serial killer was lying on the iron cot recalling the incidents of the last night the way a horror movie aficionado might recall the famous soup puking incident in ‘The Exorcist’.

  Unlike others, Neeraj had sensed something was wrong with the town almost the moment he entered it. But that did not put him off the track in the least bit. A long time student of anarchy, he was quietly looking forward to what was about to take place. A big IMAX sized confrontation between the good and the evil, both sides considering themselves to be the representatives of the good, while acting under the undeniable influence of evil. It was this sort of senseless violence that really amused Neeraj.

  Take the example of the dead child now. Killed no doubt by the incompetent doctor, who was more concerned with helping himself with a bit of the child’s mother, than curing the child. It would have been very small town-like, and dreadfully boring, if the doctor was cut in two by a meat axe by the child’s father. The fact that the doctor was murdered in his own clinic using nothing more lethal than a syringe, while the child’s father was lying comatose under some tree was much more….should we say predestinate. It hinted at bigger and nastier things to come. Neeraj looked forward to them with never a thought about his own immortal soul.

  Last night he had been out for a stroll, when the other side paid him a visit. The chosen representative was a young man who suddenly popped out of a nearby bush like an extremely humorless jack in the box. Neeraj was alert in an instant, though outwardly he remained calm as if this was the kind of confrontation that he was really looking forward to.