Kumbhpur Rising

by Mayur Didolkar

  “Stop it Happy, stop there Rakesh,” he said.

  Rakesh said in an angry voice, “Enough of this nonsense Nishant, now throw the fucking knife away and let Mr. Gore go. Now!”

  “If you let him go I will increase your severance package,” the MD piped in. Everybody had almost forgotten he was there. Rakesh and Rajat raised their heads to see him, and worse still Happy turned. For Nishant’s tired, stressed, mind that movement was too sudden to be ignored. Pushing the accountant away, he leapt at Happy’s exposed back, and sank the blade in Happy’s back. If connected, this stab would have almost put Happy in the ICU. Fortunately for him, Nishant’s weak forearms, and his slow reflexes meant that the knife only connected with the upper part of Happy’s arm. Happy screamed, and turned to face Nishant .The next moment Rajat and Rakesh, their panic unfrozen by the attack on their God, snatched Nishant away from him. The struggle to take the knife away from Nishant lasted only sixty seconds, enough time for him to suffer a broken jaw and a dislocated shoulder. Ragini had to slap Rakesh a couple of times before he realized the Nishant was already unconscious.

  If this incident was a blur to Ragini now, then the preceding months when Nishant was tried and convicted of second-degree attempt to murder, were almost non-existent. She remembered Happy sitting in the witness stand and quoting with great authority references from the world over. He had spent nights pouring over search engines trying to find connection between being fired from a job for reasons not related to performance and its effect on the stability of the human mind. He pleaded far better than the attorney representing Nishant, trying to draw the judge’s attention to the tragedy of Nishant’s life, and his single aberration as a result of it. Perhaps it helped, perhaps it did not. Nishant was sentenced to four years of RI.

  Now, as Ragini stood on the balcony of her friend’s holiday home, she recounted the whole tale to the man she had met barely a day back and somehow that did not feel strange.

  It felt even less strange, when at the end of the tale, he took her in his arms and turned her face to him for a long, passionate kiss. The kiss had a strange familiarity to it. After a long time she was being kissed by someone who was not paying her.

  It felt good.

  Vinit jumped out of the jeep and ran in the awning. He did not bother to turn the flap of his raincoat up to protect himself from the rain. As he walked to the steps of the hospital, the visitors stood up to greet him. Vinit knew both of them were cops even before they introduced themselves.

  “My name is Shilpa Joshi, I am an ACP with the Mumbai Crime Branch,” the woman was petite, but she had an athletic grace about her. Her bare arms on display through a short sleeved white top had the tone of the gym on them.

  The man with her was older, around fifty, and he seemed like a career cop. Dark tanned skin, hard grim face with a hint of a paunch, yet fitter than most of the cops his age. He had a big scar across his throat and forearm. He was stabbed at some point in his life.

  Vinit took a cursory look at Shilpa’s identifications, and straightened his shoulders in formal salute. Shilpa barely acknowledged it as she saw the ambulance pulling in the forecourt and the mortally wounded police officer was put on the stretcher.

  “What happened Inspector?” She asked as the twitching form of Rajesh was taken past them.

  “There has been a disturbance in this area madam. One of my deputies has been attacked by a lunatic while we were trying to arrest him and his daughter,”

  “Did you arrest them?”

  Vinit felt bile rising in his throat as the realizations finally hit home. From today, he had to live with the grim reality that he had killed two people. “No madam, I had to kill both of them,” he said and shook a cigarette out of the crumpled packet. The older man produced a cheap lighter from his trouser packet and gave him a light.

  “DYSP Pradeep Raje,” he said formally. Vinit acknowledged him with a nod.

  Just then a constable came running out of the hospital wing and addressed Vinit, “Sir Constable Patode has gone into convulsions, some kind of heart attack.”

  “Arrange to take him and Rajesh to the district hospital. I will call them. Hurry up,” the constable saluted and ran back inside.

  “This constable Patode, was he injured in this attack too?” Raje asked.

  Vinit let out a hollow laughter and said, “No, he was injured while he tried to shoot me earlier this morning,”

  Shilpa and Raje looked dumbfounded as they let it sink in.

  “He tried to shoot you?” Shilpa asked incredulously.

  “He did and if I did not have another alert colleague, it would be me having that heart attack,” Vinit replied.

  “Tell me Inspector, something about this place is out of whack, isn’t it?”

  Vinit suddenly felt very, very tired. He had not slept well last night. Since morning, he had witnessed a series of brutal killings, was nearly killed by a psychopath himself . Now a brave colleague and a good friend was fighting for his life inside. He sat down on the porch steps so hard that Raje thought that the town lawman was fainting. Raje put a hand out to support him. Vinit waved him away, saying he was ok.

  When he looked up Raje was sitting next to him, and smoking a filter tipped cigarette. Shilpa was standing in front of him.

  “Tell me about it Inspector Kamble, what is going on out here?”

  So, sitting on those steps and watching all the frantic activity around him, he told both the city cops all about it. It took him less than twenty minutes. At the end there was a heavy silence.

  Shilpa was the first one to speak, “I must commend the way you have held yourself up in this extraordinary situation. However, I have more bad news for you, I am afraid.”

  Vinit looked at her. His eyes asked her what could possibly be worse than what he had just narrated.

  Shilpa produced an 8x10 colored picture from her handbag and showed it to Vinit.

  “Have you seen this man in the town,” she asked.

  Vinit began to say no, and then something clicked. Yesterday he was at the basti to investigate the death of the child. When he was done, he was walking back and while casually looking around, he saw a bald man standing near the beach, observing the scene in the basti with an apparently casual eye. Vinit, who was in civilian clothes, nodded at him and the man nodded back with a sad shake of the head. It was that man in the picture. Of course, in the picture he had thick wavy hair and he looked a little heavier in the face, but there was no mistaking those dark eyes and the high cheekbones.

  “I saw him amongst a tourist party that arrived yesterday, who is he?”

  DYSP Raje answered in a gentle, almost kind voice, “that man is Neeraj Joshi. He is a fugitive from the law. We want to arrest him with charges of an insider scam on stock market, threatening to kill and for killing at least two people.”

  **

  Chapter 8

  The rainfall turned in to a monstrous downpour by evening. The tourist party sitting cooped in the bungalow, watched as everything around them got soaking wet with the kind of rainfall that one could only see in coastal towns.

  Then just as suddenly the rain stopped and the foxes showed up.

  Ragini stood outside the house, smoking. Her face had a satisfied glow. The kiss on the balcony had ignited the passion within her that she thought she had lost permanently. They had fallen on their knees the next minute, and then it all happened; right there on the balcony. Anybody taking a walk on the beach could have seen the intimacy clearly. But thanks to the rain, there were no walkers on the beach, or so she hoped.

  Now as she stood there, she saw some movement behind the compound wall and a couple of eyes glowed at her through the darkness. Ragini gasped, and stared. In a minute, a fox, no bigger than a stray dog, walked from behind the wall and entered the forecourt. It halted a few feet from where Ragini was standing and let out a throaty growl. Ragini wanted to run inside the house but her legs wouldn’t move an inch.

  ‘I am going to die, m
auled by this beast, an hour after I have made love after a long long time,’ she thought with tears in her eyes. The animal fixed her with its glowing eyes, its tail swishing from side to side. It seemed to soften her up with mind games before attacking her.

  Just then Rajat and Rakesh walked out of the house, and they saw the fox and Ragini at the same time. Rakesh seemed to be taken aback. Rajat, however, did not seem to be disturbed in the least bit. He simply walked past Ragini towards the fox. The animal growled even more menacingly but Rajat seemed not to have heard it. He calmly bent to pick up a stone from the muddy ground, and hurled it at the animal, connecting squarely with its throat. The fox howled in pain and disappeared, jumping over the wall effortlessly.

  “Scared you didn’t it? Ugly beast,” Rajat said, wiping his muddy palm against the thigh of his jeans and stood by her. Ragini, limp with relief, allowed him to take her hand and they walked back. Rakesh fell in step with them. After taking a couple of steps, all of them stopped. .

  Two more foxes blocked their entrance to the house, like guards of some old fort. Their hungry eyes seemed to hypnotize the three humans.

  Again Rajat was the most composed. He again bent to pick up a handful of stones, but before he could hurl them, one of the foxes attacked. With a throaty growl it sprang forward in a fluid motion straight towards Rajat. Rajat looked surprised, but did not lose his wits completely. Taking a couple of hasty steps back, he threw the largest stone in his hand at the fox. Again he connected, this time dead in the center of the animal’s forehead. It fell to ground but again stood up, shaking its head like a boxer in agony. Rajat hurled the second stone at the other animal still seated on the steps, he missed and the stone shattered the window pane instead. In the dead silence of the evening, the sound was loud enough to bring everyone out.

  It was all happening very fast, the door was thrown open and Rani and Happy poured out together, trampling the fox that for some reason still remained seated. With a howl, it ran away when Happy kicked him with his stout Reebok trainers. Rani lost balance and fell on the steps.

  Meanwhile, the other animal again charged towards Rajat, but by then Rakesh was out of the panic that gripped him. As it went past him Rakesh stuck his heavy foot out, kicking the animal in its soft stomach. With a terrible howl of pain, it fell sideways. Rakesh, perhaps out of fear more than cruelty, jumped on its head. There was a sickening crunch as its skull broke under Rakesh’s weight.

  “The PETA people would not approve of this Rakesh. No sir they won’t” Rajat said. Ragini, sick and relieved at the same time, could not help but wonder what the matter was with Rajat. In their group, he was physically and mentally the weakest person. He was forever the peacemaker, the breaker of bar-room brawls. She would have never imagined that her friend had the courage to stand his ground and throw stones at a wild beast while it was charging towards him.

  All of them walked inside, and Rajat secured the door. Rani had a slight cut on her cheek due to the fall.She and Ragini were very scared. Rakesh too seemed affected by his own actions, for he ran for the bathroom the moment they came inside the house. Ragini could hear him retching. Only Happy and Rajat looked perfectly normal.

  Neeraj came down the steps (he had chosen to stay upstairs after they were done earlier). Happy brought him up on the events. Neeraj too, looked surprised at the fact that it was the calm and gentle looking banker who defended his friends.

  “Are foxes regular in these parts?” he asked Rajat.

  Rajat shook his head, “We know there are foxes in the jungle nearby, but so far they have never ventured out in the open like this.”

  “Rain?” Happy suggested.

  “That is the most surprising part. Foxes attack humans normally in summer time, because it is their mating season and that is when they are at their most irritable. Also sometimes in summer, they face food shortage which makes them desperate enough to attack humans. I have never known a fox attacking in July. These buggers hate the rain.”

  “Very odd,” Happy said and moved to the window. He trailed off mid sentence and stared out. At first Rajat thought that Happy was about to launch one of his meaningless monologues, but then he realize something outside had caught Happy’s attention. So Rajat and Neeraj walked over to the window, and looked for themselves.

  About a dozen foxes surrounded Rajat’s holiday home. They seemed an angry bunch.

  “And the heat just keep on coming,” Rajat said. He turned inside to fetch his gun.

  Rakesh looked at Happy questioningly and Happy shrugged. Rani watching them was amazed despite herself, mentally ill or not, there was never any question as to who was in charge there. However, right then Happy seemed to be non-committal, content in just observing Rajat in action. Ragini took a look at the pack outside and shuddered.

  Rajat walked back into the room carrying an old hunting rifle. The weapon looked strange in his neat hands with their shapely fingers (Ragini used to tease him about his fingernails which were immaculate even in the middle of a summer vacation “Do you do a manicure Rajat baby?”). Rajat dropped on one knee, and broke the barrel open to insert two cartridges in the chamber. That done, he stood up and walked to the window, pushing Happy aside.

  As he raised the rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim, an old man walked out of nowhere. For one moment he was not there, the next moment he was standing right among the foxes, Rajat took the rifle down, thanking his stars before lowering the rifle. The old man would have been cut in two.

  “You stupid bastard, move out, can’t you see the foxes? Come inside the house for God’s sake!”

  The old man heard him and looked around himself, as if noticing the foxes for the first time. He did not look scared in the least and the animals too stopped their throaty growls. He walked towards the house and onto the porch. Rani opened the bolt with shaky fingers and let him in.

  Later on Ragini would remember that the only two people genuinely on the alert the moment the stranger stepped inside, were Neeraj and Happy. Both of them went rigid in their place for a moment, before Neeraj walked casually out of the room, as if he had work elsewhere. Happy stood staring at the stranger fixedly, like you would at the TV screen if you were watching a movie and trying to match a face in it with a name.

  Rajat as the host of the house, walked to the stranger, he had kept the rifle on his shoulders. He looked comical.

  “Who are you, and what the fuck were you doing standing among those animals? I could have shot you.”

  “Not with that gun Sahib, you would not,” the stranger said and lit a bidi. The acrid smell filled the living room.

  Rajat slapped the bidi out of the old man’s hands, and said roughly, “You can smoke your fucking bidi outside, for now just tell me what are you doing here?”

  “I have come here to warn you Sahib, please leave the town immediately and take your friends with you. This town is not good for your health.”

  Rajat was bewildered. He could not think of a single person in the town who would want him to leave. He hardly came here anymore, and his father was the best friend of the town’s strongman, Rajaji.

  “Who are you working for old man?”

  “For the revolution, you have heard of the execution of the headmaster and the English teacher. You have, no doubt, also heard of the execution of the sodomising, thieving bastard Raj and his family. They were all acts committed by the members of the revolution. I am a humble soldier of this revolution. I have a message from the Courageous Leader. He asks you to leave immediately.”

  “Courageous Leader? Well if he is here, then where the fuck are Rocky and Bull winkle?” Rakesh asked and laughed high, deep belly laughter. The old man, on whom the humor implicit in the cartoon characters was lost, stared at him with dull lifeless eyes. In about ten seconds Rakesh’s laughter died.

  Rajat was thinking fast. Small towns like Kumbhpur were full of politics that turned violent quickly, since most of the people involved were stupid and dumb. It was dangerous to g
et caught in the crossfire, as strangers sometimes did. While he and his friends were enjoying the beauties of the scenic town, a lot might have happened that he was not aware of. Rajat, who had spent his childhood in this town, was aware that by acting headstrong and running the old man out of the house, he might be putting himself and his friends in danger.

  At the same time, he did not want to get out of Kumbhpur in this weather as a result of a prank played by some drunken old fart. He needed counsel and an update on the local situation. There was one person who could give him that, but Rajat would not call him in front of the old man. But then how could he get to another room and make that call without arousing the stranger’s suspicion?

  Rakesh, in one of his countless drunken spells, had claimed that their little group had developed a feeling that was almost like telepathy. All those present promptly laughed him off, but Rajat had seen it taking place a few times before. It happened again then.

  “Hey old man relax a little, won’t you sit down, you look tired,” Rakesh moved in front of the old man, holding his frail shoulders in his arms and forcing him to sit in a chair nearby. Since Rakesh was 6’2”, he blocked the old man’s vision, allowing Rajat to retreat to the adjoining room. Rajat overheard Rakesh asking the old man if he would like to have a cigarette, and the old man politely refusing it. Then Rakesh asked him his name, and Rajat heard the stranger giving his full name “Nivrutti Hari Pade” like he must have been taught in the school.

  Rajat dialed Rajaji’s mobile number. Rajaji had given it to him yesterday when they had run into each other in the street.