Mumbai Noir

by Altaf Tyrewala

  “Aage?” Jende prodded.

  “There are three instructors. One masseur.”

  “Aah.”

  “He’s a sixty-year-old man.”

  “So?”

  “Nothing. He’s in his gaon.”

  “You know everything about this gym or what?”

  “When you take a one-year membership, you’re supposed to get five complimentary massages. I haven’t had any because I was told the masseur is in his gaon.”

  “On the banks of the Ganga, no doubt.”

  “You too?” The city had had a parochialism seizure. A young political party had decided that too many outsiders had arrived in the city and were taking jobs from the locals. Out-of-townies had been beaten up. The boys from the banks of the Ganga had it especially bad. Many seemed to feel some sympathy for this stance, even if they disapproved, they said, of the violence.

  “Arrey, where police has time to be political?”

  Peter looked carefully at his old-school friend but Jende’s face remained the stoic mask of the misunderstood man doing his duty. He continued, “Vishal was a trainer. The other two are Rahul and Sihon.”

  “Sea-horn?”

  “So he said.”

  “Tera?”

  “Mera.”

  “This is a name or what? Sihon?”

  “I looked it up in the Bible. It’s there.”

  “What did this Bible-walla banda do?”

  “He was defeated by the Israelites.”

  “Why give name like that?”

  “Why give name like Eklavya?”

  “Arrey, he should be dutiful and obedient, like Eklavya.”

  Peter shrugged. He himself was a rock. Jende was Shiva, the blue-throated god. The names passed without comment. Everyone knew what a Peter was. Peter wasn’t sure, but everyone else was; that counted in Mahim which sat across several communal and political fault lines.

  “Three boys. One masseur. One old man. Members?”

  “Many. Mostly college boys. And middle-aged ladies. And college girls.”

  “Means janta.”

  “Yes. Janta. Everyone. There is even one white girl.”

  “Chikni ya gori?”

  “Full gori. She’s from Poland, I think.”

  “In Mahim?”

  “Shouldn’t you know that? If she lives in Mahim?” Peter asked. An old rule made it mandatory to tell the police if you were having a foreign guest, even for just a night.

  “Police should know everything. Then their work will be easy.”

  Peter recited gym schedules and holidays, talked about the sauna that did not work most days. Thought some more. “They divide them up. Rahul does the young college boys. Vishal does the middle-aged ladies. Sihon does the girls.”

  “Does means like …” and Jende waved his fist in a manner that suggested an infinity of lewdness.

  “Bad verb. Does means looks after. Means when a college boy comes in, Rahul will give him a high five, ask him about his bike, his babe. Then he’ll ask why he’s late, what he’s planning to do, maybe spot him. That kind of thing. Sihon will do that for the young women. And Vishal for the middle-aged ladies.”

  “Who does the old men?”

  “No one.”

  “Means?”

  “Means they come and say, Hello, uncle, once in a while, or, Saab, first class? But nothing else.”

  “Poor Pittr.”

  “Poor Peter, indeed.”

  They drank their tea.

  “Come to think of it …” Peter said.

  “Don’t come to think. Just tell.”

  “I haven’t seen Rahul in several days.”

  “Aah.”

  “Jay, it may be nothing.”

  “I said it’s something?”

  To which there was nothing else to say.

  “More?” Jende offered.

  “Marega. Acidity.”

  “Zindagi imtihaan leti hai.”

  Hindi film songs have various uses, Peter thought. One of them is to provide pop philosophy. And life does indeed require you to sit for several examinations.

  Jende sat quietly for a while. “Yeh Vishal …” He framed his thought. “Not much fun, uske liye, na? Only fat-fat women in salwar kameez?”

  The notion had occurred to Peter too. He shrugged. “These are only my observations, boss. Maybe there was no hard and fast rule …”

  “Did you see exceptions?”

  “When I was there? Never.”

  “And why do you think … ?”

  Peter shrugged again. In his mind, he saw Shiva Jende, age ten, fighting a bunch of boys who were calling him kaalia. Victoria High School was not a kind place.

  “Say.”

  Peter looked at him.

  “Because he looked very blacky?” Jende asked.

  Peter sighed. The color of your skin is always a marker in India. Always. Vishal would have been assigned the aunties on the basis of his darkness just as Sihon got the young women because he could speak a little English.

  “Don’t worry. I don’t care now. Eklavya and Abhimanyu went on their mother’s color, mere liye bas.”

  Peter smiled because Jende had mentioned his sons. One did that. One smiled at the mention of other people’s children. But he hoped that Jende would construe his smile as one of friendly approval of another’s offspring and not of the sentiment expressed. Was it a good thing that Jende rejoiced that his sons had taken on their mother’s skin tone? Or was it a bad thing? Or was it anything at all?

  “Yeh Kalsekar?

  “I don’t know. He just looks after the reception.”

  “Means?”

  “He takes calls. And handles the membership renewals. And makes sure people don’t come twice a day.”

  “Twice a day?”

  “College boys.”

  “I can’t go once a day. Where these boys … ?”

  “You’ve joined a gym?”

  “Police gym hai na? Compulsory.”

  They both thought about that for a bit.

  The phone rang. The voice on the other side was shrill, hysterical. Jende turned matter-of-fact.

  “Chhapar phaad ke,” he said, invoking the metaphor that when God gives, He tears open your roof to pour it in on you. “One more.”

  He gulped his tea, burned his mouth, screamed, “Maadherchod!” The tea man came in, assuming that he had been summoned. “Chal hutt,” said Jende, waving him away. And to Peter, still sitting there. “Tu bhi.”

  Peter obeyed. You did not sit around a Mumbai police station if you were told to move on.

  The park was quiet but Peter saw that a couple of EverFit regulars had also decided to walk.

  “Hello,” said Mrs. Vishwanathan, a retired schoolteacher. “What trouble this is.”

  He knew what she meant.

  “They must refund,” she said. “If they are closed, they must refund.”

  “Or extend,” said Peter. “Give one more day for each day missed.”

  “Haan, like that they will do,” replied Mrs. Vishwanathan. She was slowing him down but there was no way to shake her off. “Endless. First, that mobile went. Gone. One moment sitting there; next moment, gone. Then Zeenat, you know Zeenat?”

  Peter indicated that he knew Zeenat. She was a schoolteacher and was getting married in three months. She needed to lose weight in a hurry and worked out with the kind of urgency that panicked the other women around her.

  “Her house was robbed.”

  Peter looked puzzled.

  “My mother said. In three. Everything in threes. In ours, three. Even in yours, three.”

  Peter nodded. He was still puzzled but he took her to mean the trinity, the triune godhead of Christianity.

  “In yours, also three,” he said.

  “And then came Malini’s house. That also robbed. Safaachutt.” Peter looked at her. “Malini?”

  “Short lady? Got white-white skin from leucoderma? One pony she keeps?”

  By which Peter understo
od Malini to be a sufferer from vitiligo who had a ponytail. “Her house was robbed too?”

  “Like one panvati, this gym is,” she said. “I told him, You go somewhere else.”

  “Who? Vishal?”

  “I told. This place will eat you. They will eat you.”

  Peter did not want to know whether she was going to identify who “they” were. He hastened his pace, but only a little.

  Mrs. Vishwanathan gave a great sigh and asked: “But will one be able to go there?”

  “Means?”

  “Means without Vishal?”

  Her voice actually wobbled. Peter started to look at her but decided against it. Vishal rose in his mind, as he had once seen him in the changing room. He had the body of someone who had devoted attention and steroids to it. He wore tight T-shirts and shorts to show it off. He had been turned loose on the several Mrs. Vishwanathans who came to the gym and here was the expectable result. He had noticed it himself, the restless hands that fluttered near the brawny young shoulders, the coquettish demands for help, the small gifts of specially prepared food. It was as much maternal as it was sexual.

  “Very sad,” he said, and meant it.

  His mobile phone rang. Jende.

  “Bola,” Peter said.

  “Just come.”

  “Where?”

  “Debonair II.”

  This was a new high-rise on the sea face, at Veer Savarkar Marg, the road that ran past a crematorium, a mill, a monument, and a park. It began at the Siddhivinayak Temple, one of the city’s most famous, and ended at the durgah of Makhdoom Ali Mahimi, the Muslim patron saint of the city’s police.

  “Which floor?”

  But Jende had terminated the call.

  At Debonair II, it was clear that the problem was on the fourth floor.

  “Madhavi P. Twenty-four. Graphic designer. Dead,” said Jende. “Not interfered.”

  By which Peter took him to mean that the woman had not been raped or molested in any way, peri- or postmortem. The victim had been young and female and pretty. Now she lay like a broken doll, her body oddly contorted.

  “Why am I here?” he asked.

  Jende pointed. A familiar blue card lay on the desk.

  “Many people are members of EverFit,” said Peter.

  “A gym coach gets beaten to death. Then a female member is murdered. Too much or what?”

  “Much too much.”

  “I am thinking,” said Jende, “we are going to get more answers back at the gym.”

  Kalsekar was behind the counter. He was drinking tea as if it were gin. Perhaps he had spiked it with gin. His hands were shaking now.

  “Let us sit together,” said Jende.

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “This boy, Vishal …”

  “All lies.”

  “I know that. But you must tell us the truth then.”

  “He was a good boy.”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  “Who would want him dead?” Kalsekar’s face crumpled a little and suddenly he went from old to ancient.

  “You tell me,” said Jende.

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “It’s all lies.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “I did not even take rent.”

  Jende glanced at me. I’d had no idea. Vishal lived with Kalsekar?

  “Food money I had to take. How much chicken one boy needs?”

  “That is understandable. Anyone would take.”

  And so it came out, in fits and starts. The young man with the certificates who wanted a job. The discovery of some common village ancestry. The offer. The unlikely companionship between receptionist and trainer.

  In the middle of it, the medical examiner came in. He held a dumbbell in his gloved hand. It had smears of blood on it. “Your weapon, I am thinking,” he said to Jende.

  “Come for lunch,” Peter said to Jende.

  “Mutton-chicken-fish?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter confessed.

  “Doll curry, probably,” Jende said, mocking the Roman Catholic way of speaking of daal.

  “I’m a poor man, Jay.”

  “Tell bhabhi, send a dabba. I’ll be here interviewing all the boys.”

  Milly packed the dabba without too much complaint. She could see the need to keep an inspector sweet. “Never know when you’ll need them,” she said, while hesitating over a second piece of fish. Then she threw it in with the air of a woman making her final offering to the Fates.

  When Peter took the dabba over, Sihon was being interviewed.

  “This woman, she was yours to handle, na?”

  “Nothing like that,” said Sihon. He looked at Peter. “Means you tell him, uncle.”

  “Uncle only has told,” said Jende.

  “What has uncle told?”

  “That you handle the young women, Vishal handled the aunties, and Rahul for the chiknas.”

  This made it sound far more dubious than it actually was.

  Sihon shrugged.

  “They only told to do like that.”

  They did an awful lot of things.

  “So tell us about yesterday. Did Madhavi P come yesterday? For workout?”

  “She came.”

  “What she did?”

  “Cardio.”

  “For how long?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “What time?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “And she left at?”

  “Eight-thirty.”

  “So what was she doing for half an hour?”

  “Means?”

  “She did cardio for half an hour. But full one hour she spent in the gym?”

  “Ladies are like that. They talk. They sit on the stairs and talk on the phone. Shower bath only takes ten-twenty minutes.”

  “Medical report says she was killed at nine o’clock. You were the last person to see her alive.”

  This was an unbelievable stretch and it could only fail.

  “Arrey, sir, why you’re talking like that? So many people must have seen on the road.”

  “Yes, that we will be checking. But where were you last night?”

  A sly look came over Sihon’s face for half a second and then it vanished. “At home.”

  “You were at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure, na?”

  “Yes.”

  Peter could hear the young man wavering.

  “Okay. I will write this down and you will sign it. You were at home last night.”

  “Sign?”

  “And we will check this with your parents.”

  “Arrey, no, saab, please, why all this?”

  “Because you are lying to me.”

  “Lying?” But he was already caught.

  Peter stepped in. “Sihon?”

  “Uncle?”

  “Tell the truth, baba.”

  Sihon looked terrified for a moment. The truth was a loaded weapon.

  “Sir, I am not like that. But he said. They could not. So I said. But I was there.”

  “You’re on drugs or what?” Jende demanded.

  Peter stepped in again. He realized suddenly and uncomfortably that he and Jende were playing Good Cop, Bad Cop à la Mahim.

  “First say this: what are you not like?”

  “Means, sir, I would not do. We are told. Don’t even look at the ladies. Means, they are your sister. We are told.”

  “And you looked on them as your sisters, yes, yes,” said Peter soothingly.

  Sihon seemed uncomfortable.

  Jende pounced: “No, he is not looking on them as sister. He is going to Madhavi’s house for sex.”

  “No, sir,” Sihon almost howled. “Not Madhavi. Chanda.”

  “Chanda?” Peter asked.

  “My setting is with Chanda,” Sihon repeated.

  Peter tried not to respond but he knew his surprise was showing on his face. Chanda
was one of the yuppie women at the gym. She wore designer trackpants and carried a water bottle that looked like it had been designed for intergalactic travel. She took tiny sips from it, as if the liquid inside were rare and precious. Sihon was having an affair with Chanda? They might be about the same age but it seemed as odd as Mrs. Vishwanathan and Vishal.

  “Chanda? What you’re doing with Chanda?”

  “Her husband told.”

  “Her husband told you to fuck Chanda while he watched?” Jende asked, but he was already losing steam.

  “Means not like that. He doesn’t have.”

  “What doesn’t he have?”

  “Means no children.”

  Peter could feel shock seeping through his face but Jende didn’t seem particularly surprised.

  “He didn’t have brothers?”

  “His brother is not like me,” said Sihon, extending a forearm and turning it for them as if displaying it.

  Peter raised his eyebrows.

  “Means I have color.”

  Sihon obviously believed that Mr. Chanda had chosen him as surrogate father on the basis of the color of his skin. A few minutes later, he was allowed to leave. His alibi was watertight. He had been doing his duty with Chanda, and Mr. Chanda had also been present. Jende received this information with no change of expression. Peter hoped his own face was as expressionless.

  “I told my parents I was studying for IAS. Please don’t tell, aahn?” Sihon said as he left.

  “Haan, one more mystery cleared,” concluded Jende, pointing to the Jesus Loves You sticker. “That boy’s work.”

  Rahul was up next.

  “Vishal was a good guy,” he said. “He was a good guy.”

  “Did you know Madhavi P?”

  He had known Madhavi. But he had not even been in the city until that very afternoon. He had been on an Ashtavinayak yatra, visiting the eight Ganesha temples of note in the state of Maharashtra. The young men at EverFit had had to fend for themselves for a couple of days. Twenty other people could vouch for him.

  The door opened a crack—it was Mrs. Vishwanathan. “Excuse, please,” she said to Jende. “May I have a word with the manager?”

  The constable on duty outside poked his head around the door. Jende raised an eyebrow and the constable looked like he had been struck by a bolt of lightning.

  “Chalaa,” he said, and Mrs. Vishwanathan vanished.

  “Odd how you meet people again and again,” Peter said. And he told Jende about their walk around the park. “And yes, I wanted to mention this: two robberies have happened. Three, if you count the mobile phone that vanished.”