‘What’s wrong with it?’ she asked her uncle.
‘Look at the date on top,’ he said.
It was handwritten. 1 January 2014. It should have been 1 January 2015.
‘Shit,’ Gunjan said. ‘Can’t he just ignore it?’
‘I asked him to. He says that his superiors weren’t happy when he had made the same mistake last year. With the deaths of 1 January 2014.’
This meant that they would now have to go to the doctor and get a new note. It also meant that they would now get the certificate only tomorrow. All other processes could only start once the death certificate had been obtained.
The doctor’s silly mistake, the rancid smell around the office, the fact that his uncle hadn’t been able to understand the simple need for a bribe, the boy’s offensive gesture – it all got to Gunjan. Something pent up bubbled over to the surface. On an impulse, she walked towards the place where the game of cricket was on. Her uncle followed her, confused.
Gunjan interrupted the game and walked towards the boy who had offended her. The boy just stood there dumbfounded. Gunjan grabbed his hair with her left hand and slapped him repeatedly with the right. Nobody moved till her uncle grabbed her and took her away. The boys were all stunned.
Gunjan was still shaking when they got into the car. ‘What happened with those kids?’ Chacha asked.
‘That guy was making vulgar gestures at me.’
‘You shouldn’t get involved like this, beta.’
‘I’m not a child anymore, Chachaji.’
Chacha didn’t say anything to that. She reversed the car, took it outside the compound, and drove in the direction that would take them to the doctor’s place. ‘Sorry,’ she said after a while.
At the doctor’s, they were made to wait for almost an hour. When they eventually got to make the request, the doctor apologized for his mistake and wrote a new letter with the right date. He had a long face and kept a slim moustache and, with his expensive wrist watch and cuff-links, seemed somewhat too sophisticated for Muzaffarnagar. Gunjan had recognized him as the father of one of her best friends in Holy Angels’ – Anjana. She had remembered the face from the parent–teacher meetings; only the hair had turned white. The connection felt too irrelevant to be brought up, and so she was pleasantly surprised when the doctor spoke: ‘You are Gunjan, right?’
‘Yes, Uncle. How do you know?’
‘That episode? With the Muslim boy?’
Gunjan and Anjana had gone out on a secret double date once, a dangerous thing to do in Muzaffarnagar. The boys were from a different school, but they had been their classmates in Holy Angels’ till Class X. The double-date consisted of nothing more than sharing a little snack at a joint in Mandi, but the consequences were terrible: Gunjan’s date, a handsome guy named Daanish, was beaten up by some goons and was hospitalized. The goons had Gunjan and Anjana take a rickshaw and asked them to go to their homes. Looking back from that rickshaw was the last time she ever saw Daanish, and as she tried to remember his face now, she realized that she had forgotten him completely.
‘You were with Anjana that day,’ the doctor said.
Scared of being found out, she and Anjana had decided never to talk about the day with anyone. So it took a moment for Gunjan to accept the doctor’s assertion. ‘I was with her, yes.’
‘Your father and I had talked that time. Told each other to be more careful.’
It stunned Gunjan to know that her father had known of that disastrous adventure of her adolescent life and had never demanded an explanation from her. She now remembered that it had happened just before the board exams. Perhaps her father was saving her from the added stress.
‘Thank you, Uncle,’ she said, rising from her chair. Jagvir Chacha stood up too.
‘I’m really sorry about your father, beta,’ the doctor said.
As they were leaving his room, the doctor chipped in with a piece of advice: ‘These days, the municipal office gives extra original death certificates for a fee. You should get many of those.’
‘Yes, Uncle,’ Gunjan said, hearing herself think that it was good advice.
In the car, Jagvir Chacha asked her about ‘the episode with the Muslim boy’ and she told him the facts. They drove homeward as the municipal office hours were over by then. It was only when they reached the farm that Gunjan realized that she hadn’t asked Anjana’s father about her friend’s whereabouts.
After the evening tea, Gunjan’s mother suggested that they look into her father’s papers. She gave Jagvir Chacha the keys to the almirah where the papers were supposed to be, and withdrew to the kitchen, from where she shouted out to Gunjan after a few minutes.
In the kitchen, Gunjan’s mother grabbed her arm and drew her closer. ‘I want you to be present there,’ she said in a voice of urgency. ‘Next to the almirah. Be there and keep your eyes open. Your uncle will look into your father’s papers. And your grandfather’s papers. I trust him, but I can’t understand a thing. You should. You should understand everything. Involve yourself, my child. Your father is gone now. There might be papers there related to your grandfather’s properties. All that is still undivided. Unresolved. We took care of your grandfather till his death; not your uncles and their wives. You understand that? You understand what that means? You should know how much money the old man had. You should know how much money your father had. I haven’t dealt with papers for thirty years now. But you’ve to understand what your rights are, what your inheritance is? Go, my child, stand by the almirah, look at all the papers. I have only you to trust.’
They found ten original death certificates for her grandfather, obtained by her father three days before his own death from the same municipal office that they had gone to. Her father had known that multiple original copies could be taken, Gunjan noted.
They found passbooks for seven bank accounts – two owned by her grandfather, four owned by her father, and one of them held jointly between her grandfather and father. ‘This is the one into which the agricultural income comes,’ Chacha said, leafing through the last passbook. Gunjan had never bothered to care if their family had any agricultural income, but it seemed logical since she knew that her grandfather owned some agricultural land. She could see that Jagvir Chacha was perturbed by the fact that her father jointly owned the account where that income accumulated. The fact that this account had the most money of all – nine lakhs – made the situation complicated. Should the money be divided equally among the families of all her grandfather’s children? Or should 50 per cent of it come to her father’s family, considering that her father held the account jointly? In none of her grandfather’s accounts did the passbooks provide the names of any nominees, neither did her father’s accounts mention an inheritor. ‘This could be a problem,’ Chacha said. Gunjan wondered why her grandfather’s papers had not been looked into immediately after his death. Had her father prevented that? Or was it just that everyone expected they had more time?
They found two life insurance policy bonds belonging to her father along with annual premium payment receipts pinned neatly together to the last glossy page of the policies. The policies had been bought at the same time close to eight years ago. The last payments had been made in May of the previous year. ‘Sum assured in either is three lakhs,’ Chacha said. ‘Here it says “payout is higher of sum assured or the fund value”. So the minimum due is six lakhs.’
‘Non-taxable,’ he added after a minute. Tax was another thing to think of, Gunjan reminded herself.
They found a motor policy document for the scooter; the last premium had been paid a month ago.
They found a fat file that included all his salary slips, from up to three decades back. Two hundred and fifty rupees, Gunjan read in one of the oldest ones. In the same file, they found details of his provident fund, both the mandatory and voluntary ones. By his uncle’s crude estimate, an amount between twenty to twenty-five lakhs had accumulated. That was Gunjan’s father’s life savings. That was how much he had managed. Had she bee
n a conventional girl, a girl who sought an arranged marriage at the age of twenty-four, her father would have found it difficult to spend a lot on her marriage and have a comfortable retirement. By necessity, the marriage would have been a small affair: fifty people or so, little or no dowry, and a husband with pockmarks or a belly, or both.
I am not rich, Gunjan told herself loudly inside her head. I have never been rich.
They found brochures of some shares and mutual funds, not amounting to more than a lakh or so. Gunjan was the nominee in all of them.
They found two thousand-rupee notes in her father’s wallet. Jagvir Chacha gave it to Gunjan. In her grandfather’s wallet were four hundred-rupee notes. Jagvir Chacha gave the notes to Gunjan and kept the wallet separately. The rings worn by the men at the time of their death were also similarly managed – her father’s ring given to Gunjan; her grandfather’s ring kept separately, along with the wallet.
They found a little notebook in which was noted the money her father had lent to four of his friends in the city. It amounted to eighty thousand rupees.
They also found copies of the various applications her father had written to his office superiors. These were applications for availing privileged leave, applications to demand money for repairs to the many government residences granted to them over the years, applications to request withdrawals from his provident fund, applications for reimbursements for family medical expenses, and so on. The two applications for provident fund withdrawals named her as the reason – they corresponded to when she first went to Delhi for her bachelor’s and when she got into a master’s programme. Gunjan had never cared where her father got money from; and it had never occurred to her that it might have been better if she had paid it back. And, she remembered, she had asked her father for help with the advance when she had broken up with her first boyfriend and had to move to a flat of her own again. Her father had always paid, and she had never cared how.
‘We should get the death certificates tomorrow, and start with all this,’ Jagvir Chacha said, breaking her line of thought.
Around 10 p.m., lying alone in her room, Gunjan called Mahesh.
‘Hey, how is it, love?’ he asked.
‘I’m alright,’ she whispered. Mahesh knew that she had to speak like this.
‘Hmm. What else?’
‘I wanted to ask you one thing,’ Gunjan said.
‘Yes, what?’
‘How much rent do the families pay? The other families who live in the building?’
‘You mean in our building?’ Mahesh asked.
‘Yes, your building.’
‘Umm … Two point five lakhs per month. The ones on the ground floor pay a bit higher; I don’t remember how much.’
‘So if I were to pay for my stay with you, I would have to pay one point two five lakh?’
‘Why would you pay to live with me?’ said Mahesh, his voice strained.
‘No, just saying.’
‘Well, in that case, that’s the calculation, yes.’
‘You know my father’s last salary was sixty thousand rupees. In hand.’
‘Umm … well, he was a government employee. The government doesn’t pay much.’
‘And my current salary,’ Gunjan continued, ‘it is sixty thousand too.’
‘What’s the point, baby? Why are you telling me this?’
‘If I intended to pay rent to you, then that rent would be more than the total money coming into my family per month.’
‘What happened, love? Why are you suddenly intent on feeling poor?’
‘And you make more than twenty lakhs a month from rent alone? That’s all my father’s provident fund, right there.’
‘What’s the point, Gunjan?’
‘Nothing, nothing really. I’m tired.’
‘Take a deep sleep, baby. I will talk to you later.’
‘Good night.’
The next morning, as Gunjan parked the car in the municipal office grounds, she saw two boys from the day before resting their cycles by the compound wall. They also saw her, and when she and Jagvir Chacha got out of the car, they ran away.
There was no game of cricket today, although the toilet next to the ‘Birth/Death Registration’ office still stank. Gunjan braved the smell and entered the room, followed by her uncle. There were two men sitting in front of the officer’s desk, and they were having a conversation about state politics. Gunjan wondered how these men could indulge in idle talk in such hellish odour. She stood next to where the two men were seated and placed the letter from the doctor on the desk. The officer didn’t notice it, but then Gunjan placed a thousand-rupee note above the letter. ‘I want ten death certificates for my father,’ she said. The officer looked up at her. ‘It’s best if you can manage this in the next ten-fifteen minutes.’ The officer nodded towards the other men and they vacated their chairs for Gunjan and Jagvir Chacha. ‘Thank you, but we will stand outside,’ Gunjan said, swatting the air around her nose.
‘Okay, madam,’ the officer said.
Standing outside, Gunjan’s mind rested a brief moment on the irony of the fact that the thousand-rupee note she had used was from her father’s wallet. Jagvir Chacha stood silently next to her, shifting his weight between his legs. In the grounds next to their standing space, there was still no game of cricket.
After ten minutes, the officer came out of the room with the required papers. As he handed them over, he said, ‘Cancer in the summer, and heart attacks in the winters. So many deaths, madam. Are you the daughter?’
Gunjan took the certificates and ignored the question.
‘Yes, she is the daughter,’ Jagvir Chacha answered the officer. ‘And I’m the brother.’
‘Your bhaisaab was so blessed,’ the officer responded to Chacha, ‘to have such a beautiful daughter.’
‘Let’s go to the bank,’ Gunjan said to Chacha.
As they walked towards to the car, they saw a group of boys near the compound gate, racing away on their cycles. When they reached the spot where the car was parked, they saw that the car had been vandalized. Someone had scrawled something on the hood, with a metal key or some other pointed instrument. It took only a moment’s concentration to read what was written: रंडी. Whore.
‘I told you not to get involved,’ Jagvir Chacha said.
Gunjan didn’t say anything and got into the car.
‘Whose car is it?’ Chacha asked once inside the car.
‘My friend’s.’
‘You’ll now have to spend money on it.’
Gunjan switched on the ignition. ‘This town is shit.’ she said. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.’
At the first branch they visited, they were told that Gunjan’s father’s account there had no nominees specified. This meant that the money could not be transferred to Gunjan or her mother directly. The branch manager that Gunjan and her uncle met – a bald man with Gandhi specs and a turtleneck sweater beneath his blazer – seemed to find pleasure in conveying the technical complications. He invited them to his cabin and asked an attendant to bring in three cups of tea. He was in no hurry.
‘Earlier, it was not necessary to mention nominees while opening a bank account,’ the branch manager said. ‘There wasn’t much awareness, you could say. But things have changed completely in the last ten years or so. Lately, we have reached out to all our account holders regarding this. Through SMS. Specifying nominees is mandatory now. And it saves a lot of problems if an account holder dies. But your father must have been busy, or maybe our messages didn’t reach him. Earlier, people didn’t have mobile phone numbers registered with their bank accounts, too, so we might not have had his number with us. I presume he didn’t use Internet banking.’
‘So what’s the procedure now?’ Gunjan asked the manager.
‘To receive the account holder’s money, the heirs need to get a certificate,’ the manager said. ‘It’s issued by the district administration.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Gunjan said.
‘What should these affidavits say?’ Jagvir Chacha asked.
‘That Madam and Mataji are indeed the heirs of Mr Ranbir Singh.’
‘Okay,’ Gunjan said. ‘So we just give a copy of that certificate to you, then?’
‘There is more,’ the manager said.
‘What?’
‘Each bank that Mr. Ranbir Singh has an account in will need to know to whom his money needs to be transferred. Now, our bank would not want to be involved in a future dispute between the heirs. What I’m saying is simple: since there are two heirs in this case, one of you will have to provide an affidavit saying that you are fine with the other person receiving the full sum. Unless there is a conflict that you are aware of. In which case things get more complicated.’
‘There is no conflict,’ Jagvir Chacha said. ‘Her mother should get the money.’
‘If that is the case, Madam will have to sign an affidavit conveying the same,’ the manager said, pointing towards Gunjan. He took off his specs and wiped the lens with his handkerchief. Everything about him seemed rehearsed and, for that reason, Gunjan didn’t like him. ‘There has to be a different affidavit for each bank,’ he added, ‘and each affidavit needs to have the exact details of the concerned accounts.’
‘Understood, Sir,’ Gunjan said.
Over the day, as they went to the branches of other banks, one after the other, they realized that the situation with each account was the same, including her grandfather’s accounts and the joint account between her father and her grandfather. There were no nominees specified, and this meant that affidavits and certificates would be required for each. Gunjan and Jagvir Chacha agreed that it was prudent to focus on her father’s accounts first. The effort required to get the heir certificates for her grandfather’s accounts was a problem that seemed beyond their capacity at this time.
That evening, there was nothing to do. From the verandah, Gunjan noticed a dense fog engulfing the house. Her mother was in her bedroom, knitting something for Chhoti Maami’s younger son, who was four years old. Jagvir Chacha was in the living room, watching the news with the volume really low, so that the neighbours wouldn’t know that the TV was on. The murmur of the TV somehow added to the silence, and the house sounded like a place that had been abandoned.
Diwali in Muzaffarnagar Page 17
