Tinsel

by Manoj (Vaz) Ramchandran

  Those evenings at Eva’s seemed to continue forever: he would go to her early, fresh with the appetite for a philosophical discourse on his latest readings (and he read like a man possessed) and she would embrace him and his curiosity both and there would be the rarest confluence of body and thought; of lust, love and lore. Man’s tragic truth stirred him particularly and she taught him delicately the immortal thoughts of Kant, Coleridge, Hegel, Foucault and Freud. She taught him repression and let flow the beast in him when he made love to her. So united with him she became in body and thought that she arranged for Candy to move out of her house to pursue her career as a bus operator in Milky Way. Candy had

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  been desperate to set up her independent home and a business under her mother’s patronage for quite some time and moved out more than happily in her own pursuit of what she had considered a bright career. Brohum was now to move in with Eva and live with her.

  Brohum’s family were the next to be sounded on the subject. Nobody for once doubted his position as an individual to choose his course of life. Prude had not time for it as it did not add to his sales; Velocity had anticipated it, as she said, a long time back, and Gogi regarded it in the tradition and mannerism of Gogo that Brohum should move out. Yet at dinner the following evening they all threw a fit when he told them that he would live with Ms Eve as her tenant. “Candy’s mom!” was all that they said to express their shock. Velocity seemed concerned and Gogi crossed herself in fear:

  “Brohum,” she said, “it is your decision to be independent of us. You are talented and can hoist your own colours. But Candy’s mom! Will not Candy be an unpleasant presence about the house? Besides, Candy’s mom has mysterious antecedents. She is a virtual outsider at Barren Park. We don’t know what she does. Some of them say that she is a witch! Are you deciding sensibly on this one?”

  “Believe me, I am,” he replied. “I know Ms Eve personally. I can’t avoid her even if I wanted to. For all her being a witch, she is my boss at Nowhere.”

  “Your boss! Candy’s mom!” Velocity made a face that said that she

  was going to puke. Gogi was aghast.

  But that was the clinching argument. The matter was put to Prude late in the evening and he said that the devil could be more reliable only by his allegiance to Nowhere, and that Candy’s mom had been branded a witch only by the idiots at Barren Park. He had held her in high esteem himself, he said, because she bought bulk orders from him and patronised his business at Nowhere Corp. too. So it was settled that Brohum should move in at Ms Eve’s.

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  Once she got him at home, Ms Eve worshipped her young pupil as a lover, as a man and a scholar. Brohum later would lavishly recollect that the first three months of his stay at Eva’s had been the best: in them they read, ate and loved with hunger. In them he had surrendered his soul to her instincts and she her body and thoughts to his soul and together they had fondled each other into newer worlds.

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  Roy continued to live with George and Gracy, but he would spend the days in the love nest with Rita.

  Sunil, on the other hand, was in love of an other kind. He had befriended and started working with an ex-insurance clerk he had met on the train named Harshal Mehta who was moving big time into stocks.

  He had suddenly gotten so busy that he hardly had the time to be possessive of Rita. In fact he was possessed by greed and it reflected in his eyes. Rita could not understand what was happening but could see the effects.

  A brand new Maruti 1000, the newly launched luxury sedan and a uniformed chauffer, stood on their society’s parking lot.

  All day he had meetings with bankers, brokers, investment consultants and industrialists wanting to take their companies public. The great Indian Stock Exchange Bull Run had begun and the ambitious ex-insurance clerk was at the helm of it.

  The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) exploded from under 2000 points to 3500 and was growing

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  every day. The analysts on TV were claiming that the Sensex could touch 10,000 points in a year’s time!

  The share price of a little known cement company, Associated Cement Works (ACW) had risen from a mere Rs 200 to Rs 9,000 in no time.

  It was a time when trading in shares became a short cut to getting rich. Illiterate hawkers, house wives, and middle class youth, mortgaged everything they had and plunged into the trade.

  Roy and Chika too followed suit. They invested all their savings in the BSE. They even took a 10 lakh loan from Bhuria to invest.

  That apart, they also invested 15 lakhs of Bhuria’s personal money in stocks at his behest.

  Zaheer was not involved in this moolah melee. His parents and brother had fixed his marriage with his second cousin Shameem. So he let Roy and Chika take all the investment decisions on his behalf.

  Shameem was four years younger to Zaheer and had carried a crush on him since she was a little girl. He used to avoid the skinny ponytailed girl at first, but it was different when she blossomed into a pretty and smart young woman.

  She stayed with her parents in a nearby central suburb called Kurla and, despite objections from some of her orthodox relatives, ran a Chinese beauty parlour called “Shameem’s” in the same locality. Her profession mandated that she looked after herself well and dressed fashionably. Her parents were not at all orthodox and she had lived all her life in a secular atmosphere.

  But Zaheer was disturbed. He knew that he wasn’t the philandering Zaheer of yore. He

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  asked her out one day and told her all about his ordeal in the police lock up and how it had affected him.

  Shameem listened intently, smiled and told him not to worry, and now that he had shared it with her, it was no longer his problem.

  They got engaged a couple of days later and had a big wedding the month after. More than 500 people attended the wedding and the feast afterwards.

  As a wedding gift, Roy and Chika booked a weeklong Honeymoon Package at The Clifton in the South Indian hill station of Kodai Kanal followed by 3 days at the Fern Garden Palace in nearby Ooty.

  The package included air fare to the city of Coimbatore and a 6 hour car ride up the winding roads to the lovely Kodai Kanal.

  Throughout the journey, Zaheer was dour and on the quieter side while Shameem was excited and extra chirpy.

  The Honeymoon Suite at the Clifton was exquisite as the name suggested. It had a living

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  room and a huge bedroom with a round king sized bed with mirrors on the ceiling and an extravagant bathroom which included a large bathtub for two. The bed had white linen and rose petals were strewn over it. “Now what?” asked Zaheer when they had unpacked and settled down.

  Shameem came over and sat on his lap. She caressed his face and whispered, “I, Shameem Zaheer Sheikh, am going to make my man love me like no woman has been loved before” and slowly and deliberately she started unbuttoning his shirt.

  When she reached down to undo his jeans, Zaheer was reluctant but gave in to her insistence.

  There he was lying nude on the king sized bed while Shameem reached for her hand bag and pulled out a scarf and blindfolded him.

  She then tip toed into the bathroom, turned the tap on the bathtub on, and dug out a small pair of scissors from her purse.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Zaheer weakly.

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  “Shut up and enjoy” she laughed wickedly, “or I will get another scarf and gag you!”

  Snip snip snip … she went at his pubics expertly and within 10 minutes all that remained on his crotch was a stubble and a half erect organ.

  She undressed herself, slowly pulled him up, brushed the hair on the bed onto the floor with a towel and led him slowly to the bathroom.

  “Can I open the blindfold?” pleaded Zaheer.

  “No dear. You will have to trust me,�
� she replied.

  The bathtub was already full of warm soapy water. She settled her blindfolded husband down and then got in herself and sat facing him. She then started scrubbing and stroking his manhood under water. The feeling was hard to resist and Zaheer could feel blood rushing into his loins.

  “You know Zaheer, you have a lovely manhood, it’s just a little rusty…” she whispered.

  After 15 minutes of the seductive wash, she pulled him out and led him to the bed pushed him on it drenching the linen and making the rose petals stick to his body.

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  “Get ready for the time of your life!” she said huskily and reached for her bag, this time to pull out a small bottle and poured the warm, sticky liquid on his crotch and spread it with both her hands to the length and girth of his circumcised organ, stomach and inner thighs.

  “What is that?” enquired the blind man.

  “It’s honey, honey,” she replied, “the sweetest thing you have ever tasted,” and started licking him with wet, even strokes, starting from his inner thighs to his crotch to his lower abdomen.

  When Zaheer could not stand it anymore, she held his now erect organ and drew it into her mouth, tasting the salty pre-cum along with the sweet honey. Although he was ready, she continued licking the length and breadth of his shaft clean, then turned her attention to his testicles.

  “Come on Shameem, I am ready!” moaned Zaheer.

  “Wait honey, do you really think I am going to let you poke that messy, sticky thing into me?” she laughed and cleaned him up meticulously with a wet towel.

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  Then she mounted him.

  Zaheer had got his mojo back!

  The rest of the honeymoon was like a resurrection for Zaheer. They made love like rabbits whenever and wherever possible … in the tub, on the couch, even on the carpeted floor.

  Zaheer was happy and Shameem couldn’t have been happier. Her hard work had paid off!

  After Zaheer had confessed to her, she had been worried. So she had taken counsel of some of the ‘experienced’ women who frequented her parlour. Some of the women were well known call girls and knew a thing or two about pleasuring a man. And she was glad she took their counsel.

  Roy and Rita were also having a rollicking time. Roy’s apartment was their love nest and Sunil’s busy schedule and greed gave them a lot of time together.

  Sunil was travelling more often, both in India and abroad. On those days Rita would sneak into Roy’s apartment after Rohan slept. Shobha was her ally in her adultery and was well compensated.

  FCN was doing good business and growing by leaps and bounds. Chika had half a dozen aunties to service and he called them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

  “What about Sunday?” the boys asked.

  “Come on guys … even God rested after a week,” laughed Chika.

  The stocks they had invested were growing manifold. They took loans and increased their

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  investment base. Bhuria was also thrilled with the results and happily increased his stake.

  Bhuria was on a roll. He had recently joined the Vardhan Gang of Central Mumbai.

  Though he had started small, Vardhan had graduated into big time smuggling and was considered to be Mumbai’s answer to Don Vito Corleone of Puzo’s Godfather. He had extensive political clout and taking his help Bhuria had managed to get Venkatraman transferred to another zone.

  He was now the uncrowned king of Chembur once again. The only thorn on his arse was Shorty and his gang.

  Venkatraman’s transfer benefitted Shorty as well. He immediately regrouped and aligned with the Dalvi Gang of South Mumbai. The gang had mushroomed in the mill workers’ slums in South-Central Bombay. Over 1,50,000 workers from almost 80 mills in that region had been left unemployed after their long strike led to a standoff with the Bombay Mill Owners Association and subsequent lockout by the mill owners.

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  Ajay Dalvi’s father was one of the workers who first lost his job and then his life to depression and locally made country liquor. The slum was a fortress for Dalvi and no law enforcement agency had the balls to enter the slum. Dalvi had serious political ambitions and refused to pay acquiescence to Vardhan and they became mortal enemies.

  Shorty had also forayed big time into the lucrative drugs trade, dealing basically in “Brown Sugar”. His boys would loiter around schools and colleges selling the drug to the kids cheaply till they got them addicted. Shorty and most of his gang members were also slaves to the drug.

  Vardhan, like Vito Corleone, was against the drug trade. His business module consisted of smuggling and collecting protection money. His reasoning was the Government did not deserve to collect customs duty and the dirty businessmen whom he extorted deserved to share their wealth.

  Things reached a flash point when Shorty started offering protection to the businessmen being threatened by Bhuria.

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  Bhuria knew that he had to get rid of Shorty and bided for the right time.

  That opportunity came when one of his informers confided in him that Shorty and his top lieutenants had left at dawn to the nearby hill station of Khandala. They had rented a sprawling bungalow on the hilltop and called in the services of a car load of call girls from Bandra. In fact, the ‘intelligence’ had reached Bhuria from a disgruntled pimp who was not paid his due.

  Bhuria immediately called Vardhan and passed on the information. They met the same afternoon at Vardhan’s place. Vardhan had used his clout to make enquiries and had a detailed hand drawn map of the bungalow ready. They strategised behind closed doors and a plan was drawn.

  At around midnight an innocuous looking mini truck carrying vegetables left for Khandala. The truck carried in it swords, daggers, two country made revolvers, two German Lugers hidden in the fresh vegetable baskets and six ruthless killers apart from Bhuria, dressed as simple vegetable vendors.

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  Since Khandala was out of city limits, they had to pass a couple of police outposts, but since mini trucks filled with farm produce usually plied at night time, they did not arouse suspicion.

  They reached the vicinity of the bungalow around 3:00 am. The party was still going on, so they waited. At around 5:00, the party died down and the squealing, laughing girls left in their Maruti Van.

  At 6:00 am, Bhuria and his men scaled the walls and silently entered the compound. To their luck, Shorty and his men were totally wasted and had not even locked the door after the girls.

  There were a couple of men strewn on the couches in the living room while the others had managed to drag themselves to the bedrooms.

  It was almost too easy. Bhuria and his men worked in pairs. One would gag the man with a pillow and the other would swiftly slit his throat with a dagger.

  After finishing the men in the living room, they

  made their way to the bedrooms. Using the

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  same modus operandi, they killed all of them but Shorty in their sleep.