Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  ‘Did Cyrus come to the club often?’ asked Chopra.

  ‘Yes, of course. He was the chairman of the club’s managing committee, as was his father before him, and his father before that, all the way back to Rustom. Cyrus was never one for details, but he insisted on being involved in the life of the community. He personally oversaw the club’s charitable programme.’

  ‘According to the police investigation he visited the club on the evening that he was killed – is that correct?’

  ‘Yes. He was here for a meeting of the managing committee. After that there was a presentation – given by myself – to be followed by a late-night supper. But he never made it to the dinner.’

  ‘He left early?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently he left during my lecture,’ said Engineer, sounding somewhat miffed.

  ‘Apparently?’ said Chopra. ‘Did you not see him leave?’

  ‘I was on stage at the time and the lights had been dimmed – so, no, I didn’t see him go. But my colleagues did.’

  ‘What was your presentation about?’ asked Chopra, intrigued.

  ‘Oh, it was a slide lecture on the results of a study I have been conducting for the past decade,’ said Engineer modestly. ‘ “A reflection and analysis of the Parsee patronage of Bombay’s architectural renaissance in the late nineteenth century as evidence of the complex colonial relationship between Parsee, British and Indian populations of the period – with a discussion on the methodological underpinnings of the study”.’

  Chopra was unsure how to respond, and even less sure that he had understood what Engineer had said. ‘I’d like to speak to your colleagues, if I may. Those who attended the lecture.’

  ‘I anticipated as much. They are waiting for us in the drawing room.’

  Engineer led the way to the lifts, which they took up to the second floor. Ganesha bundled in beside them, squeezing Chopra against the mirrored rear wall.

  The drawing room, a magnificently chandeliered space, was every bit as lavish as Chopra might have expected. The Parsees, on the whole, did not do things by halves. He recalled Homi explaining that Zoroastrians, unlike the pious of other religions, did not eschew wealth as necessarily evil. In fact, they actively embraced it, as long as it was utilised to the benefit of others. For this reason, Parsees rarely donned sackcloth to head off into the hills in search of the ascetic life.

  The polished white Italian marble floors gleamed, and the walls were hung with canvases and tapestries depicting morally invigorating motifs from the long history of the Zoroastrians. A common theme running through many of the paintings was the depiction of the club’s founder Rustom Zorabian in a prophetical light: Rustom standing resolutely at the prow of a boat as it churned through choppy seas – presumably on the long and desperate flight to India; Rustom engaged in ardent negotiation with British representatives of the East India Company. A particularly striking canvas depicted a bronzed and muscled Rustom kneeling atop a mountain, a torch of sacred fire held aloft, as he gazed into the heavenly ether communing with Ahura Mazda.

  The image, intensely hagiographical, gave Chopra pause.

  Clearly Cyrus’s ancestor had held a high opinion of himself, as both a leader to his people and a devout Zoroastrian. He wondered if this hubris had been passed down the family line – had Cyrus also viewed himself in this manner?

  He quickly reviewed what he knew of the Parsee religion.

  The sect had been founded by Zoroaster – known also as Zarathustra – a priest living in ancient Persia who claimed to have received a revelatory vision from the god Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom. Ahura Mazda urged him to preach against the polytheistic religions of the time, and to embrace the inherent duality of existence, namely the eternal battle between good and evil – with evil being personified in the entity known as Ahriman, the Destructive Spirit. Zoroaster had been one of the earliest to preach belief in a single god, and the concept of paradise. Through good deeds, the righteous could earn immortality. Those who opted for the path of evil were condemned by their own conscience, and must expect to be punished in the afterlife.

  He briefly wondered where Cyrus Zorabian might fit in this grand scheme of morality. Perhaps it was too early to say.

  Chopra himself had never had much time for piety. He was content to let others believe what they wished, but he held no illusions that the world was a better place because of it. If the current state of things was anything to go by, it seemed evident that the exact opposite was the case. With so many recipients of the ‘truth’ throughout the ages, it was a wonder that anyone had any idea what was going on.

  ‘This way,’ said Engineer, and led them to the rear half of the grand drawing room, where clumps of comfortable-looking red horsehair sofas and bucket seats were arranged on a thick Persian carpet. Scattered among the seats were half a dozen ancient specimens – the members of the Vulture Club’s managing committee.

  They were even older than Chopra had anticipated.

  One of them, a perfectly bald gentleman in white slacks, slept the sleep of the dead, a newspaper propping up his chin, drool escaping from his lower lip; another, wearing a red Parsee fez secured under his chin with an elastic strap and clutching tightly to a mobile catheter stand, eyed Chopra with a rheumy glare, as if he suspected that the detective had designs on the half-filled pouch of murky yellow liquid hanging from the stand. A silver-haired woman in a floral dress gave him a slightly bemused smile, then went back to the crochet hoop in her lap. Ganesha, instantly intrigued, trotted over to her, and attempted to investigate the hoop. The woman took this in her stride, allowing him to run the tip of his trunk over the intricate embroidery.

  ‘Attention, please,’ said Zubin Engineer, rapping his cane on the floor. ‘This is the man I told you about. His name is Chopra, and he is investigating Cyrus’s death.’

  ‘What?’ said Catheter Man. ‘Speak up, Engineer. Can’t hear a word.’

  Ganesha, losing interest in the crochet, walked over to the sleeping gentleman and prodded him awake. The man opened his gummy eyes, the newspaper sliding off his chest, then mumbled: ‘By Ahura Mazda, Engineer, your nose gets bigger by the day.’

  ‘That’s an elephant, Dinshaw, you senile old fool,’ said Catheter Man, who was seated opposite him.

  ‘Who are you calling senile, Forhad? I’m every bit as sharp today as I was seventy years ago when I used to thrash you in the weekly chess tourney.’

  ‘Is that why you’re wearing a bib?’ said Forhad nastily.

  ‘He’s a fine specimen,’ said Dinshaw, patting Ganesha on the head. ‘You don’t see many of them around any more. When I was young they were everywhere, hauling timber, charging madly at trucks. Great days, great days.’

  ‘When you were young, Dinshaw,’ said Forhad, as he pulled his catheter stand away from Ganesha’s curious trunk, ‘dinosaurs still roamed the earth.’

  ‘I have some questions,’ interrupted Chopra.

  ‘What?’ said Dinshaw. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said you’re an idiot,’ muttered Forhad.

  ‘Really? Why would he say that? I’ve only just met the man.’

  Chopra raised his voice. Five minutes with the methuselahs of the Vulture Club and he could feel his blood pressure heading skywards. ‘I said,’ he bellowed, ‘that I have some questions. About Cyrus.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ said Dinshaw. ‘And there’s no need to shout. We’re not deaf.’

  ‘I have been told that Cyrus left the evening lecture early on the night that he died,’ Chopra ground out. ‘May I ask which of you saw him leave?’

  ‘That would be Dinshaw,’ said Engineer. ‘Tell the detective what you heard on the night of Cyrus’s death. Dinshaw . . . DINSHAW!’

  Dinshaw, who had drifted back to sleep, jerked awake. ‘What’s happening? Is it the end of days?’

  ‘I wish it was the end of your days,’ muttered Forhad. Then louder: ‘The detective wants to know what Cyrus told you when he left the lec
ture. On the night he died.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Dinshaw, shifting on the sofa. ‘He was sitting behind me in the lecture hall. And then he got a phone call. I could hear him mumbling away, so I turned and asked him to be quiet. Young people these days, no manners.’

  Chopra wondered just how ancient Dinshaw was if he considered the sixty-five-year-old Cyrus Zorabian to be ‘young’. ‘What was the conversation about?’

  ‘I don’t know. My hearing isn’t what it once was.’ Dinshaw grimaced. ‘But Cyrus was disturbed by it, that much I recall. He told me he had to leave urgently, and that I should convey his apologies to Engineer after the lecture.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Around nine thirty, I think. The lecture had just begun. It wasn’t due to finish for a couple of hours. Engineer does so love the sound of his own voice. Not to mention the two hundred slides!’

  As Zubin Engineer bristled beside him, Chopra considered Dinshaw’s testimony.

  Nine thirty.

  The pathologist had concluded that Cyrus had died between 10 and 11 p.m. Given the evening traffic in the city, this meant that Cyrus had left the Vulture Club – following the unexpected phone call – and driven directly to Doongerwadi to meet his fate in the Towers of Silence.

  What had convinced him to leave?

  The sound of a bell being rung cut through the conversation.

  Chopra turned to see a large man in an apron wheeling a trolley into the room. ‘Lunch is served!’ he bellowed.

  There was a marked stirring of interest, as the gathered committee members enlivened at the prospect of their midday meal.

  ‘What’s on the menu today, Izad?’ asked the urbane woman with the crochet hoop.

  The chef, adjusting his apron over his substantial belly, began to read off a menu card. ‘Chicken dhansak, lamb dhansak, mutton dhansak, prawn dhansak.’

  There was a loud groan. ‘Dhansak? Again? When are you going to cook something else?’ said Forhad, glaring at the chef.

  Izad’s face swelled. ‘Something else? What do you mean something else? My family has been making dhansak at this club for over a hundred years. Our dhansak is the best dhansak in the country. People would give their right arms for just a taste of my dhansak.’

  ‘Man cannot live on dhansak alone,’ muttered Forhad.

  ‘Well then, man can bloody well go hungry,’ said the chef, brandishing his serving ladle as if it were an axe.

  Ganesha, drawn by the delicious aromas of the iconic Parsee dish – a stew-like mixture of spiced meat, vegetables and cooked lentils – had trotted over to investigate the lunch cart.

  ‘You see,’ said the chef, ‘even the elephant cannot resist!’

  ‘Perhaps we can finish our conversation outside,’ suggested Chopra, leaning into Zubin Engineer.

  When they had returned to the lobby, Engineer said, ‘I must apologise for my colleagues. They are a little set in their ways.’

  ‘This is a sensitive question,’ said Chopra, ‘but was Cyrus well liked here?’

  Engineer squinted from behind his spectacles. ‘What do you mean? He was the club’s chairman.’

  ‘Are you saying there was no one here who wished him anything but well?’

  Engineer hesitated.

  ‘This is no time to hold back,’ Chopra prodded. ‘I am not a policeman. You can be assured of my discretion.’

  ‘Well, I suppose there was Boman . . .’ said Engineer reluctantly.

  ‘Boman?’

  ‘Boman Jeejibhoy. He is – was – a member of the managing committee, until he quit last year following a disagreement with Cyrus. We all thought it would blow over – they’ve been friends since they were children, after all. But I don’t think they had reconciled by the time Cyrus died.’

  ‘What did they fall out about?’

  ‘I don’t know. Neither of them would explain it. All we know is they had a bust-up in the lobby, ending with Boman threatening to kill Cyrus.’

  ‘Did you tell the police this?’

  ‘Of course not. It was just an argument. Boman didn’t know what he was saying.’

  ‘You never tried to find out what the disagreement was about?’

  ‘Certainly. But they were both as stubborn as each other.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to this Boman,’ said Chopra.

  ‘It won’t do any good,’ sighed Engineer. ‘But I will give him a call. Perhaps he has had a change of heart since Cyrus’s death.’

  The Towers of Silence

  Chopra decided to continue in the footsteps of the initial police investigation by next visiting the crime scene. Doongerwadi was a brisk, forty-minute drive from the club. He took the Bandra-Worli Sealink, the new flyover that speared across Mahim Bay, then sped the Tata van along the Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan Road running all the way from the Worli Sea Face to Mahalaxmi. From here it was a quick loop around Haji Ali and Cumballa Hill to the wooded tract of land sitting in the very heart of the city.

  By the time they arrived it was two in the afternoon.

  The heat had become unbearable. With the air-conditioner in the van temporarily out of action, he and Ganesha had sweated like lobsters in a pot, and were glad to be back out in the open.

  They were met at Doongerwadi’s eastern gate by Anosh Ginwala, the head corpse-bearer assigned to the Towers of Silence. Ginwala, dressed in black pants, a long white shirt and a red, fez-like hat, was a dour man. His sunken eyes looked out from beneath thick eyebrows, sullenly observing a world he appeared to hold in contempt. His lips twisted into a grimace beneath a thick moustache as he let Chopra into Doongerwadi. ‘A few years ago, no non-Parsee would ever have been permitted to set foot on this hallowed ground.’

  Chopra knew that this was true.

  He had had to call Perizaad Zorabian to arrange the visit. He wished to get a feel for the scene of the crime. He also needed to speak to the man who had found Cyrus’s body – Anosh Ginwala.

  ‘I am told that Cyrus was a frequent visitor here,’ he began as Ginwala tramped ahead along a rutted path. The path meandered through a thicket of trees, blocking out all but the odd shaft of lancing sunlight. The darkness pressed in around them, thick and textured. He felt Ganesha trot up closer behind him.

  ‘He has been coming here regularly these past months,’ confirmed Ginwala. ‘Doongerwadi is one of the few places in the city where he knew he would not be bothered.’

  Chopra considered this. On the evening of his death Cyrus had been scheduled to sit through a lecture at the Vulture Club. He had left only after receiving a mysterious phone call.

  Whatever he had been doing in Doongerwadi, it was a good bet that he had not come here to be alone.

  ‘Does anyone stay here on a permanent basis?’

  ‘A number of us call Doongerwadi home.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Khandias – corpse-bearers.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘We have been given accommodation by the main gates, on the far side of Doongerwadi.’

  ‘It seems a grim place to wish to reside,’ mused Chopra.

  Ginwala turned to glare at him. ‘Do you think we do this because we wish to? Have you any idea what it means to be a khandia? We handle the dead, Chopra. Because of this we are considered untouchable – in a community that claims to be casteless. Hah! Once upon a time I used to live in the suburbs. But when I lost my job, this was the only work I could get. And once my neighbours, my friends, discovered what I did, it wasn’t long before we found ourselves ostracised. They stopped coming to our home; they refused to eat from our kitchen. Even now, those who wish to tip me for escorting their dearly departed into the netherworld will not touch my hand to give me their money.’ Bitterness dripped from Ginwala’s tone, forestalling Chopra from asking any more questions.

  They proceeded in silence until, some ten minutes later, the path opened out into a clearing.

  The Tower of Silence that rose before them was built of ancient sandstone bricks,
a roofless, circular structure some three hundred feet in circumference and eighteen feet high. A stone ramp led up to a wooden door built into its outer wall.

  A trio of vultures were perched on the tower’s rim. One of them shook out its wings and snapped its beak at them.

  ‘When I first came to Doongerwadi,’ Ginwala began, ‘there were so many birds there was not enough space atop the tower for them all. They would flap and wheel above us in a great cloud, blotting out the sky.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘A decade ago their numbers were decimated. That was when life began to change for us.’

  Chopra had seen many photographs of the legendary Towers of Silence, but now, as he stood for the first time before one, he felt a blast of emotion that unsettled him. He could not have named the reason for his discomfort – he had been around death so often that death alone was not enough to unnerve him.

  No. It went deeper than that.

  The idea that inside this macabre monument had lain the corpses of innumerable men, women and children, left to the predations of scavengers, seemed somehow perverse to him.

  And yet he knew that it was precisely this feeling, born of little more than ignorance and an instinctive xenophobia, that had led to the vilification of the Parsee practice of excarnation, ordained by the prophet Zarathustra so that the elements that the Parsees held dear – earth, fire, water – would not be defiled by burial or cremation.

  In recent years, this unease had grown into a clamour. The residents of the high-rise towers that surrounded Doongerwadi had petitioned the state government to have the practice outlawed; the idea of human corpses rotting in the open for lengthy periods of time in close proximity to their homes had become intensely unpalatable.

  The Parsee community had, unsurprisingly, responded with a belligerent refusal to buckle under the pressure.

  Nevertheless, there were some, Homi included, who believed that change was inevitable. Homi himself had championed the heretical notion that Doongerwadi might be better utilised as a centre of cremation. ‘Once you are dead, who really cares, anyway?’ he had baldly asserted.