Bad Day at the Vulture Club

by Vaseem Khan

  Chopra thought that his friend was being purposefully naïve.

  Religion warped the minds of men in ways that continued to astonish him. Set against the blind adherence to that-which-had-been-enshrined, common sense and logic could rarely hope to prevail.

  ‘Do you know what Doongerwadi means?’ said Ginwala. ‘ “The orchard on the hill”. But if this is an orchard, the only fruit it bears is the fruit of death.’

  He shuffled up the ramp, pushed aside the wooden entry door and vanished inside the tower.

  Chopra turned at the door as he realised that Ganesha was no longer behind him. ‘It’s OK, boy,’ he said, sensing the elephant’s distress. ‘Wait for me here.’

  Inside the tower, he found himself looking down upon three concentric tiers of stone, moving downwards towards a central well. A number of decomposing corpses lay on the tiers; some exhibited the signs of having been scavenged. The central well seemed to exude a camphorous breath that hung in the air.

  Even though he had been expecting it, the ghastly panorama sent a shiver through him.

  ‘Males are left on this outermost circle,’ explained Ginwala. ‘Females on the middle tier, and children on the innermost. Beyond that is the well – though it is no more than a pit paved with stone. When the bodies on the tiers have sufficiently deteriorated we push them into the well. The well is connected via channels to underground chambers containing charcoal and sand. The putrefying matter is washed into these chambers by rain, and gradually filters away. At least that was how it used to be.’ Ginwala grimaced. ‘In the old days, the vultures would reduce the bodies to a heap of bones in half an hour. There was little left to go into the well. Since the vultures vanished, things have changed. Now the bodies lie out on the tiers for far too long. Five years ago, we installed solar concentrators to help focus the sun’s rays and aid the process of desiccation. This is only partially effective. Sometimes bodies take weeks to decompose. In the rainy season they become bloated, like sludge. Have you seen a piece of bread when it gets soaked? A body becomes gooey like that. It is not pleasant.’

  Chopra shuddered. ‘You found Cyrus’s body in the central well – is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He had been thrown inside?’

  ‘I doubt that he got there himself.’

  ‘What were you doing in here?’

  ‘My job,’ said Ginwala flatly. ‘I had come to deliver another body to the dakhma. I checked to see how the previous incumbent of the central well was coming along – and saw Cyrus in there. I have observed many terrible things inside these towers, but none so terrible as a fresh corpse inside the central well.’ The corpse-bearer’s brow darkened at the sacrilege.

  ‘How did Cyrus get into Doongerwadi? Presumably it is locked.’

  ‘He had his own set of keys. This is ancestral Zorabian land, after all.’

  ‘Could he have been meeting someone here that night?’

  ‘Who would he meet? The corpse-bearers are generally shunned, and the only other human residents are incapable of meeting anyone.’

  ‘The police believe he was killed by a drug addict. Apparently, they have been climbing the wall.’

  Ginwala’s expression folded into a frown. ‘Yes, it happens. And ever more frequently as the city becomes more crowded. We patrol the grounds regularly, and throw out anyone we find. But we cannot stop them all.’

  ‘So it is a possibility?’

  Ginwala shrugged. ‘Anything is possible. The plot is fifty acres. There are only a dozen khandia families living here – and we generally don’t come into the woods in the evening.’

  Chopra sensed that he had gained as much as he was going to from the surly corpse-bearer. ‘Thank you for your time,’ he said, as they made their way back out of the tower.

  He passed back through the wooden door and immediately noticed the vulture squatting on the ground near Ganesha. The vulture was unusually large, almost a metre in height, with the bald head and white neck ruff common to its species and a distinctive white band across its hooked beak. The little elephant was eyeing it with some trepidation, unsettled by its scrutiny.

  As Chopra appeared, he padded with relief to the foot of the stone ramp.

  ‘Come on, boy,’ said Chopra. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Ginwala led them back along the trail to the eastern gate. Here he locked the gate behind them, then, without a word of farewell, turned and vanished back into the gloom.

  Chopra, glad to be back out in the sunlight, herded Ganesha into the van, then slipped into his seat and started the engine. He paused, foot poised on the clutch, looking back at the gate into Doongerwadi.

  The encounter with Ginwala had left him uneasy.

  He could not shake the feeling that the man had left something unsaid; not exactly lied, more omitted details from his stilted and grudging testimony that might prove to be important. The case was swiftly entangling itself, suspects shimmering into view. He needed to lay the groundwork, establish the veracity of the ‘facts’ presented to him by the initial investigation, then begin checking alibis – such as that of the murdered man’s estranged son – and other testimony that felt less than airtight. Ginwala would be high on that list.

  Ganesha’s trunk tapped him on the shoulder. ‘You felt it too, did you?’ he said, glancing at the elephant in his rear-view mirror as he slipped the vehicle into gear and stepped on the accelerator.

  There was a bump as the front fender struck something below his eyeline, followed by a loud squawk.

  Instinctively, he slammed on the brakes.

  Cursing, he leapt out of the van.

  On the baking tarmac, beside the van’s front tyre, was a vulture. He realised that it was the same one that had been eyeing Ganesha inside Doongerwadi.

  He knelt down beside the bird.

  Its eyes were closed. Up close, the arch scavenger gave off a horrible stench. Clumps of rotting flesh stuck to its beak. The realisation churned his stomach. He wondered just who the bird had been snacking on.

  He reached out with a finger and jabbed the vulture in the ribcage.

  The bird’s wings fluttered feebly, jerking him backwards.

  He watched as it snapped open its eyes, scrabbled to its feet, then attempted to take off, managing only to flail around in an ungainly circle. He realised that its right wing was broken, sweeping along the floor at an unnatural angle.

  He was glad now that Ginwala had vanished with such alacrity. Heaven only knew the fuss the man would have made had he seen Chopra mow down one of the few remaining vultures. He had no idea what the penalty was for running over an endangered holy bird, but he guessed it wasn’t pleasant.

  A vulture of substance

  ‘Gyps indicus. Otherwise known as the Indian vulture.’

  Rohit Lala, vet, grinned at Chopra.

  ‘I know what it is,’ said Chopra through gritted teeth. ‘Can you fix it?’

  ‘Her,’ said Lala. ‘Can I fix her.’

  Chopra had become well acquainted with Lala – a large, voluble and gregarious man hailing from a rich Marwadi family whose paterfamilias still could not believe that his only son had eschewed the ancestral jewellery business for the suspect pleasures of fiddling around with the private parts of animals – since Ganesha had arrived on his doorstep. He found the man’s inveterate good humour generally insufferable, but he was a more than competent practitioner of the arcane craft of animal husbandry.

  A regular Doctor DooLala, as the man himself was wont to joke.

  ‘This is a rare animal you’ve chosen to run over,’ continued Lala. ‘A decade ago there were more of these around than you could shake a stick at. And then, almost overnight, 99 per cent of the population died off. Can you guess why?’

  Chopra shook his head.

  Lala pointed his finger at Chopra’s chest. ‘You, my friend, are the reason why. Humankind. A drug called diclofenac. Administered to livestock in order to promote good health. Unfortunately, the drug i
s deadly to vultures. When they fed on dead cattle, they ingested enough of it to knock out their kidneys. Pretty much wiped them out.’

  ‘But they have recovered now, yes?’ said Chopra, glancing at Ganesha, who was looking on with some concern.

  ‘Barely. And nowhere near the numbers they once were. Captive breeding programmes have reintroduced a few to Doongerwadi, but they remain critically endangered.’ Lala grimaced. ‘They are a truly remarkable species. We love to hate them, but the truth is that vultures do a great deal for us humans. Do you know that when the vultures died off, the rat and wild dog population in Mumbai exploded? Which, in turn, meant the spread of diseases such as rabies. With the absence of vultures, crows stepped in to pick at the corpses in Doongerwadi. Unfortunately, crows are fussy eaters. They have a habit of flying off with body parts – fingers, eyes, tongues – occasionally dropping them into the surrounding homes.’ Lala stretched his lips into a grisly grin. ‘Whether we like it or not, we need vultures, if only to clean up after ourselves.’

  ‘Can you fix her?’ Chopra repeated.

  ‘She has a broken wing,’ explained Lala. ‘If left untended it could prove life-threatening – simply because the bird will not be able to feed. But it is a simple matter to set.’

  Lala called over his assistant, a rat-faced individual named Stephen De Souza. Together, they transported the bird inside.

  With the bird set on a worktop, Stephen gently held the broken wing in its natural position as Lala cut a length of gauze and wrapped it around the bird’s body, slipping it over the damaged wing, and under the functional one. In this way, he immobilised the injured limb, but not so tightly that the vulture’s breathing was restricted.

  ‘All done,’ said Lala, stepping back, as the bird attempted to scratch at the gauze with her beak. ‘You need to keep her in a confined area for about two weeks. Indoors. Otherwise she will provide an easy target for a feral dog or a passing leopard.’

  ‘Me?’ said Chopra in alarm. ‘I thought you were going to keep her here.’

  ‘I wish I could. But I just don’t have the space.’

  ‘But where will I house a vulture?’ Chopra could not keep a trace of horror from his voice.

  ‘You’re a smart man. You’ll think of something.’ Lala turned back to the bird. ‘You know, there’s something not quite right with her. Even accounting for the fact that you bashed her with your van, she seems to be quite sickly. Look at this plumage; she’s been losing feathers. And her tongue – it shouldn’t be that colour.’

  ‘Perhaps it is that chemical you mentioned? Diclofenac.’

  ‘No. That was banned years ago.’ He continued to stare at the bird, then took out a small torch and shone it in her eyes. When he straightened, moments later, it was with a shake of the head. ‘I’ll take some blood. Have it tested. We’ll get to the bottom of it.’ He looked down with affection at the bird, which clacked her beak and returned his gaze with a beady-eyed stare. ‘Parsees believe that these vultures serve as intermediaries between earth and heaven. By consuming the body, they liberate the soul. Look after her, Chopra. She is the future of her species.’

  With Stephen’s help Chopra bundled the bird safely back into the van.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, turning to Lala, ‘my little companion here seems to be somewhat distracted these days. Do you think he’s ill?’

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ said Lala. He slipped out his torch and gave Ganesha a quick once-over, which the elephant submitted to without protest. ‘Nothing that I can immediately detect,’ concluded the vet.

  ‘It is probably nothing,’ agreed Chopra.

  Lala smiled. ‘Don’t forget, elephants are highly emotional creatures. In that respect, they are very much like us. Don’t you have days when you don’t feel quite at your best?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Chopra.

  ‘And you have yet to get to the bottom of Ganesha’s past. Who knows what trauma he may have suffered? Perhaps he is troubled by bad memories.’

  Chopra looked down at his young ward, who was busy investigating Lala’s shoelaces.

  The vet was right, of course.

  Over the past year, he had made little headway in uncovering Ganesha’s history. The truth was he did not even know where to start. His uncle’s letter had given no clue as to where Ganesha had been born, or under what circumstances Bansi had come into contact with him, let alone why he had sent the calf to Chopra.

  It was a mystery that needed to be solved; one day, he would do so. For now, all he could do was look after his young ward as best as he was able.

  He patted Ganesha on the head. ‘Let’s head for home. Irfan will be preparing your bowl of evening chocolate.’

  At the sound of the word ‘chocolate’ Ganesha’s ears perked up. The little calf was addicted to the stuff, which Irfan would melt into a bucket of creamy milk for him each evening.

  Like the humans he lived with, it appeared that chocolate was a sure-fire pick-me-up for an elephant.

  A client at the restaurant

  Back at the restaurant, Chopra parked the van, then carried the vulture into the rear compound.

  He found the chef, Azeem Lucknowwallah, sitting out on the veranda, a thick cheroot stuck out of the side of his mouth, concentrating fiercely on an ancient typewriter perched on a rickety table before him. As Chopra looked on Lucknowwallah lifted a finger and hammered at a couple of keys. He then ripped out the vellum sheet, examined it, swore, curled it into a ball and hurled it into the compound, adding to the drifts of abused paper littering the parched earth.

  ‘What are you doing, Chef?’ asked Chopra, temporarily halted by the odd sight.

  ‘I am penning my memoirs,’ said Lucknowwallah, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. The cheroot jacked up and down between his lips. ‘But I just cannot seem to get the opening right.’

  By now Chopra was used to the chef’s eccentricities. Highly combustible and intensely driven, Lucknowwallah had cooked for some of the finest restaurants in the country, only coming out of retirement to work at Poppy’s because his own father had been a policeman, killed tragically in the line of duty by a rampaging bullock.

  ‘Your memoirs?’ he echoed.

  ‘These days every two-chip burger mechanic is out there hawking his autobiography, so I thought why not Azeem Lucknowwallah? There are people who would literally bite my arm off for my life story.’

  ‘Why are you using a typewriter?’ he asked, for want of something else to say. ‘Don’t you have a computer?’

  ‘You can’t make tandoori chicken in a microwave,’ replied the chef airily. Then he seemed to notice, for the first time, the bird clutched in Chopra’s arms. ‘Why are you carrying a vulture?’

  ‘Her wing is broken. I’m going to keep her here till it heals.’

  Lucknowwallah plucked the cheroot from his mouth and stared at him. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I have to keep her somewhere,’ said Chopra desperately.

  ‘This, my friend, is a restaurant. One does not keep a carrion-eating scavenger near a kitchen.’

  With some effort Chopra stopped himself from noting that his mother-in-law was already employed front-of-house.

  ‘This is my restaurant,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well then,’ said Lucknowwallah acidly, ‘perhaps you would like to take charge of this evening’s service?’

  Chopra gave up. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will find somewhere else.’

  He walked through the kitchen, where the sous chefs Rosie Pinto and Ramesh Goel were busily prepping the evening service, and into his office.

  Here he found Rangwalla waiting for him.

  Chopra set the vulture gently down on to the tiled floor, where she immediately attempted to gouge a chunk out of Rangwalla’s leg.

  His assistant detective leapt up from his chair, back-pedalling smartly to the room’s corner, as the bird waddled after him, her one good wing flapping furiously in the confined space. ‘Get this damned thing of
f me!’ he spluttered, ending with a strangled cry as the bird lunged for him again.

  Chopra grabbed the creature and shoved her under his desk, where she huddled into herself. ‘It’s probably your aftershave,’ he muttered.

  Rangwalla gave his boss an acerbic look.

  The former policeman had served as Chopra’s deputy for twenty years at the local Sahar station, and had always suspected that Chopra was a little too straightforward for his own good. Rangwalla believed that sidling up to a problem was often the best way to catch it unawares. He came from an upbringing where, usually, the only thing that stood between success and failure was a swift kick to the nether regions. After Chopra had left the force, Rangwalla had found himself in the crosshairs of ACP Suresh Rao. Infuriated at Chopra’s final act of rebellion – pursuing a case that Rao had declared off-limits – but unable to do anything to the man himself, Rao had taken out his frustration on his second-in-command, securing Rangwalla’s dismissal from the force on trumped-up misconduct charges.

  As if to underline the stark difference in the two men’s moral compasses, it was Chopra who had subsequently come to his former sub-inspector’s rescue, offering him a role at the detective agency.

  Rangwalla, a slight, bearded man with a dark, volcanic complexion, invariably dressed in a black kurta and blue jeans, had always possessed the uncanny ability to blend into the streets; it was a skill that Chopra had yet to master, and for this reason alone his old deputy had proven to be a valuable addition to the agency.

  They sat to discuss the day’s events. It was a ritual they had established when Rangwalla joined the agency; in this way Chopra could keep abreast of the cases he had delegated.

  ‘There is someone I wish you to meet,’ said Rangwalla, glancing nervously under the desk. He had pulled his chair well back, in case the vulture attempted a surprise attack. ‘He’s waiting outside.’