by Vaseem Khan
The guards stepped aside to reveal a portly Indian in an ill-fitting Nehru jacket, Nehru cap and round-framed spectacles. To Chopra he looked like a plumper version of the freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose.
The man welcomed the newcomers with a beaming white smile and spread his arms as if he meant to sweep them all up in an enormous embrace. ‘Welcome to the Crown Jewels exhibition!’
Chopra squinted at the tour guide’s nametag: ATUL KOCHAR.
Kochar was an enthusiastic man. He might have been an actor in his spare time, Chopra reflected, such was the animation with which he narrated the tour of the exhibits.
Chopra listened with only half an ear. Like most of the others in the red-carpeted room, his attention was instantly drawn to the Crown Jewels securely ensconced behind various glass display cases stationed around the gallery.
He plucked his reading spectacles from his pocket and pushed them self-consciously onto his nose. From his other pocket he removed his copy of the Ultimate Guidebook to the Crown Jewels, which Poppy had insisted they purchase from the Visitors’ Centre for an extortionate sum.
As Kochar continued to speak, Chopra peered at the nearest display cases then leafed through the guidebook for the corresponding entries. In spite of the fact that few of the treasures had made it to India, there were, nevertheless, some breathtaking artefacts on display and the guidebook sought to provide the glamorous back story that lay behind each one.
‘But how much is it all worth?’
Chopra looked up to see the plump man who had stuck his arm around the waxwork Queen accosting the tour guide with a belligerent expression.
Kochar gave a somewhat strained smile. ‘No value can be placed on the Crown Jewels, sir. They are the very definition of priceless.’
‘Nonsense,’ barked the man bombastically. ‘My family are Marwari. We are in the jewel business. There is always a price. Come now, don’t be coy. Let us have it, sir.’
A chorus of agreement washed over Kochar.
As he looked on, Chopra felt a twinge of sadness. Was this all these people saw? A dragon’s hoard of treasure to be weighed in dollars and rupees? What about the weight of history that lay behind each of these magnificent creations? Or the skill that had been employed to manufacture them?
‘Stop your yapping, man. Did you come here to appreciate the jewels or buy them?’
Chopra turned to see the tall Sikh man from the queue glaring at the Marwari. The Sikh was a big, muscular gentleman with a fine beard, fierce, bushy eyebrows and a stupendous yellow turban. The retort that had sprung to the Marwari’s lips died a quiet death. His face coloured but he said nothing.
The Sikh pointed to an eight-foot-high sandstone carving of the goddess Kali, which had presumably been left inside the gallery due to the fact that its rear was affixed to the wall. ‘You are probably the sort of fool who does not appreciate even our own history.’
Chopra felt an instant affinity with the irate Sikh.
‘Yes,’ agreed a pretty young woman in a bright blue sari and red spectacles. ‘We should all learn to appreciate our own heritage. Only then can we truly appreciate someone else’s.’
The crowd swiftly saw which way the wind was blowing and galloped towards the moral high ground. There was a sudden chorus of agreement with the big Sikh. ‘Indian culture is the best, no doubt about it!’ ‘You can keep your Crown Jewels, sir. The Mughals threw away more magnificent treasures when giving alms to the poor!’ A circle widened around the Marwari, who blushed furiously.
Kochar spared the hapless man further embarrassment by smoothly drawing everyone’s attention to the centrepiece of the exhibit – the Crown of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in which was set the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
The presence of the Koh-i-Noor on Indian soil had caused quite a stir.
Ever since the legendary diamond had been ‘presented’ to Queen Victoria more than one hundred and fifty years earlier it had been the subject of controversy. Many in India felt that the Koh-i-Noor had been stolen by the British, and that it was high time those great colonial thieves were forced to rectify the matter. The news channels had been awash with talk of demonstrations and civic protest, particularly from the India First lobby. In an attempt to ward off potential embarrassment for the government, Mumbai’s Commissioner of Police had ordered a clampdown on protests during the royal visit, an act which itself had courted controversy as it was deemed inherently unconstitutional.
Kochar gave a brisk rendition of what he called ‘the dark and bloody history of the Koh-i-Noor’, beamed at his rapt audience, and then abruptly announced that they had a further fifteen minutes to view the Crown Jewels before they would be requested to make way for the next party.
The crowd dispersed around the room.
Chopra bent down to take a closer look at the diamond.
‘Careful, sir. Don’t get too close or the sensors will go off. They are very sensitive.’
He looked up to see Kochar smiling wearily at him. He realised that another man, late-middle-aged, with greying hair and a noticeable paunch, was staring down at the crown from the opposite side of the display case. The man’s brow was furrowed in consternation and Chopra could make out that he was sweating heavily even though the room was air-conditioned.
The man seemed to notice his scrutiny and looked up with a guilty start.
Chopra’s own brow furrowed.
It seemed to him that he had seen this gentleman before, but before he could place him the man turned and shuffled quickly away towards one of the exhibits lining the walls of the gallery.
Chopra looked back at the crown, resplendent on its velvet cushion. His eyes were automatically drawn, once again, to the Koh-i-Noor. The display lighting had been set up so that it accentuated the legendary diamond’s beauty. Truly, he thought, it deserves its name: Koh-i-Noor – ‘mountain of light’.
And suddenly there was a feeling inside him, like a whispering in his blood. Here was a living tie to the ancient India that he so cherished. He wondered what it would feel like to hold that enormous jewel in his fist, just as the greatest monarchs of the subcontinent had once done. Would he sense the ghost of Babur hovering on his shoulder? Would he know Shah Jahan’s misery as he looked longingly at the prize taken from him by his own flesh and blood? The Koh-i-Noor, which, for centuries, had set man against man, king against king, legion against legion…
A loud bang jerked him from his reverie.
Instinctively, he turned and looked for the source of the noise. He heard another bang, then another. Alarm tore through him as he saw a dense cloud of smoke swiftly expanding around the room, engulfing everything in a choking miasma of white. The world began to spin around him, the room sliding away into a gentle, sighing darkness. Another noise now, just on the edge of hearing, a thin high-pitched whine that he couldn’t identify.
As he slumped to the floor and into unconsciousness, the last image that came to Inspector Chopra (Retd) was of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, spinning in the heart of a white cloud, rays of light shooting from it in all directions, incinerating everything in their path…
Chopra completed his account and focused on Jha.
The Force One commander had stood up and was now pacing the small, airless room. Jha had purposely left the air-conditioner off – an old and well-worn interrogative tactic – and the room was as hot as a sauna. Sweat poured down the commander’s haggard face, drenching his moustache, but he made no move to wipe it away. He had more pressing concerns.
Jha whirled on Chopra and began peppering him once again with questions: what purpose did you have in coming here today? What time did you arrive? Who else did you know in the jewel room?
These were all questions that Chopra had already answered, but he knew that repetition was another key weapon in the interrogator’s arsenal. Jha was trying to force Chopra into changing his account, to reveal some thread that he could use to unravel a dishonest tale. But Jha had forgotten the obvious flaw in this techni
que: when an interviewee told the truth, his answers would stay the same, no matter how many times you asked your questions.
As Chopra watched Jha fumbling, his mind whirled with questions of his own, questions brought about by some of the revelations that Jha had inevitably disclosed during his interrogation. How had the thieves managed to smuggle the gas canisters into the museum with which they had incapacitated Chopra and the other visitors? How had they shattered the supposedly impregnable reinforced glass of the display case? How had they then achieved the miracle of vanishing from the crowded and heavily guarded museum with their stolen treasure?
By the time Jha wearily dismissed him, Chopra had come to the private conclusion that this was a mystery that would prove beyond Jha’s ability to solve, a mystery that would swiftly become a national scandal.
What would the Indian government do then?
POPPY’S BAR & RESTAURANT
Some hours later, when Chopra arrived at the restaurant after dropping Poppy back at their apartment complex, he found the place in its usual state of regimented chaos. The harrowing events of the afternoon had left him in need of a quiet hour or two with his own thoughts and so he had come to the restaurant just as he usually did at about this time each day.
The dining area, with its chequered tablecloths and glitzy chandeliers, was a cauldron of animated chatter and beguiling smells. He picked his way through the crammed tables, accepting greetings from regular patrons, many of whom were old police friends, but not stopping to converse.
Quickly, he made his way to the rear office of the establishment he had opened following his forced retirement from the police service earlier in the year.
Once inside his office, he flicked on the air-conditioner, only to hear it gurgle and wheeze to an untimely death.
Cursing, he picked up the phone and ordered a lime water and a dampened handkerchief from the kitchen.
He then slumped back in his padded chair and allowed his thoughts to return to the tumultuous events at the Prince of Wales Museum, going over the details Jha had let slip during his ham-fisted interrogation.
The robbery had been immaculate.
The thief or thieves had entered the Tata Gallery from the rear, blasting a hole through the unguarded, sealed door at the back of the gallery with a shaped explosive charge. Once inside, they had rendered the occupants of the gallery unconscious by using pressurised gas canisters. The thieves had then somehow broken through the reinforced glass of the display case housing the Crown of Queen Elizabeth, as well as shattering some of the surrounding cases. Puzzlingly, they had taken only the crown and, with this single prized possession, had fled the scene through the destroyed rear door. The door led to a passage that connected the Tata Gallery to the Jahangir Gallery in the east wing of the museum. The thieves, it was presumed, had taken the unguarded fire exit stairs, halfway along the passage, down to the ground floor… where they had promptly vanished into thin air.
Clearly, the ring of Force One guards stationed around the perimeter of the museum had not spotted anyone fleeing the scene. The instant that the glass display case had been shattered an alarm had gone off, placing each commando on red alert. Not even Houdini could have slipped through the net. The museum had been instantly locked down and every single person in the building had been rounded up and searched, as well as every corner of the museum premises.
Nothing.
The sound of a truck backfiring on the main road returned Chopra to the present.
He stood up and made his way through the restaurant’s kitchen to the compound at the rear.
The generous space was lit by a single yellow tubelight around which a cloud of midges roiled. The compound was walled in on three sides by crumbling brick walls topped by a confetti of multicoloured shards of bottle glass. A narrow alley ran from the compound back along the side of the restaurant and out on to Guru Rabindranath Tagore Road.
The noise of late-evening traffic drifted in, punctuated by the occasional blood-curdling scream as a pedestrian came too close to the passing vehicles.
Chopra walked to the rear of the space and lowered himself into the rattan armchair that he had installed under the tubelight. The light was suspended from a line strung between the compound’s single mango tree and a TV antenna on the roof of the restaurant. It swung gently in a sudden breeze that leavened the muggy December heat.
Beneath the mango tree, a grey shape stirred.
A flush of warmth moved through Chopra as Ganesha raised his trunk and gently ran the tip over his face. ‘How are you, boy?’ he murmured.
The moment lasted only an instant before the elephant turned away huffily and hunkered back down into the mudbath in which he had been wallowing.
Chopra knew that Ganesha was upset with him. It was just another sign of the young calf’s burgeoning personality.
When he had first been sent the baby elephant by his Uncle Bansi Chopra had not known what to do with the creature. What did he, a retired police officer, know about caring for an elephant? But gradually, as Ganesha had accompanied – and then actively helped – him in solving the murder of a local boy, he had come to realise that there was something mysterious and unique about the little creature. His uncle’s words, set down in the letter that had arrived with his strange gift, had come back to him then: ‘remember… this is no ordinary elephant’.
Once a sceptic, Chopra was now a believer.
There was something improbable about Ganesha, something quite beyond Chopra’s ability to slot him into the neat little boxes of rationality and logic that he had lived by his whole life. There were depths to the elephant that he had yet to fathom. And, of course, there was the mystery of the creature’s past, upon which he had singularly failed to shed any further light.
Ganesha: a riddle inside an enigma wrapped inside an elephant.
Often, when he looked into Ganesha’s gentle brown eyes, he would think he saw his Uncle Bansi staring back at him. The same mischievous uncle who had grown from a rascally boy into a white-bearded wandering sadhu, disappearing from their Maharashtrian village for years at a time only to return with tall tales of magical encounters in faraway lands that he would share with his callow nephew and credulous kinsmen.
Chopra knew that one day he would get to the bottom of the mystery, but for now he had barely enough time to count his blessings, as his wife took pains to regularly remind him. After all, not only had the restaurant got off to a flying start, so had the second venture that he had embarked upon following his retirement.
Chopra had been a police officer for more than thirty years. For thirty years he had awoken, put on his khaki uniform, taken the police jeep to the nearby Sahar station and settled down behind his desk knowing that he was about to embark upon his allotted duty in life. For thirty years he had been a man with a purpose, one that was perfectly suited to both his disposition and his talents.
And then, one day, following a heart attack that had dropped on him out of a clear blue sky, a doctor had told him that he was the victim of a curse called ‘unstable angina’ and that the next time the attack might be fatal. To his despair Chopra had been forced to leave the police service and ordered to avoid stressful activity.
This had been easier said than done.
The murder that Chopra had subsequently solved had opened a can of worms in Mumbai, implicating senior politicians and policemen in a nationwide human trafficking operation. The scandal had done wonders for the new Baby Ganesh Detective Agency and they had been inundated with cases ever since.
And yet… the cases that now came his way were hardly the same as those he had tackled as head of the Sahar police station.
Take the past few months. Chopra had spent endless days trailing errant husbands and delinquent children. He had tracked down missing wills. Companies engaged his services to check up on the backgrounds of dubious employees; political parties paid him to uncover potential skeletons in the closets of election hopefuls. He was even approached by worrie
d parents wishing to discreetly verify the bona fides – and assets – of aspiring sons-in-law.
It was all steady work.
Yet the truth was that such cases did not quicken the pulse the way a solid police investigation did. There was no sense of the greater good being achieved.
Chopra had always believed in the ideal of justice. He knew that sometimes justice was a malleable notion, particularly in India where money and power often tainted the application of due process. But this did not alter his view that the books of the cosmos could only be balanced when good and evil fought and good came out on top.
He shuffled around in the rattan chair, seeking a more comfortable position. His right hip hurt from where he had slumped onto the floor at the Prince of Wales Museum.
‘Come now, Ganesha, be reasonable,’ he said to the elephant. ‘I could hardly have taken you with me. They would never have let you into the exhibition.’
Ganesha snuffled noisily and hunched further away.
Chopra sighed. It was bad enough, he thought, to be burdened by a temperamental wife, but to also have to adjust to a temperamental one-year-old elephant was sufficient to try even the patience of a saint.
He decided that young Ganesha would be best left alone until he had overcome his fit of pique.
Pulling a sheaf of papers from the leather document folder that he had carried out into the compound with him, he excavated a calabash pipe from his pocket and set it into the corner of his mouth.
Chopra did not smoke. The calabash pipe was an affectation that he employed to promote clear thinking. He had long been a devoted fan of Sherlock Holmes – in particular the incarnation portrayed by Basil Rathbone in the 1940s – and the calabash pipe gave him an instant sense of stepping into the great detective’s shoes.
He settled his spectacles onto his nose and began to read.
