by Vaseem Khan
Chopra sensed that Lala was right.
He had brought Ganesha home and settled him back into the courtyard. He had then pulled out his twin bibles on the care and husbandry of elephants.
The first was the weighty, fact-based encyclopaedia The Definitive Guide to the Life and Habits of the Indian Elephant by Dr Harpal Singh.
Chopra thumbed through the glossy pages and learned that although an elephant’s hide appeared to be robust, in reality there were places where that skin was as thin as paper. He discovered that elephant skin is sensitive to heat, and that elephant calves sunburn very easily, hence their tendency to hide beneath their mothers, to squirt water over themselves and slather themselves in mud at every opportunity. Dr Singh wrote that ‘an elephant’s skin is so sensitive that it can detect even a fly landing upon it’. These revelations made Chopra think that perhaps Dr Lala had underestimated the pain Ganesha had suffered from his injury.
Then he turned to the second book, his personal favourite.
It was a thin volume entitled Ganesha: Ten years living with an Indian elephant. The author was a British woman called Harriet Fortinbrass who had come to the subcontinent in the 1920s. Fortinbrass had adopted a young elephant whose mother had been shot dead by her father, a British diplomat – indeed the name she had given her ward had inspired Chopra to select Ganesha for his own charge.
Whereas Dr Singh was a font of dry facts and details, Fortinbrass’s passion for her ward shone through. ‘Elephants are great communicators [she wrote]. They use their heads, bodies, trunks, ears and tail as a form of language. For example, when a female elephant feels threatened, she will make herself appear larger by holding her head as high as she can and spreading her ears wide. An elephant’s mood can be determined from its bodily movements. An elephant that withdraws from the tactile world is an elephant in emotional distress.’
Chopra had tried everything he could think of to bring Ganesha out of his funk, but to no avail.
In the end he had decided to leave the elephant alone while he worked in the restaurant’s back office. A number of cases required documentation and a backlog of client correspondence had built into a miniature pyramid inside his filing cabinet. Irfan had done his best but there was only so much the boy could do to keep the wolves at bay. Paperwork was a chore that Chopra did not enjoy but his long years in the service had taught him the value of maintaining a meticulous paper trail. It was a strategy that had paid dividends many times over. And he had insisted on that same rigid attention to detail in his junior officers.
A nervous Sub-Inspector Surat delivered the Kanodia case file to him just as the evening restaurant crowd was beginning to swell.
‘Did Rangwalla ask you to do this, Surat?’ Chopra asked sternly as he took the dog-eared manila folder.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Listen to me carefully. You are not to do anything like this again. You have a new commanding officer. You owe him – her – your loyalty. Did you stop to think what she would do if she found out you were handing over police files to non-police personnel?’
Surat paled as he thought of the consequences of upsetting Shoot ’Em Up Sheriwal.
‘Never mind. What’s done is done. Let me take a look at this tonight and then I want you to return it to the station first thing in the morning.’
Surat snapped off a spectacular salute. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And Surat… you don’t have to salute me.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Chopra sat out under the stars and opened the file. Crickets sang a chorus above the steady rumble of traffic from Guru Rabindranath Tagore Road. The smell of cinnamon drifted from the restaurant – Chef Lucknowwallah was preparing his special cinnamon-infused rice pudding. Chopra hoped the chef would save a plate for him; it was a particular favourite of his.
Balram Kanodia – known to friends and associates as ‘Bulbul’ Kanodia – had been born in the city of Rajkot in the state of Gujarat in 1959. He had moved to Mumbai in his early thirties and had set up a hole-in-the-wall gemstone business in the industrial quarter of Sahar known as SEEPZ. In time, the business had become a small jewellery operation – Kanodia was descended from a line of Gujarati jewellers and was rumoured to be an exquisite craftsman, particularly adept at designing complex gemstone jewellery.
Kanodia had come to Chopra’s attention when a street informant had fingered the jeweller as a small-time fence. Bulbul had clearly decided that the razor-thin margins he made from his work were not enough to meet his needs.
Chopra had had Kanodia’s operation monitored and then sent an undercover agent in. Kanodia had taken the bait and agreed to find a home for what he had been expressly informed was stolen merchandise. The entire sting had been secretly recorded and Chopra himself had slapped the cuffs on the would-be middleman.
The investigation and arrest were meticulously logged in the file, as Chopra expected them to be. He was gratified to discover, however, a wealth of additional information.
Chopra had long insisted that his men continue to make notes in case files well after an initial arrest, so that criminals who might resurface in the locality could be monitored. It had paid off numerous times, and it did again now.
A number of further entries described Kanodia’s life following his arrest.
Chopra was surprised to note that although Kanodia had begun his sentence in the general barracks of the Arthur Road Jail, within a month he had been transferred to Barrack No. 3 – the barracks run by the Chauhan gang. Kanodia’s time in jail seemed to have been greatly eased through his association with this band of organised criminals.
Upon his release from prison – due to an early parole that Chopra did not believe was warranted – Kanodia had gone underground for almost a year. Then, out of nowhere, he had found the capital to set up a jewellery emporium called Paramathma – meaning ‘divine soul’.
So Bulbul developed a sense of irony during his time in jail, Chopra thought.
According to Rangwalla there were now at least six branches of the Paramathma chain around the city, the largest one in the affluent suburb of Bandra. The one thing that modern Indians had in common with their ancestors was a love of jewellery. From Mughal emperors to the lowliest members of the lowest caste, this pursuit of gold and gems seemed as much a part of the fabric of Indian life as spices and religion.
Business was booming for Bulbul.
Chopra put down the file and tried to impose order on to his thoughts.
Bulbul Kanodia was now his number one suspect as the mastermind behind the theft of the Crown of Queen Elizabeth.
He knew that jewellers from every corner of the country had descended upon the Prince of Wales Museum in the past weeks. After all, when would they get another chance to behold the most magnificent creations their particular brand of artifice had ever conjured up?
Kanodia, however, was a man with a track record, a man connected to Mumbai’s criminal underworld. Chopra had little doubt that organised crime had financed Bulbul’s chain of jewellery stores. Kanodia was a front man and Chopra believed that the jewellery stores were being used by the Chauhan gang to launder black money into white. The plot to steal the Koh-i-Noor was exactly the sort of thing the gang would consider a coup.
A metallic clanking signalled Irfan’s arrival with Ganesha’s evening bucket of coconut milk. Irfan salaamed his boss and then approached the little elephant.
Chopra watched the smile fade from Irfan’s face. ‘What is the matter with him?’
‘I am afraid Ganesha has had another encounter with human nature.’
A look of confusion passed over the boy’s face. He set down the bucket and then knelt down beside Ganesha. ‘Hey, boy, cheer up. Don’t let the world get you down.’
Ganesha remained unresponsive.
Irfan stood up and began to dance, singing a popular Bollywood number that never failed to delight Ganesha.
Nothing.
‘Chopra Sir!’
Chopra turned
to see the statuesque figure of Rosie Pinto, one of Chef Lucknowwallah’s two assistant cooks, standing on the veranda in her white uniform and toque blanche.
Rosie was an enigma to Chopra. A Goan Catholic with a figure that reminded him of the statues of primitive mother goddesses that he sometimes saw on the Discovery Channel, Rosie had a personality as large as her figure and a booming voice that easily cut through the bustle of the restaurant when the need arose. Chopra had found himself quite intimidated at first, but Chef Lucknowwallah had been effusive in his praise for her skills in the kitchen.
Rosie seemed equally popular with the clientele. She had a saucy air about her, and it had not escaped his eagle eye how often Rosie’s generous backside was slapped by overfamiliar patrons as she wiggled her way across the restaurant floor. Rosie never seemed to mind, but he had considered having a word with her about the matter. He did not wish to encourage licentious behaviour in his staff. After all, this was a family restaurant, not a ladies bar.
‘What is it, Rosie?’
‘Chef wishes to see you urgently. He is waiting in your office.’
Chopra’s heart sank. As he reluctantly hauled himself to his feet and trudged towards the restaurant, he tried to focus on the fact that he was exceedingly fortunate to have secured the services of Chef Lucknowwallah.
Azeem Lucknowwallah, by his own admission, was a genius. He had spent a lifetime working in the kitchens of five-star hotels and ‘tip-top’ restaurants. He had travelled the subcontinent, imbibing recipes and techniques from the masters. Lucknowwallah had retired three years earlier, but had come out of retirement to apply for the position of head chef at Poppy’s Restaurant, the post having been recommended to him by his nephew and Chopra’s neighbour, ghazal troubadour Feroz Lucknowwallah.
Chef Lucknowwallah’s father had been a police constable in faraway Lucknow, once renowned as the City of the Nawabs. Lucknowwallah Senior had been killed in the line of duty, run down by a crazed bullock during a protest march by the Indian farmers’ union campaigning against government-set cotton prices in the early seventies. The young Lucknowwallah had been left with the harrowing memory of his father expiring on a dusty cornfield to the echoes of a police lathi charge and the yelps of stricken farm folk. Ever since that ill-fated day, he had sought for a means to honour his late father. The opportunity offered by Mumbai’s first restaurant dedicated specifically to the police service was too good to pass up.
Chopra had hired Lucknowwallah on the spot and had been greatly relieved when the chef had not haggled over his salary. He could not afford to pay the rate that a man of Lucknowwallah’s experience could command. Lucknowwallah had dismissed his concerns with an expansive wave of his hand. ‘Neither of us are here for the money, Chopra,’ he had opined.
The chef had settled in quickly and soon the restaurant’s patrons had begun to rave at the conveyor belt of magnificent dishes that emerged from his kitchen.
The problem was not the chef. Lucknowwallah was an artist and highly strung. He could handle that. No, the problem had been created by Chopra himself. For the millionth time he wished that he had not caved into his wife’s demand that he ‘find something for my mother to do’. As if the old crone did not have enough to do making his life a misery at every opportunity.
But at Poppy’s behest he had installed Poornima Devi as the restaurant’s front-of-house manager. He had anticipated that the old woman would quickly tire of the post and leave of her own accord.
To everyone’s surprise, his mother-in-law had taken to the role with an industry that unnerved all those around her.
Poornima Devi’s ability to inspire terror in the waiting staff ensured a fast and efficient service in the dining area. Her grasping memory – usually employed in recalling Chopra’s numerous faults – meant that nothing was forgotten in the day-to-day running of the operation. Furthermore, with Poornima supervising proceedings the number of wastrels frequenting the restaurant had swiftly dried up. Those diners who suddenly realised that they had forgotten their wallets just as swiftly found them again under her withering, single-eyed scorn.
Chopra knew, from personal experience, that an enraged Poornima Devi was a Kaliesque vision of terror.
His mother-in-law insisted on wearing the white sari of a widow, her grey bun and black eye-patch lending her once-attractive face a terrifying severity. She had steadfastly refused to don the bright pink uniform that Poppy had chosen for the restaurant’s staff. ‘Should I wear make-up too, like some cheap floozy?’ she had sneered. ‘Would you sell your mother to the Kamathipura brothels?’
It was perhaps inevitable, Chopra reflected, that a battle of wills would ensue between Chef Lucknowwallah and Poornima Devi. The two were chalk and cheese and rarely saw eye to eye.
He sighed. Sometimes he longed for his days as a police officer, when all you had to worry about was getting shot.
He found the chef pacing the floor of his office, vibrating with indignation.
‘What has she done this time, Chef?’
‘That… that… woman… has ordered me – ordered, mind you! – to see to the over-spicing of my Shahi Chicken Korma!’ The fat little man quivered with indignation. There were curry stains on his white chef’s jacket, obscuring the initials AL embroidered on the breast pocket.
Lucknowwallah’s round cheeks glowed red from the jungle-like heat that prevailed in his kitchen. The top of his head was covered by the white cricket umpire’s cap that was his trademark, though Chopra suspected it was a gesture of vanity, a failed attempt to conceal Lucknowwallah’s thinning hair.
Before Chopra could respond the chef exploded again. ‘Am I a khansama now, Chopra? A two-chip cookwallah to be ordered around by a glorified waitress? I, who trained at the knee of Master Lal Bahadur Shah! I, whose forefathers served as vasta wazas for the courts of emperors! When Akbar lay dying after fifty years on the throne, do you know what he asked for? Not gold or concubines… Akbar begged for the peacock heart basted in saffron oil that was the invention of my ancestors! When General Sikander was sentenced to be crushed to death beneath an elephant’s foot for daring to love Emperor Jahangir’s favourite consort, do you know what his last request was? Did he ask for one final kiss from his lost love? No, sir! He asked for one last taste of the kabuli biryani that made kings of my predecessors!’
Chopra sighed and realised that his evening’s travails had only just begun.
Back in the compound Irfan knelt down in the mud and patted Ganesha on the head. ‘Someone hurt you today, didn’t they, Ganesha?’
The little elephant remained morose, shrouded in a depressed silence.
‘You must not be so sensitive. People hurt each other all the time. Like Chopra Sir says, it is in their nature. You must become tough, like me. Then it doesn’t matter how much they hurt you.’
Ganesha opened his eyes. Then he unfurled his trunk and lifted it to touch the boy’s face. He slid the tip of the trunk down towards Irfan’s shoulder and traced the cigarette burns that had made circular scars on the skin.
‘A bad man did that to me,’ said Irfan, his voice suddenly low. ‘He tried to break my spirit each and every day. But one day I realised that no one can break your spirit unless you let them. So I ran away. Now he cannot touch me. No one can touch me.’
In the sudden silence there was only the steady drone of traffic from the nearby road. And then Ganesha lifted his trunk once more to the boy’s face and brushed away the tears that had materialised on Irfan’s cheeks.
GAREWAL HITS THE HEADLINES
Christmas in Mumbai.
Inspector Chopra (Retd) had often wondered how, given the fact that less than three per cent of the population of Mumbai was Catholic, the festival could engender such hysteria. In the run-up to the big day the whole city seemed to be overcome by a frenzy that he found impossible to fathom. It was another sign of the times, another line in the sand marking the ever-rising tide of westernisation that was engulfing urban India.
&nbs
p; As he looked around at the streams of his fellow Mumbaikers thronging the brightly lit mall, he corrected himself. Perhaps westernisation was not the right word. Retailisation. Merchandisation.
He set down the shopping bags he had been carrying and checked his watch. The watch was twenty-five years old and had been a gift from his late father on the occasion of Chopra’s wedding. He remained sentimentally attached to it even though it spent more time in the repair shop than it did on his wrist.
It was already midday. He knew that he should be working on the Koh-i-Noor case – each stuttering tick of the watch’s second hand was a personal rebuke – but he had made his wife a promise.
Poppy was an inveterate fanatic of festivals. It did not matter which festival, his wife loved them all. She seemed to be instantly infected by whatever happened to be going around. He did not begrudge her this happy knack – he simply wished that she would leave him out of it. But Poppy, as is the way of some people, seemed convinced that Chopra would enjoy such occasions just as much as she did if only he would give it a chance.
‘Ho ho ho!’
He turned. Standing before him was a short, thin man clad in a Santa Claus outfit that was many sizes too big for him, giving the impression that he had lost a lot of weight very recently. The outfit seemed to be wearing the man rather than the other way around. A fake white beard was attached to his chin and fluffy eyebrows pasted on above his eyes. One of the eyebrows had tilted downwards, but he seemed unaware of this.
‘Ho ho ho!’ he repeated, in a thin reedy voice.
‘Can I help you?’ Chopra asked crossly.
The annual epidemic of Santas was another thing that bothered him. In his opinion they were not only irritating but also suffered from the crime of being inferior knock-offs. The vast majority that descended upon the city each year – in malls, in restaurants, even in the local branch of his bank – looked more like costumed hashish addicts of the type he often saw sleeping rough under the many flyovers of Mumbai.
