by Neil D'Silva
“Why is everyone so scared of him?” Maya asked.
“Nothing…” he said. “No reason. I will come back when he is at home. Just tell him Akram was here.”
“Akram, okay. He will want to know why.”
“He knows, don’t worry. My father is the landlord of this house. I have come to collect the rent.” Saying that, he turned and started to walk down the stairs.
Maya looked at him descending the stairs. A landlord’s son, but no airs at all! How soft-spoken too! Maya kept staring long enough to realize she was probably making a fool of herself, but even then she could not resist. Perhaps it were his mannerisms, or it was his affable face, or it was merely the fact that he was the first decent man she had seen in days. She called out to him, “Akram, hey Mr. Akram…”
He looked back, wary of admonishment.
“If it is only about the rent, I could give it to you,” she said. “You’d only have to wait a minute.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes, yes. Come on up.”
He climbed back up. “Good! That saves me a trip.”
“Please sit inside till I fetch the money,” said Maya.
There was reluctance in his manner. “I don’t think I should come in,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”
For anyone else, the safety chain would have stayed put. But, this was different. Maya wanted to talk more with this gentleman, to know more about him and to tell him about herself. She did not want him to leave so soon.
She became a schoolgirl herself. She opened the safety door wide, and flung the door ajar. A part of her hoped he would take this as an invitation and enter.
Maya was flirting with danger. But she didn’t care. Danger had come to her in the most tempting form.
***
The first thing Bhaskar did on returning home was to open his cupboard. “I hope there’s some money left,” he said. “I start school on Monday and need to buy the train pass.” He opened the drawer where they kept the cash. His reaction was instant. “Oh, I thought there was more money here.”
“The landlord’s son had come,” said Maya, “asking for rent. I gave him his money.” There was a subtle apology in those words, and she didn’t understand why that was so.
“Did he now?” He sat down dejectedly on the bed. “But why did you give him the money? You could have called me before giving. I was thinking of stalling him this month. The wedding has set me back a bit.”
“I am sorry,” said Maya. “I should have asked.”
“It’s all right now. What’s done is done.”
“I have some money in my bank account—”
It was as though she had exploded a bomb in the little room. Bhaskar stood up like there was a spring attached to his spine. Towering over her, he placed his hands on her shoulders and looked at her in the eye with a pained expression. “You do not need to spend your money, Maya,” he said, softly but firmly. “It pains a man to hear such things. Don’t remind me how you were better off before you came here.”
“I am sorry,” said Maya.
“I know you lived in a better house. You had your mother and your sister, and here you are alone. But let’s both forget our pasts and move on, okay? Otherwise, this is not going to work.”
Maya lowered her head.
“When did he come?” Bhaskar asked with an abrupt change in his tone.
“Who?”
“Akram Lakdawala, the landlord’s son.”
“Around ten.”
“And did you give him the money at the door?”
“Yes,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“He didn’t come in?”
“No. Is anything wrong?”
“No… no, no… not at all.”
He didn’t say anything the rest of the day, and they had no further communication, except in the night when he came to her like a sex-starved animal vying for every bit of her soft flesh. And after he had had his fill of her, she couldn’t sleep for the images in Gore haunted her right through the dead of the night as he snored peacefully next to her.
~ 10 ~
Goat Walking into Slaughter
School was closing for the Christmas vacations and the teachers spoke about the weeklong holiday that loomed ahead of them. Maya hadn’t come back to school after her wedding post-Diwali. Without Maya to give her company, Padma sat with the other teachers and tried to chat with them. She did not really participate in their conversations but nodded her head at the right times. Her mind occasionally drifted to how Maya would have responded to certain aspects of the gossip, and then she made a small mental side-note to call her now-married friend when she got home.
After the teachers left, Padma thought she would spend some time in the computer lab, filling in the students’ marks of the previous test. She headed to the lab and started working on them. If she did this one measly task, she would have respite for a whole week. She put on her earphones and, listening to old movie songs sung by her favorite combination of Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhonsale, she began entering the marks.
She was down to the last three entries when someone tapped on her shoulder. She turned to see it was Ranganath, the school peon.
“Padma mam…” he said.
Padma removed her earphones. “What is it, Ranganath?”
“Mam, there is something I have to tell you.” He spoke in whispers though no one was around, and that immediately got him Padma’s undivided attention. “But you must promise me you will not tell anyone.”
“You are scaring me now, Ranganath.”
“You are a good lady, mam,” Ranganath said. “Maya mam is a good lady too. You are both good, nice and decent. That’s why I am telling you this. When I came to know about it, I could not sleep. I tossed and turned in my bed and my wife Shona—she is a nice woman too—was most distressed. She asked me what it was and I could not tell her. But, mam, now I must tell you. I cannot live with this.”
“What is it, Ranganath?” Padma raised her voice.
“Come with me, mam, and I will show you.”
Padma obediently followed Ranganath to the last computer in the lab. This was a password-protected computer meant for the use of the admin staff. He switched it on, logged in, and then extracted a pen drive from his trouser pocket.
“I made a copy of this secretly so I could have proof.” He inserted the pen drive into the USB slot. “Principal Purohit should not know I have this. If he does, I am without a job from that very minute.”
“He won’t. What is this?”
“Watch.”
The video he had started was hazy. It took a moment for Padma to realize that it was a grab from the fifth floor security camera. She squinted at it, trying to make sense of the visual.
As it cleared a bit she kept looking with perplexity, waiting to find out what the peon was trying to show her. And then she saw Bhaskar in the video, walking hurriedly along the staircase. And just when he was walking out of the scope of the camera, she saw him adjusting something in his kurta pocket.
The one intriguing thing he did just then was to remove that particular object out. If it were not for that, Padma would never have been able to see what he was hiding so carefully under his kurta folds.
It was the glass jar with the heart in it.
“Did he steal the heart?” Padma asked, so loudly that it echoed in the empty lab.
“The video does not lie,” said Ranganath. “Look at the way he is keeping it. The moment I saw it, I realized it was not his authority to handle it.”
“When did you see this?”
“Much before Principal Purohit came to know about the missing heart. I make it a habit of checking the videos from the security cameras whenever I can. That day I just happened to be checking them when I saw this.”
“Then why didn’t you report it immediately?”
“I didn’t know this was a robbery at first. Nobody spoke about it that day. But the next day when Principal Purohit called everyone to
their office, I went back and showed him the clip privately.”
“And?”
“He told me, in no mean terms, to keep my mouth shut about it.”
“What?”
“Yes. He told me that the heart was already gone, and there was no point framing a teacher of the school and causing a scandal.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“That’s it, though.”
“But why would he steal the heart?”
“I think it is obvious.”
“What?”
“Have you seen his throat? All red, like it has been scorched with burning coals. And I have seen him in the washroom. His arms and legs—they are punctured like they have been poked with a thousand pins.”
“Yeah, but what does that tell you?”
The peon’s eyes grew large and his chest puffed up in pride. After all, he was giving information to a person who was an acknowledged expert in disseminating information.
“I hail from the land near the Ganga, mam,” he said, “and there we see these marks of self-infliction quite commonly.”
“Self-infliction, really?”
“Also, once when he was alone in the staffroom at a late hour, working on some art model, I heard him chanting.”
“Chanting what?”
“A mantra. Yes, I am sure of that.” Ranganath had a particular cockiness in his voice. “And those injury marks, they are of no accident. Do you know who I have seen having such injuries and chanting such mantras?”
“Who?”
“Aghoris.”
“Aghoris?” she repeated. “Aren’t they some kind of ascetics?”
“Yes they are. They were originally devotees of the Great Lord Shiva. But in today’s world, many of them have deviated from the path of true enlightenment. These who have strayed away do not have anything devout left in them. In any case, these aghoris are a strange lot. They live in graveyards and worship on haunted grounds.”
Padma let out a shudder.
“Yes, they are scary,” said Ranganath. “Once I was in my native village in Uttar Pradesh when I got lost. Our state has these sudden jungles that confuse even the locals. No one ventures into them, we keep to the straight paths. Anyway, I once lost myself in a jungle. It was an Amavasya night, and I was scared shitless. I heard all kinds of jungle sounds and thought the safest thing to do would be to go up a tree and stay till morning. I did that, and don’t know when I dozed off. Then, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by some strange noises. I opened my eyes and saw. Near the tree where I was perched, there was a small campfire burning now. Around it sat two aghoris, both dressed in black. Their matted hair was evidence that they hadn’t bathed in a long time. I could smell them even up there on that tree. Know what they were doing?”
“What?” Padma asked.
“Eating. From the same plate. It was something red and raw that stank. Dogs had gathered around them, and they were eating from the same plate too.”
“Oh, don’t tell anything more, please!” Padma closed her eyes, trying to shut out the visual that was forming in her mind. Then she opened her eyes and asked, “But these aghoris are celibates, right? They cannot have families.”
“No, they cannot, and that’s what makes me think there is something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Padma removed the flash drive from the computer. “What am I supposed to do with this now?” she asked.
“That’s your call. Do you think you should show it to Maya mam? She is his wife now. She must know, I think.”
“Okay, I will transfer the clip on my cellphone and give this back to you. I will show it to her. But, I still wonder—why did he take the heart?”
“Well… Do you know what one of the bloodcurdling rituals of the aghoris is?”
“What?”
“Eating human flesh.”
***
Maya didn’t take Padma’s call the first time. No one had called her in a while and she took time to realize it was her cellphone ringing. When it rang a second time, Maya took the call.
“Hello Padma,” she said, “good to hear from you.”
“Same here, Maya, how’s married life?”
“It’s good. I’m learning on the job.”
“Is he with you?” Padma’s tone wasn’t of a friend looking for casual banter; it was of a hurried messenger who furtively looks over their shoulders.
“No, he’s gone out.”
“When will he be back?”
“He doesn’t normally come back before evening. Why, isn’t he in school? He should be.”
“Yes, he must be in school. I saw him in the morning,” said Padma. “I am still at school and I saw something that I need to show you.”
“What is it? Sounds something really exciting.”
“I do not wish to tell you anything over the phone. I’ll meet you. Tell me a place.”
“I do not know this neighborhood quite well,” said Maya. “Haven’t even been to the station alone.”
“Where is the house at Naigaon?”
Maya told her what she knew of the place.
“Okay, I’ll locate it on my GPS and come. What is the best time to come? He shouldn’t be there.”
“Still nervous about Bhaskar?” asked Maya. “I understand. You could come now if you want. He won’t be back till nightfall.”
Padma disconnected the phone and moved out of the computer lab. As she walked along the empty corridor, she ensured the clip was still with her. There was nothing on her mind at the moment except showing that clip to her friend and perhaps help her decide the future course of action.
But, she shouldn’t have been so lost in her thoughts.
For, if she had been more alert and looked at the other end of the corridor, she would have seen the tall dark man staring at her with hands buried in his large trouser pockets and murder in his face.
She was stupid. Engrossed in her talks, she hadn’t even seen him earlier peering through the side window of the computer lab with his bloodshot eyes, a vantage point from where the admin monitor screen could be easily seen.
***
After getting off at the Naigaon Railway Station, hiring an auto-rickshaw to the address mentioned was the easy part. The difficult part was after alighting from the auto-rickshaw when Padma had to look for the Hussein Lakdawala Chawl, a place so inconsequential that even the satellites had overlooked it when tracing their maps.
She asked around to locate the place, and when she finally found some people who showed traces of recognition, a new problem arose. There were two Hussein Lakdawala Chawls, or perhaps it was the same chawl that sprawled over a large geographical area and was divided by the main road passing through it.
Padma stopped asking people for directions after a while, for she started getting more leers and stares than answers. What has poor Maya gotten into?—she thought.
Eventually she reached a crossroad where she saw a fading signboard that proclaimed the name of the chawl. There were arrows pointing in both directions of the road, but that would be easy because she had the block number with her. A-223 would not be that difficult to find. She found that she was in Block K at the moment; she would just have to take the left turn ahead and—
She came to a dead halt in her tracks.
He stood right in front of her, a curious smile upon his face.
The sudden presence of Bhaskar put a sense of foreboding into Padma’s heart. The fact that she held incriminating evidence against him made her feel guilty, but then she realized there was nothing he knew that he could hold against her.
“Hell… hello Bhaskar,” she said with a feigned courteous smile. “I was just coming over to your place to meet Maya.”
“Of course,” he said in as gentlemanly a tone as he could muster, “and you got lost in this labyrinth.”
“Indeed I did,” Padma laughed nervously. “I guess I have to go that way, am I correct?”
; “No, you aren’t,” he said, the smile refusing to leave his face. “The blocks here aren’t in any particular alphabetical order. Our house is that way. In fact, walk with me. I am going home too.”
“Oh, you are…” Padma’s plan of meeting Maya in private hadn’t worked this time. She would have to find another opportunity to warn her friend of the peril that lurked in her house. But right now she had to wrangle out of this situation. She felt the best way to do it was to continue pretending she had come for a casual visit. There would certainly be no harm in that pretense.
Padma let him walk ahead for she had no option anyway. She walked hurriedly, unsuccessfully trying to match pace with his long strides. But she fell behind, which gave her an opportunity to observe him minutely. She saw his neatly dressed form, which sufficiently hid the hideousness underneath, but then could this man be a man-eater? A cannibal? She cringed at the thought.
And then she remembered the missing people reported from all over the city, gone without a trace, neither hide nor hair ever found of them.
When she finally snapped out of those thoughts, she saw they had left the Hussein Lakdawala Chawl far behind.
The houses and shops had thinned now, and at the end of the road, she could see what looked like an unused garage. Behind her, there was nothing but a dusty and desolate road.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“It’s right ahead,” he said, without looking back.
There was no further communication; he didn’t bother to explain. He just walked on with his atypical gait, with hunched shoulders and open fingers. Suddenly, as she saw his hulking form, Padma felt like she were a goat walking into slaughter.
There were no houses here, only a barren strip of land.
There were no people; there weren’t even the flitting auto-rickshaws, so ubiquitous in suburban Mumbai.
She noticed the dogs didn’t bark at him. As he walked, they sprang away from his path, as though he were some kind of overlord of this domain and they were his minions.
This wasn’t his home for sure. This couldn’t be anyone’s home.
