Khushwant Singh Best Indian Short Stories Volume 2

by Khushwant Singh

  The airlines coach brought the passengers to Palam. He was waiting in the main lounge with a hundred or so other passengers, to go through the security check, and glad that he himself carried no hand baggage, when he heard a distorted announcement on the public address system.

  ‘Damn!’ the man next to him cursed. ‘This flight never gets off on time, does it?’

  ‘That’s because of the VIP pilot,’ another man said, looking up from his paper. They open all baggage – oh, every single thing. Not like the other flights, where they only examine hand luggage.’

  ‘Oh, not every piece, only anything that looks suspicious,’ the first man said.

  ‘No. Every single suitcase, and all the packages in the suitcase. My son was going back to school. His tuckbox was opened.’

  The sound was like a murmur, and somewhere far away. Balram felt as though he was falling into a trance. The loudspeaker was saying it again and again: ‘Will Shri Jamna Das, passenger on flight IC 124 to Udaipur, please contact the inquiry counter…. Will Shri Jamna Das…’

  Balram got up and walked towards the toilets. On the way he glanced at the inquiry counter. He could have sworn that the two men behind the girl at the counter were plainclothes policemen.

  When he came out of the toilet he saw a new lot of passengers streaming in. A flight had arrived from Bangalore. He fell in among them and went into the baggage room. He slipped out of the main exit and walked to a waiting rickshaw. ‘Delhi station, please,’ he ordered. Luckily, he had not thrown away the third-class ticket. Behind him, he could still hear the urgent voice saying, ‘Will Mr Jamna Das, passenger on flight…’

  TWELVE

  A Slice of the Melon

  MANOHAR MALGONKAR

  Believe it or not, the technique of how to make a bank pay you other people’s money I learnt from a police officer, a much-respected and feared commissioner who recently retired. He had given an interview to a paper in which he had described some of the methods employed by clever criminals. I still possess a clipping of that interview.

  And I am one of those who don’t feel squeamish about helping themselves to a nice, fat slice of election money –not many people would, if they only knew what a staggering percentage of election funds is siphoned off by party workers. I know a man who, only five years ago, could not afford a new umbrella. During the last general elections, he controlled his party’s disbursements to its candidates in the district – just one district. Today he has the grandest bungalow in town.

  Myself, I have never had real access to campaign funds but, in the Gujarat elections, I was close enough to where the action was to be benumbed by the sheer bulk. Money came pouring in, by post and messengers – cheques by the dozen and cash in bundles of neatly clipped-together currency notes. The boss sat like King Midas in his counting house, gathering in the currency notes and stuffing them into little cloth bags and every now and then putting away the bags in the party’s steel cupboards. The cheques were bundled by two clerks, one of them being myself.

  The scent of all that money all but drove me mad.

  I am not going to say which party it was that I worked for or even name the town in which we were located. But I think I can safely reveal the name of my boss, who was the treasurer for the district, Mr M. Shah, because I am quite sure that there must be hundreds of people of the same name in every large town in Gujarat, so that no one can pinpoint the man who was our Mr M. Shah. I’ll give a hint though. He was the Shah who was the subject of a recent investigation by the CBI over some shady midtown land deals. Many people believe that it was this investigation that was Mr Shah’s main qualification for being chosen as the party’s local custodian of its coffers.

  The mail came in the mornings. I and the other clerk carefully slit open the letters which, for the most part, contained cheques. We gathered the cheques in lots of ten and put rubber bands around each bundle and passed the bundles on to the inner office where Mr Shah and the accountant sat. Even though most of the cheques were made payable to the party’s treasurer, there were a dozen or so every day which were in Mr Shah’s name and stamped Account Payee Only. In the afternoons, the same cheques came out again, this time to be recorded in a register and then sent off to the bank with the office messenger.

  I couldn’t have been working for more than a couple of days before I began to notice that more cheques were being received than were sent to the bank and that these missing cheques were invariably from among those which happened to be made payable to Mr Shah by name.

  It was obvious that some form of what the Americans call ‘cutting a melon’ was going on in the inner room. Was there not, I kept asking myself, some way in which I too could help myself to a slice? After all, it was a very big melon; after all, I needed the money much, much more badly than Mr Shah who drives the fastest Impala in town and owns its tallest block of duplex flats.

  I racked my brains. The answer kept coming: No, no, no and no. There was just no way of getting my teeth into the melon.

  But the next morning it was suddenly yes; the answer positively leapt at me from the ‘Jobs Wanted’ column of The Chronicle:

  Smart, young, action-oriented…etc.

  Write to Maganlal Shah Box No. 1070.

  And suddenly everything had fallen into place.

  I confess I was slightly put off by Maganlal Shah’s qualifications. I would have preferred someone who was neither smart nor action-oriented. But the one thing that mattered was that he had the right name. Besides, I have always prided myself on my flair for talking myself out of tight situations, of which, alas, I have encountered more than my fair share. Surely, I told myself, I could get the better of some callow youth, however ‘smart’ he thought himself to be.

  That evening I read and reread my clipping of the ex-police commissioner’s reminiscences and all night I brooded over my plan. I could not see how it could fail.

  I wrote to Maganlal Shah, calling him for an interview, and saw him in a small office room which, I knew, could be hired by the day, or even the half day. Here men, who profess to represent upcountry business houses which have scores of openings for young men with no special qualifications, arrange to interview candidates for these jobs. On the appointed day they come bustling in, carrying large briefcases with Indian Airlines baggage tags and looking as though they are in a tearing hurry. They give each of the candidates a minute, no more. They distribute application forms to all comers and tell them to fill them up quickly and to attach two ten-rupee notes to each form. As soon as the hour is over, they collect the forms and stuff them into their briefcases and dash off, mumbling that Mr Birla hates to be kept waiting for lunch – never to be seen again.

  But, for my very special job seeker, I had all the time in the world. I told him I was the front man for some very big people who wanted to start a travel agency and who were prepared to spend a lot of money in preliminary groundwork.

  ‘Your starting salary will be Rs 400; but confidentially I can tell you that it’ll be raised to 600 in three months.’

  ‘What’s the job?’ he asked.

  ‘My assistant; you know, secretary, accountant, office manager.’

  I took him out to lunch to Kwality and spent thirty rupees on our meals. Then we strolled back to my ‘office’ for the day – well, two days, really. I made him sit down in the chair opposite and asked: ‘You don’t happen to have a bank account, do you?’

  He appeared quite taken aback. ‘Me? Bank account! No, sir.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to open one immediately. Right away. My principals, they’re…oh…most anxious…’ I rattled off about big finance for a minute or so before coming back to the point. That’s your first bit of work for us – open a bank account. Get some friend to introduce you. Here’s three hundred rupees to deposit in the account.’

  It was a wrench, paying out that three hundred, which represented about a third of my worldly wealth.

  ‘But why a friend?’ he asked. ‘Couldn’t you introduce m
e to your own bank, sir?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, no; won’t do at all. In fact it would quite shock my principals if…if…they were to know that I took on a young man who didn’t even have… ’ This time I gave him a prolonged burst of straight talk on business practices. ‘And one thing,’ I told him before he had a chance to recover, ‘when you give your name at the bank, give it as just M. Shah, not Maganlal Shah; for That’s the way you will be signing er…letters and things for us.’

  ‘Oh, but why?’

  ‘Our clients will be mostly foreigners,’ I explained. ‘Japanese and Americans; they get put off by our long names – real jawbreakers – ha ha.’

  He gave a cheerless imitation of my guffaw. ‘So get used to calling yourself M. Shah,’ I pressed home my point. ‘Not Maganlal Shah. Okay?’

  ‘What bank, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, any bank; any bank at all,’ I told him. ‘We’re not fussy. Only…not some small suburban branch. One has to be where the business is, eh; in a busy street – middle of the town.’

  As he was going, he turned and asked: ‘Current account?’

  ‘What? That’s right, a current account.’

  The next morning, he was waiting on the landing of my ‘office’. We both went in together and he told me that he had opened his account in the Merchants Union Bank at its city branch. He laid on the table a thin yellow cheque book and some paying-in slips.

  ‘Good,’ I said, waving a hand for him to sit down. ‘The first thing to do is to sign these cheques.’

  ‘All ten of them?’

  ‘Certainly – all ten – so that we can start recruiting some bright young men and er…some smart young girls…ha ha…ahurm. We’ll pay their advance salaries even while you’re away, eh? – with the new accountant’s cheques, ha ha ha.’

  This time he did not join in my mirth. ‘But there’s only the three hundred in the account, sir,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Oh, I’ll put in another couple of thousand next week; I’m glad you remembered to bring some paying-in slips. Yes, you sign them all; I’ll fill in the amounts and names later.’

  ‘And no use crossing them or putting Account Payee Only, I suppose?’

  At the time it did not occur to me that he knew much more about the business of bringing money than I had credited him for. ‘Of course not. No use giving Account Payee cheques to young men and girls, is there? Yes, use this table. Of course, by the time you get back, you’ll have your own room, when we get into our regular office – with a girl to do our typing.’

  He took out his fountain pen and opened the cheque book. Then, as though the penny had just dropped, asked: ‘But where am I going, sir?’

  ‘Hadn’t I told you? – Well, well. You’re going on one of your first sprees for this travel business – junkets, they call them in America. I want you to go all the way to Cape Comorin by bus – yes, only bus – and then wander all over Kerala. Find out all about the sights: beaches, temples, those fabulous waterways, festivals, game reserves, ruins, the lot. Take three weeks. Our men must know what we’re selling the clients personally; no half measures. They must cover the ground the hard way – by bus.’

  I had worked in a travel agency for a while and knew the spiel. I went on for a couple of minutes about the special attractions of the business and then trailed off because I noticed that Shah was gaping at me open-mouthed and had not signed a single cheque. ‘Well, I’ll leave you in peace for a while,’ I offered. ‘Must dash off now. I’ll be back in an hour; then we’ll go and get some lunch, eh?’

  I hurried off to my real office and to my labours for the party. When I got back, Shah handed me the cheque book. I flipped the pages and saw that all the cheques bore his signature. I pocketed the cheque book as well as the paying-in slips and said: ‘Now lunch.’

  This time we went to a Chinese restaurant and I was a little surprised when Shah asked for chopsticks in place of knife and fork. Over the stewed noodles and sweet-and-sour and Peking prawns, I told Shah what I wanted him to do and gamely parted with another three hundred rupees for his travel expenses. He made a docile if not overeager recruit; and kept nodding at everything I said, while expertly wielding the chopsticks, and nodded even while the waiter was asking if we would have chilled litchis for dessert.

  I winced – litchis were four rupees a helping – but went on with my talk of how he was to see everything himself and not hurry back: that our principals would judge him by his close study of our working ground.

  It was nearly three o’clock when we parted at the door of the Green Dragon and Shah promised to set off on his bus journey to the end of India early the next morning. I had run through very nearly all the money I had, I kept thinking as I walked to our party office, but I had achieved a lot too.

  I had a bank account in the name of Mr Shah and signed bearer cheques to withdraw money from the account. Now all I needed to do was to find the money to put into the account so that I could withdraw it.

  And the very next morning, the cheque was waiting for me; Rs 15,000 on a Bombay bank, payable to Shri M. Shah and crossed and superscribed, Account Payee Only. I pocketed the cheque and, that evening, filled in a paying-in slip. The next morning I took the cheque to the city branch of the Merchants Union Bank and credited it into Mr M. Shah’s account.

  It usually took a week for a bank in…well, our town… to realize a Bombay cheque. I gave it ten days. On the eleventh day I went to the Sony agency in the Mahatma Gandhi Chowk and selected a radio set. The price was Rs 407, with taxes, which was just right for my purpose. ‘I’ ve no cash though,’ I told the fat shop assistant who had been showing me models for nearly half an hour. ‘you’ll have to take a cheque.’ He shot a withering glance at me and went to the back of the shop and brought an older and fatter edition of himself who came out scowling and saying ‘Well!’ in a booming voice.

  Before he could say anything more, I gave him a smile and said: ‘Look, I’ll give you a bearer cheque. If you could send it round to my bank and collect the money, I’ll come and take away the radio set in the afternoon. Okay?’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ Fatty answered, grinning. ‘No problem at all.’

  I wrote out the already-signed cheque and slipped away, as though in a great hurry, but lingered at the other end of the shop just long enough to take a good look at the messenger whom Fatty had summoned to take my cheque to the bank. I hurried out and waited in the street for the messenger to come out, then I followed him all the way and into the bank.

  This was the test. Had Rs 15,000 come in or not? If the teller handed the messenger the cash, it meant that the money had come in. If he returned the cheque, it meant that I had to slip out quietly and quickly, because that would mean that something had gone wrong. My heart fluttered and gave a tremendous leap as I saw the teller passing the money through the grill.

  In the evening, I went and collected my three-band Sony and listened to the music till all the radio stations fell silent, one after the other. Then I went to sleep.

  The next day was the first of the month, rush day at the bank and ideal for taking out large amounts of cash without too much scrutiny. I wrote out a cheque for Rs 14,500 and I can assure you that it went against the grain to leave nearly four hundred rupees in Shah’s account, never to be withdrawn – at least not by me. But it was important not to give the impression that the account was being drained dry.

  The teller handed me a disc. Number 193. One-plus-nine-plus-three, I counted. Thirteen: my lucky number. I waited, scarcely breathing. They seemed to be taking rather a long time; but then this was a busy day, with uniformed peons drawing large amounts of cash for salary disbursements. Then I heard a number being called out: one hundred and ninety-eight! So they had passed my number. And yet I knew that the money had come through. More numbers were called out; not mine. I would wait till they passed two hundred and ten, I told myself, then I would saunter away.

  ‘…nointy-tree, hundred and nointy-tree,’ the teller was sa
ying.

  I went up. The teller had another man standing next to him.

  ‘Is this your cheque?’ the other man asked.

  My eyes were playing tricks, my voice was not my own. ‘Yes – at least my office cheque.’ I managed to mumble.

  ‘Is this your signature?’

  I cleared my throat and said: ‘Mine at the back. But the cheque is signed by our accountant, Mr Shah. It is for the payment of our staff,’ I added, and then asked: ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘But Mr Shah drew out the money for the payment of the staff yesterday,’ the teller explained.

  ‘What! But he couldn’t have! Mr Shah is in Kerala. And…besides…’ And just as I was going to blurt out that Shah had no cheque forms with him, I remembered to shut up.

  ‘Yes?’ the man with the teller asked.

  ‘Well, nothing. So Mr Shah has already taken away the money for the staff payment?’

  ‘Yes. He was very anxious about it. Kept coming every day for the past week to find out if the money deposited into his account had come in. It came in only two days ago, so yesterday he issued two cheques. One for Rs 407, the other for Rs 14,500, which he cashed himself.’

  They say that in moments of great shock one’s faculties are at their keenest, which is what may have saved me from jail that day. The similarity between the two amounts was my salvation. I forced myself to smile and took a deep breath.

  ‘Ah, it’s all clear now. You see, Mr Shah was going on a long tour of Ceylon and…’