Handbrake, Puri’s driver, inched the Ambassador forward and, with only ten minutes to go, finally turned into New Delhi Railway Station. Passengers were hurrying from their vehicles and dashing zigzag between waterlogged potholes toward the station. Parking touts were gesticulating wildly like gauchos herding cows. Coolies in red tunics and soggy turbans peered through steamed-up car windows touting for work.
“Which train, saab?” “How many pieces?”
An elderly coolie, whose bare, sinewy legs showed between the folds of his dhoti, hoisted Puri’s bag onto his head and set off for the terminal. The detective struggled to keep up with him—umbrella held at forty-five degrees against the wind, eyes fixed on the backs of the man’s callused heels, which squelched rhythmically in his rubber chappals.
They’d covered about a third of the distance when disaster struck: a gust plucked away the umbrella as easily as a balloon from a child and sent it rolling across the car park. Puri had the presence of mind to clasp one hand to the top of his head, thereby saving his cap, but in so doing, he forgot to watch where he was treading. Looking down, he found his right leg knee-deep in muddy water.
With a curse, he hurried to the station building and took cover. His mishap had engendered a collective whoop from the crowd sheltering beneath the overhang. Many of them were still smiling as he brushed away the muck from his trouser leg. Puri could barely mask his displeasure at being considered a figure of fun. After being reunited with his umbrella, which was brought to him by a helpful parking attendant, he strode purposefully into the ticketing hall, water seeping from the sides of his shoe.
The security check beyond proved as haphazard as ever. The metal detector beeped constantly as departing passengers coursed through it unchallenged. The jawan manning the X-ray machine yawned. When the image of the detective’s bag appeared on his screen, the impression of his .302 IOF pistol went unnoticed.
Puri, who had a license to carry the firearm, felt tempted to give the idiot a piece of his mind. Sloppy security had helped facilitate the success of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, after all. But he hurried on, deciding instead to report the incident upon his return to Delhi.
Finding the station’s only escalator broken—BY ORDER OF THE STATION MANAGER according to an official notice— gave him something further to grumble about. But once he’d climbed the steep steps up to the iron bridge that spanned the platforms, spied the roofs of the trains below and heard the lowing of the horns, his pulse began to quicken. Puri was still caught up with the romance of train travel. No other means of transport came close. With a car you simply got inside, told the driver where to go and sat back, a passive observer. Buses were even worse. But with trains there was ritual and expectation: pick up a couple of magazines from A.?H. Wheeler’s bookstand; find your carriage; claim your berth; put your head outside to watch the stragglers hurrying to get on board; listen to the final whistle as the bogey shuddered forward.
There was no substitute for the tamasha of being amongst the jostling crowds of passengers in the stations, either. And in New Delhi they were drawn from every corner of the country. While crossing the bridge, he found himself amongst Sikhs, Rajasthanis, Maharashtrians, Tamils and Tibetan monks. He passed a family of Gujarati villagers, who’d evidently disem-barked from the Varanasi train and were carrying plastic containers of holy Ganga water. Behind them appeared a group of Baul minstrels, easily identifiable in their patched cloaks, their instrument cases tucked under their arms. All the while over the PA system came announcements about the departures of trains bound for some of the furthest destinations in the country—Jaisalmer in the Thar Desert; Darjeeling in the foothills of the Himalayas; Thiruvananthapuram, a three-thousand-kilometer journey to India’s southern tip.
If there was anything that provided Indians with a sense of living in one nation, it was the railways, he reflected. The Britishers had at least bequeathed that.
“Carriage number, sir-ji?” asked the coolie.
He’d been waiting at the bottom of the stairs on Platform 11 for his customer to catch up with him. Despite the heavy bag balanced on his head, he wasn’t the one sweating profusely.
“S3 number,” panted the detective. “Second-class AC.”
The Jammu Express was preparing to depart, and along the platform, relatives stood waving off their loved ones. The coolie wove his way between heaps of cargo and the odd fortune-telling-cum-weighing machine, and reached the carriage with a few minutes to spare.
Inside, the passengers were settling down for the journey. Bags were being stored under bunks, the sore feet of elderly aunties were being attended to by dutiful daughter-in-laws, packs of cards were being shuffled in preparation for games of teen patti, and sections of stainless steel tiffins containing home-cooked food were being separated and laid out on newspaper like mini buffets.
The detective brazenly pushed his way down the aisle between the bunks until he found his family members, who numbered six in total.
“Chubby, so wet you are, na!” exclaimed his mother. “What all you’ve been playing at?”
Rumpi, too, reacted with little sympathy.
“What have you done to your new suit?” she asked. “What a state!”
He looked down at the offending trouser leg. A small pool of water had started to form around his shoe.
“It is raining, my dear,” he stated.
“Well, main thing is you made it just in time,” said Rumpi. “Come. The train’s leaving any moment. Your berth is that one.”
She pointed to the one across from hers. It was occupied by his nephew Chetan, who was fifteen, grossly overweight and an irritating busybody.
“Hi, Uncle!” He grinned with a mouth full of chocolate.
Puri greeted him warily, never altogether comfortable with the young man’s overly familiar tone, and felt suddenly thankful that he wasn’t going with them.
“Actually, my dear, something most urgent has come up,” he said.
“Don’t tell me you’re not coming, Chubby!” replied Rumpi, who struggled to make herself heard over a babble of disappointment from the others.
The detective put up his hands in a defensive posture. “Believe me when I say it is not by choice. My heart was set on coming, actually.”
Rumpi stared at him in disbelief.
“My dear, allow me to assure you, I’m the one who is disappointed. But one matter of life and death is there.”
“Something serious?” piped up Mummy.
Sometimes Puri forgot that his mother wore a hearing aid that seemed to give her almost superhuman auditory perception.
“Not at all, Mummy-ji,” he answered.
“But you said ‘life and death, na.’”
“Must be you heard the words ‘wife’ and ‘theft’ and got them mixed up. I was referring to a minor robbery, only.”
Mummy shot him a skeptical look. “Then why it can’t wait a few days?” she asked.
“Most likely I would be able to join you tomorrow or next day,” he answered, his words addressed to the entire family. “Meantime, sincerest apologies all round and safe travels.”
He took Rumpi to one side. “Believe me, it is not my fault—quite the reverse in fact,” he said. “The situation is a grave one. A young man’s life hangs in the balance.”
She could tell that he was telling the truth. Chubby might have lied consistently about his calorie consumption, but he never exaggerated about the nature of his work.
“Such a pity,” she said. “I can’t remember the last time we got away. I was hoping we’d perform the darshan together. At least promise me you’ll take a few days once it is all over.”
The train gave a jolt.
“Absolutely, my dear,” he said. “I’ve been invited to lecture at Pune, actually.”
“No, Chubby! None of your conferences! I want to go to Singapore or some such place.”
Puri soon found his way blocked by a man coming in the opposite direction. The stranger was his g
irth twin. Neither of them could pass without the other backing up.
“I would be alighting the train,” explained Puri, who could feel it moving down the tracks.
But the man didn’t give ground; instead, he turned side-on and the detective was left with no choice but to do the same.
The two men shuffled past, their stomachs pressing together like a couple of beach balls. For a moment, Puri felt like he was going to get stuck.
“Seems we’re both expecting!” joked the stranger, whose breath reeked of garlic.
Puri responded with an awkward, perfunctory smile and then let out a loud yelp as his toes were crushed underfoot.
“Was that you? So sorry!” apologized the stranger.
Struggling free, the detective limped to the door and managed to step down onto the platform without causing himself further injury.
“Bloody fool needs to go on a diet,” he muttered to himself as he watched the Jammu Express pull away.
* * *
Rajnath, otherwise known by Puri as “Sneaky Ticket Wallah,” was waiting for Puri on Platform 3. Once again he’d achieved the miraculous at short notice and secured Puri a berth in a first-class, air-conditioned compartment on the Lucknow Shatabdi.
Puri didn’t ask how he’d done it and preferred not to know. He simply took the ticket, thrust it into his pocket and, having thanked Rajnath, sent him on his way. With some twenty minutes to spare before his train departed, he then headed to the platform dhaba and ordered a couple of samosas and a cup of chai, as the coolie waited with his bag. What with the storm and the rush to see off Rumpi, this was the first opportunity he’d found to reflect on Facecream’s phone call.
His Nepali operative had always been an enigma. Details about her past remained few and far between, even after years of unremitting service. But the revelation that she’d become involved with the so-called Love Commandos had come as a shock. Puri had read about the organization in the papers and considered it to be something of a joke. He also disapproved of its work. Love was all well and good, but when it came to marriage, the approval of elders was sacrosanct in his book. It was not just about a girl marrying a boy; on the day of her shaadi, a bride became a part of her husband’s family. If she hailed from another community or a totally different caste with a conflicting set of values and habits, what then?
His own marriage had been arranged and it had worked because he and Rumpi shared similar backgrounds and their families had got along from the start.
“Our mutual affection and devotion for one another grew over time rather than with so much groping in the back of a cinema hall,” he’d written recently in a letter on the subject of “premarital relations” to the honorable editor of the Times of India. “So much of hormones going unchecked are like genies out of the bottle.”
Still, Facecream had never asked for his help before and he wasn’t about to turn her down. The details were these: A young male Dalit student called Ram had been abducted from the Love Commando safe house. His girlfriend’s father, a notorious Thakur by the name of Vishnu Mishra, had vowed to kill him. Yet he claimed to have no knowledge of the boy’s whereabouts.
“There’s something else is going on here—something I’m missing,” Facecream had said over the phone.
Ram and Tulsi met at the University of Agra, but they both hailed from more rural parts of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Ram’s village was to the west of the state capital, Lucknow. It was there that Puri suggested they try to pick up his trail. He had a hunch (which he kept to himself) that the young man had decided to go back on his commitment to the girl. No doubt her father, Vishnu Mishra, a wealthy man, had bought Ram off. So the boy had staged an abduction and simply run away.
Puri’s Lucknow-bound train was now standing on the platform.
In the first-class carriage, he found two young men already occupying two of the four berths. They greeted him with respectful nods, eyes lingering on his dirty trouser leg. The coolie placed Puri’s bag on the floor and the detective reached inside his safari suit to take out his wallet. It wasn’t there.
“By God,” he mumbled, struck by an uncommon panic.
He began to pat himself up and down as if there were insects crawling on his skin. But his pockets were empty. The wallet was gone.
“There’s some problem, Uncle?” asked one of his fellow passengers.
“Yes, I, well . . . my wallet.” He sounded uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “Seems to be gone, actually.”
Puri thought back to where he might have lost it. He’d definitely had it with him when he’d left the office . . . the only time he’d needed any money was to pay the dhaba owner and for that he’d used loose change.
And then it came to him.
“Maaderchod!” he cursed to the shocked bemusement of his fellow travelers.
Out on the platform, the station manager was blowing his whistle.
The coolie, who wore a “Likely story, saab” expression, held out his hand. Puri fished out the last 100 rupees from his trouser pocket and handed it to him. The old man touched the note to his lips, then his forehead, and hurried toward the exit.
Three
Puri wasn’t one to jump to conclusions. His father had drummed it into him from an early age never to assume anything. Gather the facts and weigh up the possibilities before drawing conclusions, he’d always said—advice that had proven both invaluable and wise.
In this case, however, Puri was in no doubt as to the identity of the individual who’d stolen his wallet: that fat bloody bastard who’d blocked the aisle on the Jammu train.
He’d used classic distraction tactics—the old stepping on the toes and garlic-pickle-breath ploy—while slipping his hand inside the detective’s safari suit.
“Must be he is a master pickpocket,” Puri explained to his fellow passengers once the train was under way. “He had the advantage, actually. What with the train getting started and all, I was in a hurry to alight.”
“Not to worry, Uncle, it could happen to anyone,” said one of the young men. They were sitting on the lower bunk opposite the detective. “There are pickpockets everywhere these days.”
“But my wits are always about me,” insisted Puri. “Nothing escapes my notice. My radar is working twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year, only.”
“You’ve got extrasensory perception is it, Uncle?” asked the second young man with a playful smile.
The fact that he was being teased didn’t escape Puri’s attention. His tone became officious. “There is nothing extra about it,” he said, his chin jutting out from the folds of his throat. “It is my job to notice what all is going on around me. I am a private investigator after all.”
“You’re a jasoos?” asked the first, who sounded surprised.
“Perhaps you have heard of me? Vish Puri is my name. Most Private Investigators Ltd. My offices are in Khan Market above Bahri Sons.”
They both shrugged.
“I’m winner of six national and one international award, also,” he added. “The Federation of World Detectives saw fit to name me super sleuth some years back. My picture was on the cover of India Today. Probably you must have seen it.”
“Sorry, Uncle, I think I missed that edition.”
The young men turned to their BlackBerries, their indifference compounding Puri’s sense of indignation at having been robbed.
Fighting his inclination to try to impress them further— another thing Papa had often tried to teach him was never to show off—he considered the best course of action to retrieve his wallet.
Inspector Malhotra, the Jammu deputy chief of police, was a good fellow, both reliable and honest. He was also discreet. Puri could ask him to meet the train and have the pickpocket searched on some pretense or other. But first he needed him located and identified.
He tried to think of someone in any of the towns en route who might be able to help on short notice. Only fellow private investigators
came to mind and he ruled them out. Puri would rather have dropped the whole affair and never seen his wallet again than let it be known in professional circles that he’d been hoodwinked.
There was only one option: he’d have to call Rumpi and ask her to locate the pickpocket’s berth number. By checking the chart (a list of passengers with confirmed berths was always pasted on the outside of each carriage), she should be able to ascertain his name.
Under no circumstances, however, was Mummy to get involved. Not because she wouldn’t be able to help. On the contrary: she had an uncanny knack of getting to the bottom of things. But then he’d never hear the end of it.
As it was, she brought up the Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken every time they met, never failing to remind him of her involvement and how, in her words, she had “solved the case.” And although Rumpi implored him not to rise to the bait, he didn’t always keep his cool.
“Yes—eventually!” Puri would thunder. After keeping vital information about the case to herself and thus jeopardizing its outcome, Mummy had identified the killer. And yes, she had been in a unique position, given her involvement with certain events in 1947, to assist with his investigation. But had it not been for his own bold and daring crossing into Pakistan—at a good deal of risk to his own life—the case would not have been successfully resolved.
Furthermore, Mummy was quite wrong in asserting that he’d promised to work with her. He had only given his word to look into the odd matter that she brought to his attention—and this for the sole purpose of keeping a closer eye on her. She was always going off on her own, sticking her nose in other people’s business, after all. One of these days she was going to land herself in a hot soup.
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