‘Sir, no?’
The fellow sounded mystified. Will my refusal alone be enough to confirm whatever suspicions he has? I must think of something more to say. Something to put the fellow off.
‘No, Inspector. You will be disappointed I know. But it is not at all possible.’
Why would it not be possible? I must produce some better reason. Something altogether convincing.
‘You see, Inspector, as Mr Srivastava was telling you, there is a strict embargo on anyone whosoever seeing those Recollections. For one hundred and one years after Krishnan Kalgutkar’s death. So . . .’
Can I make some sort of a joke about it? Will that put this fellow off?
‘So, Inspector, I am afraid you will have a very long stay here in Banares. Ninety-seven years, if I am getting right my sums.’
‘Well, of course, I am not able to wait that long, sir. You see, what is in that document is perhaps vital evidence. And— And, sir, I must mention there is Section 186 of Indian Penal Code, Obstructing a public servant in the discharge of public functions, sir.’
The impertinent rat.
‘I hope you are not threatening me, Inspector.’
‘Oh, no, sir, no. No, I was mentioning only. Because, you see, sir, it is vital that I am seeing these Recollections.’
Time to make him altogether give this up. With one good lie, since it has to be.
‘Inspector, I am not at all understanding why it is so vital. KK himself was speaking about the Recollections to me shortly before his sad demise. He died, I am happy to say, here in Banares itself, a part of his body immersed in the waters of Holy Ganges. Now I am able to assure you that, though he said there were personal matters there it would be better not to let come to the light for many years, there was nothing else that needed to be concealed. There is, therefore, nothing that could have caused anybody to murder Mrs Shoba Popatkar. Nothing that can have any possible bearing on your inquiries. Nothing.’
‘Then, sir, excuse me.’
How the fellow was persisting and persisting.
‘Then, sir, if these Recollections have in them nothing that needs to be concealed, why may I not see?’
‘Inspector.’
Thunder here. Trumpet like an elephant in rage itself.
‘Inspector, are you having no sense of decency whatsoever? The Recollections are under the ban of a dying man. Are you daring to defy his most sacred wishes?’
‘No, sir. No. Not at all.’
Ha, I have done it. I have put this bandicoot in a cage where he belongs. Let him squeak there as long as he likes.
Yes, now the fellow was getting up from his seat. Looking disgraced and defeated. Well, good riddance only.
‘Then I must accept that, sir. But— But I think I must say also that, if my inquiries do not produce any other reason for that man coming from here so soon after Mrs Popatkar had made her visit, then I may have to return and definitely take your permission.’
Well, let him. Let him return and return. So long as he is never getting to see the Recollections I am safe.
Ghote, lying on bedding whose cleanliness he did not feel altogether happy about, perhaps without good reason, realized that sleep was going to escape him. The clamour of the city all round, the clang-clang of bells as worshippers went into the temples, the rise and fall of bhajan singing, the grinding of traffic in the street outside, the shouts and yells of life going on far into the night, all had ceased some time before. But the thoughts churning in his head were keeping him awake just as effectively.
Had he been right to have left H. K. Verma without forcing out of him permission to inspect Krishnan Kalgutkar’s Recollections? Then could he go to that library and insist, like Mrs Popatkar, on seeing the document, permission or no permission? No, Mr Srivastava had apparently already got into deep troubles over allowing it to be read once. He would never let it happen a second time.
And had he been right to have accepted H. K. Verma’s assurance that there was nothing in the Recollections that could have caused anybody to attempt to shut Mrs Popatkar’s mouth? Was there, as he had self-thought at the time, something, somehow, a little wrong about the way that assurance had been given? What had it been? Nothing he could lay a finger on even now.
Or was that niggle of doubt no more than his imagination?
And then, damn it, there was the way he had been landed with camping in this hotel. That fool Mishra about to tell him, as they were going from the BHU to H. K. Verma’s house, about some famous theft from the Golden Temple, had suddenly shouted to the driver to stop.
‘Look, look. Here is the very place where you must put up, Inspector. Very good hotel. I am knowing it well. Hotel Relax. Relax by name, relax also by nature. It would begin to give you an idea of our Banarasi way of life, of our masti itself, happy relaxing.’
And before he had had time to object or even agree the fellow had stopped the autorickshaw, jumped down, run into the place. He had thought of protesting. But he had to stay somewhere. And in any case as soon as Mishra had returned he had plunged back into his story.
‘You are knowing what is the Golden Yoni?’
He had felt obliged to answer.
‘Yoni, yes, I am knowing. Everyone is knowing. Object of worship, the opposite of lingam, the female organ instead of the male. I suppose the Golden Yoni was stolen from this Golden Temple.’
‘Yes, yes. From Golden Temple itself,’ Mishra replied, eyes glowing with enjoyment. ‘The greatest theft in the world. The lingam only those fellows were leaving. Even our stop-at-nothing goondas are knowing what is a hundred and one per cent sacred. And afterwards . . . You can imagine. Entire Banares was desolate. If those thieves had been found they would have been torn to pieces.’
‘So you were never able to track down culprits? But I am supposing they were able to wash away that sin the next day even, going down at sunrise to the Ganges?’
He had felt entitled to that jibe. But Mishra had quickly got his own back. Shouting above the noise all round, the yammer of the motor-cycle engine in front, the incessant tonk-tonk of temple entrance bells, the jabber of voices, the bleatings of beggars, the bawling of hawkers, he had produced his answer.
‘No, Inspector, you are altogether wrong if you are believing the Golden Yoni thieves were able to escape the outcome of their wrong-doings. You see, if you are committing a sin inside Banares itself it is what they are calling vajralepa, hard as rock. Not even Ganga jal can wash it away. No, no, those fellows are doomed to their next lives as the lowest of the low. As mosquitoes every one.’
And now, whining as if it was one of the Golden Yoni thieves in his next life itself, a mosquito had got into the room and seemed intent on landing anywhere it could on his hot and restless body.
Oh, and in his rush to leave for this place he had forgotten to pack sharp-smelling Odomos cream. Completely without any defence.
And completely, too, he thought with a heavy thump of dismay, without an idea of where to carry on his inquiries when morning came. If ever it did come in this cursed night.
6
H. K. Verma had slept badly. Try as he might he had not been able to stop the thoughts fighting each other in his head. This Inspector Ghote from Bombay, did he suspect something? Or was he just only in truth wanting to see KK’s Recollections? But even if that was all he wanted, it was the path down, down, downwards to ruin only.
Yet how could he have stopped the fellow finding those terrible last words of KK’s in any other way than he had? But that blank refusal – nothing, nothing else at all, had entered his head – could so easily have alerted him to the fact that the Recollections were a clue pointing simply to himself.
If the Bombaywalla was clever enough to see it . . . He had not seemed so. He seemed to have accepted that KK had discussed the Recollections and there was nothing in them that could have led to Mrs Popatkar being murdered. Feeble though that was. But would the fellow eventually have doubts? Would he ask himself, sooner or later,
why the guardian of the Recollections had been so violent in refusing to let an officer of the law read them?
Then . . . A sudden, fearful, beguiling temptation.
Shall I let this prying Bombay mosquito learn everything? Read the Recollections? Let entire disaster come. The burden will be lifted. I would be confessing what I have done, even if not directly. I would be as much free from the weight of the sin as I felt when I was stepping out of the Ganga. Only to find relief draining from me drop by drop almost as the Ganga water drained from my back.
He lay there, his heart thumping and thumping.
But am I truly burdened with sin, he asked himself. Truly? Surely that – that unthinkable thing, after all was a real act of right-doing? The outcome will – it will, it will, it will – mean a better life for the downtrodden by the lakh, by the million, by the crore. Once Social Upliftment Ministry is in my hands.
So surely I was in the right then.
But if that was the right thing to do, equally as much stopping the act coming to light is a right thing also.
Then – a terrible idea – is there a way of preventing this Bombay intruder with his as yet unmade guesses . . .?
The thought was with him still, painful as a fragment of grit under an eyelid and as hard to get rid of, as he went to the Ganges for his sunrise dip. But the swirling water of the wide, soul-cleansing river failed now to give him the new-day, new-start feeling it had always done. Day after day, year after year, whenever he had been at home in Banares.
Ghote had not arranged to avail himself of Inspector Mishra’s assistance after the first day. When with darkness rapidly coming on they had parted before he had gone in to see H. K. Verma he had imagined himself next morning setting forth, full of the fire of the chase. He would go back to that library tucked away among all the various learned institutions in the wide spaces of the Banares Hindu University. There, armed with H. K. Verma’s authority – no reason for him not to give it? – he would plunge through the Recollections. Then, learning what it was Mrs Shoba Popatkar had found in them, he would know who in Banares had had reason to shut her mouth. And he would have brought the culprit in. Got the necessary assistance from the Senior Superintendent over the formalities, and taken his man back to Bombay. In handcuffs.
But now there seemed little he could do. Heavy with gloom and muzzy-headed after his wretched night, he had risen late and then after mooning long over his breakfast had sat reading the unfamiliar pages of the Banares paper Aj, vaguely hoping he might find in it something to give him an idea. At last with a groaning sigh he admitted to himself the only feeble thing left was to return to the Cantonment Station and see if he could trace Mrs Popatkar leaving Banares. She just might have spoken to somebody, said something. At least it would be better than going tamely back to Bombay.
It was with a sullen hatred for everything his eyes lit on that H. K. Verma set off soon after he had got back from the Ganges to see his son. He would have to get home again in plenty of time to receive Jagmohan Nagpal before the High Command walla took in his turn a Ganges dip, to the click-click-clicking of the photographers from the Aj and the Gandiva. But certain information had to be prized out of Krishnakanta.
He wanted it. Urgently. However much he kept telling himself he did not want it. That he ought not to want it. That he did not wish even to know it.
It was almost nine o’clock by the time he arrived at the big house on the outskirts of the city with its wide lawns and its high surrounding walls. But, to his disgust, he found no one in the family was yet up.
‘I am having my holy dip at sunrise,’ he said when he at last got hold of Krishnakanta. ‘Three hours past already, more even. And you are not even starting your day.’
Krishnakanta leant forward and spooned English marmalade heavily on to the toast on his plate.
‘But I am making damn good use of my day when I am up,’ he said. ‘Better than any politicking-molliticking.’
‘Well, let me tell you that my politicking, as you are pleased to call it, is about to bring forth very much of fruit. Jagmohan Nagpal is coming today to see me.’
He glared at the loaded piece of toast Krishnakanta was now manoeuvring towards his mouth.
‘And why cannot you eat proper food? What is wrong with good Indian khana?’
‘Nothing, Pitaji. Nothing at all. If you are liking it. There is no question of wrong and right. I simply prefer what I am eating now.’
‘And I suppose that boy of yours is the same? Or does he lie in bed all morning and eat nothing at all?’
He knew he ought not to be going on like this. But these businessman’s Western ways of Krishnakanta’s simply infuriated him. They were wrong. Wrong.
Or was it that complaining of marmalade and Vikki – no, Vikram – was simply a way of avoiding what he had come with such urgency to find out?
But Krishnakanta had become sharply alert.
‘Nagpalji coming? Does this mean what one of my Delhi contactmen was saying . . .?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Strictly confidential for the moment, but it is going to be Minister for Social Upliftment.’
Now a quick scowl stopped the marmalade-dripping toast finding its destination.
‘Social Upliftment, what good is that only?’
H. K. Verma almost jumped up from his chair.
‘What good it is? What good it is? That is the seat in whole Government where a man of goodwill can do most for his downtrodden fellow citizens.’
‘Pitaji, it is me, Krishnakanta, you are talking to. No point in hypocrisies with me. You know just as much as I do that one and all in this world are beasts of prey only. It is jungle we are in. Jungle. And the hardest hunters eat best.’
‘No. No. That is not the way I was teaching you. Don’t you remember as a boy coming with me, at this time of year itself, to the Ram Lila out at Ramnagar? How we discussed after each evening’s play its example of goodness?’
Krishnakanta gave a snort of laughter.
‘No, Pitaji, what I remember is asking and asking till you were buying me sweets.’
‘Oh, yes, you were always greedy. I should have beaten you.’
‘And that would not have made me less greedy, I promise you. Come, you know very well why Social Upliftment Ministry is no good. Precious little procurement in it. Not a damn thing for any factory of mine.’
H. K. Verma sat in glowering silence.
Why did the boy assume he would take the evil course? Using his office to line family pockets. He would not. He had never taken the evil course. He had—
Then, shrieking like a dust-storm at the height of summer, into his head rushed horribly vivid images straight from Bombay. The deep pits in the old woman’s neck as his thumbs had found them. The sudden heavy limpness of her frail body sagging from his two clenched hands. And, last, the cheap blue-check cotton sari flung wide on the stone floor as he had thrown her aside. He had tripped on it as he had turned to get away. He could almost feel how it had tugged for one horrible clinging moment at his foot before he had kicked it clear.
Evil motives. Yes, I had them. That truly is what urged me on. Evil. No getting past that. What I did was evil. And what I came here intending to do, or have done for me, is evil also. Getting rid of that prying policewalla. Finding out from Krishnakanta, without if possible letting him know why, where to find some willing men from the wrestling pits. The goondas he used to beat up strike leaders. And worse than beat even, if the hints I would not let myself hear were true.
But no. No, I will not go down that path. I will not inside Banares itself commit a sin that would be rock-hard. Let the Bombay rat live. I am at least as good a man as that, whatever Krishnakanta is thinking of me. There are some things I would never do.
But should I have even thought of it? No. No, I never should have. But I did. I did.
When Jagmohanji takes his Ganga dip I will take also. To clear my soul.
But will Jagmohan object to any stealing of photo limeligh
t? He might. Almost certainly he will.
Better play safe.
At the Cantonment Station Ghote had some luck. Perhaps, he thought wryly, because no amount of luck was likely to do him any good now. But the first ticket examiner he approached had known Mrs Popatkar to talk to. She had come to Banares many times, he said, visiting the Northern Railway General Hospital. And he had seen her as she had left on the day before her death. She had arrived at the station in a great hurry and had only just caught the Rajdani Express. It had been one of the days when it had left exactly on time.
‘She was not saying anything to you?’
‘No, no. Too much of hurry. She was just only wishing me as she ran by.’
Checked. Nothing more to be learnt about what it was she had come to Banares for. No clue at all as to what it was she had read in Krishnan Kalgutkar’s Recollections.
Turning away, yet more deep in despondency, his eye was caught by a familiar figure. The white hippy. Or, if what Inspector Mishra had said here at the station when he had noticed the fellow hovering as they had gone to question the autorickshaw drivers, the white junky, the hawker of brown sugar.
And the fellow, plainly, was watching him himself. He looked as if he was wanting to speak, and yet was hesitating to.
Did the riff-raff believe he was a customer for his crude heroin? He might. Yesterday morning he had seen him staring in the same way from behind the newspaper he was pretending to read. As if wondering what this person not behaving much like a pilgrim or a tourist had come to Banares for.
Right, let’s catch the fellow. See what he is up to. At least something useful to do, here in this good-for-nothing city.
He put on an air of thoughtfulness, turned and began to walk wanderingly off in the direction of the forecourt.
And, yes, he was drawing the fellow along behind.
Slow the steps a little more. Hope to bring him nearer without him realizing. Slow yet again. Do not for anything look round. Just count on such a junky not being a hundred per cent alert. Slow again.
Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote) Page 5
