Ghote looked round to see if all this was being addressed to someone else near by. There was no one. The old man, a single breath taken, resumed. Implacably.
‘It has been the greatest solace to me to be within the boundaries of Kashi, which, you understand, are by no means contiguous with the boundaries of Banares considered in the municipal sense. No, no. Kashi itself extends in a wide sweep, known by the name of the Panchkroshi Road. You may find it just this side of the Banares Hindu University. Within that area I have been in no danger all these years, should death have overtaken me, of finding myself still chained to the endless cycle of birth and rebirth. Yes, even a mosquito, lucky enough to be killed by an idle slap inside Kashi’s bounds, is assured of moksha, of eternal release.’
Till that moment the old man had been fluting his words out towards the river below, where a corpse whose mourners must have been unable to pay the Doms even for a stone to sink it was floating slowly past, pale humped back and buttocks. Now he turned and produced a toothless smile of radiant sweetness.
‘But, I can see, my dear sir, you are disinclined to believe this. I assure you it is true.’
All Ghote had for a moment vehemently wished was that the mosquitoes making his life a misery at the Hotel Relax would, if he were ever quick enough to slap one to death, be consigned in their next lives to a yet lower place in the order of existence. But the old sannyasin was looking at him with evident enjoyment of his theological example. And in momentary silence.
An unexpected opportunity to shoot in a question that had come unbidden into his head.
‘Tell me, please. The goondas and murderers they say infest this place itself at midnight, should they get killed, say in a police firing, will they also be relieved of the burden of their evil doings?’
What he hoped to hear in reply was an authoritative denial that any murderers, two-rupee or ten, lurked at the Manikarnika Ghat at night. But he was disappointed.
‘Oh, my dear sir, certainly. Why, even a donkey will receive liberation here.’
‘And an atheist?’ doubting Ghote could not help putting in.
‘Yes, an atheist, a Muslim, a Christian. Are they not, after all, of more worth than a donkey? When the Doms place woods on the body of an atheist who is believed to be a Hindu that gentleman will attain moksha as surely as the Dom himself. Even the greatest sinner will achieve this release dying inside Kashi. Do you know the story of the nefarious Durdhara?’
Ghote contemplated for a moment claiming that he did. But he strongly suspected it would make no difference to the determined old sannyasin.
Out in the wide, swirling river a vulture had settled on the floating corpse as it went past the flooded leaning temple upstream.
If I have to, Ghote thought, could I swim out to that temple, crouch on the far side, escape like that?
‘The story of Durdhara,’ he conceded.
‘Durdhara,’ the old man began, a light of pure joy in his eyes, ‘was among the wickedest of mortals. He not only ate meat but he spent all his money upon it, together with alcoholic drink and loose women. He attempted to murder a brahmin. One small act alone stood out in this record of infamy. Durdhara had stolen into a garden and plucked some flowers for his lover, herself a prostitute. Chased, he leapt over the wall but in doing so dropped the flowers. “For God Shiva,” he mischievously called out. But even uttering Shiva’s name in this manner earned him some minutes in heaven before he was to be plunged into hell. Now, in that short time he encountered a heavenly damsel by name Menaka and became filled with remorse for his each and every sin. Menaka then fetched holy water from this city of Kashi and, by sprinkling it upon him, enabled him to enter within the city’s bounds. As he was doing so the many sins emerging from his body in ghoulish shapes became burnt up by Kashi’s fire. And it was, of course, that blue smoke rising up that is making the sky above us, up to then perhaps altogether without colour, into the blue you now can see.’
Ghote looked up. The sky was blue. But at midnight? What colour would it be then?
When it came to it H. K. Verma stood for almost an hour at the top of the great square bowl of the Serpent Well, his mind swaying this way and that. He stared, hardly seeing what was in front of his eyes, at the immense grey stone walls plunging downwards and the narrow stone steps creeping up their sides. At the bottom, far down, he contemplated the square of water, black in the dazzling sunlight, flower offerings dotting its surface in minute coloured specks. At its edge white-clad widows squatted in prayer, working through their last days in holy Kashi. A handful of pilgrims toiled up the steps on the opposite side cradling little glinting brass vessels filled with doubly sacred water from the well.
There he stood while the battle raged within. At times the forces of evil – yes, they are forces of evil, admit it – almost won. The idea that it was his right, that it was the right and only course for him, to send some of Krishnakanta’s wrestlers to the Hotel Relax and have this rat from Bombay put out of the way. For ever.
Then, at the last moment, the forces of good would fight back.
What has come upon me that I should even be contemplating such an act of wrong-doing? Myself, who from boyhood and always has striven and striven to do right? How can I even think of so much as going to talk to those goondas? Asking, in return for whatever sum they would demand, to have the policewalla blotted out? However necessary it may be.
But the battle was not decided there looking down far, far below to that black square of sacred water.
At last, moving almost as a sleep-walker, he made his way to the wrestling pit that had hovered in his mind, a vision of evil.
I am not committing myself to anything. Not even to speaking to one of those fellows. But it would be stupid, when I have come all this way, not at least to look. See what sort of goondas they are there. The sensible course. The right way to set about it.
I have not made up my mind. To do it. To . . .
Very well, say it. To add one more death to that death I brought about in Bombay. But this would be a truly necessary death. If that little rat has got his teeth into the truth somehow, then he has to be made to let go. Even by blows.
And this is the way to make certain. To use one of these fellows. Krishnakanta has done it. I am sure of that, however much he will not say so out aloud. But strikers have been killed. In riotings, they were saying it in the papers. And if a striker, who is committing violence himself, has to be killed, why not equally a stinking little rat from Bombay?
He found himself standing just outside the pit, by a shrine to God Shiva. A conical lingam painted in stripes of ochre and red inside a barred cage. On the walls at either side crude paintings of devis, each with her long black hair reaching down to below her waist, red garment across one shoulder showing a full breast. Each with a bowl in one hand and in the other, raised high, a broad sword, its blade red with blood.
The blood I am about to pay to have shed?
Leaning up against the shrine, carelessly left, were half a dozen stout bamboo lathis. He saw them raised, descending, time and again. Blood on them. Brains. And a man left dead.
The face of the devi on the left was half-hidden by a spotted mirror in a battered frame, hung from a hammered-in nail. Reflected in it, he saw one of the wrestlers. A big muscular fellow, bare of body all but for a scanty pair of shorts, biceps bulging, shoulders wide, a mop of curling hair. He was sitting on a stone ledge, idly playing with a pair of heavy dumbbells.
His man? The one who would do it?
But did he want it done?
And perhaps that fellow would refuse. Every wrestler in Banares cannot be willing to . . .
He found he had moved round the shrine. To the pit itself.
Why? Was he really going to go up to somebody there? Throw out some hints? Find one or more of the fellows ready to— Ready to take some money, half now, half later?
He looked at the muscular, oiled bodies in the sand of the pit. But which would it be best to approach?
One of the youngsters sitting cross-legged at the edge watching the two engaged in a bout?
No. Too young. Too young. Surely boys like those could never . . .
Then the men fighting, sand clinging to their naked flesh and thin shorts? The shorts the man on top wore – he made out as he shifted to get a better hold – were a cheerful blue with little white flowers. Somehow they made the viciousness he was showing towards the man underneath all the more troubling.
Or should he go up to the fellow lying at the side of the pit? He was on his own, flat on his belly in the sand, evidently exhausted after a bout, his head resting on a forearm, his back still encrusted with sweat-soaked sand. It would be easy to go and stand just near him. There was a sad look on his face. He must have lost a bout. Would he be ready to earn a good sum another way? By going to the Hotel Relax tonight?
A good sum. A bad sum.
12
At the Hotel Relax Ghote sat waiting, counting the hours till he could set out from this safe haven for the Manikarnika Ghat and its incalculable dangers. They were hours passing with excruciating slowness. If, he thought, I have looked at my watch once, I have looked at it one thousand times.
He had returned from his long daylight vigil at the ghat feeling the sharp smoke of its fires engrained in his skin. The interminable soliloquy of the ancient sannyasin seemed still to be shrilly ringing in his ears.
‘Such is the story of Durdhara. Now let me tell you the story of Mandapa.’
He could have said, No, I do not wish to hear one other story. But it would have offended that good old man. And, besides, there had been nothing else to do. Until midnight.
‘I would like to hear.’
‘Now, Mandapa, although he was the son of a man renowned for his piety, was himself both wild and wicked. With some friends he was drinking liquor and committing various crimes. He appeared to be, as you might say, an all-bad man. So sunk was he in his wickedness that, even when he and his co-riff-raffs had stolen gold from the maharaja, he then swindled those friends out of their share and hid himself in the house of a certain prostitute. Whereupon his father, learning the full extent of his wickedness, disowned him. Those riff-raffs, however, found Mandapa while he was walking out from that prostitute’s place and beat him with great severity, leaving him for dead on the bank of the River Asi, which is, as you may know, just within the border itself of Holy Kashi.’
Beat him with great severity. The old man’s calmly trotted-out words came back to him now with a shiver of foreboding. Was he risking a beating of great severity himself? Once he had left the hotel? Risking even being left for dead? Death itself?
Once more he looked at his watch.
‘When at last,’ the old sannyasin had continued, ‘this badmash Mandapa was recovering consciousness what should he see but a happy party on the Panchkroshi pilgrimage, the long walk round Kashi that takes, as you can tell from its name beginning five, five days and five nights to perform. Being at loose ends, wicked Mandapa thought to go along with these pilgrims. Now, even setting out on a pilgrimage with such good-seeking people had a somewhat transforming effect on Mandapa, and when they had reached to their next halting place he joined them in singing and dancing before the image there of God Shiva. And so it went on, day by day, night by night, till at last Mandapa was meditating upon Shiva with every step he was taking. Burning also with remorses, he neither ate nor drank. So they came at last to conclude the pilgrimage by bathing here at Manikarnika, just where we are sitting now. There his co-pilgrims were praising and proclaiming that Mandapa was now a sinless fellow, and, hearing so much, his father claimed him again as his son.’
The end of the story had come as something of a disappointment. Surely Mandapa, transformed so wholeheartedly from wrong-doer to right-doer, had merited some greater reward than that? He could, for example, have been given a maharaja’s daughter in marriage. But, seeing the contented way the sannyasin’s gummy mouth had closed, he had accorded the tale as much of a ‘Wah, wah’ of approval as he could rise to.
It had been a mistake. The old man had broken into speech again. A story about a Banares aghori, one of the renouncers going to the point of sleeping on graves, drinking wine from split skulls, cooking their food on the embers of the funeral pyres.
He had done his best not to listen. What if at midnight he should encounter an aghori? Or worse?
Not all the minutes spent under the shower on his return had washed away the sound of that voice in his head or the smell of corpse smoke on his body. Nor had he been able to do much justice to the meal he had eaten, try as he might to time-waste over it.
Once more now he picked up that morning’s copy of the local edition of the Times of India, although he thought he had read every scrap of its solid columns. News, rumblingly thunderous editorials, the That’s Entertainment section, the Letters to the Editor, the sport pages, the business pages, even the classifieds – Ravi Sharma wishes all Banares patrons and clients a very happy Bharat Milap and offers a selection of quality used cars (Bank Loan Possible).
Bharat Milap, was that the festival Mishra had told him about at some stage? The final night of the Ram Lila plays, one of which Mishra must be watching out at Ramnagar now? The last part, celebrated in the city itself, of the often-told story of Rama? Well, he would have left by the time that took place. If he did find out something at the Manikarnika Ghat in three hours’ time – no, still almost four – then he would have gone back to Bombay with his culprit, whoever he was, handcuffed beside him. Some goonda, hired perhaps by H. K. Verma himself. But, much more likely, Rick’s information proving so much nonsense, he would be going back to the Assistant Commissioner admitting Banares had been one washout only.
Ah, a little corner of tucked-away news items he had missed before.
And— And one small headline leaping out: Murder Hunt Move.
He seized on the few lines of smudgy print below. And, yes, as he had somehow known, the murder hunt was for the killer of Mrs Shoba Popatkar, famed freedom fighter. The Bombay police, it said, had switched their investigation to Banares.
That and no more.
He dropped the paper, went to the hotel’s battered old telephone and, not without frustration, got through to Inspector Wagh.
‘It is Ghote. Ghote. Inspector Ghote. In Banares itself. But, Inspector, what is this-all I am reading in Times of India? Murder hunt is switching to here? Why is that? You are finding out something new?’
‘No, no, Inspector. Just only complete dead-end here. So Assistant Commissioner, Crime Branch, is saying Banares is best bet. Up to you itself now.’
And at last it was time to go.
Midnight. The Manikarnika Ghat. And no sign of Rick. But in the strong, pinkish light of the full moon the ghat was by no means as deserted as he had imagined it would be. There were nothing like as many people about as there had been when he had sat in his niche in the temple wall with the talkative sannyasin beside him. But there were people, and they were hardly Mishra’s two-rupee murderers. There was a bandarwalla with his performing monkeys, although he had failed to attract any onlookers and was sitting on one of the steps rhythmically caressing his two pets. There was a boy in a white kurta up on a stone plinth playing a shenai, an endless repetitive mournful fluting. Higher up on one of the platforms overlooking the unbroken waters of the Ganges half a dozen men were exercising even at this hour. Oiled bodies gleaming in the moonlight.
Good people. Simple people. Going about their lives as best they could. Nothing whatsoever under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. He felt a slow down-stepping of relief. The realization that his earlier fears had been self-created. Perhaps, after all, he would get back to the Hotel Relax without a bruise on his body.
Remember the proverb in Marathi: Your own mind is your worst enemy.
But he could do with seeing Rick.
He looked up at the moon softly shining in the star-set, cloudless sky. There was a ring round it. His mother always used to
say a ring round the moon meant one of two things. A death, or a miracle. Well, death looked less likely now. But would there be a miracle? The boy Rick simply giving him without any trouble the name of the man from Banares who had killed Mrs Shoba Popatkar? The name, and hard evidence to prove it.
At the line of still burning pyres at the foot of the crumbling steps three or four Doms were poking at the remains of the corpses with their long rods. He saw one catch hold of an unburnt foot and twist the leg to get it consumed.
In the boats moored just beyond the steps the pinpoint orange glows of the cheap beedies the boatmen were smoking glinted like so many fireflies.
Rick, is he hidden somewhere, as I am myself? Waiting, too, to make sure the meeting is between ourselves alone? In one of the boats? Or . . . Or disguised as that woman – one of the few to be seen – wrapped from head to foot in a pale-coloured sari, looking like a pillar only? Or has he, as he did near the hotel, taken up a position where he can make a getaway as soon as he has learnt what I have to tell about the drugs raid? Before he has produced any information himself?
Down by the river the leaping and sinking flames of the pyres, their light catching now one thing now another, the shadows coming and going, made nothing easy to see.
Murder Hunt Move. The little headline jumped out at H. K. Verma as, unable to make himself go to bed, he moodily turned the pages of the Times of India, neglected till this late hour and even now hardly read or remembered.
Murder. He read with desperate greediness the short piece under that headline.
Switched to Banares. The words came up at him like the cupped-hands splash of cold Ganges water which, waist-deep in the holy river, he threw on to his cheeks each morning. But they did not have the same sin-cleansing effect.
What had the police discovered down there in Bombay? Had that Bhojpuri-understanding fellow there suddenly remembered the man who had asked if he knew where Mrs Shoba Popatkar stayed? Had he gone to the police with a full description?
Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote) Page 11
