Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote)

by Keating, H. R. F.

  He found he was possessed of a sense of burning urgency. No need for it, he kept telling himself. Why should that Bombay rat go out to Srivastava at this very moment? As likely as not the fellow would not even try to see the Recollections at all. He would feel the one-hundred-and-one years ban is not so easily got past. Oh yes, he could try to get legal permission to break the trust. But that would take him months. Even years. So no danger there.

  Yet he could not stop himself counting every second.

  Hurrying and pushing through the narrow galli leading from the house. Thrusting aside pilgrims, their faces dazed with bliss. Barging past the less holy, making Banares one stop on a sight-seeing visit to north India, wide-eyed, looking this way and that, pointing out the most ridiculous things to one another – ‘Look, that painter is putting an elephant on the wall there’, ‘Yes, look, Maharajah himself in the howdah’ – kicking a goat out of his path, almost knocking down a man strolling towards him reading a newspaper, its pages held wide. Pushing on, pressing on.

  On along Bengali Tola where already down at the ghat the dhobis must be busy slapping and slapping at the garments they were washing.

  Push on. Press on.

  And at last a taxi.

  Shout out. Catch the taxiwalla’s eye.

  Yes, thank Bhagwan. He has seen me.

  ‘To the BHU.’

  ‘Ji haan, sahib. Ninversity.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But BHU, mind. I do not want to find myself at Sanskrit University.’

  ‘Nai, nai. BHU.’

  But the traffic was appalling. Every few yards, it seemed, they were brought to a halt.

  A handcart loaded with baskets of flowers had somehow been tipped over. The baskets had rolled all over the roadway. Tight-crammed marigolds still in place, circles of blazing orange. Looser flowers blowing to and fro, brilliant red and pink petals everywhere. And the man taking them to the flower market at the Chowk running here and there, wailing in despair, stopping to dab up a handful, running back to his cart trying to heave it upright once more, running out again to snatch at another tumbling ball of brilliant petals.

  H. K. Verma sat fuming. Should he at least get out of the taxi and push a ten-rupee note into the man’s hand? An act of charity.

  ‘Drive on, drive on,’ he shouted to the taxiwalla. ‘Go past those people. Get up on the pavement.’

  ‘I am going as fast as I can, sahib. Will the world end in ten minutes only?’

  ‘Drive on, I say.’

  And at last they got going again.

  Soon to be stopped by a long camel train, paying no attention to any other traffic, the tall, swollen-bellied animals, with their burdens swinging down at either side, indifferent to whether they were moving flat-footed over the sands of Rajasthan or working their way along a Banares road. And then, as indifferent, it was a ‘rolling’ sadhu, making his way to some sacred destination, some particular one among the city’s two thousand temples fixed on weeks or months ago as the only right aim in life. Painfully slowly he measured his length on the dusty roadway, got to his feet, carefully stood exactly at the point his hands had reached, lay down again, scrabbling a mark on the road surface with his fingers, got to his feet once more.

  But too holy a man for any taxi driver to pass, unable as he was to make a wide enough detour.

  ‘Go on, man. Go on.’

  ‘Sahib, I cannot.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Go past him. You need not touch one hair of his head.’

  ‘Sahib, no.’

  ‘Five rupees if you start this second.’

  ‘Oh, sahib, how cruel you are to a poor man.’

  ‘Go. Go.’

  And they went.

  Did one of the wheels run over that hand, flat there on the road?

  H. K. Verma refused to let himself think about the tiny bump he thought he had noticed. It might have been anything, he told himself. Anything. A stone. A stick. A piece of jackfruit husk. Anything.

  Well, I could come back this way, see if he is still making his way along. Look at his hand. Do the needful.

  Another halt.

  He peered ahead to see what the trouble was. A big, shiny tourist bus, Super De Luxe Colour Video boldly on its side, white faces under a variety of bright cotton hats at every big glinting window. It was manoeuvring with difficulty into the narrower road leading down to the Harishchandra burning ghat where the guide would, no doubt, tell the story of how Raja Harishchandra, lover of truth to the very core, in order to keep to his vow had beggared himself to the point of having to act as a funeral-pyre attendant.

  What for do tourists like that want to come here? What of benefit to their souls, if they have them, can there be in Banares? They are wishing to stare and smear only. To make fun even of our Hindu legends and customs. You know they burn your body when you’re dead? And they put corpses in the Ganges. Total pollution. No. No, I must not be bitter. They do have souls. They may not be Hindus, but they are men and women. They are capable of leading good lives. They need whatsoever of help they can get to do so. And if the sights of Holy Banares are assisting them, let them take the help.

  At last, after three or four more manoeuvrings back and forth the glittering bus disappeared. Horn Please painted in elaborate multi-coloured letters under its big rounded back window.

  They advanced a little further. But the tangle of traffic caused by the tourist bus, jammed trucks, cars, autorickshaws, scooters, cycles – each and every one hooting and ringing, ringing and hooting – had extended for a quarter of a mile or more beyond. All too soon they were forced to a halt once more.

  He managed now to contain his fury. No use shouting at this fellow driving. He has done his best. It is his duty to push his vehicle along as fast as it is proper to take it, and that duty he has done.

  Nevertheless he could not prevent himself sending rage-hot glances out at the houses and shops to either side.

  The Be Good and Do Good Typing And Xerox Centre. Two typists in its open front, heads down, pounding away at their big old machines. Their duty to type. Cute and Crisp Copies in Secs. Good work.

  But . . . Be good? Do good? Had he himself done what was his duty?

  Perhaps, after all, he had. After all. If it had been his duty to become Minister for Social Upliftment . . . If that was what this life of his had been destined for at the last . . . And, then, Mrs Shoba Popatkar with her obsession with the mere telling of the truth, with her wholly self-centred passion, had stood in the way. So, if that was right – if it was – it was the good thing he had done. The good action.

  No fault of his, in that case, if the jockeyings of Delhi politics had prevented him becoming Minister. That can have had no bearing on what had happened.

  But was that what had happened? Or had he simply given way to rage then? As just now he had done in telling this fellow here at the wheel to drive over that rolling sadhu? If it was his hand they had driven over . . .

  Ah, moving again at last.

  And now Asi Road straight ahead. In a minute or two, surely, they would come to the bridge across the little River Asi just before it joined with the Ganges. And then it would not be so long till they reached the BHU campus, just over the Panchkroshi Road. And once inside the campus with its radiating semi-circle of clear wide roads it would take no time at all to reach the library, Mr Srivastava and the Recollections.

  Ghote hammered on Inspector Mishra’s door. What if he had already left for the Sandbank?

  For some reason, for no reason, he had abruptly been overwhelmed by a notion that he had to get to Mr Srivastava’s library with all possible speed. He had tried to fight the feeling down. Such causeless hurry-scurry was not the right way to go about any investigation. What would the great Dr Hans Gross, author of the famous Criminal Investigation, his guide for years past, have said?

  But it was with a surge of joyous relief that, when the door was opened, he saw Mishra.

  ‘Ah, Inspector Ghote. Today I have already dealt with the matter of my na
tural functions.’

  He grinned.

  Ghote grinned back.

  He would have liked to have asked after little feather-light, chatter-box Rukmini. But the inner urgency was too strong.

  ‘Please,’ he burst out, ‘I am wanting your help at the library of Mr Srivastava at the BHU. Can you come at once? I have a taxi waiting only.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Why not? Sandbank would still be there.’

  Restraining himself with difficulty, he allowed Mishra to call out to his daughter-in-law to say where he was going. Getting back into the taxi he shouted, ‘To the BHU, fast as you can.’

  ‘One moment,’ Mishra broke in. ‘Bhai sahib, go round by parts of the Panchkroshi Road.’

  ‘Sahib, it would be longer-longer.’

  ‘But quicker also.’

  Mishra turned to Ghote.

  ‘Altogether less of traffic. Take my word. If there is truly so much of hurry.’

  ‘Yes, yes, there is. Panchkroshi Road, driver.’

  The way Mishra had chosen was a great deal less traffic-thick than the road leading to Dal Mandi where his eager autorickshaw walla had followed H. K. Verma. But it was clearly a long way round. In places, too, it became scarcely more than a dusty track. And the tourist-guide commentary Mishra at once embarked on soon became intolerably irksome, however much he told himself it could not in fact be delaying them.

  ‘Yes, Inspector, the Panchkroshi Road is the route taken over perhaps two thousand years by pilgrims in Banares, though of course, you understand, we are now going over just only some parts of it, and in the opposite direction from the pilgrimage itself, as laid down. In ancient days, so it is said, they took a string and set one end at the Mahakaleshvara Temple, then the centremost point of Banares, and drew a circle. Everything within that circle, on this side of Mother Ganga, constitutes Holy Kashi. And the circumference of that circle, which has a radius of five kroshis, is the Panchkroshi pilgrimage, though of course the road no more takes an exact circle. Do you know that the kroshi, the Sanskrit measure of distance, is about two miles in length?’

  Two miles, Ghote thought. And panch, five, kroshas. So a ten-mile radius. How long does that mean this Panchkroshi Road is? Even if we are going along only part of it? It will take us altogether too long.

  ‘There are no fewer than one hundred and eight stopping places for a pilgrim on the route,’ Mishra continued with happy implacability. ‘They include Shiva temples, Devi temples as well as numerous shrines of Ganesh, of lesser gods and of bhairavas, those figures of terror such as Dandapani, the god I was calling as the Police Officer of Kashi when we were in the Vishvanatha Lane running after that junky fellow.’

  He broke off.

  ‘By the way did you catch sight of the chap ever?’

  Ghote felt himself in a dilemma. If he told Mishra he had been accosted by Rick that night near the Hotel Relax he would have to go on to say he had gone to the Manikarnika Ghat at midnight, and without taking this Banares-knowing colleague with him. It would give Mishra good reason to feel slighted. On the other hand, perhaps he ought to confide in a fellow officer, even if retired, who was also on the case. Neither course seemed altogether right.

  He snatched at the sight of an autorickshaw going towards the city on a main road crossing their path. Tied to its flimsy roof was a long stretcher, with on it under a white shroud a corpse.

  ‘Look at that. Tell me, do bodies sometimes fall off? That rickshaw walla was going at a fine rate.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it happens,’ Mishra said, in quick dismissal. ‘But I was telling you about this Panchkroshi pilgrimage.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Kindly go on.’

  But speed it up: that will somehow speed up the journey.

  ‘Rightly seen,’ Mishra said, eagerly taking up the invitation, half-hearted as it must have sounded, ‘Holy Kashi is a well-laid out mandala, with each of its temples having its proper place in the radius of five kroshas. Of course, you cannot see this nowadays, and perhaps it was never so except in the theory. Nowadays, as you must have found, Banares is one fearful jumble only. But kindly remember what it ought to be.’

  But Ghote was in no mood to remember any such thing.

  What if H. K. Verma, he thought with thudding impatience, takes it into his head just now to warn Mr Srivastava on no account to let me see the Recollections.

  ‘Look, look,’ Mishra said urgently. ‘Look, that temple there, to the right. That is Kapiladhara, the building near by is the last of the four dharmashalas on the route. It is where the pilgrims to spend the last night. The pilgrimage is taking five days, you know. The pilgrims must set out very much before dawn each day, and they must reach the halting place by midday.’

  Why must, Ghote wondered. Banares seemed netted down with thousands of sets of rules that had to be obeyed. One only way to do everything. If it is not these pilgrims having to start so early just to finish by noon itself, it is the pandas down by the Ganges giving it left and right to anyone sitting before them. Put a flower in the pot. Rub in a circle. Sprinkle Ganga water. On and on. Do this, do that. Do not do this, do not do that.

  ‘But, of course,’ Mishra went on, apparently oblivious of how little progress they seemed to be making, ‘you do not need to make this pilgrimage to gain the blessings that accompany it. You may go also to the Panchkroshi Temple where there are one hundred and eight carvings on the walls, each one representing a station on this road. If you stop at each of those it is the same as coming round by the road here.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Ghote said.

  Another widow, he thought, staring at a party of trudging pilgrims with an old, old, bent-backed woman hobbling along on her staff in the rear.

  How much longer would they be?

  ‘Now,’ Mishra was churning on, ‘have you heard the story of Mandapa, the wild and wicked, and how he by chance made this pilgrimage?’

  ‘No, I have not heard,’ Ghote answered, scarcely listening.

  But at once he realized he had heard the story. The unstoppably talkative sannyasin at the Manikarnika Ghat had recounted it, in full detail. Tell Mishra? It would save him from another recital. But it would mean, too, admitting he had gone to the ghat, saying why he had, saying how he had met Rick there at midnight and how, in a manner he was a little ashamed of, he had got more information out of the boy.

  He held his tongue.

  Mishra embarked on the story. Once more Ghote heard how Mandapa had been so wicked as to drink liquor, how his father had disowned him, how he had cheated his friends over what they had stolen, how he had been beaten up after leaving the prostitute’s house. Was that at Dal Mandi? Was that quarter just the same all those years ago? In Banares nothing was more likely. Till at last Mishra reached the moment where the wicked youth, recovering on the bank of the River Asi, joined the pilgrimage along the Panchkroshi Road and became totally good.

  But when would they themselves get to the Asi? And the BHU lying just beyond?

  21

  H. K. Verma found Mr Srivastava sitting at his battered old table, carefully altering an entry in a huge, handwritten ledger, face intent, spectacles slipping down his thin nose.

  The old man half-rose from his chair.

  ‘It is Mr Verma. Sir, this is an honour. We do not often have distinguished visitors. Or, to tell the truth, any visitor whatsoever. Nobody, in fact, since that police officer from Bombay I had to send to you when he was asking to examine the Recollections of the late Shri Krishnan Kalgutkar.’

  ‘Which I also wish to examine now.’

  Mr Srivastava looked up, his face stamped with complete dismay.

  ‘To examine? The Recollections?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Why else should I have come?’

  ‘I— I do not know.’

  Mr Srivastava seemed to be puzzling over his question, endlessly.

  ‘Well? Are you going to find them for me?’

  The Adam’s-apple in Mr Srivastava’s stringy neck moved up and down. Once.

  ‘W
ell?’

  ‘But, Mr Verma, you must surely know that is impossible.’

  ‘Impossible? What are you saying? Am I not the chief trustee? Was I not the person responsible for depositing the Recollections under your care when the late Krishnan Kalgutkar was taking sannyas?’

  Mr Srivastava nodded quavering agreement, but produced no reply.

  ‘So, if I am the chief trustee, do I not have the full right to examine the Recollections?’

  ‘Sir . . . Mr Verma, you know the fact of the matter is that no one has a right to see the Recollections. That was the condition made, passed on to me by you yourself, sir, when the papers were deposited here. Under a ban of one hundred and one years.’

  ‘But it was I myself—’ He bit back the you fool he had been on the verge of adding. ‘I myself who made that stipulation. I must have the right to override it.’

  Mr Srivastava considered.

  ‘Of course, Mr Verma, I was not at all understanding at the time the Recollections were placed under my care that it was you who had imposed the one-hundred-and-one year ban yourself.’

  He looked up once more.

  ‘However,’ he said, ‘I cannot consider that this fact may alter the situation. A ban was imposed. A ban stating that no one was to see the Recollections. I do not believe I am entitled to make any exception.’

  H. K. Verma felt the rage swelling up inside him till it was almost cracking open his whole body.

  ‘But— But, you fool, you were allowing that woman Mrs Shoba Popatkar full access. Full access. So why in God’s name are you refusing it to me?’

  ‘But— Oh, sir . . . Mr Verma. But Mrs Popatkar I was not able to prevent. I was explaining per telephone. She is not a person it is possible to prevent.’

  ‘And am I any different? Let me see those Recollections this instant.’

  ‘No, sir. No. I have been deficient in my duty once. I will not be so again.’

  ‘Let me see the Recollections’

  He thrust his face into the old librarian’s.