Living Hell

by Vivaan Shah

  The Nether Regions

  Nadeem staggered through the marsh, trying hard to retain his balance, stepping on rodents here and there, and keeping a jittery eye on whatever path revealed itself in the pitch-black night. There was a navigable walkway back up towards the main road somewhere, but his eyes took some time to get accustomed to the darkness. He held his arms out, hoping to get a feel of anything that seemed even remotely familiar, anything that would guide him through the infernal swamp. As the blind haze began to subside and some vision presented itself to him, he could faintly perceive the grey concrete legs of the crumbling bridge that stood stooped into the shallower regions of the creek. Thankfully, there were indentations on the broad pillar-like structures that could be used as footholds to climb up till its top. He crawled up the bridge with the slithery grasp of a reptile. Once he had made his way up and was within reach of the railings, he lifted himself back on to the main road. He didn’t want to turn back to look at what he had abandoned. It was no place for any human being in his right mind to be. He ran across the empty road, towards the Goregaon telephone exchange, stopping to ask a parked autorickshaw driver who was sleeping on the side of the road for help. The driver resisted on account of the way Nadeem was smelling. He had to walk all the way back to the telephone exchange, appearing in the darkness almost like a creature from the black lagoon. What had slithered past him as he swam to the shore was a matter only for the most depraved speculation. Whatever it was, he might have resembled it in that state—a mutant that had spawned out of the indifference of the great corporate carcass of our metropolis.

  Gathering whatever strength he had left, he sprinted across the main road, dodging the speeding cars and trucks that stormed past, waving his hands wildly at them, in the hope of getting them to stop. None of the vehicles acknowledged his presence; he was simply a mild inconvenience that could be easily ignored with the blink of a headlight. Somehow, through sheer grit and brute strength, he managed to make it back to the telephone exchange. Once he reached, he hit the pavement at the divider and stretched himself out on it, panting heavily as if he was about to have a heart attack. He had depleted every last bit of wherewithal and laboured to catch his breath. His lungs began to squeak, a bloodthirsty cough enveloping his entire being till he looked no different from the derelicts in debauched slumber beside him. As he regained his bearings and attempted to straighten up, he turned gradually to the shut-up subway. It lurked like a concrete spectator in the illuminating gloom of the street lamp. He hurled himself towards it in an instant but paused at the entrance, glaring down at it incredulously.

  He thought twice before entering it, but his curiosity outweighed his anxiousness. He walked in slowly keeping an eye on the stained, yellow cube tiled walls and floor. It was dark, the overhead tube lights had been switched off, but the moonlight still managed to seep its way in as he manoeuvred down the flight of steps. The dreary corridor seemed to stretch on into infinity. He wished he had a torch on him, but parts of it were vaguely perceivable in the darkness. Bits and pieces of the tiling on the walls were broken, the floors were slippery with paan stains and the grime and commotion of the day. He knew not what he was doing down there, but he carried on into the void as if obeying some unseen command from beyond. He could hear droplets of water dripping as he walked further into the bowels of the subway, keeping a stiff eye on everything visible. Stray dogs littered the path, some awake, some growling with malice and discontent, and some merely there as keepers of a forbidden alleyway.

  The subway wound on indefinitely, curving left. Somewhere in the distance, a lamp illuminated a corner of the wall, making it appear faintly like a cave painting. Nadeem slowly closed in towards it, his eyes glowing with dread as he tried to get a glimpse of what had caused the light. He felt he could distinctly hear the sound of children playing, the noisome banter of a gathering of some sort. As he neared the lamplight, he noticed a crack in the walls from where the light arose. It had been covered with a board of plywood. The faint sound was emanating from behind it. He pulled it out with much force—one of the sides had been nailed in—and it swung open, giving way to a dilapidated view that struck him as foreboding, yet strangely inviting. Behind the cracks of the cube tiled walls, a dim passageway seemed to lead on to what appeared to be an underground drainage system, a network of tunnels and trenches in a crater that lay beneath even the lowest depths of the subway. He entered it, against his better judgment.

  The hideous odours of the catacombs plagued him with delirious associations. ‘This is where the sewage waste from the entire city winds up,’ he thought. Everything that is flushed down, washed away or runs through a pipe lands up in this forsaken pit. As he walked through the scum, marsh and waste towards the illuminating abyss, he came across what at first glance resembled a settlement, a kind of ramshackle jhopad patti, an underground dwelling place where a family had camped for the night to avoid the wrath of the municipality. A stove was parked on the floor next to a tattered cloth which encircled a sleeping area, serving as a makeshift tent. Two adults were asleep inside it, as their two ragged children, a boy and girl, threw stones into the unending distance of the sewers. A small man sat quietly on the ground next to them, his stony visage sullen yet perceivably alarmed at Nadeem’s intrusion. The two kids scarcely bothered to take notice of Nadeem, but the little man’s wandering gaze settled on him, appearing remotely threatening in the shadows. He was a dwarf and was clothed in rags he had probably borrowed from the children. His eyes were large and the contours on his face resolutely unfriendly. The playful shrieking of the children took on an air of uncanny inappropriateness. So engaged were they in their trivial pursuits that they failed to acknowledge Nadeem’s presence. As they glanced backwards and noticed him, the boy immediately shouted, ‘Ehh! Police! Police!’ The two children ran for their lives into the depths of the gutters, as if playing a game of hide and seek, abandoning their parents and the other man who sat silently, still as a rock. His face tightened as Nadeem closed in towards him.

  ‘I’m not the police!’ Nadeem informed him. ‘And I’m not with the municipality, either.’

  The two haggard adults, passed out in the enclosure, had failed to be awakened by Nadeem’s intrusion. The dwarf did not speak a word; he just silently took in whatever explanation Nadeem had to give for himself. Nadeem himself did not have much of an explanation, much less a reason for being there in the first place.

  ‘I heard you get ‘maal’ here. Smack. There was an old lady. Do you know her?’

  The little man studied Nadeem’s every gesture. He didn’t have him squared for a junkie. He seemed too composed and in command of himself to be one, even though he was covered in slime.

  ‘They found a policeman’s body in this place,’ Nadeem informed him.

  The little man stared back at him, his eyes enlarging with every word that was spoken.

  ‘I take it,’ Nadeem continued, ‘that the police are not your friend.’

  The little man did not reply.

  ‘Did you see the body?’ Nadeem asked, cautiously.

  The little man got up from his stoop and went over to a trash can that lay near the stove. He scooped out all the waste and removed from it a disembodied forearm. It had been severed from the elbow and was covered in slime, practically decomposed. It looked like it had been lying in the sewer for quite a while. The little man presented it to Nadeem almost as if he wished him to shake the hand. Nadeem retreated in disgust and outright horror. He had never had the opportunity to see anything quite like it.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he gasped.

  The little man still did not reply. Nadeem covered his mouth with the palm of his left hand, the one that had not touched the walls in the darkness and was presumably clean, at least in comparison to the rest of his body. He ran out of there, climbing back into the subway with the awful knowledge he had mistakenly gained and with the fearful realization that there were some truths that were better unknown. It took so
me doing for him to find his way back to the subway entrance, and as he emerged out into the outside world, he thanked his stars for being in one piece.

  He walked all the way from the Goregaon telephone exchange to the nearest autorickshaw stand, near the Fire Brigade station, and rode home frightfully bewildered, telling the auto driver to step on it. The auto driver asked what the matter was and if he was all right, but Nadeem told him to keep his eyes on the road. Thankfully, he did not take objection to the smell. He’d probably smelt and seen worse.

  Back from the Dead

  By the time he got back to Little Heights, Inspector Gaekwad’s jeep was parked outside the lobby carelessly, in a most indecent fashion. One of the doors had been left open and there was no one behind the wheel.

  Nadeem rushed up to the third floor where Inspector Gaekwad and a team of ballistics experts were surveying the staircases. He flinched for a moment on registering Nadeem’s condition.

  ‘What the hell happened to you, Chipkali?’

  ‘I rose from the dead.’

  Inspector Gaekwad looked around at the rest of the assembled personnel, his face suddenly stricken with confusion. Rohini, Mangesh, Kishorie Lal, Mr Machhiwaala and Warren were still in the flat and hadn’t budged from there. Warren was doing a miserable job at playing host; he tried his level best to make them tea but pretty soon, Rohini had to intervene.

  ‘I think you’d better go attend to your guests and leave me to my job,’ suggested Inspector Gaekwad, leading Nadeem back into his flat. He dispatched Mangesh to go and get his spectacles and flashlight from the open police jeep downstairs.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ Mangesh asked, as he headed down the stairs.

  Inspector Gaekwad proceeded up to the fourth floor. Warren shot a discreet look at Nadeem once he was away from the wandering eye of Inspector Gaekwad. He twitched his eyebrows and nodded silently, calling him closer.

  ‘When did he land up?’ Nadeem whispered to Warren who appeared to have more on his mind than he could communicate just at that moment.

  ‘About fifteen or twenty minutes ago,’ he groaned, suppressing what he actually wanted to say.

  ‘How many people did he bring with him?’

  ‘Four ballistics men, plus another guy in the bathroom. The psychiatrist.’

  ‘The one we saw at the station?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s him,’ he twitched nervously.

  Nadeem’s attention spun towards the bathroom. It was occupied, as was apparent from the lights that were switched on. ‘Who’s in the bathroom?’

  ‘Him! Gaekwad brought him along handcuffed.’

  The gentle sound of the flush rumbling into motion was followed by the crickety clank of the bathroom door being unlatched. Dr Vengsarkar emerged from the toilet, wiping his wet hands on his shirt. His crooked eyes had grown somewhat colder and less kind. He looked up at Nadeem, not knowing what to do or say.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me using your bathroom,’ he said politely. ‘I just couldn’t help myself. By the way, I think your toilet seat’s busted.’

  Rohini came around from the kitchen, carrying a tray with four cups of tea neatly arranged on it.

  ‘Let me get that for you,’ Warren insisted, fumbling at the tray and relieving her of the painful duty. Both of them moved into the living room where Mangesh, Kishorie Lal and Mr Machhiwaala were, leaving the two of them alone to have a little man-to-man chat, outside the bathroom.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Nadeem asked.

  ‘I got a call from Inspector Gaekwad earlier this evening in connection with the Makhija killing.’

  ‘Killing?’

  ‘It’s actually a poisoning according to them, one that I engineered.’

  ‘I see!’

  ‘He seems pretty sure about it. He said it was “beyond a reasonable doubt”. You see, after you left Malwani police chowki, the three of us had a conference. Inspector Nagpal had managed to procure Chintan’s medical reports from K.L. Hospital and he shared them with Inspector Gaekwad.’

  ‘What were you doing at the K.L. pharmacy earlier with Dilip? I saw you there.’

  ‘I see,’ he smiled. ‘You did? Ah, yes, come to think of it, I think I saw you too . . . but only for a brief flicker of a moment.’

  ‘What, may I ask, was the purpose of your visit?’

  ‘Oh, it was merely scientific. Just a casual experiment. There is a particular medication of mine that is currently in the experimental stages, but easily procurable from your friendly neighbourhood chemist. The K.L. pharmacy is stocked with it. I had gone there at Inspector Nagpal’s behest in order to test it on a specimen of mine admitted in the special ward on the third floor of the hospital.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Nadeem asked, as he tried to comprehend the purport of his account.

  ‘That’s where one of my patients is currently admitted. He’s from the St Aloysius reformation and recreation centre, a former inmate at the Nandlal Pramod Facility in Pune. You see, K.L. Hospital has been kind enough to start a rehabilitation programme in association with the Nandlal Pramod Functionality Centre, where we run a programme that helps recovering addicts reintegrate into society through pharmaceutical assistance. I regret to mention that some of the patients in the ward were beyond saving and are presently in quarantine. Some of them are quite seriously infected and have, no doubt, picked up one or the other kind of neurological, physiological, skin and venereal disease from the various substances they had invariably been accustomed to. You see, Nadeem, when a person’s moral compass collapses, there is no turning back from the point of no return.’

  Rohini came along to hand Dr Vengsarkar a cup of tea, which he refused on account of his acidity.

  ‘Look at this lady,’ he said. ‘A perfectly honest, hard-working woman. Works part-time at a handicrafts store. Vasundhara, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Trying to get a degree in market research, studying for her MBA side by side, got married before her time. There’s hope for her yet. For the likes of you and Makhija, who already had their shot and fouled it up, there’s just one place—the dustbin. And what use is trash if you can’t recycle it? That’s where we come in.’

  On re-entering the flat, Inspector Gaekwad immediately noticed Nadeem and Dr Vengsarkar talking to each other near the bathroom.

  ‘Eh!’ he called out. ‘You two! Come here.’

  Mangesh had by now come up with his torch and specs.

  ‘Raut, separate these two men,’ he instructed Mangesh. ‘Put Nadeem Chipkali in the bedroom and lock him up there.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Nadeem stopped him. ‘What’s all this about him poisoning Makhija?’

  ‘They showed the reports to a specialist,’ Inspector Gaekwad spoke blankly with the dreary monotony of a newsreader. ‘He claims there’s been some medical malpractice involved.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Eh! Watch your tongue, Chipkali!’

  ‘This man had nothing to do with it,’ Nadeem insisted, putting his arms around the doctor. The doctor shrugged his shoulders away from his grasp, wary of getting any of the sludge on his shirt.

  ‘That’s right,’ Dr Vengsarkar added. ‘Look, officer, if you want to put me away for medical malpractice, that’s perfectly fine by me. That’s a minor offence in comparison. If you want, I can even sign a written confession. But not for murder. For God’s sake. That I’m not guilty of. I’ve never killed anyone in my life. I swear on my mother. I swear on God.’

  Inspector Gaekwad looked at him.

  ‘Okay, not on my mother, but on God. I swear on God, I never killed anybody in my life.’

  ‘Perjury’s a serious offence, Dr Vengsarkar. If you intend to tell the truth, I suggest you tell the whole truth, not half.’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Nadeem asked, still befuddled by the recent progress of the case.

  ‘Synahydraloxide,’ Dr Vengsarkar proclaimed, holding up a rectangular glass bottle of
pills with a yellow sticker running all the way across it. ‘A concoction synthesized at one of the laboratories of a privately owned pharma company in Badlapur. One of the shareholders of the company, an acquaintance of mine, had a stroke of genius. You see, it is a widely known fact that some of the drugs floating around in the black market have been known to cause a wide variety of genetic abnormalities, mutations, birth defects, and so on. Where else does one procure smack but from the junkyards, where else does ganja grow but in the most squalid areas, feeding off of sewage water, where else does one procure a pharmaceutical drug but from a low-hygiene potentially bacterially infected hospital like K.L.’

  Inspector Gaekwad looked at him morosely, his eyebrows thickening over the precariously balanced spectacles dangling on his nose.

  ‘All the industrial, radioactive, biohazard waste that collects in the city can be used to a profitable purpose,’ continued Dr Vengsarkar. ‘If utilized correctly, it can be employed with startling effects, especially on the terminally ill. You can see results that would baffle science, give an answer to modern medicine. If implemented on living patients, one can study the outcome, psychological and physiological, and prevent any further such cases from occurring. It’s kind of like trying to find a vaccine. You see, there are certain microscopic germs and bacteria which exist in all this waste. When isolated and extracted into a concentrate, they can then be injected into any substance or compound without altering the chemical composition. By doing this you can actually locate the disease and study the effects.’