SI Jadhav, swaggering along with his two disreputable panches, showed – whenever Ghote chanced to look back for a moment – a hair-raising tendency to swipe at any object that looked as if it might be easy to topple, a display of china European Farm animals, a pile of inkwells of all sorts heaped one on the other, even a chair made entirely out of glass in a room devoted wholly to such furniture. The aged first panch broke out into a wild cackle of laughter every now and again and his younger companion, the pinjari, apparently felt that the higgledy-piggledy dignity of his surroundings obliged him to pause at the entrance to each successive little room and emit from his fluffing instrument one loud resounding twang.
Ghote thanked his stars that the British professor was too intent on her onwards rush to the possibly stolen Parvati to pay attention to the rest of his party.
At last they came to a narrow downwards-leading flight of stairs, each step used to display some other object from the museum’s collection, four or five different hookahs, a framed picture of an English cottage, turned sideways, a small board hung with various patterns of padlock.
At the stairs’ foot they plunged once more into another series of little rooms. Professor Mrs or Miss Prunella seemed to know her way, unerring as a bloodhound on the scent.
In the gloom here the Founder and Chairman stopped his squeaks, regained his voice and began to shoot out vague explanations of the riches under his control. ‘Opal water,’ he said, gesturing abruptly to a tall glass jar half full of some cloudy liquid. ‘Where there is poison there is also nectar, that is a mathematical truth.’ Then in the next little chamber, ‘Alchemy Department. We are doing many experiments to turn copper into gold. Gold into copper also.’ And in a room containing coins and banknotes of every conceivable kind – Ghote had to stop and prevent the pinjari secreting a heap of little silver pieces – ‘Kindly notice the Arab currency notes, all misprinted, very, very rare.’ And in yet another room, its walls lined with narrow shelves on which rested, dustily, stones of every colour and shape, ‘One thousand different, full of scientific importance, magical point-of-view, astrological point-of-view.’
This last utterance was finally too much even for relentlessly forward-marching Professor Prunella. She turned briefly and barked out over her shoulder, ‘Charlatan. Poppycock.’
Ghote, alternating during the whole of their clattering progress between being impressed by the sheer quantity of learned objects and feeling darts of doubt over the Founder’s claims about them, felt grateful that the professor made no further assertions of her uncompromising beliefs until they came, at last, to a faded loop of red rope barring their way.
Professor Prunella unhesitatingly thrust it aside, as doubtless she had done on her earlier visit. Striding forward a pace or two into the denser gloom of an ill-lit short corridor, she reached up and clicked on a light switch.
‘There,’ she said.
Behind, the pinjari gave not one but a whole succession of reverberant twangs on his instrument.
Screwing up his face in an effort to blot out all awareness of the sound, Ghote could not but recognise that, a yard or two further down the corridor, there stood an idol of Parvati, the ‘princess of the fish-shaped eyes’ herself. Seated on the representation of a stool. With one leg tucked under, halfway towards the lotus position.
‘It is from the Gudalpore Temple?’ he asked Professor Prunella.
‘Stake my life on it. It’s my subject, you know. This is going to make one hell of a paper for Indian Sculpture Studies.’
Ghote turned, with curious reluctance, to the Founder and Chairman.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘are you able to account for the presence here of one object that appears to have been removed from the Temple of Gudalpore without due and proper authorisation?’
The aged amasser of all the varied objects they had seen licked at his thin lips. He cast a peering long, searching look over the rounded limbs and tall-crowned head of the stone goddess.
‘The making of this museum,’ he muttered, ‘has been my life-long work.’
‘That is not an answer,’ Ghote replied, forcing himself to unrelenting severity despite a prickle of doubt somehow running through him like an underground tremor, unaccountable but not to be ignored.
He waited for the old man to speak again. But he seemed to find it difficult to produce any further words.
‘Come, Inspector,’ Professor Prunella said with a snort of indignation, ‘you have my word for it. This is the Parvati from Gudalpore and nowhere else.’
And as if to emphasise her certainty she gave the rounded form of the goddess a resounding slap across her shoulder.
Ghote winced.
‘Good, good,’ exclaimed the pinjari suddenly in broad Marathi. ‘I would give a beauty like that more slaps than one.’
Ghote hoped profoundly that the professor’s Indian studies had not given her an acquaintance with local vulgarities.
Apparently they had not, because she simply contented herself with keeping the slapping hand on the goddess’s shoulder in a distinctly proprietorial manner.
Ghote turned again to the Founder.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you have not yet given proper answer to my request concerning this idol.’
‘No,’ the old man shot out, as if the single word of denial had been a hard bubble deep within him whose passage at last could not be resisted. ‘No, no, no. Who can say where such a fine object can have come from? This Parvati may have been in my store-room many, many years.’
Ghote found himself in a dilemma. The Founder and Chairman’s response had clearly not been wholly satisfactory, yet clearly, it was nevertheless a denial that this idol of Parvati, one after all among many thousands that must exist all over India, was the very selfsame object that had once been in the Gudalpore Temple. Equally, on the other hand, the British lady professor had declared uncompromisingly that it was the Parvati from Gudalpore. She herself had seen it there. Yet might she be mistaken? That had been ten years ago, after all. And then one had a duty as an Indian not to accept each and every statement a Westerner cared to make as a holy truth. A patriotic duty even, though difficult.
‘Inspector,’ Professor Prunella snapped out now, ‘arrest this man.’
It almost decided Ghote. He was damned if he was going to carry out an arrest on the order of a Westerner, an angrezi even, relic of the British Raj and, worse, a woman. But on the other hand …
Then he heard cocky sub-inspector Jadhav come clicking to attention as if to acknowledge orders from a senior officer he was showing the utmost willingness to comply with.
No, if the Founder and Chairman was to be arrested on a charge of concealing property knowing it to have been stolen, then that task was not going to fall to a little jumped-up fellow from Tilak Marg Police Station. It was—
But suddenly from immediately behind the tall statue of the fish-eyed princess there came the rending squeal of heavy wood on stone and a small door there was abruptly thrust open. In the narrow doorway there stood a bare-chested man of huge proportions, bullet-headed, heavy-jowled, arms loose-hanging.
Instinctively Ghote stiffened, expecting instant attack.
‘Ah, Manik, there you are,’ the Founder and Chairman said with sudden cheerfulness. ‘Just when I am wanting you.’
The hulk in the doorway answered only with a grunt, though he seemed to have understood.
‘Manik, have you moved this Parvati idol?’ the Founder and Chairman asked. ‘Where was it kept before?’
He turned to Ghote.
‘You will hardly believe it,’ he said urgently, ‘but the Museum has accumulated so many important objects in so many fields of Indology that at times even I begin to forget where and when they were acquired.’
The declaration had the effect, for no conceivable reason, of causing the old, slack-mouthed ex-peon panch to break out into another of his long cackling laughs. Was it – could it be? – Ghote thought, somehow a mocking comment on what the old museum o
wner had said?
And should he act on it?
He was saved, however, from feeling he had been swayed by any such ridiculous motive by the explosive shrilling of a large bell clamped to the wall nearby connected to a telephone elsewhere in the old building.
‘Some person offering some new object for the Collection,’ the Founder immediately claimed. ‘Or perhaps they are wanting to arrange some seminar.’
He made as if to go and answer.
Ghote quickly stepped across and laid a detaining hand on his arm. He was not going to risk a possible malefactor making off.
‘Go and answer it,’ the old man said to Manik. ‘I really must give this gentleman and lady my fullest attention.’
The silent hulk shuffled off in the direction of the stairs.
‘SI, go with him,’ Ghote snapped. ‘See he makes no attempt to leave.’
Turning from making sure the sub-inspector had obeyed, Ghote saw that the Founder and Chairman had slipped though the little narrow doorway behind the Parvati statue.
Brushing past the substantial form of the British professor, still laying claim to the goddess, Ghote dived through the doorway in pursuit.
But he found that the old man was not making for any tiny back entrance, as he had feared. Instead, he was moving from one object to another in the dimly-lighted store-room, peering at representations of gods and goddesses, some so thickly covered in dust as to be almost unrecognisable, others clearly to be seen as elephant-trunked or many-armed or many-headed, playing flutes, astride peacocks, chipped here, broken almost in half there, complete to the last detail elsewhere.
‘Sir,’ he said, firmly as he could, ‘what are you doing? I am not at all satisfied by your answers till date. Kindly accompany me back to the idol in question and give detailed assurances.’
For a moment it looked as if the old man was going to ignore him. But he straightened up at last and without explaining breathed a heavy sigh and made his way out to stand on the other side of the disputed Parvati from the stout competing form of Professor Prunella, still with her hand on the goddess’s shoulder.
Ghote felt that the pair of them were somehow presenting to him his dilemma as a living picture. Which of the two had the real right to possess Parvati? Was it the imperious lady professor, bringing to her claim all the overwhelming confidence of the West? Or was it this old man, steeped in the philosophies of the East, seeing this Parvati as one among the many, many accumulations of a lifetime of gathering objects to illustrate and enhance the concept of Indology?
And yet, had there not been something distinctly doubtful about the way he had advanced his claim to possession of the fish-eyed princess? But, there again, the British professor had surely been more aggressive in her demands than was altogether right. She had spoken of a contribution to – what was it? – the Indian Sculpture Studies as if that meant more to her than anything else.
So could she have …? But, then, could he not …?
He was unable, in his dilemma, to prevent himself looking with fervent prayerfulness to the goddess herself as if from her stone lips the answer might somehow come.
And it did.
Because suddenly he realised there was a way of making sure this Parvati was the Gudalpore Parvati. An almost certain way.
Sub-inspector Jadhav had just returned, sullen now, shepherding in front of himself the huge silent bulk of the man Manik.
‘SI,’ Ghote said to him, ‘keep sharp watch on each and every person here. I would not be one moment.’
And without waiting for any acknowledgement of the order, he set off at a run through all the little crammed and crowded rooms of the basement area, past the thousand different dusty stones, past the misprinted Arab currency, past the alchemic apparatus, past the tall jar of opal water. He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring padlocks, hookahs, everything. On he went, still hurrying as fast as he dared, past glass chairs and bedsteads, past china farm animals – how did they reflect Indology? No matter – past the heaped pile of different inkwells.
Till at last he came to the entrance hall. And to the glass-fronted cupboard that contained measuring instruments from the most distant past to the present day. Without hesitation, he wrenched open its door, reached up and took from its place one of the neat modern measuring tapes he had seen almost without seeing it as Professor Prunella had hurried them towards her quarry, and to the tape he added, as a last-second afterthought, one of the straight notched sticks from the most distant past.
Then, in even less time than it had taken him to get to the cupboard, he ran back to where the disputed Parvati stood. The Founder and Chairman had not budged from his place at one side of the stone goddess, nor had the British professor moved from her position on the other side. Each silently asserted possession firmly as before.
‘Excuse, please,’ Ghote said.
And he brushed the two claimants aside, took the notched stick he had seized and laid one end on the topmost stone jewel of the princess’s crown. Then he swivelled the stick’s other end till it touched the nearest point on the wall behind and made there a tiny scratch on the plaster.
Next, swiftly kneeling, he took the spring-loaded tape, zipped it open and measured the exact distance between his scratched mark and the floor beneath.
The tape, he found with sudden relief, was marked in centimetres, rather than inches. And in a moment he was able to look up and proclaim triumphantly, ‘One hundred and forty-seven.’
‘One hundred and forty what, for heaven’s sake?’ Professor Prunella boomed. ‘Have you gone dotty, Inspector?’
‘Madam,’ Ghote replied, still kneeling on the floor. ‘Not one hundred and forty, but one hundred and forty-seven. One hundred and forty-seven centimetres, the exact height of the idol of Parvati stolen from the Gudalpore Temple and reported on first-class authority to be kept hidden in Bombay for inspection by foreign buyer or buyers, unknown. That statue is undoubtedly here.’
‘You’re telling me nothing I haven’t been saying all along,’ Professor Prunella answered, puffing her chest out to wonderfully new dimensions. ‘Arrest this man. Haven’t I told you it’s your duty half a dozen times already?’
Ghote rose to his feet, taking a deep breath. As he had knelt checking the exact figure on his measuring tape, a number of things he had observed in his brief time in the Hrishikesh Agnihotri Museum had formed into a pattern in his head. A satisfying coherent pattern.
‘Madam, Sir’ he said looking from the majestic form of the British professor to the bewildered Founder and Chairman. ‘There is not only the question of one Parvati idol itself, there is the question of other artefacts also.’
‘What—’
‘Madam, from the Gudalpore Temple there were also stolen four terracotta representations of God Ganesha, that is with the elephant head as you must very well be knowing, plus also one Goddess Sarasvati riding as per custom upon a peacock, in this case with tail partly missing, plus again two God Krishnas playing upon flutes together with eighteen other artefacts, various. Madam, in this store-room just only behind where I am standing I have observed, as also has Mr Agnihotri, each and every one of these items, notably free from dust. So, madam, what is to be learnt from this?’
‘Why, damn it, that this fellow has stolen the whole lot from Gudalpore.’
‘Not so, madam. I have told. Mr Agnihotri was just only examining these items. He was not attempting further to conceal same. No doubt he was wishing that, like this Parvati idol, there were objects he had at some faraway time acquired, but he found in the core of his heart that they were not. No, madam, he was not responsible for having these things stolen.’
‘Then who the deuce? No, wait. I know. My Mr Poe’s Indian guest at breakfast this morning.’
‘No, madam, no. The person who hid all these loots here is the man strong enough to move from place to place one Goddess Parvati in sandstone, 147 centremetres in height. The same person who also, though he is appearing dumb, can very well
answer telephones and could also communicate with accomplices suggesting to them to hide Parvati among so many other gods and goddesses. It was a most clever device used, I am thinking, by Mr Edgar Allan Poe in the story by the name of “The Purloined Letter”.’
He shot out an order to Sub-Inspector Jadhav.
‘Take him to your station and charge-sheet him, in my name, with concealing twenty-six various artefacts knowing them to have been stolen.’
‘Artefacts, Inspector?’ the SI inquired, a frown on his face even as he grabbed the hefty and bewildered Manik.
‘Yes, man, artefacts. Artefacts. Are you not knowing what are artefacts?’
1988
FOURTEEN
Light Coming
All the anger of youth blazed in young Ved’s eyes.
‘Oh, Dada,’ he shouted, neck stringy with rage, ‘did you never do any wrong? Were you always and always one good-good police inspector?’
‘Ved,’ his mother exclaimed, bristling with shock. ‘How dare you? When you know you are in the wrong also. Taking that sweetmeat I was keeping and keeping for your father. He ought to beat you.’
‘Well,’ Inspector Ghote said, offering Protima a placatory smile, ‘let me perhaps instead tell a story.’
And despite the sharp look he got back, tell his story he did.
It happened, Ghote said, when he was a boy himself, a little younger than Ved was now, in the days when his father had been the schoolmaster in a remote village. A village so remote that, when he himself had been born, it had not even had electricity.
‘Up to the age of ten only I had not seen any light that did not come from a flame. Still now when I am thinking of my boyhood I see men moving through the night with burning flares, just only dispelling the darkness. Then you were feeling that this was what light was doing, sending back the dark. Now it is something you are feeling you have some definite right to have.’
‘Yes,’ Ved said, yet at the edge of sulkiness, ‘but what is the story?’
Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes Page 21