by Monabi Mitra
‘Pity you didn’t like the white sari with the black border. It would have suited your personality, Aunty.’
‘Don’t you have a chain lock, Aunty? Tell your daughter to get one for you from America.’
They bowed and nodded and smiled and left, pulling the door shut after them. The lock clicked in place.
Lily Lahiri stood shaking on the carpet, her heart pounding, her knees limp. She had never been so frightened in her life. Bits of tissue clung to the carpet. Lily felt tears pricking her eyes. She reached out to the sofa to steady herself and her hands brushed against something, a piece of paper, it had figures written on it, and something else in Bengali. Lily Lahiri fell against the sofa with the piece of paper crumpled in her hand, only dimly hearing the doorbell and her cell phone go off together.
Pilot 56A rumbled into the Diamond Point thana and the officer-in-charge got out with a sigh of relief. It was 6.30 p.m., hot, dusty, and even seeing off the inspector general’s convoy had not improved matters one bit. Constables in various stages of undress lounging around the thana compound scuttled across the courtyard like distressed crabs at the officer’s sudden arrival. The duty officer, engaged happily in killing mosquitoes with an electric exterminator that looked like a racquet, quit his enjoyable pastime to make a hasty salute.
The officer-in-charge groaned, ordered a cup of tea and switched on the air conditioner he had bullied out of a local tradesman. As he stood up to shut the window, he could see that the sweeper was drunk and weaving around the thana veranda with a commode brush in his hand. Damn the man!
He began work on a mountain of files that had built up relentlessly on the table over the last week. The inspector general’s parting words had promised an inspection. If he only knew what it was to be in the thick of things and not just roost happily in the comfortable confines of a splendiferous city office! The officer-in-charge wailed to himself and attacked the mountain. His phone rang. It was his most reliable informer.
‘I’m sending along a friend. Johnny. He might have something interesting to say.’
‘About what?’
‘Arms. Currency too, maybe. Interested?’
The officer frowned. Illegal arms and currency were too much of a bother to follow up. On the other hand, if he could pull off a few successful raids before the inspection, he could petition for a transfer closer to town. His wife nagged continuously about sharing a flat with his parents, and family squabbles were giving him sleepless nights.
‘Okay. But you’re sure about this, right?’
‘I’ve never let you down, have I?’
The officer admitted that he hadn’t.
The door opened and the duty officer entered. He said, ‘A guy wants to see you, Sir. Says he has some information he can convey only to you.’ Johnny was brought in, limping on a pair of crutches. He was short and stout, with long hair curling about his shoulders and he sported a moustache.
‘This information is hot,’ he announced without preamble, ‘provided you don’t give in to pressure and let the man out after a few days. His name is Babul and a deal’s going down—arms. Usually, the stuff comes from the Northeast and from Nepal, but this time it is coming in on a fishing trawler. The main thing is, he’s not to be let off.’
The plan was to keep watch on the railway platform where the arms were to be handed over. Once the exchange was made, Johnny would give the signal and the arrest could be made.
‘Mind you, Babul must not escape by any means.’
The name Babul was completely unfamiliar to the officer-in-charge who had spent much of his time investigating local political party brawls and covering up for the favoured political party of the moment. The rest of the time was spent in looking after weekend murders—as he called them—call girls done in by their employers on the beaches following dirty weekends, or college girls killed by their boyfriends once the fun was over. Beyond the murders and the political warfare, was a steady stream of VIPs to be escorted to the Sunderbans resorts and back; members of the bureaucracy and the judiciary and film stars, all demanding pilot cars and fresh fish and armed guards and Sunderbans honey. Where was the time to find out what Babul really did?
Acting on Johnny’s instructions, the policemen watched breathlessly as the train slid in to the station. Even before the train reached the platform, the blind beggars and musicians jumped off, followed by the pickpockets with the trip’s pickings. Vegetable vendors crowded the platforms, carrying enormous baskets filled with brinjal and spinach, papaya and gourd. Over the years, Calcutta streets had begun to metamorphose at certain times in the morning and evening, into impromptu bazaars where the farmers sold their vegetables, fruits and fresh country eggs. The policemen watched with impatient eyes as the wares were loaded on to the densely packed suburban trains. These would make their way to middle-class neighbourhoods where, in the heat of the afternoon, the farmers would take time off for a nap, their stuff piled high under jute matting, so that Tara returning home from work would have to pick her way delicately between the vegetable mounds.
Johnny was in a corner of the platform, before a row of taps, glued to his cell phone which had been squawking for some time now. The policemen watched, hoping the mysterious Babul would bite.
Hard-eyed women in saris, college girls in dresses of synthetic fabric, hungry-looking suburban men in cheap trousers and scruffy shirts, farmers in loincloths, vagrants with black, torn shorts, fishermen’s wives in ragged saris, children in patched skirts and boldly coloured tops—no, Babul didn’t seem to fit anyone who tumbled in and out of the compartments.
Johnny suddenly moved towards the train. The engine let out a low moaning whistle before starting. A man wearing a white shirt and a pair of white trousers, carrying a broad black sports bag, leapt nimbly down from the train just as Johnny reached him. The train lurched forward. The waiting policemen struggled to reach the pair. It seemed as if all the world’s fishermen and farmers’ wives were thrusting themselves in their way. The train had begun to move forward slowly. At the same time, another man darted in from another part of the platform, rushed up to the man in the white shirt and began talking to him excitedly. Babul, momentarily taken aback, turned aside to look at this man. The policemen, throwing all caution to the wind, completed the last few paces with a wild cry and leapt upon the trio. Babul was netted at last and in the most inglorious way, under the shadow of a railway urinal by a couple of lowly police constables.
With him were Johnny, secretly triumphant, and the third man who looked as if he had just seen a vision of his own funeral. A ramshackle jeep swung into the Diamond Point thana and the officer-in-charge, astonished that his raid had actually worked out, waved them all into the lock-up and wondered what to do. He had just finished planning a weekend trip with his wife and child and the successful raid was a spoiler. He spent ten minutes placating his wife, then mopped his brow and got down to business.
He knew Johnny and guessed who Babul was, but stared heavily at the third man. Who on earth was this chump?
‘Name?’
‘Buro Das.’
‘What were you doing there, talking to this man?’
‘I couldn’t find my cell phone and thought he had taken it. I want to charge him for theft.’
‘Where did you lose your phone?’
‘In the train.’
‘But you have it now, do you not?’
‘It was a mistake, I realized later on.’
‘Are you sure you don’t know the man?’
‘I don’t, Sir, do believe me. I came here to visit my friend who lives in the next village and I need to go home.’
Had the officer been attentive he would have realized that Johnny was trying to make a sign to him about something. Johnny, caught in the terrible position of pretending to be arrested without really being so, had an idea that Buro had been there for some other purpose. But the officer’s head was too full of his wife and the cancelled trip, and the fact that the Additional SP and the
SP would soon be in his small office and a hundred other cases would be dug up for perusal.
So he blinked tiredly and desultorily took down the false address which Buro supplied him and then let him go.
In a triumph of miscommunication, Bikram heard about Babul’s arrest two days later, and about Buro’s arrest and being let off, nothing at all.
When two men from the local police station arrived at Lily Lahiri’s opulent flat, they found her sitting with a stung look on her face. Lily had, however, sufficiently recovered her composure to frown at their arrival and ask them to take off their dirty boots.
‘You’re late,’ she said angrily. ‘They could have killed me.’
‘What happened, if you could kindly tell us …’
Without asking them to sit, Lily Lahiri related the events of those harrowing ten minutes.
‘Is anything missing?’
‘No, at least …’
Lily cast her eyes quickly around the room, even though she knew the men had not really been ordinary thieves.
‘Have you ever seen them before?’
‘No.’
‘What about your maid?’
‘She’s washing the clothes, so you’ll have to wait to see her,’ said Lily ungraciously.
The older policeman, acquainted with high-society ladies and their ill-humoured servants, said that if that was all, they would go back to the police station, and if madam or her maid had anything else to report they could do so there.
‘But you haven’t even looked around,’ said Lily pettishly.
‘Our boots are dirty, as you say. Would you like to have them clumping round your rooms?’
The other man suddenly noticed the bits of tissue and the crumpled scrap of paper on the carpet.
‘Did they leave that behind?’
‘Possibly, it wasn’t there before.’
He picked the paper up, one of which had a name that looked like S.K. Hassan on it.
‘Did they give this to you?’
‘Didn’t you hear what I said? I ordered them out of my flat and rang the police up to make a complaint.’
The policemen glanced around the room and then, finding nothing better to do, left.
The paper travelled to Bikram at the end of the day along with a rather emboldened report, detailing the policemen’s visit and inspection of complainant’s flat.
Lily Lahiri rang up Parry Prakash’s wife and outlined the incident in a rather embroidered report, ending with the policemen’s muddy boots and how she would have to get her carpet dry-cleaned again.
16
‘If you will allow me, Sir, I would like to take a shot at the Bose house once more.’
‘Thank you, Raja, but that won’t be necessary.’
‘I’ll be careful this time.’
‘I just told you, don’t bother.’
‘But I want to, I must. I’ve never failed at anything and here I am, unsuccessful the one time the man who has saved my life has set me to do something.’
‘Raja, go home, or wherever you sleep at night, if at all, and forget I ever told you anything.’ Bikram wished he had never confided in Raja. While Bikram liked his irrepressible jauntiness, lately he was finding his informer to be a bit of a bother.
Raja himself was distressed by his failure and by Buro’s discovery of him. He consulted his astrologer who assured him that the stars were beneficial and a long-awaited wish would come true. Then Raja looked up his telephone diary, thumbed through the names, settled on one and took the plunge. Montu Mondol had been set free on bail and was only too happy to help. He still remembered the Coke at the airport police station and cherished fond memories of Bikram. Montu looked at Raja with newly-found respect. ‘You’re his guy? Lucky! How often do you meet him?’
‘Hardly talks to me, you rat. Picked me up at that Babul raid but let me off lightly. I want to do him a good turn.’
They discussed Babul and who might have turned him in and, more importantly, who was running the racket now. Then Montu expressed his willingness to do what he could for Bikram.
‘There’s a posh house we have to watch. I tried it once during the day, but the whoreson who works there is too smart for me. I’ll need your help.’ Raja fumed as he described Buro. They drew up a sketchy plan, celebrated their partnership with a bottle of XXX rum and went home.
Montu considered his options. He could go as a salesman, a serviceman, a postman or a courier delivery guy. But none of the disguises was foolproof. Finally, he made a few phone calls to influential friends, strolled around to the club at the corner where the underlings of the local councillor played carom, made friends with the secretary, procured a copy of the electoral rolls for the upcoming municipal elections, promised help in securing votes when necessary, collected a sheaf of ‘Vote For—’ posters, cans of paint, paintbrush and set off for the Bose residence.
The durwan blocked his way. Montu explained patiently, ‘All we want is to talk to your master.’ He looked down at a piece of paper. ‘Robi Bose, and ask him for permission to paint names of candidates on this outside wall.’
‘You can’t.’
‘We’ll wash it off after the elections.’
‘The master’s dead.’
‘Shit, man, we’re sorry. The mistress, then?’
‘She’s not at home.’
‘Look, brother, times are bad, and the poor are getting poorer. People flock from the villages every day to Calcutta to look for a job and set themselves up on the pavement. Do you want a cigarette shop to spring up before your gate, or a ragpicker to start a dustbin here? Be wise, man, and let us in.’
The durwan understood and after a hurried discussion with someone inside the house, let them in. As the iron gates creaked open, Montu laughed. He had climbed higher and sturdier gates in his life. This looked like child’s play.
‘Are there dogs in the house?’ he asked chattily. ‘I’m scared of them, got bitten once and had to take injections in my abdomen.’
There were no dogs.
‘Surveillance equipment, you must be having advanced and very modern security.’
‘We have plenty,’ said the durwan, ‘inside the house.’
Not on your life, thought Montu, or I wouldn’t be here.
‘Could we set up some of my equipment here?’ Montu pointed to the door of the durwan’s outhouse. He fumbled in his pocket and took out a packet of expensive cigarettes. The durwan’s eyes gleamed but he refrained from helping himself. No smoking.
Outside, were two or three of Montu’s associates, standing and measuring walls and doing just enough to pass off as lower-rung party cadre.
Once inside, Montu lost interest in politics and began to admire the beauty of the garden and the shrubs there. ‘What lovely flowers! Sunflowers too. I haven’t seen them for quite some time.’
He was taken inside to Nisha Bose. She did not invite him to her patterned and cushioned drawing room but dismissed him from the door. Still, from the variegated plants in the background and the paintings on the wall, along with the expensive-looking rug whose edge he was standing on, Montu calculated the opulence inside. Curiously enough, he was not struck by Nisha’s beauty. She stood before him in a dressing gown with dragon patterns on it and her hair was washed and smelling of cedar. Montu saw only the petulant droop of her mouth and her crinkled eyes, as if she had just turned away from the sun or had been scolded by her parents.
‘No posters and no graffiti. I’ll complain to the … Anyway, I’ll have none of it.’
‘We were just asking. No pressure.’ He tried to look soothing and produced the electoral roll. ‘Nisha Bose: age thirty-four; Robi Bose: age forty; Buro Das: age twenty-five; Mithu Das: age twenty-two; Gopal Tewari: age forty. These are all the people in your house. Anyone else?’
Beyond her he could see the veranda that ended tantalizingly in cavernous halls he itched to explore. House break-ins were always exciting, even though they were now the stuff of his infant years. He waited f
or the expected reply. None came. ‘All right. No posters, not at all,’ he parroted. ‘But I need to confirm our electoral rolls to see if our records are all right. Sometimes people die, or move out and our records have to be updated.’ He waited again for a statement but, as before, none came.
‘Sorry to trouble you. I’ll be off.’ Montu ambled out of the veranda, waited for the door to close, then looked around. Here was an old house run in an old-fashioned manner. No dogs, no surveillance, two servants who were no better than stick figures and a middle-aged watchman with cable TV in his room. Montu could only imagine what he did after dark. Also, the boundary wall lay close to the kitchen and a convenient jackfruit tree grew close to it.
He turned his attention to the watchman. ‘Why don’t you join our club on weekends? We have good times there.’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Of course you have. It’s in the bazaar down the road.’
The durwan looked ill at ease. ‘Political stuff’s not for us. We do our work and mind our business.’
‘But it’s not always political.’ Montu winked. ‘We have video shows and all. Good booze, foreign. And discounts at local shops. Good connections to make there. For example, you need a new mobile phone. The one you have is a 2003 model.’ The durwan’s phone was trilling—an agitated Nisha was at the other end, wanting to know if that obnoxious man had left. Taking this opportunity, Montu escaped. He had enough to work on.
Raja and Montu returned at 2 a.m. Rain fell around them heavily, bringing with it the smells of wet earth and green leaves, but the two were unmoved by nature’s charms. Wearing black raincoats over army camouflage colours, they hoisted themselves over the wall and into the garden. The kitchen window was unlocked and Montu, amazingly athletic despite his toad-like appearance, partly twisted his body in and looked around, then slithered back and shook his head. The pantry door was closed. They circled around, looking for doors and windows left open by chance, but the rain played spoilsport.
Rain fell thickly around them and stung Raja’s scalp. He put his mouth to Montu’s ear and said something.