‘There has to be a way to open it,’ said Ruby, coming forward. If they took such great care in preserving it, they would have to have access to it.’
Baba Ramtirath bent closer. Deep blue eyes squinted at the glass case, the centre of such attention. His fingers gently drummed over the glass, turning it round and round. He had tried to make himself presentable for the occasion, wearing beads of Rudraksha and long garlands of marigold flowers that hid his loins. By then Ruby had got used to seeing stark naked men. She briefly wondered whether it would be difficult to adapt back to her life in the US.
She had grown to love the morning sounds of temple bells, chanting, the sound of waves, the boats on the river, the colourful streets, the sadhus, the smoke from their chillums, the children flying kites from rooftops and the man she had met here, Hawa Singh.
Baba Ramtirath looked up. ‘The glass case itself is a vault. It works on the mechanism of an ancient lock where the pieces of the same metal were conjoined and rotated.’
‘So does it have a key?’ asked the SSP.
Baba Ramtirath smiled. ‘They don’t have keys to them.’
Hawa Singh echoed Ruby. ‘If it’s a lock, then it has to unlock. Every lock is made for that purpose,’ he said with irritation.
‘I have not encountered such a vault in the last thirty years but, still, I’ll try my best,’ said Baba Ramtirath. He tried sliding the bottom and the top, but that didn’t work.
‘Sir, we can try using a heavy hammer,’ suggested Gaya Prasad.
‘We cannot take a risk with the manuscript,’ warned Vishnu Shastri. ‘It could turn to powder on exposure, and then we’d have nothing.’
‘In ancient days,’ said Baba Ramtirath, ‘they used to fill such locked chambers with a chemical that came ablaze and destroyed the entire contents if anyone broke through.’
‘Are you saying this glass case could also contain something like that?’ asked the SSP.
‘I don’t know. We need to be careful,’ Baba Ramtirath smiled his eternal smile.
‘Can’t we cut through the glass?’ asked ACP Shishir Jha.
‘It’s bulletproof, Jha!’ shouted the SSP.
Baba Ramtirath was concentrating on the glass case. There seemed to him to be another glass cylinder inside, that slid from both side to side, finally settling in the centre.
There was sudden excitement on everyone’s face.
Baba Ramtirath saw that the manuscript had moved right into the centre in the smaller cylinder. There was no way out.
It was like a tortoise hiding under its shell, sensing danger.
The excitement died down.
Frustrated, Hawa Singh raised his fist hand high up in the air and brought it down hard on the middle of the cylinder. Nothing happened even then.
Everyone—but Ruby—gave him a look of disdain. Hawa Singh removed his hand from the case and made another fist.
There was a soft hiss. A hairline crack appeared on the glass case. They gathered eagerly around.
Another big punch. The glass case broke open.
There was a time when Hawa Singh had punched a hole through the bulletproof glass of a politician’s Ambassador car as he tried to molest a female reporter sitting inside with him. His sheer determination, as always, won the day.
A smoky gas with a pungent smell coming through the crack in the glass seemed to erupt inside the case, and then, suddenly the manuscript caught fire. Everyone gasped.
Hawa Singh plunged his hand in and rescued the manuscript. The sides had charred and blackened, but it was whole.
They had the manuscript—the original manuscript of the Bhrigu-Samhita!
It was a parchment made of fine leather. Leaves and beaten bark were usually used for writing on during Vedic times. It appeared Bhrigu wanted material that was hardier. The sage’s farsightedness served them well. If the scroll had been of dried leaf or bark, it would have been completely destroyed in the flames.
Vishnu Shastri lifted it with both hands, and opened it delicately. Fully unrolled, it was more than ten metres long.
They couldn’t make head or tail of it.
It was Baba Ramtirath and Vishnu Shastri who looked like kids who’d found a treasure trove.
Hawa Singh could see it contained many horoscope charts, drawings of the Sun, planets and some calculations. One part, the pandit told them, had descriptions in Sanskrit of the effect of the planets, Sun and Moon on Earth.
‘As I told you,’ Vishnu Shastri said, with obvious glee, ‘the Bhrigu-Samhita was written in pre-Vedic times, and there was no record of its date. Now we have one!’
The others saw Baba Ramtirath and Vishnu Shastri looking with awe at a particular chart, their eyes filled with tears.
‘What happened?’snapped the SSP.
Baba Ramtirath turned to them. ‘Maharishi Bhrigu made a horoscope chart of Lord Krishna here in Kaashi. That means Bhrigu compiled it during the time of Krishna. That makes it not less than 9,000 years old!’
‘That also makes Benares the oldest inhabited city in the world!’ Vishnu Shastri joined in excitedly. ‘The Vatican thought Jerusalem to be the oldest.’
Baba Ramtirath read out from the manuscript. ‘Maharishi Bhrigu wrote that Krishna was the Special One and that he was Rama in his earlier life, and would come back in many avatars—as Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed. So there is no difference between any of them. They are all One.’
Ruby knew that this discovery would shake the very foundations of the Vatican.
Vishnu Shastri pointed to a crude drawing of the solar system with the Sun at its centre. ‘See, Bhrigu knew 9,000 years ago that the Sun was the centre and not our Earth, while it was not till the sixteenth century that Galileo and Copernicus came up with the truth.’
Baba Ramtirath pointed out some additional parchment joined to the manuscript. It looked to be more recent than the Bhrigu-Samhita. The colour had not yet faded. He looked closely at the handwritten accounts. ‘These were written by the followers of Bhrigu during the time of Christ, a few thousand years after Bhrigu wrote his manuscript. It seems the royal family of Benares had preserved all of this. It says that Christ had sent his disciple Thomas to teach his form of spirituality in India, and that he came to Kaashi, that is, Benares. Thomas spoke of many of Christ’s teachings that don’t exist in the Bible. Principles such as karma and re-incarnation seem to have been reaffirmed by Christ.’
Vishnu Shastri said, ‘The Bible was not written by Jesus Christ. It was written by his disciples and other saints. Many of Christ’s teachings were originally Eastern in nature, and were edited out. Imagine the implications that this discovery holds for Western Christianity and its churches?’
‘Okay, so we have laid hands on this miraculous document, one that will shake the entire Western world. But what,’ said Ruby, getting down to brass tactics, ‘does all this have to do with the murders?’
Hawa Singh was trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. ‘All three victims were connected to the Vatican,’ he said. ‘Either they were sent by the Vatican to look for this manuscript or they came independently in search of it, having heard of it in Rome.’
‘You mean they didn’t want the truth to come out—that Benares is the oldest inhabited city in the world, and about the original teachings of Christ?’ asked Ruby.
‘So why kill them?’ said Baba Ramtirath.
‘Yes, finding the Bhrigu-Samhita would have glorified Hindus and Benares. Maybe the Butcher didn’t want that,’ said Hawa Singh.
‘Unless the killer is a fanatic Christian and didn’t want the findings to shake faith in the richest religious centre in the world,’ said Ruby.
‘Exactly. Maybe we were wrong all the time. The killer is not a Hindu but a Christian, and the Cross is a statement of supremacy,’ said Vishnu Shastri.
‘We all know that Manvendra is a Hindu and belongs to the royal and supposedly divine family of Benares,’ said the SSP.
‘He might have considered it his royal dut
y, as part of the family, to protect the Bhrigu-Samhita.’
‘Then why did he go and kill the king of Benares, his own brother?’ asked Ruby, almost shrilly. They all looked out of their depth.
Hawa Singh took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Look, we’ve identified the killer. Once we catch him, everything will come to light. The focus right now should be on looking for him.’
‘What should we do with the manuscript?’ the SSP wanted to know.
‘It’s a great opportunity for a press conference,’ said Hawa Singh, grinning inwardly. ‘You can show this to all the reporters and tomorrow morning the papers will be filled with the news. Maybe that will even help in getting the Butcher out of his hide-out.’
‘It’ll definitely take some heat away from the Butcher case,’ said ACP Shishir Jha.
It was party time, again, for the hounds.
*
By the time the SSP and other police officers finished briefing the media on the astonishing new discovery, it was 11.30 pm. The predicted hailstorm came and lashed the city of Benares. Taking the severe weather into consideration, the SSP arranged for police jeeps to drop the reporters back at their respective offices. It was another matter that he wanted the news splashed in every paper the next day. Preferably featuring him in a prominent role.
Hawa Singh had borrowed Gaya Prasad’s police jeep to drop Ruby to Nadesar Palace. The storm continued throughout, hailstones clattering furiously on the jeep all the way.
Both Ruby and Hawa Singh were too tired—body and mind—to thrash through the details of the case any further. All they desperately needed was to sleep.
They ran from the jeep to the warmth and dryness of the heated lobby. It was like a different world. Hawa Singh escorted Ruby to her room. He wanted to leave, but the lure of a glass of scotch pulled him inside. He waited as Ruby went to mix him a drink.
She looked at him over her shoulder. ‘Why don’t you have a shower? It’s lovely and warm. It’ll soothe you.’
Hawa Singh felt uneasy about having a shower in her hotel room. But she pulled him up from where he was sitting and playfully pulled off his jacket. ‘Now, you’ve begun to smell,’ she teased him.
He went inside the bathroom, where there was a big shining bathtub. He worried that he might soil it. He looked at the faucets, the shower above his head, the gleaming knobs and the commode that gleamed like a throne.
He removed his clothes and hesitantly turned on the shower. A spray of warm water hit his body with a hiss. It was indeed soothing. He held his face up to the cascading water and smiled broadly. This was as good as a treat.
He felt the door open a crack, and held his breath, waiting. Ruby had also shed her clothes. Now she joined him under the shower, their eyes never leaving each other’s. She looked at the wound on his chest and kissed it.
In a flash they melted into each other’s arms, kissing passionately, their legs entwined. They could not recall when they came out of the bathroom and collapsed together on the bed.
It was frenzied love-making, although Hawa Singh remembered to be gentle. Later, sated with love, they lay breathlessly side by side, staring at the ceiling.
It was Ruby who turned to smile at him. ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with you,’ she said simply.
Hawa Singh restrained himself. ‘I’ll always be there for you,’ he said, meaning it, but not wanting to give way to his emotions just then.
Ruby didn’t know what he meant. She had wanted something more. But she didn’t want to spoil the moment, and lay quietly in his arms.
*
He slipped into the room like air slipping through a crack in the door. He saw them lying wrapped in each other’s arms amidst the tangled sheets. A smile appeared on his face. He sat himself down on the sofa and contentedly took out the Colt.
He looked at the peaceful, sleeping face of the policeman they called Hawa Singh. He pointed the Colt at his head thinking, ‘This is the irony of life. You get killed by the very pistol you kept for your own safety.’
He looked at Ruby’s long, toned legs. She was indeed beautiful. He saw her snuggled close to Hawa Singh, smiling in her dreams.
He lowered the Colt thoughtfully. He would love to engage Ruby in sex, but would also love to give her a special and spectacular death.
He was no pervert. He was merely working towards a purpose. Anyone coming between him and his quest was his enemy.
He laughed to himself, silently, ‘We’ll have a great time, Hawa Singh. I won’t let you die too easily.’
He knew that they had shown the original manuscript of the Bhrigu-Samhita to the press. He smiled at the stupidity of those policemen. They were merely doing his job for him, walking obediently into the web he’d spun for them.
He wanted to wake up Hawa Singh and laugh in his face. But he controlled himself. He was no ordinary criminal, no senseless serial-killer. He wanted to cut each and every branch off, before uprooting the tree entirely.
For him the number eleven would not be enough. He had a long way to go, many obstacles to clear on the way.
He kept looking at the sleeping couple. They’d found love at the time of death.
Then he got up and slipped out the way he came in. At that very moment Hawa Singh got up with a start. He could sense that someone had been in the room.
A shiver ran down his body. Did the Butcher come in here?
Hawa Singh saw the half-open window, rushed to it and looked out. There was only darkness to be seen. He closed the window and turned back to Ruby. She was in deep sleep.
Hawa Singh had never slept so well since he had lost Kavita. But sleeping had cost him the Butcher.
CHAPTER 39
Hawa Singh had fallen asleep again, despite himself, and it was the loud ringing of the phone that woke both him and Ruby. It was Sub-Inspector Gaya Prasad. The Butcher had scored yet another time.
The news jolted them out of their dreamy state. They were out of bed and dressed in three minutes flat. Hawa Singh checked his watch. It was 5 am. Another grisly dawn awaited them.
Dawn appeared to be the Butcher’s preferred time for doling out death. They reached Manikarnika Ghat and saw two police jeeps standing there. Gaya Prasad, along with five other policemen, was busy moving away the early morning devotees who had crowded around the ghat. The fire from the pyres was going as strong as ever.
‘I’m sorry to have woken you up so early,’ said Gaya Prasad. ‘We found another body and it looks like the work of the Butcher.’ He led them ahead. They walked past the Vishnu temple that was believed to be sinking slowly into the sand at an angle. They drew close to the sacred well called the Manikarnika Kund, said to have been dug by Lord Vishnu at the time of creation. It is believed that Lord Shiva had dropped his earrings in this well during his transcendental dance. Hence the name ‘Manikarnika’, meaning ‘jewelled earring’.
The Manikarnika Ghat brings death and release face-to-face with the creation of the universe. While the power of life was generated at the charanpaduka of Vishnu, the actual cremation of bodies takes place at Jalsayin Ghat, the whole of which is called the Manikarnika Ghat. Jalsayin, or ‘the sleeper of the water’ reflects the beauty of Vishnu asleep on Shesha Naga, during the cosmic deluge consuming the ashes of the cosmos, symbolizing the endless cycle of time, the flame of which burns continuously at the Manikarnika Ghat. Shesha also means remainder; the ashes that remain to be washed away by the Ganges, and lose themselves into the cosmic ocean. In Hindu mythology, Vishnu is the seed of life, a lotus from whose navel grows Brahma, who creates the world.
Every Hindu in Benares aspires to be cremated at Manikarnika. It is believed that cremation here is a guarantee of liberation, courtesy a boon given by Lord Shiva. Nevertheless, it’s a very costly affair and not everyone can afford it. The cheaper option for liberation was the Harishchandra Ghat, and most ended there.
They reached close to the perimeter marked by a rope. Hawa Singh could see a group of Doms watching them approach. Inside t
he perimeter was a large round slab called Charana Paduka, placed on high ground. In the middle of it stood a stone pedestal in the shape of a lotus, the top of which was inlaid with marble. The two footprints of Lord Vishnu marked the centre of the marble.
According to legend it is believed that Lord Vishnu had chosen this sacred spot for the performing of ascetic rites and the worship of Lord Shiva. Vishnu apparently stood in meditation there for about 500,000 years to please Shiva, leaving his footprints on the stone.
According to this legend, Benares would be more than 500,000 years old, but then those were just myths and legends.
Right on top of the Charan Paduka sat a human figure in a meditative pose with his hands folded. It was headless.
The torso was drenched in its own blood. The marble stone nearby was also awash in red. A fountain of it must have spurted after the beheading.
Hawa Singh ducked under the rope, followed by Ruby. They were careful not to slip on the blood when they reached the body.
Hawa Singh bent down and picked up the stub of a cigarette. It was from a joint of marijuana. So it was the Butcher who had done it. He had created another work of art for them to wonder at. Ruby took the stub from Hawa Singh and placed it in her evidence pouch.
The body was not that of a white foreigner. It was a male of medium height, average build, lean and brown-skinned. There were no marks of torture or a struggle on the body. There were a few scars on the shoulder blades, neck and back that looked like scars from childhood injuries. But there was the telltale cavity in the chest area, from which the heart had been removed. There was no Cross on the scene.
Although the victim was not a foreigner this time, nor had the body been pierced with a Cross, the absence of the heart seemed to echo the Butcher’s modus operandi.
But the absence of the head posed a problem. It would be difficult to identify the victim. Gaya Prasad called to them, ‘Sir, we also need to check inside the temple.’
Right before them was the small Adi Kesava temple that housed the Charan Paduka. Hawa Singh and Ruby proceeded to its inner sanctorum, Gaya having secured the place with policemen. In what seemed to have become a grim repetition of police procedures, no one was allowed to enter Manikarnika Ghat.
THE BUTCHER OF BENARES Page 23