No one moves. The despair has turned everyone to stone; Adi and Priyo seem unable to move their feet away from where Madan is writhing.
As he is hauled up and pushed out of the room he turns to the ineffectual gallery one last time. Something has changed. The tears on his face are not yet dry. His mouth is now twisted not with agony, but with contempt. He snarls, ‘This is how it ends, I should have known. The milk and the mango-flesh mell, the mango-stone is always rejected.’ He tries to laugh mockingly, but it comes out as a short, acid bark. There is a disparate crowd outside, people in the street, outside the houses, faces at windows, figures standing on their verandahs, all feasting on the unexpected treat of a man’s supreme public humiliation; fodder for conversation through the shrivelled days of dearth.
An ashy gloom descends on the house; its grasp is tight, but the effect it has on the Ghoshes is one of slackness. Even the recurring and compulsive discussions are underlined by tiredness, resignation. The questions go around in a barren loop: how could the burglar have got hold of the keys to Purnima’s safe? It must be an inside job or else how could he have known which was the right key? How could the heist have happened right under their noses? Where was Purnima when the theft was in progress? How come no one had noticed anything? It had to be an inside job, in that case. But who on the inside? They chase their tails, but like clockwork toys whose wind-up energies are coming to the end.
Charubala has to explain the events to her husband, now slow-witted with illness, several times before he can comprehend the narrative. He says, ‘The police are right. Never trusted that man, especially after he put his son up to all that union mischief. The enemy inside is far more powerful than the enemy outside.’
Charubala retorts sharply, ‘If all fathers had to suffer for the deeds of their sons, you wouldn’t have been here to make these tart comments.’
Supratik is back home well before dinnertime. Sandhya hovers around in his room, trying to help him put his things back in their place while simultaneously keeping up a running commentary of the day’s events, which her son has missed. Supratik goes through the usual motions of a periodic ‘Hmmm’ or ‘I see’ or ‘Really?’
Sandhya asks, ‘You are the clever one, can’t you shed some light on this?’
He answers, ‘If Madan-da has really taken Boro-kaki’s jewellery, all power to him. They are poor people, the stuff is going to be useful to them. Your lot have more than enough already.’
It is not until later, not until she is in bed, picking over the day, knotting and reknotting all that has happened, unable to sleep, that his outrageous words return to her and she notices, for the first time, that he said ‘your lot’ and not the usual, expected ‘we’.
Inspector Saha comes along the following day and attempts to convince the Ghoshes of Madan’s culpability. ‘Who else knows the ins and outs of the family, the smallest details?’ he asks. ‘Who is in charge of what set of keys, which key opens which safe and which almirah, who comes in, who goes out of the house and when, the routine of every single one of you – who knows all this? We have ruled out the others. Gagan, your driver, doesn’t stay in the house overnight. Besides, he hardly ever comes inside. Malati and Kamala – well, they would have needed a man’s help to do it. The day-maids who do the cleaning and the laundry, likewise. Who does that leave?’
Sandhya says, ‘But . . . but he is like one of us. He has been with us since my husband was one year old.’
‘Look, I’ll hope you’ll pardon me for saying this, but this is how these people operate. We’ve been seeing cases like this crop up all over the city. They play a very long game, get your trust completely, then one day’ – he claps his hands – ‘all into thin air, both servant and jewellery. For what is he doing it? What is the motive?’ the Inspector continues, saying the word in English, moteebh, and repeating it with pride – ‘What is the moteebh? You know all about the problems with his son, Dulal; they happened at your factory, union leader and all that. Did you know that Dulal set up an electrical-goods store in Jadavpur after he lost his job at Bali? The shop’s not doing well, he’s drowning in debt. Where do you think the money to set up in retail business came from? There was no way out for Madan but to get his hands on some money quickly. Hence the burglary.’
Sadhya and Chhaya exclaim in concert, ‘What? What are you saying? We didn’t know all this . . .’
Neither did Adi, but he is not going to let his surprise show. He is the one who asked SP Dhar and Inspector Saha for a favour – to ‘talk’ to their colleagues in Bali and enlist their ‘help’ when union troubles were beginning to get out of hand – and he cannot give the Inspector the pleasure of showing his amazement, if the SP and the Inspector have made Dulal’s subsequent business a matter for their interest. The Ghoshes have not forgotten that the police refused to come when Prafullanath went to confront Dulal, but they can do little in retaliation. In the coalition government the issue of labour unrest had been moved, in a shrewd manoeuvre by the CPI(M), from a law-and-order issue under the Home Ministry, a Congress portfolio, to the domain of the Labour Minister, a CPI(M) man. Or so SP Dhar had said then, his voice dripping with well-honed regret and affront at such political football. It strikes Adi again that it had suited the police very well to say that their hands were tied. But why then this ongoing show of concern, of consultation and democracy, with the SP coming to inform him about Supratik, and now the Inspector being all solicitous and chummy and a bit too forthcoming with explanations over Madan-da’s arrest? Atonement for that error with his father? Or, more likely, that they do not want to burn the bridge, however unimportant and small, with the Ghoshes?
He recoils inwardly at the man’s professional mixture of authority and ingratiation, but brings himself to look at the Inspector’s face to be reminded of those shifty eyes again; yes, they are the same if tinier than last time because the Inspector’s face is puffing up as if in geometric progression with age. Inspector Saha turns to Adi, to appeal to a man about matters of the world that men understand better, and catches Adi looking at him then averting his eyes instantly as their gazes meet, but not before Adi has noticed the Inspector’s recognition turn into something that Adi cannot quite put his finger on, something truculent, something that resides more in the territory of power than obsequiousness.
Inspector Saha continues as if nothing has passed between them: ‘And, of course, we have cast-iron proof: we found the ring in his room. How else would you account for that?’ he asks triumphantly.
Purnima echoes him, ‘Yes, how else? How else?’
Chhaya cannot let this pass, so she begins, ‘Oh, I’m sure there can be many explanations for that—’ but stops abruptly because she does not have a single one handy and it would not do to be asked and have nothing to show; such loss of face in front of Purnima.
Sandhya, suddenly mindful of the fact that the Inspector has not been offered a cup of tea, leaves the room to direct the staff in the kitchen; there is no Madan-da to look after these things any more.
Inspector Saha says, ‘The big question facing us now is how to recover the items? Has he sold them? Is he using someone as a fence? We’re questioning him to see what we can unearth.’
Priyo flinches; he has some understanding of the exact nature of this ‘questioning’ business. It would have been preferable to follow the kind of natural unspooling of these things that happened in more common, lower-middle-class neighbourhoods – a hue and cry raised after the accused, a ragtag bunch of people gathered to beat him in public into confessing – rather than have the police question him in jail. At least with the method where people took the law into their own hands, they, the Ghoshes, could have been witness to the rough justice of the crowd, they could have seen the worst, they could even have intervened. They would not have had to speculate about what was being done to the unfortunate old man in the foetid privacy of prison.
Inspector Saha says, ‘You understand we’re living through difficult times. President’s
Rule again, twice in as many years. Governments rising and falling as if they’re doll’s houses, terrible law-and-order situation, getting worse by the day. Heh-heh-heh-heh, who knows what lies in store tomorrow?’
There, that fawning laugh again, Adi thinks, as he suppresses a shudder; the SP had clearly trained his junior well. Hearing it is like having a bucket of cold snot thrown on you; you want to rub yourself with a loofah afterwards for hours. As if in rhythmic response, the fan flutters the pages of the Charu Paper calendar on the wall; it sounds like mockery.
Sandhya comes in with a tray of tea and snacks – only Marie biscuits; no Madan to direct the rustling-up of delights – and sets it down on the coffee table. She says, ‘Ma wants to come downstairs.’
Adi says, ‘Let me go up and help her’ and leaves the room with his wife. Who knows what lies in store tomorrow? Could the Inspector have been trying to send some kind of message to him? Why the prefix of that insinuating laugh otherwise? Could SP Dhar have sent Saha for that very purpose?
Inspector Saha is still distributing meaningless reassurances like cheap boiled sweets at a children’s party when Charubala comes into the room, supported on one side by Adi and on the other by Sandhya. The Inspector does not stand up.
All through the previous night Charubala has lain awake thinking of the configuration of words she would use to tell the policeman several things: how wrong he was, how one could trust Madan blindly, how they were not going to tolerate this terrible error of their Madan being in jail . . . She had driven herself to a keen point of agitation, even anger, but seeing the Inspector sitting right in front of her, slurping tea noisily from his saucer, dunking biscuits into his cup, that anger somehow dissipates. He is, after all, a policeman of senior rank, not a constable, but a powerful, well-connected person, and Charubala has never been able to shake off an early fear of both policemen and Englishmen.
All the impassioned speeches in her head fade to a meek, plaintive, ‘Inspector-babu, Madan is innocent. You must kindly release him. I give you my word that he hasn’t done this.’
Inspector Saha pulls off the difficult trick of looking concerned, condescending and respectful all at once; a miracle, Adi notes, given that a complex of emotions would find it tricky to play quickly through all that flesh and adipose tissue. Then he is gone, with an ominous, ‘Not everything is in our hands, as you think. Some things are in yours too. Also’ – here he pauses at the threshold of the living-room door, turns round, flashes his yellow teeth in a way that makes Adi wonder how a smile so greasy can have such a sharp, dangerous edge – ‘we don’t usually come to people’s homes to update them on the state of an investigation, they usually come to the police station. I came as a personal favour to Adi-babu. After all, Boro-saheb Dhar, Adi-babu and I go back so many years, we have so much history between us, heh-heh-heh-heh.’
Much like the iron grilles on the Ghoshes’ front balconies, poxy with rust under the recent new coating of paint, the steady conviction that Madan is innocent begins to corrode under the acid that the Inspector’s words have sprinkled on it during his visit. Purnima, loyal primarily to her material possessions, is the first to be swayed. ‘The Inspector is right,’ she says to Priyo. ‘Who else could have taken it? Madan-da knows the ins and outs of everything, the routines of everyone. Only he could have burgled us with such ease and with no one being any the wiser.’
Priyo too teeters: ‘I’m finding it difficult to get my head around it.’
‘He’s been nursing a grudge. It’s that business with his son. I think he has been biding his time.’
‘A long time to bide. But I cannot think of anyone better placed than Madan to burgle us, you’re right. Still, I find it difficult to believe. He has been with us since before I was born . . .’ Priyo’s words tail off. The worlds of reasonable doubt and dogged faith have never seemed more incommensurable.
Bhola consoles his mother with equally empty words. ‘Ma, what good is all this crying going to do? The Inspector can’t be lying. If he says Madan-da has stolen, then he must have reason to say so. We couldn’t counter any of his arguments.’
Charubala is heartsick. Memories play like clips from old films inside her head and she relays them weepily. ‘How can it be?’ she cries. ‘Do you know, when he and Adi had very high fever at the same time – Adi must have been around six or seven then – I put them on the same bed and stayed up all night, putting cold water compresses on their foreheads.’ What she wants to ask the world is whether that act did not fasten him to her and hers for life, but she cannot find the words, or perhaps the courage, actually to say this, because to embody it in words would be an acknowledgement of a sort of fissure between them that had been eternally present. She dwells on details that sieve through her soul, leaving behind both purified object and unwanted residue: Madan bringing her children gifts every time he came back after his annual visit to his home in the village in Orissa; Madan lying to protect the children from her anger when she knew they had been up to mischief; she and Adi making fun of Madan, affectionately, by asking him to sing Oriya songs, then cracking up at the outlandish language; Madan tripping over his reading from Shahaj Path in the early stages of his education at her hands . . . How could those instances, so funny or ridiculous or endearing at the time, have been sifted to become only repositories of pain now?
Sandhya is no better than her mother-in-law. Things are at sixes and sevens without Madan-da’s cohering presence. She finds herself lacking the energy to be the girder around the house; it has had to do without her for two and a half years, it will no doubt survive the two days of looseness brought about by Madan-da’s arrest. Yet this very pragmatism is the result of inertia. So many details were taken care of by Madan-da that in less than twenty-four hours of his absence cracks are proliferating everywhere. Did she then do nothing worthwhile? Or was Madan-da the real energy behind the scenes and she only a titular supervisory figurehead? Thoughts along these lines are interrupted by the appearance in her room of Chhaya and Jayanti. Without saying anything, they need, it is clear to Sandhya, some principle of reassurance from her in the middle of this unravelling.
Even Chhaya has no appetite for this particular spectacle of someone else’s unhappiness. She says, ‘Who would have thought . . .’ and stops. Previously those very words would have been the prelude to a ripe thrill of a conversation saturated with cheerful malevolence; now the words are only doleful.
Jayanti echoes her sentiment – ‘Yes, truly . . .’ – and brings the aanchol of her sari to cover her mouth.
Sandhya, attempting to emulate the rationality of her elder son, says, ‘Wait, wait. Nothing has been proven against him yet. They still haven’t found the missing jewellery.’
Jayanti says, ‘But they took him to jail. Would they have done it if he was innocent? Then there was all that business with his son . . . We didn’t know a word of that, did we?’
Sandhya cannot answer this; neither can Chhaya. There is a long pause marked by the same looseness, the same unbinding that has begun to rear its head everywhere. It manifests itself as a lack of energy in everything; this twilight gathering, with the darkness falling outside, is no exception. It is a testament to that dispersion of focus that no one gets up to turn on the lights, despite everyone’s firmly held belief, particularly Sandhya’s, that dark interiors at dusk drive out the goddess of wealth. Now if Madan-da had been around . . .
Madan has become, overnight, a ghost in the midst of the living.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1970
ONLY THREE MONTHS since the news about Sona has broken and already a different order is beginning to set in. Like the camouflaging of an insect, one saw the before and, with great effort, the after, but never the process in between. So how and when exactly, and in what degrees, the new dispensation arrived no one could tell, only the fact of its dawning and its presence afterwards. Purba, in turmoil, notices, but does not give it much thought. As for Sona, it is impossible to tell if he perceiv
es at all in the first place, or if he senses and understands but will never bring himself to comment on it, or if he is simply above it all in the world of numbers.
But nothing escapes the fine sensor of Kalyani’s attunement to the unstable connections, forever careening, sometimes this way, sometimes that, between people. It is she who notices the increasing frequency with which food is sent down to them from upstairs, and although Madan-da’s recent departure has led to a lot of things beginning to fall to rust, this is one area that has, shockingly, improved. Then she notices that it is not stale food, on the cusp of turning, that is being sent to them, but freshly cooked marvels – any number of vegetable dishes, cabbage or bottle gourd with small shrimps, egg curries, yellow split peas with raisins and fried coconut, rui fish in yoghurt sauce, mince with peas and potatoes, mutton curries . . . This is what heaven is in her imagination – delights being sent down from up above. They even take care, she regards, to send her mother’s vegetarian food separately from Kalyani’s and Sona’s non-vegetarian dishes to avoid contamination, but she does not move one step further from observing to pondering on the reasons for this sudden newly-found consideration for her mother.
Purnima comes one evening, bearing a box of classy sandesh from Ganguram.
‘Baishakhi’s had a son,’ Purnima says, giving the paper box to Purba, ‘so I’m distributing sweets.’
Purba smiles and receives it with her usual, ‘Oh, really, there was no need . . .’
‘I’m giving it to everyone in the family, so why should you be excluded? You are family too,’ Purnima says. ‘Besides, you have your own reasons for eating sweets now, Purba, don’t you? All this wonderful news about our Sona . . . who would have thought that a boy from this house was a hidden genius? Really, unthinkable for stupid people like us! Anyway, some goddess is sure to be smiling on you now, things are beginning to look up, good news is beginning to come in . . .’ The tone for noting good tidings modulates to faint regret by the time she reaches the end of the sentence.
The Lives of Others Page 54