‘Ah, but their world runs on our signatures, my boy,’ Chaube said, smiling at the younger minister. ‘Don’t they say—the pen is mightier than the paisa?’
‘Yes, something like that!’ Karan laughed.
‘Well, close enough is fine. I’m hardly an educated man!’
The two men smiled and took sips from their glasses.
‘You seem to be spending a lot of time outside Delhi these days,’ Chaube said presently. There was no overtone in his voice, just the note of a simple observation.
‘Sir, it is difficult to catch people like you in Delhi these days. So, one must get out of town oneself.’
‘I am surprised that Saran allows you to go running around the country when you two are this close to presenting your Bill in Parliament,’ Chaube said, this time sounding more inquisitive. ‘But of course, he knows you’ll always return to do his bidding.’
Karan chuckled, not the least bit offended by the choice of words. ‘Well, the eyes will see only what they are being shown.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that I am not with Saran as he gets ready with Right-dot-Comm.’
Karan could see that he now had Chaube’s undivided attention.
‘You see, Chaubeji, it is time for the hound to break away from the leash that the master is holding.’
Chaube showed no reaction to this revelation, except that his unblinking stare did not leave Karan’s face for even a second. He took a long sip from his glass as he mulled over what he had just heard.
‘That was a big thing to confess,’ he finally said after a full minute of silence. Then, he continued, ‘But why does the hound want to bite the hand of his master?’
‘Oh no, not bite, Chaubeji,’ Karan smiled. ‘Remember, it’s a hound, not a fucking mongrel. The hound is about to tear the hand off the master’s body. In fact, have you ever seen a Doberman attack its master when it’s angry? It goes for the face!’
Chaube’s eyes widened. ‘How?’ he asked.
‘Doesn’t Right-dot-Comm sound too good to be true, Chaubeji?’
The older politician nodded.
‘In politics, aren’t things that sound too good to be true just that? Usually, they are also the worst things ever for the country.’
Chaube merely looked on.
‘How can you, such an old hand at all this, in fact, the second-in-command in our party’s Working Committee, not see that Right-dot-Comm is nothing but a fraud perpetrated by Satyendra Saran—and me?’
The senior minister shifted uncomfortably on his white cane chair a couple of times before saying, ‘I always suspected it, but Saran… he is so… so clean.’ Chaube almost made a face when he uttered the last word.
There was silence again. The glasses had gone empty and were efficiently re-filled by the unobtrusive attendant. The ambience around the pool had quietened considerably. The noisy birds had finally muted their twittering.
‘So, it looks like you are going to bring Satyendra Saran down by exposing Right-dot-Comm as a scam, correct?’ Chaube resumed once the attendant had gone back to his distant perch.
‘Me? Who said I was going to do any such thing?’ Karan asked in mock surprise, causing Chaube genuine surprise.
‘What the hell are you saying? Didn’t you just say it all? Hound, tearing the master’s hand, face, and what not!’
‘Oh, that wasn’t me I was talking about, Chaubeji!’
‘Then?’
‘I was talking about you. YOU are the dog that plods along the master, smelling his shithole, eating the morsels he throws your way, licking his toes. You are his deputy in the party. You stand when he tells you, sit when he commands you. You, Chaubeji, are Satyendra Saran’s dog on the leash. Not me!’
Chaube’s face quickly contorted with anger. The nerve of this whit of a boy to even think of such derogatory comments, let alone speak them out loud! And on Chaube’s own turf!
‘Madarchod, are you even in your senses to be talking to me like this? After confessing your grand scheme about what you intend to do with the PM, you are putting it all on me?’
Karan laughed at Chaube’s rage, which enraged the older man even more.
‘I will chop your dick off with my own hands, haraamzaade! And then toss it for the crows to nibble at.’
‘But, Chaubeji, why so angry?’ Karan said, controlling his guffaws. ‘Do you see any other way of taking down Satyendra Saran? I mean, unless he is shamed in public, how does one bring down such a popular PM? And unless Saran is removed, how can we have a new Prime Minister?’
Karan did have a point, and Chaube—hardened politician that he was—saw it immediately.
‘See, Chaubeji? I am not a total idiot, am I?’
‘Tell me clearly what is going on in that chutiya head of yours!’ Chaube demanded. ‘Who becomes the PM once Saran goes? Me?’
‘You?’ Karan snorted. ‘You? Prime Minister?’ His giggles grew louder. The anger on Chaube’s face, which only moments ago had started to subside a bit, rose again at warp speed.
‘Haraami, who then? You?’ he asked, almost ready to punch Karan in his face. ‘How many days has it been since you even stopped feeding at your mother’s teats? Doesn’t she still wash your nappies? How can YOU even think of being PM?’
‘Well, I can be PM, if you proposed my name.’
‘This fool has gone mad!’ Chaube thought as he settled back into his seat in total exasperation. Karan was still smiling.
‘See, Chaubeji, it’s very simple. All you have to do, as the leader who is second-in-line to Saran in our party, is to start grumbling about Right-dot-Comm to the media. Throw them a sound-byte or two about “corruption” and “special interests”, and they will all swoop in like vultures to a carcass. Imagine, the most distinguished party leader having reservations about his own Prime Minister’s signature legislation! Once you speak up, several more ministers will voice their negative opinion too. I will manage that part of the show.’
Chaube kept staring at Karan with an astonished expression. He said nothing, allowing his deranged junior colleague to continue.
‘As you know,’ Karan continued, ‘it takes no time to sway public opinion against anyone in this country, provided we make enough noise about it. We could even announce a couple of CBI enquiries on the issue! That will be like a grand crescendo in an already loud symphony.’
Chaube was now shaking his head.
‘And once the dominos of a rebellion start falling, no one, not even the mighty Satyendra Saran, pure as milk and honey as he is seen to be, will survive it.’
Chaube now had a smile on his face. There was only derision that it conveyed.
‘So you see, Chaubeji, it is all quite simple,’ Karan concluded, his face bearing a triumphant smile.
It was time for Chaube to speak now. ‘And once Saran is dispatched to the dustbin, I take it that I will propose your name as the new leader of the party? And, by consequence, the new Prime Minister, right?’ the elderly man said.
‘Absolutely right!’
‘And that will be because, by then, you will have distanced yourself enough from Right-dot-Comm? So when the fires of public anger and resentment rise, only Saran will be consumed by it. You will stay safely unscorched.’
‘Right again, Chaubeji!’
‘In fact, you may even be hailed as the man who gave birth to the brilliant idea of Right to Communication, but then had to part ways with your own baby when you saw how Saran had prostituted it.’
Karan grinned.
‘Karan Singh Rathore, the Man of Principles!’ Chaube said loudly, as if making an announcement on TV. ‘Karan Singh Rathore, Prime Minister!’
‘Chaubeji, I never took you to be this intelligent before today. But you seem to have understood the plan to perfection. It’s like you are reading my mind!’
Chaube rose his back from the chair and turned fully to face Karan. Then, he slowly brought his face closer to Karan’s menacingly. Karan held hi
s impish grin and didn’t didn’t bat an eyelid.
‘Saale behenchod,’ Chaube spoke slowly in a gravelly tone, ‘now tell me this. Under what drug-induced haze did you make this scheme? And in which universe did you even conceive that I will play along with your chutiya games?’
The two men steadfastly held their positions, their faces merely inches away from each other. Then, slowly, Karan’s devilish grin started to transform into a scowl. The kind that people usually have on their faces when they have to touch something really filthy.
‘In which universe, Chaubeji?’ he repeated. ‘In the same universe where I am not the one preparing to marry off a barren daughter to one of the richest families in the country. But you are.’
With that, Karan pushed himself away and reclined against the polished white cane chair. But he didn’t take his eyes off the older minister. Chaube’s face was starting to darken in a mixture of confusion and surprise, as if he wasn’t sure if he had heard Karan right. Karan gave him a few moments to sort out the bewilderment before continuing.
‘Looking at your face, I gather that you have no intentions of letting Mohanlal Hanslal Dave know that your only daughter can’t bear his only son a child? That this would be the end of the line for their family?’
This time, there was no bewilderment on Chaube’s face. It had gone dark, much like the Surat sky in the darkening dusk.
‘How did…?’ the older man mustered.
‘…I find out? That your daughter did her high school in Chicago where she couldn’t stop spreading her legs for anything that had a dick? That she got pregnant three times? And that the third abortion got botched so badly that she can never have children now?’
Chaube’s lower jaw shook like a Japanese earthquake. His eyes were glowing like embers. Karan knew that the shocked man was now molten with rage inside. And so, he poured more oil into that fire.
‘That was when you pulled the little slut out of school and brought her back to India. And now, when there is opportunity of forging a lucrative partnership with poor dear Mohanlal Hanslal Bhai, you are playing dirty by passing off soiled goods to him? Do you really have no shame, Chaubeji?’
Chaube was so infuriated that if he could have spontaneously erupted, he’d have done so.
Karan knew that his victim was now teetering at the edge of damnation. There was no reason to push him further. In fact, it was now time to offer him a lifeline. He waved his hand at the attendant who was waiting by the far side of the pool. The servant came running. Karan gesticulated at Chaube to finish his drink. The man complied. Then, the attendant coasted away with empty glasses to the bar inside.
Presently, the men were alone again, with fresh replenishments in their hands. It was time to close the deal. Karan waited for the man to say something. He knew that the ‘drinks interval’ had given Chaube time to accept that he was finished if he didn’t fall in line with Karan’s plan.
‘What do you want, Karan?’ Chaube asked, without anger this time. The evenness of the politician’s voice conveyed that he was ready for a compromise—of any kind. Karan felt a sense of relief he was keen to not show. Getting Chaube to fall in line had been critical to the coup.
‘Chaubeji, all I want is your aashirwad,’ Karan said, his voice conveying nothing but virtuous reverence now.
Chaube gave him a curt nod before taking a big swig from his glass. He grimaced, as if the Stoli tasted awful. Karan noticed the look and offered a consolation prize to the man he had just bashed up.
‘Chaubeji, I will personally see to it that Prime Minister Saahab graces Dolly’s reception in Delhi with his presence. You wait and watch, it will be the best one Delhi has ever seen. After all, we all want nothing but the best for your daughter, right?’
And thus, like dominos falling one by one, Lakhani’s billions and Karan’s convincing power riding predominantly on their little book of secrets, were building an army of quiet supporters ready to play their part come action time. Never before had skeletons buried deep inside the closets of Lutyen’s Delhi been put to better use.
One month before the gala evening of the National Awards at Siri Fort, the Right-dot-Comm Bill was presented in the Lok Sabha by Prime Minister Saran himself. The debate on the historic bill lasted a little less than two days. The government agreed to add all the changes recommended by the Opposition. They were mostly minor anyway. Right-dot-Comm was carried in both Houses of Parliament by a thumping voice vote—a ‘grand culmination of fifteen months of blood and sweat that the Prime Minister had personally put into this historic endeavour’, as IndiAction! and the rest of the media put it. The President’s signature happened the next day.
Right-dot-Comm was now enshrined in the Constitution of India.
One man was noticeably absent from all the celebrations surrounding the new law. The press release from his Ministry said that the Hon’ble Information and Broadcasting Minister had to be away from Parliament because he was attending to ‘his ailing mother’ in Gorakhpur.
The clock on the wall across from his bed displayed a time past midnight but there was still no sleep in Manjrekar’s eyes. The jigsaw puzzle in his mind had been so confounding that it had temporarily numbed his mind to his life’s realities—a daughter who was dangling close to death in a hospital, and a marriage that was perhaps even closer to its end. Even now, when most of the pieces of that puzzle had fallen into place, Manjrekar was still restive. He was debating whether it was the right time to make his move.
‘Will there ever be a right time to do something like this?’
He toyed with his second-hand phone. He had been watching an MMS clip on it. He had already watched the video four times.
Manjrekar recalled how he had stumbled upon the first piece of the elaborate riddle. It was the story that S Ahmed Rizvi had narrated to him in Delhi about his years at Innocent Dreams. That tale had triggered a memory of the two shaved heads murders that Manjrekar had encountered in Mumbai some time ago. On his return from Delhi, he had reached out to Suresh and gained access to the case files of the two dead men—Ankit Mohile, whose murder had been solved by Manjrekar himself, and Brijesh Jha, whose case file had been closed with the finding: ‘No witness or forensic material found. Criminal(s) unknown’.
Ankit Mohile and Master Brandy. Two names that had been connected in life via business associations. But two names that had seemingly no connection in death. Until now, that is. The link that Manjrekar had established between the two murders was as irrefutable as it was intriguing.
Manjrekar pressed the green button on the phone and the video clip started to play again. The voice of Jazmeen came through loud and clear from the tinny speakerphone. It was the same interview that had been playing on the canteen TV when Manjrekar and the new police recruits had met months ago.
‘All I believe is that my life today is the sum-total of my experiences gathered from all who came into or exited my life. Some were like saints—like a lady named Katy Katrak, who gave me a job when I came to Mumbai, kept me grounded and always believed in my talent, and who I still call Mamma; and Sareen, my hair and makeup man who has stayed by my side through the years. Most others I have met may not have been saints, but yes, they were all teachers. Like Master Brandy who taught me dance. Or Ankit Mohile Sir who gave me my first break. Both of them are sadly no more. They came to my life, played their part in my life’s education, and then they left.’
Film star Jazmeen knew both Ankit Mohile and Master Brandy alias Brijesh Jha. Quite closely, it would seem.
But so what, one might have asked. A mere coincidence, surely. In the film industry, didn’t everyone know everyone else? Knowing both murdered men didn’t mean Jazmeen was somehow responsible for their deaths, one could argue. And that argument may have been valid too, if it hadn’t been for Jazmeen’s connection to a third murder case that was very similar to Mohile and Jha. The file of that third case had been sourced from the Delhi Police Archives with Rizvi’s help. The name on that file was Jasmin
e Bhatia. She was the owner of Innocent Dreams where Jazmeen had once been an inmate with a different name.
Jasmine Bhatia, whose battered body had been found in her home one morning years ago—with all her hair sheared off her head.
Still a mere coincidence? Possibly.
Manjrekar’s analytical mind was too intrigued to not investigate these connections further. So he had decided to stalk Jazmeen’s posh residence on 16th Road in Bandra. The property records of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had yielded another curious trail—Jazmeen’s link with the Rathore family. The flat where she lived was not hers. It was owned by the late Arjun Singh Rathore, a film producer. His brother was Union Minister Karan Singh Rathore, whom Manjrekar had spotted during his clandestine surveillance. And when the Rathore association took Manjrekar to Gorakhpur, he had stumbled upon one more piece of the elaborate jigsaw.
Amrit Singh Yadav, whose body had been discovered lying in a ditch miles outside town. His head had been tonsured after death.
No more a mere coincidence, surely.
‘Just how many secrets are you hiding inside that tiny choli of yours, Jazmeen Madam?’
The time on the clock was now 1 AM and Manjrekar was finally feeling heavy-lidded. He picked up his phone one final time for the night. The wallpaper displayed the picture of his daughter Roshni. She was laughing, brightly expending sunshine just like her name portended. Her face made Manjrekar smile. He didn’t feel restive anymore. He had made a decision. In a way, he knew that he had already made his decision weeks ago.
Manjrekar opened the browser of his phone and typed—‘Phone number film star Jazmeen’. The search results listed over 50,000 entries.
Jazmeen saw Karan steal a look at her bosom. His gaze turned away as soon as it was caught. That adolescent gesture—to look and then quickly look away—from grown men like him always amused her. She had noticed him doing so even on the morning after Arty’s death. She had realised later that Karan may not have been able to control it, considering how wet and bare she had been when she had stepped out of the shower absentmindedly to open the front door for him.
Pretty Vile Girl Page 35