by Tarquin Hall
Chanakya would have ridiculed the Nehru dynasty’s protectionist policies and applauded India’s recent economic rebirth, Puri reflected. But the slums and poverty, the inequality and rampant abuse of natural resources – all this would have appalled him. More than two millennia ago, he had stressed the necessity of honest and just governance. And yet today, a handful of politicians aside, India was ruled by a bunch of bloody goondas.
Sometimes, Puri wondered if the best thing might not be a revolution. But he doubted that would ever happen. The majority of Indians were farmers, not fighters. War had always been the preserve of the Kshatriya caste, and nowadays most of them were traders, businessmen and software engineers. Some even worked as private investigators.
♦
A honk at the gate brought Puri to the front door with an expectant grin on his face.
His face fell when a red Indica with a crumpled bumper, a bashed-in fender and a Punjab number plate entered. It belonged to his sister’s husband, Bagga-ji, who lived in Ludhiana.
“Don’t tell me,” the detective moaned to Rumpi, who was standing next to him on the porch. By now she had changed into a light chiffon sari, which had been part of her wedding trousseau, and rubbed sindoor into the parting of her hair.
“Chubby, stop it. Be nice. They’ve got some good news.”
“They’re getting divorced, is it?”
“Now that’s enough. Be a good host and don’t get into any more arguments with him.”
Bagga-ji pulled up and stepped out of the car. Everything about him screamed cheapness, from his polyester shirt to the big gaps in his blackened teeth.
“Namaste-ji!” he cried, sounding as if he had cotton wool in his mouth. “How are you, Mr. Sherluck?”
Puri groaned inwardly. He hated people comparing him to Sherlock Holmes. Bagga-ji’s thick Punjabi pronunciation made it all the more irritating.
“Hello, sir-ji!” said the detective, pronouncing ‘sir’ ‘saar’. “Good journey?”
“Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine,” replied his brother-in-law.
The detective’s older sister, Preeti, alighted from the other side of the Indica. Of all the minor but nonetheless enfeebling ailments from which this large, quiet woman suffered, the most serious was acute Bagga-itis.
“Chubby, you’ve lost some weight, is it?” she asked as they greeted one another with a loose, sideways hug.
This was said with concern rather than admiration.
“Not that I’m aware,” said Puri, observing his belly, which spilled over his belt.
Bagga-ji had already gone inside the house.
Five minutes later, when Puri, Preeti and Rumpi reached the sitting room, he was sprawled on the floor. On the carpet in front of him lay a large glass of Royal Challenge and a collage of irregularly shaped pieces of paper with names and phone numbers in spidery writing. The backs of cigarette packets, old cinema tickets, strips torn from old envelopes – these served as Bagga-ji’s phone directory and lived, for the most part, as a big lump stuffed into the pocket of his half-sleeve shirts.
“Sorry, ji. Long-distance. Five minutes only. Don’t mind, huh?” he said, holding the receiver of the home phone to his ear.
“Please, sir-ji,” replied Puri. “Make yourself at home. You’d like a cushion? A foot rub?”
The detective’s sarcasm was lost on his brother-in-law.
“Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine!”
The detective still found it hard to believe that his sister had married such a prize Charlie. But Preeti had never attracted many suitors thanks to her weight and bad skin. She’d been twenty-seven by the time Jaideep Bagga had come along in his secondhand three-piece suit.
“Good for nothing much, na,” had been Mummy’s appraisal after meeting him for the first time.
But Papa and Bagga-ji’s father had got along and Mummy had been overruled.
The family astrologer had sealed Preeti’s fate. Jaideep Bagga was a perfect match. Never mind that the young man had only displayed an aptitude for playing carrom board and eating large quantities of laddus.
During the thirty-three years that had passed since then, Bagga-ji – whom Puri privately referred to as ‘Baggage’ – had proven a constant embarrassment to the family. The detective dreaded inviting him to any family function, especially since his performance at Jaiya’s wedding. Tipsy on whisky, he had tried to ingratiate himself with the minister of chemicals and fertilizers and asked him for a job for his eldest son. Despite receiving a sharp rebuke, Bagga-ji had spent the rest of the evening trying to worm his way into all the photographs taken of the MP from Chandigarh.
Anecdotes about Bagga-ji’s business dealings abounded. His deceased father’s transport business was long gone. And acre by acre, he had sold off most of the land he had inherited, sinking the proceedings into harebrained schemes. At one point he’d even invested in a Nepali yak-burger joint. But like all his enterprises, the Big Yak had gone under.
Now, it seemed, he had something else brewing. No doubt it was ‘foolproof’ and was going to make him the richest man in all Punjab.
“Lakshmi has finally smiled on me!” he said in Punjabi with a grandiose sweep of his hands once he was off the phone.
The detective cast him a weary look. “What’s the plan this time?” he asked, switching to Punjabi as well. “Camel-milk ice cream again, is it?”
“Actually that was not such a bad idea,” interjected Preeti. It was rare for her to come to her husband’s defense; usually she suffered in silence. “The ice cream itself was quite delicious.”
“Problem was milking those bloody camels!” Puri chuckled.
“Laugh all you like,” said Bagga-ji. “But you’ll soon be congratulating me. A construction company wants to build a shopping mall on my land. They’re offering me one crore.”
“Which company?” asked the detective, sounding dubious.
“A big, respected one. I visited their offices. Very modern. They’re offering Western-style contract.”
Preeti added: “It all seems pukka, Chubby.”
Another horn sounded at the gate. Puri looked outside in time to see Jaiya being helped out of the car by her husband.
Her belly had grown large and round.
“Hi, Papa!” she said, waddling over to him with a big smile.
“Nikhee, beta, so wonderful to see you. Just look at you! How many you’ve got in there?” he joked.
“Well, actually, we’ve been waiting to surprise you, Papa,” she said with a grin, rubbing her bump.
His eyes widened. “Don’t tell me.”
“Yes, Papa, we’re having twins.”
“By God! My dear, you heard the news?” he called to Rumpi. “Nikhee has got two in the tandoor!”
“What wonderful news!” she replied, trying to sound surprised, although it was obvious she already knew. “All I can say is it’s a good thing we’re well prepared. Isn’t it, Chubby?” She gave Jaiya a mischievous wink.
“Yes, my dear,” intoned Puri.
∨ The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing ∧
Six
No one spotting the auto rickshaw driver who parked his three-wheeler down Basant Lane behind Connaught Circus would have guessed that he was a sattri – in ancient Chana-kyan terminology, a spy. Nor that he knew every brothel, illegal cricket-gambling den and cockerel-fighting venue in the city – not to mention most of its best forgers, fencers, smugglers, safecrackers and purveyors of everything from used Johnnie Walker bottles to wedding-night porn. Blind in one eye, with henna-dyed hair and tatty, oil-stained clothes, he blended into the cityscape as seamlessly as Delhi’s omnipresent crows.
Not even his family knew about his secret life.
Perhaps one day, when his three children were old enough, Baldev Pawar would tell them. But for now it was too risky. If word of his true identity ever leaked out, his life would be in jeopardy and his ability to operate seriously compromised.
Worse, he would be disgraced in
the eyes of his father.
Papa Pawar had, in the best family tradition, spent his life working as a professional thief. And like his father and his father’s father, he had worked diligently to ensure that his sons became proficient, capable crooks themselves.
From the age of seven, Baldev had been trained to pick pockets and relieve aunties of their handbags. As a teenager, he had graduated to locks, ignitions and safes. And in his mid-twenties he had started robbing banks. But after he was caught emptying the safe of the Faridabad branch of the Punjab National Bank and subsequently confined to a rat-infested cell for five years, he had decided to do the unthinkable and go straight. Papa Pawar had been devastated. It was his son’s destiny to rob and cheat; dacoity was in their blood, he’d argued. But India was changing. Just because you were born into a certain caste, tribe or clan didn’t mean that you had to stick to the job description of your forebears, Baldev had argued.
How Baldev, aka Tubelight, had become one of Vish Puri’s operatives was a story in itself. Suffice it to say, it was not one he would ever share with his father or his brothers, all of whom were still in the family business and living nearby. Better that they believe him to be a lowly auto rickshaw driver than find out the truth, that he worked for one of their natural enemies: a jasoos.
Besides, a rickshaw wallah was the perfect cover for the type of work Tubelight was now engaged in – tailing grooms, spying on errant husbands, befriending servants and milking them for their employers’ secrets. He didn’t have to account for his whereabouts to anyone; he could hang around on any street corner or in front of any chai stand without raising suspicion; and – requisite bribes demanded by the police aside – the three-wheeler was an economical and agile means of transport.
Refusing fares was not a problem, either. Dilli wallahs were well accustomed to gruff, unaccommodating auto rickshaw drivers forgoing their custom whenever a requested destination did not suit them.
Still, as Tubelight crisscrossed the city, he sometimes took on board paying punters. Besides making a few extra rupees, it was an excellent way of keeping his finger on the pulse of the city.
This morning, en route to his rendezvous with Puri, all the talk from the backseat had been about yesterday’s sensational murder. An elderly couple had described Kali as if they’d seen her themselves. Towering a hundred feet tall, she had slain dozens of people, hence the police cordon around the area, they said.
“Let us hope she rids us of our politicians!” the old woman had declared.
A fertilizer salesman from Indore believed Kali was going to cleanse the world of sinners. Judging by his terrified expression, it seemed the man had sinned a good deal.
Dainik Jagran, the bestselling Hindi newspaper (readership 56 million), was also preoccupied by the same news.
As Tubelight waited for Puri on the backseat of his auto rickshaw, he read a description of how, last night, “in the interests of national security,” the police had cleared the streets around India Gate of thousands of Kali worshippers.
“Thus far,” the editorial pointed out, “Hindu nationalist politicians have not sought to exploit the situation. Doubtless because of the site’s proximity to Parliament and key ministries, not to mention their own residences, they have appealed for calm.”
“Think Swami-ji did it?” Tubelight asked Puri in Hindi after the detective finally arrived.
The two were standing in front of one of their favorite breakfast dhabas that served kokis. The aroma of onions, green chilies, cumin seeds and fresh coriander frying in ghee wafted over them. They both ordered one of the Sindhi-style pancakes and sipped their cups of chai. The drink seemed to perk up Tubelight, who was still groggy, early mornings being anathema to him.
“If he is the guilty one, proving as much will be a challenge, that is for sure,” said Puri. “We would need someone to get on the inside of his ashram. That is the only way.”
On the hot tawa, the koki mixture spat and sizzled.
“How did you get on last night?” asked the detective in Hindi.
Puri had charged Tubelight with tracking down Constable R.V. Dubey, the first police wallah to have reached the murder scene, to find out if he had seen or heard anything that had not appeared in the offical panchnama.
This was Most Private Investigators’ standard procedure given that constables often failed to report key information to their superiors – either through sheer incompetence (anyone with the ability to sign their own name could become a beat cop and they received no investigative training whatsoever) or deliberately (usually because someone bribed them to keep their mouth shut or they were just plain scared).
“I befriended Constable Dubey at the liquor store,” answered Tubelight, who combined a gift for getting people to talk with an ability to hold his liquor like few men could. “We enjoyed some Old Monk rum together.”
“And?”
“Approaching the scene, he passed an ice cream wallah pushing his cart. He was with a rag picker. Male, twenties, black skin.”
“Paagal!” bawled Puri. “That was the murderer! He just let him walk away, is it?”
“Of course, Boss.” Tubelight shrugged.
Their kokis were served with a dab of fresh butter and some curd and garlic pickle on the side.
As they greedily tore them apart with their fingers, the detective asked: “Did this prize Charlie see the murder weapon?”
“Didn’t see it, Boss.”
“You believe him?”
“Yes, Boss. By the end of the evening he was chattering away like a parrot. Believe me, I learned all his secrets. Most of them I’d have preferred not to have heard.”
“Now I’ve another assignment for you,” said Puri, adding in English: “No rest for wicked, huh?”
Tubelight did not reciprocate Puri’s mischievous smile. He had been working long hours over the past few weeks, and thanks to the heat and constant ‘load shedding’, or power cuts, he and his family had taken to the roof of their small house at night. Sleep had been in short supply, what with the mosquitoes and the incessant arguing of the husband and wife next door. The operative badly needed a few ‘offs’. But now did not seem the time to broach the subject; Boss had that unstoppable look in his eye.
“You know any magicians?” asked Puri.
“Jadoo wallahs?” Tubelight’s eyes widened. “You want to stay clear of them.”
“Why exactly?”
“They’ve got powers. I’ve known them to put curses on people.”
Puri could not help but smile at his operative’s superstitious nature.
“All the same I would need to talk to them,” he insisted.
Tubelight regarded him warily.
“They live in Shadipur Depot, in the slums,” he said. “Have their own language – a magician’s language passed down father to son. No one else understands it. Not even me. But there is one old babu who might help. Calls himself Alcbar the Great.”
♦
Puri’s task for the day was to call on the surviving members of the Laughing Club. Before that, he planned to break into Dr. Jha’s office at DIRE. The detective was certain the institute would be closed and wanted to take the opportunity to snoop through the Guru Buster’s desk and files without anyone else knowing he had done so.
This was typical of Puri’s approach to detective work. ‘Less everyone knows what I know, the better’ was one of his credos.
Handbrake drove him to Nizamuddin West, once a self-contained village abutting the tomb of India’s most revered Sufi saint, but now a South Delhi colony. The India of narrow alleyways filled with Muslim pilgrims, beggars cradling drugged babies and the smoke of sizzling lamb kebabs gave way to well-swept residential streets lined with houses and apartments owned by wealthy Muslim merchants, lawyers and the odd gemstone dealer.
DIRE HQ was a 1950s bungalow. There were rusting bars on the narrow windows and buddleia growing from cracks in the grime-stained walls. A poster on the gate read:
&nbs
p; DO YOU HAVE SUPERNATURAL POWERS?
CAN YOU CURE A TERMINALLY ILL PERSON?
REPAIR A TRANSISTOR WITH USE OF REIKI?
WALK ON WATER?
READ OTHER PEOPLE’S MINDS?
FLY TO THE MOON AND BACK WITHOUT AID OF
SPACESHIP?
IF SO YOU COULD WIN 2 CRORE RUPEES!
JUST PROVE YOUR POWERS IN A LOCATION
SPECIFIED BY RATIONALIST AND ‘GURU BUSTER’
DR. SURESH JHA.
APPLY WITHIN.
IT MAY BE NOTED: THE TWO-CRORE-RUPEES AWARD
IS NOT KEPT IN OUR OFFICE.
As he had anticipated, Puri found the front door padlocked. It was still only nine o’clock and Dr. Jha’s secretary would not be along for at least an hour, if indeed she was coming to work at all, which he doubted. According to Mrs. Jha, with whom Puri had spoken briefly after her husband’s cremation yesterday, the future of DIRE was uncertain. The old Guru Buster had run it more or less single-handedly and had not appointed a successor.
The detective made his way down the side of the building to the kitchen door and found it already open. The lock looked as if it had been forced, probably with a strong, metal implement like a knife.
He could hear activity inside the bungalow – drawers being opened and closed; the rustle of papers; a cough.
Puri stepped inside but had to proceed slowly on account of the squeaky rubber soles of the orthopedic shoes he wore to account for his short left leg.
He crossed the stone kitchen floor on tiptoe without making a sound and entered the reception-cum-administrative office. It was a large room, dark and musty and simply furnished with a couple of desks and chairs, and an old Gestet-ner stencil printer with fresh blue ink on the roller.
The door to Dr. Jha’s office was on the right-hand side of the room. It was closed, but someone was moving around inside.
The detective continued on tiptoe. But as he reached the door, he felt a painful cramp shoot through his left leg. This forced him to stop, and in shifting his weight onto his right foot and almost losing his balance, his shoe squeaked like a child’s bathtime rubber duck.