by Tarquin Hall
Puri froze, his heart beating wildly. He waited for the cramp to ease off, not moving a muscle. It was almost a minute before the pain passed. Then slowly he pushed the door to Dr. Jha’s office open.
It was empty. To the right of the room stood another door that was ajar. Puri approached it cautiously. He pushed it gently open.
Just then he was hit on the back of the head with a hard object. He heard someone say, “Oh, bugger!” before he fell to the floor, unconscious.
♦
When Puri came around, it was to a throbbing head and the sound of a woman’s voice asking him if he could hear her.
Gradually, his vision came into focus. The first thing he saw was a wavering, large red dot. When his sight cleared, he recognized the face of Dr. Jha’s secretary, Ms. Ruchi, who had been at the cremation yesterday. She was wearing a big red bindi.
“Mr. Vish Puri, sir, are you OK?” she asked, staring down at him.
The detective tried to respond, but his words came out slurred.
“Better take rest, sir,” she said. “You’ve had a nasty bash. Fortunately there’s no blood.”
The detective felt the back of his head; a large lump had already formed.
“Whoever it was got you with this, sir,” said Ms. Ruchi, holding up a cricket bat. “Knocked you for six, looks like.”
Another five minutes passed before Puri was able to sit up. The floor around him was scattered with papers, the contents of Dr. Jha’s desk drawers and the drawers themselves. Someone had evidently turned the place over.
“Last thing I remember…” said Puri, who was suffering from mild amnesia, “I was… crossing the reception… I heard… something inside. But after… it’s all… there’s nothing. It’s a blank, only.”
“You saw who hit you, sir?” asked Ms. Ruchi, regarding him with a caring, sympathetic expression.
He hesitated before answering. “I don’t believe so… but…” he answered.
Puri had a nagging feeling, as if there was something he had forgotten to do, but he couldn’t remember what it was. “Could be it will come back to me,” he added. “How long I’ve been here?”
“I’m not sure, sir. I came five minutes back. The time is half past nine.”
Ms. Ruchi helped the detective up into a chair and then went to fetch him a glass of water. Puri sat surveying the office. Pinned to a board on the wall hung a collection of photographs of Dr. Jha and a group of young volunteers working in rural India during a recent DIRE ‘awareness’ campaign. They could be seen taking turns walking across red-hot coals, a feat performed by many traveling sanyasis to demonstrate their ‘supernatural powers’. Watching was a group of villagers. The idea was to impress upon these illiterate peasants that India’s holy men were con artists.
Could some of the volunteers or perhaps a rival rationalist have carried out the murder? the detective wondered hazily. Such types studied the tricks and illusions of Godmen, after all. Perhaps one of them had wanted Dr. Jha out of the way?
“Sir, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what are you doing here?” asked Ms. Ruchi, breaking into his thought processes when she returned with a glass of water.
“Just I was passing by and found the door open. The lock had been forced. So naturally it was my duty to do investigation.”
“I suppose it must have been one of Maharaj Swami’s people,” said Ms. Ruchi.
“You saw him, is it?” asked Puri as he sipped the water and his head began to clear.
“I’m afraid I caught only a glimpse of his back as he climbed over the wall behind the building. He had a car waiting. I heard it drive away.”
“What all he was after?” asked Puri.
“Doctor-sahib’s file on the Godman, most probably.”
“He found it – the file, that is?”
“Fortunately not. Doctor-sahib keeps it hidden away. I mean…” Ms. Ruchi dropped her gaze to the floor; she looked suddenly overcome with sadness. “I mean… he kept it hidden away.”
“I’m most sincerely sorry for your loss,” said Puri, who had not had the opportunity to offer her his condolences at the cremation yesterday. “Dr. Jha will be sorely missed. An upstanding fellow he was in every respect.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said as the tears began to trickle down her face. She dabbed them with her handkerchief, quickly regaining her composure. “Is it true you’re investigating his murder?” She added quickly: “Mrs. Jha told me.”
“Most certainly,” he answered. “And let me assure you, my dear Ms. Ruchi, I will be most definitely getting to the bottom of it by hook or crook. Vish Puri always gets his man – or in this case I should say ‘his deity’, isn’t it?”
“I’m pleased to hear it, sir,” she said. “I’d be happy to help in any way I can. As much as anyone, I want Maharaj Swami to face justice.”
“You’re certain it was he who committed the act, is it?”
“Who else could it have been?” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, as if Puri had blasphemed. “Dr. Jha was Maharaj Swami’s enemy number one. He had been campaigning against him tirelessly. And recently he had been investigating a suspicious suicide of a young woman at the Godman’s ashram, the Abode of Eternal Love. Her name was Manika Gill. Dr. Jha believed she was murdered.
“And there’s another thing,” continued Ms. Ruchi. “Yesterday Dr. Jha received a death threat. I’ll fetch it for you.”
She disappeared into the reception and soon returned with the piece of paper pasted with letters cut from a Hindi newspaper. Puri read it out loud: “‘Whenever there is a withering of the law and an uprising of lawlessness on all sides, then I manifest myself. For the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of such as do evil, for the firm establishing of the Law, I come to birth, age after age.”
“That is from Bhagavad Gita – book four, I believe,” said the detective. “Some believe it means Lord Vishnu will appear on earth when humanity no longer understands right from wrong. It is a kind of doomsday prophecy. How this arrived?”
“It was hand-delivered – put through the letterbox the day before yesterday. That was Monday.”
“Dr. Jha’s reaction was what exactly?”
“He didn’t take death threats seriously, Mr. Puri – he’s had quite a few over the years, as you can imagine.”
“Ms. Ruchi, be good enough to give me one copy of this thing and keep the original safe here with you.”
“Absolutely, sir. There’s a photocopy wallah under the pilu tree in the street.”
“I would also be most grateful for one copy of Dr. Jha’s file on Maharaj Swami, also. That is at all possible?”
“Of course, sir. I’ll go and fetch it.”
She went to find the file while the detective stood up, still feeling unsteady, and made his way back into the kitchen.
Getting the lock dusted for fingerprints would be a waste of time, he reasoned. But Puri wanted to see if there were any other clues: perhaps a boot mark on the floor or a thread caught on a nail.
He was examining the door when Ms. Ruchi came to find him, clutching the bulging file.
“To tell you the truth, that lock was easy to open,” she said. “One time I forgot my keys and I managed to get in using a screwdriver I keep in the car. I’ve been meaning to get it fixed for ages. Later this morning I’ll get the lock wallah to come.”
“Anyone else knew it was broken?”
“Not that I’m aware. The only other people who use it are the cleaners.”
Puri had seen enough and accompanied the secretary out into the street to make use of the photocopy wallah’s services.
“Tell me, Ms. Ruchi,” he said, “why you came into the office today? You should be taking rest, no?”
“Someone has to be here to look after the office and…” Her eyes started to well up again. “I suppose I wanted to be here… to be, well, near him. Does that sound strange?”
“Not at all. It is quite understandable.”
Tears started t
o flood down her face.
“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” she said, straining to keep her voice steady. “Dr. Jha was like a father to me – so calm and kind. It’s like there’s a big hole in my heart. What am I to do without him?”
∨ The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing ∧
Seven
As Puri headed off to interview the surviving members of the Laughing Club, his wife was sitting down in Lily Arora’s five-bedroom house in Greater Kailash Part Two, a posh South Delhi colony.
This month’s venue for Rumpi’s kitty party club, the living room had been appointed with furnishings ‘inspired’ by the ancient world. The mahogany coffee table in the middle of the room was built like a Grecian altar. The Italian sofas, with their gold arms fashioned like great curling leaves, were suggestive of Roman licentiousness. Black and gold pharaoh heads and sphinxes purchased in the gift shop of a Las Vegas hotel adorned both the side tables and the marble mantelpiece with its decorative Zoroastrian winged lions. Bunches of plastic sunflowers in replica Phoenician vases were dotted around the place – along with Chinese dragon napkin holders filled with pink paper serviettes.
The sofas’ hard, slippery upholstery and curvy backs did not make them conducive to reclining or lounging. Rumpi and the fourteen other kitty party members – all housewives, most of whom she had known for years – had to sit on the edge of their seats. This suited Mrs. Nanda, who, with a straight back, a level chin and a sprinkling of gold jewelry, was a model of poise and elegance. Petite, bespectacled Mrs. Shankar, who practiced yoga and meditation and always dressed in long, loose capris and block-printed achkans, perched gracefully as well. But for the likes of Mrs. Devi, who by her own admittance had a ‘sweet tooth and a salty one, also’ and took up a much greater portion of seating space than the aforementioned ladies, Lily Arora’s furnishings were both an uncomfortable and unflattering proposition.
“What I wouldn’t do for a beanbag right now,” Mrs. Devi murmured to Rumpi.
Still, as the servants circulated with platters of ‘ready-made’ chai, spicy chiwda, peanut chili salad and veg samo-sas, the room was thick with conversation – not to mention Lily Arora’s heady perfume. On one side of the room, the recent plunge in the Mumbai stock market was being discussed. In the middle, the talk was of the upcoming end-of-year school exams. And a clutch of ladies nearest the mock fireplace were making plans to attend a concert by Anoushka Shankar in Nehru Park.
Soon, though, news spread through the room that Mrs. Bina Bakshi’s daughter-in-law had ‘fled the coop’ – in other words, her in-laws’ house.
Mrs. Nanda, whose husband was a high-powered accountant, had heard that ‘the boy’ drank a lot. “Apparently he reverts tully each and every night,” she reported. “Mrs. Bakshi’s daughter-in-law was under depression.”
Mrs. Devi, the wife of a top bureaucrat, eagerly grasped the gossip baton, passing on that she had been told by an undisclosed source that Mrs. Bakshi and ‘the girl’ had ‘not hit it off from the moment she came home’.
Mrs. Bansal, the only woman present to have attended the fabled Bakshi wedding at the Hyatt, spoke up next.
Mrs. Bakshi’s daughter-in-law, she said disapprovingly, had ‘modern ideas’. Not being a ‘domesticated person’, she was trying to put off having children in order to further her career in marketing ‘or some such nonsense’.
“Her parents must feel so ashamed,” commented another woman. “Personally I can’t imagine.”
“Has she no respect?” another voice chimed in.
It was then that Puri’s gray-haired mother, who at Rum-pi’s invitation had joined the kitty party for the first time, spoke up. “So much change in society is going on, I tell you,” she said. “Relationships are getting all in a twist, na? Boys are mostly to blame. One minute wanting educated girls, next demanding stay-at-home wives. So much confusion is there, actually.”
As she was the eldest in the room by some fifteen years, her words engendered a chorus of approval.
“Very true, Auntie-ji.”
“Quite right.”
“I totally agree.”
But by the end of the discussion, the majority view still held.
“Men are not perfect, that is for sure,” concluded Lily Arora, whose hot pink kurta, churidar and high heels with glittery silver straps were set off by more makeup than all the other women wore put together. “But it’s a wife’s role to manage. Look at what I’ve had to put up with. Sanjeev is a rascal, quite frankly. But running away was unthinkable. It would have brought so much pain to both families, mine and his. In these situations one has to think of others.
“As for husbands,” she continued, “my dog trainer, Arti, always says to reward your pooch when he does what you ask and give appropriate correction when he doesn’t. Same has worked with Sanjeev.”
After the laughter had died down, Mrs. Deepak announced the birth of a fifth grandson. Amar, weight nine pounds, had been born at the Happy Go Lucky Maternity Home.
“By cesarean,” she added, beaming proudly.
Mrs. Azmat then shared her news. Since the ladies had last got together a month ago, she and her husband had gone on a cruise around the Great Lakes.
“They are really great in every sense,” she said, showing the other women some of the dozens of photographs her husband had taken of her obscuring a series of dramatic landscapes.
The conversation drifted on – the events on Rajpath were discussed, the astronomical price of gold and news of a fresh dengue outbreak in the city.
“Even the president’s son got it.”
“Just imagine.”
“No one is safe.”
At around one o’clock, Lily Arora finally brought the group to order and made various announcements. Next month’s get-together was to be held at Chor Bizarre, which offered a kitty party lunch special for 500 rupees per head. Her son and daughter-in-law, who were members of one of the new ‘couples kitties’, had been there and found it ‘quite satisfactory’.
Next, this month’s guest speaker, a physical exercise trainer called Bappi, entered the room. A diminutive but muscular young man with dyed yellow hair, he took Lily Arora’s place in front of the fireplace with the portrait of Sanjeev Arora’s stern-looking grandfather looming behind him. As the ladies continued to munch on deep-fried chiwda, he asked if any of them had diabetes. Eight hands went up.
How many of them exercised properly?
Again there was a strong show of hands.
“Ladies, casual walking does not count,” admonished Bappi.
Most of the hands went down.
Bappi then turned to a flip chart that he had set up on a stand. The first page depicted a dumpy middle-aged Indian woman. Next to her stood an extremely athletic-looking Western lady in a leotard, GO FROM AUNTIE-JI TO MISS WOW! read a message underneath.
“You, too, can look like this with just thirty minutes’ training every day at Counter Contours,” announced Bappi. “Our training program is tailor-made for all ages.”
He spent the next fifteen minutes demonstrating some simple exercises. When he was finished, the ladies gave him a round of applause.
“I’m sure we agree that we can all do more to stay fit and fine and Mr. Bappi has made some wonderful suggestions,” said Lily Arora as the trainer packed up and left.
It was now time for the most eagerly anticipated moment of the party: the kitty draw.
Traditionally, each member of a kitty party brings a fixed sum of cash every month. The total pot is then awarded to the member whose name is drawn from a hat. Each member can only win once, so essentially the kitty is an interest-free loan system.
Lily Arora’s kitty reflected the more modern values of India’s middle classes in that some of the cash was given to charity and some was put aside for group vacations, like the one to Corbett National Park the ladies were planning for later in the year.
This was their fifth draw.
“Ladies, it’s time to get out
your cash,” said Mrs. Arora, holding up a plastic bag. “I’m adding my five thousand rupees. Please, ladies, all do the same. Only exception is Mrs. Puri, who is joining us for the first time and is therefore required to add five months’ total amount. Admittedly this is an unusual practice, but we are delighted to have Auntie-ji joining us.”
The ladies all unclasped their handbags and took out wads of notes. These were placed in the bag.
“Today’s kitty is eighty thousand. Of that, ten thousand we are donating to charity. This month Mrs. Azmat has nominated one NGO assisting slum children called Smile Foundation. Twenty goes into the holiday fund. That leaves sixty. All those ladies who have not collected their share in past months are eligible to draw.”
A ripple of anticipation ran through the room as twelve of the ladies, including both Rumpi and Mummy, wrote their names on little pieces of paper. Once folded, these were dropped into a small plastic bucket.
Lily Arora gave it a good shake, stirred the papers and, with closed eyes, picked a name.
“And the winner is,” she said, pausing for dramatic effect like Shahrukh Khan on Kaun Banega Crorepati? “Neeru Deepak! Congratulations!”
Mrs. Deepak, the one with the abundance of grandchildren, let out a squeal of delight and collected her money.
“Tell us. What all are you going to do with it?” asked the hostess as she handed over the winnings.
“I promised my eldest grandson a new Xbox. His birthday is coming up,” she said.
“Very good,” said Lily Arora, smiling. “So as per the rules you will make your contribution next month but not be eligible for the draw. Also at our next meeting you are the one responsible for providing going-away presents.”
The ladies returned to their tea and gossip as they waited for lunch to be served.
About ten minutes later, Lily Arora’s poodle started barking in one of the back rooms. There came a crash from the kitchen. Raised voices could be heard. Rumpi thought it was likely a servant dispute of some sort. But then two men burst into the living room wearing women’s stockings over their faces.