by Tarquin Hall
The detective stood with his eyes closed and his hands pressed together, entreating Shiva for protection from negative forces conspiring against him. The priest then smeared his forehead with a daub of vermillion paste, gave him a string of rudraksha beads, and pressed blessed halva and a few sultana raisins into his upturned hands.
With the god duly on his side, Puri returned to the car and shared the prasad with Facecream and the driver.
To the west of Lucknow, past rains had carved deep gorges into the earth’s crust. They spread like fractures in a pane of glass across the umber-colored landscape—perfect hideouts and smuggling routes for the likes of the infamous Bandit Queen, who’d once been the scourge of the area.
Despite the evidence of bygone deluges, this year’s monsoon was late here too, and the earth was wracked with thirst. Even at this early hour, it was evident that today would bring no reprieve. There was not a wisp of cloud in the sky: just the reds and pinks of dawn and the promise of a harsh, punishing sun.
The legions of truck drivers, who spent the best parts of their lives in cramped cabs hauling goods over thousands of miles, knew this better than most. Their battle-scarred carriages jostled for position along the highway, charging at one another like angry bison in a race against the fiery globe inching over the horizon. The tiny hatchback found itself boxed in amongst monster wheels and lopsided loads that threatened to topple over at any second. Engines roared and air horns blared, drowning out any attempt at conversation. Puri and Facecream were forced to pass most of the journey in silence. Indeed, it wasn’t until they’d covered nearly a hundred miles and the traffic had begun to thin that the detective outlined how he intended to proceed.
“Better if I travel to Ram’s village alone,” he said, reasoning that it would be a mistake for them to be seen together. “We will find a dhaba or some such place on the highway where you can wait.”
Facecream could sense a certain distance in Puri’s manner. This was born, no doubt, from her admission to moonlighting with the Love Commandos. He was somewhat possessive, after all, and probably looked down on the organization’s activities to boot. Puri could be stubbornly old-fashioned about certain things, and the institution of arranged marriages was one of his pet issues. She’d heard him voice opinions on the subject before. Although he was no caste apologist, he’d sounded pompous and out of touch.
She soon realized that despite dropping everything and rushing to her assistance, he also harbored serious misgivings about the case and even suggested that the whole thing might be a ruse.
“Sir, there’s no doubt Ram was abducted,” Facecream insisted. “There was every sign of a struggle and all his possessions were left behind.”
“You’re certain, is it? No chance whatsoever he decided not to go the marriage way?”
“No, sir. I’ve no doubt he loves Tulsi very much.”
Puri’s expression suggested he considered this a flimsy argument. “There are other considerations in life, also,” he said.
“Sir, I agreed to help Ram because I believe in him,” said Facecream. “In this day and age, why shouldn’t he be able to choose his life partner freely and she hers?”
Puri frowned and Facecream decided not to push the point further. She was deeply grateful to him for coming all this way. In spite of his quirks, he was the one person she could rely on to help.
“All I can tell you is that Ram planned to marry her,” she reiterated. “We were planning to take them to the temple right away.”
“And these other volunteers, your Love Commando types, they’re all to be trusted?”
“No question.”
“What if one of them betrayed Ram?”
“If you met them, sir, you’d see they’re all loyal and dedicated.”
Puri’s nod indicated that Facecream’s judgment on this matter at least was good enough for him.
“What else you can tell me about the boy?” he asked.
“I’d call him brave. He’s not backed down despite everything. He’s resourceful as well. As a child he didn’t go to school. His family are traditionally swine herders. But he saved enough to buy books and taught himself. Eventually, with his mother’s help, he got a place in a high school in Lucknow and moved into the city. When it came to getting accepted into university, he had to fight hard to get a place. Despite the reserved seats for his subcaste, he faced a lot of discrimination. He’s been beaten up more than once.”
“When did you see him for the last time?”
“Yesterday, before we set off for Agra University to fetch Tulsi.”
“How you would describe his mental state exactly?” asked Puri.
“He was nervous—no doubt about that. Very jittery and preoccupied, in fact. But then you would be too, if a man like Vishnu Mishra had sworn to kill you.”
“You know where all he’d been staying these past weeks?”
“He’d managed to rent a room somewhere in Agra. I got the impression that he’d visited his village in the past few days, though. He mentioned seeing his mother after a long time. They are very close.”
Facecream paused. She felt a sudden inclination to explain to him why she’d volunteered for the Love Commandos, why she was so passionate about the cause. Perhaps if she told him about her past, he’d understand. But then his phone rang and as he answered it, the moment passed.
The approach to Govind, Ram’s village, looked timelessly idyllic in the pearly morning sun. A sandy lane led through fields of ripening wheat, and beyond, humpback zebu cows pulled wooden plows through the dark alluvium. Water being pumped from bore wells formed little streams that glistened in the sun like some magical elixir. Even the fumes from petrol generators hanging above the landscape like morning mist looked enchanting.
They passed a single-story building that stood on its own in the middle of a fenced-off plot. A red cross painted on its side indicated that it was a clinic. The rusty padlock on the door and the weeds growing in the cracks of the porch suggested it was government funded.
Govind’s only school was next—a collection of simple buildings with bars in the windows arranged in a semicircle around a banyan tree. There was a marked lack of activity here, too. It was now half past seven and the front gates were closed. An empty chair stood sentinel.
Twenty yards beyond, farmsteads with cow dung patties drying on their walls marked the outskirts of Govind proper. Chickens pecked about in patches of chaff where wheat had been threshed by hand. An old man with languid eyes sitting on a charpai stared at the hatchback as if it was the first car he’d ever seen. His wife crouched on the doorstep of their house sweeping away the dust with a reed broom while holding the pallu of her brightly colored sari across one side of her face.
Gradually, the buildings grew denser, the lane narrowed and the car entered an open space in the center of the village. To one side stood a small shop offering everyday products like hair oil, soft drinks, cigarettes and strips of foil pouches containing gutka and paan masala.
Puri wound down his window and asked the shopkeeper for directions to Ram’s home. The man seemed to anticipate the question and made an impatient gesture with his hand. The “salla bhangi,” as he referred to the Dalit, lived on the other side of the village. “Take the lane to the left and follow the smell.”
The detective’s face showed marked disgust as he told his driver to carry on. Delhi society might have been acutely hierarchical, but nowadays, amongst the middle classes at least, money generally counted more than caste. A Dalit with the means could buy his way into any neighborhood; similarly, Brahmins no longer found themselves at the top of the pecking order by right of birth. But this wasn’t Delhi. And although untouchability had been outlawed as long ago as 1947, and it was no longer unheard of for Dalits living in rural India to be invited to upper-caste weddings (and occasionally even eat off the same plates), Puri could see that Govind remained strictly segregated. Away from the large houses and cars, the sacred bathing pool and the richly ad
orned temple complete with a well-fed and especially smug-looking pandit, the Dalit ghetto was grim. Perched on a rocky slope that led down to a trench filled with garbage, a collection of mud and thatch houses stood alongside a filthy stockade holding a few cows and water buffalo.
There weren’t many people about—some men tanning hides, a few women milking the cows, three or four kids playing cricket with a tennis ball. One by one, they all stopped what they were doing and hurried indoors. By the time the hatchback came to a stop and Puri got out, there wasn’t a single person in sight.
The detective considered knocking on one of the doors and explaining the purpose of his visit, but decided instead to go and sit in the shade of the only tree and wait for someone to come to him.
Gandhi, he reflected, had seen village life as essential to the survival of Indian society. “If the village perishes, India will perish too,” he wrote. His romantic notions of the rural ideal were shared by many an Indian even today. As a younger man, Puri had shared them as well. But experience had changed this perception. The former Dalit leader Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s assertion that the village was “a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism” had proven closer to the truth in the sixty or so years since independence. Sitting there, Puri thanked his lucky stars that he had born and brought up in a city, even if he often bemoaned the negative sides of urban living and the creeping Westernization of the nation’s youth.
Ten minutes passed. And then a man approached. Like the other Dalits, his clothes were old and dirty and he was clearly malnourished. His face and body bore signs of an additional indignity: he’d been badly beaten within the past few days and his cheeks and forehead were bruised. Had Puri not known better, he might have attributed the stranger’s cautious, subservient demeanor to the violence he’d endured and not a natural timidity born of a lifetime of repression.
“Saab, I am the government-appointed village chowkidar and it is my duty to ask you your business here,” he explained in Hindi, hands pressed together in a namaste.
Puri improvised. “I’ve come to make a full report about the incident,” he said without elaborating.
“You’re with the police, saab?” asked the chowkidar.
“From Delhi.” He was certain that mention of the far-off capital would be enough to establish his authority. Taking out his notepad and pen, he added, “Tell me what happened to you.”
The chowkidar eyed the items with apprehension. “Which incident, saab?”
“You’ve been beaten.”
A coy smile spread across the man’s face. “It’s nothing, saab,” he said with a shake of his hand. “A misunderstanding.”
“With whom?”
A schoolboy giggle spilled out of him. “What’s done is done. No complaint.”
“Were the men who did this to you looking for Ram Sunder?”
The chowkidar pressed his hands together again, this time in supplication. “Please, saab. I’m a humble man. I don’t want trouble.”
“Then tell me this: when was the last time you saw Ram?”
“Just three or four days back, saab. Since then we’ve not seen him. Believe me! If he were here, I would tell you willingly. Why should we suffer for him?”
Puri gave a nod. “How long did he stay?”
“A few hours. He came late at night. By morning he’d gone.”
“Has anyone else come today looking for him?”
“No, saab.”
“Last night?”
“No one.”
Puri checked his watch. It was almost eight. If Vishnu Mishra was coming, he would be here soon.
“Show me Ram’s house,” he said.
“It’s the one over there. The brick one.”
Shielding his eyes from the sun, Puri looked to where the chowkidar was pointing. The house stood at the bottom of the slope and was indeed built of brick, the only one of its kind in the Dalit section. There was another thing: the construction was new.
“Saab, it was made last month.”
“What does the father do?”
“Nothing. He sits around. She’s a midwife.”
Midwives were traditionally considered polluted and were invariably all Dalits. They earned a pittance.
“Then where did the money come from?” asked Puri.
“Ram sent it. He’s the only child.”
The detective noticed a satellite dish on the roof—an incongruous sight given the inherent impoverishment of this part of the village.
“They have a TV?” he asked.
“His father bought it.”
“With money sent by Ram?”
“Yes, saab.”
“When?”
“A few weeks back.”
“There’s electricity?”
“It comes and goes.”
Puri started toward the house. They passed a water pump, the only one in the Dalit section. It appeared to be broken. A well-trodden path ran down through the fields beyond the village to a river about a mile away. It explained why the chowkidar smelled of river water.
“Are Ram’s parents at home?” the detective asked as they approached the house.
“His father is there.”
“And the mother?”
The chowkidar didn’t answer.
“Where is she?” Puri demanded.
“She left, saab.”
“Left the village?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last night. After dark.”
“And she hasn’t come back?”
The chowkidar shook his head, eyes cast down.
There was a sudden urgency to Puri’s step as he strode up to the front door of the house. This might well be a serious business after all. The boy’s life, the mother’s too, perhaps, was at stake. He found the door open and hanging off its hinges, a boot tread clearly visible across the grain.
Puri pushed his way inside. The room beyond was sparsely furnished, the floor bare concrete. A man sat snoring in a lone chair, his head resting on his chest. The TV in front of him had a cracked screen and a dent in its side, yet it still worked and was tuned to the Filmy channel. Bollywood’s Govinda was gyrating his hips in front of a Swiss Alpine landscape.
“Is this the father?” Puri asked the chowkidar, who’d entered the house behind him.
“That’s him, saab.”
There were a couple of empty plastic bottles lying discarded on the floor. Puri didn’t need to pick up and examine them to tell what they had contained. The whole place reeked of tharra.
His attention was drawn to the far wall of the room, which was plastered with posters, flyers and cutouts from newspapers all depicting Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Baba Dhobi.
“For Ram’s parents, he is God,” explained the chowkidar, as he stood behind the detective. “When the party sends buses, she goes to his political rallies. Any opportunity to see him.”
“And you? You voted for him?”
“Of course. We all did. He gives us hope.”
Puri took a closer look at the collection on the wall. There was a photo mixed in. It showed a handsome young man in a T-shirt and jeans standing next to a village woman. They were posing in front of a statue of Baba Dhobi.
“That’s Ram and his mother, Kamlesh,” said the chowkidar. “They traveled to Lucknow last year.”
Puri took the photograph off the wall, slipped it inside his safari suit and went to rouse the father.
“Hey, you, wake up!” he bellowed, and gave the man a rough shake. “I want to talk to you!”
The man snorted a couple of times and opened his bloodshot eyes.
“Kya?” he said with a grimace.
“He’s with the police,” bawled the chowkidar in a belligerent tone that could not have been more different from the one in which he addressed Puri. “You’d better answer his questions!”
The detective could see now that the father had also been badly beaten in the past few days.
&n
bsp; “Do you know where your son is?” he demanded.
His question was drowned out by the sound of “dishooms!”—the exaggerated fight-scene sound effects coming from the TV. Puri turned off the set and repeated his question.
“He was here but he left,” replied the father.
“Where did he go?”
“How should I know?”
“How does he make his money?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Who beat you?”
“Some men. They were looking for Ram.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did you tell them?”
“What I told you.”
Puri rolled his eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. This was a waste of time. What brain cells this simpleton had ever possessed had been destroyed by seventy-proof moonshine and Govinda movies. He went to look around the rest of the house and found two bedrooms, a basic kitchen equipped with a sigri and a few pots and pans, and a bathroom devoid of plumbing.
There were, however, a couple of items of interest: a newly opened mobile phone box and, plugged into an electrical socket, a charger with a cord that had recently been uncoiled.
Pushing open the back door in the kitchen, he found himself in a small, walled enclosure. To one side there was a hole in the ground about a foot deep. Next to it lay a pile of freshly dug earth.
Retracing his steps into the kitchen, Puri found what appeared to have been retrieved from the hole: a stainless steel box with traces of dirt inside.
He carried the box into the main room. What had it contained? he demanded from the father.
“Kya?”
“Who dug the hole in the ground?”