by Tarquin Hall
Puri made a note of this as his secretary went on.
“One thing is strange, sir,” she commented. “There’s no information available about this organization. No articles have been written about their work in any journals. The staff is not quoted anywhere that I can see. None of its research is published online. And another thing, sir—only an e-mail address is provided.”
Puri was quiet for a moment and then said, “Let us shake the tree and see what all falls down.”
“Sir?”
“Madam Rani, please be good enough to send them one e-mail message on my behalf. Make mention that I have been in the village of Govind and spoken to certain Dalits with bruises on their arms. Provide my identity and mobile number and request an interview with the director at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile I’ll endeavor to find out their location.”
Puri spent the next half an hour calling various contacts in the world of medicine to ask if any of them knew of the Indian Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, and was eventually given an Agra post office box listed in a medical directory.
Deep spent the night on the floor of Facecream’s room, his hardened, streetwise demeanor melting into innocence in slumber. He slept on his front the way children do, his legs splayed and arms flopped by his sides.
Over breakfast, he was quiet.
Facecream asked if anything was the matter.
“You’re not a teacher, are you, ma’am?” he said.
She put her food to one side. “No, I’m not,” she admitted.
“What then? Police?”
“I’m looking for Ram Sunder. Someone abducted him and I’m trying to find out what happened.”
Deep didn’t look surprised. But then nothing seemed to faze him. “You think he’s still alive?” he asked, his tone faintly mocking.
“Until it’s proven otherwise I have to keep looking.”
“Why?”
“Because I promised to help him. And he’s my friend.”
The boy lapsed into silent thought as if the concept of friendship was new to him. Half of his breakfast remained in his bowl. He began to spoon it into his mouth again.
“I’ve got to get to work,” he said.
Facecream couldn’t help but smile to herself as she watched him eat. She’d been a lot like the boy at that age—old beyond her years with a tough exterior born of an equally rough, unforgiving childhood and desperate never to show the slightest sign of vulnerability.
“Deep, I need your help,” she said. “I have to find out if Ram’s mother, Kamlesh, got on a bus—and where she went. It’s very important. At the chai stand, you see all the buses leaving and know all the conductors. You hear all the talk as well.”
“Is that why you’re being nice to me? Giving me chicken, walking with me, so I’ll tell you what you want to know?”
“I admit I came to see you hoping to get information. But I like you, Deep. I want to help you.”
“Like the children who come to school?”
“Yes.”
“When you get what you want, you’ll leave.”
“I’m not like that. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
“You’ve told them you’re going to give them better food and proper teaching.”
“I’ll do everything I can to make sure those things happen.”
The boy finished eating in silence, cleared away his bowl, and went to rinse out his mouth.
Facecream followed him to the washbasin.
“If I can find out what happened to Kamlesh, there’s a chance, just a chance, that we might be able to find Ram—assuming he’s still alive.”
“What if I tell you what you want to know and someone finds out? You’ll be gone and then what? I’m the one who will have to face the consequences.”
“I’ll make sure nothing happens to you—I promise.”
Deep found his bike and strapped on his wooden blocks.
Facecream appealed again for his help. But she was forced to watch him ride off through the gates like a mother who, despite her best intentions, felt misunderstood.
Upon reaching Agra, Puri headed straight for the main post office, where, in the canteen around the back of the building, he managed to persuade one of the employees to indulge in a little felonious activity.
Escorted into a dusty filing room, Puri spent an hour searching through the card indexing system of PO box numbers, which had suffered the ravages of heat, humidity, monsoon floods, rodents, termites and pesticide—not to mention the usual dust and the odd chai spillage. By a minor miracle, he found ICMB’s card and was able to decipher the spidery handwriting.
At midday he was back beyond the Agra city limits, driving through a so-called Special Economic Zone. It was one of dozens set up across the country and comprised hundreds of acres of formerly agricultural land that had been forcibly purchased by the government and sold to industry at a handsome profit. Much of it lay fallow, with large empty plots surrounded by brick walls and signs warning trespassers to keep out. Along the borders of the tarmac roads that crisscrossed this forlorn landscape, countless piles of broken concrete, bricks and plaster had been dumped from other construction sites. They passed the odd factory, processing plant and storage depot where trucks were being loaded and off-loaded.
And then, like a mirage, the ICMB building came into view—a three-story cube of blue reflective glass.
It was surrounded by twenty-foot-high walls topped with razor wire, turrets mounted with CCTV cameras, a double set of gates with a raised anticrash barrier in between, and uniformed security personnel.
The only sign read NO ENTRY.
Puri got out of his car and was approaching the gate when his phone rang. A young woman introduced herself as the assistant to Dr. Arnab Sengupta, ICMB’s head of research.
“His diary is full. The earliest he can see you is Tuesday of next week,” she said.
“I’m outside the gates now, actually,” Puri responded.
“Outside where?”
“Your facility,” he said. “It is a big blue glass construction, no?”
There was a stunned silence. The assistant mumbled something about having to call him back and hung up.
Puri returned to the car to sit in the air-conditioning while he waited. His tree-shaking strategy seemed to be working. The fact that the assistant had called him suggested that whoever was in charge at ICMB wanted to get a look at him, find out what his game was. He’d certainly proven his tenacity by turning up at their door. But from here on, he was going to have to improvise, jugaad being his watchword.
He passed the next ten minutes staring out the window. The odd pye-dog scurried past. A man sitting perfectly perpendicular on a straight-bar bicycle came and went. A couple of hundred yards away, four laborers worked in the baking sun, digging a ditch. A couple of tents were pitched nearby, the roofs made of blue plastic. Puri guessed this was where the laborers slept at night. A woman and some children squatted outside the entrance of one, cooking on a couple of bricks and some chunks of coal. What must it be like to be so destitute, he found himself wondering suddenly. There was surely nothing noble about poverty. And yet the wealthy often ended up worse off—blinded by their conceit.
The sound of his phone ringing broke into his thoughts.
“Dr. Sengupta will see you,” said the assistant. “I’m sending someone out to collect you.”
Passing through the reception and the windowless corridor beyond was like entering a science fiction spaceship. The walls were a futuristic silver. Spotlights dappled the carpeting in recurrent circles. Automatic doors swished open and closed with precision.
Finally a conventional wooden door opened into a large, modern office. It could have been located anywhere in the world. The only natural feature was a potted plant, and even that looked like it might not last long beyond the confines of its fabricated environment.
As for Dr. Sengupta himself, Puri would have guessed that he was Bengali even without
knowing his last name. His ethnicity could be read from his bone structure, dusky skin and bookish demeanor. Was there ever a “Bong” doctor, academic or intellectual, who didn’t wear glasses?
“Come in, Mr. Puri,” said Dr. Sengupta, his tone brisk and awkward. “You’ll take tea, coffee, water?”
“Nothing.”
Dr. Sengupta wore a white laboratory coat over a shirt and tie with a couple of pens sticking out of his breast pocket. The diplomas framed on the wall bespoke a lifetime in academia and research, the dustbin brimming with paper coffee cups of a workaholic nature. Not exactly the social type, Puri surmised, noting the absence of a wedding ring despite his age, which he put at around forty.
The female assistant, who’d escorted Puri from reception and lingered in the doorway for further instruction, pulled the door shut.
“I understand you found us all on your own?” said Dr. Sengupta as Puri placed a copy of his card on the desk and sat down. “Would you mind telling me how you managed that?”
“Will and way, sir—will and way,” said Puri.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“A trade secret if you like.”
“I see,” said Dr. Sengupta with impatience. “Well, I suppose we all have them—trade secrets. It’s just that we have gone to considerable lengths to remain anonymous.”
“I would certainly say so, sir. There is not even so much as one sign outside your facility.”
“I suppose that makes you suspicious?”
“It is certainly unusual, is it not?”
“Our research is extremely sensitive, Mr. Puri. We have to take our security seriously.”
“You’ve been threatened, is it, sir?”
“We deal with genetics, Mr. Puri, and by default that’s about people’s identities. I don’t need to tell you that identity—or at least people’s perceived notions of their identities—can be a thorny issue in India to say the least. Our findings are highly controversial. They answer definitively, once and for all, who we are and where we came from. Potentially that poses a threat to certain sections of society. When it comes to caste and Hindu identity, there are numerous vested interests. But then science always threatens preconceived notions amongst the narrow-minded.”
There was a hint of the evangelical in Dr. Sengupta’s voice.
“You are on something of a crusade, is it, sir?” asked the detective.
“We are a research institute, Mr. Puri. But I would say this: India will never progress, never join the rest of the civilized world, until we are rid of the caste system once and for all. It is utterly divisive, breeds corruption in our political system and ensures that tens of millions of Indians remain mired in poverty and ignorance—a great albatross around our collective necks. So, yes, it is my sincerest hope that our research will change the way society regards itself.”
“You’ve no argument from me on that count, sir,” said Puri, who wasn’t sure what an albatross was but decided not to ask. “But I fail to understand how your research will change things.”
“Mr. Puri, what is caste?” asked Dr. Sengupta, although the question was clearly rhetorical. “A hereditary transmission of a style of life that often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy and customary interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution. We are born into it, in other words. I, for example, am a Vaidya Brahmin. We are one of the elite classes of Bengal—physicians by tradition. If you believe in fairy tales, I’m descended from Pandit Budhsen, a notable Vedic scholar. That chain is believed to be unbroken, lending us a perceived purity. However, an analysis of my own genetic sequencing proves that although my forebears have long remained endogamous—that is to say they have married within their own community—I’m the product of two genetically divergent and heterogeneous populations that mixed in ancient times: in lay terms, Indo-Europeans and Dravidians.”
“The concept of racial purity is thus proven false,” ventured Puri.
“As is the entire basis of the hierarchical structure of caste.”
“Mind-blowing,” murmured the detective, who could certainly see why such findings would prove controversial.
“You see, Mr. Puri, India is quite unique. The range of genetic diversity is up to four times higher here than it is in, say, Europe. Yet for the best part of three millennia, there’s been little mixing between communities. Time and again we’re finding people from different castes, religions and tribes living in close proximity to one another—sometimes separated by a matter of meters—who’ve never intermarried. You might liken this phenomenon to pools of water high up on a beach, separated from one another and the tide.”
Puri took out his notebook and scribbled a few lines. Then he stopped, frowned and rubbed his forehead. “I’m getting confusion,” he said.
Dr. Sengupta checked his watch. “Yes, Mr. Puri,” he breathed.
“You say you are mapping the population’s DNA, but for the purposes of knowledge, only, or you are seeking some profit, also?”
“Our principal activity here at ICMB is the study of genetic disorders.”
“Disorders, sir?”
“Mr. Puri, I’m not sure I have time to explain the whole science to you. But genetic disorders are caused by sequence variation in genes and chromosomes. Some are inherited, others are caused by new mutations. Some types of recessive gene disorders confer an advantage in certain environments.”
There was a knock on the door and Dr. Sengupta greeted it with marked relief. “Come!”
A tall, broad-shouldered foreign gentleman with combed-back flaxen hair appeared. He was wearing a flannel suit and a sharp, blue-striped shirt. “Justus Bergstrom, ICMB director,” was how he introduced himself in an accent reminiscent of the old newsreaders on Radio Moscow—a kind of cross between American and Eastern European.
“My apologies, I was in another meeting,” he said as he shook Puri by the hand. “I hope Dr. Sengupta here has cleared up any preconceived notions you might have formed?”
“Preconceived notions, sir?” asked Puri.
“That we might be exploiting people,” said Bergstrom, who hovered to one side of the desk. “You’ve been in one of the villages where we’ve been working, I understand.”
“In one such village, sir.”
“Our team was there some three months ago, I believe?” Bergstrom looked to Dr. Sengupta for verification of this and the Bengali gave a nod.
“So what exactly is your concern, um, sorry, Mr.”—he looked at the detective’s business card—“Mr. Poori.”
“A poori is a type of fried bread, puffed and all. I’m a Puri, actually,” said the detective.
“My apologies. My Swedish accent. And these Indian names, you know.” He emitted a stabbing laugh. Dr. Sengupta smiled in concert.
“It is my understanding you paid some Dalits one hundred rupees in return for a sample of their blood and asked them to sign some kind of release form,” stated Puri.
“Perfectly standard practice—all within the guidelines set out by your health ministry, I can assure you,” replied Bergstrom.
“But with such DNA samples your organization could benefit to the tune of tens of millions of dollars—hundreds possibly—through the genetic research you’re conducting, no?”
Bergstrom met this statement with a quizzical smile, as if he regarded it as pitifully naïve. “Why don’t we take a little walk, you and I,” he said. “There’s something I’d like you to see. Perhaps then this thing will become a little clearer.”
Bergstrom went and held the door open. “Please, Mr. Puri,” he said, one arm held out toward him.
The detective put away his notebook and pen, stood from his chair and thanked Dr. Sengupta for his time.
“Pleasure,” he said with the most perfunctory of handshakes.
Puri moved toward the door but stopped halfway across the office. “By the way, my deepest condolences,” he said.
“Condolences?”
“For your loss. I understand one of your faculty was killed on Thursday, only.”
Dr. Sengupta nodded sadly. “Yes, poor Anju,” he said. “A terrible loss for all of us. I still can’t quite believe what happened.”
“A car crash?”
“She lost control of the wheel and spun off the road,” he added.
“She was a brilliant scientist and will be sorely missed,” said Bergstrom in a dry, corporate tone. “Now, if you’d like to follow me, Mr. Puri.”
The Swede led the detective to an elevator. This took them up to the second floor, every movement monitored by dome cameras fixed to the ceilings. Puri found himself standing behind the glass wall of a large laboratory. It looked like something out of a James Bond set with a cast of anonymous men and women in identical white coats, masks and rubber gloves. Some of them were peering into microscopes. One took samples out of a large refrigerator.
“Take a guess as to how much this facility cost to build,” said Bergstrom.
“Some millions of rupees I would imagine.”
“Fifty million dollars, Mr. Puri. Everything you see here is state-of-the-art. The laboratory is air sealed. Only recently, after all the failures on the national grid, we had to build our own power plant providing an uninterrupted supply twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I can’t tell you how challenging it’s been to set up this kind of research facility here in India. The business environment is extraordinarily discouraging.”
“Your investment comes from where exactly?”
“International equity firms mostly. Some Indian money also.”
“All looking for a healthy return no doubt.”
“If you’re asking whether they’ll profit, the answer is that I jolly well hope so. Millions of Indians will also benefit from the drugs that will be developed thanks to our research, I might add. So when you accuse us of taking advantage of ignorant villagers, you would do well to keep in mind that we’re working to improve their lives and those of their children and their children’s children.”
“Sir, I’ve not accused you people of anything,” said Puri, who’d stomached about as much corporate rhetoric as he could take for one day. “It is my sworn duty to investigate the case inside and out, leaving no stone unturned.”