The Case of the Love Commandos

by Tarquin Hall

  Twenty-four

  Mummy and Rumpi didn’t reach Jammu until dawn, by which time the robbery of the Vaishno Devi shrine had become national news. Bundles of thousand-rupee notes with a value of one million dollars had been stolen, it emerged, and the police were hunting for a young woman going by the name of Gauri Nanda. An artist’s impression of the suspect was being circulated. Extra security had also been put in place at the airport and railway station. There were checks being carried out on all major roads leading in and out of the city.

  Jagdish Uncle hadn’t been heard from since midnight, when he’d reached home. Mummy and Rumpi soon discovered that there was a simple explanation for this: he was tucked up in bed sleeping soundly.

  “But, Uncle-ji, you said you would not rest until you tracked them down—that no one could pass through Jammu unnoticed,” said Rumpi after they woke him.

  “Everyone in the city is known to me,” he replied with a lordly flourish as he stood in the kitchen in his undershirt, sarong and black socks.

  “So where is Pranap Dughal?” asked Mummy.

  “Kindly allow me to explain,” he replied. “See, after my poor Sweetie met her fate, I called ahead to Ranvir at the toll. Thus he saw that same Toyota entering the city boundary on Palace Road. From there, Manvir who sells guavas spotted their vehicle racing past Government Dental College. Five minutes later, they reached Purani Mandi, where Raju, who sits playing cards with Amit and Gurshan, did not fail to notice the vehicle, also.”

  Jagdish Uncle helped himself to some cold rajma from the fridge, eating it straight from a Tupperware container.

  “You were saying, Uncle-ji?” prompted Rumpi.

  “Right, so, after that they passed through Lakhdatta Bazaar.”

  “Aur?” asked Mummy, who was fast losing patience.

  “Then they crossed New Tawi Bridge. Arjan, the Kwality ice cream vendor sitting on the far side, is well known to me. From him I was able to trace the vehicle to Gandhinagar, where Puneet Sahib’s driver was sitting idle doing timepass.”

  “Any person in Jammu did not see them, Uncle-ji?” asked Rumpi.

  “At that point, in fact, madam, the trail went stale. Had Mr. Julhar been feeding the pigeons in his usual place, their direction thereafter would have been duly noted, but alas, he went to attend his sister’s wedding in Jalandhar three days back and while there got admitted to hospital with an abdominal infection.”

  Rumpi took a deep breath to calm herself, exhaled slowly and said, “Uncle-ji, were you able to trace them or not?”

  “I was not.”

  This disclosure drew a joint sigh of disappointment from the two women.

  Jagdish Uncle, however, made light of it. “Ladies, not to worry, be happy,” he said.

  “How you can say that?” asked Rumpi.

  “Situation is under control.”

  “Uncle-ji, you just told us you weren’t able to locate the Dughals.”

  “That is true, I was not. But Surender, who works at Anand Auto Parts—he saw them entering Paradise Guesthouse.”

  Rumpi screeched, “Uncle-ji!” and picked an apple up off the kitchen table as if to throw it at him. “How can you joke at a time like this?”

  “It is easy when you know how, madam,” he said with magisterial dignity.

  Mummy looked less than amused. “Did they do check in?” she asked.

  “They are in room number four. And,” Jagdish Uncle added, “I came to know they have tickets for the Jet Airways flight at eleven. Now we can inform Inspector Malhotra and he can do the needful.”

  But Mummy was already heading for the front door.

  “Where are you going?” he called after her.

  “Just I must reach,” she called over her shoulder.

  Rumpi hurried after her. “Wait, I’m coming with you,” she said.

  Jagdish Uncle was left in the kitchen holding the Tupperware container of rajma. “What’s the hurry?” he called out. And then after a moment’s hesitation, “Wait for me!”

  It was still too early to find an auto plying Jammu’s streets, but they came across one parked at the end of the galli that ran in front of Jagdish Uncle’s home. The auto wallah, who was asleep in the backseat with his feet sticking out the side of his vehicle, was perhaps the one person in all of Jammu with whom Jagdish Uncle was not acquainted, and it took the latter a few minutes to persuade him to forgo his wash and breakfast and transport them the couple of miles to the Paradise Guesthouse.

  “You are providing an important public service,” Jagdish Uncle kept assuring him.

  These blandishments appeared to make no impression whatsoever on the auto wallah, who took his time slipping on his chappals, combing his beard and relieving himself on the nearest wall.

  He then spent a couple of minutes communing with the collection of deities on his dashboard before hand-cranking the engine. Soon, the auto was putt-putting through Jammu’s narrow lanes.

  They were about halfway to Paradise Guesthouse when Jagdish Uncle remembered to turn on his phone and found a couple of missed calls from the clerk. The Dughals, he learned, had checked out and were headed for the train station and not the airport.

  The Delhi-bound Shatabdi was due to depart in twenty-five minutes. The auto wallah was duly informed of the change in destination—at which point he rebelled.

  “Sahib, nahin,” he said, and pulled to a stop.

  No amount of pleading or indeed name-calling—“stupid duffer!”—would persuade him to budge and only an offer of double the usual fare assured his continued cooperation.

  This princely sum didn’t guarantee that the vehicle moved any faster. But thanks to its compactness and maneuverability and the driver’s knowledge of a number of shortcuts, they were able to make up for lost time.

  With ten minutes to spare before the departure of the Delhi-bound train, the trio pulled up in front of the station and hurried to the entrance.

  They found a crowd of passengers waiting to pass through the extra police security check, where an X-ray machine was in operation.

  Mummy spotted the Dughals at the front of the queue, but there was no way to reach them.

  “The stationmaster is known to me,” said Jagdish Uncle.

  “Go find him, na. We two will stay here meanwhile,” said Mummy.

  She and Rumpi watched Mrs. Dughal being wheeled around the metal detector arch before being searched by a female jawan. Her husband then passed through the arch without triggering the alarm and the police waved him on toward the waiting train.

  An announcement came over the tannoy system saying that the train would be leaving in five minutes.

  “Requesting all passengers to kindly board,” said a female voice.

  With just two minutes to spare, Jagdish Uncle returned with the stationmaster. He led them through the cargo-storage area, where railway officials and porters were sorting parcels of all shapes and sizes wrapped in muslin cloth. A barrow of crates blocked their exit for a crucial thirty seconds. They heard a whistle followed by the slamming of doors.

  By the time they reached the platform, they were too late. The train had pulled out of the station.

  “Had it not been for that duffer we would have reached here in time,” said Mummy, who was referring to the auto wallah.

  “I still don’t know what you expected to do once we caught them,” said Rumpi as she watched the rear carriage disappear from sight.

  “What with so many police around we could get them delayed, na.”

  “Well, Mummy-ji, we tried our best and that’s the most anyone can ever do. Uncle-ji, you also deserve a medal. Where would we be without—”

  Rumpi looked dumbstruck. She had spotted something at the end of the platform and was staring hard. “That looks like Inspector Malhotra and—”

  “Them!” exclaimed Mummy.

  The trio walked toward the Dughals in a kind of astonished daze.

  Inspector Malhotra greeted them warmly.

  “Mrs. P
uri, I owe you an apology. You were right all along,” he said. “One of the Vaishno Devi priests has confessed to drugging the security guard and planning the robbery with this man, Pranap Dughal, or rather Dhiru Bhatia, a charge-sheeter, believed to have been involved with the Bhutan Bank robbery last year.”

  Mummy was all grins. “Most probably he started life as a pickpocket,” she said. “Thus he could not resist taking Chubby’s wallet. Old habits and all.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Mrs. Puri,” said Malhotra. “But to be honest we are still a little stumped.” He took her to one side and whispered, “We are unable to locate the loot. I’m concerned that they might have hidden it somewhere or it is being transported by another accomplice.”

  “No, no, Inspector. Just you are looking but not seeing,” said Mummy.

  “I don’t understand, madam.”

  “See here.” She rummaged through her purse and retrieved a safety pin. Thus armed, she approached Mrs. Dughal.

  The woman shot dagger eyes at her. But Mummy didn’t hesitate to jab the pin into her side several times.

  There came a slow hissing sound.

  Mrs. Dughal began, imperceptibly at first, to reduce in size.

  “See,” said Mummy.

  Malhotra lifted up the woman’s kurta. Beneath lay a deflating fat suit and, beneath this, wads of thousand-rupee notes strapped around her stomach, thighs and legs.

  “Her chin is fake also—and she is wearing so much of makeup,” said Mummy. “But underneath you will find the young lady you are doing searching for high and low. Gauri Nanda no less.”

  Once the money had been recovered and the Dughals led away, Inspector Malhotra escorted Mummy to the police station, where she was required to make a statement.

  It was the sand in the Vaishno Devi guesthouse that gave the game away, she explained, adding, “Just they were doing disposal of it down the shower.”

  “Are you saying she—Mrs. Dughal, aka Gauri Nanda—carried the sand beneath her fat suit all the way up Vaishno Devi?”

  “Correct. Everything was deception, na—her weight, candy bars, ordering of large meals from room service, shouting abuse at her partner in crime. Thus she and he were setting the stage like magicians. Aim was to make all and sundry believe she was obese. No one should be in doubt. Porters included. It was she who returned Chubby’s wallet in the wee hours on the train. Just she slipped it unseen under the curtain. That is after taking off all her getup and thus going unrecognized.”

  “So once they reached the top of the mountain she changed out of her fat suit and got rid of all the sand she’d been carrying about her as well,” said Malhotra. “But I don’t understand how she checked into the guesthouse as Gauri Nanda.”

  “I believe I know the answer to that one,” said Rumpi, who was sitting in on the debriefing. “Once the two of them were in their room in the Vaishno Devi guesthouse, she waited until the foyer was crowded and then slipped outside unnoticed. The priest had her backpack waiting. She put it on, returned to the guesthouse and checked in under her assumed name. Then in the middle of the night she left again—fooling even Mummy. She broke into the vault, made off with the loot, and returned to her room. In the morning, she taped all the wads of notes to herself and donned her disguise again, although the fat suit probably didn’t have to be inflated quite as much as before, I would imagine.”

  “That is how we came to recover her backpack and climbing rope from her room,” said Malhotra. “Had the couple’s chartered helicopter been allowed to land they’d have got clean away.”

  “Scot-free,” agreed Mummy.

  “But thanks to you, Mrs. Puri, these two were brought to my attention—thus when the priest confessed I knew who to look for.”

  “So kind of you,” said Mummy.

  Malhotra escorted them out of the station to an auto.

  “Naturally I will mention your invaluable assistance in my report and, furthermore, recommend you receive the five lakh reward, madam,” he said.

  Rumpi smiled. “Seems you were right after all, Mummy-ji,” she said as she gave her mother-in-law a fond hug. “Old really is gold.”

  Twenty-five

  Puri had lost count of the number of weddings he’d attended in his time. During the height of the season, he was often left with no choice but to make an appearance at four or five “functions” every week, the vast majority for business associates, neighbors and distant cousins.

  Invariably the venues were “marriage halls” or “lawns” with spaces large enough to accommodate hundreds, sometimes thousands, of guests. Vast cathedrals of frippery and bling, they were generally so garish and ostentatious—not to mention bright—that the detective often wondered if they could be spotted with the naked eye from space.

  The last wedding he’d attended (or was it the one before?) had been held at Seven Star Banquet Hall in Moti Nagar. The daughter of a childhood friend who’d made a fortune in kitchen and bathroom tiles (and, like most people with cash and half a brain during the past decade, a second fortune in “realty”) had married the son of a Delhi marble dealer.

  “No expense has been spared!” the bride’s proud father had boasted.

  As was so often the case, this proved no exaggeration. His daughter and her betrothed posed for photographs while sitting on Louis XIV–style thrones atop a stage straight out of a Miss World contest. Fountains spewed multicolored water, laser beams pierced the sky and a Bollywood starlet in a plunging sari blouse gyrated atop a podium.

  Puri was spoiled for choice when it came to food, with a buffet as long as a football pitch offering Continental, Indo-Chinese, Punjabi, south Indian and numerous varieties of street food. The gol gappa was especially good. But along with a severe case of indigestion, he left feeling somewhat subdued by the crassness of it all. In a country with so much want and need, the Great Indian Wedding was truly out of control.

  It was, therefore, with marked relief that Puri arrived outside the venue for Ram and Tulsi’s wedding.

  The Arya Samaj temple at the “Ashram red-light turnoff” on Delhi’s Inner Ring Road was a simple building, barely recognizable from the outside as a Hindu place of worship. Maintained by a reform movement that emphasized the importance of meditative prayer over idol worship, the entrance was markedly peaceful, with no loudspeakers blaring mantras. Puri joined a small group of guests made up of the bride and groom’s most trusted friends, as well as Facecream, two of her fellow Love Commandos and three plainclothes CBI officers charged with protecting Ram.

  In the absence of a brass band and white steed, the baraat was an improvised affair. When the groom arrived on the back of a motorbike dressed in a simple sherwani and pagdi, he was showered with ten-rupee notes and everyone jigged to the female guests’ rendition of “Le jayenge, le jayenge dil wale dulhania le jayenge!”

  Tulsi had arrived ten minutes ahead of Ram and was waiting inside the temple. She looked stunning in a gold and red lehnga, the delicate henna patterns on her hands and feet and strings of jasmine tied in her hair more than making up for the absence of extravagant bridal jewelry.

  The room where the ceremony was to be conducted was simply decorated with strings of fresh flowers hanging from the walls and Kashmiri carpets laid on the floor. The priest, or arya, wore none of the usual regalia of traditional pandits; in a plain shirt and trousers, he could have been mistaken for an office worker. Ram handed him the items required for the ceremony—two marigold garlands, half a kilo of ghee and a box of ladoos—and the couple sat cross-legged on the floor before a shallow hearth.

  Once all the guests had arranged themselves in a semicircle behind them, the ceremony began with Tulsi draping a garland around Ram’s neck. The groom then washed his feet, hands and face before eating from a concoction of curd, honey and ghee.

  “It’s good of you to come, sir,” Facecream whispered to Puri as they sat side by side, watching the sacred fire being lit.

  “I would not have missed it for all the world,
actually,” he replied. “So much courage Ram showed, I tell you.”

  Even when his mother’s killer had led him away with the intention of putting a bullet in his head, the young man hadn’t begged for his life. He hadn’t even cried.

  And now, when the CBI was preparing to charge Baba Dhobi and Dr. Pandey with murder and Ram faced the ordeal of years in protective custody as the star witness in what would hopefully be a political trial the likes of which India had never seen, he was holding firm.

  “I want justice for my mother” had been his words to the CBI director yesterday after being warned of the possible dangers of testifying.

  It had been wrong of him to prejudge Ram, Puri acknowledged privately. And he’d been wrong to condemn Ram’s union with Tulsi. Family was the bedrock of society—on that the detective held firm—but like anything else, families could “malfunction.” Vishnu Mishra’s rejection of an upstanding young man like Ram on the basis of caste was at best misguided.

  Puri felt the urge to write a letter to the honorable editor of the Times of India on the subject and penned a few lines in his head.

  Tradition and customs have their place and provide us with key reference points and a certain continuity. However, rigidity in thinking is the enemy of progress. Likewise, babies should not be thrown out with the bathwater. It is for young people also to act responsibly during times of change. A successful marriage is built on mutual understanding and compatibility. Love should also be there.

  As Puri watched the bride’s and groom’s hands being joined together, he was suddenly struck by an intense longing for his wife. It felt like an age since they’d spent any proper time together and he was glad that she would finally be home from Jammu in a few hours. Tomorrow he would take her to that restaurant she liked—the Chinese one in that godforsaken mall in Vasant Kunj. Then this weekend there was his birthday bash to look forward to. Their three daughters were all coming home and the house would be filled with grandchildren and laughter.

  Ram and Tulsi recited their wedding vows and began to circle the flames. When they had completed four turns, Tulsi placed her foot on a stone while the groom repeated a mantra expressing his wish that their marriage should be built on firm foundations. The arya then filled Tulsi’s hands with puffed rice.