The Case of the Love Commandos

by Tarquin Hall

  “You have grown in your parents’ home but, like a seed, must be replanted in another home in order to blossom and mature,” he said.

  Ram and Tulsi were now husband and wife. Only the paperwork remained. Two witnesses were required to sign the marriage certificate, and the happy couple asked Facecream and Puri to oblige.

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure, young man,” said the detective as he pinched Ram’s cheek hard in a show of pure Punjabi affection.

  On the way back to his office, Puri watched the sky through the window of his Ambassador. A dark cloud was moving over the city like a menacing alien mother ship, casting Delhi in a gloomy half-light. Everyone out on the pavements or standing in the doorways of shops and businesses had their eyes cast upwards. But their expressions spoke only of joy and expectation. The monsoon proper had finally arrived. Relief was only minutes away.

  When he reached Khan Market, Puri didn’t linger outside, however. He went straight up to his office and started dictating his notes on the Case of the Love Commandos to Elizabeth Rani. His executive secretary, who had finally enjoyed a couple of days off, typed his words on a laptop computer, stopping him occasionally to confirm a date, a time or the spelling of an unfamiliar name, like Justus Bergstrom.

  “As for the killer himself, he was indeed an Afridi, as Tubelight had guessed—a descendant of Muslim Afghans who settled in Uttar Pradesh,” said Puri. “Vishnu Mishra has since been released and all charges dropped. He has offered a substantial reward for anyone who leads him to his daughter.”

  The detective ended with the words “Madam Rani, it is without doubt one of the most challenging cases I have solved in my long and illustrious career ’til date.”

  Usually this would have been Elizabeth Rani’s cue to marvel at his acumen. But fearing the evil eye as much as her employer, she restricted her congratulations to “Well done, sir, I don’t know how you do it.”

  She then followed this up with a few questions about the case.

  “Sir, Ram’s mother, Kamlesh, was violated by Dr. Bal Pandey at Lucknow General Hospital and Baba Dhobi, who in those days was an administrator, failed to file a case against him,” she said.

  “Quite correct, Madam Rani,” said Puri as he sat back in his executive swivel chair with his fingers knitted together and hands resting on his belly.

  “But then she—”

  “You are wondering what benefit Baba Dhobi gained from turning a blind eye and not pressing charges against Pandey?” he asked with a hint of magnanimity in his voice.

  “Actually, sir, that I understand. Being a man with no scruples, he turned the circumstances to his advantage. What I was wondering was—”

  “Why Kamlesh Sunder continued to place trust in him?”

  She gave a nod. “Yes, sir.”

  “Madam Rani, a female such as she, coming from the village and all, never thought for one second that Baba Dhobi was playing a double role,” said Puri. “He presented the situation as us versus them—that being his forte so to speak. He was a fellow Dalit in a position of authority and yet he could appear to be powerless against the Brahmin oppressor.”

  He paused. “Anything else is there?” he asked, knowing full well that more questions were to follow.

  “Yes, sir. I don’t understand how Hari came to know that Ram escaped his captors.”

  “That is an easy one, actually, Madam Rani. He was working for Baba Dhobi, who in turn was in touch with Bergstrom, who was desperate to get back his data key with the research.”

  “They had links beforehand—Baba Dhobi and Bergstrom?”

  “ICMB could not build such a facility in Uttar Pradesh without the express permission of the chief minister, Madam Rani. So many kickbacks and all are required.”

  “So it was Baba Dhobi’s goondas who went to the village and thrashed Ram’s father and the chowkidar in the village?”

  “Not at all. That was the work of the two Gurkha gentlemen in the employ of Bergstrom. After coming to know that Dr. Basu leaked the research, they were charged with searching high and low for Ram.”

  “I still don’t understand how Ram escaped, sir.”

  “He revealed the details yesterday, only. After getting abducted, he was interviewed by Bergstrom at some undisclosed location in Agra. Some violence was used—beatings and all. Afterward, Ram was confined to a room and one ankle was chained to the wall. Later that night he pulled a few threads from his shirt and used them to tie three links in the chain together, thus shortening it and making it so tight that it dug into his skin. He then called to the guard and demanded to use the toilet. This was allowed and so the chain was removed. After Ram returned from the toilet, the chain was placed once again around his ankle. The guard, not noticing the threads with the links still tied together, made it a little loose. Once he had departed from the room, Ram snapped the threads, thus rendering the chain loose enough to slip it off his ankle. He then made his getaway out a window and went to ground once more in Agra while searching for Tulsi.”

  “A remarkable young man,” said Elizabeth Rani. “I do hope he’s being properly protected.”

  “What with all the publicity in the case, the CBI would not want to be found wanting,” said Puri. “Priority will be given to his safety, that is for sure. But he and his lovely bride will be forced to live with separate identities ’til the end of their days. For everything in this life there is a price to be paid, Madam Rani, is there not?”

  “Yes, I suppose, sir,” said Elizabeth Rani, who didn’t sound altogether convinced.

  She stood up from her chair and lingered in front of the desk with a puzzled look. Puri could see that there was still something on her mind.

  “Tell me, Madam Rani?” he said with as much patience as he could muster given the hunger pains that were developing deep in his belly.

  “Facecream, sir. You don’t think she would ever leave us, do you—go and work for the Love Commandos full-time?” she asked.

  Puri’s mouth curled into a smile. “To be totally and perfectly honest, I have had my concerns, also,” he said. “What all she was doing mixed up with such an underground organization? I wondered. Where were her loyalties lying these days? But now all concerns are gone. I salute her commitment, actually. She identifies with the cause. It is heartfelt, that is for sure. Why …? I cannot tell you. Could be when she was younger, she was forced to marry. Or she was forbidden from marrying some boy. Frankly speaking, it is not for us to ask. She is a privately minded person. And I am proud to say, one of the most remarkable people I have had the honor to work with ’til date.”

  The pitter-patter of rain drew the detective’s attention to the window. Streaks were starting to appear on the grimy panes.

  “Aaah, at last Madam Rani—baarish!” he said as he stood up and went to get a closer look. “Better late than never, haan?”

  “Yes, sir, the city certainly needs it.”

  They stood by the window watching as the deluge grew in intensity and the surfaces of the road and pavement below began to effervesce as if the water gathering upon them was boiling.

  Puri pushed open the window. The stale, fetid air that had been hanging over the city for weeks was dissipating. He found that he could breathe easily again.

  “Madam Rani, we should celebrate,” he said. “Send the boy for some nice hot pakoras.”

  “But, sir, the weather?”

  He looked out the window again. The other side of the street was no longer visible. It sounded like they were standing at the bottom of a waterfall.

  “Come now, Madam Rani,” said the detective, “it is only a little rain, no?”

  At a few minutes to eight in the evening, Puri fixed himself a drink, sat down on the sofa in his sitting room and switched on the TV.

  “News is coming!” he shouted to Rumpi, who was in the kitchen.

  The detective could barely contain his excitement as he switched to Action News!

  Often when he solved a big case, he didn�
�t get the recognition he deserved. Either because some cop stole the limelight or, more often than not, out of a need to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

  Occasionally, he also stayed away from the cameras for fear of prejudicing the outcome of the trial. He and Hari had agreed to adopt such a policy with regard to the Case of the Love Commandos.

  If the special court acted properly and Baba Dhobi and Dr. Pandey and all those associated with the murder of Kamlesh Sunder were convicted, then the two rivals would break their silence.

  The Jain Jewelry Heist, however, was different.

  Puri had finally solved the case that very afternoon after he’d found himself thinking about Baba Dhobi’s south Indian Vaastu practitioner.

  Vaastu was becoming increasingly popular amongst India’s “creamy layer.” The wealthier they got, the more paranoid they became about losing everything, it seemed. Thus the thought had occurred to him that the Jains might have consulted with a Vaastu practitioner.

  He soon discovered that they had.

  His name was Gopal Jaipuria and he’d advised Jay Jain in the design, positioning and construction of the house.

  Jaipuria, a specialist in astro-numerology and gem therapy, had also been given access to all of the Jain family’s birth dates, anniversaries and favorite numbers. With these, he’d been able to crack the combination to the safe.

  “What part did the other thieves play—the ones you caught with the earrings and cash?” asked Rumpi as she settled onto the sofa next to him.

  “The Vaastu practitioner set them up—gave them the job, so to speak.”

  “So they arrived after he’d emptied the safe?”

  “By a good hour at least. Must be he opened the safe with some ease, left them a token amount and made off with the mother lode. After, the gang came bungling in, blowing up the safe with dynamite. A bunch of jokers they were.”

  At five this afternoon, Jaipuria had been arrested and the jewels recovered. Puri had thus concluded that his bad fortune was gone. The evil eye’s gaze was focused elsewhere. When Action News! arrived at the scene and asked him to comment, he hadn’t been able to resist taking credit for single-handedly solving the case.

  Now, fifty million people were about to share his moment of triumph.

  “Here it comes,” said Rumpi when the graphics rolled and the sensational music pumped from the speakers.

  “Tonight—an Action News! exclusive!” announced the anchor.

  Rumpi took Puri’s hand in hers. “I’m so proud of you, Chubby,” she said, and gave it a squeeze.

  “Our reporter is live in Punjabi Bagh, Delhi, and we cross to her now. Vineeta, I understand the real hero of the Vaishno Devi heist has been revealed?”

  Puri exclaimed, “What the bloody hell!” as a young woman appeared on the screen, standing in front of an apartment block.

  “That’s Mummy’s house!” cried Rumpi.

  “Yes, my dear,” mumbled Puri, who looked like he’d lost the will to live.

  “It’s emerged tonight that an aunty in her seventies cracked the case single-handedly,” the reporter was saying. “Thanks to this heroic senior, the thieves together with the loot were apprehended by the police as they were making their getaway. Koomi Puri, known to one and all as Mummy-ji, is here with me now. Mummy-ji, the Jammu police have called you a national hero. How does that make you feel?”

  Mummy glanced apprehensively at the camera. Staring down at the handheld microphone, she spoke into it. “Just I was doing my duty as a concerned citizen of India, na.”

  “I understand the thieves masqueraded as yatris on the pilgrimage, but you realized there was something fishy going on?”

  “Pranap Dughal—sorry, Dhiru Bhatia—was a bad sort. So crafty he was. A daku through and through.”

  “And you saw through the lady thief’s disguise?”

  “At first, no. She was doing so much of abuse and all and eating everything in sight.”

  “And I understand you identified the priest involved, also.”

  “He was on the train from Delhi doing planning of the robbery with Pranap Dughal.”

  “Now, I’ve come to know that sleuthing runs in the family, Mummy-ji. Is it true your son is a private investigator in Delhi?”

  “My late husband Om Chander Puri was a police inspector, also.”

  “And it was because you were trying to help your son that the thieves came to your notice on the train?”

  Puri could hardly watch. He’d managed to contain news of the embarrassing pickpocket incident, and his professional reputation remained intact.

  “Please, Mummy, don’t … I’m begging you,” he muttered.

  But he was wasting his breath. She came straight out with it.

  “See,” she said, “it all started when Chubby—that is my second eldest, the private investigator one—he got his wallet stolen on the train by that Pranap Dughal.”

  Puri covered his face with his hands.

  “By God,” he groaned.

  Epilogue

  The city was loud—car horns blasting, people shouting. Billboard advertisements showed half-naked, fair-skinned girls. Everyone seemed to be in a big hurry.

  The cost of everything was equally bewildering. The bus ticket alone had been more than each of the three women spent on lentils in a week. The price of a plate of subzi and three rotis quoted at a roadside stand had persuaded them to go without food until they returned home to the village in the evening.

  An auto wallah quoted them a fortune to take them to the address written on the business card.

  They would have to walk, they decided. Poonam knew better than to ask the police for directions. Instead, she approached another Dalit woman and asked her son, but he only pretended to be able to read the address and sent them in the wrong direction.

  Finally, as they stood at a busy junction looking this way and that and wondering if perhaps their journey had been in vain, a young woman wearing glasses stopped to cross the road. In her appearance, she was like the village teacher who’d helped them. Poonam summoned the courage to ask her to point the way.

  The young woman didn’t speak Awadhi but looked at the piece of paper and nodded. The place was very close, she seemed to say—a five-minute walk at the most.

  Soon, the three women found themselves entering a building and then being shown into a strange metal box with a mirror on one wall and some buttons next to the door. A man wearing a uniform asked them where they were going and Poonam showed him the card. He then pressed one of the buttons. Two metal doors slid together. Finding themselves trapped inside, they panicked and screamed. Then they felt a strange sensation as the box moved upward and, a moment later, the doors opened again.

  They staggered out and were greeted by a plump, middle-aged woman in a sari, glasses and maroon lipstick. Her name was Kukreja.

  She led the three women into a small, cramped room full of papers and books and gave them chairs to sit on.

  Kukreja Madam said she was pleased that they had come to see her and said she knew all about their situation. She even had a file on her desk, containing official documents about their village, Govind. They detailed how much rice and lentils the Dalits had been allotted under the government ration scheme over the past year. But when Kukreja Madam read out the figures the women said that they had received less than a quarter of the official count.

  “How many days’ work have you completed under the rural employment-guarantee scheme?” she asked.

  “None!” they chorused.

  Kukreja Madam pursed her lips and then riffled through another file. She found their names listed on another piece of paper and explained that, according to the official record, they had worked for one hundred days each and been paid accordingly.

  A young man appeared carrying three cups of tea and a plate of biscuits.

  When he was gone, the village women began to giggle, telling Kukreja Madam that no man had ever served them anything before.

 
She smiled. “I can help you,” she said. “But it’s not going to be easy and will take time. First, I need to understand how things work in your village and the name of the pradhan in charge of distributing the rations.”

  His name is Rakesh Yadav, they said, but he’d been arrested a few days ago for processing and smuggling heroin. His eldest son was now in charge.

  Would his family come to know about their visit to Lucknow? Poonam wanted to know.

  Yes, they would find out eventually. But as Kukreja Madam explained, she ran a charity that would take up their case and place two volunteers in the village. They would monitor the situation and report to the police.

  “The police do exactly what the Yadavs tell them to do,” Poonam pointed out.

  Kukreja Madam repeated that she was not promising change overnight. But if they were strong, it would come.

  The three women talked amongst themselves and agreed that they were prepared to stand for what was rightfully theirs. They believed others in their village would join them.

  “Good,” said Kukreja Madam. “Then we will fight them together.”

  Mouthwatering Dishes from the Vish Puri Family Kitchen

  Lucknow Mutton Biryani

  The city of Lucknow is synonymous with Biryani. The dish is traditionally cooked using the dum pukht method (in Persian, dum means “to breathe” and pukht “to cook”). The idea is to use a low heat and to seal the rice and meat in a pot using dough around the lid, allowing the juices and flavors to slowly infuse the dish. Do this in an earthenware pot with a lid on the stove or in an earthenware dish in the oven.

  Serves 4

  Meat

  2 pounds lamb, mutton, beef, or chicken, cubed

  1 cup stock

  Marinade

  4 tablespoons garlic paste (or mashed garlic)