Banquet on the Dead

by Sharath Komarraju

  ‘Yes, Hamid bhai. Durga—Doctor Koteshwar Rao’s wife—saw her at twelve. Lakshman, Venkataramana’s elder son, reports having seen her at twelve-five, and his mother says she saw her too around the same time on this path, walking towards the well.’

  ‘Ah, that means the old lady was probably here at that time. This path is in quite plain view, is it not? And it is not likely, is it, that all three of the family members are mistaken?’

  Nagarajan pursed his lips and said, ‘Well, they could all be lying.’

  Hamid Pasha nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps they are, but it is unlikely, miyan. It is dangerous to lie about something so openly as this. Just about anyone in the house could have glanced at the path at the time, and their lie would be found out. It is a big risk to take—if they have taken it— and to what purpose?’

  They walked along the path towards the bushes. The building was now completely out of view. On the other side the top of the compound wall was visible, colourful glass pieces sticking out the top.

  ‘What did you think of the memsaab?’ Hamid Pasha asked.

  ‘She has a bit of a reputation in the family of being a shrew,’ said Nagarajan. ‘Doesn’t look like anyone likes her very much. I got that feeling last time I was here, too.’

  ‘Ah, miyan, this is the second time you’re here. I keep forgetting that. So you have an unfair head-start over me. No matter, tell me, will you not, what you think of her?’

  ‘Headstrong.’

  Hamid Pasha nodded, saying, ‘Good.’

  ‘She has something to hide.’

  ‘Indeed? What makes you say that?’

  Nagarajan said doubtfully, ‘Why else would she be so keen on getting us out of here?’

  ‘Well, miyan, what would you do if there is a death in the family, and instead of being allowed to grieve in peace, you have a policeman and a questionable-looking old man knocking on the door to “ask questions”? I would have behaved very much the same, I think. No, that is not it. Did you notice anything else?’

  Nagarajan shook his head.

  ‘Did you not notice her hands?’

  ‘Her hands? No.’

  Hamid Pasha stroked his clean-shaven upper-lip, where his moustache would be if he had had it. ‘Miyan, remember, with women, that is the first place you look. A woman’s hands tell you more about her than her words ever will.’

  ‘Well,’ Nagarajan said uncertainly, ‘I suppose she had nice hands.’

  ‘Nice? Of course she had nice hands, miyan. Hands are always nice. But you did not notice, I take it, how worn out they were? Her fingers were rough, and her fingertips had burn-marks on them. Did you notice how closely-cut her fingernails were?’

  ‘Yes. What of it?’

  ‘The sign of a woman who does a lot of work with her hands; a lot of domestic work.’

  ‘Perhaps. Not surprising for a housewife, I suppose.’

  ‘Hain? There is no “perhaps” about it, dost. I am certain. Sad, is it not, that someone in her painful condition has to work so hard to run the house? Can she not afford a servant?’

  Nagarajan frowned at the ground. ‘I don’t see how that is relevant.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hamid Pasha lightly, ‘I do not see it either. I am just observing, that is all.’ After they had covered a few more paces he said, ‘Surely you have seen that her hair is dyed?’

  ‘I did not notice.’

  ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk, what did you notice then, miyan? You did not notice the reddish-brown tresses near the temples, the grey hair up at the scalp, where it is hard to reach without a decent mirror?’ His hand rose to caress his cap, just above the scalp. ‘Yes,’ he said dreamily, ‘very hard to reach’.

  ‘You think that’s important? The fact that she dyes her hair?’

  Hamid Pasha shrugged. ‘It might be. Who knows?’

  ‘What of the lame one?’

  Hamid Pasha’s face became grim. ‘Ah, he is a hard fellow, that one. He does not seem to be sad at all about his mother’s demise.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Nagarajan. ‘He doesn’t seem the caring kind, somehow.’

  ‘Not only that, did you notice how he stressed that he is the only one in the family that could not have killed his mother?’

  Nagarajan said, ‘That’s true, though.’

  ‘Ah, but is it, my friend? Perhaps it is true he cannot come to the well to strike his mother. But a murder is only the deed. One could easily be the brains behind the deed. And this one—this lame one—mark my words, he has the brains. I can picture him sitting in his room, smoking away, shaking away at his legs and hands, and plan, and plot, and sit there and watch as his plan unfolds—yes, he definitely has the temperament.’

  They came to the end of the path now, and stood facing the well. It was square-shaped, twenty feet on each side, with a brick wall rising up to a further eight or so feet on the side facing the compound wall. It was built of concrete, and a flight of stairs descended from the rightmost edge down to the surface of the water, some twelve feet below. They stood by the side adjacent to the brick wall and peered down at the still, green water. It was a partly cloudy day, and their reflections were only faintly visible.

  Hamid Pasha looked to his left. ‘So that was where Nagesh was working.’

  Nagarajan nodded. ‘Beyond this well, yes.’ Then he pointed with his right arm at the well’s far corner, where the flight of stairs began. ‘That is where the side-gate sits, though we cannot see it. That was where Ashok was when he heard the cry.’

  Hamid Pasha walked along the edge of the well and nodded at the concrete protrusions jutting out of the far wall. ‘This well has been here for long, miyan. Those are for drawing water, are they not?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nagarajan followed him at a distance. ‘Yes, I think so. All of this used to be farmland, once. They used this well to irrigate their fields. I don’t think they’ve used it for that purpose for at least two generations now.’

  ‘Ah, hmm, yes. But two deaths in the well, miyan. And it is not a dangerous well, mind you. It is not like there is a slippery stone along which you would fall if you were not careful. It is built rather well. Not the sort of place you would expect accidents, hey?’

  Nagarajan said, ‘It’s hard to say.’

  Hamid Pasha turned and laughed. ‘You are right, miyan. I think I am too hard a man. I see meaning in every small occurrence. Perhaps I should be less suspicious.’ His eyes made a quick movement towards the path between the bushes. ‘Now I wonder who that is.’

  The stranger’s white shirt had a big brown smudge under the left pocket. A dirty rag hung over his shoulder, and his blue lungi fell to his knees. His eyes peered, blinking, from behind thick, round, red-rimmed glasses. Two of his front teeth grew outward from between his lips, giving him a distinctly mouselike appearance.

  He scratched the back of his head and asked, ‘Yes, sir, are you looking for someone, sir?’

  ‘No, my man,’ Hamid Pasha said good-naturedly. ‘We are just having a look around. And who might you be?’

  ‘My name is Ellayya, sir. I am the manservant here. Me and my wife both.’ He ran his hand over his unkempt, grey hair. ‘Swami saab did not say anything about expecting visitors, sir.’

  Nagarajan said, ‘We dropped by on the say-so of Doctor Koteshwar Rao.’

  The man smiled, revealing more of his misshapen teeth. ‘Kotesh babu asked you to come. Then it is okay. I used to carry him on my shoulders—all around here. And now he is all grown up and I play with his son. Tomorrow I will play with the boy’s son too, maybe.’

  ‘So you have been here long, dost.’

  ‘Oh yes, sir. I started when I was little more than twenty-four, under Kakaji babu. Never felt like leaving. Me and my wife, both.’

  Hamid Pasha asked, ‘Then you must have known the lady well.’

  Ellayya’s voice grew heavy with grief. He removed his glasses, coughed back tears and said, ‘Yes, sir, very much so, sir. She was like a mother to all of us. She paid for my son’s educati
on, sir; she paid for my wife’s treatment, for my treatment, sir; yes sir, like a mother, she was.’ He coughed again.

  ‘Was she,’ Hamid Pasha said softly, ‘in the habit of coming here to the well?’

  Ellayya looked up in surprise and shook his head. ‘Oh, no, sir. Not at all. She was very scared of the water, she was. Always told me that looking down at the water made her feet tingle. Made her dizzy, it did. She never came so far as the path here, sir, not even when Kotesh babu’s son learnt to swim here last summer. Not even then did she come.’

  ‘Then why do you think she came here that day?’

  Ellayya’s eyes now truly welled up. ‘I—don’t know, sir. It was lunchtime, so I was in my house. I did not hear anything, sir. It’s a far way out to the house, you know.’ His calloused hand rose in the direction of the bushes to the right. ‘I have been thinking why she had come here, but no, sir, I cannot think of any reason why. All I can think of is that she didn’t know she was coming here.’

  Hamid Pasha eyed him carefully. ‘Hain?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Ellayya said, ‘I cannot be sure, you understand—but—but it seems possible that Amma did not have her glasses on, and maybe—maybe she thought she was going straight to the main gate—and turned around here to the well?’ He looked behind him for a second at the path. ‘You see how similar they look?’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘that is definitely possible— yes’.

  Ellayya said miserably, ‘This is a very bad well, sir. I keep telling them to close it up. It is not like they have any use for it any more. They use the water for household purposes, yes, but it’s not like they cannot dig a borewell out in the yard. There is a lot of water here.’ He stamped his foot, gesturing at the ground. ‘But this well... ‘he shook his head forcefully, ‘no good. Two deaths—nearly three.’

  Nagarajan asked sharply, ‘Three?’

  ‘Oh yes, just last summer, Kotesh babu’s son was learning to swim, and they strapped him to an old oil can and threw him in the water, you know. It was all okay when we checked it out the night before, sir, but the boy just went under. He didn’t float at all. Kotesh babu jumped in and brought him out. He was shaking like a leaf, poor boy.’

  ‘Why did the boy go under? The can was no good?’

  Ellayya shrugged his heavy-set shoulders. ‘Nobody knows, sir. It was good when we saw it the night before, as I said. But the next afternoon we saw there were holes in it. Two holes right at the bottom where water had got in.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘nothing to worry about there! You may have missed them the night before. Mistakes happen.’

  ‘Yes, no doubt. No doubt. But this well is cursed, sir, I tell you. Cursed! At least now I hope Swami saab will get it covered. It has not served anybody, this damned well!’

  For a while nobody spoke. All three of them stood staring at the steps which led down to the water.

  Ellayya looked at his watch, a round, white, clunky thing, and said, ‘Oh, look at the time. I must start making preparations for lunch. Nothing gets done around here without me, sir. I will take your leave now, sir.’ And he tottered away.

  After the man left, Hamid Pasha sighed. ‘Indeed, miyan, it might well be as he said. It might well be that the old woman was just blind! It might yet be an accident.’ Then his eyes narrowed at the round, muddy depression by his feet, around which the grass lay flattened. ‘And yet,’ he said, ‘it might not’.

  ‘Let’s go, Hamid bhai,’ said Inspector Nagarajan. ‘Let’s go and meet the family.’

  5

  PRAMEELA PRESSED DOWN with the weight of her hand and twisted the lid of the cylinder stuffed with dough, forcing noodles of kneaded gramflour to emerge from the perforated bottom and curl over themselves in circles on a platter. At the end of each circle she opened the lid and filled it with a handful of fresh flour and repeated the process. Next to her, Karuna, who sat on a three-legged stool, picked up the rounds of twisted dough and fried them in oil.

  Prameela steadfastly avoided her daughter’s eyes. Karuna had the sharpest tongue in the family. It was a general rule that, with her, you only spoke when spoken to and not otherwise. But Prameela had seen the two men who had come this morning. She couldn’t say why, but she felt she needed to know who they were and what they were after.

  She acquired a tone of false authority; offence was the best form of defence, people said. ‘Who were those men, Karuna?’ she asked, not looking up from her work.

  ‘Mother, what concern is it of yours?’

  There it was—that sharp tongue. Prameela did not know whom she got it from. None of the family had such a short temper—well, her mother used to say Kakaji’s father had an abuse ever ready at the tip of his tongue. But Karuna had not seen this man to be influenced by him. Where else could it have come from?

  She sighed; there was no use playing the authority card on Karuna. She’d better get right down to the point. So she asked, ‘Are they—policemen?’

  ‘One of them is,’ replied Karuna. ‘And the other fellow is some sort of a detective.’

  ‘Oh—I wonder what they are now after? I thought they were already finished with the investigations?’

  ‘That’s what I thought too. That’s what I told them; that they were not welcome here, especially with the function coming up next week.’ Her nostrils flared and her brow tightened. ‘You’ve put too much cumin in the flour. Can you not smell it?’

  ‘Swamannayya likes it like that,’ Prameela said slowly. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course. Why did I even ask? Swamannayya likes this, Swamannayya likes that, Swamannayya gets everything he wants.’

  ‘Don’t speak like that, Karuna, please.’

  ‘Oh, enough, Mother! Don’t pretend that you don’t know his game. You are not that naïve.’

  ‘But he is a man. Men are like that—’

  Karuna flipped the snacks in the oil, one by one. ‘Some man he is,’ she said. ‘Never worked a day in his life, has he? Scrounging on the wealth of his mother, lording it over his mother’s house, is that how all men are? Do you really believe that?’

  ‘Oh, Karuna, I wish you and he could get along. He is not that bad.’

  ‘And now,’ Karuna went on, ‘he has this group of madmen setting up shop in our backyard. Where did he get this idea from, I wonder.’

  Prameela said, ‘Oh, it has been two or three months now since they have come. Once the building is finished they will all move in.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And who will feed them? Who will pay the rent for the house? Who will look after the servants? He definitely won’t, the “man” that he is. I tell you what, Mother, Grandmother was lucky to have died, otherwise she would have to put up with him for God knows how much longer.’

  ‘No,’ Prameela said, shaking her head mournfully, ‘please, don’t talk like that’.

  ‘That is the problem with you, Mother. You let yourself be kicked around the place by these—these men! If they live with me for a year I will straighten them out. Then they will know what life actually is like.’

  ‘But Raja is lame,’ Prameela complained.

  ‘So?’ Karuna retorted hotly. ‘Who doesn’t have problems? Don’t I have problems? Am I not working to run my house? Even if he’s lame, he should make himself useful in some way, not smoke all day. And haven’t you ever wondered how his lameness does not stop him when he wants to go watch a movie?’

  Prameela did not reply. After a while, in a low voice she said, ‘He cannot even eat properly by himself.’

  Karuna laughed. ‘Mother! Mother! If Raja had the choice, he would sell you, Swamannayya, this house, and even Grandmother for a lifetime’s supply of cigarettes.’

  Prameela began to protest weakly.

  Karuna did not let her. ‘Anyway, enough of this. The men of this house are incompetent oafs. The whole town knows that. We don’t need to discuss them. Hurry up with the pressing, will you? I am done with my round of frying. Don’t you see?’

&nb
sp; Prameela quickly refilled her machine and started pressing. Presently she said, ‘Those two men—are they going to ask us questions now?’

  Karuna shrugged. ‘Let them do whatever they want. It is none of our concern.’ She stirred the oil absently for a minute, then looked up and said, ‘You know, it is strange why Grandmother went to the well that day, isn’t it?’

  Prameela’s hands twitched, and she twisted the machine harder. ‘Yes, I suppose,’ she said. ‘How am I supposed to know?’

  ‘She has always been so scared of water. Remember, she used to get scared of washing her hair in the shower because it made her feel as if she were drowning? Why did such a woman go to the well?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Prameela quickly. ‘How am I supposed to know?’

  ‘Mother!’ Karuna exclaimed. ‘Watch how clumsily you’re making them! If you don’t keep the shape right, I will not be able to fry them properly.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘If you’re tired we can take a break and start again after a while. We can serve some of these finished snacks to the “men” in the meantime.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Prameela, and stood up. Karuna looked up at her curiously.

  ‘Why are your hands shaking, Mother?’

  ‘Just tired. My hands shake when I am tired. You know that.’

  ‘Hmm, okay. Take these to Swamannayya—he won’t like it if I take them to him. I will take these to Raja.’

  ‘Okay,’ Prameela said, and bending down to gather some snacks in her still shivering hands, she filled up a plate and hurried out of the room. As she exited, she could not shake off the feeling that Karuna’s gaze was still following her.

  ‘Swamannayya?’

  ‘Yes, Prameela, come in. Bring in the Amrutanjan bottle, please.’

  Prameela picked up the bottle, pushed the door open, and went in. The room was dark, but clean. A burnt incense stick stood on the table, its ashes sprinkled about because of the fan. Four books lay on the corner of the table, laid out on top of each other, the widest one at the bottom and the narrowest on top. The pen-holder, with two Reynolds pens leaning against the rim (one red, one blue), stood against the wall. The chair was pushed in. The bedsheets had a washed look about them, and so did the cupboards and the bookshelf. As she always did, Prameela felt a wave of womanly approval sweep over her as she entered.