The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook

by Nury Vittachi

  Gupta scratched his chin. ‘That’s about seventy, seventy-five—but there appear to be more joining the queue all the time, so it will be difficult to tell.’

  ‘How can we help?’ Wong asked.

  ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ the police officer said. ‘That’s very easy. See this lot?’ He airily waved his hands over the crowd. ‘Find out who really did it. That’s all you have to do.’

  ‘Piece of cake,’ Joyce said, turning around to study the crowd.

  ‘Always hungry,’ Wong explained to Gupta. ‘Always asks for cake.’

  ‘Young people always want sugary things,’ the officer replied, with a distant look in his eye. ‘Mind you, so do I.’

  The three visitors from Singapore arranged to meet Subhash Reddy the following morning at X=Coffee, but had no idea how to proceed. Sinha ate crab curry for breakfast, while Joyce ate a small, pale-yoked egg. Wong nibbled at some dry toast. Little conversation flowed. The problem they were facing seemed insurmountable.

  Where to begin? There was no obvious application of feng shui, vaastu or astrological lore. There were no clues. And there was a host of impracticalities in starting any sort of investigation. They were here only for a few days. No way could they interview all the people who confessed to the murder. The list had been closed at one hundred and fifty at 10 pm the previous night. And that was only because Inspector Gupta had passed an instant and arbitrary law saying that with regard to murder confessions, no more than one hundred and fifty were allowed, and would-be confessors from any murder from now onwards would be served on a first-come, first-served basis. Any murderer who confessed to any killing after the police-set deadline would not have his confession accepted.

  The silence gradually became oppressive as the four of them peered into their tumblers of tea.

  ‘I’ve got the full list of one hundred and fifty confessors here,’ Sinha said. ‘Muktul had it sent around to my room this morning.’

  They passed it around, surveying it gloomily. How could one identify a murderer when all one had to go with was a list of names and dates of birth?

  ‘Why don’t we hang it up and throw a dart at it?’ Joyce said. ‘How on earth can we find out who did it? I can’t even pronounce most of these names. And I don’t fancy trying to produce one hundred and fifty birth charts.’

  ‘Same-same,’ Wong agreed.

  The young woman ran her index finger down the list and stopped. ‘Hey. There are some, like white people.’

  Wong looked over her shoulder. ‘Gwailo?’ he asked. ‘Here?’

  Subhash Reddy shook his head. ‘No. This is south India. There are lots of names here that come from the West. It’s a historical relic. In Kerala, for example, many people are carrying the name George. In Cochin, there is a district called Jewtown. A typical south Indian name might be Minnie Matthew. India is a very mixed place, with all sorts of cultural roots.’

  Joyce ran her finger down the list. ‘So a guy with a name like, here’s one—David George—isn’t a foreigner? He’s a real Indian?’ she asked.

  Subhash nodded. ‘He’s a real Indian.’

  Wong took the paper and stared at it. ‘Any Chinese names?’

  Subhash looked at it. ‘Not on this list. But there are Chinese in India. There are lots in Calcutta. Lots in the tanning business, since Indians don’t like to handle cowhide.’

  The feng shui master looked to Dilip Sinha. ‘Can we do anything with this list?’

  The Indian astrologer put his fingertips together under his chin and thought. ‘I don’t know. Like Joyce, I believe intellectual thought is not going to give us an answer in this instance. We need a different method. But something based on chance, like Joyce suggests, is not a good answer. It would be in better keeping with our traditions to look for a mystical route.’

  The feng shui master pondered. ‘Why so many people want to confess to being murderer? So crazy. Why so many people not like Spaniards?’

  ‘It is crazy. But I guess the only conclusion is that he was hated. I think it is not Spaniards. I think it is Spanners, right, Joyce?’

  ‘Spammers. With an M.’

  ‘Spammers. With an M. I see. I must practise. Why are Spammers so hated?’

  ‘I don’t know. Well, I do. They fill up your inbox with junk.’

  Wong nodded. ‘They fill up your inbox with junk. I see. What sort of junk? Old bed? Lupsup? Old shoes?’

  ‘Not that sort of junk. I mean computer junk.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Wong. ‘Old computers. Broken screen, like that?’

  ‘No, not broken screens. I don’t mean like physical junk. An inbox is like a computer mailbox.’

  ‘Mailbox? Like on ground floor of YY Mansions?’

  ‘No. It’s a folder you get on your screen. And they put junk in there. I mean, they put email letters telling you to buy stuff. Advertisements mostly.’

  ‘But why people get so angry?’

  Joyce shrugged her shoulders, not knowing how to explain. ‘It’s—it’s really irritating. I mean, I’ve wanted to murder Spammers before now. You see, you click on the little envelope thing on the corner of your screen, and you think, yay, I’ve got mail! One of my mates has written to me! You feel all happy. A little number pops up in a box on the bottom left of your screen and says you’ve got, say, ninety-nine new emails. And you think, cool, because you think they are all letters from like guys or your buddies or your mum or chatroom people you’ve been talking to or whatever. But then it turns out that ninety-five of them are junk mails telling you to buy stuff. Only four of them are from people you know. It’s really annoying. I can’t explain how annoying it is. And they are such liars—that’s the worst thing.’

  As she spoke, she became increasingly strident. Wong watched with undisguised fascination.

  ‘The spanners—I mean, the Spammers—really are utter bastards. They have this little thing at the bottom and it says if you click it you won’t get any more email, and poor little old ladies who don’t know any better click it, and instead of taking them off the list, they send them more and more and more junk mail. Hundreds of pieces a day. They are truly evil.’ Wong was still not absolutely clear what the problem was. ‘But if you see advertisement in newspaper, you don’t get upset. So why you get upset if you see advertisement in your box?’

  ‘Inbox.’

  ‘Yes, in box.’

  Joyce thought for a moment. ‘Well, unless you have a fast connection—and that costs big bucks—it takes a lot of time to download emails. Doesn’t it, Subhash?’

  The young man agreed. ‘Joyce is right. It really drives you mad if your precious time and money are being wasted downloading a lot of junk. Some people who are really poor . . .’

  The young woman interrupted. ‘Yeah. When I lived in Hong Kong, we had to pay this surcharge called PNETS for every minute we were on.’

  ‘Peanuts?’

  ‘Not peanuts, PNETS. Spelt P-N-E-T-S.’

  Wong was looking confused.

  Subhash raised his hands to show that he could explain it simply.

  ‘Getting on the Internet is not usually free. It costs money. Usually there is a charge to the telephone company, and also there are tariffs set by the TRAI—Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.’

  Wong was intrigued. ‘Ah, this is interesting.’ He faced Subhash. ‘Can I ask you question? Is it possible that someone only has few minutes every day to download email. And he get very upset because his few minutes taken up by junk emails from the Spaniard, not real emails from lovers.’

  ‘You mean loved ones,’ Joyce said. ‘Not lovers.’ She suddenly felt herself blushing.

  ‘Sure,’ Subhash said to the feng shui master. ‘There must be loads of people like that.’

  ‘On this list?’

  ‘Yes. Dozens,’ the young man said. ‘I think at least half the people on this list don’t have their own computers. They use computers at school or college.’

  ‘What if they have no school or college?’


  Subhash thought about this. ‘Well, then they’d go to Mag-Auntie’s.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Sinha asked. ‘Is it an Internet cafe?’

  The young Indian frowned thoughtfully. ‘I would say more of an Internet chapatti house, or Internet bhajji house. We call it a short-eats house, you know? It’s an e-choupal in Hindi slang. It’s the place to hang out in Pallakiri.’

  Sinha translated: ‘Short eats—like a snack bar, or bakery café or something.’

  Subhash nodded. ‘Yes. The old ladies in this village like to go to Mag-Auntie’s. That way, they keep in touch with their children overseas. She lets them use her computers. She charges money. I think at the moment you pay maybe two rupees a minute.’

  ‘So that’s not expensive, then.’ This was Joyce, returning to the conversation, now that she had got over the embarrassment of having used the word lovers.

  Subhash sighed. ‘I’m sorry to disagree with you, my dearest sister Joyce, but that is expensive.’

  Joyce blushed again. She tried to ignore her burning cheeks. ‘A couple of rupees a minute? What’s a rupee worth? Like a few cents?’

  ‘For these old ladies, that’s very expensive. Some of them have a budget of a few rupees a day to live on.’

  ‘I want to meet Mag-Auntie,’ the feng shui master said.

  Mag-Auntie was nowhere to be seen. She had disappeared. Her restaurant, an open-air eatery where a dozen people lazily picked over short-eats and tapped at computers, was being run by her grandnephew Arti. An enticing smell of charred chickpeas and fried onions gently wafted from a counter laid with trays of curries gradually getting cold.

  Arti, a blotchy-faced youth of about twenty nursing a bottle that looked like Coke but had Thums Up written on it, took a shine to Joyce.

  ‘Hi pretty girl, you ’Merican?’ He grinned, showing two missing teeth. ‘I show you Internet, good price. Hot pictures.’

  Subhash’s face darkened. ‘Leave her,’ he said.

  Joyce was thrilled. Could it be that Subhash was jealous?

  But then the young man’s expression changed. He smiled and spoke to Arti in the local dialect. As they chatted, Joyce was aware of the grandnephew sending lascivious glances her way. She squirmed uncomfortably and moved to stand behind Wong, who was trying to avert his eyes from the unappetising food.

  Subhash walked over and spoke quietly into her ear: ‘I told him that if he tells us where Mag-Auntie is, you’ll give him your personal email address.’

  ‘I will do no such thing.’

  ‘I know that and you know that. He doesn’t.’

  Half an hour later, they were walking through a rural area.

  They left the main road and followed a dirt path through a grove of trees towards a clearing. They climbed a small hill, turned through a field of foxtail millet crops, and moved through a row of semul silk-cotton trees into a small clearing at the foot of another hill.

  There was something almost magical about the grassy paddock in which they found themselves. It lifted their spirits, and all four of them were suddenly laughing for no reason. The sun glinted through fairweather clouds and a light northeastern breeze flicked forelocks off foreheads.

  The glade was astonishingly beautiful. A huge variety of trees lined the clearing, with teak, casuarina, Acacia nilotica, Albizia lebbek and neem jostling together. From behind them, a clump of giant bamboo stalks leaned into the scene, and almost hid a tiny creek that trickled over a natural watercourse.

  A small, white, single-storey house stood in the middle of the clearing, with a steep hill to the right and a stone hillock on the left.

  On arriving at the spot, both Wong and Sinha were stunned. They gazed at the house, the hill, and the surrounding trees with what could only be described as awe.

  The pain that had been a constant presence in the feng shui master’s face for the past two days vanished. He appeared to grow younger.

  Wong looked at the house and turned to Sinha. ‘The ming t’ang,’ he breathed.

  The taller man echoed him. ‘The ming t’ang.’

  The feng shui master slowly shook his head in wonder. ‘Waah. Nearly perfect, no?’

  Sinha nodded. ‘Yes. Damn near.’

  ‘The house. The hill.’

  ‘The other hill.’

  ‘The ch’i.’

  ‘The prana.’

  Joyce stood open-mouthed and speechless as Wong and Sinha spontaneously started skipping through the tall grass, which was speckled with shoulder-high poppy plants and wild sorghum. They looked like infants, dancing with excitement at the discovery of a new playground.

  ‘What are they doing?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. They’re your friends,’ said Subhash. ‘Do they often do this?’

  ‘I’ve never seen them do anything like this before. There must have been something in their tea.’

  ‘What does ming t’ang mean?’

  ‘It means bright hall. One of the signs of a place with perfect feng shui is that it has a low, open area in front of it where good spirits gather. It’s very significant.’

  ‘I get the feeling they like this place.’

  Joyce agreed. ‘They spend all their lives looking for places with perfect feng shui. They seem to have found one.’

  ‘Come.’ Subhash beckoned to her to sit on a large, pebble-shaped rock nearby. ‘Tell me about this feng shui stuff. What does it mean?’

  Joyce used finger and thumb to wipe the sweat from her upper lip. She sat next to Subhash and looked over at the two grown men gambolling through the glade with their arms in the air.

  ‘It’s like this. Deep in your brain is a picture of home.’

  ‘Your own home?’

  ‘No. It’s in the bit of your mind they call like the instinctive memory? You heard of that?’

  ‘Yes. We sometimes call it the race memory. Part of our brain that holds things that evolved over centuries and millennia. From when human beings lived in caves and so on.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s it. Well, Wong believes that there’s a picture there of the perfect home. It’s a small place. It’s surrounded by greenery—’cause, that was the only colour in those days, they hadn’t invented Dulux and stuff. It had running water nearby. It was built into the side of a hill.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So the sabre-toothed tigers or mammoths or whatever couldn’t get you.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Well, feng shui helps us to like re-create that scene. That’s why green is a relaxing colour. That’s why you feel better with a mountain behind you and water in front. Et cetera, et cetera. Feng shui turns your home into a replica of that dream home deep, deep in your head, sort of thing.’

  ‘Interesting. We have the same idea. We call it vaastu.’

  ‘Yeah, same thing.’

  Wong and Sinha, having skipped the length of the glade several times, stopped in the middle and stared at the house.

  The geography of the scene before them was simple, but breathtaking. The small home appeared to be embraced by two hills. To the east and slightly behind the house was a steep, rocky hill with a small grove of amaltas at its foot. The high branches of the trees were draped in clusters of bright yellow blossoms that looked like gold grapes.

  To the west was a smaller hill—really little more than a cluster of igneous boulders. The rocks were phaneritic, their surface peppered with tiny bright crystals. They stretched behind the small home, reaching out to the lower parts of the hill opposite. In front of the rock formation was a single old-growth gul mohur tree carrying a vivid mass of scarlet blossoms.

  The two hills, their fingers touching behind the house, formed a perfect Dragon and Tiger embrace, protecting the house and encompassing it with the best fortune imaginable. Further behind the house were tall trees and, beyond, a much larger mountain.

  Wong picked out the elements that made the location so magical. ‘Green dragon one side, white tiger other side. At back is black turtle. Ming t’ang in front
. Truly here is heaven.’

  ‘It is really quite remarkable,’ Sinha agreed. ‘All you need is a red bird at the front, and it would be perfect.’

  Wong pointed at the shrubs in front of the house, where several birds could be seen—and one of them was a scarlet minivet, a startlingly bright crimson Indian bird with a jet-black head and cloak.

  The two of them started to walk towards the home at the centre of the picture: a small structure with a gently sloping roof. A row of pink cassia trees stood behind it, a profusion of rose-white blooms visible over the house’s green tiles. In pride of place at the heart of the area behind the house was a tree that Wong did not recognise. It stood taller than the cassias, with solid branches carrying orange and scarlet clusters of flowers.

  In front of the house were several low shrubs, decorating a winding path to the front door. On the right of the stone track were several hari champa bushes, their leaves dark green at ground level, rising to bright lemon green for the newest buds. Even from this distance the apple-fragrance of the bushes could be detected. On the other side of the track was a line of yellow oleander shrubs, known in India as the trumpet flower bush. They were growing wild, with some sprigs standing higher than Dilip Sinha. ‘I love the trumpet flowers,’ the Indian astrologer said. ‘Poisonous to man but very popular with the gods—we use them for decorating temples.’

  ‘That tree is what?’ asked Wong, pointing to one beyond the house.

  ‘That’s an asoka, a sacred tree for Hindus. It exhales perfume at nights during April and May every year. It is associated with love and chastity. Remember the story of how Sita, the wife of Rama, is abducted by Ravana? Well, she escapes and finds refuge in a grove of asokas.’

  ‘Very beautiful,’ said the feng shui master.

  ‘It is. Gautama Buddha was born under one of those.’

  As they approached the house, the thick grove of trees behind it appeared to grow taller. ‘In feng shui, trees north behind house very favourable. Lots of leaves, lots of prosperity.’

  Sinha agreed. ‘Works for me too. In vaastu, the north direction is associated with the god Kubera, Lord of Wealth. We associate it with the planet Mercury and Indians place their vaults and money boxes in the north, in the belief that this means they will always have something to put into them.’