by Anita Nair
Gowda and Urmila stood there, looking at each other, but the guests were beginning to trickle in and it was time for Gowda to be chief guest, light the lamp and speak a few words.
What did he say? Gowda couldn’t remember. He had written down a little speech and memorized it. Had he parroted the words? Or had he said something else? Urmila had seemed moved and so did the others.
It had been easy enough to find the words, to sound as if he meant it, especially after he had seen the group of transgenders cowering at the back of the room. So afraid to come forward and be among the rest of the invitees. So certain that ridicule would be meted out to them if they did. So wanting to belong, but so definite that they would not be allowed to. Gowda had felt outraged to see the trepidation in their eyes and how they shrunk within themselves.
After an initial viewing, Gowda walked about, lingering before each photograph. He felt Urmila come to stand at his side. ‘Borei, you haven’t changed at all. You don’t know how ridiculously pleased I am about that,’ she murmured.
Gowda continued to stare at a photograph. ‘Why would I have changed?’
‘You are a police officer now.’
‘So…’ Gowda turned, amazed that she could be so affected by stereotypes.
‘You don’t expect much sensitivity from a policeman!’ She smiled.
‘Or is that you don’t expect sensitivity from me?’ Gowda asked quietly.
He saw her stiffen. ‘Don’t twist my words, Borei, please.’
Gowda took a deep breath and moved to the next photograph.
‘So which one do you like the most?’ he asked, trying to slash the tension that had crept between them.
He saw her clench her jaw as if to still her words. ‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘It’s an amazing shot; Ravi says he shot it in Shivaji Nagar market some days ago in available light. It’s stunning.’
It was a photograph that defied all rules of light, focus and framing in the conventional sense. It was a photograph of a group of eunuchs at a bangle seller, each one of them only partially visible. But what drew the eye and made it linger was the untainted joy that emanated from them. For a moment they were free of the demons of their own making and the world’s and so they stood there, radiating girlish delight at choosing glass bangles; the pleasure of seeing them slide onto their wrists, the clink of glass against glass as one of them held up her wrists. The light caught the glee and the nakedness of their dreams in their eyes.
And the light caught some more. A curve of a cheek as it leaned forward to touch a roll of bangles. And an earring that dangled into the frame. A beautiful pearl-drop earring.
Gowda’s breath snagged in his throat.
She told herself she had to stop. She told herself she had already crossed the threshold of danger and would arouse suspicion. She needed to get a grip on herself. But how could she? She couldn’t help it, like she couldn’t resist the caress of the pearl against her skin. She swung her face a little so the jhumkas bobbed gently against her cheek, jhumkas with little shimmery pearls until her pearl earrings were ready.
A week after the earring had been misplaced, she had found a jeweller who had promised to replicate the earring for her.
Akka had made a face when she asked her to take the earring to the jeweller. ‘Take King Kong with you so the jeweller doesn’t mess around,’ she had told Akka. ‘And tell him I need it in ten days’ time.’
‘Do you think I can’t handle the jeweller? I don’t need anyone to go with me … anyway, what’s so special about that earring?’ Akka had grumbled.
The elderly eunuch disliked King Kong and he, Akka. Each felt the other had usurped the other’s place.
‘Just do as I ask, Akka,’ she said, allowing a trace of steel to enter her voice. How could anyone understand what those earrings did for her?
They were standing at a crossroad near Infantry Road. Akka sidled up to her and said again, ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like you being here … it is dangerous.’
She sniffed. A little girlish sniff. ‘Don’t you get tired of saying this to me, Akka? I am tired of hearing it!’
‘You don’t realize … we have nothing to lose! But you are not like us,’ Akka murmured.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s true! I am not like you or the rest of them.’
‘Since you have such contempt for us,’ Akka began.
She touched Akka’s elbow. ‘That was uncalled for. I’m sorry. But why do they have to flaunt themselves? It only makes them a joke, a sick repulsive joke. You are not like that!’
Akka looked away. ‘I was once like them … we cannot help ourselves. We do not know who we are. And so we exaggerate in the only way we can. But you … you are not like us. You don’t have to be like us.’
She stared into a pool of darkness beyond Akka. ‘I cannot help it any more than they can. Why won’t you allow me that?’
They stood there side by side, watching the flurry of traffic. It was a few minutes past nine. The beat police weren’t out on the prowl yet. Anyway, the policemen wouldn’t trouble them unless they solicited blatantly. They had been dealt with. It was all part of a process and if you knew how to, you could survive working the street. That was lesson number 1 of the street – every man has a price.
A young man stepped out of one of the small restaurants. He stood at the entrance, hands on his hips, looking speculatively at the street. She saw how his T-shirt clung to his chest. She saw the corded muscles of his throat and the swell of his biceps. She saw how his jeans hinted at the tightness of his haunches and the bulge of his groin. She thought of how his breath would reek of garlic, onion and the spice of the biriyani he must have just eaten.
She watched him walk to the paan shop and buy a paan. She saw how his hand reached into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out a wallet. The slow thumbing of notes, the return of wallet into pocket, and the stuffing of paan into his mouth. His lips parting, the gleam of his teeth, his tongue receiving the betel-leaf pouch … she could taste it now. The sweetness of his saliva honeyed by the gulkhand in the paan, flavoured by the betel-leaf juice. His jaws moved as he chewed. That strong jaw chiselled almost out of sandstone. Firm, but soft. In the pit of her belly, there was a leap of longing. She swallowed. She adjusted her sari, ignored Akka’s imploring gaze and walked towards him.
The young man had walked a little further down. There was a row of shops housed in an old building with colonnades and arches. He stood by a pillar, waiting. What was he waiting for, she wondered. A friend? A whore? I can be both, she told him in her head.
She went to stand on the other side of the pillar. A smile tugged at the corner of her heart, the curve of her mouth. How had it come about that once again she found herself located within one of the paintings she loved? She saw him lean forward to look at her. She touched the pearl strings around her neck and draped the edge of her pallu over her right shoulder so it flowed into the crook of her right elbow. She leaned against the pillar so her jhumkas were visible.
She folded her hanky into four and let it unfurl, a pale pink flower that she toyed with as she felt him assess her. It felt so right, this moment, almost as if it were destined. This old-fashioned shop front, the man by the pillar, and she on the other side. The Stolen Interview. That was what Ravi Varma had called the painting. Why stolen, she had always wondered. But now she knew. She was there to steal his time, his soul. She smiled, lifted her gaze and let her eyes sneak a look at him.
Their eyes met. She dropped her gaze and played with her hanky flower.
‘Are you waiting for someone?’ he asked.
‘My brother,’ she said, allowing a trace of shyness to touch her voice.
‘It’s not safe for a girl to stand here by herself,’ he said. ‘Rather irresponsible of your brother!’
‘He’s not really my brother. He’s a distant cousin and I am new to Bangalore, so when he offered to pick me up and drop me at my hostel, I…’ The words flowed. She liked this little stor
y about herself.
‘You stay at a hostel?’ His voice quickened.
She smiled secretly. All men were the same. All they needed was a thread to latch on to. All they needed was a crack in the door to wedge their foot into.
‘Yes, it is a hostel for working women. Near Banaswadi,’ she murmured softly.
‘You know what, I’m going that side. Would you like me to drop you?’
She looked at him with her eyes wide open. More shock than surprise, she told herself. Oh, how she enjoyed this! Playing them like an instrument. And how easily they allowed her to play them. ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll wait for my brother,’ she said softly, moving away ever so slightly from the pillar, as though she wanted to distance herself from his preposterous suggestion.
‘It’s really not safe for you to stand here. This is Bangalore. Not … where do you come from?’
‘Haveri,’ she said, mouthing the first name that came to her.
‘That explains it! Bangalore girls wouldn’t be this naive. And this isn’t a safe part of the city.’ He paused. ‘And someone as attractive as you…’
She felt him look sidelong at her to see if his compliment had registered. A small smile. That was all he would need to pursue his suit. That was all she should allow him. Or he’d think she was easy … and that she wasn’t.
‘My name is Sanjay. I came to Bangalore about six months ago from Tumkur. There’s only fifty kilometres between here and there but it could very well be another planet. That’s why I am concerned…’ he said carefully. ‘So listen to me and let me drop you. I live near Ramamurthy Nagar, so it’s not all that far from you. In fact, it’s on my way,’ he lied.
He came to the other side of the pillar, to where she stood.
He was even more perfect up close, she thought, and then remembered to say, ‘But my brother!’
‘Call him on his mobile and tell him that you found your own way to the hostel,’ he said. ‘Come, my bike’s parked there!’
‘You have a bike?’ She was surprised.
‘Yes, that’s the first thing I did when I got here. Took a bike loan and got this beauty.’
She touched her hair. Then took the end of the sari and draped it over her hair. That should hold it in place.
They walked to the bike. She watched as he started the bike. Through the visor of his helmet, he said, ‘C’mon, get on the bike! Are you afraid? You have been on a bike before, haven’t you?’
She nodded and perched sideways on the pillion.
‘No, sit properly. And you’d better hold me. You don’t look like you are used to sitting on bikes.’
She held his shoulder with her palm. A touch-you-touch-you-not sort of a grip. He sighed, but didn’t say anything.
Soon they were in the thick of traffic. He talked to her all the way. Words the wind whipped out of his mouth. Words that lost a syllable in the din of traffic. For all she could hear was her hammering heart. It didn’t matter what he said; the pressure of his body against hers felt like heaven. What was he doing to her? Giving in to impulse, she wrapped her arm around his waist.
He turned his head and murmured, ‘That’s better!’
She knew that he would stop. That he would find a pretext of some sort to take her into a quiet place. That he would then move in on her. All men were the same. She preferred them to be the same. That way, there were no surprises.
But he didn’t stop.
At Banaswadi, she helped him find the street where the hostel was located. Some months ago she had helped a distant relative find a place here. So it wasn’t hard to lie when he wanted to know what they ate for breakfast and the closing time, how many inmates to a room and if there was hot water.
He took her number and gave her his. He said they must meet again and elicited a promise from her that she would call. He looked at her carefully one last time and touched her cheek with the tip of his finger. He waited for her to enter the gate. And then, on his large noisy bike, he drove away into the darkness.
She walked back into the quiet street. She felt bereft and alone. Then, further ahead, she spotted a man. She felt his gaze on her. A hungry gaze she knew she could appease.
She stood by the side of the road, knowing he would come to her.
She thought of what would happen next. The frantic unravelling of clothes and inhibitions, the glorious need, a desperate need to caress and pummel, rake skin with nails and nip flesh with teeth. She would offer it all, her mouth, her tongue, every orifice and crevice for him to plunder and fill, so the clamour in her head would cease, so there would be stillness thereafter. The deafening thunder of stillness that would allow her to forget.
SATURDAY, 13 AUGUST
Santosh tried not to stare. So this was the Crime Branch office. It wasn’t all that much. He had expected something more grand. Something imposing, significant and representative of the importance of the work its inmates did.
A careless coat of pale-blue colourwash had been slapped on at some distant point in time, but the damp had worked its way through the plaster and paint so that large splotches of grey coloured the walls of the hallway and the staircase. A heap of broken chairs, tables with their Formica tops peeling, and old sofas were piled into a corner of the room that opened from the staircase. Beyond this was the Serious Crime Division, a hive of rooms with flimsy partitions made of plywood and glass.
ACP Stanley Sagayaraj’s room was a vast improvement. The senior man had a vast granite-topped table, a Dell PC that was still wreathed in its plastic cover on a side table, and several glass-fronted, locked cupboards of books. Santosh’s eyes darted over the spines. Police diaries, Law of Arms & Explosives, Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, Criminal Law Journal, Criminal Major Acts, Criminal Minor Acts and, incongruously, The Book of Indian Birds. On the walls, which seemed to have been painted more recently, were three framed pictures of birds.
‘I was a keen birdwatcher once.’ ACP Stanley Sagayaraj’s voice didn’t hide the amusement he felt at Santosh’s careful gathering of details. ‘I don’t have the time for it any more.’
He gestured to the two men to sit down.
Gowda pulled a chair out and sat down while Santosh wondered if he should sit in the same line as Gowda or in the next line of chairs behind Gowda. What was the protocol when it came to these things?
‘Sit down, Santosh, what are you dithering about? The view is the same no matter where you sit,’ Gowda said impatiently, gesturing to a chair next to him.
‘My team’s been busy,’ ACP Stanley Sagayaraj said, pulling out the case diary. ‘Roopesh, the BPO employee, had told his roommate he was going for a movie that evening. In his wallet, we found a bill from Empire on Mosque Road. The nearest theatre is Kalinga, which as we all know is a pick-up place. So in all probability he went for the evening show with one express purpose. To get laid.’
Santosh dropped his eyes. Gowda’s and Stanley’s eyes met in amusement at Santosh’s discomfiture.
‘So they checked at the theatre. The ticket checker remembers him. He was alone and had asked the ticket checker if he could move from the seat he was allotted. The parking boy, who remembered him as well, said he drove away on a Kinetic Honda with a woman. Roopesh had apparently entrusted his helmet to the boy and promised to tip him when he collected it. By the way, the scooter hasn’t been found. We have sent out an alert. So I am inclined to agree with you. Perhaps this is a team working together. A woman who is the bait and a man who is the actual killer. We’ll know for certain when the DNA tests arrive.’
Gowda nodded. ‘There’s something else. Do you remember the earring I mentioned? The one that was found on Liaquat. I had it sized, appraised, etc., by a jeweller. Last evening I was invited to a photo exhibition and one of the photographs was of a group of eu … er … transgenders. An evening shot set somewhere in one of the by-lanes of Shivaji Nagar.’
‘I saw you looking at it for a very long time and wondered…’ Santosh said.
‘Well,
it was a very interesting photograph, but that wasn’t the reason. One of the eunuchs had a similar earring. I am not completely certain though, so I’ve asked them to forward me a copy of the photograph.’
‘Have you thought of rounding up the eunuchs and questioning them?’ Stanley asked, looking at the photographs of the victims again.
‘I was going to get that done,’ Gowda said.
‘Sir, we could ask them to come to the station this afternoon,’ Santosh butted in.
Stanley and Gowda exchanged a look. ‘He’s new, isn’t he?’ Stanley asked sotto voce.
Gowda smiled. ‘Give him a break, how does he know what they can be like! No, Santosh, we go to them. Bringing them into the station would be like, what’s that idiom? Bringing a bull into a china shop. Except this would be several bulls who would think nothing of breaking up things, stripping their clothes off and rolling on the ground. So, Santosh, we go to them. In fact, I want you to do it. Take Head Constable Gajendra with you when you go for the questioning. He is an experienced man.’
Gowda’s phone beeped as they stepped out of the Crime Branch office. He glanced at the screen, his face tightening.
Gowda didn’t speak much as the police vehicle drove back to the station. Santosh tried to read his face but apart from the grim set of his features, it was hard to decipher anything. What could be wrong? Santosh wondered. With a tiny mental shudder he decided it might be best to stay clear of Gowda for the rest of the day.
A little past lunchtime, Gowda called for PC David to drop him home.
The house was empty. Gowda had waited for Roshan to step out. He stood at the doorway of his son’s room for a moment. Then he went in and opened Roshan’s rucksack. He rummaged through it briskly. There was nothing there. The weed pouch was empty. The grass and hash had been smoked up.
Gowda sat on the bed. Had Roshan gone out to score some more? What would come next? Speed. Angel Dust. E… Gowda chewed on his lip thoughtfully.