by Vaseem Khan
Meanwhile, the newspapers had had a field day. A web of corrupt politicians and policemen had already been implicated in the affair, including local MLA Ashok Kalyan. The Air Force Colony complex had been besieged with reporters prying into the life of the retired inspector who had cracked the case and in so doing had shaken the very ground beneath the feet of the high and mighty.
Through the phenomenon of the modern Indian media, a howling, insatiable, many-headed beast, the whole country was hooked on the scandal. At the centre of the furore were the rescued orphans who provided a gripping human-interest story. They were presently being put up in the city’s most expensive hospital, their plight being used by social agencies as an exemplar of how little Indian society cared for the poorest and most dispossessed. The Chief Minister had been falling over himself to display his concern for the traumatised orphans. The Prime Minister had been forced to make a televised statement, promising an investigation into every orphanage in the country and personally assuring that such a thing would never again be allowed to happen.
Accusations were flying thick and fast of other corrupt practices by politicians in bed with gangsters. Of clandestine arms deals and spurious cattle-feed scams. Vote rigging and paid-for planning permissions. Rivers of black money flowing from the coffers of criminals to the even bigger crooks in elected posts.
To the delight of the masses, politicos of all feathers were running for cover.
And Chopra had achieved all this… Poppy had no idea how Ganesha had become involved, but the newspapermen seemed quite intoxicated with the angle of the elephant sidekick. They had made Poppy’s life miserable with their constant requests for interviews, just so that they could ask her inane questions about Ganesha: Does he do any tricks? Can he understand everything that you say? Do you think he is God’s avatar come to help your husband?
Oh, those silly newspapermen!
The only saving grace had been observing Mrs Subramanium’s helpless fury. The old martinet had complained bitterly about the furore but had been powerless in the face of the marauding pressmen who simply thrust microphones in her face every time she tried to chastise them from the premises. Poppy was certain Mrs Subramanium would be sharpening her claws in readiness for the upcoming Managing Committee meeting…
And then there had been the whole business with her cousin Kiran. Certain extraordinary developments had put paid to all of Poppy’s plans. The boyfriend of Kiran’s daughter Prarthana, the wretched scion of the industrialist who had been packed off to a European boarding school, had somehow found his way back to Mumbai. Without informing his parents, he had arrived at Kiran’s bungalow and thrown himself at her feet. In the modern way of things he had blubbed on about how much he loved Prarthana and insisted that he was willing to do the right thing by her. He wanted them to be married that very day.
Prarthana had thrown a vase of flowers at him, concussing the wretched boy, and had told him to crawl back to his father.
The boy, once he had recovered from his daze, had threatened to commit suicide there and then if Prarthana did not agree to marry him, proving that he was a true acolyte of the Bollywood school of melodrama. Prarthana had handed him a box of matches and told him to talk less and do more.
Finally, Kiran had got the pair of them to see sense. Without further ado, she had organised the wedding. Her husband, still away in Delhi, had been furious, but for once Kiran had put her foot down. She did not explain the necessities behind the marriage: Anand did not need to know about that, at least not then.
The irate father of the groom had also turned up, the buttons of his shimmering silk bush shirt almost popping from his ample stomach in fury. He had shouted. He had raged. He had shaken his fist, and threatened to call the police. Kiran had swiftly sent him packing.
Poppy reflected that her cousin could be quite the tiger when roused.
And although gossip was rife and would no doubt follow the young couple around for quite some time, at least they would be a married couple when the baby was born.
Poppy tried to feel happy for her cousin, but inside, her heart ached. It was cruel of God, she thought, to have given her hope, after all these years, of becoming a mother, and then to snatch that hope away again.
And, of course, there was the whole business of the Other Woman.
Poppy had become more convinced than ever that her husband was about to leave her, about to set up home with his fancy woman, whoever she might be. And now she could not even deliver on her claim that she would finally give her long-suffering husband a child. Her last hope of holding on to the man she had loved her whole life had vanished.
And then, that morning, when she had readied herself for a final confrontation, Chopra had told her to get dressed. He wanted her to accompany him. He did not say where.
In the auto-rickshaw, Chopra had remained determinedly silent, in spite of Poppy’s repeated questioning. The bad feeling in her stomach had festered, until she became quite nauseous. She could think of only one place they could be headed. Chopra wanted her to meet his new woman. The question was: how would she react?
I’ll scratch her eyes out, thought Poppy defiantly. But she knew that she would not. If Chopra wanted her to meet his future wife, then it was because he wished for a dignified end to their marriage. He had always been a man who prided himself on his dignity. She would give him that, she thought. No matter what it cost her, she would give him that.
The auto-rickshaw stopped.
Poppy looked out. They were on Guru Rabindranath Tagore Road. Traffic buzzed by them on the right, while a steady stream of people moved by on the left. ‘Why have we stopped here?’
Chopra did not answer. He got out of the rickshaw and paid the driver. Mystified, Poppy followed him.
They were standing in front of a broad, single-storey building, with a front porch leading into a cavernous room that was decked out with tables and chairs. It looked like a restaurant, a dhaba-style restaurant, she thought. She looked up. Where the restaurant’s nameboard should have been there was a white cloth. Perhaps the nameboard was behind the cloth.
Chopra walked up the shallow steps fronting the porch and into the restaurant; Poppy followed.
Above them ceiling fans whirred, churning the hot air. A few flies buzzed lazily around the darkened interior. Poppy was beginning to understand. He did not want to take her to the woman’s house. He did not trust her enough to reveal to her exactly where her nemesis lived. Instead he had picked this neutral venue for their meeting.
She looked around, seeking a lone woman seated at one of the tables.
What would she look like? Poppy wondered. Attractive, no doubt. And young–or, at least, younger than her. After all, Chopra was still a handsome man.
Suddenly, she realised that there was no one in the restaurant. It wasn’t a popular place, then. That must be why Chopra had picked it; they would have privacy, at least, for her shame. The place seemed to have been newly refurbished. The furniture was unchipped, with bright chequered tablecloths and high-backed comfortable-looking padded chairs. The granite floor tiles had been newly laid, and the paint on the walls was bright and welcoming. She could not see any menus, however, and there seemed to be no staff around. That was strange.
‘Well,’ said Chopra, ‘what do you think?’
Poppy was bewildered. ‘What do you mean? What do I think of what?’
He smiled. He appeared to be enjoying a joke at her expense. ‘When Dr Devidikar told me that I would have to retire, I was terrified. I couldn’t tell you just how terrified. What would I do with the rest of my life? I had been a police officer for so long that I could not think of any other sort of existence. But gradually I came to terms with the situation. I started thinking about what else I could do with my time. I didn’t want to become that retired old duffer who potters around, reads the newspaper for half the day, spends the other half watching cricket and talking of the good old days. And so gradually I came up with a plan… Do you know, in
Mumbai now we have every kind of restaurant going. If someone in the world eats it, we’re serving it somewhere in this city. But there is one sort of restaurant that I have always wished for that we don’t have. Do you know what kind that is?’
Poppy shook her head; her bewilderment was increasing by the minute. What in the world did this have to do with the Other Woman?
‘A restaurant run exclusively for policemen!’ Chopra said. His face had broken into a rare grin.
‘What?’
‘Think about it. A policeman is welcome nowhere, not truly. Most restaurants will immediately rush to offer him a free meal, thinking that should they not, they might risk angering him, and no one wants to anger a policeman, even if they have nothing to hide. And as for the other customers–as soon as a policeman sits down they become uncomfortable. There is nowhere a policeman can go in this city and know that he is not only welcome, but positively one of the family. That’s when I thought of this place. A restaurant where policemen can gather, knowing that the owner himself was once a policeman, knowing that the clientele are all policemen. A place where they can meet and be themselves, where they can bring their families if they wish, where they can sit with colleagues and discuss the day’s work, or simply be at peace for a few moments; a port in a storm; a home away from home.’
Chopra beamed. ‘This is our new restaurant.’
‘Our restaurant? Do you mean you and… and the other one?’
‘Other one?’ It was now his turn to look confused. ‘What other one?’
‘The other woman,’ wailed Poppy desperately. She had promised herself that she would not cry, but she could feel the tears welling at the corners of her eyes. She hoped her mascara would not run. She looked terrible when her mascara ran.
‘Oh, Poppy!’ said Chopra exasperatedly. ‘Come with me.’
He turned on his heel and walked to the front of the restaurant, out into the sunshine. There was a spring in his step that he recognised from his early years on the force.
The past few days had been akin to a rebirth for Chopra. In between his bouts with the media crews, he had spent much of his time fielding a continuous stream of calls from the city’s most senior policemen. A few had queried his investigation and the authority by which he had conducted it. But on the whole there had been a genuine feeling that Chopra, a retired officer, had gone beyond the call of duty and in so doing had brought honour to the service. One of their own had cracked a major crime ring and finally concluded the criminal career of Kala Nayak. And Chopra’s exposé of Ashok Kalyan’s involvement and the collusion of various policemen in the affair had given the Commissioner ammunition with which to launch another root-and-branch inquiry into corruption within the service. With the newspapers behind him the Commissioner was busy fanning the flames, making all sorts of noises about gangsters and corrupt politicians preying on vulnerable, underpaid policemen.
Chopra knew that the Commissioner was a political animal and that he was using the situation to his advantage. But he had also heard that the man was honest–as honest as it was possible for Mumbai’s top policeman to be. He felt sure that much good would come of his crusade, even if some of that good was the furtherance of the Commissioner’s own career.
One consequence of the furious activity of the past two days was that Chopra had barely had a minute to himself. He had had almost no opportunity to clear the air with Poppy. On the couple of occasions that he had tried she had worked herself into such a rage about his recent behaviour that he had abandoned the attempt. Now that he finally realised exactly what had been going on inside Poppy’s head he felt suddenly ashamed. He had caused her much grief and that had never been his intent.
At that moment, a truck pulled up beside them.
Sub-Inspector Rangwalla jumped out of the driver’s cab.
‘Rangwalla!’ said Chopra sternly, returning to the present. ‘You’re late.’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. There was a problem at the station. A team arrived from the Central Bureau of Investigation to interview Inspector Suryavansh. They took him back to their head office in Colaba. I’m not sure he is going to be back soon.’
‘But then who is in charge of the station?’
‘ACP Rao put Inspector Modak temporarily in charge, sir. Until Inspector Suryavansh returns.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘We can only pray, sir,’ said Rangwalla with a wooden face. ‘Of course, this was before ACP Rao himself was requested to attend the CBI offices.’
Chopra’s face betrayed no emotion. He remembered how vehemently Rao had opposed his determination to conduct an autopsy on Santosh Achrekar’s body…
Rangwalla moved to the rear of the truck and let down the tailgate. Ganesha trotted out into the sunlight. Immediately, the little elephant lifted his trunk and petted Chopra’s face.
‘Just a minute, Poppy,’ he said. ‘I must deal with our little friend first.’
He led Ganesha down a narrow alley that ran along the side of the restaurant and into a compound at the rear. The compound was securely walled on three sides, with a covered veranda looking out from the rear of the restaurant on its fourth. At the back of the compound was a large mango tree, ripe with fruit. Beneath the tree was a pool of muddy water, surrounded by dry grass. Ganesha trotted to a halt below the mango tree and regarded the muddy pool.
‘Welcome to your new home, boy,’ said Chopra.
The elephant looked up uncertainly, then dipped the tip of his trunk into the pool as if testing the water. He appeared to be satisfied with what he had divined and stepped forward to plop himself down into the mud. Reaching out his trunk he picked up a fallen mango and popped it into his mouth.
Over the past few days the little elephant appeared to have fully regained his appetite and had abandoned his self-imposed fast. To Chopra’s dismay he remained addicted to junk food, in particular bars of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. But at least he had begun to eat a more regular elephant diet as well. Chopra hoped that in a few months Ganesha would begin to fill out.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were moving him here?’ said Poppy crossly, her other worries momentarily forgotten. ‘You know that Mrs Subramanium will think that she has beaten me.’
‘Mrs Subramanium was right. An apartment building is no place for an elephant.’ And neither, thought Chopra, was an elephant sanctuary a thousand miles away, not for my Ganesha. That very morning he had called Dr Rohit Lala. Thanking the vet for his efforts, he explained that in the end he could not discharge the responsibility his uncle had bequeathed him by sending the young elephant away.
Dr Lala had expressed surprise. ‘Are you sure you know what you are doing?’ he had asked.
‘No,’ Chopra had said with feeling. ‘I only know that it is the right thing to do.’
Chopra turned to Rangwalla. ‘Did you pick up the plaque?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Rangwalla. He reached into the sack he had been holding and took out a large metal plaque, about two feet long on each side. The plaque glinted in the sun as he handed it over. Her curiosity piqued, Poppy looked over her husband’s shoulder to read the engraved inscription on the burnished piece of metal:
THE BABY GANESH DETECTIVE AGENCY
‘What is this?’ she asked suspiciously. Poppy had become increasingly confused by her husband’s behaviour. She had come prepared for an emotional showdown and some manner of explanation, but instead Chopra was leading her around as if nothing were going on. And now this…
‘This, my dear, is my second great idea.’
‘What do you mean?’
Chopra put down the plaque and turned to her. ‘Poppy, I am a detective. I may no longer wear a uniform, but that is what I am. This restaurant will practically run itself. I must have something else to occupy my time, something else that makes me feel that I am still the same Ashwin that you have known all these years. This whole business with the Achrekar case gave me the idea. I have spent thirty years learning how to be a detective.
Just because I am retired it does not mean my brain has also retired. I can continue to do what I have always done, only now I can choose the cases that I wish to work on.’
‘But what about your heart!’
‘I am not a fool. From now on I will take only cases that don’t almost get me killed. You know, missing husbands, lost wills, that sort of thing. But this is something that I have to do. It is as simple as that. I hope you can understand.’ Poppy opened her mouth to protest, but then hesitated. As long as she had known him, her husband had been a policeman. She could not imagine what it had meant for him to give that up. It must have been like giving up a part of himself. Could she really deny him this?
A private detective. Surely that would be a safer occupation than an active police officer?
She sighed. ‘Where will be the office of this fancy-shmancy detective agency?’ she asked finally.
Chopra smiled. ‘You are standing in it.’
Her eyes widened, and then she began to giggle. ‘And I suppose he is your partner, is he?’ she said, pointing at Ganesha, who was happily rolling around in the muddy water.
‘Don’t forget what Uncle Bansi said: he is no ordinary elephant.’
Rangwalla had wandered over to the mango tree. ‘Sir, you don’t believe all that mumbo-jumbo, do you?’
Ganesha looked up at Rangwalla. Then he siphoned up a trunkful of water and shot a jet all over the sceptical sub-inspector, soaking him to the skin.
Poppy and Chopra laughed as Rangwalla beat a swift retreat, cursing under his breath.
‘Come on,’ said Chopra. ‘I haven’t shown you the best part.’ He led Poppy back to the front of the restaurant. ‘You didn’t ask me what our new restaurant will be called.’
‘Our restaurant?’