Kumbhpur Rising

by Mayur Didolkar

  “Radhika… Ashok,” he was calling his wife and his younger son again and again but there was no sound save the faint echo inside an empty house and his own footsteps. He reached for the light switch, and switched it on. Even though the supply of electricity was down, he had an inverter that could supply power for up to twelve hours. The living room bathed in light and Rajaji screamed loudly. For some time he felt that he was incapable of stopping.

  Both his sons were seated on the living room sofa, facing each other. Their mouths were covered with saliva and foam. Their eyes stared into nothingness. There were marks of strangulation around their necks. Ashok, the younger son’s throat was bleeding from a wound. The room had the foul odor of death.

  Rajaji collapsed near the front door and started screaming and crying hoarsely. The fear that he had liberally distributed in his lifetime had come to visit him. His own sons lay murdered in his house and his house had eight more rooms to investigate. Who knew what horrors each room would reveal?

  Rajaji, the strong man of Kumbhpur, became a weak man and gave up. He knew this was one blow from which he would not recover. Crying and blabbering he started hitting his head and repented for all the sins he had committed throughout his life.

  By the time Vinit parked his jeep in the muddy courtyard of his police station the whole town was in darkness. This itself was no uncommon occurrence in konkan where power outages are the rule rather than an exception in the monsoon. What was a little unusual was how silent the village felt, the moment Vinit cut off the jeep engine. There was absolutely no sound, save the incessant drumming of the rain on the thatched roof of his police station. There was none of the usual baying of cattle at night, no mother calling her child in a loud coarse voice to stop playing in the rain, no sound of hurried yet tired footsteps hading home. The whole town was as silent as it would be at say three in the morning. On second thought, Vinit thought that the town could not be so silent anytime.

  “Spooky isn’t it?” He almost jumped at the voice, and turned to see Rakesh standing next to him, trying to make a go of his sodden lighter. Vinit pulled his own zippo out and gave him a light but said nothing.

  They all walked in a silent file inside the police station. It was basically an old two room house, where one room was converted into a holding cell and the verandah and the first room was used for an office. The toilets were a later day addition in the form of a separate structure in the same compound. There was only a single constable on duty. But unlike other days, when you would find him dozing, he was wide awake. He had news to relay to his boss.

  “Sir Water is flowing over the bridge so they have shut it down. SP Saab called to tell that the reinforcements will reach tomorrow as soon as the road is clear,” Vinit sat down numbly and nodded to the constable to go back. He turned to see similar weariness on the faces of the two city cops.

  “It might interest you to know that the bridge is not likely to be operational again tomorrow morning, for that matter I guess the bridge has served its last customers sometime today morning, before the festivities in your quaint little town began,” Happy said in a conversational tone and sat next to Shilpa casually draping an arm around the chair back and crossing his leg. He looked like an extremely malnourished Amithabh Bachchan.

  “I suppose your cop friend from Delhi told you that?” Shilpa said with open hostility. Vinit was so tired of her highhanded arrogance that he could have slapped her right there. She was a city bred, upper class woman who failed to understand that this was a situation that was way beyond her. Her badge and rank was not going to protect her, if the shit really started flying. Vinit had enough to worry about without having to baby-sit a senior officer.

  “My cop friend in Delhi will never tell me anything, except may be to go fuck myself, oops sorry for the French,” Happy said, and cackled wildly.

  Vinit felt his head would explode. A charmingly awful vision floated into his head and refused to go away. In that vision, whatever peculiar madness the village folks were exhibiting today, finally had him in its cold claws. He could see himself taking out his service revolver as if to keep it on the table, but instead turning casually and shooting the city cop through her stylishly short hair, then turning and giving her driver cum bodyguard cum assistant some lead through the top of his head too. From where Vinit was sitting, he would not have to so much as shift his butt to take them down. Then, he would take the tourists who had chosen a very bad spot for a bit of rest and recuperation. He imagined them as mud pigeons in a shooting gallery and him taking careful aim, not to waste government issued ammunition (heheheh), killing them all by a single shot through head each. He shook his head to waken himself from that dream. Then realizing that it was time to get a grip on himself, he walked out of the station towards the toilets as if to take a whiz but really to go to the only place where the womenfolks from city were unlikely to follow and nag him.

  Vinit ducked inside the squat cement room that had a basin and urinals out front and a toilet block to the left. Inside he leaned against the basin, and shook the last cigarette out of his crumpled pack (his second for the day). Then he realized he had left his Zippo inside, cursing himself he was about to throw the cigarette, when suddenly a flame came in front of his face. Startled, he looked up, and came for the first horrifying time in his life, face to face with a bona fide certified serial killer.

  “If I wanted to lose you guys, I could have done that in the last few hours easily. Tonight, I would say you have difficulty in finding your asshole with a flashlight Inspector,” Neeraj Joshi said and pressed his pistol against Vinit’s side.

  Chapter 12

  Near the seashore, the rain still poured in thick sheets, visibility reduced almost to nothing. This was a perfect place for the rising to take place. Courageous Leader and a few of his followers were standing on the seashore, waiting for the ammunition and their comrades to emerge from the sea. Courageous Leader was a little worried, though his face showed no such emotions.

  In his occult process of raising the dead, something had gone wrong, the way early experiments of preparing penicillin might have resulted into some anomalies. He knew his crew of trusty undead followers was pretty immune to almost everything, so long as their need of killing and murder was sated from time to time. The place in the woods was a pretty secure base camp too. Yet even now he knew there was one chink in his armor. The dozen or so men and women lying in a heap was a testament to that.

  His followers as yet could not stop a bullet and once dropped from a gunshot wound, they would not rise no matter what. Before coming here, he had tried to resurrect the schoolteacher and the village man Nivrutti. But he was unsuccessful each time. So now, he knew that the only thing that can stop this rising was a hail of bullets.

  He was worried like a good planner, but not overtly so, since he also had a fair idea how much ammunition a small town like this can have. Once the town was cut off from pretty much the entire world, there were not more than 10-12 old-fashioned rifles and pistols and may be a few dozen shells to deal with. And he had the majority on his side. His team was working diligently for the last two weeks, visiting homes of all the poor and suppressed people at night, planting the seed of revolution in their minds. In the morning, those people woke up thinking they had a nightmare, but then as morning gave to noon, they would think ugly hateful violent thoughts about their oppressors who could be anyone from the corner grocer to a mother in law and by the time the sun set in the west, they would all know exactly what to do about that rage. In fact, the biggest problem Courageous Leader had was to make them contain their rage till this morning, since he did not want to have chronic small instances of violence, but one big boom, like the one they had today.

  And what a boom it was. The pedophile teacher in school hacked to pieces by his pupils, Wadale the music teacher first murdering his headmaster, and then along with his daughter converting her in law’s place into an abettor. Champa, the maid servant of Rajaji’s household, entering his
house late in the evening and murdering Rajaji’s sons, who for the last few years had almost every night raped her in front of her ailing, paralytic husband. Rajaji’s munim, the mousy old man by the name of Lala, locking the door of his party office from the outside, securing it with a big cupboard and then setting the whole damn thing on fire, trapping about ten of Rajaji’s goons, and then killing his own philandering wife at home.

  In the darkness of night, now the single story office was burning brightly and well, serving as a lighthouse. Courageous Leader could smell the odor of burning flesh of those goons. Their screams gave him a pleasure so exquisite, that it almost had the effect of distracting him from his main work.

  He shook himself back to reality as the rain and the mist gave way only for minute to let him see a thick column of people rising from the sea. The legend of a thousand swords, coming to life for the first time. His people were rising from the sea and each one of them held a sword high over their heads. Courageous Leader knew there were about three hundred of his followers now ready to take care of business. They would first go to the police station and take care of that little town cop who was making such a damn nuisance of himself. Then there were those city folks. Already they had shown themselves as a bunch of resourceful and courageous people and they were really close to each other. Just the kind of pocket of resistance that a good leader would like to take care of quickly and silently before it mutates into a counter-revolution. Once the cop and the city folks were taken care of, then the only person remained to be neutralized was that strange bald man, who so ingeniously and bravely had escaped being driven to the sea by his people only an hour ago. Courageous Leader, however, knew that he would not have to take care of the strange man. He was bringing in a mercenary who had a personal score to settle for him. And once the strange bald man was dead the whole town was more or less his.

  Courageous Leader threw his head back and let out a devilish, subhuman howl that seemed to pierce the rainy night in two. His followers, rising from the sea, had no problem hearing the war cry even though they were still away from the shore. They all raised their swords in the air, and let out similar howls.

  They were coming for the town.

  The shock was so great for Vinit that the cigarette dropped from his mouth. He knew in his mind that he was never again going to hold his wife in his arms, never going to see his baby, in fact not going to do much anything other than dying, like the score of dead men he had been witnessing since morning. He had no doubt in his mind that the man standing in front of him was a complete sociopath, devoid of any human emotions. He knew what he had done to those goons who tried to scare him back in Mumbai. He knew he had come here to take care of the remaining law enforcement in this shitty little village and then he would escape, never to be seen again in India. Probably he would be sunbathing with a petite oriental woman on some foreign beach while Vinit would be lying in the ground, his mortal remains cremated, an unpleasant memory of the horrible things that took place in this town in one strange monsoon.

  “Your constable is not dead and neither would you be, if you are not as foolish as the woman cop who is hunting for me,” Neeraj said.

  ‘They always say that so that in the terror of your life you will do their biding and then they will finish you when you least suspect it.’ Vinit thought.

  As if reading his mind, Neeraj sighed and said, “Look dude, this town has really got weird. Weirder than you would know, I have been scouting this place for the last two hours, in fact I was hiding behind the toilets of the Sathe’s place and heard every word your boss and the city folks said. Then I took a round about the town, and man it is creepy! Downright creepy! Something out of a John Carpenter movie, or a Stephen King novel that he wrote when he was feeling real mean. Let me bring you up the speed.”

  “Your village strongman, the one they call Rajaji, is now reduced to a whimpering sissy in his own living room. His sons are dead and his wife is missing, if you turn left and look out of the window, you will see a fire burning brightly near the temple where his party office used to be. Some old man came and locked it from the outside, and doused it with petrol before setting it on fire. He was laughing while he did it.On the road connecting the office to the Sathe bungalow there is a jeep lying in a ditch. Inside there are three men, all looking the rough type. Their throats are slashed. Two more men who apparently tried to run fared no better either. One is hanging from a nearby tree, and other is lying on the road neatly cut in two with meat cleavers,”

  Neeraj’s voice was calm, steady, as if he was reciting a boring weather bulletin, but Vinit could detect a faint undercurrent of unease in his voice. He was a little pleased to see that the serial killer too, was a bit shaken by the senseless violence in the town. But all the same, Vinit had to agree that Neeraj seemed far better in control after watching so many atrocities. Benefits of being a killer himself!

  “At a guess I would say the local strongman’s party is finished and, so is the law enforcement. Now that your sub is shot and lying in the ICU and your constables ummm let’s say unavailable, they are coming for your village.”

  “And you came to warn us?” Vinit asked in a sarcastic tone.

  Neeraj’s voice hardened, “yo mumma never taught you not to make fun of serial killers son? I can make their job easy and let you have some lead in the guts, but I won’t since I need you and the city folks. Yes, I agree they are coming for me too.”

  “And you suggest we unite and fight them?” This can not be happening to me, Vinit thought. It was beyond surreal.

  “Or perish separately,” Neeraj said

  ***

  “What do you think is going on here Rajat?” Ragini asked him, they were standing outside in the porch, mainly to escape the cold stares Shilpa was fixing them with. Rajat turned around and saw his friend in the dim light. She looked downright scared, her bravado in front of the cops notwithstanding. He put her arm around her and Ragini moved closer to him.

  “ This vacation has been a bad idea and I feel guilty to get all of you down here, my town is going to shit right in front of my eyes, but you did not have to witness that,” Rajat said and shivered a little.

  “You know Ragini, when I was a kid, I used to go to school to the same place where the teachers got killed in the morning. Let me tell you it was a bad place even back then. Teachers who would rap our knuckles raw even for so much as a giggle, older kids beating up younger ones, will you believe there used to be male prostitution here back in the 90s too?”

  Ragini looked up surprised. Ever since the group had found out what Ragini was doing for a living, the subject of paid sex was taboo. So now her sensitive friend bringing up the topic surprised her. Guess tonight all the rules were off.

  “Ten and eleven year old kids, offering their behinds to the older kids for the price of a movie ticket or an ice cream, there was a pit behind our school where they used to go and service the older kids.”

  The unspoken question about Rajajt’s own participation in this remained hanging. But tonight was Rajajt’s night of mind reading.

  “I did not participate in this business either way; catching or pitching. What I am trying to tell you is growing up in a town which is known nationally for the temple and its heritage can sometimes be no better than growing up in the sleaziest slum of dharavi.”

  “Ever since I remember, all I wanted was to get out of this place. This place where walking home in the evening from school, one would always see at least one drunk fight on the road. A town, where my mother was scared to send my sister for an evening tuition when Dad was not in town as in the evening the Beer Street would be full of drunken men. Young drunks with their hormones raging, old drunks with minds perverted with a life time of depravity, but drunks all the same. My mother would call them pigs. I felt so hopeless and so small. I was the son of a government employee, a good student and a football player of some quality. But in this town, those things were almost like disqualifications. This town always bel
onged to the bullies. Bullies in the ZP, bullies in the school and bullies even in the temple! Do you know that every year when there is an election of trustees of the temple, the police needs to be called and the area near the temple is cordoned off for the day? And despite that, I do not remember a single year when there was no violence during election time. I mostly, felt depressed with this violence then; it depresses me even more now. The trust has a total fund of around 30-40 Lacs, a big amount, agreed, but nowhere compared to the real big ones like Tuljapur and Shirdi. But in this shitty little place people will kill and steal to control that kind of money. That’s the bane of small towns in India I guess. Petty violence,”

  “My parents sent me and my sister to college in Pune and life changed a bit for me. There were bullies there too, mind you, but at least in a big city you can get lost and stay lost if you want to. If you are a woman, you can get married and find protection like my sister did.”

  ‘Lucky sister, look what kind of protection my marriage offered me,’ Ragini thought.

  “And now I came back here after God knows how many years. When I was telling you about all the scenic beauty and the temple I was not lying. The place is beautiful. But I guess I left out a lot of details, like the town’s drinking problems, the violence and the sodms. I meant well Ragini,” here he squeezed her hand tightly, “I was just hoping that in a short one week vacation, I can show you all the beauty and the violence would stay underground. Was it too much to expect? ”

  Rakesh and Rani were sitting in the room by themselves, not talking. Happy who seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, stood by the window, staring outside and talking to himself. Rani wanted to remind him about his medication, but somehow realized that this was not the right time to discuss medication with her husband. In any case there seemed to be remarkable improvement in Happy after coming to this place. Rani thought this to be weird, since her own peace of mind, such as it was, was shot shreds with all the strange things happening around her. Her simple, essentially urban mind was unable to cope with the randomness of the violence happening around her. Her mind was on the task of getting out of here. She walked up and stood next to him. Happy continued to sing under his breath and almost ignored her.