Mehrunisa looked at the clear blue sky and hoped for illumination. The one thing she knew for sure was the diarist was a psychopath. The question to be answered was: who was the psychopath—Raj Bhushan or Arun Toor.
Mangat Ram barged in. ‘Sahib, he—he spoke—he asked for you—he—’
Mehrunisa started towards the professor’s room and the housekeeper fell in step. He recounted that he had been dusting Professor Kaul’s room when he felt his eyes on him. When he picked up the photo frame on the sideboard, the professor motioned for it. He stared at the picture and then started talking to it! When Mangat Ram tried to talk to the professor, he asked for her.
‘“Mehr, Mehr”, he said, repeatedly.’ The disconsolate housekeeper watched from the doorway as Mehrunisa entered.
Professor Kaul was still holding the photo and in the midst of some narrative. Mehrunisa pulled a chair close to his bed and rested her head in his lap. In turn, he placed his palm over her hair. She could feel his hand, skeletal, brittle, as it lay on her head, making no attempt to pat her as he continued talking. He seemed to be repeating the same story. She sat up, removed the picture gently, and took both his hands in hers and listened intently.
Inder and his wife Indu were god-fearing. Once Indu’s brother Sunder visited them. All three went to Goddess Durga’s temple. First Sunder entered the temple. On seeing the idol of Durga, he was so overcome by devotion that he decided to sacrifice himself. Subsequently, he cut his head off in front of the idol. Then Inder entered the temple and saw his brother-in-law’s dead body. Gripped by a sense of self-sacrifice, he too cut his head off. Finally, Indu entered the temple and saw the two dead bodies. Overcome by grief, she wept loudly and prayed to the goddess Durga to give her the same husband and brother in her next life. As Indu prepared to give up her life, Durga appeared. She said she was pleased with their devotion and would bring the two men back to life. Then she asked Indu to join the two heads to the respective bodies. When Durga put life into the bodies, Indu realised she had mixed up the heads. Now, Inder’s body had her brother’s head and her brother Sunder had Inder’s head!
So, who would be Indu’s real husband now?
Professor Kaul turned to look at her. For an instant Mehrunisa thought she saw a sign of recognition in those tired eyes. Whatever it was, it vanished in an instant. However, the professor’s voice acquired urgency as he frantically repeated his query.
So, who would be Indu’s real husband now?
Mehrunisa shook her head. She wanted so much to jolt her uncle awake, so he would stop treating her like a twelve-year-old and talk to her. But the professor persisted. In a strange high-pitched voice, he kept repeating the question.
To quieten him she said, ‘The head is the body’s most important part since that’s where all thoughts and memories reside. The man with the husband’s head had all the memories of Indu as a wife. So he was her real husband.’
As she finished, Professor Kaul went quiet. She continued to speak with him, attempting to locate the trigger that had set him on the narrative, but he had once again retreated into the shadows of his mind.
As she took the photograph back to the sideboard, she studied it, wondering what about it had set off the story. A group of men stood in front of the Taj Mahal: Professor Kaul, Arun Toor, Raj Bhushan, and a couple of assistants. The professor stood in the middle, flanked by Toor and Bhushan with the assistants standing deferentially apart. Arun Toor, clean shaven for a change, was dressed in his habitually creased kurta, baggy trousers, slip-on sandals; Raj Bhushan, on the other side, was dapper in his neat boxed beard, tailored trousers, brogues, and Nehrucollared shirt.
As she replaced the photograph, she wondered why her uncle had chosen to tell that particular story. What was it R.P. Singh had said about the previous story her godfather had told her? That the crux of it was the escape ... Mehrunisa stopped in her tracks. Both stories were about the impression of death, when not dead.
Agra
I
t was midnight at Taj Ganj police station. SSP Raghav and R.P. Singh sat discussing the DNA result that had come in two hours back. A half-empty bottle of Old Monk, a partially-depleted plate of oily samosas, and a radio humming in the background gave the impression that the cops were letting their hair down.
The next instant R.P. Singh hurled a tennis ball at the opposite wall as he snarled, ‘He’s making a chutiya of us!’
Singh collected the ball on rebound, got up from the chair and said, ‘Let’s go over it again.’
SSP Raghav worked the ends of his luxuriant moustache and started. ‘We matched Arun Toor’s DNA, sourced from personal articles at home, to the DNA of the torso recovered from the python’s belly. And it didn’t match. However, it did match the DNA sample taken from the pink kurta. Which means, someone was poisoned, as the post-mortem has shown, dressed in Arun Toor’s kurta, and then fed to a snake!’
R.P. Singh paced the floor, juggling the ball in his hands. ‘This person approximated the Taj supervisor in height and build. But the relevant specs are those of an average Indian male,’ he shrugged. ‘It would be easy for Toor to lose himself in a crowd.’
Singh’s study of the notebook recovered from the trunk in Raj Bhushan’s house had revealed a psychopath with twin obsessions: his mother and his Jat heritage. He walked to a board that had seen some furious scribbling and turned to a new sheet. On it he wrote two words— Mother, Jat—and eyed Raghav.
‘Arun Toor was a Jat, Raj Bhushan is not.’
‘But Mehrunisa is certain she saw the very same trunk in Toor’s house. So, what is Toor-the-Jat’s trunk doing in the house of his boss?’
R.P. Singh had tried to contact Raj Bhushan, but the office had informed him that the director-general was on tour in southern India for a few days and he wasn’t picking up his cell phone.
Singh paused to refill the glasses with rum. ‘Consider the possibility,’ he said, his eyes glittering, ‘this case started with a murder, yet the murdered man might be alive.’
‘And laughing at us all this while! Watching us run in circles as he hides—’ Raghav swore, dragging Toor’s grandmother into the melee of curses.
‘Hiding where, hiding where?’ R.P. Singh had resumed his perambulation. He had been asking that question every single day since Republic Day, a fortnight back. Meanwhile, the additional security at Taj Mahal had been lifted since he could find no further justification for extra security.
Singh grabbed a samosa and chomped on it as he walked about, the peas popping to the floor. The radio was playing a peppy Bollywood number, its notes pulsing through the stale air.
‘Boss,’ Raghav called, his voice slurring from the rum, ‘you realise we have a growing list of behrupiyas?’ He held up his fingers as he counted. ‘One: Kriplani. Two: Raj Bhushan. Three: Arun Toor.’
Singh nodded his head in assent. The home minister might have let Kriplani off, but he would follow every lead until he nailed the behrupiya. Then he chortled loudly. ‘The third behrupiya is technically dead!’ It turned into a snigger as he realised how ridiculous it sounded.
Raghav had started to sputter too, as he shook his head. When he couldn’t stop his head from shaking he realised dimly that he was drunk.
‘Boss!’ he hollered. ‘I think we are drunk. We should have a samosa each.’ He wobbled around the table and grabbed two samosas. ‘Some food helps reduce the a-aceta-acetal-de-hyde—got it!—in the stomach.’
‘You are the one who’s drunk!’ Singh protested as he demonstrated a straight walk.
It was as straight as the jagged skyline of Taj Ganj.
He noticed the bloodshot eyes of his colleague, paused, and stood akimbo. In Chhattisgarh there was a swathe of forest that the locals called ‘unknown jungle’. It was so impenetrable that even the government had not mapped it yet. During an operation a constable was kidnapped by the Maoists and secreted into the jungle. When he was released the Maoists sent a message on his person: every inch of his body was slas
hed with knives. The deep scars were meant to constantly remind the police not to venture into the unknown.
Since the murder in the mausoleum, the SSP had pursued the case with the zeal of one who had everything to lose. What scars was he carrying?
‘Tell me, SSP, why are you losing sleep over the Taj conspiracy?’
Raghav looked up, suddenly alert, as if someone had shone a torch on his face. His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘Remember Babri Masjid? I was on police duty when it was ravaged in front of my eyes—my orders were not to intervene. Never,’ he shook his head vehemently, ‘never before had I felt that helpless in life. Bas, after that I pledged to follow the path of right, regardless.’
On that he downed his glass of rum. In his mind’s eye Raghav saw a frenzied mob tearing at the pristine marble of the Taj Mahal; gouging out the lapis lazuli, agate and jasper; stabbing the Quranic inscriptions; hammering the cenotaphs. Marble dust clouded the air, sandstone splinters flew into the sky, shards of red, green, blue scattered like confetti.... Was that the fate of the monument of love in an age of hate?
Angrily, he said, ‘All it takes is a few mad men, the destruction of Babri Masjid has shown that.’
Singh nodded his head, his mouth pursed. He wasn’t the only one who felt this case of the Taj conspiracy alluded to the infamous Barbri demolition. The grim thought promptly sucked fumes of tipple out of his head.
Wiping his mouth Raghav asked Singh, ‘What made you such a dusht?’
‘A proper devil, hunh...’ R.P. Singh drawled and patted his bald pate. ‘See this? I shaved my head on my father’s death. After which I decided not to grow hair.’
Raghav was leaning on the table, face in his hand as he listened with interest.
‘My father, General Jai Singh Sisodia, was a decorated war hero. The ‘71 war. Then he was sidelined in the Army because he resisted the corruption he saw around him. He died a disillusioned man. And I vowed to myself that I would race right to the top of my career, whatever it takes. You see,’ Singh rested his palms on the table, ‘the general could fight the enemy across the border but how do you fight the enemy within—the corrupt politician and the self-serving bureaucrat? The home minister and director special ops want the conspirator. But they don’t want to go down the warrens that lead to such moles. So they call in pest control.’
He snorted. ‘Me.’
‘The general’s mistake was that he saw only one kind of pest. But a pest control man must fight rodents and roaches and raccoons.’ He paused. ‘He must be able to get into the heads of all his pests.’
He pulled back, walked around the room with long deliberate strides before he pulled a chair and straddled it.
‘Three things are clear: faking the murder of the Taj supervisor was pre-planned. A substitute—someone with close physical resemblance—was identified in advance. And the corpse was stolen from the morgue to prevent a post-mortem that would lead to identification. The death of the python,’ he said, his eyes flashing, ‘was very lucky for us.’
Raghav nodded. ‘In the elaborate dance of deception, the puppeteer tripped up. In an otherwise perfect execution, he made one bad move.’
‘This pest,’ R.P. Singh banged the table with his fist, ‘I’ve tunnelled inside his head. And no Aurangzeb-behrupiya-chutiya is going to escape me!’
‘We’ll get him, boss.’
The two men clinked their glasses, rum sloshed, and as the radio blasted a raucous drumbeat, they joined in, belting out the lyrics with off-tune fervour.
Agra
P
re-dawn fog shrouded the Taj Mahal complex. Everything lay quiet, cold and still. Only a continuous lapping of water sounded. A boat came into view, packed with a mass of huddled people. Another boat glided behind, and another ... the column of boats was long as it paddled up the Yamuna river towards the Taj Mahal.
The first boat stopped short of Dassehra Ghat, near the ruins of an old haveli, erstwhile tannery, now abandoned. The dilapidated haveli of Agah Khan fell within the Red zone under the purview of the CISF, and Inspector Bharadwaj had co-opted this, the residence of Shah Jahan’s officer in charge of riverine security, to launch an assault on the monument. Men disembarked and ascended the slope, a man in the shadows briskly herding them into the ruins. Other boat people followed. Some looked ghostly, blending into the prevailing mist with their ash-smeared bodies.
Inside the ruins were arrayed the creature comforts of bedding, water and provisions. The youth of Taj Ganj, all with saffron headbands and fiery eyes, doled out food and blankets to the Shiva devotees who had paddled through the night from Bateshwar to witness the predicted Shiva miracle. Their instructions were not to let these men venture out of the ruins until the time was right. Meanwhile, the bhang and exhaustion would knock them out for several hours.
From his corner in the shadows Inspector Bharadwaj watched the proceedings, a thin smile on his sallow face— all was going to plan.
Delhi
T
he contents of the mysterious diary had spun her mind like a roulette wheel all day long and she’d slept fitfully as a result. Next morning, brain dead, she opened a book for some relief. The Vatican Masterpieces transported her to more idyllic days.
Upon completing her Renaissance studies, Mehrunisa had figured the best way to continue her education was to see the great Florentine and Roman museums on a daily basis. Since museum fees were expensive, and one needed a job to sustain a bare minimum lifestyle, Mehrunisa had done the next logical thing: signed up as a guide with an agency that provided Vatican tours. Thereafter, she spent two years shepherding eager tourists through the capacious museums brimming with treasures.
Her favourite galleries were the Sistine chapel and Raphael’s Stanze. While the Sistine threatened to give her goitre—much as it did Michelangelo with the constant upward posture of his head and neck while painting the ceiling—the latter was easier on the body. It had been time well spent.
Now, whenever she felt the need to break away from the immediate world, she would open one of her art history books and lose herself in the lavish illustrations of either the Sistine or the Stanze. It was working, for the fresco of The School of Athens had drawn her in.
Of all the frescoes that decorate the walls of Raphael’s Stanze in the Vatican museums, this, The School of Athens, was probably the most famous and most reproduced, as Mehrunisa had informed many Vatican tourists during her stint as a guide. Now, Mehrunisa studied the beautiful fresco in which young Raphael had painted a veritable who’s who of Greek greats, accompanied by some Renaissance luminaries: the philosophers Socrates and Diogenes, the mathematicians Pythagoras and Euclid, and in a prominent place, the reflective figure of Michelangelo.
The two most influential philosophers of ancient Greece stood in the centre: Plato and Aristotle. With his right finger, Plato pointed to the sky. On the right stood Aristotle, Plato’s pupil, his open right hand indicating the Earth. Thus had Raphael depicted the two thinkers and their different approaches to life: Plato’s idealism alongside Aristotle’s realism.
Mehrunisa studied the bearded Plato—his face, so historians said—resembling that of another Renaissance great, Leonardo da Vinci. Raphael had met him in Florence in 1504 and the encounter had left such an impression on the twenty-one-year-old that subsequently he abandoned the manner of his master, and moved closer to that of Leonardo. The portrait was the artist’s homage to his ideal. And indeed, Plato looked like Leonardo of the self-portrait painted by the artist himself—the flowing beard, the balding scalp, the intent gaze.
In the fresco’s right-hand corner, as was customary, Raphael had painted himself. Wearing a black cap, he looked at Mehrunisa with a soulful gaze. Almost all the other figures in the fresco—certainly all the artists— sported a beard; Raphael was the only clean-shaven one. And it seemed to Mehrunisa that if the beard of Leonardo, in the representation of Plato, were transposed to Raphael’s face, the two would look quite similar. It had struck her before that
while Raphael had painted Plato in the image of Leonardo, he had also painted him in his own self-image. Implying thereby that perhaps, young though he was, he was already claiming to be in the league of Leonardo.
Once again, Mehrunisa scrutinised the two faces, transplanting the beard from one to another. And, from somewhere, Pamposh’s teasing statement when R.P. Singh had landed at her doorstep popped in her head: the fun is in figuring what the fuzz conceals.
One hand massaging the back of her neck, Mehrunisa glanced at her uncle. He had been asleep for the hour or so since she had been absorbed in her study. She sighed and looked away, her gaze trailing to the sideboard and the plastic tray on which were arrayed the multiple medicine bottles that were her uncle’s daily diet. Her eyes skimmed the familiar contents: the professor’s stack of books—neat, since he had not picked up any since his illness—the spare spectacle case, the round moneyplant vase, the group photo in front of the Taj...
The next instant Mehrunisa shot like a rocket from her chair and ran to grab the photograph. Her eyes bored into the picture, her mind transplanting the boxed beard from Raj Bhushan’s face to Arun Toor’s clean-shaven face. It struck her then, with force!
The two men, the ASI director-general and the Taj supervisor, were of similar height and build. She was such a fool! The evidence had always been on the sideboard! The bell should have rung with her godfather’s mythological stories of apparent deaths. His warning to watch out for Aurangzeb! The attack on the professor right after she accused Raj Bhushan in his office and mentioned that he had mentioned Aurangzeb. Mangat Ram’s puzzlement over Raj Bhushan’s sudden desire for walnuts. The frequent use of fresh mints to mask his smoker’s breath. The strangely yellowing fingers of a non-smoking director. The occasional lapses into vulgar jokes by an otherwise suave director. Her own feeling that Raj Bhushan, whom she had never met before, seemed somehow familiar....
The Taj Conspiracy Page 24