Delhi Noir

by Hirsh Sawhney

  Sam had made a small mistake as the cop was about to exit. “Zaroorat padi to mai tum ko phone karunga, thik hai?” (“I’ll call you if and when I need you, all right?”), he had said, but using the familiar “you” with relish. Fat Cop’s eyes had flared. At the same time, Sam received a small kick in the back of the shin from Ajit. It was explained to him later that the “tum” was an off-note in the complex and beautiful symphony of Ajit’s subjugation of U.P. Singh. As Chandran had then underlined, “These kinds of sodomizings are a verre delegate business, mach-aa! Best to leave it to the experts, you understand?”

  HISSING COBRAS

  BY NALINAKSHA BHATTACHARYA

  R.K. Puram

  On a drizzly November morning, around 11:00, Inspector Raghav Bakshi parked his Gypsy under a neem tree and looked at the shit-yellow two-story government quarters surrounding a bald patch of land that was meant to be developed as a park. On Sunday mornings one could see the neighborhood kids playing cricket or badminton here, but the park was now deserted except for a couple of stringy goats grazing in a corner where there were still a few clumps of grass leftover from the previous monsoon. R.K. Puram Sector 7 was a colony for the babus who slogged from 9 to 5 in government offices, the Bhawans stretching from India Gate to Rashtrapati Bhawan in Lutyens’ Delhi. The wives of these babus, having bundled off their kids to school and their husbands to office along with their lunch boxes, were now enjoying a couple hours of break from the drudgery of running their households on shoestring budgets. Later, after having their frugal lunch of roti, sabzi, and achaar, they would switch on their TVs to enjoy their favorite soaps on Star Plus, Sony, or Zee, mushy serials that glorified the virtues of joint families shepherded by benign and supportive elders.

  The inspector was here, in fact, to inquire about the accidental death of one such matriarch, a sixty-five-year-old woman named Kamla Agarwal who’d presided over the measly quarters of her son and daughter-in-law. Five days ago, the old lady was “brought dead” to the emergency room of Safdarjung Hospital with multiple skull fractures. The policeman on duty had registered the case as a “death caused by a fall from the top of Malai Mandir,” an imposing south Indian temple situated on a hillock that overlooks plebeian Sector 7 on one side and swanky Vasant Vihar on the other. The very next day, after the postmortem, a no-objection certificate was issued for the cremation and the paperwork was passed on to the R.K. Puram police station. Inspector Bakshi would have treated the case as a routine one, but then came an anonymous call from a woman alleging foul play. Bakshi decided to give the Agarwals a good sniff, just in case.

  The inspector rang the doorbell outside quarter no. 761 and a swarthy woman in a green-and-yellow synthetic sari opened the door. She had a gray shawl draped around her shoulders. As he announced the purpose of his visit, Bakshi noted that the buxom woman, who could have been in her late twenties, adjusted her shawl to cover her bosom. Ushered into a ten-by-ten room painted a dull shade of yellow, Bakshi took a quick inventory of its furnishings: a twenty-inch Onida TV mounted on an aluminum cabinet; a fancy wall clock embellished with a Radha-Krishna icon; a drab government calendar with too many holidays marked in red; a faded print of a nondescript landscape showing sunrise or sunset. This was a babu’s no-frills basic dwelling, he thought, and the message that it conveyed to him was: Don’t expect barfis and cashews with your tea. Amidst this tawdry bric-a-brac, the woman sitting before him on the divan looked quite glamorous.

  Bakshi’s roving eyes now paused above the TV cabinet to study a framed picture of an elderly woman smiling under a pine tree on a hilly road. “Is that Kamla Agarwal?” he asked, sitting down on a lumpy sofa with frayed upholstery.

  The woman nodded. “My mother-in-law. That one was taken at Katra when she made a pilgrimage to Vaishno Devi last summer.”

  “Hmm.” Bakshi stroked his well-trimmed mustache like a pet dog. He was pleased to note that the woman was nervously twisting a corner of her shawl. Did she have something to hide? Or was she just feeling uncomfortable in the presence of a beefy policeman when her husband wasn’t around? Bak-shi opened his notebook and plucked a pen from his breast pocket. “First things first,” he said. “Your name?”

  “Mukta Agarwal.”

  The inspector listened to Mukta’s story while consuming a cup of tea and some namkeen. When he stepped out of quarter no. 761 half an hour later, he was inclined to believe that the deceased Kamla Agarwal was indeed just an unlucky woman who had visited Malai Mandir with her daughter-in-law to watch the evening aarti. Built entirely with blue granite stones in the hallowed traditions of Chola architecture, the temple was a south Delhi landmark that attracted thousands of devotees every day. After receiving prasadam from a priest, the two women had proceeded toward the back stairs of the temple for a quick exit. That was when Kamla slipped on a banana peel flung by a careless devotee and hurtled down ten steep steps, crushing her head on a massive boulder that awaited her like Yama, the god of death.

  As Mukta narrated the incident, her face turned ashen, her eyes glistened with tears, and she finally broke down, gagging her mouth with her shawl. The woman either possessed the thespian talents of Meena Kumari or was an ordinary lachrymose housewife. Bad luck, Bakshi thought. If he could catch a whiff of foul play in her tale, he could find a way to squeeze her husband for a few thousand.

  * * *

  That evening, Mukta told her husband about the policeman’s visit.

  “And what did he ask?” said Ashok, masticating a matthi and sipping his tea with some relish. After his back-breaking eight-hour grind as a typist in the Ministry of Rural Industry, he didn’t really want to be bothered with a detailed report of the policeman’s visit. He had been a dutiful son and had already done enough for his domineering mother, who always treated him like a child. He had bribed the morgue assistant to jump the line for a quick postmortem, lit her pyre, consigned her ashes in the holy Yamuna, and, on the chautha, the fourth day of mourning, fed seven brahmins to ensure that his mother’s soul speedily reached its heavenly abode without any interruptions from the dark creatures of the netherworld. Let his robust wife now handle this police inquiry, which, he believed, was just a routine exercise. She wasn’t a weakling, after all. Didn’t she once tell him that she had played on her school’s kaabadi team?

  Still, he nodded perfunctorily when Mukta detailed the day’s proceedings. “He asked me how it happened and who saw it,” she said. “I rattled off the same story I’ve told the whole world a hundred times. He also asked for a recent picture of Mataji and one of me too.” Mukta sighed. “I’m tired of all this.”

  “So am I. I wish you hadn’t taken her to that temple.”

  Why blame me when it was your mother who wanted to see the evening prayer?”

  “I’m not blaming you, dear,” Ashok said, trying to mollify his wife. “Look, I don’t think they’ll bother us about this again.” Like his late father Ramlal, Ashok was a quiet, peace-loving clerk who avoided trouble of any kind, so much that he wouldn’t take a crowded bus if he found the conductor badmouthing a passenger traveling on the footboard.

  Less than forty-eight hours had passed since he’d met Mukta Agarwal when Raghav Bakshi received a second anonymous call from the same woman. “Have you visited quarter no. 761?” she asked, sotto voce.

  “Yes, but I found nothing suspicious there.”

  “So you too have been taken in by her cock-and-bull story? Slipping on the banana peel and all that bakwas.”

  “Look, if you want us to dig deeper, you have to come out in the open and give us a written statement.”

  “I can’t do that. But do you know about her affair with one of the neighborhood boys—a jawan?”

  “I think you’re digressing,” Bakshi said, feigning disinterest. But he had already pressed a button on his telephone that would record the conversation. Mukesh the techie might even be able to trace this elusive caller.

  “Tell me your name,” he said.

  “Anamika.”<
br />
  Bakshi was about to needle her with more questions, but Anamika—or whoever she was—had hung up. As he sat there twirling the ends of his mustache, his lips slowly spread into a smile. The information he’d just acquired could be valuable. He briefed Mukesh and then summoned Ram Bhaj, a freelance informer who was his man Friday. A three-day watch on Mukta Agarwal would be good enough to ferret out her little secrets.

  Mukta knew she was under watch, but she ignored her stalker since she had other things on her mind. She felt sick one morning, vomiting twice in ten minutes. Having missed two consecutive periods, Mukta knew those passionate afternoon sessions with Rakesh had given her something more tangible than orgasmic delight. The young soldier and the distraught housewife had consummated their relationship, built clandestinely over a period of six months, during one opportune week in October. Rakesh was on leave and Kamla was away at her daughter’s place in NOIDA. What Ashok couldn’t achieve in three years, even with the help of those exotic medicines prescribed by a renowned “sexologist” of Daryaganj, Rakesh did in seven days flat. Impressed by his performance in bed and assured by his declarations of unending love, Mukta had told her new lover she wanted to divorce her husband. Rakesh promised to marry her once he was posted away from the killing fields of Kashmir.

  Bakshi hadn’t been very happy with Ram Bhaj’s initial report, which contained nothing more than Mukta’s haggling with the greengrocers at Indira market and buying muffins and cheap noodles from Supreme Bakeries in Sector 8. Mukesh the techie wasn’t very helpful either. All his efforts revealed was that Anamika, literally “Lady Anonymous,” had called from a PCO in Sector 18 NOIDA.

  “Dig deeper,” Bakshi hectored his minion, “or you’ll get a mighty kick on your gaand.”

  The threat of an immediate sack worked wonders on Ram Bhaj. He quizzed, cajoled, and threatened the Sector 7 women into revealing Mukta’s secrets, which, he knew, would put his demanding boss in good spirits.

  “Mukta has a lover called Rakesh who is a fauji,” Ram Bhaj reported to his boss.

  “Good,” said Bakshi, reaching into his drawer for a sachet of paan masala. He had just returned to his seat after beating a confession out of a suspect. Punching and whipping suspects gave Inspector Bakshi the same thrill he felt when fucking a woman who wasn’t his wife.

  “The lover’s parents live in quarter no. 353, directly opposite the CPWD Enquiry office,” Ram Bhaj continued. “They’d been meeting on the sly since May this year but it wasn’t until October that they actually shacked up. Rakesh had come home from Kashmir on a week’s leave and Kamla Agarwal was away at her daughter’s.”

  “Great,” Bakshi grinned. This was what he called Class A material. “Who served up this chaat-masala?” he asked, just to make sure he wasn’t being fed bazaar gossip.

  “Two elderly women who knew Kamla Agarwal.”

  “And what did the young women say about Mukta?”

  “A lotus in a dungheap.”

  “Really? How fascinating! And what did they say about Kamla?”

  “She was a tyrant. She treated her bahu like dirt, even worse because Mukta didn’t bring any dowry and couldn’t conceive after six months of marriage. They said Kamla made three attempts on Mukta’s life within the past year: The first time it was poison, dhatura seeds, then she tried pushing her daughter-in-law over the terrace. The last time she sprinkled kerosene on Mukta’s clothes and tried torching her.”

  “Lucky woman, she’s still alive and kicking after all that! Why didn’t she run away to her parents?” asked Bakshi.

  She went to her parents after the poison, Ram Bhaj explained, but they sent her back saying they already had too many mouths to feed.

  “What about her husband?”

  Ram Bhaj curled his thin lower lip in disdain. “He’s a weakling, a coward who slunk away to the terrace when his mother turned the heat on his wife.”

  “You haven’t told me the whole story, Ram Bhaj.” Bakshi was stroking his mustache again. “Am I right?”

  The lackey grinned. “Your brain works like a computer, sir. I am sure you will get the ACP’s post very soon.”

  “Stop oiling my butt and spit out the gem you’re holding in your gullet.”

  “He is impotent, sir,” the informer whispered.

  “Who told you this?”

  “Neela, Mukta’s close confidante.”

  “Hmm.” Bakshi wanted to whistle, but he straightened himself up in his chair and assumed an official air to indicate that their meeting was over. “Good work, Ram Bhaj. Keep it up.”

  Bakshi pondered the case before him. If Kamla’s friends knew about Mukta’s affair with the virile fauji, Kamla herself must have known what her bahu was up to while she was away. Bakshi needn’t be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that upon discovering Mukta’s adultery, Kamla must have taken her tyranny to new heights by the first week of November, around the time when she had her great fall from the temple top. Perhaps the tortured bahu had pushed the tyrannical saas down the stairs after all.

  The next day, Bakshi received yet another phone call regarding the Kamla Agarwal case, but this time it was from a man. “My wife has been making some wild allegations against Mukta Agarwal on telephone,” said a phlegmy voice. “Please ignore them.”

  “Identify yourself first.” The cop pressed the record button on his telephone and then looked at the crime chart on the wall. It showed that two suicides, one murder, and three burglaries had occurred that week. Not enough work for a proactive police officer like Bakshi.

  “My name is Anand Bansal, I’m Ashok Agarwal’s brother-in-law.”

  “Your profession?”

  “I run a courier service from Atta Market, NOIDA.”

  After he had collected the address and telephone number of Anand Bansal, Bakshi threatened that he’d file a case against the man’s wife for making unsubstantiated allegations against Mukta Agarwal and interfering with a police investigation. When Anand seemed sufficiently brow-beaten, Bakshi suggested they could settle the matter at 6:30 that evening—not at the police station, but in the Sector 9 park, near San-gam Cinema.

  That evening, Bakshi not only collected ten thousand rupees from Anand Bansal to exonerate his wife from a police case—enough money to splurge on drinks and kebabs for a week—he also gathered a few nuggets on Mukta Agarwal that Ram Bhaj, his dogsbody, had failed to unearth. Nugget no. 1: Anand, who hailed from Meerut, was Mukta’s former lover, and it was he who had persuaded Kamla to get Ashok married to his old flame. He’d wanted to see the poor shopkeeper’s daughter happy and well-settled, but he had no idea that Ashok was a “nonfunctional male” or that his mother would be so hard on the poor girl. Nugget no. 2: Even though she’d denounced Mukta as barren, Kamla had let Anand know in a roundabout way that for the noble cause of perpetuating the Agarwal clan, she wouldn’t mind if her virile son-in-law, who had already fathered three healthy children, inseminated Mukta, as long as it remained a family secret. While Anand was willing to oblige his mother-in-law, Mukta rejected her former lover’s advances. Nugget no. 3: Savitri, Anand’s wife, hated Mukta because she knew about her husband’s premarital affair with the woman. Anand had no idea why his wife would allege foul play in her mother’s death, other than a perverse wish to see her enemy incarcerated in a dark Tihar cell.

  As Bakshi’s visits to Safdarjung Hospital and Malai Man-dir hadn’t unearthed any substantial evidence, he was inclined to believe that Mukta had no hand in Kamla’s death. Nonetheless, he couldn’t get his mind off the woman, particularly after the new masala that Anand had provided about her. Ah, those lucky bastards, Rakesh and Anand, he thought wistfully.

  On a chilly December afternoon, Bakshi pressed the bell of quarter no. 761 for the second time. He was clutching a slim gray police file. Mukta saw him through the peephole and rearranged her shawl to cover her bosom before opening the door.

  “How are you, Mrs. Agarwal?” asked Bakshi. He stepped in without waiting for an invitation.

&nb
sp; “I am fine, inspector saab,” Mukta said, edging away from the path of the hulking policeman to avoid any accidental contact.

  “You haven’t told us the truth, Mrs. Agarwal,” Bakshi said, settling down on a sofa.

  “What truth are you talking about?”

  “You had a very strained relationship with your mother-in-law.”

  “That’s not true. We had a few saas-bahu spats in the past, but in the end we got along fine.”

  Bakshi guffawed and shook a few grains of paan masala into his mouth. The tang of lime and tobacco often fired his imagination. “A mongoose waltzing with a snake, huh?” he said with a sly wink. The inspector then tensed his facial muscles to look serious and slightly intimidating. “You haven’t told me the true story, Mukta Agarwal.”

  “I told you everything I saw,” Mukta maintained.

  Bakshi held up his file, frowning. “Here I’ve got statements from three witnesses who saw you from the circular path that goes around the base of the temple. They identified you and your mother-in-law from the photographs.” Bakshi studied his suspect’s face to assess the effect of his words before opening his file. “Here we have Mrs. Natarajan of Saket telling us that she saw you arguing with the old lady.”

  “That’s not true … We didn’t have any arguments that evening.”

  “And here’s Mr. Nair, our second witness from Moti Bagh, who saw you smiling while Kamla was still tumbling down the stairs and shrieking.”

  “That’s totally absurd! I’m not mad, inspector.”

  “Of course you aren’t; you just couldn’t help rejoicing the death of a person you hated. You are a clever woman, Mukta Agarwal: You foiled three attempts on your life.”

  Mukta gave a start at this sudden disclosure which she had thought was known only to Neela, her best friend in the neighborhood.