The Third Squad

by V. Sanjay Kumar

  I find that surprising. A haircut? I just had a trim a week ago. Then I realize. “The target—first tell me about him.”

  “A guy with long hair,” he replies flippantly. “The rest will be e-mailed. Don’t worry, once you read about him you will be happy to get rid of him.”

  The line disconnects.

  * * *

  “Karan, are you there?” Why does she shout from the bedroom when everything in this chawl is right next door? “Didn’t you hear the doorbell ring?”

  The neighbor’s boy stands at the door peering in, his hand outstretched. He holds an empty cup before my groin. “Sugar,” he says.

  I let him in and walk over to the hallway. Outside, the chawl courtyard has a young fan club that looks up at me and cheers. I wave and shoot a mock bullet their way and they cower and run, their peals of laughter dry in the morning sun. And memories flood back of a picnic by Powai Lake where as schoolchildren we ran laughing into the water and one of us couldn’t swim. I retreat to my place by the lamp in my den. I write the first few words without thinking.

  Today was an unbelievable day. I met a man. He saw me once.

  “Do you remember me?” he asked.

  How could I forget? My memory never lets me go.

  The godforsaken bell rings again, interrupting my reverie.

  “Karan, are you just going to sit there all day?” asks Nandini.

  I remember heading to Churchgate at five that very morning; the hour of the milkman, the doodh-wallah who roams Mumbai streets with his milk cans. The express train was late by two minutes and I was restless and jumpy, wanting to get off that platform. I caught a local train instead, comforted by the anonymous crowd. At the end of the journey I got pushed out into the chaos. The station announcements echoed in the vast hall and people hurried, spilling into the streets. Outside I had time to get my shoes polished. The shoeshine boy who sat on the pavement had a runny nose and his hair was unwashed and matted. He was skinny and he chattered as he polished, clicking his teeth.

  “You use it as a mirror now, uncle,” he said proudly as I looked down at my shiny black shoes. I suddenly remembered Nandini’s tirade on child labor. I felt a pang of guilt as I placed a small fat coin in the boy’s palm. His hand was so cold and that got me down.

  I crossed the road and waited outside the salon’s glass doors. The place had ten chairs in two rows of five, and they were mostly occupied. A magazine vendor had spread his wares on the pavement outside. I picked up a Marathi weekly with a shrill headline. “Hello Mumbai, this is Marathi speaking,” I mumbled. The vendor smiled, displaying a large gap where two front teeth should have been.

  My guy walked into the salon and they sat him down immediately. It was definitely him; as Desai said, he was alone. I heard the waiting customers click their disapproval at this preferential treatment as I entered through the door. The air was cool inside and the sounds were hushed. Click, spray, wash, and dry. This salon was like an assembly line.

  “Be seated,” a voice said.

  The mirrors on the walls faced each other and all reflections retreated into infinity.

  “Haircut?” asked another barber. “Shampoo?”

  I walked up to the man who was busy explaining how he wanted his parting.

  “Right side,” he was stressing. “Not the left side.”

  I stood near him and was momentarily confused by his many reflections. Damn mirrors.

  The two of us paused, a cop and a hood at the edge of a labyrinth. He had cloudy eyes. We exchanged glances.

  “Do I know you?” he asked. I nodded into infinity.

  This was a page that I had read before. This was a chapter that I had understood.

  His eyes darted in sudden recognition. He knew this was the end of the line. I watched his hands under the white sheet that covered him. “Don’t be brutal,” he whispered.

  I placed a hand on his shoulder, keeping faith as I took the shot. I recoiled, expecting shattered glass. The muffled sound traveled the length of that room, the blood falling short. I could see his exit wound.

  I remember him now. I remember speaking to him as I left. What did I say?

  “Are you going to sit there all day?”

  * * *

  “Karan, where did you go so early?”

  “Haircut. I needed a haircut,” I reply.

  “Show me, chief.” I like it when she calls me that.

  She turns me around and feels the hair on the nape of my neck. It is a moment of intimacy till she sees the gash. Her fingers find the bandage under my collar, the blood seeping at the edges.

  “What happened?”

  “The barber. The barber got me good,” I joke. Her breath turns shallow.

  Desai calls just as Nandini is about to launch into a tirade. I wait for two rings before answering.

  “Job done, Karan?” he asks loudly.

  “Yes,” I reply in a low voice, suddenly resenting his blasé manner. “Yes, it’s done.”

  “Describe,” he says. He sounds bored; perhaps he is tapping a pencil and doodling instead of making notes. Nandini stands next to me, watching me closely and making me very self-conscious. I turn away from her as I speak. Should I try to sound as if I cared, for her benefit?

  “I couldn’t see his hands,” I begin. “The guy was sitting wrapped up to the neck in a white sheet on the salon chair. Only his head was visible.”

  “You had a clean shot?”

  “Yes, and I took it. I was disoriented by the mirrors. I hate mirrors. It was disorienting but still I took it. And then . . .”

  Desai taps his pencil against the receiver.

  “The barber was his regular. He had a straight razor. He came at me from behind. I saw him in the mirror but by the time I turned he slashed me.”

  Desai has ceased tapping. I can almost feel his frown. “Karan, you need more tests. I can’t imagine a barber getting his way with one of our best.”

  There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I’m physically all here. I’m thinking clearly and executing successfully. What I need is something they won’t give me—a DNA test.

  * * *

  People have patron saints and in the state of Maharashtra many of the Hindu faith look toward Shirdi and its patron Sai Baba. They acquire small photographs of Baba, seated with one leg crossed over the other and a palm raised, offering you blessings. They frame them and hang them up and hope for benediction. Nobody took me to Shirdi. Nobody anointed my walls with Baba. Nandini for some reason has placed an incense stand in my small den and the smoke curls from it, looking for a place to get away. The smell of sandalwood seeps into the upholstery and ash blows on the floor. I sit in there with a burned match, not sure where to throw it.

  The festival days are upon us. They batter my doors down with sound. A loudspeaker blares out a bhajan loop all day long. Then, at night, a procession march that never leaves. It takes them a week to rouse the idol. Finally they place the Ganesha idol on a pushcart and wheel him away, leaving behind an empty silence.

  I’m feeling lucky so I decide to tiptoe to my shrine. I place my speakers on a pedestal and light another match. The strains of a raga hesitate. And then my gods take center stage. My patron saints are singers; music is my shrine.

  “Karan, there’s smoke coming from beneath your door.” I hear footsteps. “Karan?” She twists the doorknob and enters. “What are you doing?”

  “Searching. Can’t you see? I’m searching.”

  “Searching for what? In the dark? Why are all the lights off anyway?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She leaves the room with a look that says, I’ll see you outside. It is a Saturday and we have to go shopping. There is a sale in Big Bazaar. Nandini is serious about sales. She says it’s the reason we’re able to pay the rent and go on vacation.

  I sit in the dark of my den with boarded windows and try to remember where I come from. There is no clarity. I remember a young man called Evam (a mofussil type and a scatterbrain with
his heart in the right place) who took care of me and others like me. I remember what I told a sympathetic teacher at Don Bosco High School.

  “I never got to know my mother. She left me when I was an infant. My father never even knew I existed.”

  I had a restless and febrile imagination.

  “Why do they only test killers and rapists, madam?” I asked her. “I want to be tested.”

  “What test?” she asked.

  “I want a DNA test.”

  I had some telltale signs. I was sure my fair skin and light eyes came from the Konkanastha Brahmin community. It wasn’t a large community so surely I could trace my lineage there. My teacher told me nothing.

  I did not rest easy. I was obsessed. As an orphan child I constantly searched for my parentage, hoping it would answer the burning question, Who am I?

  “Studies show that a lack of knowledge of your origins inhibits your social skills. So you can keep searching,” said my teacher, “but be aware that you may never be satisfied.”

  I remember Evam telling me, “There’s a child inside that will never let go of you.” He ran a place we called Evam’s Ward. “This child inside you wants to make you whole. You should let him, but you are also scared. You are scared of the thought that who you are depends on what became of your parents.”

  It was complicated. I was tagged “special”—the word has dogged me ever since I learned to spell. Special care, special assistance, and specialty ward; but one day the veil lifted and it all went away. My friends were not so lucky and they remained at Evam’s Ward, which was really more of a day care center. They made faces when they saw me leaving—that was the norm. They made faces all the time, as if they were unable to arrive at the same muscular presentation as regular people. But I had given up trying to speak to them in a form that was understood as conversation.

  So my life accumulated day by day, leaf by leaf, till I was introduced to my future boss. Evam asked me to meet a police officer, a leader of men. He saw something in me. Ranvir Pratap was that police officer and he shaped my career.

  “Why don’t you have an idol or at least a framed photograph of one like everyone else?” Nandini sometimes asks.

  She doesn’t like the blank nature of my worship or the line that I have written on the wall of my den. In black marker I’ve written the words AHAM BRAHMASMI, which means, That which cannot be abandoned, that which is whole and ever present. To me this made a lot of sense, perhaps as a counter to those who gave me birth and then abandoned me in a place like Evam’s Ward among those they considered worthy of “special” attention.

  When Nandini saw the quote for the first time she translated it as, I am Brahman. She did not like it. “It sounds like you have a high opinion of yourself. Remember, there is nothing sacred about what you do.”

  I wouldn’t let her erase it, so below the words she has written, Your name is Karan. You kill for a living. Work like this must be so hard to find.

  Cast a Lazy Eye

  A “special” like me has a girl like Nandini. I have an unknown past and she is most concerned about losing her identity. Mumbai, her fitful muse, nourishes her and also eats away her being. I get to hear a lot of what she thinks on the subject. Every day she bemoans a lost custom, a forgotten festival, a curtailed ritual, or even words that lost have utility and disappeared. She feels we are being reduced to a lowly herd by Navi Mumbai, the new Bombay.

  “Cast a lazy eye on this city,” she said once.

  What?

  “Or make love instead.”

  She has been reading poetry in the parlor while getting her legs waxed. Nandini was determined that she would not simply be a sufferance like her city. Every day she observed Mumbai and compared it to her Pune, the smaller metropolis just two hours from here, and in her dispassionate manner she stated that the character of the city would not endure. To endure was to die. To all those who glorified the ability of the city to bounce back from adversity she had this to say: Mumbai Devi is a selfish hag full of selfish people. Its known benefactors, the Parsis, were also selfish. They had selfish enclaves and selfish sperm. Even the worms in the compost in their baugs were Parsi.

  Roaming the city she felt for the small nooks, corners, parks, and temples—Gowalia Tank, Gamdevi, Teen Batti, Banganga, and Bhuleshwar. There were Christian precincts, Muslim gullies, Goan houses, the Lohar Chawl, Crawford Market, P D’Mello Road; the list was endless. She looked hard at the people in these places to see if they belonged. She wasn’t so sure.

  Mumbai has no sons and daughters. The city changes hands way too often, even as you speak. Belonging is hard to come by; even if you own a few square feet on the twentieth floor, one day your sea view might suddenly be obscured. The only upward graph the city has is one that shows property prices.

  Nandini wants to disrupt Mumbaikars. I don’t know what drives her or what causes her grief but her chief instigator is the city. Standing outside Churchgate Station in the morning, being part of the rushing hordes of office workers, she cannot believe the cops use a dirty rope to shepherd them through traffic. She rails at the inefficiency of the ticket counters and cannot understand the patience people have, standing endlessly in long lines. In town hall meetings, between heated arguments about parking and water conservation, she asks people to calm down and read the Bhagwad Geetha.

  The rampant encroachments in the city disturb her, the illegal power-tapping, the water-hoarding, the hafta or bribe that is demanded by people doing jobs they are being paid for, the noise pollution—all of this gets to her every day.

  Despite all this Nandini is proud of her city; she loves Mumbai. Love is too strong a word for me. I like Mumbai and I hide my liking behind a veneer of criticism. But it is a hard-working city and I fit in. I am thorough, diligent, and I do my job without delving into the “greater good” or the “higher purpose” which other encounter teams believe in or say they believe in.

  Nandini leads Heritage Walks that are a mixture of fun and learning. Some days I follow her and hover in the periphery. Some days I mingle with the group. By now I know a lot about Bombay. Every building has character and every place has history. And every chutiya on the street is on the make. I say, You want to see Mumbai? Look into their eyes.

  Today she is looking pretty in a red and yellow salwar kameez. I watch the others as they observe her. I can never get used to the sight of her. I am tailing her because Special Branch has information that a gang is out to hurt her for what I have done to one of their own. The intelligence is unconfirmed but we need to be careful. I had to tell Nandini about the report and for once she said nothing. But I’m sure the unsaid will surface later. (I can imagine her confronting me, saying, One day it will come home to roost, this monster you’re rearing.)

  “Art deco?” she questions the group, raising an eyebrow.

  The group stares at the Regal Cinema. It is early on a Sunday morning and there is a slight haze in the sky. A breeze is coming in from the road that leads to the Gateway of India and the Arabian Sea behind it.

  “Architect Charles Stevens; the theater opened in 1933,” says a smart aleck. He’s juggling a bunch of handwritten notes, a smartphone, and a large camera.

  “Looks fairly ordinary,” observes somebody else. “I prefer multiplexes.”

  The Regal Cinema had its moment in another era. It was an era when every city in India had a Regal, an Odeon, and a Ritz, and the crème de la crème wore trousers and pressed shirts and watched Hollywood movies.

  “This is a single-screen theater,” says Nandini. “Somehow that sounds dated.”

  “Isn’t that the Shantaram Road, the Colaba Causeway?” asks another, pointing toward a crowded lane.

  There are ten of them in today’s group. Four young couples from Bangalore and Chennai wanting to “know” Mumbai and two cheerful European backpackers. The latter perk up on hearing the S-word.

  “Really?” says one of them. He pulls out the hallowed book and feels its dog-eared pages. “Can we
go there now?”

  “Later,” says Nandini. She pirouettes on her feet and her salwar flows in a full circle behind her. The group follows her gaze and takes in an eclectic mix of buildings and roads.

  They are standing at the center of a parking lot where six roads meet. On weekdays it becomes an island marooned in a sea of traffic. This is where Nandini begins her South Mumbai Walk, where the city for a moment reverts to Bombay. On Sunday mornings it is quiet, traffic is thin, and you find time and space to take shade under fully grown trees. Around you are buildings that have withstood the relent of time, and the air you breathe is testimony to bygone eras that have been erased inadequately.

  A few deep sighs and they set forth into the road that leads to the Taj Mahal Hotel. I hang back for a while and peer into an antique store called Phillips.

  “Watch your step,” warns Nandini. “Careful not to walk over those drains with your noses open.”

  They tread carefully around the iron grates that dot the roadsides. The pavement is irregular and footwear tangles with broken stone. Visitors can never get used to the smells of Mumbai—around restaurants, on the train, near the docks, in the vicinity of street people, and from the sewage that courses through those ubiquitous drains. The smell of fish and saltwater, the dank smell of cloth and sweat, the fumes from vehicles, and sewage fill this place we call Mumbai.

  At the gateway the shutterbugs get busy. The sea is calm and a few boats provide fodder for cameras. The Taj Mahal Hotel sits in profile against scattered clouds. A variety of merchants and opportunists accost them for trade and favor and Nandini waves them away weakly. And here her wandering eye comes into play. She spots the people at the margin, the ones sleeping on the pavement, the balloon seller who is puffing his cheeks and blowing his wares, and the mofussil group that has arrived by van at an early hour to capture the sunrise and then head for the Elephanta Caves. I find her glancing at me and I nod ever so slightly. I part with some loose change and grab a pink balloon.