I broke through the circle of vengeful onlookers and meandered around the neighborhood. This place is a rural implant in a concrete city; acres of swaying, knee-high grass and herds of livestock have withstood the encroachment of builders. I soon found myself strolling into a wooded area on a gentle hill. This was a secluded spot popular with morning walkers and joggers. There was a parapet wall along the edge of the road upon which young couples whispered sweetly into one another’s ears.
A family with two young children hurried past. “Look at the sunrise,” said the mother, tilting her child’s head up. The other boy hung back, gaping at the canoodling teenagers. I caught his eye and he stuck his tongue out at me.
It was indeed a magnificent sunrise. I wanted to shake these early-morning go-getters, tell them a man has died. But it was time to move on.
Back at the murder scene things were in flux. I stood behind Ranvir and looked for trouble among the restless. I watched my boss work the crowd. How can one describe him? He was short for his build. For the money they paid him, he delivered. His current tormentor was a colleague in the department: Tiwari.
My boss ran the Third Squad like an old-school thug. The department loved him and his results. They bestowed on him a deaf ear, a blind eye, and a license to do as he pleased. In the course of five long years he had cleaned up some of the worst vermin that Mumbai could throw his way. In the underworld his value soared. Announcements of the price on his head were noted on a blackboard near his chamber and they drew a soft response from him. He never dwelled on the fact that he was a target, and that one day this might all catch up with him.
Ranvir was soon wrapping up at the cattle ranch in Goregaon. He had assembled the rowdy crowd into a circle beside the sheds. Amid the urine and dung and buzzing flies, he asked them to drop their weapons—right now. It was a heroic scene. My fingers caressed my handgun and I had already picked my first target—the red-faced, stout bully with a bristling mustache. I could hear the birds and the bees and the sound of distant traffic in the distance.
“Sahib?” said Govardhan Bhai to Ranvir. “We were here to protect the poor guy. We couldn’t.” The rest of his gang looked on grimly and nodded.
Ranvir walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He spoke quietly: “Govardhan Bhai, I know you didn’t do this. After all, he was one of your men.”
“Yes, sahib.” Bhai ceremoniously dropped his sickle to the ground and the rest followed suit. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, a shot rang out. It sounded distant but I felt the impact right next to me. The crowd hushed and I glanced around. The local constable who had accompanied us stood frozen and my boss looked horrified. Bhai was standing beside him but his eyes were bulging and his chest was bloody. Another shot rang out and this time we whirled in the direction of the sound. It had come from the hillock nearby. I knew this had to be a scope rifle.
“Down!” I screamed, summoning a voice I never knew I had. “Get down!”
“Everybody down!” my boss echoed. Most of the crowd obeyed and crouched on their knees, some right into the blood and gore. My gun was out and without much thought I shot three bullets into the hillside. Bhai looked puzzled; he reached out to us and stumbled. We grabbed his hands but couldn’t hold him upright for long.
What followed was a tense half an hour in which a restive and increasingly vocal crowd of bhaiyas were barely in our control. We held our ground till two trucks arrived with more reinforcements. I glanced at the dismembered body of the informer one last time. It looked hopeless and forgotten. Death has no dignity sometimes.
Ranvir placed a hand on my shoulder. “The guy’s name was Vithaldas Panduranga. You wanted a name, didn’t you?”
I nodded. I needed to put a name to that body; it made him a person. We were given cover as we were whisked away. My boss was livid over the next hour while we drove into town, speaking on the phone with someone named Mishra. When we reached our building Ranvir looked like he wanted to get his hands around Tiwari’s neck. According to Mishra, the long-range shots had been fired by Atmaram Bhosle, a known cop-killer and gun-for-hire. It was rumored that the khabari gang that shared our building had asked for Govardhan’s head in retaliation for Vithal. It was the second show killing that day.
In the media spin that followed, the episode was made out to be an encounter, one that Ranvir’s team had staged. A well-known politician with a large migrant constituency raised a stink. My boss was forced to go on leave for a month while a departmental investigation took place. The ignominy of it all left a deep scar on Ranvir, and he was hurting even after he was cleared of any wrongdoing. The case file on Govardhan Bhai stayed in our records. We didn’t want it, but it remained a recorded encounter, the only one where I had taken a shot and missed.
* * *
Nandini cannot rest. She leaves home furtively. She gets the address from Karan, heads to the Goregaon-Jogeshwari belt, and finds Panduranga’s dwelling. The neighbors are of no help. She ransacks his abode for a trace of family and finds none. The building watchman comes up to her and they chat. He leads her to the ghat where Panduranga lies unattended. The ghat is a strange one and at this hour an old hag and a fat man ask for money to conduct the rituals. Nandini pays for ritual and a little extra for dignity. It is almost morning by the time the preparations are done.
“Who was this young calf?” asks the old hag. Nobody answers. “Did he have a good life?”
“Mahamayi,” replies the fat man. “In Mumbai the good life is a seasonal thing, like mangoes.”
“Light him up,” the hag says. Flames leap into the sky. A good fire loves cow fat. But the flames burn out quickly and the act seems inadequate. The city lights blink as dawn breaks. Below the hill there are signs of life. They wait till the flames wilt. Another conch-shell note pierces the air, starting low and ending with a blast. The fat man wipes his conch with the folds of his dhoti.
“Gather his ashes,” says the hag. “He wore no valuables—no necklace, no rings, and no gold fillings. What a waste, I shouldn’t have waited.”
The cab ride back is long and Nandini’s mind roams.
It is a sultry dawn in the city, she thinks. Sleep at your own risk in this place because great men plot while you dream. The night is when webs are spun and bells are rung. So much happens. In the night the city yields to the will of those who hold remorse for ransom. This city of noir sleeps at dawn. The night’s debris waits for the tide.
Karan is asleep when she returns. She wakes him up.
“Tell me you didn’t do this!” she shouts.
Karan rubs his eyes and meets her gaze. He shakes his head.
“Say it loud, Karan, I need to hear this.”
He tries to respond but no sound emanates. Outside the pigeons fly away in the breeze. The neighbors lie in their crumpled beds and try to drown the noise from the streets below.
“I hope somebody pays for this,” she says.
After going back to sleep for a few hours, Nandini reads the full story in the newspaper and apologizes to Karan. For the next couple of days she will try to make it up to him.
Getaway
Driving lessons. She drives and you sit in the passenger seat with a seat belt around your middle, your mustache is slightly awry and one end tickles, your sides are hurting after your workout at the gym, and you are blowing air into your palms as you had been before taking a shot. You are being looked at, not for the first time, but this look is special. She keeps throwing glances but you stare straight ahead, refusing diversions. She overtakes a few cars and is honked at for doing so. You reach Chembur and she slips into the left lane and slows down. The road is broad and the surroundings have opened up somewhat. In the distance you can actually see a horizon that is slightly blurred by the smog. There is smoke in the air from tall chimneys that are the lifeblood of the Rashtriya chemical factory, a known consumer of oxygen. “Chembur blood samples are usually negative.” That is what she has told you.
“What do you see?” she as
ks, parking on a side street. It’s an easy description and, while you are no T.S. Eliot, you are succinct. You call it an industrial wasteland.
“Roll down your window,” she says. You do so. “What do you see?” she asks again.
Lesson one, from this curator of cities, was learning to see with all your senses. With the windows down you can experience what this factory is doing. It is ruining the air by smelling like sour eggs and burned toast. There must be some honest sludge somewhere too amid the deceptive green swamp that stretches up to the factory from the highway. Nandini has told you that you have a sixth sense but that one of the other five is usually missing. Which one? You’ve never asked.
You resume your journey. She takes the highway by the neck and drives through the wind. The sound of tires and the air rushing past the windscreen grows louder and louder, and she finally slows down below 100. She is testing you. You hold your breath, barely.
Lesson two, from this woman who holds your life together, was learning trust. Not in her driving but in her (and your) innate instinct to stay alive. She slams the brakes and swerves to the right as a bus ahead of you with no brake lights stops suddenly. Passengers disembark from it and you glimpse them in your sideview mirror as you speed past. The world is unaware an accident did not happen.
This could be called distance learning. A fair distance from the city you see trees and open farmland and a few people tilling it, some watering it, a scarecrow, a school with barefoot children, a train making slow progress, the wheels of a cart—and you feel the absence of punctuation and a mind on the mend. You feel rested. “Default settings,” Nandini calls it. “They are very special. A normal person needs to reclaim them.”
You make love in a motel. “Say fuck,” she says. You cannot. “Say it out loud,” she says. She does when you don’t, she says it aloud with eyes closed, and it isn’t an order but her body speaking. “Fuck,” she exhales. In that room for the anonymous, the two of you find an hour to do your thing. For you it seems just physical but her intensity gets in the way and you begin to feel something that you have not before, and you realize that getting away from the everyday provides these moments. The ride back is silent, half drowsy but expressive.
“Are you in love?” she asks you.
You take your time to respond and then nod your head.
“How do you know?”
Love is metabolism; you know that. The heart beats a little faster from the anxiety and the anticipation that you feel around her. Love is insecurity; you can feel that because occasionally you truly let go. Love is a habit; you have a habit of staring at her when she isn’t aware and when she catches you looking, she asks, “Why are you smiling?” You had no idea you were smiling. “Love makes you whole?” she ventures, holding you.
Does it?
“You want to see what love looks like?” she says, grinning into your face, turning the rearview mirror so you can see yourself. You look thrashed. There is graffiti on your cheek; a long scratch from her fingernail and two pinch marks.
When you get home she kicks off her shoes, throws down her bag and keys, pirouettes, hugs you, laughs, wheels around, whoops, spins, and stumbles, holds her head till it steadies, and then enters your den. You follow her in a happy daze and your eyes adjust to the dark and you see that she has used a fluorescent marker on your wall. She has written: BRAHMAN, WOULD YOU KILL FOR ME?
Encounter Thirty
When Nandini got pregnant her home became silent at night. The chawl members welcomed the silence but were unaware of the reason. Soon Nandini was visibly pregnant and then the neighbors congregated, played some games, and suggested names. The child would be a girl, they decided. She would have her parents around her little finger.
Karan stood tall when all this happened and tried to imagine what life would be like. He was anxious. All he wanted was a normal child, a healthy baby who would dribble, spit, wail, and still be cute. When there wasn’t much time to go—perhaps a month—he was relieved by a lull at work. Every assignment was now a cause for argument in which Nandini played prosecution. But she was glowing, became a happy grumbler, and her appetite was hearty. Karan learned how vegetables were cut, sliced, and diced. Most mornings he made Spanish omelets and some nights he tossed a Chinese noodle.
And then, out of the blue, as it always happened, a call came and an encounter took place. That day Nandini was yearning for a Gujarati meal and he was to meet her for lunch near Bombay Hospital. He managed both, barely making it to the restaurant. They had lunch together, enjoying the meal, but that night she discovered Number Twenty-Nine because Karan had been careless—he’d left his gun and a spent cartridge on display.
She sat on a lounge chair with her legs up on a stool, the light from a lamp casting shadows on a wall. He could tell from her stare that she knew. “Why now?” she asked him, her hands on her belly, tapping, responding to the movement inside. Was there ever a good time? He had no answer.
The next morning there were complications. There had been complications before with autoimmune rejection, and she was taking medication for it, and for a while they had prayed and things had settled down. This time seemed more urgent and, as he rushed her to hospital, they looked at each other for reassurance but ended up fearful. His car did not let him down and it drove smoothly and quickly. They held hands till she went into surgery. The doctors did their best but could not save the baby.
For days after this Nandini went into a shell. She sat at home in that same dark place, looking at Karan expectantly when he walked by. He wasn’t very good at discerning feelings and it was easy for him to be oblivious. But the sheer physicality of her stare raised a singular question: was he guilty? In their nuclear household this mishap was Number Thirty.
When she emerged from her depression she was still a little distant and there needed to be a confrontation to clear the air. He abhorred confrontation but now he wished he could instigate it. He said sorry many times in his head and finally out loud.
Was he sorry? Yes, now and then, and he felt sorry for her sometimes. He was also sorry for the perversion of what was good and the deification of what was considered bad, and he had stood in the land in between, where his job made him feel guilty and his boss told him that his misgivings were groundless.
Nandini listened to a TED Talk that evening. Again. She was an evangelist for such material. She found them uplifting, these stories of the valorous who could stalk a stage with a mic pinned to their collar, who used their hands cleverly to articulate stories, and before them the acolytes gathered, a junta hooked to phoenix-like narratives attempting to prove that life rewards those who believe in redemption.
She wanted an encounter specialist on a TED Talk. If only Pradeep Sharma would stand up in the dark under a spotlight, keeping his hands in view, and speak about gunning down baddies. What would this achieve? She felt people should know how cold and clinical it all was, and how desperate.
Karan himself would not be able to deliver a TED Talk, according to her. He disagreed, privately. Something told him that his halting manner, his pauses, his uncertainty, and his doubt would be less polished but more riveting. He would tell those gathered there about the unreal feeling that came his way before he pulled the trigger. He wasn’t thinking, just like the manual said. There was no doubt, only unease.
“What are you, Karan? What kind of person are you?” she asked him. “You go to a barbershop and shoot someone who is seated and helpless. You go to a grieving son on his mother’s death anniversary and shoot him dead as he kneels at her grave.”
She was holding her scrapbook in which she recorded his actions, culled from newspaper reports. Some days she wanted to destroy it, as if it was a part of him that could hence be excised and diminished. He could sense that.
“Do you know these people?” he asked her. “Have you read their stories?”
She wouldn’t listen.
“These people have done nothing to you. They haven’t threatened or even heard of
you, and yet you walk up to them and kill them in cold blood.”
She needed help. Maybe he did too. The next day the two of them were in the midst of a Sunday breakfast and it was obvious she hadn’t slept well. She had her head in her hands and her hair obscured her face as she flipped the newspaper pages. She was still in her faded cotton nightgown that she had bought at an art exhibition and refused to let go of. He waited for her next salvo and it came.
“Who can do the things you do and then walk away to a restaurant to eat a leisurely lunch?”
He had done that, admittedly. What could he tell her in his defense? They had gone to that Gujarati restaurant because she wanted to go. Of course he was hungry, and he had done justice to the unlimited thali. The restaurant staff had gathered around him and beamed because they hadn’t seen his kind of relish in a while. And now, after realizing he had come straight there after a bloody assignment, Number Twenty-Nine, she was playing that scene over and over in her mind. He hadn’t even gone to his office to file his customary report. Assignments made him hungry. It was a physical thing that he thought needed no explanation.
“Nobody is a shell,” he finally said. He was done with her staring.
“What did you say?” she replied, leaning in closer.
“Everything is questionable.” This wasn’t his best. He could express it better in local parlance in front of men but he couldn’t tell her that he was a dumb madarchod or a grade-A bhosadi because he stuck to a job that wasn’t plain and simple and whose reward was just a damn statistic.
He felt alone now. He always felt alone when people came at him saying he was heartless. But there was a way out. All he had to do was to show signs that he was affected. Perhaps by skipping a meal, getting migraines, developing an ulcer, shouting Gaand maraa bhosadeke aulad, suffering sleepless nights tossing and turning and mumbling incoherently, visiting temples after something untoward like a hit, or by confessing to her now and then that inside he was eroding and he was gutted—this would have made him part of the human sea.
The Third Squad Page 9