by Vadhan
Raghuram fell silent. He brought the transcript forward under the light of the dull table lamp. When he had finished reading, he turned to Kant.
‘I believe you now,’ he said.
Kant gave a curt nod.
‘And the magic man wanted me dead. What’s wrong with me by the way? There’s something about me he doesn’t like?’
‘Something to do with the Agniputr. Its part of the transcript.’
‘And Kiromal means to kill me.’
‘You need protection Mr. Surya...’ said Kant.
‘My friends call me Raghu...’
‘You have to assume there’s a killer out there looking for you. Raghu... I am a soldier. I can protect you. If that thing in your castle is a danger to this country I need to know about it, I can help.’
Raghu thought only for a moment before he extended his hand, ‘Welcome aboard the confusion wagon,’ he said to Kant. ‘Let me introduce you to my other team member,’ he gestured for Poti to join them. Kant had done his homework on the diminutive little man.
‘Lieutenant Krishna Naidu from the First Engineering Corps, I believe,’ Kant said.
Poti saluted smartly to the officer, ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I am retired.’
‘Good for you!’
CHAPTER 31
THE chartered aircraft landed in Tirupati at precisely ten in the morning. Poti, in a pair of jeans and a sweat shirt as protection from the mild mountain chill, was the first to get off the plane. Raghu, clad in black jeans, a maroon T-shirt and a black leather jacket, followed him. Sheila looked laid back and relaxed in faded blue jeans, a bright blue pullover and had a woollen shawl around her; Kant came out last, comfortable in his fatigue jacket over a white open neck T-shirt and blue jeans. They only carried hand baggage; they did not expect to stay too long in Tirupati.
The man by the rented silver Toyota Innova MUV at the parking lot looked relieved when Poti signed the papers for the car. He snatched the keys from the man and jumped into the driver’s seat with Kant riding shotgun. Raghu and Sheila settled themselves in the rear. They drove into Tirupati, the temple town at the base of the Tirumala hills. It was about that time that Raghu’s phone rang. He answered with a gentle Hello. In a moment a broad smile broke out, presently he hung up after a word of thanks.
‘That was my lawyer from Vijayawada. The court’s thrown out the petition by the government to vacate the injunction order,’ he said with a triumphant air.
‘Congratulations,’ Sheila responded and squeezed his shoulder. Poti smiled broadly and Kant shook his head in wonder.
‘How did you manage that?’ she asked. She was witness to the scheme between Kiromal and Raghu’s cousins and their intention to break Raghu’s case wide open.
Raghu shrugged humbly, ‘You see,’ he said, ‘After my grandfather’s murder, understandably, there was a rift in the family. My great grandfather partitioned the property between the members.’
‘Wise thing to do. Keeps people busy minding their new found wealth,’ Kant observed.
‘Yes. There were three shares; one fell to my great grandfather, the other two to his sons, namely my grandfather and his brother. My father, as the heir of my dead grandfather, inherited his share.’
‘So that’s one third of the property that came to you,’ Kant observed.
‘Correct. My grandfather’s brother did not get property as part of the settlement. He got the cash equivalent, ranging to hundreds of crores of rupees even in the pre-independence days. Thus, they relinquished their share in the property to my father. They left Gudem to settle down in Hyderabad. It was all recorded and registered.
‘That’s two thirds of the properties in your kitty.’
‘My great grandfather wrote off his share to my father under a gift deed. The castle and memorial hall, all the lands and villages, everything came under the absolute ownership of my father.’
Kant clapped his hands in glee, ‘The entire property is yours.’
Raghu nodded. It did not seem to matter to him that his properties counted him as one of the richest people in India.
‘My father gave away almost all the rural lands we had to the farmers almost as soon as he got them back in the ’40s. He retained the castle and the memorial hall and our urban and semi-urban land holdings. They passed on to me as his sole heir after my father’s life time. My cousins knew they had no right in the properties when they filed their petition in the High Court to vacate the injunction order. Therefore, instead of strengthening Kiromal’s case, it further weakened it because their claim was obviously frivolous. They dragged the government down with them.’
Kant said, ‘Wait a minute. What am I missing here? If your cousins knew this, why’d they fight against you, knowing you would win? It doesn’t serve their purposes.’
‘Because, that was the plan,’ Raghu said. ‘My grandfather’s brother may have been mad and in the grip of an equally mad tantrik. The truth is, he was in awe of his elder brother. He loved my grandfather too much to kill him intentionally. Over a period of time, we’ve realised the futility of a feud in the family. It’s the 21st century for god’s sake, we aren’t feudal warlords anymore nor do we want each other’s holdings. We co-exist happily. The so-called feud exists only in the minds of the people of Gudem, not between us. When Kiromal contacted them, they in turn got in touch with me.’
‘You were playing Kiromal all along and he didn’t suspect a thing,’ Sheila observed.
Raghu shrugged, ‘He was desperate enough to go to my cousins. That was one of the things that really set me thinking that Kiromal had a personal stake in the whole business. I dug deeper and found out how the entire project was controlled by his business empire.’
‘Never thought I’d say this, but well done,’ Kant said. He could just about imagine the look on Kiromal’s face when he heard the news. He had sure as Hell picked the wrong family to mess with.
‘Which is neither here nor there Babu; they’ve set a killer on you. Nothing’s really changed,’ Poti warned Raghu.
It was a sobering thought that instantly changed the mood in the car. They drove in silence. Soon they were at the entrance of the ghat roads that led to Tirumala and the world’s second richest temple.
‘This is my first time to Tirumala,’ Kant said, ‘my wife always wanted to visit here, funny that the pilgrimage’s happening in these circumstances.’
‘When it’s all over, I’ll personally arrange for your pilgrimage, Major,’ Raghu promised Kant.
‘Thanks.’
It took them all of half an hour through the winding mountain roads to reach Tirumala through progressively increasing chill. They drove into the temple town only to find themselves in a melee of hired jeeps, buses and luxury cars along with large volumes of people on foot.
‘Have you been here before?’ Kant asked Sheila.
‘Once, when I was a child, there were no multi-storied apartments and traffic signals in Tirumala in those times,’ she remarked, ‘it’s a lot more commercialised now.’
‘We need to find the Devasthanam office and find out about Ramaya Shastri,’ Raghu observed.
After initial enquiries, they found the temple’s administrative office. The Innova crawled into a parking lot. The legend on a new glass building proclaimed it was the office of the Tirumala Tirupathi Srivaru, as though Lord Balaji himself was the immortal CEO of the place and would stride in at any moment in his golden splendour holding a diamond studded smartphone to boot. Raghu agreed silently with Sheila. Commercialisation of God appeared to be an understatement.
They walked into the marble floored reception. A young man dressed in pale yellow kurta and dhoti was seated at a reception desk, typing away on a key board, his gaze riveted to the LCD screen in front of him. As is usual of the priestly class in Tirupati, his head was partially shaved from above the forehead to the peak of his scalp. The hair was grown long for the remaining part and was neatly knotted at the back. He wore a tilak of three vertical lines on his
forehead, two on either side were coloured white and one in the centre in red. It was the insignia of Lord Balaji.
‘How may I help you?’ he asked in perfectly modulated English.
Raghu cleared his throat. ‘We are looking for Ramaya Shastri from Eluru, West Godavari District. My father knew him and I was hoping to look him up.’
The young priest smiled pleasantly and typed something on his keyboard. Presently he said, ‘We have three hundred pundits of that name, none of them from Eluru. When would your father have met him?’ he asked.
‘About forty-two years ago,’ Raghu said sheepishly.
The priest did not appear flustered. In fact, he smiled. ‘I need to check the archives. I am afraid we’ve been able to computerise records for about twenty-five years so far. The rest are in the main archives. This could take a while, maybe a few hours. Could you come back in the evening?’
Raghu thanked the priest and asked him his name.
‘Ramaya Shastri,’ the young man replied and went back to his work leaving Raghu gaping at him.
‘What shall we do now?’ Kant asked, ‘We have half a day to kill.’
‘Only one thing left to do,’ Raghu said, ‘let’s go for a darshan. Let’s pay the Lord of the Seven Hills a visit.’
CHAPTER 32
THE Golden Temple of Lord Balaji was not really made of gold. Portions of it were covered in intricately designed gold plates, especially the dome. The long winding queue into the temple started in a different part of the little township. As is usual during any time of the year, it was filled to the brim with avid and noisy worshippers. It took the four unlikely pilgrims all of five hours of jostling and pushing before they were able to enter the sanctum sanctorum.
Once they did enter the sanctum, a change came over. A hush. Perhaps in reverence to something all of them recognised as primordial. A CD player continuously chanted Vedic hymns. Air-conditioners cooled the sanctorum. Inside, there were no electric lights, only huge oil lamps that lit the narrow hall that led to the inner sanctum of the fourteen-foot idol of Lord Balaji, or as he was known in Tirumala, Lord Venkateswara.
Raghu had paid several visits to Tirupati and yet the magic of that moment when he first entered the sanctorum was never lost. For Kant, a first time visitor, the experience was completely otherworldly. Down the narrow hall, people streamed in to see the deity.
The flickering light of the oil lamps danced on the diamond studded splendour of the glittering idol. A four-foot brass divider separated the pilgrims that entered the sanctum from those that exited it through golden gates. While people entered facing the deity, those that exited the sanctum too faced it as they walked backwards. After a four-hour queue, the pilgrims were allowed only a few moments in the sanctum, they wanted to make the most of it.
The deity wore a conical crown of gold, studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and other precious stones. The armour was diamond studded gold and a golden sword with a diamond studded hilt was stuck through a pure gold and gems belt. The deity’s arms were covered in protective gloves of precious stones and gold. The lower torso of the deity was wrapped in a rich silk dhoti.
Thick stripes of white camphor with a line of red in the centre made for the tilak that covered the face of the deity from the lip of his crown till below his eyes. Legend had it that if the camphor that cooled his eyes were removed, the peaceful Balaji would be filled with such wrath over the evil in the world that he would burn it.
Pundits chanted Sanskrit and Telugu hymns continuously while other pundits had an aarti plate with camphor lit fire. Sandalwood and rosewater mixed with the sweet scent of camphor filled the room with ethereal fragrance. Something in the air did not brook even the most hardened cynic from uttering one cry of dissent as the pilgrims called out Lord Balaji’s many names. ‘Govinda,’ ‘Gopala,’ and ‘Venkataramana’ echoed in the narrow hall leading to the deity.
In a matter of few minutes the foursome was out of the sanctum. Presently, they stepped out of the temple gates with banana leaf cups filled with chakarapongal, a sweet dish made of rice, jaggery and ghee. They lapped it up hungrily and dropped the empty cups into one of the neatly interspaced dust bins.
It was six in the evening. Fifteen minutes later, they were at the reception desk of the Devasthanam offices again. A different priest, as young as the one that had occupied the seat in the afternoon though a lot plumper, was at the reception desk.
‘I am looking for Ramaya Shastri,’ said Raghu in response to a look of benign enquiry.
‘Why do you want to meet him?’ asked the young man.
‘We enquired with him on some information we needed this afternoon and he asked us to come around in the evening.’
‘I see, there are several enquiries, may I know what it is about?’
Raghu explained to the young priest that he wanted to know about Ramaya Shastri. The young man gazed at Raghu doubtfully.
‘I know that sir. Do you want to meet him or know about him?’
Raghu patiently repeated his request.
‘I am not deaf sir, you told me you want to meet Ramaya Shastri about himself, I can understand that, pray tell me why, are you here to recruit him? I can give you my resume as well.’
‘We are not here to recruit him. Why would anyone want to recruit a priest? We wanted to know about another Ramaya Shastri who was an official in this place a long time ago.’
‘Ah! One moment please.’
The young man from the afternoon meeting arrived presently and took along the fuming foursome with him into his office.
‘Sir, Ramaya Shastri is very much available. He would like to know who wants to meet him.’
‘Is he here?’ Raghu asked.
‘I am afraid not, he is at home.’
‘Please tell him that Raghuram Surya wants an audience with him for a few moments.’
The priest nodded sagely, again. He picked up a mobile phone on his desk and dialled a number. He spoke in rapid-fire Telugu and moments later he hung up.
‘He says he will see you as soon as possible, he seemed pretty excited. It appears he looks forward to meeting the son of Surya Prasad Surya, is that your father?’
‘Isn’t that what he just said? What, it’s auspicious to ask stupid questions today?’
‘I am sorry sir, I did not mean to anger you,’ said the priest in a small voice.
Raghu felt like a heel. ‘I am sorry, it’s just that we’re...tired and...I am sorry.’
The priest wrote down an address for them and accepted their thanks.
‘Could you give me directions to his house?’
‘I am afraid I don’t know the directions to his house sir. I am not familiar with Hyderabad. I am from Nellore, myself.’
‘He’s in Hyderabad? What’s he doing there?’
‘After his term as Governor, he continued to stay in Hyderabad.’
‘Governor? Of what?’
‘Of the State of Andhra Pradesh,’ said the priest with mild surprise.
They gawked at the young priest, dumbfounded.
‘A priest from Tirupati became the Governor of Andhra Pradesh?’ Kant asked in utter disbelief.
The young man laughed aloud, ‘When an army man can become the Prime Minister of India, a lawyer can become the Finance Minister, a scientist can become the President of the country, not to mention more than one actor as Chief Minister, why can’t a priest become a Governor?’
CHAPTER 33
THEIR return journey from Tirumala was silent. The travellers were lost in their own thoughts.
It was true, Sheila mused, a tremendous peace did settle over her in the few moments she was in the sanctum sanctorum though it did not last long after she stepped out. Human emotions are so unique, she mused. It was funny how the mind played tricks to make her believe in something that might not have been there at all. The so-called placebo effect.
She knew of schizophrenics who swear to having had conversations with real people while all along the
ir mind plays tricks on them. The question of what’s real does not really have an answer. Even something as simple as what one sees every day is an interplay of light, shadows and memories.
The fact that Raghu, whom she did not know a couple of months ago was irreplaceable to her now appeared so illogical and yet it was so true. She was happy when he laughed, she loved his humour and wanted more than anything else to be with him. The thought of losing him created a deadly emptiness in the pit of her stomach. Her so-called walls and road blocks to relationships had dissolved like salt in the sea, making her world beautiful again. She sighed happily.
But...there was an assassin waiting to kill her love. The bleak thought slashed a scar on that happy moment. Assuming that they did escape the killer, the Sutram loomed over them like the shadow of a tsunami wave from which there was no escape. They had to face that thing. They had to. There was no choice. Then there was Govind Kiromal along with his weird ‘guru’, intent on ruining her life.
She leaned forward all of a sudden, slid her arm around Raghu and kissed his neck. His arm ensconced hers in the dusk as they headed for the airport.
Raghu’s thoughts were elsewhere. The case in Vijayawada was as good as won and yet Govind Kiromal had taken the victory away from him. He had taken the game to a different level. Raghu swore to stop the killer before any harm came to Sheila or the rest of his retinue.
His thoughts flitted to Sheila, the girl that he loved. The first time he’d seen her in the castle, he knew she was the one. The smile did it. That and the strength in her eyes. She was a woman of substance, a class apart from the rest, someone who would never leave his side and someone he could adore for the rest of his life. She was ten years younger to him and wiser than he could hope to be thirty years hence. He loved her long neck, her straight delicate back and the way her hips swayed when she walked. He felt her arms around him. She kissed his neck. He wished the moment would go on forever.