‘I wanted to ask the clown man for a twisty balloon.’
‘Which clown man?’
‘That uncle from the ice cream place.’
I repeated my hysterical warnings and held her inside a tight embrace. I was no longer an anxious mother, I was an overwrought mother who had failed once and was unwilling to fail again. My voice, edged with fear, was harsher than it should have been: ‘You should never leave me, you know that. You can’t follow strangers. That was a stupid thing to do, Rhea.’
On the way home, after the panic had drained away, I was filled with such a buoyant lightness at finding her safe and alive, I didn’t process what she had said till we were back in our living room.
Did she say she wanted a twisty balloon? The clown at Kalpana’s party had created twisty balloons for the kids. But how did Rhea know that? She had only been an infant then and hadn’t gone to the party even. ‘Why did you want twisty balloons?’
My daughter was already wheeling her cycle towards the backyard. ‘At the party, the clown gave me a twisty balloon.’ The dust motes dancing inside a light shaft seemed to pause. Everything around me seemed to be slowing down.
‘Which clown, Rhea?’ My heart had stopped beating. Why had my daughter never mentioned this earlier?
‘The party clown. The uncle with the mask.’ I couldn’t believe that I had been interviewing clowns from all over the city but had gleaned nothing from the one person in the world that I was most intimate with. ‘He came to Bijoy’s party.’ To Bijoy’s party? Of course, Bijoy had mentioned that the clown hung Rhea’s jumper on the tree. But who had invited him there?
‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?’ My daughter, was becoming like everyone else around me, unreliable. Why were my closest family members, like Baba, suddenly filled with secrets?
‘I forgot.’
‘Did he touch you? Try to harm you in any way?’
‘No Mama, he was nice, he gave me a twisty bird balloon.’ The flowers and the winding path around them were taking on a grisly quality. How could the others not see it? The dread inside our constructed allure?
‘A bird balloon?’ I was already geared up to confront this clown, to claw his grinning face out with my pointy fingernails. How dare he entice my daughter with his macabre gifts?
‘Yes, only for me. He was standing near the bushes. No one else saw him. But he gave me that balloon.’
‘Was the balloon black?’ I felt like the scene in the backyard was clouding over, with shadows scuttling over our pebbled pathway. There was a hum in the air, a moist heaviness that signified a sudden rain shower.
‘Yes, it was nice.’ No, Rhea. It was anything but nice.
‘Where’s the balloon, I never saw it?’ I didn’t know my son had a clown doll, or my daughter a bird balloon. Was I, like Manas occasionally implied, losing a grip on reality?
‘Burst. But he was gone, so I couldn’t get another one.’
‘You said he was wearing a mask? Do you remember the colours?’
She paused for a few seconds, before hoisting herself on her bike.
‘Yes,’ she said, as she whirred away again. ‘A painted mask’
‘Do you remember the colours?’ Orange flares crowned her head as if her hair had been set on fire.
‘Red, blue, black.’ The same colours worn by the clown at Kalpana’s party.
When I called Bishnu, she said there was no clown at the party. She thought Rhea might have imagined it. I said Bijoy had seen him too, hanging the jumper up on the tree. She laughed: ‘You seem to be communicating more with my son in the past weeks than I have for years.’ Fortunately, she seemed delighted by the shifts in him. She said, there was a litheness in his movements since he had started associating with us. ‘Whatever you’re doing with him, Vedika, it’s good for him.’ I wish I could be as assured as Bishnu seemed about involving little Bijoy in my mission. Was it ethically sound to get a ten-year-old tangled up in a murder investigation?
That night, I clicked on the Entertainers-for-hire app on my Smartphone, browsing through their ‘About’ links in more detail. I landed on a page filled with angel investor photographs and profiles. I was about to click off when I spotted a familiar face with plasticky Barbie doll features. Simi? I magnified the image to confirm my discovery. Simran Mathew, Jacob’s wife, was an angel investor in Entertainers-for-hire. Why was everything in Fantasia, its people and their nebulous links, everything it touched, all connected?
TWENTY-EIGHT
I OFTEN DWELT ON my knotty findings while sauntering around our project. Along the lake path, with its white spiky flowers and drooping ferns, through the woods, under the canopy of thick bamboos, plum-coloured jacarandas, and flaming gulmohars whose fern-like leaves folded up after sunset. By the Zen garden pond, where orange fish flashed beneath white lilies.
On that particular morning, I walked inside the golf course with the purpose of bumping into Simran. Walkers weren’t permitted to trample on the players’ turf, and were confined to the narrow path that encircled the 50-acre course. That morning, Simran’s eyes were shaded by large Ray-Bans, her ears plugged into her iPod. When she spotted me, she shook off her ear plugs and ambled alongside. We had become chummy, of late, at the pool.
In the distance, Raj, Jacob, Tushar and Manjushri teed off with our Swiss invitees, by the rock garden. The VIP Swiss visitors, invited to certify our course for an international golfing circuit, had been welcomed the previous day.
Though Raj and his committee hadn’t been paying as much attention to the other parts of Fantasia of late, the golf course remained a fixation. Other areas weren’t derelict by any means, but the wear and tear on them was overlooked as time progressed. But in the run up to the Swiss golfers’ visit, even the other areas had recouped their earlier sheen. We received peremptory emails from Raj to keep the premises sparkling and spotless. ‘Dog owners must pick up dog litter, children must park bikes in garages, garbage must be sealed in black trash bags.’ The clubhouse marble was polished, the swimming pool scoured, the parkside benches repainted. Inside the golf course, the grass was pruned, hedges sheared, tiny ponds dredged and refilled.
Soon after her pregnancy, Simran had recovered her size-28 waistline and mannequin-like features. But that morning, she seemed a little puffed up in her blue capris and snug, white T-shirt. Walking by her side, I caught a glimpse of the deep, purple bruise on her left eye, behind her goggles. ‘What happened?’ I asked, though I wondered almost immediately if the question was too forthright.
‘Oh, that?’ she said. ‘So foolish, Jacob still can’t believe I did that. Banged my head against the corner of our dining table.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘How did you—?’
‘I was drunk. We had one of those parties at our place, with a bartender mixing deadly cocktails. God knows what he put in them, had such a terrible hangover this morning. I thought a walk would do me good, clear my aching head.’
‘Have you tried hot water with lemon and honey? Great for hangovers.’
‘There they are—the boys. Jacob was so sweet, he held this ice pack on my eye for an hour, he was so concerned.’
Walking towards us from behind the elephant rock, a large jagged piece of granite shaped like an elephant’s ear, were the ‘boys’ - the two Swiss gentlemen, Raj, Jacob, Tushar and Fantasia’s celebrated woman golfer, Manjushri. At first, we suspected that Manjushri had started playing the game merely to hang around her favourite men. Fluttering her manicured fingers before our disbelieving eyes, she’d said: ‘I was such a tomboy growing up, always loved playing with boys.’ But she developed such a keen interest in golf and practiced her swings so often, her handicap was soon lower than Tushar’s.
Just then Jacob and Manjushri, who had vanished for a fleeting moment behind the elephant rock, emerged into view, Jacob’s arm flung carelessly around Manjushri’s shoulder. Simran bristled by my side, but her expression stayed unchanged as we continued down our path.
‘S
o how do you spend your weekends?’ I asked, trying to change the subject as we turned a corner, leaving the golfers out of sight. I was wondering how to introduce her investment in that Entertainers business when Simran interrupted my thoughts.
‘Do you think I’m attractive?’
‘Of course,’ I said, swallowing my surprise. ‘We envy you. You’re so slim and so much younger looking than all of us.’
‘I don’t know Vedika, if Jacob is going to leave me soon.’
‘I...uh...’ I stuttered.
‘Not even because I did or said anything. All because of Ishan, always has to do with Ishan. He’s such a cranky kid, hardly sleeps, and troubles us so much. I was arguing with him yesterday, telling him to clean up his room, always such a mess. He hit me with Jacob’s golf club, the Bobby Jones club that he bought from London for a 100 pounds.’
‘Ishan hit you with a golf club?’
‘You know how one thing leads to another. Jacob didn’t do anything, didn’t try to stop him when he lifted the club. Truth is, Jacob blames me for his behaviour, tells me I don’t know how to be a mother. When I married Jacob, he had me sign this very tight prenup, and I signed away my rights to his wealth. He’s given me a great life, doesn’t deny me anything, but I used to worry that some other creature—’ Simran said, looking distractedly at our golfers in the distance. ‘I hope they certify our course, don’t you?’
‘You were worried that some other...?’
‘I worried about some young creature hijacking my home. But he compares me with his past wives, claims they were better mothers. I thought our kid would draw us closer, but it’s not helping because Ishan’s always in the way.’
‘Why do you think Ishan’s behaving like this...?’
‘He feels really sorry later, after everything. His behaviour’s not something he can control, it’s as if he’s been possessed by something.’
‘Really? By what?’ Possessed? After Joanne, Simran was the second mother to use such a term.
‘I don’t know, Vedika. Sometimes, he tells me strange things. He said that there’s an evil being in our complex.’ An evil being? Was Ishan playing with Joel? Was his behavior influenced by that kid?
I looked at her at once, startled, and bit my lip. ‘Does he tell you who the villain is?’
‘It’s not real, just something these kids are making up.’ We had meandered off the golf course path, towards Simi’s Royale home. ‘Would you like to come in, have some tea?’
I continued to dwell on Ishan’s remarks, as we stepped across their perfect foyer into a supremely stylish living room. Their ceiling and walls, decorated with fractured tiles in zany shapes, conflicted with the mirrored finish that surrounded their marble fireplace. As she settled into her plush divan, Simran sighed. ‘Parenting is always hard. Being a stepparent is even harder.’
‘Yes,’ I said, my eyes drawn to the faux fire flaming inside the fireplace. Did the room’s predesigned discord - glass and polished steel juxtaposed against wood and leather - reflect the disharmony in their marriage? ‘Do you also mentor startups? I was browsing the Entertainers-for-Hire website. You seem to be one of their angel investors?’
‘That’s not me, that’s Jacob. He uses my name for tax reasons or something, but he’s the real investor. I don’t even know what these companies do.’
‘Has he ever mentioned this company?’
‘No, my name features on dozens of companies, but I’m not really involved…’
‘Rhea was telling me that there was a particular clown at Bijoy’s party. A clown wearing a mask who made them twisty balloons. Did Ishan ever tell you about –’
‘Ishan’s too old for clowns.’ Simi’s laugh was like a bubble that floated up to the ceiling and popped. She was so preoccupied with her problems, she didn’t think to ask why I was asking these questions, and I pressed on.
‘There was a clown, Simi, a masked clown. He made Rhea a bird balloon.’ I tried to keep a smile fixed on my face. I couldn’t reveal the fear welling up inside. Had that clown targeted my child only?
The strain must have shown even to troubled Simi. ‘You look drained, Vedika. Shall I get you some tea?’
As Simi rose and headed out to an interior room, I picked up the magazines fanned out on her oval glass centre table. Running a desultory eye over the Cosmopolitan and Vogue issues, while my thoughts still centred around the mysterious clown, I almost didn’t notice the brochure stuck between the carefully arranged glossies. I fished out my reading glasses from my track suit’s pocket to ascertain that the text printed across the leaflet was indeed: An Appeal for The Dhoolvansh Missionary School. Dhoolvansh? Again? The place that evoked such fury in Baba? The place that the murderous truck driver belonged to? How were Simi and Jacob connected with it?
Simi bore a tea tray into the living room, while I still clutched the brochure.
‘Are you funding this school?’
‘Which school?’ Simi poured tea and milk into my cup.
‘Some school in Dhoolvansh?’
‘No idea, Jacob funds many charities in backward places.’
‘Dhoolvansh is a backward place?’
‘Must be, so many places in our country are…aren’t they?’ Simi picked up the brochure, and skimmed its contents as if she were encountering it for the first time. ‘This one? I think the builder sent us this one.’
‘Kusro? He’s asking you to fund this?’
My mind was already spinning in dizzying circles. How was Kusro connected with that school in Dhoolvansh? And was Jacob merely an innocuous investor and philanthropist? And was Simi as obtuse about his activities as she professed? After all, Jacob could have known that a clown had been ordered for Kalpana’s party. He could have ensured that the original clown was substituted by another one. But why would he have done that?
‘Would you know why Kusro’s funding this school?’
‘Who knows?’ Simran looked at the brochure again. ‘He’s not the only one, I think Raj’s father is one of the big funders.’
‘Raj’s father? Why this particular school?’
‘Vedika, I really don’t know too much about this. Why are you so interested?’ The spell broke at last, and I could only weakly smile and excuse myself, a few minutes later.
TWENTY-NINE
GOOGLING DHOOLVANSH THREW UP scanty facts I could have learnt at school, if I hadn’t been turning my pages into the wings of a vampire bat or the tail of a droopy-eyed lizard. The kind of dull facts that tripped me up in our Board exams: a town in the state of Bihar, that evolved from a conglomeration of villages; the name ‘Dhoolvansh’ (place of dust) derived from the region’s fertile soil, a red, mineral-rich soil that nourished a rich array of crops—rice, wheat, maize, corn, bajra, ragi. A river ran through the town, segmenting it into two antipodal halves. The Western Sector hosted the erstwhile white collar managers of a mining company, that had been closed down for the past few years. This part was well-planned, organised into ordered blocks with paved streets and trim gardens. The Eastern Sector contained tenements for the mining workers and other settlers. There were only a few other irrelevant links.
I googled ‘Dhoolvansh Missionary Society’ and even ‘Jacob Mathew,’ but apart from a list of Jacob’s media investments and a few Page 3 images of Simi and Jacob at society events, the laptop drew a blank. On a sudden impulse, I googled ‘Debashis Roy’, Baba’s name, and ‘Dhoolvansh’. Nothing. I tapped out ‘Mehta’ and ‘Dhoolvansh’ and something small popped up. A short paragraph about a defunct mining and construction company called Kushi. Something about paid up shares and capital, but nothing particularly intriguing or revelatory.
That night, I called my stepmother. Since their visit, I had been calling her more frequently to check on Baba. He was on a new pill that seemed to be working. He still had occasional blankouts but at least his condition wasn’t worsening.
‘Asha, I need your help. I need to find out why Baba and Ma left Dhoolvansh. And also why Baba was
so angry that day. What happened to them there?’ Baba disliked phone conversations and hence Asha was his telephonic emissary.
‘Vedika, it was a long time ago. Why do you want to get into that?’
‘I have a sense that it’s important, you must find out what happened.’
‘If your Baba hears me mentioning that place, he’ll stop talking to me. You saw how he reacted that day, at your place. Anyway nothing happened, he wanted to quit his job, that’s all. Then he came to Kolkata and did some private consulting. But you should know all this, you’re his daughter.’ I ignored the edge in her tone, when she stressed daughter.
‘Where was he working then?’
‘With some government organisation, I think. Maybe doing some chemistry research. But why are you asking…’ Again, the refrain I came up against.
‘Have you heard him talk about The Dhoolvansh Missionary School?’
I wasn’t sure if Asha heard me over the telephone’s static, but there was a distinct silence after my question. And a palpable chill in her voice, when she said: ‘Baba sends an annual donation there. I don’t know why he wastes his money.’ Baba was a donor to that school? And so was Jacob? And Kusro? And Raj’s father? The tension on the other side indicated that I was entering contentious terrain. Asha and Baba must have argued about his annual giveaways. Perhaps, as my mother would have said, she was aggrieved about funds being diverted away from her jewellery and clothes. I sighed, as I disconnected the call, a few minutes later.
I needed a forest walk, the brooding silence of that leafy pathway, but it was already too dark for that. Besides, when I called Hansika and asked if she wanted to join me for a short walk around the complex, she suggested the lake path. The trail around the lake was better lit than the forest path, with yellow street lights that glowed above shimmering reflections. Perhaps this was safer, given what was going on around us.
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