‘Bad character, scum of the earth, lowlife, you can add that too …’
‘I warned you that you’d be hurt.’
‘No, I won’t. You go ahead.’
‘How can I go ahead? But the crux of the thing is that no one will rent a taxi to someone of your repute. Who will become the guarantor that you won’t run away with the taxi?’
‘Can’t you do that?’
‘No, Jeete, I can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘My taxi’s papers—rc, insurance policy, etc.—are all deposited with that money lender in Mahalaxmi. I don’t have anything with me to be your guarantor.’
‘But you can do it at your personal guarantee, no?’
‘I am a nonentity. I count for nothing. Nobody will pay heed to my personal guarantee.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I will become your cleaner. Don’t you need a cleaner to regularly clean your taxi?’
‘You … you are joking.’
Jeet Singh kept quiet.
‘So, what’s your answer?’
‘I gave you my answer. No new trouble for some time.’
‘For how long?’
‘Six months … at least six months. I will do whatever you say after that.’
‘I can’t wait that long.’
‘Why, what’s the problem? The set-up won’t evaporate in six months.’
‘I can’t wait. I want to fix that bloody Mangesh Gable now.’
Jeet Singh didn’t respond.
‘Well, at least say something.’
‘I have said what I had to say, there’s nothing to add.’
‘Jeete, during your tough times—toughest times, to be precise—when my statement could have sent you to serve time for five years, Eduardo came to me and said you were my first cousin Enjo’s friend. I told him any friend of Enjo’s was a friend of mine. I changed my statement in the court for a friend and saved your skin. And it was to save you that I let Bada Batata beat me so hard that I ended up in hospital …’
‘For that, I am thankful from the core of my heart.’
‘That you are. But tell me, are these considerations of friendship one-way traffic?’
‘What did you say?’
‘You were my friend because you were Enjo’s friend. But I am Enjo’s first cousin and I am nothing to you?’
‘What are you saying, yaar. I am your friend.’
‘Then why don’t you honour the friendship?’
‘I do, I do. At present I have eighty thousand rupees with me, you can take it all. You can say that I covered both your loan and the loss you suffered at the card game.’
‘I thank you for that but this offer is inappropriate.’
‘Why?’
‘First, I don’t want charity. Second, how does that hurt that dog Gable?’
‘You postpone that for some time, we will handle him later.’
‘No, I want to handle him now. I want my revenge now. Postponing revenge is weakness, cowardice. The Holy Bible says revenge is a dish best served hot. I can’t let it go cold.’
Jeet Singh didn’t say anything.
‘Plus I did all this homework.’
‘It will come in handy later …’
‘I don’t want lip service, Jeete, I want action. I want active participation.’
‘Revenge has blurred your vision, that’s why you are not ready to accept that there is nothing wrong with waiting for some time.’
‘I can wait for some time, but six months is not “some time”. It’s a whole lot of time.’
‘Now this is how it is. My final word is that presently I don’t want to get into any new trouble. Later …’
‘ok,’ Gailo got up, ‘I will go now.’
‘Gailo,’ Jeet Singh also got up, ‘you can’t go like this.’
‘So how shall I go?’
‘First tell me what you’re going to do.’
‘Why should I tell you?’
‘Is our friendship over just because I told you what’s good for me for some time?’
‘Had I thought along those lines, had I thought that I must do what’s good for me, you would have been rotting in prison right now. You want to stay straight for a while, right? You would have truly been straightened, that too for five years, had I done what was good for me. I’m leaving now!’
He suddenly turned around and strode out.
Jeet Singh lit a cigarette and sat down with his head in his hands.
What an awkward situation! He felt caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. I’m in trouble if I do something, and I’m in equal trouble if I don’t do something. It was friendship on one side, and compulsion on the other.
He smoked for some time in silence.
‘No,’ then he said firmly to himself, ‘I will have to avoid getting into trouble, if not forever, then at least for some time. I will try to make Gailo understand. I will go to his bewra adda tonight.’
4
Somebody coughed lightly at the door.
Jeet Singh was standing on a stool, trying to remove the cobwebs from the ceiling. He was in a lungi and vest, with a rag tied around his head. He turned his head and found Sushmita standing at the door.
He was aghast.
He jumped off the stool and rushed to the bathroom. When he came out, he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and the rag was gone from his head.
He moved towards her, stopped midway, forced himself to smile, gave up immediately and then nervously looked around.
‘Can I come in?’ she asked gently.
‘W-what?’ he stammered. ‘Y-yes, why not! Yes, please come in.’
‘Thanks.’
He placed a chair before her.
‘Thanks.’
Jeet Singh looked at her, this time for some seconds.
Sushmita! The big seth’s wife!
Now his widow!
She looked a mess. Her face was free of make-up and her hair was dishevelled. She was wearing a simple salwaar-kameez with the dupatta tied round her neck like a muffler.
Beauty queen!
Celestial nymph!
Was it really her?
That same tall, fair, beautiful girl … hour-glass figure … carved features like a marble statue … maybe not at her best at that moment but so what! Even the moon has dark spots, but it is still the moon none the less.
When did he last see her? When was he face-to-face with her?
Wednesday, the seventh of January.
Just five minutes before his failed suicide attempt in the lift … his determination to burn in a pyre of currency notes.
Colaba, Tulsi Chambers, tenth floor. The main door of Sindhi seth Pursumal Changulani’s fabulous flat. Standing there at the threshold facing each other …
‘There is no Sushmita here. This flat belongs to Mrs Changulani. Keep that in mind in the future.’
Those words echoed in his head.
So many things he wanted to forget, so many things he couldn’t ever forget, flashed before his eyes like a newsreel:
‘My sister has cancer; we got a warning six months back. She needs to be taken to Germany for immediate surgery. The expenses would be around ten lakh rupees, which I can’t arrange. Now only three months are left. If Asmita dies, I will also die with her. It’s an issue of ten lakh rupees. If you could arrange that much money to save her, I will be your slave for the rest of my life.’
Sushmita lived only a few houses away from his place. The voice of Sushmita’s landlady echoed in his ears:
‘Jeete, girls leave their own house once they are married. Her sister Asmita died two weeks back, and just three days after her last rites, she married that Sindhi boss of Asmita’s.’
‘Your sister expired so you felt there was no need to keep your end of the promise. Your sister died so you no longer needed that money for her treatment. How can the untimely death of your sister be the reason for my punishment? You broke that promise and married someone already.’
Eduardo’s sympathetic,
insistent voice kicked at his senses:
‘Jeete, abandon that road that doesn’t take you anywhere. Abandon the goal that you can never achieve. Abandon that desire that can never be fulfilled. Forget her. Forget that treacherous, ungrateful liar of a woman; forget this death wish of having her.’
Desire! Stubbornness!
The desire to still have her, and stubbornness to have her by paying the price.
And so started the series of payments.
First ten lakhs.
Then thirty.
Then thirty-five.
And on that Wednesday, 7 January, an even bigger amount!
‘I don’t seek your charity. I will buy the thing I want, and I will pay the price for it, a bigger price than Pursumal. I will keep coming with bigger amounts, let me know when you think I have paid the proper price. Then I will take the delivery of the merchandise I’ve purchased.’
She coughed into her hand.
Jeet Singh returned to the present. He laughed nervously, stopped immediately, then sat down on a stool across from her.
‘Bloody idiot! Laughs before a newly widowed woman.’
‘I … I express my con-condolences on the sad demise of Pursu … Sethji,’ he stammered.
‘You got the news?’
‘He was an important person … this was such a big incident … All of Mumbai came to know about it through the papers, so I also got the news. What happened was horrible. There seems to be no justice in this world. He was such a nice person. In my life full of misfortune and accidents, whatever limited sympathy I ever got, I got it from him. To tell you the truth, I am alive today just because of his kindness. Otherwise I would have died in the lift, much before being sent by him to Nanavati Hospital. If I had not died then, the police would have killed me. Sethji protected me from the police, by telling them that I was his employee, and the money I burnt to die in the lift was his money. I am really sorry about his death.’
She bowed her head, and touched a corner of the dupatta to her eyes.
‘I am surprised why he showered all these favours on somebody like me, who was trying to ruin his married life.’
‘He told me why.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes, I’ll repeat what he said, I remember his exact words. He said—“Consider them acts of atonement for the injustices committed by you on that boy. Consider the sympathy given to him by your husband as what he expected from you instead.”’
‘He said this, exactly this?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s very surprising.’
‘You want to hear another secret?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘He knew of your involvement in the Tardeo Super Store robbery.’
‘What?’
‘He knew of it via that pd, Shekhar Navlani, the one he had engaged to keep an eye on you. Navlani knew of your every move and he wanted to tell the police about your role in the robbery. He even wanted to be an eye-witness against you in that case. He would not have budged from it had he not been instructed by Sethji to refrain from it.’
‘Oh!’
‘When you were on the verge of imminent death with a time-bomb in your lap in a godown in Dharavi, it was again he who ordered Navlani to defuse the bomb and save you. And he did all these things at a time when your death or sentencing would have been to his benefit, for it would have eliminated the root cause of all troubles.’
‘What troubles?’
‘Your stubbornness! That you wanted to lay your claim upon me by paying a bigger price than him.’
Jeet Singh remained silent and tried to avoid her gaze.
‘Sethji said that in place of going on committing all these crimes, had you committed just one crime, of murdering him, then your objective would have become much easier.’
‘He said this?’
‘Yes, he did. He said it the very same day when that incident— the one in the lift—happened.’
‘My God!’
‘He knew everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Yes, to the last detail. He knew of your every visit to Tulsi Chambers, the amount of money you carried each time, your savage objectives, your involvement in the robbery, all that bloodshed in Dharavi … he knew all of it.’
‘How … how did he know all this?’
‘A bit of it through that pd Navlani and a bit through the secret recording arrangement he had done in the flat; this too through Navlani. Even I didn’t know it was there.’
‘Good God!’
Neither of them said anything for some time.
Finally Jeet Singh broke the silence. ‘How come you’re here in Chinchpokli?’
‘I came to tell my landlady—Aunty—to have my old house cleaned.’
‘Why?’ Jeet Singh asked in a surprised tone.
‘From now on I am going to live there.’
‘What?’
‘It’s good that I did not give up that house and kept sending the rent to Aunty. Otherwise I would have been on the road, literally.’
‘You don’t say!’
‘I was passing by your house, saw the door ajar so thought may be were in. Do you live here these days?’
‘I will from now on. Just came in today.’
‘That’s why you are busy cleaning the place!’
‘Yes.’
‘Where were you before?’
‘I did not have a fixed abode, used to wander here and there.’
‘But now you will live here?’
‘Yes, that’s what I intend to do.’
‘That means we are neighbours again.’
‘But …’
‘The only difference is that you came back by choice, while I had to come because of my compulsion.’
‘What compulsion? What business do you have here?’
She sighed; her body shook with a sob-like noise.
What was the matter?
‘Have a look at me,’ she said finally. ‘Other than the clothes that I am wearing, there isn’t a single thing of Sethji’s property that I can call mine.’
‘What?’
‘The only consolation is that the house here is still within my reach, otherwise I would have to live like a beggar.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Those three kids of my sister’s, they were in a residential school in Lonawala, they too will be on the road like me …’
‘Oh my God!’
‘My position is even worse than it used to be in the months before the marriage; in fact it’s pitiable. At least I had a job then, a steady source of income. Now I don’t have even that.’
‘But you are the widow of such a rich businessman!’
‘I am not.’
‘What?’
‘This Sunday morning, both his sons who are settled in England and his daughter who is settled in Kolkata, reached Colaba for the last rites. We were handed over the body on Sunday night after the post-mortem and the cremation was on Monday morning at the electric crematorium in Marine Lines. By the evening of the same day, they threw me out of the house.’
‘Oh no!’
‘They did not even allow me to pack anything, not even my clothes. They even forced me to leave behind all the jewellery I had on my body, including things I had even before the marriage … a nose-stud that looked like a diamond but was not, bangles, bracelets, rings, necklace, tops … nothing left. The daughter took some pity, so she threw out an old bag with some clothes after me. Maybe because the bag and the clothes belonged to my pre-marriage days, and were not worthy of being kept there.’
‘But why did they do this?’
‘Because they insisted I was not the wife, but “live-in partner” of their father and since the partner was dead, I was not allowed to “live-in” there.’
‘But this is atrocious, a gross injustice! Till Saturday you were the wife and better-half of a person and right after his death you were nobody!’
‘Why nobody? I was his “live-in
partner”.’
‘But how … how can they turn a regularly married woman into …’
‘What regularly married? What marriage? They told me that I could die trying but still couldn’t prove that I was the wife of Changulani Seth. Even the sho of Colaba police station said so.’
‘The sho said this?’
‘They had him summoned in advance, so as to muffle my voice in case I tried to resist their injustice.’
‘But marriage is an important social event, there are a number of witnesses to it … guests, friends of the bride and groom, the pundit who performs the rites …’
‘Our marriage happened without any pomp and show at a small Arya Samaj temple in Colaba. The pundit was a displaced Kashmiri Brahmin, who has gone back to his hometown in Kashmir with his family, as the government is running a resettlement plan for them. Nobody knows where in Kashmir his hometown is. The aged store manager Tiwari was another witness, but he was dismissed by Sethji’s sons the moment they reached Mumbai. They said he had grown old, and was incapable of running the store, that he was himself anxious of retiring and going back to his parental house in Ballia. An employee who used to take care of the whole store, and who was always praised by Sethji for his sincerity and commitment suddenly grew old and incapable, and the sons knew it the moment they landed here from England.’
‘What do you think must have really happened?’
‘It’s not that difficult to figure it out, given what had happened later. He must have been made to disappear, so that he couldn’t testify to the marriage.’
‘Could he not have resisted them?’
‘Either they must have lured him with money, or he was threatened by Inspector Devtale to comply. No common man can resist the police these days. Otherwise he can suddenly have an accident, or die in an encounter.’
‘Do you think he would have been threatened?’
‘He was a loyal employee of Sethji’s, it is unbelievable that he agreed to toe their line for money.’
‘Ballia is not such a big place. He could be located.’
‘It’s also not a small place. And see the distance; it’s at the Bihar border in UP. And they are just saying he has gone to Ballia, we don’t know where he actually went.’
‘Hmm.’
‘And even if he could be located, who is going to do it? Me? Do you think I can?’
Jeet Singh shook his head.
The Colaba Conspiracy Page 4