by Vaseem Khan
‘You are delusional, Chopra,’ growled Rao, shaking his head. ‘Garewal himself must have removed the Koh-i-Noor. He has passed it on to his fellow conspirators. We don’t know who they are yet, but we will soon. Garewal will crack. I will make Garewal crack, that I promise you.’
‘These so-called conspirators are the same ones who gave you the anonymous tip-off,’ said Chopra. ‘They knew you would go chasing off after your own tail.’
‘Are you saying they transferred one million rupees into Garewal’s account just to frame him?’ Rao’s voice was incredulous.
‘What is such a sum when set against the Koh-i-Noor diamond?’ Chopra was almost shouting, but he didn’t care.
‘Nonsense! This time it is you who are the fool. Garewal and his gang pulled this off together. The plan was for Garewal to keep the crown at his house, remove the Koh-i-Noor and send it on, perhaps even get it out of the country and into the hands of a buyer. Maybe the crown was part of Garewal’s payoff. Or perhaps Garewal tried to cheat his associates. Garewal slipped up, Chopra. It is as simple as that.’
‘What about the tip-off? Doesn’t it seem suspicious to you at all?’
Rao shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe someone had an attack of conscience. Maybe Garewal’s greed turned them against him. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I have Garewal right where I want him. It is just a matter of time. We will find the rest of the culprits and we will recover the Koh-i-Noor. The Prime Minister himself will pin a medal to my chest. And Garewal will spend the rest of his life breaking rocks in the deepest darkest hole we can find for him.’
THE DIVINE SOUL EMPORIUM
Chopra slammed his hand on the horn. Around him a crescendo of furious trumpeting arose like the devil’s own orchestra. He had once read that in some foreign countries injudicious use of the horn was prohibited by law. He wondered how Mumbai would fare if such a law was enacted in the city.
All around him, the traffic was gridlocked.
Chopra sat in his Tata Venture on Swami Vivekanand Road in Bandra West just yards from the Turner Road junction, seething with anger at Rao’s pig-headedness. It seemed clear to him that there was at least the possibility of a grand conspiracy behind the theft of the Koh-i-Noor. That a very sophisticated team of criminals had carried out the heist and had then planned their escape just as carefully, including the framing of Shekhar Garewal. The transferred funds, planting the crown in Garewal’s home – these acts all spoke of an outfit that was slick, professional and well financed. To Chopra this meant backing – the sort of backing that had access to specialist skills and almost limitless resources.
In other words: organised crime.
He was convinced more than ever that Bulbul Kanodia – backed by the Chauhan gang – was behind the robbery.
With this realisation his next course of action, over which he had been fretting, became clear. It was time for him to confront Kanodia, to rattle Bulbul’s cage and see what he could learn.
Having made this decision Chopra had driven directly from his unpleasant meeting with ACP Rao to the headquarters of Kanodia’s jewellery chain, the flagship Paramathma store in Bandra.
It was time to beard the former fence in his lair.
If he could actually get there.
Before Chopra was a scene of chaos, caused by a morcha – a protest march – led by a voluble group of eunuchs and social workers. The marchers, an invading army against which the authorities were powerless, had taken over the junction. The situation had been compounded by an overturned bullock-cart, which had spilled dozens of musk melons across the junction’s cratered tarmac, drawing in an opportunistic crowd of beggars and lepers.
The eunuchs were campaigning for equality.
A recent supreme court settlement had finally confirmed that the country’s vast eunuch population should be classified as a third gender. This had been an important first step to improving their plight. Now the eunuchs were fighting to have legislation passed that guaranteed them equality in all areas of life, particularly in employment.
Chopra wholly supported the movement. He had long ago decided that the eunuchs – many of whom had been taken at a young age and mutilated against their will – had the worst lot in a society where caste prejudice and poverty meant a life of misery for millions on the lowest rungs of the ladder. Sadly, it would take more than legislation to change millennia of prejudice. As he had learned over the years, the hearts of his fellow countrymen were not ruled by laws written by clerks locked away in distant air-conditioned offices, but by older laws, of superstition, mistrust and unthinking hatred.
He suddenly realised that he knew the eunuch boisterously demonstrating at the head of the parade. It was Anarkali, one of his many local street informants in Sahar, a strapping six-foot-tall specimen in a bright yellow sari and permanent stubble. Anarkali was waving a placard around and exhorting her fellow third genderites to make themselves heard above the din of horns. On the placard were the words: ONE DAY THE PRIME MINISTER WILL BE A EUNUCH.
A number of news crews had arrived to cover the action.
A blue police truck was parked at the edge of the melee, a line of policemen from the nearby Bandra station leaning against it, eating roast peanuts and watching the show. Chopra knew that they would not intervene unless things got ugly. No one wanted to risk being cursed by a eunuch. You never knew what they might wish upon you. A eunuch’s curse was said to persist for generations.
Chopra had had enough. He removed the keys from the ignition, checked that the handbrake was on and got out of the van.
It took him five minutes to locate the Paramathma store. The jewellery emporium was sandwiched between an Italian furniture boutique and an interior design consultancy specialising in the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui, which had recently taken Mumbai by storm. To Chopra’s supreme irritation Poppy had rearranged the furniture of their flat on three separate occasions in the past months as first one then another feng shui guru gained prominence.
As he approached, a liveried doorman in a golden turban bowed at the waist and swung open the gilded doors.
Chopra had never been inside a store like this. He had never worn jewellery himself and Poppy had always been content with the jewellery she had inherited from her mother and in which she had been married. Of course, if they had had a daughter he would eventually have found himself in such a place, haggling himself into an early grave as a prelude to her wedding.
The interior of the emporium was a shrine to all that glittered and was gold.
The floors and walls were coated in dazzling white Italian marble. Ornate chandeliers dangled from the ceiling. A koi-filled fountain was situated in the centre of the vast space, surrounded by a dozen gold-plated Buddhas dribbling water from their navels. Blow-up posters of demure models in saris wearing exquisite jewellery and expressions of wistful contentment were strategically placed around the room. Armed security guards lurked behind hand-tooled pillars in the form of bejewelled caryatids.
A number of display counters were dotted around, each with an attendant clutch of sales clerks and boisterous clientele.
Behind a particularly extravagant counter Chopra espied an older-looking gentleman in a dapper suit writing on a vellum notepad. The gentleman straightened as he approached, a smile of instant welcome affixing itself to his parched features. Chopra guessed him to be in his sixties, but his hair and moustache had been dyed jet black.
He took out his identity card. ‘I am looking for Bulbul Kanodia.’
The man’s forehead creased into a series of horizontal lines. ‘I am sorry?’
Chopra realised his mistake. ‘I mean Mr Balram Kanodia. The proprietor of this establishment.’
‘Ah. Mr Kanodia Sir. I am afraid he is not here today. Perhaps I may be of assistance instead?’
‘Yes. You can be of assistance by telling me where he is.’
‘But what is this in connection with, sir?’
‘It is a police matter.’
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bsp; ‘Police?’ The man paled as if Chopra had said a dirty word. ‘Please lower your voice, sir. There are respectable people in the store.’
Chopra leaned forward. ‘Where is Kanodia?’
The man pursed his lips. ‘I am afraid that I am not at liberty to say.’
‘I see. In that case I wonder if you have been watching the news?’
The man seemed perplexed by the unexpected change of direction. ‘The news?’
‘Yes. For instance, did you know that the eunuchs are marching just five minutes down the road?’
‘Why, of course. They have been making a racket for hours. Between you and me, they are a nuisance. Quite unnatural creatures.’ The man shuddered. ‘If it were up to me I would round them all up and put them outside the city. Let them live in some colony far away from us normal people.’
Chopra smiled savagely. ‘Is that so?’
The man rapped his knuckles on the glass of the display counter. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Well then, how would it be if those eunuchs decided to pay your store a visit? How would it be if they decided to camp outside your door for the next seven days?’
‘What? My God, why would they do that?’
‘Because the leader of the protest is a friend of mine.’ Chopra glared at the man. ‘How do you think your sales figures will fare then?’
The man swallowed. His hand rose involuntarily to pull at his collar, which had suddenly become very tight. ‘What is it you wish to know?’
‘Where can I find Kanodia?’
‘He is at the circus.’
‘What?’ Chopra gaped. ‘Did you say circus?’
‘Yes. The Grand Trunk Circus. They are currently camped on Cross Maidan. Mr Kanodia wishes to contract their services.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘It is his daughter’s sixteenth birthday tomorrow. He is hosting a lavish party at his residence on the Bandstand. He wishes to surprise her. She is very fond of the circus, it seems.’
Chopra was silent, his mind whirling with sudden possibilities.
He had come here because he believed that confronting Kanodia was now the only avenue left to him if he wished to pursue his investigation. And yet, at the same time, a nagging doubt persisted. There remained the possibility, no matter how small, that he was wrong, that Kanodia was innocent of any involvement in the theft. After all, what did he really have to go on? Kanodia’s presence inside the Tata Gallery at the time of the robbery? A guilty expression? Chopra’s own presumption that the former fence was connected to organised crime?
The plain fact was that all he really had was conjecture.
He wondered if Rao had interviewed Kanodia yet. He suspected that he had not. Rao was focused on breaking Garewal. Perhaps Kanodia did not figure in his investigation at all.
What was it someone had once said? The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense…
What if Kanodia had absolutely nothing to do with the theft? What if Garewal was guilty? In that case, all that remained was to find Garewal’s accomplices. They in turn would lead the authorities to the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
Or what if both he and Rao were wrong, and it was neither Garewal nor Kanodia, but someone else entirely?
After all, hadn’t any number of nationalist organisations complained about the Koh-i-Noor being paraded under India’s nose by the British? Hadn’t scores of warnings poured in from fringe radicals threatening to steal the diamond?
One thing Chopra knew well about his country was that it was large enough to house all manner of lunatics. And a lunatic with a cause was the most dangerous kind of all.
THE GRAND TRUNK CIRCUS
The public ground known as Cross Maidan in south Mumbai’s New Marine Lines district had gained its name from the sixteenth-century stone crucifix erected there by Governor Nuno da Cunha, back when the city was under Portuguese rule. The cross, planted in the northern end of the five-acre common, was deemed to possess miraculous powers – supplicants journeyed from all over the country seeking fulfilment for prayers that had fallen on deaf ears elsewhere.
Chopra parked his van on Fashion Street, the strip of Mahatma Gandhi Road that ran adjacent to the Maidan near the Bombay Gymkhana.
Even at this late hour Fashion Street was alive with the clamour of furious haggling as locals and tourists alike matched wits with the owners of hundreds of stalls lining both sides of the street and selling every type of garment known to man.
Chopra threaded his way swiftly through the chorus of pleading and wailing and gnashing of teeth and on to the Maidan proper.
The sky above was darkening and streams of commuters hurried along the shortcut called Khau Gully, connecting the Victoria and Churchgate stations via the Maidan. In spite of the gloom numerous games of cricket were still going on. More than one famous Indian cricketer had first honed his skills on the patchwork of threadbare pitches that stretched over the common. Chopra was tempted to stop and watch, but he knew that time was short.
He wanted to catch the circus before it folded up its tent for the evening.
As he walked across the Maidan he reflected that in the days before Partition, tens of thousands of his fellow countrymen had gathered here to peacefully protest the continued presence of the British. His own father, Premkumar Chopra, who had once lived in the city, had stood shoulder to shoulder with countless others and chanted pro-Independence slogans. Gandhi himself had spoken to the masses here. And one day, his whispers had become a cyclone that had blown away the British.
The circus comprised a single two-pole big top, with a bright red roof, and red and yellow stripes marching around the sides. A colourful, hand-illustrated wooden board sat above the tent’s entrance depicting an exuberant virtuosity of circus acts. The board was surrounded by lightbulbs, many of which had failed. On a second board above was a painting of a grinning, bearded Sikh gentleman, a tiger, and the words: TIGER SINGH PRESENTS THE WORLD- FAMOUS GRAND TRUNK CIRCUS.
The evening show had ended. A handful of desultory visitors hung around outside the tent, smoking beedis and spitting. One man urinated onto a tent peg.
Chopra entered the big top.
The interior of the tent was lit by hanging striplights powered by a portable generator that thrummed away in the background.
Chopra found himself confronted by a compact circus ring surrounded by rows of red plastic chairs. A cleaner worked his way between them, picking up discarded chocolate wrappers, soft drink bottles, paan leaves, cigarette packets and other junk. His expression transformed into one of horrified distaste as he peeled a discarded condom from the floor and threw it into his bag. A solitary drunk who had fallen asleep in his seat snored away, a dribble of eighty-proof saliva trickling down his chin.
The ring, a dusty circle hemmed in by foot-high portable barriers of the sort used to mark the boundaries at cricket matches, was still alive with activity.
The performers were winding down, letting off steam after the evening performance.
Chopra watched as a flame-thrower in a sequinned jacket practised blowing a jet of fire at a wooden mannequin tied to a stake five metres away. Beside him a portly, blindfolded man hurled knives at the same target. He was not very good, Chopra reflected, as another knife bounced hilt-first from the wooden figure and clattered onto the dusty floor. He hoped that in the real performance a live volunteer was not employed as the target.
His eyes were drawn to a caparisoned elephant sitting in the centre of the ring on a reinforced stool, its front legs raised in the air. A hoop dangled from its upturned trunk. A slender woman with Assamese eyes hung from the hoop, her body contorted into a ring.
Suddenly the elephant sneezed. Girl and hoop landed in a heap on the floor.
A chorus of raucous laughter arose from the far side of the circus ring where half a dozen dwarves in clown outfits were lounging in a circle smoking and playing cards. ‘Why don’t you come and ride my trunk, Parvati?’ one of them shouted. ‘I prom
ise I won’t take my trunk out of your hoop until you’re finished.’
More raucous laughter.
Chopra stepped over the ring barrier and walked over to the dwarves. ‘I am looking for Tiger Singh,’ he said.
The dwarves stopped laughing and stared at him, their jovial clown make-up re-forming into baleful expressions. The dwarf who had spoken to the contortionist spoke again: ‘Are you from the AWBI?’
‘Who?’
‘The animal welfare people,’ clarified the dwarf.
‘No. I need to talk to Tiger Singh. It is a business matter.’
The dwarf turned back to his cards. ‘He is in the back.’
Chopra found Tiger Singh in a straw-lined temporary paddock behind the circus tent in which were tethered a number of threadbare camels and emaciated horses. Singh was seated on a cane stool on one side of an upturned wooden crate. On the other side was an old dwarf in a tight-fitting scarlet ringmaster’s jacket with gold trim. A cheap cigar stuck out of the side of his mouth as he intently focused down on Singh’s hands.
Singh had three coloured balls laid out on top of the crate. As Chopra watched, his hands became a blur, moving the balls around on the crate’s surface.
Suddenly, one of the balls vanished.
The dwarf looked up. He plucked the cigar from his mouth, blew a cloud of brackish smoke into the humid night air and said, ‘Not bad.’