by Anita Nair
As the jeep drove away, Gowda knew a moment of disquiet, even as he opened the gate to his house.
There was a fine patina of dust on his Bullet. Gowda frowned as he ran a finger along the curve of its petrol tank and onto the seat. Shanthi was supposed to have wiped his bike every day. The car was dusty too, and dried leaves were wedged on the windscreen between the bonnet and the wipers.
She didn’t seem to have watered the garden either. The jasmine creeper that wound its way up the pillar at the corner of the verandah looked thirsty, and the potted plants had wilted. Dried leaves lay all over the driveway.
On the doormat were two days’ worth of newspapers. Gowda opened the door, perplexed. Where was Shanthi? It was unlike her to not turn up without letting him know. There was a faint musty smell. Of a room shut before the mopped-up floors had time to dry. He opened the windows one by one.
Then he went into the kitchen and turned the tap on. A trickle of water emerged and stopped. ‘What the fuck!’ Gowda said aloud, slamming his fist on the granite counter. For a moment, he stood there stumped, wondering what to do next.
He dragged himself to the work area behind the kitchen. The switch for the water pump was somewhere in here. He had been one of the lucky ones to strike water when they sank a borewell in his plot of land. At four hundred feet he had wondered if he should ask the borewell operator to stop. ‘At this rate, we’ll be digging a hole into the White House on the other side of the planet,’ he had joked.
The man had stared at him with a blank face. What was the policeman implying? Whatever, it was best to pretend he didn’t understand. There was no trusting a man in uniform. But at four hundred and twenty feet, the bore had struck a water table. Water had gushed out with a force that had almost thrown Gowda off his feet. His spirits had soared; it had felt like a personal triumph.
Gowda found the switch and put it on. Fortunately, there was power. Powercuts were part of this new Bangalore. Most homes including his had back-up power but a water pump wouldn’t work on it. The humming began. He hoped water was running up the pipes. He opened the door and stepped into the desolate-looking backyard. He found the pipe running up the well to the overhead tank and laid his ear against it. It was a hot afternoon in March and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky but the GI pipe felt cool against his skin and he could hear the reassuring surge of water.
There was nothing for him to do but wait. Roshan had WhatsApped him a word card some days ago. Exhaustipated – too tired to give a shit. That was precisely how he felt now. He pulled out a chair from the dining table. He was hot and weary. He had lain awake through the night on the train and had fallen into a troubled sleep that had left him more exhausted than refreshed. The last five days had been gruelling and it had brought him no closer to tracing the absconding Chikka.
He looked at his phone thoughtfully. He should be calling Mamtha. Urmila would be expecting his call, he knew. However, it was Shanthi he called. There was no response. He looked at the food parcel on the table. But he was loath to eat until he had washed the grime and filth off himself.
Soon he heard the splash of water as the tank overflowed. He switched off the water pump and headed to the bathroom, taking his clothes off as he walked.
Gowda turned the shower on and stood below it, letting the cold jets of water inject life into his weary body. He soaped himself using a daub of shower gel. Urmila had insisted he switch to shower gel.
‘Less incriminating when I am here and we need to shower,’ she had said. They had stood under the shower, soaping each other, still flushed from having made love. She had sniffed at the cake of soap. Mysore sandalwood. She had put it back on the dish carefully.
He had frowned and appraised her face. Then, unable to help himself, he said, ‘You sound like you’ve done this before.’
She had glared back at him. Then, controlling herself, she said in a voice so cold that it almost made his balls shrivel, ‘What are you implying, Borei? I have friends. We talk. Every experience I refer to needn’t necessarily be mine.’
Gowda had pulled her to him and held her as a silent apology. How we love is indicative of who we are, he thought. I am that awful cliché that I thought I would never be. A middle-aged man, slack of jaw and spirit, clutching at a straw of hope in the guise of a woman who knew me as I once was. I doubt myself and all that I am, and so I doubt her too. For that is who I have become. A man who doesn’t know.
‘Say it, Borei,’ she had murmured against his chest. ‘Tell me what you are thinking, whatever it is.’
He had shaken his head and kissed her on the forehead, feeling a great surge of warmth for her. Love was a word he didn’t even use in his head any more. ‘I get insecure,’ he said. ‘I wonder what you are doing with me and then …’
She touched the tattoo on his forearm and traced her finger along the wings on the wheel. It had been an impulse decision to get a tattoo, and he had chosen one that suggested the open road, the song of the wind, the thump of a Bullet engine, the dream of a lifetime to keep going without pausing. He had had to hide it from Mamtha at first, afraid she would sneer or, worse, prophesize all the diseases he could catch from a tattoo parlour.
‘I always wanted to sleep with a man with a tattoo,’ Urmila said, straightfaced. ‘So you are just part of my bucket list of men.’
He stared at her for a moment. Then he grinned and gathered her to him.
She nuzzled her face into his chest and wrapped her arms around him. ‘You give me what no one else ever has,’ she said. He noticed that she didn’t use the word love either. The shower jet rinsed the soap off their bodies.
A bell rang. Gowda snapped out of his reverie. It rang again. A persistent annoying note that wouldn’t allow Gowda to ignore it. He turned off the shower wearily. Who would come calling on him at this hour? He wrapped a towel around his waist and went to the door, dripping water as he walked. He peered through the eyelet in the door. Santosh stood framed in the doorway. Gowda opened the door.
‘You have lost weight,’ Santosh said by way of greeting.
Gowda touched his chest almost unconsciously. His chest hair had begun to grey.
‘And you have been working out?’
Was that a note of approval he heard in the boy’s voice, Gowda wondered with some annoyance.
‘If you have finished admiring me, may I go finish my bath?’ Gowda didn’t bother hiding his displeasure.
‘Did I disturb your bath?’ Santosh said, without a trace of embarrassment.
‘What happened to your voice therapy session?’
Santosh shrugged. ‘It can wait. I shifted the appointment to later this evening.’
‘Sit down,’ Gowda said as he padded back to the bathroom.
When Gowda came back to the living room dressed in his habitual track pants and a collared t-shirt, Santosh was looking through a case diary that sat on the table. He put it down.
The beaming Santosh had been replaced by a man whose features were set with the rigidity of a mask. ‘He is still out there.’ Santosh’s fierce whisper filled the silence.
Gowda nodded.
‘But why, sir?’ Santosh’s whisper rose. ‘Why is he not behind bars? Why was he given bail in the first place? Section 302 IPC is a non-bailable offence, I thought. Whoever commits murder shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life and shall also be liable to fine.’
Gowda slumped into a chair. He looked at his fingers as he tried to process his thoughts and form the words.
‘When we rushed you to the hospital, all I thought of was how I was going to ensure you survived. Chikka was taken into custody. He had confessed to having shot the corporator to save you. Bail, which is never given in 302 cases, was allowed. He had confessed; he was a hero who had saved you, one of our own, from certain death. And he knew which strings to pull. Besides, all of the corporator’s property was in Chikka’s name. He produced the documents as surety and, given his brother’s criminal past, his lawyers claimed t
hat his life would be under threat if we sent him to the undertrial jail in Parappagrahara. And just my bloody bad timing!’
‘What do you mean?’ Santosh asked.
‘It was a Thursday night, if you remember. By the time they had patched you up and moved you to the ICU, it was Friday noon. I hadn’t had the time to check your phone. I finally did that evening and went to the PP with fresh evidence. Chikka, however, was out on bail and absconding,’ Gowda said. ‘The public prosecutor said he had never seen anyone move this fast. It was almost like clockwork.’
‘I’ll hunt him down, sir.’ Santosh’s voice rose into a squeak.
Gowda looked at the boy’s face. It bespoke a need to exact revenge as much as catch a criminal who thought he had got the better of them.
‘You know that I am with you, don’t you?’ Gowda said. ‘We’ll hunt him down.’
Gowda’s mobile rang. The old-fashioned trilling of a black bakelite phone you dialled with a finger. ‘You changed your ringtone.’ Santosh grinned.
Gowda shrugged. Then he frowned as he picked up the phone. ‘Shanthi,’ he barked into the phone, ‘where are you? What? I’ll come there. Give me a few minutes.’ Gowda picked up the Bullet keys.
Once, there was nothing in Doddegubbi but mango orchards and millet fields. A few farmers lived there, struggling to eke a livelihood out of the land. They grew whatever would grow there. Cauliflowers, cabbage, beans, spinach, snake gourds and chayote that everyone else called ‘bengloor kathrikai’. They grazed their cows and in the evening there was the old temple they went to worship at. But the church changed all that in the late nineties with a spate of conversions. It brought people to live in a deserted tract of many acres. Every convert received a piece of land and some money to build a house of their own. The poor from Vasanth Nagar, Lingarajapuram and Vivek Nagar congregated at the land the church had given them in return for converting, and a new village sprang up overnight. It was called Gospelnagar.
The church opened its door, awaiting the flocks of converts. But only a few arrived. Husbands and wives converted but the children remained Hindus. And so, even though a house had a cross fixed to the lintel above the main door, and a photograph of Jesus with his bleeding heart and long melancholic face within, there were also photographs of Ganesha, Lakshmi and Shiva presiding over the household.
Shanthi and her husband had been one of the earlier converts. Shanthi had been unsure about changing her religion but Ranganna, who was now Daniel Ranganna as she was Esther Shanthi, had insisted. Besides, it was the only way they would ever have a house of their own.
A motley group of men, women and children were gathered on the road outside the line of houses in Gospelnagar. They stared as Gowda’s bike turned the corner, the duk-duk sound echoing through the street.
Ranganna stood by the side of the road with his hand on his hip. He slammed his forehead with the palm of his hand as he talked to a group of men. At the sight of Gowda’s bike, he peeled himself from the group.
Gowda parked the Bullet on its stand. Santosh stood helplessly, not knowing what was expected of him. ‘What happened?’ Gowda asked with a curtness that surprised Santosh. Gowda, he thought, was very fond of Shanthi.
‘I don’t know, sir, I don’t know!’ Ranganna wailed, beating his hands on his head. ‘It’s all that woman’s fault. She is never at home. Who knows what happened to my daughter?’
Gowda quelled him with a glare. ‘Stop this playacting, Ranganna,’ he snapped. ‘If anyone is to blame, it’s you; if you didn’t drink through everything you earned, your wife wouldn’t need to work in three homes. Where is Shanthi?’
From within the house, Shanthi came out. Her hair was unkempt and her face was tear-streaked. ‘I am here, sir,’ she said, her voice hoarse from crying.
‘Tell me what happened,’ Gowda said, softening his tone.
‘She went to school as usual on Wednesday, sir. It was her maths exam. When she didn’t come back by one, I got worried. I waited till two and went to the school. The teacher said she attended the exam but left an hour early on her own. All her friends were still writing the exam at that point, she said. I went to each one of their homes but no one remembered seeing her in the school afterwards. Where could my Nandita have gone, sir?’ Shanthi began sobbing again.
‘Have you registered a complaint at the station?’ Santosh asked, seeing Gowda’s discomfiture.
Shanthi shook her head. It was her husband who spoke up. ‘We can’t go to the police. Once everyone knows about this, who will marry her?’
‘She is what, twelve years old, and you are worried about what will happen ten years from now?’ Gowda snarled.
Shanthi hastily interrupted. ‘I was waiting for you to come back, sir. Some of our close relatives have gone looking for her.’
Gowda sighed. Most people were wary of going anywhere near a police station. Even when they needed the help of the law. ‘Go to the station right now and register a complaint. We can’t do anything legally till a First Information Report is written,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to the station writer. You know Head Constable Gajendra, don’t you?’ He turned to Shanthi. ‘Make sure you go too.’
‘How will you manage, sir?’ she asked as Gowda turned to go.
‘Don’t worry about that. Let’s find your daughter first,’ Gowda said gently. ‘Shanthi, she will be fine,’ he added. ‘She must have gone to a relative’s house in Kolar. Isn’t that where your relatives are?’
Shanthi nodded. ‘I have an aunt in Tumkur too.’
‘She must have gone there,’ Gowda said, starting his bike. He turned to look at Santosh. ‘Have you had lunch?’
‘No, sir, but …’
‘If I don’t eat something soon, I’ll pass out. If you don’t want to eat, you can watch me,’ Gowda growled.
‘It seems to me that everything has changed. I was away for just six months but it feels like six years,’ Santosh said, gazing around almost wistfully as they rode towards the restaurant.
It was a café-like place with tubular steel chairs and granite-topped tables. A bicyle hung from the stucco-finished wall and each table had a bicycle bell to summon the waiter.
Gowda rang the bicycle bell with an almost imperious note and said, ‘Change is inevitable. You can never reverse the past.’
While they waited for the food to arrive, Gowda called Gajendra. ‘Have the child welfare officer come in this evening. I need to speak to him.’
Gajendra sighed. ‘We don’t have one any more, sir!’
Gowda frowned. ‘Why? What happened to Manjunath?’
‘His father expired and he has gone on leave. I think he’ll try and arrange for a transfer to Tumkur,’ Gajendra said.
Gowda paused for a moment.
‘I think you are thinking what I am thinking, sir,’ the head constable said softly.
Gowda grunted. ‘Let me talk to DCP Mirza. He would be the best person to speak to. I am sure he’ll make it happen.’
‘Santosh sir will do a good job as CWO, sir. And it will give him some time to settle in before taking up active duty,’ Gajendra said.
When the food arrived, Santosh watched Gowda eat. It seemed he had changed too. Santosh couldn’t exactly fathom how, but he had. Where was the man who would have headed to the nearest Darshini restaurant to tuck into a bisibele bath or a karabath? Instead, he seemed to be eating what looked like fat noodles at a place called Bicycle Café. Apart from the bicyle role-playing as wall-hanging, there were no bicycles around and hardly a soul.
‘Do you like what you are eating?’ Santosh asked. ‘Is it Maggi noodles?’
‘Pasta,’ Gowda said, twirling a strand around a fork. ‘It’s nice. Do you want to try it?’
Santosh bit his lip, unable to decide. ‘Is it beef?’ he asked.
Gowda frowned. ‘Chicken. But what’s wrong with beef?’
‘We are Hindus, sir!’
Gowda’s mouth twisted into a narrow line. Santosh felt that familiar knot of fear. �
��I’d like some,’ he said hastily.
Gowda called for an extra plate. He doled out a portion for Santosh and said, ‘Don’t use your hand. Watch how I eat it with a fork …’
Santosh stared at his plate of pasta helplessly. Some things never changed, he thought. Gowda still had the ability to fill him with adulation one moment and infuriate him the other. We are Indians and Indians eat with their right hand. Why do we have to use a fork? God knows how many mouths it has been into.
‘Are you ready to join duty?’ Gowda asked abruptly. A gust of warm air rushed in as the door opened and a group of northeastern students walked in.
Santosh stared at them for a moment and then, meeting Gowda’s gaze, he said, ‘I am not sure, sir. But if I don’t now, I might lose my nerve forever.’
‘Countless policemen go through service without anything like this happening to them. It’s unfortunate that you had this happen to you on your first case,’ Gowda said, choosing each word carefully. ‘If you are unsure now, you may never be able to after a few days. For what it’s worth, I’ll be with you. And …’ Gowda paused. ‘I am never going to let you risk your life again. That is a promise I made to myself.’
Santosh felt a lump in his throat. But he knew that Gowda wouldn’t like it if he said he was moved. So he said, ‘They should have added some dhania podi to this pasta thing!’
Gowda grunted in agreement. He had thought the same but Urmila had almost bitten his head off for saying so. ‘What is wrong with you? This is an Italian dish. You should eat it like they do, not smother it with coriander powder and turn it into Udupi Italian.’
‘True.’ He grinned. He rang the bell again. ‘Get me some more chilli flakes and some coriander powder,’ he said.
Moina looked at the packet of food she had been given. It was biriyani again. There was a time when she had dreamt of biriyani – the aromatic rice separated grain by grain with ghee and spice, mutton pieces and the cubes of patato, the whorls of fried onion – but now she was tired of it. Instead, she dreamed of other things: a long leisurely bath with water she had drawn, bucket after bucket, from the well behind her home. Dal chaval and a piece of fried fish and a long green chilli to set her tongue tingling. A walk on the road, feeling the breeze on her face. A full night’s sleep. The ceasing of beatings and of the soreness between her legs.