The Temple-goers

by Aatish Taseer

  ‘But their horse?’ one of the colony boys yelled.

  ‘What?’ the MC snapped.

  ‘How can they go back if their horse has no head,’ the boy asserted firmly.

  The MC’s face soured. ‘Tch, bloody fool. He’s a king, you think someone won’t lend him a horse? It’s a bloody honour to lend a king a horse. He could get land and money.’ He chuckled. ‘Made me lose my thread. Stupid boy.’

  ‘They go back to the palace,’ someone yelled.

  ‘Yes,’ the MC said, his momentum returning, ‘they go back to the palace on a borrowed horse. And there the king, on seeing his son, severs his head from his body and cuts him into small, small pieces. You must have heard of the killings in Sectorpur. Just the same, but even smaller pieces and not with a knife from a mall, but with a sword. Can you imagine, a father cutting his own son, cutting, cutting…’

  The crowd let out a cry of dismay. ‘And then he offers it to the goddess. There they sit, Tara and him, performing the greatest of all sacrifices to the goddess. But the meat stays meat; it doesn’t become the boy.’ The MC looked with relish at his audience; they looked back expectantly, knowing that in India stories didn’t end this way. ‘The king turns to Tara and says, “Look what you’ve done. You’ve sacrificed my heir for your bloody goddess.” Tara falls to her feet and raises up her hands in supplication. And once again she becomes the goddess. “Divide the offering into five portions,” she orders. “Feed the first portion to your horse…” ’

  ‘What horse?’ a colony boy yelled.

  ‘Bloody fool,’ the MC yelled back, ‘wait for it. The king is amazed, but he takes the meat of his son to the stable where he finds his horse restored to perfect health. What’s more, the meat has turned to apples, oats and sugar cubes. Victory…’

  ‘Victory to the true durbar!’ the crowd screamed, and threw up their hands.

  The MC smiled. ‘Then the goddess says, “Feed the second portion to your son.” Again the king is amazed, but at just that moment the boy appears, saying he was woken from a gentle sleep where sweet lullabies were sung to him, and as he says this, the human flesh in the king’s hands turns to sweets and soft things. Because this is what children like…,’ the MC said. ‘Victory…’

  ‘Victory to the true durbar!’

  At this point, the MC’s saffron-clad helpers had appeared in the crowd and were handing out tea and sweets. As the MC detailed where the remaining portions of the human sacrifice were to go, the ending of his story became the end of our jagran. The sky was now full of light and 108 lamps fluttered in the morning breeze.

  ‘The king was told,’ the MC said, ‘that Rukmani was none other than his own sister-in-law. And in this way,’ he added, now tired himself and hastily wrapping up the tale that had reached its conclusion with the break of day, ‘the curse of two lifetimes was broken.’ With this, the MC announced a final opportunity to donate, a closing ceremony, the ritual washing of feet and the distribution of food and offerings, ‘Then you to your houses and me to mine.’

  The presence of daylight on the all-night gathering was at once jarring and beautiful. Everyone was recovering from the strange effect of the story and its ending timed to meet the morning.

  Megha rose, pushing her way to the front of the closing ceremony. She told me firmly to stand next to her. Soon I could see why. The family, Amit and others, were all pushing close to the front so that they could be part of this final ceremony. Hands clutched at hands. Food that had been left at the front as offerings was distributed. Amit made sure that I got a small leaf plate with a blessed one-rupee coin.

  ‘What about me?’ Megha asked.

  He ignored her.

  ‘Amit?’

  ‘Don’t speak too much out of turn,’ he snapped.

  She pulled a banana off the plate and marched out of the tent, gesturing to me to come along.

  Outside, in the clear morning light, fat black ants crawled over the sandy ground and carpet; wires hung limply from the halogen lamps; a man lay sleeping on a cemented surface; a concrete water tank loomed; cows appeared, looking for things to eat. Little girls were assembled at the front of the tent and Aakash’s family symbolically washed their feet. On one side, Aakash was distributing puris and a mountain of sweet, pulpy food. Megha called to him from time to time: ‘Aakash, kaka, Aakash, kaka.’

  He looked grimly up at her, then told her for no apparent reason to be quiet. In the meantime, the little sweeper had appeared and was digging with his small, strong nails at a piece of offering. Around us, the durbar was being taken down, gods undressed and carried away, their torsos separated from their legs. Kali’s lion was being stripped of its mane.

  Megha picked up the little sweeper and pointed at the now shorn animal.

  ‘Loin!’ she said. ‘Loin! What does a loin do?’

  The little sweeper roared, raising his short, tough arms over his head and gnashing his teeth.

  I had managed to escape unnoticed and was standing apart, scanning the street for Uttam, undoubtedly asleep in the front seat of the car, when I felt Aakash’s hand on my shoulder. ‘Hey, man? What’s you doing, man? Dude?’

  Around us, cows having found what they wanted, walked away with orange rinds in their teeth.

  ‘Go and sleep, my friend,’ Aakash said. ‘We’ll see what tomorrow has in store for us.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Today,’ he said, and laughed.

  He leaned in to give me a hug as Uttam drove up. Then pressing the side of his face against mine, he held it there. Its bones were hard and its stubble rough, but it was also tremulous and wet with tears.

  22

  The atmosphere of fable that the jagran awakened carried over into the next day. The city awoke to television images of policemen in olive green wading through a hyacinth-choked canal in Sectorpur, its banks thick with keekar. In the background were the power station’s iron men with electric cables slung between them. In the foreground, four black bin bags. They were marooned among the hyacinths, bobbing, rolling over on to their side, suddenly straightening up with the policemen’s touch, like four happy ducklings in the misty sunshine.

  The policemen took cautious steps into the canal’s poisonous water. The bin bags playfully resisted their capture, slithering away just as one of the men was about to get hold of the rope that tied them to each other. Only the stillness of the camera’s eye brought some gravity to the scene. The country’s three main news channels all claimed to have been tipped off but were vague on details. TVDelhi’s red scrolling banner said no more than ‘Scare at Power Station’.

  I had woken late at Sanyogita’s and watched in my pyjamas. Sanyogita had gone out, and Vatsala brought me some toast and orange juice. My head was still soft with sleep and the winter sunshine pouring into the room made me want to prolong the feeling of morning. The light in Delhi had changed; it came now from another angle, and far from striking the surface of buildings, seemed to lose its footing on rooftops and columns. And though it was warm, you could sit in it for hours without breaking into a sweat. Hazy and scented with smoke, it rose like a glow from the city, heightening the sensory power of the Delhi winter. The bougainvillea, the occasional smell of kebabs, the wail of a garbage collector created so acute an impression that it was as if some part of an old photograph, having shed the inertia of years, had gently begun to move.

  I watched the news unthinkingly for many minutes, but when the channels gave up on the bin bags, I did too and switched to a feature film. I had begun to doze again when I roused myself purposefully and went to have a shower. The puzzling effect of staying up late, sleeping for a few hours, getting up in the early hours of the morning, then sleeping again, and now entering my third morning in a single day, brought on a kind of reverie. The glass doors of the shower had steamed up and yet, through their foggy walls, I could see the orange bars of a bathroom heater. And it was through this pleasant blur of heat and water that Sanyogita’s cry broke, not a piercing cry, but a
haggard groan, with many dying falls.

  It was followed by the slamming of a door, a charge through our bedroom and the bathroom door being wrenched open. As she entered, I think she must have tripped over the heater, kicked it aside, straightened it, and then perhaps known the unreasonable, synaesthetic confusion of feeling you can’t be heard in a steamy room. But I heard her. I heard her cry, ‘Baby, oh God, baby, they killed that girl,’ then bitterly, ‘Your friend killed that girl.’

  I let a second pass, in which I felt a strong desire for privacy. I turned the tap slowly, feeling in the abrupt cessation of hot water the mood beyond the cubicle.

  ‘Baby, can you give me a towel?’

  Sanyogita stared bleakly at me, then found me a towel. I wiped myself thoroughly, and wrapping the towel about my waist, took her hand and walked back, past my locked study, into the room with the television.

  TVDelhi’s red scrolling banner had changed from ‘Scare at Power Station’ to ‘Another Grisly Murder in Sectorpur’. The screen, when it wasn’t showing a small photograph of Megha laughing, her rounded, milky teeth visible over wet lips, a caption below reading ‘1982–2008’, showed Aakash, arm in arm with two policemen, his eyes half-open and burning, as they became when he was tired and hungry. He was still in his capris and beige and white knit T-shirt; his shoulders, sandwiched between the thin, forceful limbs of the policemen, appeared larger than usual. The colony, with its peach-coloured buildings, was visible behind him, as was the white tent with its scalloped red skirting. I was finding it difficult to stave off the confusion of having recently been present at a place that was now on television when the phone rang. This, at least, was something to hold on to.

  ‘Hello, Aatish?’ said an unfamiliar voice from an unfamiliar number.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sparky Punj here.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘We’ve met in Junglee. I’m one of Aakash’s clients.’

  Of course I remembered him: tall, lanky man with a handlebar moustache, a white towel perpetually around his neck. Sparky Punj, the lawyer and Aakash’s prized client. Among the very few in Junglee to whom he gave preferential treatment over me.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said, walking away, Sanyogita’s eyes desolately trailing me. ‘Have you spoken to him? I was just going to try calling, but –’

  ‘His phone’s off, buddy,’ Sparky inserted quickly. ‘Do you have a minute?’

  A few minutes later, I was hurriedly getting dressed as Sanyogita fired questions at me.

  Did he kill her?

  I don’t know.

  But is she dead?

  Yes.

  Who was that?

  A lawyer called Sparky Punj.

  What does he want?

  He wants me to come and see him.

  What for?

  I don’t know. He wants to help Aakash.

  Oh, so you think Aakash is innocent?

  I don’t know. I’m just going to hear him out.

  You’re on his side, aren’t you? It could have been me and you would be on his side. Yes?

  No, I’m not on anyone’s side, but what is the harm in seeing what the deal is?

  Silence.

  So where are you going?

  Just down the road, in fact. He lives in Jorbagh.

  Silence. A softening of tone.

  Do you want me to come?

  No, baby. I think you’d better not. I’ll be back very soon.

  Sparky Punj was not home when I arrived at his single-storey bungalow. A servant in white showed me past darkened sliding doors into a wood-panelled study with black leather sofas, a glass coffee table and a brightly coloured Souza on the wall. A dim picture light fell over the painting. A few rays escaping from its brass tubular frame entered the crystal boat and dagger objets on the coffee table. I was fingering the line of prominent brass studs that ran along the sofa’s arm when nearly an hour and a half later Sparky entered. He was all in white, down to the socks in his black leather shoes. He wore collapsible spectacles, connected at the bridge with the help of a magnet, behind which the eyes, darkened around the sockets, were afflicted with a tic, causing him to blink rapidly when he spoke.

  ‘Aatish. Good, buddy. Glad you made it. Here, take a look at this,’ he said, tossing me the afternoon paper. It was folded in four to Shabby Singh’s column, ‘The long arm of the divine Chamunda’. At the centre was a picture of the canal from which the four bin bags containing Megha’s body had been retrieved. There was a police line encircling the crime scene and a crowd around it. The column detailed, with some relish, the problems a small breakaway state like Jhaatkebaal could face when, by virtue of being on the border of Delhi, it experienced sophisticated urban crime in its jurisdiction. But Sparky didn’t wish me to read the column at all.

  ‘Look at that picture, buddy,’ he said, crouching next to me. ‘You know who that guy is?’ He picked out a balding man with a moustache from the crowd scene in the main photo. He stood outside the police line, wearing khaki trousers and a black leather jacket.

  I shook my head.

  ‘You see that he’s hiding his face in the picture.’

  He did have his arm raised over his head, but I said I thought he might have been shielding himself from the glare of the sun.

  ‘No, buddy,’ Sparky said, ‘he’s concealing his identity, you see. Because he’s operating outside his jurisdiction.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He’s a Delhi officer,’ he exclaimed, ‘operating illegally in Sectorpur. The best man Delhi has. Now, let me show you something else.’

  He took the paper from me, flipped to another page, and again folding it in four handed it back to me. This article was about him. It showed a picture of Sparky next to a picture of Aakash. The headline read: ‘Sparky Punj Takes up Trainer’s Cause’.

  ‘So you’re acting on his behalf?’ I asked, hoping now perhaps to get some real information.

  ‘No, buddy, that’s the funny thing. Well, at least not when this article was published. Basically what happened was that I was in my office in Sectorpur when I heard the terrible news from one of my contacts in the police. It hit me damn hard, buddy, double-hard: it’s not just because of Aakash, you know; the girl’s brother is a pal of mine. Very sweet guy, wants to be a writer and things. No, this was close to home, I assure you. I could hardly think straight when I heard. And the crazy thing was I had a time set for a training with Aakash literally a couple of hours later. The standard practice on Sundays was that I’d pick him up from his place, we’d drive into town and work out there. I sometimes use Junglee, but my main gym is at the Ashoka Hotel. I think Junglee’s a little grimy. Anyway, when I get this call, telling me Aakash’s girl is the victim, I decide, despite all that had happened, to drop what I was doing and head over to Aakash’s. You know, to offer my condolences and basically be around in case he needs any help – no formalities. I like the guy; damn good trainer if you ask me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course…’

  ‘I arrive to find the family all sitting round. Devastated; I mean, you’ve never seen people in greater shock. They’ve just had some religious occasion, a jagran or some such jazz. The girl was with them till the morning; on the sly, mind you. She goes home, no problem. Six hours later she’s dead and they have the police and press wallahs at their front door. I’d met the girl too – sweet, bubbly, polite. Great shame, you know? They made an adorable couple. Her family wasn’t happy of course, but this sort of thing resolves itself with time.

  ‘Aakash’s father’s a long-time government servant, you know? He’s from a decent Brahmin family; they’re not used to handling this crap. TV cameras, broadcast vans, Shabby going at them great guns.’

  ‘She was there?’

  ‘Oh yes. In full fettle. Anyway, I figure there’s not much for me to do at that point. So I pay my condolences and am slipping off when a reporter from one of the city papers catches me. She asks if I’m representing Aakash; I say no and lea
ve it at that. But her photographer takes a picture of me anyway and they run a small item in the afternoon edition. Now, one result of this article is that the police wallahs become damn suspicious. “Why is a lawyer coming here? If he’s innocent, why will he be needing a lawyer?” The other is that a few hours later I receive a call from – I won’t name any names, but from a very senior police officer who’s seen the report in the paper. He knows me a little, our girls are in school together, and so he calls me up and immediately says, “Sparky, are you representing this trainer chappy?” I said, “Sir, no. I mean, I know the guy, but the story in the paper is groundless. He’s just my trainer. I went to pay my condolences, nothing more.” Now, at this stage, I can see that suspicion is beginning to fall on Aakash. And no wonder. Poor boyfriend of rich girl, you know? She leads him on for a while, but then doesn’t want to marry him; jilted lover, you know the score. Motive’s there, opportunity too, and it’s not as if I know that he’s innocent.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I like the guy, but nobody can tell what another man is capable of. I don’t know if my own chappy here won’t cut my throat for a little extra dosh; you get the picture. Anyhow, this guy says to me, “If you’re not his lawyer, I damn well hope you will be, because he’ll need a good one.” Literally, his exact words were, “We hang our heads in shame, because they’re going to pin the whole damn thing on him.” He said the whole business is shit-high with politics. There’s a lot of pressure on Chamunda Devi to act. The case is technically in her jurisdiction, it’s the third of this kind this year in Jhaatkebaal and she has an election next year. And Delhi, he said, won’t get in her face over it; they’d prefer she destroy herself. So they’ll stand back and let her goons in the Jhaatkebaal police force do as they wish.’

  I tried at this point to say something, but Sparky stopped me with a raised hand, and urgently bringing this circular torrent back to where it had begun, said, ‘And that’s when he tells me about the top cop in the picture – you know, the one I just pointed out to you. He says that since the murder had happened so close to Delhi, he’d taken the liberty of sending one of his men under cover to the scene of the crime. This guy’s literally seen hundreds of cases like this. And he comes back and reports to his superior that there’s no way on God’s earth that the trainer could have done this.’