‘Nothing like the King when you’re feeling blue,’ he affirms. ‘Sit, sit,’ he urges, turning it down and motioning me to a chair.
‘Wife still unwell?’
Rajeev shakes his head. ‘Better, thanks. No, a friend wounded in the recent attacks has just died.’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘He’s not the first. They killed the president of the Gymkhana Club, to which I belong. At the Taj. And my dear friend Kamte. He was one of the policemen ambushed outside Cama hospital. His grandfather was in the IP at the same time as Moore-Gilbert. They’d certainly have known each other.’
‘How awful for you, Rajeev.’
His habitual gentleness evaporates in a scowl. ‘Those bearded bandit bastards, what do they hope to achieve?’
‘Well, one’s been caught, perhaps we’ll soon find out?’
He shrugs unhappily ‘Here, I dug out the grandfather’s book. You can borrow it.’
What? I can barely contain my curiosity. If the elder Kamte knew Bill, perhaps there’ll be something about him in the work Rajeev places before me. From Them to Us, its battered cover proclaims. But my host’s still looking upset, so I put it away in my bag for later. Rajeev sighs.
‘You know, I’m glad I’m coming to the end of my career. Such bungling, you wouldn’t believe. Three intercepted signals, sent at monthly intervals, warning of the attacks.’
My ears prick up. ‘You saw them?’
Rajeev looks momentarily nonplussed. ‘Friends, contacts,’ he then says.
‘But if there was intelligence, why didn’t they prevent it?’
‘The signals only said luxury hotels would be attacked. Not which ones or when. You can’t lock down a city like Mumbai. Anyway, sometimes these messages are sent to deliberately mislead.’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘Pakistan, though they deny everything.’
‘Is it all really about Kashmir?’ Some of the media have hinted at this. As I understand it, the wound’s been festering since the 1940s, when the British gave its Hindu ruler the choice of joining India or Pakistan at Independence. Defying his Muslim subjects, the overwhelming majority, the Rajah chose India. Imperial law gave him the constitutional right to do so, and this remains the basis of India’s claim to the region. Its military, many assert, enforce that claim by behaving like an army of occupation, and is responsible for innumerable abuses.
Rajeev guffaws dismissively. ‘Of course certain people will say so. Obfuscation. But it’s partly our fault as well.’
‘Why?’
My host launches a diatribe against the incompetence of the authorities. Federal and state agencies are in competition, depriving each other of crucial intelligence. The Navy blames the coastguard and the coastguard blames the inshore marine police. No one will take any responsibility.
‘Mumbai will never be the same,’ he concludes mournfully. ‘Everyone stays at home in the evening now. How can you trust anything? I was at a wedding at the Taj myself, just days before the attacks.’
While we talk, a woman comes in with bowls of spicy-smelling tomato soup and toast. She says nothing; whether this is Rajeev’s wife or a servant, I can’t tell. We eat and have tea, during which my host tells me more about the IP officers who lived upstairs. We’re interrupted by his mobile going off. He glances at it before letting it ring and ring.
‘Don’t mind me,’ I murmur.
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t pick up unless I recognise the caller. I wait a while, then sms them to text their message.’
I’m puzzled, but Rajeev diverts my attention by asking how the research is going. He grimaces sympathetically when I describe what happened yesterday. But his face lights up when I mention Poel.
‘I know him. And Commissioner Sivanandan. I’ll try to find out when Poel gets back. I’m sure he can sort it all out.’
He’s impressively well connected. My host leans forward with a teasing look. ‘Look at this now.’
He pushes across a slab of a book. It’s a coffee-table-format tome on the Maharashtra Police, produced – Rajeev says – to mark the centenary of the modern force in 2006, though its roots go back almost a century earlier. Abundantly illustrated, there are several photos from the 1930s and 40s. Some are riot scenes, one showing a young white police officer and a dozen Indian constables, wooden lathis drawn, facing an ocean of angry faces across a street strewn with bottles and stones. The European’s features are indistinct, but I think immediately of Bill and his injuries. There are some recent shots of the training school in Nasik on which I also linger. Why, here’s the old IP mess Bill and Poel would have frequented. Towards the back, a scrap of paper sticks out.
‘Look carefully,’ Rajeev urges with a smile.
The page opens at a formal portrait of a man in his fifties, with long beaky nose and hooded eyes. The caption reads: ‘Emmanuel Sumitra Modak, Commissioner of Police, Maharashtra State, 1972–5.’
‘I don’t understand, Rajeev.’ But the name’s somehow familiar.
‘E.S. Modak was assistant superintendent of police in Satara the whole time your father worked there.’
Of course. His name came up occasionally in the SIB archives. If only I’d known, I’d have paid more attention. I greedily examine the photograph. The face is highly intelligent but the expression’s guarded, the lips pale and thin.
‘And,’ Rajeev grins, ‘it appears he might still be alive.’
Jaw-dropping. ‘But you said all my father’s contemporaries had died.’
He grimaces apologetically.
‘Where is he?’
‘Somewhere in Pune. Now I don’t want to get your hopes up. I haven’t heard anything about him myself since 2001.’ He glances heavenwards. ‘Which is why I thought he’d gone up, like all the others. My contact says he was ill a few years ago, so bad he had to go to Rhode Island, where his son lives, for treatment. He doesn’t know one way or the other what the result was. But someone thinks they sighted him a couple of months ago.’
‘How old would he be?’
‘Eighty-seven, eighty-eight. He joined the IP two years after your father.’
Bill would have been ninety next year if he’d survived. That’s forty-five years he was cheated out of, half a life.
‘We’re trying to get hold of his address. Assuming he’s alive and has all his faculties, he’ll know a lot more about your father and the Parallel Government than you’ll find in the archives.’ He scowls. ‘Still no answer from this Bhosle to your emails?’
I shake my head.
‘If the worst comes to the worst, Modak’s widow may still be around. She should remember something of those times. She was a fair bit younger, I recall.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you, Rajeev.’
‘Most happy to help. But first we’ve got to run down where he lives – or used to live.’
I nod.
‘So what are your plans now?’
I shrug.
‘I’ll try and find out when Poel gets back. What about getting away yourself for a few days? You could do worse than start with Nasik. That’s where your father seems to have spent most time, if he didn’t go to Sindh. The training school’s well worth a visit. Ask for Mrs Goel, the director.’ He laughs enigmatically. ‘But don’t say I sent you.’
I wonder if there’s anyone Rajeev doesn’t know. But why the disclaimer? ‘Perhaps I should head straight for Pune?’
My host considers a moment, before shaking his head. ‘Better to wait until we’re sure about Modak. From Nasik, you’re only a few hours north of Pune by bus and while you’re looking round there, we can carry on hunting for Modak.’
‘It might save time to go straight to Kolhapur and try to find Shinde and Bhosle?’
Rajeev shakes his head. ‘University vacation time by now. They could be away. Keep them for later; if we don’t find Modak then you can try down there.’
‘You think they’d be co-operative?’
My host shrugs. ‘Jealous types, these provincial historians. You’ve read Nirad Chaudhuri. Just don’t give the impression you want to write about the Patri Sarkar. They probably think they own the subject.’
Later, in my hotel room, I pore over Kamte’s From Them to Us, published in 1982. Disappointingly, there’s no mention of Bill. But the author describes how he himself was supposed to have been sent to Satara in May 1944, just as Bill left. This was in order to help suppress ‘the “Patri Sarkar” agitation, which was notorious for its treatment of informers, real or imagined’. While diverted at the last moment to Dharwar, some distance from the disturbances, Kamte nonetheless dismisses the ‘baseless reports’ of police brutality in Satara. This seems telling, given his occasional criticism of white colleagues, from whom he apparently suffered some degree of prejudice. On the other hand, Kamte’s a policeman himself, so he would probably protect his own, wouldn’t he? Indeed, his disclaimer about police brutality is somewhat undermined when Kamte describes a crowd of demonstrators he was confronted by early on in his appointment to Dharwar: ‘I asked them to disperse, failing which they would get a beating.’ Was this typical police strategy at the time? If so, what light might it shed on Bill’s alleged behaviour at Chafal?
All in all, this feels like a breakthrough. Here’s the first documentary counter-evidence to Shinde’s accusations. If only Rajeev can run down Modak. I wonder what he’s like. I can’t afford to think of him in the past tense. If he and Bill worked side by side against the Parallel Government, presumably he’ll be pleased to see me and talk? His evidence may prove crucial. Suddenly, remembering Rajeev’s earlier comment, I’m arrested by a strange feeling. Perhaps I am becoming a detective, like Bill. Yet he’s the chief suspect in this case. However, I’m also acting for the defence. Are the roles compatible? Bill’s words echo across the decades from the Ugalla River.
‘You have to collect the evidence. Then it’s for other people to decide.’
CHAPTER 5
My Father’s Friend?
As I’m packing up my hotel room to leave for Nasik, Rajeev rings. He can’t keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘We’ve found Modak.’
‘What?’ My heart pounds.
He dictates an address in Pune. ‘You should go straight away. It seems his son has come over from the US for Christmas. They may go away somewhere or whatnot.’
‘Do you have a number?’
‘I’m sorry, no.’
I consider rapidly. Nasik will have to wait. In view of Shinde’s accusations, meeting Modak’s the priority.
‘I was just on my way to the train station.’
‘Good. My dear friend, please to keep me advised of your movements. I will always aid you with every helpfulness. Now, a little word.’
‘Yes?’
‘Modak has the reputation of being cranky. His fellow-officers rather avoided him.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s a bit … he always felt hard done by.’
‘Was he?’
‘Well, he was always something of an outsider. For one thing, he’s Christian. His father converted. He was a district magistrate under the British. A big fish. But they sacked him during the war.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Anyway, try to humour him. He could be a gold mine.’
‘I can’t thank you enough, Rajeev.’
‘Modak had a difficult career,’ he adds, almost absent-mindedly.
‘How so?’
‘It must have been very hard for him after Independence. Do you know, he actually shot his own future boss during the Patri Sarkar agitation? When Nana Patil tried to escape from Sangli jail – in 1943, I think. Shot him in the back as he was running away.’ His voice tails off meditatively. ‘Yes, then your intended victim becomes chief minister of Maharashtra and you’re still in the force. To Nana’s credit, he never held it against Modak. He could have finished his career at a stroke.’
Rajeev’s warning tone doesn’t detract from my elation. If Modak’s cranky, it won’t be on my account.
Victoria Terminus is heaving, except for an area cordoned off with plastic tape, which, apart from a guard or two, is ominously empty. It’s hard to believe that so many people were gunned down here barely three weeks ago. I get a train easily enough and we’re soon on our way. It’s a relief to escape the intensity of Mumbai. Tiredness and heartache are slowly soothed by the laboured rhythm of the train chugging inland towards the Sahyadri mountains, known to the British as the Western Ghats. We climb ponderously through run-down Raj-era stations, each a shade cooler than the last, where I sense the ghosts of Kipling’s lovers and clubmen hovering on the platforms. The landscape ripples into ever deeper gorges beneath forested crests, the occasional village in a clearing dwarfed by huge blue skies.
As we reach the Deccan plateau on which Pune is situated, my apprehension mounts. I’m investing hugely in finding Modak. If anyone can vindicate Bill, it’ll surely be his comrade-in-arms of eighteen months during the Parallel Government agitation. But will Modak be willing to talk? What if he’s drawn a line across those troubled times, given what was evidently an awkward transition between service in the imperial Indian Police and its post-Independence successor? Yet he obviously did well enough, reaching the rank of commissioner. Now I think about it, I don’t remember any mention of him in Shinde’s account. Why not, if he was in Satara at the same time as Bill, and especially if he shot one of the leaders of the insurgency?
Central Pune is an unpleasant contrast to the still-gracious Fort area of Mumbai where I based myself; unsurprisingly, perhaps, since the city’s population has doubled to more than five million in just fifteen years, with no perceptible investment in infrastructure. At the station, long queues of Christmas travellers snake round the concourse, right into the road, each person clinging to the one in front like disaster victims.
‘Is for ticket offices. They do like that to stop queue-busters,’ my taxi-driver explains.
Getting around is one continuous dodgem-car snarl of close shaves, klaxons and frustrated drivers. For the first time, I see the kind of poverty I expected in Mumbai: disabled boys tapping at our windows, old men in rags, bewildered families squatting amongst their possessions on the teeming pavements, perhaps regretting their decision to migrate to the city. The driver weaves in and out of the bedlam, hand glued to his horn, overtaking any which way he can, mounting the pavement when all else fails.
Happily, the hotel I’ve booked turns out to be a delicious oasis of smoked glass and cool marble, with friendly and efficient staff. The receptionist shows me on the map where the Modaks live and recommends the German Bakery, on the same road, for a late lunch.
‘Everything’s prepared with sterilised water, only,’ she affirms.
I shower, change and catch an auto-rickshaw back through the mayhem round the station towards Koregaon Park. I feel as vulnerable as an egg in my open-sided carriage, staring aghast at the throbbing buses which bully beside us, inches away.
The pollution’s palpable as fog and I have to clamp a hankie over my nose against the fumes. Eventually we turn into the relative calm and green of ‘The Cantonment’, the old British garrison area and now HQ of the Indian Army’s Southern Command. Nothing’s visible behind the endless walls, with sentries at every corner, saluting the pennanted 4×4s which bustle past. Koregaon Park’s leafier still, though the greenery’s already gathering a rime of post-monsoon dust.
There are suddenly a fair number of Westerners, most clad in long maroon shifts. This area’s home to the Osho commune, where Bhagwan Rajneesh returned after being expelled from Oregon – with or without his collection of Rolls-Royces, I can’t remember. Along the pavements, shiny-faced acolytes greet each other with long hugs. Soon the tuk-tuk arrives at the German Bakery. But being this close to Modak, I’m suddenly too on edge for lunch. Instead I settle on cappuccino and a coconut macaroon.
As soon as I’ve finished, I head down Koregaon Park Road, searching for
no. 22. Vendors’ stalls clog the pavement, evidently catering to Oshoites, displaying regulation maroon robes, sunglasses, curios and cases of Red Bull. To my surprise my destination turns out to be a scaffolded house with workers slapping render on the front. It’s a while before they can find someone who speaks English. His face and stick-like arms are caked with cement dust.
‘House empty. Before Mr Sinha. New owners now.’
There’s no answer when I phone Rajeev’s mobile out on the street. When I call Inquiries for his landline, he’s listed as ex-directory. Nor do they have any E.S. Modak. I feel crushed. My quest seems to have come to a dead end again. I wonder if I should return to Mumbai.
Since I’ve paid for my room, however, I decide to take a look around Pune while I work out a plan. The Osho commune is supposed to be interesting, so I head there first. It’s down one of the streets leading at right angles off Koregaon Park Road. Strolling down Lane Two, as it’s called I realise I’ve stumbled on an architectural jewel. It’s all Art Deco buildings, in much better condition than those in Mumbai. Perhaps the monsoon’s not so damaging inland, or the owners more particular. I photograph a few houses, before finding myself outside a spectacular double-storeyed specimen with a curved frontage, painted fresh sage-green. The garden’s gorgeous, huge trees edging a smoothly shaved lawn. More vibrant colours, but the borders are clearly modelled on the English cottage garden. Seeing a man on the drive, I think it polite to ask permission for a photo. He doesn’t understand, but signals me to wait.
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