Uday played the part of the bragging cop to perfection. But his mind was working away. Amir Akhtar came to him knowing something he should not have. Now this boy, working with Amir, had dropped in to see him with the commissioner’s reference. Uday Kumar did not believe in coincidences; he knew something was up.
Ten minutes later, he decided to wind down the act. ‘So, Abhishek, since you have come to me and given me the honour, I will help you. You are from Benares; my father grew up there. You fall into my relationship circle. We Biharis go by our hearts. Ask Amir. I trained him when he first started out. Now that you have me as your guru, I want payment – guru-dakshina.’ Uday grinned.
‘Whatever you say, sir,’ Abhishek replied. He understood the game: Defer to the man, flatter him and grovel slightly.
‘Arre bachche, you think you can give Uday Kumar anything? Big people of this city want to bestow gifts on Uday Kumar. By the grace of God, I lack nothing. I am a simple man and I intend to stay that way. But what I want,’ he continued with another intense look at Abhishek, ‘is that you work hard and you learn. The press are our colleagues. They work alongside us; they tell the people what we do. So you have to know, understand, and be responsible. I will teach you if you promise to work hard. OK?’
‘Yes, sir, of course.’ Abhishek nodded enthusiastically.
‘First thing you have to do is understand the city. You are an outsider like I once was. You have to feel its pulse; know it at different times of the day and night.’
Uday turned to Mayank. ‘Do you still go out on night patrol?’
‘Not since I have been posted here, sir. It is not required at the Crime Branch,’ the officer replied.
Uday slapped the desk in disgust. ‘Not required? It is not required that an old man like me slave away with no hope of promotion or perks. But I do it, no?’
Mayank looked suitably chastened.
‘Right! Abhishek, Mayank will take you out on night patrol, a night gasht. Go this Friday. Take him to your office and fix the details. And you, Abhishek, you must tell me what you saw in the city. Write me two pages, OK? I want to see what you observe. Don’t worry; I will give you stories. Uday Kumar will make you a star.’ He smiled. The act was over.
‘Thank you for your help, sir.’ Abhishek was genuinely grateful.
The deputy commissioner nodded at both men, indicating dismissal.
‘M
aya,’ Amir called from his cabin.
‘Coming, just a minute,’ she yelled. Walking across the reporting room towards the boss’s cabin, she was aware of Abhishek’s eyes on her.
‘Sit,’ Amir said, his eyes on the computer screen. ‘Please tell me something. Why does every news story become a feature with you? “Government poised to grant minority status to Jamia Millia Islamia University.” That’s enough. Why add colour to this news item?’ He sounded exasperated. ‘You want to be a writer, write for the features page whenever you like. City pages require reporters.’
‘I never get time to write for anyone else, Amir.’ Maya sounded hurt.
‘How will you get time? You are too busy flirting with the new boy,’ he said, now grinning.
‘Shush!’ She giggled. ‘What are you saying, Amir? You are such a gossip.’
‘OK, listen, take everyone’s order. I’m calling the club. And tonight will be a late one; it’s Vivek’s farewell too.’
Maya left his cabin and called out loudly, ‘Place your orders, guys. Who is having what?’
Every second Friday, Amir made it a point to gather the reporting unit at the Press Club. When the management offered to pick up the tab, terming it a ‘bonding exercise’, the chief reporter refused. ‘Just gossip and bitching, Mihir-da,’ he said to his editor later. ‘Can’t have those bastards intruding. Next they will ration our drinking and make me draw pie charts.’
Rahul said he could not make it. He had been married a month now to his long-time girlfriend and reporter at Sunday Times, Madhumita Biswas, and was avoiding the club.
Amir laughed at him over the partition. ‘Rahul, stop being ridiculous. People start drinking after marriage and you are trying to give up? Won’t work. Call Madhumita too. Drinks are on me.’ He paused and looked at Abhishek, sitting quietly amid the loud drinks’ orders. ‘And you are coming too. Vivek’s farewell should be your initiation.’
A
lthough he must have passed it several times, Abhishek had never really noticed the derelict, almost decrepit two-storey building on Raisina Road. Located opposite the ostentatious Chelmsford Club and a stone’s throw from various national symbols – Parliament, Rashtrapati Bhavan and India Gate – the Press Club was not an architectural marvel. There were no liveried doormen at the gates, and the men’s urinal was situated unashamedly close to the entrance. A tiny glass-panelled enclosure served as a reception where Amir signed in the new recruit.
As he pushed open the door to the main dining hall, Abhishek was surprised at the smell of cigarettes that clung to the air. The smoking ban in restaurants and clubs had been in place for years, but the journalists decreed that the law was an ass and wrote their own in great plumes that lingered in the air.
The neon strip lights contributed to the Press Club’s seedy, shabby feel. The sunmica-covered tables, the cheap whisky in thick tall glasses, and the well-used plates completed the scene.
Abhishek mentioned his observations to Rahul, who replied brusquely: ‘This bunch of people is one of the most powerful in the country. Don’t be fooled by the decor.’
Maya, Abhishek noticed, had conspired to sit next to him. ‘Great food. The rum tastes like fertilizer, but it’s thirty rupees a peg,’ she said, and told him to try the shammi kebabs. Abhishek caught Amir winking at her and wondered at the joke.
Twenty minutes later, Vivek joined them. Amir got up to give him a hug. ‘You come late even for a drink?’ he said, slapping Vivek’s back.
‘And you keep time even when you are drunk,’ Vivek shot back. ‘Good evening, guys.’ He pulled up a chair next to Abhishek. ‘How was the meeting with the big boss?’ he whispered.
‘Went really well. Can’t thank you enough.’
‘Don’t worry about thanking me. I extract my dues.’ Vivek’s eyes shone with mischief. ‘So, give me details.’
Abhishek, in a low voice, summarized his meeting with the commissioner.
‘Excellent. Well done. Now go easy and never tell anyone I gave you the tip-off. I don’t want to appear soft in my middle age.’
Abhishek nodded, basking in Vivek’s praise and obvious delight.
‘But you should know that you have failed as a reporter,’ Vivek added, taking a gulp of his whisky. ‘You trusted what I said. How did you know that I was not setting you up? You are, after all, my competition now. Never trust anyone in this profession.’
‘I didn’t. I went to the Security Lines and checked out what you’d told me.’
Vivek’s smugness dropped momentarily. ‘What?’ he spluttered. ‘You went there?’
‘Yes, I went the very next day.’ Abhishek told Vivek that at the Delhi Police Security Lines, he had asked for Constable Balbinder Singh.
‘Who Balbinder Singh?’ a guard at the reception desk had queried.
‘Balbinder Singh, the sardarji, the Sikh gentleman … ?’ Abhishek had nervously replied.
The guard was dismissive. ‘No, we don’t have sardars here. You are mistaken.’
‘I apologized and left immediately,’ continued Abhishek. ‘Your information was one hundred per cent correct, Vivek sir. Sorry, I did not mean any offence.’
‘I will watch out for you, Abhishek Dutta,’ Vivek said slowly, staring at him. ‘You’re going to be a handful.’
Rahul left soon after, Madhumita in tow, sparking off derisive laughter from the table. ‘He is such a mouse in front of her. It is funny … his bravado in the office and then, Madhumita shows up and he becomes all silly,’ Maya smirked to Abhishek.
The bell rang for the final orders
and there was a scramble towards the bar. Amir took orders for another round. Abhishek refused. From this world of loud gestures and casual claims, the new reporter slipped out for his night gasht unobserved.
6
‘M
y parents feel that the coming of the Maruti car changed Delhi in the ’80s,’ Mayank told Abhishek. ‘My father is emphatic that it took away the stability of the Ambassador and the Fiat with a flimsiness that, over time, started to reflect in us.’
It was past 1 a.m. The awkwardness of two young men meeting in a forced context was being mitigated by a glass of sweet milky tea at a roadside stall, the heat generated from the flickering gas burner providing some relief from the mid-November cold. They were in Seemapuri, a district at the outer extremities of north-east Delhi. Abhishek lived close by, in Mayur Vihar, an area dotted with unimaginative but adequate concrete blocks for the city’s middle class. On learning this, Mayank had decided that they should start their night’s journey there. ‘Let me introduce you to your neighbours,’ he had said.
When he met Abhishek outside the Press Club, Mayank had offered him two choices. He could either spend the night in a police station to see how things operated, or they could roam the city: go to various police checkpoints, see the positions of the Police Control Room vans, get a feel – as Uday Kumar had said – of Delhi. For Abhishek, the choice had been obvious.
‘Good, I like driving,’ Mayank said, and they’d climbed into his jeep.
It had taken fifty minutes to drive from New Delhi to Seemapuri. On the way, Mayank had stopped to inspect three PCR vans. Abhishek was amused by the dozing policemen, their initial irritation at being disturbed and then their clumsy, snappy efforts to come to attention. In the first van, the policemen had taken off their belts and shoes and were sharing what looked like a bottle of alcohol. Mayank patiently waited with Abhishek as the policemen dressed. He’d then asked to see their night logbooks.
‘Shanti hai, sir. All quiet. We just did two rounds,’ one of the policemen had muttered. Mayank checked the book, nodded and left.
After they’d found the constables in the third van asleep, one with his head on the wheel and the other in the back, Mayank felt he should explain. ‘The inspector and his deputies have fixed nights for patrolling. These policemen know the duty patterns. They were not expecting us tonight.’
The two young men finished their tea, ordered another round and moved towards the footpath, close to a fire made from cardboard boxes, newspapers, a few pieces of wood and bicycle tyres. The warmth compensated for the stench of burning rubber as they squatted on the pavement next to three crouching men gazing into the fire.
‘At the police academy,’ Mayank continued, ‘I was obsessed with understanding crime patterns in cities. For example, a port city like Mumbai or Chennai is very different to Delhi. There is hardly any organized crime here; no Dawood Ibrahim or Chhota Rajan.’
Abhishek was tempted to ask his new friend about Babloo Shankar, but resisted.
‘I should qualify that,’ Mayank added quickly. ‘Delhi saw terrorism much before Mumbai. I can’t remember the exact date, but it was definitely sometime in 1980 when the first terrorist strike happened. The chief of the Nirankari sect was killed. What was the name?’ He pondered for a moment. ‘Yes, Baba Gurbachan Singh and his bodyguard Pratap Singh.’
A boy brought the tea and both men fell silent, enjoying its comfort. Lighting a cigarette, Abhishek cued Mayank: ‘You were saying about Delhi in the ’80s.’
‘Yes … Actually everything really changed after 1984. Indira Gandhi’s murder and the anti-Sikh riots destroyed the city. I was too young, but my parents still talk about the horror. So many Sikhs were killed, men burnt, women raped. And look at our criminal justice system. The court cases go on even now and the guilty roam openly, especially the politicians. I am sure you know.’
‘I know the basic facts, but not much,’ Abhishek admitted.
‘Yes, too recent history to be taught in classrooms. After the riots, there was a spurt of terrorist strikes. In 1985, there were bomb blasts on three consecutive days: 10, 11 and 12 May. Transistor radios were used as set-off devices. Then, on 31 July, a member of Parliament, Lalit Maken, and his wife were killed along with another party colleague.’
‘You have some memory, Mayank,’ Abhishek said appreciatively, stubbing out his cigarette.
‘Sorry, maybe I am showing off now.’ Mayank sounded embarrassed. ‘But Uday sir instructed me to give you a bit of background.’
‘It’s fascinating. Please go on.’
‘Well, several other political leaders were killed in the following months. My mother’s family is very well connected in the Congress party, so these are all familiar names. After Maken, on 4 September Arjun Das, a member of the Metropolitan Council, was killed in Laxmi Bai Nagar … Look, I could go on but we should head off now if you want to check out the police station.’ Mayank looked at his watch. ‘It’s one thirty.’
‘Yes, let’s go. Thanks, this has been really educative.’ Abhishek stood up. ‘I thought policemen were kind of … you know … like constables on the road, taking bribes and harassing people.’
‘That’s our public image and quite rightly too,’ Mayank said, paying for the tea. ‘Do you want to walk a bit?’ he asked. ‘The police station is just five minutes away, we can then go towards central Delhi where I was posted earlier and maybe, if we have time, I will show you some interesting things that happen in the posh parts of our diplomatic enclaves. What do you say?’
‘All sounds very good to me, Mayank. Thank you again.’
As they stepped into the by-lanes of Seemapuri, Abhishek was surprised by all the activity. Despite the winter night and the late hour, carts crunched the potholed roads, people lurched by carrying sacks on their backs, an old Hindi song floated down from an upstairs window and a group of children played hopscotch under a street light.
A few auto drivers slept in their tiny open vehicles. Others, finding the cold impossible to bear, congregated in silence around small fires. The narrow lanes and the houses haphazardly constructed on top of one another reminded Abhishek of home. ‘Quite like Benares,’ he remarked to Mayank.
‘Nothing holy about this place though. Most of these guys are smack addicts.’ Mayank indicated the crouching silhouettes.
‘Who said anything about holy? It’s exactly the same in Benares. Charas addicts are everywhere in the old town. My parents made sure to keep me away.’
‘Where did you live in Benares?’ Mayank asked.
Abhishek had grown up in the campus of the Benares Hindu University where his father was a professor of English. He went to the Central School quite close to home. ‘Protected, government-coddled existence. I then went to Kolkata for my higher secondary. All my relatives amassed in that city, so I suffered another kind of coddling. And then Delhi University for graduation. I was at Hindu College. I bet you were a Stephenian?’
Mayank smiled at the reference to the decades of rivalry between Delhi University students from every other college and those from the decidedly superior – a fact grudgingly admitted – St Stephen’s. ‘No such chance. Went to IIT Delhi. I was a computer geek,’ he replied. ‘This way,’ he said, turning left onto a main street, where the lights of the police station became visible. ‘I studied computer-science engineering. My doctoral thesis was on cyber crime. I submitted it only after I joined the force. That was tough. IIT does not take things lightly,’ he said.
Abhishek wasn’t surprised to hear that Mayank was a product of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology that came up as pillars of modernity under Nehru in the 1950s and still retained their edge, despite the continued privatization of higher education.
At the police station, the duty officer had to be summoned and he arrived looking dishevelled; a mousy, sad-mouthed man with small eyes and a thin moustache on a flat face. He was apologetic, and Mayank, despite his status, seemed even more so.
‘I was on a rando
m patrol, Om Prakash-ji. So just dropped by. Don’t bother yourself.’
‘No-no, sir, not at all,’ he protested. ‘It is a privilege; an officer like you coming by. What can I get, sir – something to eat, tea, coffee?’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ they both insisted.
Ten minutes later, after their third round of tea, the two young men managed to leave the police station. Om Prakash pleaded to be allowed to drive them to Mayank’s jeep or at least have it brought to the police station. In the end, they let him accompany them to the vehicle.
‘Good night, sir. Please come again,’ Om Prakash said, bending forward to clasp Mayank’s hand between his own. He circled the jeep and shook hands with Abhishek, saluting as they drove away.
‘I know the policeman is a hated figure,’ Mayank said, driving carefully through the narrow lanes, ‘but imagine this: Om Prakash stays away from his family for four to five nights a week, patrolling these streets in the cold; he lives in really inhospitable barracks with others like him; goes home briefly and then back to work again within hours. For years on end, it’s the same routine. We officers have ambitions. We have cars, houses, family lives. What do these men have? Oh yes, they are corrupt and I do not condone corruption. But over the last two years, I have started to understand some of it.’
They turned onto the near-empty highway towards ITO, the jeep’s headlights carving columns of light through the smoky mist. Mayank stepped on the accelerator. ‘You know who piss me off ? The officers, people like me, who conduct daylight robberies. The constable takes money from a truck driver; you see it – the officer gets his cut behind closed doors; you miss it. As you were saying, your view of police is that of the corrupt constable on the street. But I can assure you, the officers are far worse.’
They turned right onto Laxmi Nagar, heading towards the Yamuna Pushta bridge.
The Price You Pay Page 6