‘Nothing to find,’ Abhishek replied. ‘He is quite repellant.’
‘That he is. But enough material for your story?’
Abhishek noted the sarcasm in the voice. ‘Yes, sir. Thanks to you. But I must leave now. Getting very late.’
‘OK. But you know the amount of flak I will get from your colleagues for this? Everyone will want to know how you got to meet the accused and they did not.’
Abhishek smiled apologetically and hurried out.
He checked his phone. There were several missed calls from the office. He called his boss.
Amir was angry: ‘Where are you? Every channel has the bloody story on air and you have vanished.’
Abhishek explained, not in an entirely modest voice, that he had got an exclusive interview with the killer. If he was expecting kudos, that did not come.
‘That’s fine,’ Amir said. ‘But it takes a minute to let the desk know so that the website can be updated. We have been running wire stories.’
A
round the time Abhishek was sitting in the interrogation cell, Vikram had received a call from the commissioner’s staff officer. ‘Good evening, Shekhar-ji,’ he said.
‘Good evening, sir, good evening. Sorry to bother you on a weekend.’
‘Arre, what weekend. Patnaik had a press conference. Just heading back.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Shekhar said. ‘The commissioner just called me regarding this young reporter, Abhishek Dutta. I believe he was there.’
‘Yes, I met him. Why, something wrong?’
‘No, nothing much. The boss is impressed and wants to invite the boy for one of the year-end lunches. You decide when. Maybe coming week? But boss is wondering if he is getting a bit too good, no? Maybe you should check on him. He called the commissioner earlier to arrange for an interview with the accused. Boss had to agree.’
‘Really?’ Vikram was incensed. ‘Let me see what I can do.’
Abhishek Dutta had grossly overstepped his mark, Vikram thought. He had bypassed the press office and gone straight to the very top. The commissioner was right; the bugger needed to be taught the rules.
10
‘S
hall we go for a drink?’ Rahul proposed and, before his wife could object, Maya answered for the group.
‘Good idea. A drink after a movie is a must. Abhishek, do you know of any place around here?’
He shook his head. Abhishek liked the idea of spending time with Maya, but it was almost the end of the month and the bars in Saket, he had heard, were expensive.
Once a bustling, affordable neighbourhood on the outer circles of south Delhi, Saket, at the turn of the century, had attracted developers who were bent on turning it into another upmarket Defence Colony clone. Old houses and even older residents hesitantly exchanged their crumbling walls for brand-new apartments with modular kitchens. As an added incentive, there was cash; so much of it that the old-timers no longer had to suffer the indignity of their children’s fluctuating generosity. The developers got flats, the owners got flats, and there were even a couple left over for renting. The slightly shabby houses in this large residential area were being quickly replaced by identical-looking apartments. The few original abodes that remained looked distinctive and unnatural. Their owners, conscious of their particularity, now pursued the builders. Everyone seemed to have won.
New tenants moved in, newer cars arrived. There was money to be spent. The elderly wanted what television had for so long promised but impecuniousness denied, and the young tenants continued the lifestyles they’d adopted during their foreign degrees. Supermarkets stocked muesli, goat’s cheese and rocket salad. Bars fashioned fresh names for jaded cocktails.
The four journalists were heading towards one such establishment. It was a Sunday evening. Abhishek’s interview with Baldev Pujara had been carried as the second lead story. Amir had sat with him to write the article, drawing from the material a sense of atmosphere and drama. When Maya accused Amir of adding colour to a news story, he had promptly agreed. The story deserved it. Maya’s stricken face had reaffirmed her earlier warning to Abhishek: in a newsroom nothing was neutral.
‘What did you think of the film?’ Abhishek asked as they took their seats at Ruby Tuesday.
‘Oh, I loved it,’ Madhumita, Rahul’s wife, replied emphatically. ‘For once, not usual Bollywood. Quite alternative and brave.’
Rahul nodded and Abhishek was just about to agree when Maya interjected: ‘I think it was a clever film. It pretended to be alternative while pandering to our worst middle-class stereotypes.’
‘Arre yaar, at least let me order a drink first,’ Rahul pleaded with her in mock anguish, and winked at Abhishek. ‘Madam did sociology in college. Now you will get an earful.’
Madhumita looked peeved. ‘No, please. Do tell us your pronouncements.’
Maya, unmindful of the sarcasm, held forth. ‘OK. Let’s start with the film’s premise,’ she said. ‘Young Indian-American banker comes back on a sabbatical to do some social research. Firmly rooted in our middle-class imagination of foreign-returned and yet slightly alternative, she, like many of us, is bored by the mainstream. Her relationship with Aamir Khan, the good-looking artist, follows set patterns. In India you need a local thing going. Artist equals alternative, therefore good choice during her research phase. There is some muddling with a washerman or washer-boy, if you prefer, to show that you are not really class conscious. The boy is poor, but his aspirations and ambitions are ours. We have carefully crafted this rags-to riches story and his character fits right in. Poor boy wants to be rich and famous, and we will help him.’
‘So what is wrong with that?’ Madhumita asked with a look which suggested Rahul and Abhishek obviously shared her position.
‘What is wrong is that if it caters to the status quo, as you just agreed, then don’t call it alternative. And when have you seen a washer-boy with a six-pack and a stylish stubble?’
‘Well, it wasn’t a happy ending at least,’ Rahul ventured to support his wife, fearing the night ahead.
‘Agreed. It wasn’t a formula film. All I objected to was calling it radical.’ Maya spoke with the certainty of someone used to winning arguments.
There was an uncomfortable pause before Maya launched in again. ‘Do you remember the films we used to admire as kids, the old ones, those blockbusters from the ’60s and ’70s? Rahul, you still sing those songs, no? They were mostly about the poor man, the poor family. They were the central characters, the heroes. Now the washerman is the outsider and wants to be like us. We are the protagonists now. Perhaps in a way you are right, Madhumita. It is radical. But that is not the sort of radicalism you espouse, do you?’
Their drinks arrived, interrupting Maya’s flow. Rahul attempted various conversations but they petered out, as did the drinks, and he and Madhumita excused themselves early. ‘Sorry guys. Staying with parents is difficult. It’s a Sunday and they will be waiting for us for dinner.’
Abhishek and Maya nodded, relieved.
‘Bad vibes between you and Madhumita?’ Abhishek asked as soon as the couple left.
‘We worked together once. I think the competitive edge remains and the fact that I am much smarter still rankles.’
Abhishek laughed. ‘You were quite harsh.’
‘About the movie? Absolutely not. It is just silly to give the label “radical” to anything you find remotely different from the formulaic. But listen, do you want to have dinner?’ Maya saw the look of hesitation play on Abhishek’s face, and added, ‘It’s on me, OK? Take me out when you get your salary.’
He smiled gratefully. ‘Thanks, yes, I am a bit broke.’
They walked out of the bar and Maya recommended an Italian restaurant next door. ‘The pizzas are very good and I love their salads. Do you like Italian?’
Abhishek chose not to admit that except for his mother’s cooking and the vile university hostel fare, he knew nothing about food.
Inside, Maya ordered a bottle
of red, a Pinot Noir, from the Burgundy region in France. ‘I look at it this way,’ she remarked. ‘I just have to get used to being an ecological criminal.’
Abhishek hoped that silence would conceal his ignorance. Was she showing off, he wondered for a moment, and then let her expressive eyes convince him otherwise.
‘So, tell me about yourself.’ Maya leaned back.
‘You’d be bored and out of here in a minute.’
‘Look, if you are telling me that you are just a kid out of nowhere who comes in and does front-page reports with alarming regularity, becomes best mates with our crusty boss, and is generally the new hotshot of the reporting unit, then I am wasting money on expensive wine.’
‘You mean you are getting me drunk to extract information?’ Abhishek smiled at her.
‘I am far more devious, my darling, and can stoop even lower, but yes, that is a possible reason,’ Maya replied, with mischief in her eyes.
Abhishek shifted to safer terrain. ‘I grew up in Benares and then came to Delhi for my graduation. I spent two years in Kolkata in between. My father teaches English at the Benares Hindu University. From graduation till now I sold washing machines for a year and then worked at a security magazine.’
Maya stared at him, and then heaved a dramatic sigh. ‘Okay, I should cancel the wine.’
‘Really, that is my life. Nothing remarkable. But tell me about yours.’
‘I will tell you about mine, mister, when you buy the wine. This doesn’t go on the expense account, you know. In fact, as you definitely know, we don’t have an expense account. So let’s start again. Where were you born?’
Abhishek was born in Kolkata. His father taught English at Ashutosh College, but got into a fight with the head of the department. ‘You know how politicized the city is. The head was close to the ruling Communist Party and so was able to have my father transferred to Medinipur in south-western Bengal. He hated it. In fact, my father hates any place which is not Kolkata. After eight months there, he found this opening in Benares. Ma and two-year-old me followed a year later.’
The move was to be temporary, until this was patched and that was worked through, this political pressure applied and that party boss mollified. Abhishek was not sure when the sense of the transitory was given up for a compromised permanence.
‘We still go to Kolkata every year, during the puja festivities, and then again in the December holidays,’ Abhishek continued. ‘The one thing drilled into me was that Benares was temporary; home was somewhere else. But my father has finally acknowledged that he will never teach in Kolkata and now talks about retirement housing rather than departmental politics.’
‘What kind of a fight did he get into? Sounds quite serious if it was a life ban,’ Maya asked, her usual loquacity mellowed by interest in her dinner companion and the quality of the wine.
‘I am not sure of all the details. My father’s family comes from a landowning class and I think we had already fallen foul of the government. In anyone else’s case it might have been hushed over, but not in his.’
The Dutta family were not only landowners; his great-grandfather, Dev Shudhan Dutta, had been the city’s most famous homeopath. ‘I am told stories about him and about his daughter, my grandmother. She was quite a character in her younger days. Mohur Dutta – more of a whore Dutta.’ Abhishek looked up and smiled at the shocked face across the table.
‘Just for that one statement I will buy you drinks for a month, Abhi.’ Maya looked like she was finally getting her money’s worth. ‘I knew there was more to you than your Bambi-eyed self.’
‘Nothing to do with me.’ He laughed. ‘Didu died a month before I was born. My uncle doted on her and recreated a magical lady for me in his bedtime stories and afternoon yarns. Legend has it that she was quite a bold thing in the Kolkata of the ’40s, just before Independence. She married an Englishman, John Goldwater. He was an itinerant traveller and theatre performer. They had two kids together, and then, as quietly as he had appeared, he vanished. Didu returned home, took back her space and her name, and carried right on as if nothing had happened. It was scandalous, but she didn’t care.’
‘Have you ever seen your grandfather’s photo?’
‘No, never. I asked, but no one seems to have any.’
‘Oh, come on. There must be something.’
‘To be honest, my father really blocked out his mother and there was barely any conversation about her at home. In fact, he should take the credit for “more of a whore”, which came out when he and my uncle had some altercation over property matters. That’s the strange thing in the family, you know. My father and my uncle are locked in this prolonged legal battle over our ancestral home. Baba has exhausted all his money and we are in quite a bad way. But every year we go and stay with my uncle in that disputed house, and you would never know that the two brothers have gone to court. The family dynamics, on the face of it, haven’t changed.’
‘You Bengalis are strange. This educated, gentlemanly veneer …’
‘Yes, that’s our family.’ Abhishek laughed.
‘And your father – is he also a card-carrying Communist Party member like every good upper-class Kolkatan?’
‘No; he hates them. He says the only achievement of the Left in West Bengal is the creation of the office-going clerk who consumes ten cups of tea a day and plays carom all afternoon.’
The food came and Abhishek concentrated on his pizza. Maya, nibbling on a caesar salad, remarked, ‘It makes sense. The theatre movements dazzled Kolkata in the early ’40s. The Indian People’s Theatre Association had just been formed … in 1942, I think. How old was your grandma then?’
‘She was born in 1920. So she would have been in her early twenties at that point, and having a lot of fun. My great-grandfather was a big patron of theatre and there were always workshops happening at home. We still have this central courtyard where all sorts of stage personalities used to come. I have seen photos of Shombhu Mitra, Ritwik Ghatak and even Prithviraj Kapoor sipping chai there. Balraj Sahni, too, was a regular. My grandmother was involved with theatre from her childhood because of all this. And then my granddad came along.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Maya sipped her wine. ‘There were all manner of foreign nationalities roaming around in Kolkata during the war years. So your granddad wouldn’t have stuck out that much.’
‘Did you do history as well as sociology?’ Abhishek was impressed.
‘Actually yes, I graduated in history and then did a master’s in sociology.’
‘Oh, I graduated in history too.’
Maya revealed little about herself. She was a Delhi girl, her father worked in the government; she did not specify where. She had been a journalist for three years now and quite liked it, but wouldn’t continue for very long. It was time to get into more serious writing and research. ‘What about you? Are you liking it?’ she asked.
‘Journalism? Yes, I love it. There is so much going on and so much energy,’ Abhishek replied enthusiastically.
‘Really?’
Abhishek had clearly said the wrong thing and paused to hear why.
‘Energy? In sitting with those police morons and their supplicant reporters?’
‘Well, I think there are some good journalists. They all seem to love anti-establishment stories,’ Abhishek ventured.
‘Anti-establishment, my ass. All they do is get gossip from one police officer and write about another. Then the other gets even. That’s all. This friend of yours, Uday Kumar, he is a goon in police uniform. Do you know the number of people he has killed? If your reporters were honest, they would write about the fake encounters that he has staged. They know, but no one writes. There was a riot in north-east Delhi a few years back. I wasn’t around then, but I have seen photos. In one, your man is lying on his back on the road and is shooting blindly over his head into the crowd, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Like he thought he was Dirty Harry or something. No one published those snaps.’
; Maya signalled for the menu. ‘Do you want dessert? I am going to have a coffee.’
‘No; I am quite full, thank you. But can I ask something? If you know these things, why don’t you write about them?’
‘You are not getting my point, are you?’ Maya shook her head, her face now serious. ‘I am part of it. We all are. Every story has to conform to parameters. Break those and you are out. I didn’t even try; I knew. But you will learn this when you get something that really hurts the order. For now, enjoy the adulation.’
‘To be honest, I am petrified,’ Abhishek confessed. ‘What has happened to me in the last month is beyond my wildest dreams. Every day, I expect that the bubble will burst; somebody will expose me, my luck will run out. And then back to selling washing machines.’
‘Endearing,’ Maya said, smiling at him kindly. ‘Don’t worry; there are enough crooks around – and by crooks, I mean the police – for you to be in business for a long time. Moreover, you have Amir’s backing. You are safe.’
‘I am terrified of Amir. I never know where I am with him.’
‘He is a difficult character for all of us. He has been around so long now that he has become part of the furniture. He likes the fact that he belongs, but he resents being taken for granted.’
Maya emptied three sachets of sugar into her coffee. ‘I know, I know,’ she said, putting her hands up. ‘The only thing I share with you Bengalis is a sweet tooth.’
‘Not me. I hate sweets,’ Abhishek said, grimacing. ‘Every time we went to Kolkata, I was force-fed. As a kid, I had a paranoia of those aunties. The moment I crossed the doorstep, they’d be stuffing me with rosogollas.’
‘Yeah, actually you don’t seem the sweet-eating type. You are quite lean and thin.’
Maya’s remark caught Abhishek off guard and he blushed. Once again, he failed to respond the way he would have wanted to.
‘You were telling me about Amir,’ he said after an awkward pause.
‘Not much to tell. He sold himself short. Stayed back in the comfort of city-reporting, doing what he knew well. His colleagues and juniors moved on. People with half his talent climbed the rungs much faster. Initially he was defiant, later he became disgruntled. We all know that, and so does he. That’s what you see today – an excellent journalist who made his final move years ago. Now he just serves out time and tells newcomers like you stories of a glorious past.’ Maya spoke without malice.
The Price You Pay Page 12