Bhrigu Mahesh, Phd

by Nisha Singh

  ‘Sir’ she said, looking straight at me and I could feel my heart awkwardly miss a beat. ‘My husband would only contact me again if he wanted me back in his life. And if he took any action in this direction, don’t you think it would hardly matter to anyone what I said in the first place? People wag their tongue only when they catch the whiff of a scandal. They steer clear of anything that only goes into the making of something acceptable by all. There is no fun in that. Hence, I am safe either ways.’

  ‘You…you are right, S…Savita ji’ I said, overcoming my loss of confidence of a moment before. To distract the state of affairs at hand, I asked. ‘For how long have you been staying here?’

  ‘Three years.’ she replied in a small voice.

  ‘Have ever thought of relocating?’ Bhrigu asked again. ‘What can you possibly hope to gain here? There is no harm in starting afresh. You still have a shot at good life.’

  ‘I…I know but…’ she struggled with herself, as if she wanted to express herself but could not find the proper words. ‘And I tried but I still don’t have enough energy or courage left inside me to go out in society again. Let me heal completely, sir, and God willing…’ In her voice had crept a note of determination. ‘One day for my son, I will.’

  That concluded our meeting with Savita. Bhrigu was quiet in the silence that followed the interview and I think he kept pondering over whatever he had just heard. I did not know how he had received the narrative but from his face it was abundantly clear that he was feeling a modicum of pain and, if it was not imagined, the slightest of alarm.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ I asked, failing once again to control myself.

  ‘Savita is a fine woman.’ he replied as if in a trance. ‘A finer woman than her I have yet to see. And that is exactly why I am worried for her.’

  ‘Why should you worry if she is a fine woman?’ I asked, confused. ‘She will go from strength to strength, I am sure.’

  ‘If she is not pulled apart, that is.’ he replied slowly.

  However hard I tried that he explains more clearly his cryptic remarks, the stubborn man simply retreated in his blasted shell and as he had done with me many a time before, refused to budge. He took a mint gum from his backpack and started working it slowly in his mouth. I now knew that he would be lost to me and the world in general for at least an hour or two and an idea occurred to me of capitalizing on the moment. Taking out my laptop that for once was charged, owning to an unnatural burst of electricity in the night where I had left my laptop plugged in, in case, I sat to compose my article titled. ‘Why the Prime Minister should get insured now.’

  I can give my audiences a detailed account of what ever happened after our interview with Savita but the problem is that our interest is only held affectively if we concentrate on things which are outside the realm of the ordinary. If, by any chance, the narrative falls in the deadly zone of the mundane, a person quickly finds that his interest is sapping faster than you could say ‘Fast.’ The point I am trying to make is that I stick to my principle, while relating a case story, to deliberately omit all those unsavory elements that in no way contribute in the clearing of a mystery or in throwing a significant light upon a portion of the hidden picture. For example, if I related to my readers how Nataraj Bhakti bored us one evening with a not-so-hilarious account from his days as a clerk, you would surely thank me profusely for having saved you from that slow torture that I had to endure. Or if I wrote how Premkala made a mess of a couple of dinners by forgetting to add salt in the curry (I secretly believe she deliberately did it. The woman is capable of anything), you would surely criticize me by complaining that I am deliberately exploiting this medium to vent my own personal grievances. You would also judge me harshly if I reveal the details of the brawl that happened between Manjunath Gupta and Chiranjeev when the former accused the latter of speaking ill will against him to the village’s main vegetable man, and how they hurled invectives at each other, coming into a hitting distance three or four times but surprisingly not succeeding in touching as much as a hair of each other. What is the use of wasting precious pages and taxing the patience of the readers if doing so did not amount to anything? What pleasure will you get if I wrote that I did not take bath for two days straight only because there was no water in the tap? Or what satisfaction would you derive if I confessed that I was now on the verge of a collapse in these supremely uncomfortable circumstances? None. My friend went about talking easily with Savita here, Bhakti there, Premkala here again; scribbling something or the other in his diary, advancing on his book on ‘Strange mental illnesses’, chewing and meditating and paying as much attention to me as a teacher pays a backbencher. I would rather edit all these not so sweet nothings and give you a general account of how the matters progressed there on.

  For one thing, there was no haunting to report at all. For a week straight, we were as vigilant as a soldier posted on the border for any sign of the supernatural and equally receptive to any activity; sound or movement of the unseen phantom but nothing happened to stir us in anyway. The comb too did not move an inch from where our host had last placed it. Yes, once or twice Bhakti would come running to us complaining of a pseudo terror but it turned out to be nothing more than the residual effect of a shock from the past and the overworked imagination of a suffering man. My friend kept a keen eye on everyone in the house and took many trips to Damyanti’s room, standing there immobilized as if in a day dream but the crux of the matter remained that the situation had frozen in time. Nothing remotely strange occurred to take the mystery further and it looked as if we were caught up in an old house struggling to provide nervous shelter to a few unfortunate human beings.

  When I could not take it anymore and announced to my friend that he does something or I would pack my bags and leave, he had to finally relent. ‘Alright’ he said, twelve days from the Savita interview. ‘I too have come to believe that there is no good staying here. I will inform Mr. Bhakti that we will be leaving tomorrow. If anything happens, he has to contact us at once.’

  With these lines that were all but music to my ears, I happily set about packing my bag.

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 23

  A Frantic Call

  While we were returning in an awkward mini-bus, bursting with people, that Chiranjeev had arranged for us, we made our acquaintance with an old man who sat nervously in the middle of the seat that Bhrigu and I shared. He had already taken his place beside my friend before I could claim it and hence I had to contend with occupying the aisle seat and risking a couple of village women dangling over me, threatening to fall into my lap with every small bump in the road.

  ‘Nataraj Bhakti had gone into a stupor when we told him of our decision to leave.’ I said, shouting over the din produced by the chattering of a million people stuffed inside the bus. ‘I thought he might go into a coma.’

  ‘The poor man had gotten into the way of thinking that our staying there had anything to do with the phantom keeping at bay.’ he replied, raising his voice just a note above his normal.

  ‘And do you feel so?’

  ‘My feelings do not matter, Sutte.’ he replied. ‘Even if I say ‘Yes’, its hardly going to solve the crisis. So why bother?’

  ‘Do you think his troubles are over?’

  ‘That we will see.’

  ‘And’ I said after a thought. ‘What did you and Savita talk about when we were leaving?’

  ‘Nothing much.’ he said. ‘I told her to take care of herself and she asked me to be the keeper of her secret. No one should know anything. Not even her elder brother.’

  ‘Oh.’ I said and added almost involuntarily. ‘Did she say anything to you about me?’

  ‘About you?’ he said, surprised at first and then his lips curled into a suggestion of mischief. ‘Why yes. She said that she is crazy about you.’

  ‘R…really?!’ I cried, almost faint with the pleasant s
hock but then as he burst into laughter, I realized that he had played one of his cruel jokes at me. Curse him.

  At this point, the septuagenarian, who was sitting between us, coughed gently. He first looked at Bhrigu as a man groping in the dark and then repeated the procedure with me. Clearly, behind those thick glasses the condition of his eyes was less than satisfactory. ‘Son’ he finally said in a thick, tremulous voice. ‘Do you, by any chance, know Nataraj Bhakti?’

  ‘Yes.’ I replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘H…he is a good friend of mine.’ he replied, pleased.

  ‘Really?’ I said and refrained to ask anything else. These old people have a tendency to break into a story if you happen to encourage them in the slightest. And this man, judging by his slow, tiresome way of speaking looked the perfect example of that species. He had an aura of a thoroughbred talker and I knew better than to provoke him in any way.

  He waited impatiently for me to ask further questions and I could see that in the way he tapped his walking stick but I kept my mouth resolutely shut. My friend was watching out the window, lost by now, in his own thoughts and hence I was safe from any query arising from his side.

  ‘I am the Pradhan of Krishna Dwar Gram.’ he helped himself, after observing that he was not going to get entertained in anyway. ‘Bulla Ram Prakash.’

  ‘Good to know that.’ I said, hoping to nip the chatter in its bud.

  ‘I know Raj beta, from when he was but a boy.’ he continued, and I understood with a sinking feeling that all my precautions had failed. ‘He is a good man. Humble and respectful.’

  ‘He sure is.’

  ‘But tell me, what is this matter of phantoms you talk about?’

  ‘Oh nothing.’ I replied, getting irritated by his unwanted interference. ‘We were just talking about an old movie we saw. That’s all. Your friend had become quite frightened after watching it.’

  ‘Oh’ he replied and grinned broadly. I could see that he had only two canines in his upper jaw and the rest of the teeth were conspicuously absent. ‘I too, am afraid of ghosts. It once happened that…’

  ‘Sir’ I said, panicked at the prospect of being the next in the long line of victims he must have claimed till now. ‘I…I am now going to sleep.’

  ‘Oh’ he replied as if crushed. As I closed my eyes and pretended to drift into slumber, a man must have approached us as I could hear his happy voice. ‘Pranam, Bulla Chacha. Where are you off to?’

  ‘Sakha, you?’ he replied, pleased again. ‘I am going to the Tuesday market. Dr. Prapanch has called for a check up.’

  ‘So at last he has come.’ said the other man. ‘He has been absconding for the last two months.’

  ‘Yes. But how can you blame him. Every other doctor does the same.’

  ‘Hmm’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘The usual.’

  ‘Right.’ Bulla Ram replied. ‘You are a very hard working man.’

  I could not know what ‘the usual’ was, of course.

  There was a silence of about five minutes when the man resumed. ‘You know, Chacha, I was hoping we could change our house.’

  ‘Why, son?’ replied an alarmed Bulla Ram. ‘Yours is a house where lived three generations.’

  ‘Yes’ he replied somberly. ‘But we have no peace nowadays. The family living next to us fight with each other so much that the noise becomes quiet unbearable sometimes. You know, they have a habit of dragging their fight outside, where there kitchen is, and the woman hurls whatever utensil she finds, sometimes directed at her husband and sometimes in the general direction of her anger. My son, Puttan, got hurt by a flying vessel. I had to ship him to the district hospital. So much blood was coming out of his head.’

  ‘Shiv! Shiv!’ cried Bulla Ram, stirred to the depths. In his agitated state he struck his walking stick against the floor of the bus. ‘That’s outrageous!’

  ‘Yes’ went on Sakha. His voice had become more animated with emotion as he found an eager listener in the elderly. ‘We are having such a hard rime. My wife and Lakshmi, who lives next door, are good friends and she tried to talk some sense into her but…but my wife says that she behaved like a woman possessed! She was out for her husband’s blood!’ He gulped visibly and began again. ‘It’s strange considering the fact that only a few months ago, the husband and wife were living happily with their five children. Not a bitter word we heard that they spoke against each other. None.’

  ‘Now when you s…say it.’ Bulla Ram said slowly but carefully. ‘I have also observed that domestic fights have increased in this village. Only a little while ago, everything was as peaceful as in the next village but…but then complaints started coming to the Panch about petty issues of domestic life. Previously, they used to solve their problems by tact and understanding but…but now it seems like the slightest of troubles is enough to throw them at each other’s neck! Only yesterday, a disgruntled Ram Manohar…’ And here he went on to narrate a squabble from the above mentioned person’s married life.

  I don’t know when I drifted off to sleep but when I woke up, I found that Bulla Ram had gotten off and that sight gave me a lot of pleasure.

  The bus dropped us at the Krishna Dwar Railway Station and a five hours journey in the train took us back home. We parted ways at Patna station, deciding to meet the next day at Bhrigu’s house for lunch. I reached the shack (My house was called ‘The Shack’) barely before sun set and received form my servant, Kamla Nath, the information that my parents where going to pay me a visit for a couple of days. They had fallen into the annoying habit of calling my servant cum caretaker instead of me owning to the one indisputable fact that he was way more excited to hear of their arrival than I ever was. The reason for my apparent callousness is simple. I love my old folks to distraction but I had recently observed that after the 55th birth anniversary of my father, he had become quiet stubborn in his ways, especially those that involved me. Previously, I could easily avoid the topic of my potential engagement in the ‘Sutte Rubber tyres and Spare parts’ but as the days wore on after his aforementioned birthday, I found that I was having a hard time extricating myself from the grotesque discussion. He would burn down my defenses with one searing look of the eye and then as I stood before him, weak and defenseless, he would embark on an unbearable lecture of how it was my duty to take care of the family business by accepting to succeed after him. Whatever I said these days had no effect on him and my mother, as usual, remained a silent spectator, watching her son get mauled by this grizzly entrepreneur. Reason, entreaties, blackmail, he withstood all with the will of a man out to do business, if you could pardon the pun, that is. To my evergreen answer of ‘I am not cut out for all of this’, he substituted his standard ‘Oh, alright. I said it because it was my duty to say so.’ with an ‘Oh, Stop it, will you? Everyone is cut out for anything only if they put their mind and heart to it. ‘Sutte Rubber tyres and Spare parts’ runs in your blood. I will have none of the usual nonsense.’

  So you can clearly see why I was ignoring his calls lately. But like a shrewd business man he had found a way to out-maneuver my every stealthy move.

  I had to cancel my lunch with Bhrigu because Kamla Nath came running to me with the phone still glued to his ear to inform me that my parents were due today afternoon. With that knowledge, came the going-to-the-station-receiving party-making-them-comfortable-in-the-house routine. After that, I got so busy dodging my father and trying to keep my head above water in general that I forgot all about the mystery that had come at the heels of my friend and I. One phone call from Bhrigu, though, was enough to seal the event in my memory for eternity. I can never forget the raw, pulsating pain; the sheer anguish in his voice when he said-

  ‘Sutte, where the hell have you disappeared?’

  ‘I…I was caught up in some domestic problems.’

  ‘Well, hold your problems right where they are.’
<
br />   ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we have a greater one on our hands.’ he replied with a catch in his voice. ‘Savita…’

  ‘Savita?!’ I cried, panicking at the thought of any harm done to her. ‘What about her?’

  ‘She is dead.’

  CHAPTER 24

  A Fancy Funeral

  ‘When…how…what…what are you saying?’

  ‘Nataraj Bhakti called me yesterday.’ he replied. ‘He broke the grim news to me. He was crying inconsolably and I could not make out the details.’

  I could feel my heart sinking to a place that I never thought existed. ‘You know…I…I was going to talk to my parents about her.’

  ‘Your parents? Why?’ and then he slowly added, ‘It was clear that you liked her very much indeed.’

  ‘Very’

  ‘We will spare nothing in catching the culprit.’ he said with a reassuring voice.

  ‘The culprit?’ I replied, shocked. ‘Do…do you think…’

  ‘Yes’ he replied. ‘I always had a very uneasy feeling about her but…but I never thought someone could go to this extreme.’

  ‘Hmmm’ I managed. This news brought on such heaviness with it that for a while I thought I could not breathe.

  We were in the train bound to Krishna Dwar. After this short conversation, the rest of the journey passed in a heavy silence that threatened to suffocate me every now and then. The fields outside the window whizzed past me but I could hardly notice anything. A family sat beside us with two little children and the people in our compartment were busy entertaining them with fruits and candies and enjoying their antics. I felt a powerful urge to stop this tomfoolery at once. When the train stopped at the Maniyar station, neither of us yearned for that delicious cup of tea that, under ordinary circumstances, would have looked too good to resist. We sat there like immovable pieces of log, trying to swallow the news we had just received and failing quite miserably at it. Finally as the train drew closer to the Krishna Dwar station, I said mechanically- ‘We have arrived.’