Category: Stories

Police Inspector Vilas Shinde was very excited; finally, after routine calls of noise-pollution during Navratri and all too familiar cases of eve-teasing, drunken-driving and even unwanted pregnancies, now, there was a real case of murder. At last, he sighed, a real crime to trigger his adrenalin rather than those boring petty offences. So far, anyway he looked at it, it defeated him. First of all, at the behest of victim Mahesh’s family, it was registered as a case of murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code even though the police hadn’t been able to find the motive for the murder, let alone find its object: the dead-body. That was on the basis of a suicide-note allegedly penned by Mahesh, which, even Shinde had to admit, had obvious anomalies.

The more Shinde looked at it, the more he was fascinated by it. At a very young age, he had read most of the works of Sherlock Holmes and he had started regarding himself as the person who was the modern-day avatar in India of the 19th century sleuth at 221B, Baker Street, London.

Shinde knew that one day, he would be able to crack the case and make himself eligible for promotion and public adulation.

Veena loved the festival of Navratri, particularly Sharad Navratri, celebrated every year in the months of September/October (Hindu month of Ashvin) to celebrate Goddess Durga’s victory over Mahishasur and of Lord Rama over Ravana. However, in her case as also for her friends in Maharashtra, Navratri goes beyond Durga and Rama and extends to other gods and goddesses such as Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kali, Ganesha, Kartikeya, Shiva and even Krishna. It satiated her religious quest and it was a great social and cultural event that went on for nine evenings and nights. She particularly liked both Garba and Dandiya dances and in her circles, she was known as an accomplished and graceful dancer.

But then, so was Mahesh; not just handsome but also great to watch when he was dancing Garba and Dandiya. Many girls went out of their way to beat their sticks against his whilst going around in swirling dance movements, re-enacting the sword-dance or the mock-fight between Goddess Durga and Mahishasura, the demon king.

Veena and Mahesh had grown up together in their colony in Borivali, a Western Mumbai suburb. Their parents were great friends too. Veena’s parents had produced three daughters, all having names starting with the letter ‘V’; Veena was the eldest, then there was Vibha and the youngest was Vishranti. Mahesh was the only son of his parents. Mahesh’s father Mahendra Nath often teased Veena’s father Vikas that the latter kept producing daughters, in a quest to get a son, and rested (Vishranti means rest or relaxation) only after producing three and still seeing no signs of a son. Both the fathers knew that this was only a joke since, in their families, girls were not considered a curse, unlike in many other parts of the country. Vikas had retorted to Mahendra Nath that the latter’s son was latter’s only for the time being until he married one of the Vs: Veena, Vibha or Vishranti. Everytime they indulged in this light-hearted banter, they cemented not just their relationship of past decades but also of the future.

Veena and Mahesh were nearly of the same age; Mahesh was older by about six months. So, it was considered natural that both should have mutual attraction. He had graduated from the JJ College of Arts and had emerged a painter with enormous promise. Indeed, some of his paintings had been displayed in art galleries including the famous Jehangir Art Gallery at Kala Ghoda in South Mumbai. Veena had just finished her Master of Science from Xavier’s and was undergoing a Diploma Course in Forensic Science. Her mind was, she found out at a very early stage in life, full of inquisitiveness and investigative skills; much more than an average female mind that effortlessly spots the minutest piece of foreign hair on the coat or shirt of her husband.

When she enrolled for the course, Mahesh joked with her that he was already scared of her lest he should leave some tell-tale signs of his aberrations. What aberrations are you thinking of? I would kill you, she had responded equally jokingly.

But jokes apart, Veena had felt that Mahesh wasn’t very serious about their relationship. There was something amiss and she sometimes sighed that it must be lack of commitment. At first she had thought of it as the usual shyness of boys and girls of their age. But, later she felt that perhaps he was undecided and wanted to explore a bit before making a final choice.

She had decided that perhaps it would help him decide faster if she were to afford them a degree of privacy that wasn’t possible at home, what with her other sisters and parents always around. Hence, she had started planning to visit places with him – a little on the secluded side – and perhaps hasten up the process of his committing to her for life. Until then, the only places that they had visited together were the movie halls whereat no meaningful romantic conversations were possible, other than between the hero and heroine on the screen.

One of the places that fascinated her was the Borivali National Park renamed in 1996 as the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, named after the younger son of Indira Gandhi, who died on 23 Jun 1980 in an air-crash in Delhi when he was performing some aerobatic manoeuvres. Wikileaks revealed many decades later that until then three attempts had been made on his life. Nine years later, on 2nd Dec 1989, the elder son Rajiv Gandhi was also killed in a bomb blast in Sriperumbdur. In between, on 31 Oct 1984, Indira Gandhi, their mother and the then Prime Minister of India, was killed in her own residence by one of her security guards. However, Veena noted that Borivali National Park (she still preferred to call it by its earlier name) reflected none of the violence associated with the death of the Gandhi family members. It was serene, verdant and quiet; especially those places that were not usually visited by the frequent visitors and tourists. Those included the two lake areas: Tulsi and Vihar, and the Kanheri Caves, sculpted by Buddhist monks between 9th and 1st century B.C.

Police Inspector Shinde spread the so called suicide note on the table in front of him for the umpteenth time. It was in black ink whereas he had already established that Mahesh normally wrote in blue. It was in the same artistic handwriting that was reflected in Mahesh’s paintings with clear strokes rather than aimless ones. There wasn’t any sign of tremor in the handwriting of a man who was contemplating suicide. The note read:

“What’s the point in going on with this life? Perhaps I should just vanish. No one is happy with me, my parents, friends, not even her. There would be nothing gained in trying to find me. By the time this note is read I would have mingled with the breeze and blown to distant places. Adieu. Forgive me for all the wrongs that I have committed.”

The suicide note was found in a book on his table, so neatly folded that his family said they nearly missed it. They confirmed that it was his handwriting but neither his family nor the woman he was going to marry could confirm any of the thoughts in the note. It came out that there was never an occasion when either of the two families was unhappy with him. It also came out that he was the darling of his large number of friends who swore by him, his vivacity and extrovert nature. Hence, the only thing that jelled in the note was his handwriting and nothing else. Shinde concluded that there was little or no motive for suicide, let alone murder. Another thing, Shinde observed, was that the paper was torn after the word ‘committed’ as if he had actually written more. Now that deepened the mystery; beautiful handwriting without any tremor and hurriedly torn paper just didn’t go together. Shinde Holmes had no choice but to conclude that there was something sinister about the note; it was meant to convey a particular sense but it actually conveyed just the opposite.

Veena remembered the Navratri of the year before. She was, to say the least, very disappointed. Not only that there was no commitment from Mahesh so far, he had started exhibiting signs that she abhorred. For her, Navratri was a deeply religious festival, signifying victory of good over evil. Even the cultural and social aspects for her were secondary. She was aware that many young people were taking recourse to such social evils as drinking and dancing and even indulging in sexual activities during the fest since most of it was celebrated, as the name suggested, at nights; nine nights to be precise. She looked down on these and felt that these were sacrilegious, to say the least. She was alright with dancing and merry-making since victory of good over evil had to be celebrated appropriately. However, she drew the line there and never wanted to go beyond.

So, one night, when she smelled liquor on Mahesh, she felt that he had crossed the line of her trust. When questioned by her, Mahesh had given a long harangue regarding madira being the drink of choice of gods and goddesses and even suggested that she too should partake of it to make gods and goddesses happy.

She, of course, noticed that his mood became far more intimate and romantic when under the influence of liquor. She was looking for some sign of commitment from him and she felt that liquor wasn’t such a bad thing after all since he said and did things that were far more attentive of her than she had hitherto experienced. Later, of course, he earned her ire for having suggested that, like other boys and girls, they could too have a little fun on the side.

That night, nay, the early morning of next day, as she lay in her bed awake, she went over the incidents of night before. Anyway she looked at them, she found that they were not to her liking. Like any other girl of her age, she had wistfully dreamt of sex but, she was firm in her mind that it had to be not casual but with her life-partner. She liked Mahesh, even loved him and she wanted him to be her life-partner. However, with the kind of upbringing that she had, casual sex would reduce her to being merely an object of desire whereas she was to be content with being his wife and lead a happy and secure life.

In the forenoon, they went to Borivali National Park again and sat at their spot near the Tulsi Lake. It was a very secluded spot on the slope of the hill looking down straight into the lake over a cliff. She suggested to him that whilst both of them were separately very talented, they must indulge in some joint creative activities. What did she have in mind, he asked her. She said she had seen an old Hindi movie called Gateway of India (the name fascinated her) wherein the hero and heroine wrote a poem in the wee hours of the morning; he would write a line and she would sing it and then she would write and he would sing it. The song, as she remembered was Do ghadi woh jo paas aa baithe, ham zamaane se door jaa baithe (For those two moments that he/she sat near me, I reached far from the rest of the world). He said whilst he painted imaginatively, poetry wasn’t his cup of tea. Perhaps we could write a play or a story together, she suggested.

So next forenoon, he brought a note-book but forgot a pen. She had taken out her black inked ball-point pen from her purse. She suggested that since he had a beautiful handwriting, he should write whilst they contemplated the story together. They titled the story ‘A Dance Of Death’ that was about a shy boy who was very fond of dancing during Navratri but not just that he was awkward, no one wanted to dance with him. Gradually, as the days passed, their joint story emerged on the paper complete with the state of mind of the hero of the story. He secretly loved a girl who was not just beautiful but accomplished dancer but she scarcely acknowledged his existence, let alone love him back. He was too scared to express his love to her.

He was often subjected to ridicule by almost everyone around him. Whilst she never joined in teasing him, he was quick to notice that she never stopped others.

He had, therefore, decided to commit suicide. On the fifth day, as dictated by Veena, Mahesh wrote on a page of the writing pad: What’s the point in going on with this life? Perhaps I should just vanish. No one is happy with me, my parents, friends, not even her. There would be nothing gained in trying to find me. By the time this note is read I would have mingled with the breeze and blown to distant places. Adieu. Forgive me for all the wrongs that I have committed. Unfortunately (Mahesh wrote further) the note fell from his pocket during a hectic and awkward dancing just before his contemplated suicide. By one of those curious coincidences that one sees so often in Hindi movies, she was the one who picked it up, read it and confronted him. She said she too was attracted to him and was wanting him to make the first move as a man must. Not finding any move from him she had kept distance. She said it didn’t matter if he didn’t know dancing as she would be able to teach him within no time. The story, therefore, was going to have a happy ending, just as both Mahesh and Veena had wanted it.

Having come to the last part of their joint story, Mahesh put his arm around Veena’s waist and with a twinkle in his eye said that night was the last Navratri night and perhaps they could take their joint story-writing from fiction to reality and bring themselves physically together at the back seat of his father’s car that he would borrow for the occasion.

Story? Commitment? Fiction? Reality? She wasn’t sure. She was indeed confused. Next night, he indeed came to the pandal by his dad’s Nano. But, she had left early.

Next day they completed their story ‘A Dance Of Death’ and he gave her the pages to keep to publish whenever she felt like. She never did.

It was finally her evidence that was to be recorded. For the last two days she had gone into near coma. After all, as both families brought out, she was betrothed to be married to Mahesh and she was as much a victim of the incident as he was. She confirmed that it was his handwriting on the suicide note. Anything unusual about the note, Shinde asked. She said, it was most unlike him to write such a note. He never displayed any signs of contemplating suicide; it wasn’t his nature at all, she said. She said they were perfectly happy with each other and she felt devastated by his disappearance. She kept saying that he won’t have ever committed suicide and he would reappear and then the fog would be cleared. She said she herself would commit suicide if indeed it came out that he was dead; she loved him so much. Since his father’s Nano had also vanished with him, she was questioned on that. She said they used to visit cinema theatres and restaurants together and that she was a frequent co-passenger with him in that car. Shinde then questioned her about any other places that they visited together and she confirmed that they were never away from public places. He then questioned her about the black handwriting. She showed him several love-notes that he had written to her in black. He made a mental note of it that perhaps the note, if at all it was a suicide note, was meant to be seen by her more than by anyone else. He questioned and questioned and she kept sobbing and crying and finally he felt nothing was to be gained by questioning her unless fresh evidence surfaced. Shinde even joked with her that since she was learning Forensic Science, perhaps she could give him a clue for cracking the case. She openly cried at his insensitivity and he promised that he would be more careful if there was to be any future questioning of her.

She was doing well in her diploma course in Forensic Science at Xavier’s. They had just learnt about knock-out drugs. These were becoming increasingly more common in – what the instructor told about – Drug Facilitated Sexual Assault, particularly in night parties in Mumbai and its nearby hill resorts. Many of these drugs were used together with alcohol to knock-out a victim for sexual purposes. She learnt that a drug called Gamma-Hydroxybutyric Acid or GHB for short was often referred to, in forensic circles, as Date-Rape Drug. The only problem, she learnt, was that once administered, it rapidly eliminated both in urine and blood and the next morning, even after tests, one could never say with certainty whether the victim was indeed administered it. She was horrified when the instructor told that although such drugs were strictly prescription drugs, there were many illegal ways of purchasing it. A notorious case of use of this drug in a party at Lonavla was discussed in the newspapers for a few days. She and the class, of course, learnt the professional ramifications of such benzodiazepines.

In yet another class, she learnt about how long does it take for a body to float after drowning. She learnt that the time for body to resurface was a function of the temperature of the water as well as body fat. She learnt that in warm water the body rises rapidly because the formation of gas within the body would be fast. How rapidly, she enquired from the instructor. He said it would be within a day or two. However, in cold water the bacterial action would e rather slow and sometimes it would be weeks before a body would surface. As an example, the instructor brought out that in Mumbai Harbour, occasionally bodies of construction workers were discovered on surface many days after they fell into the sea from construction sites adjoining the harbour. These were in such decomposed state after having been in water for several days that nothing worthwhile could be learnt from them. She also learnt that when a body is fully distended, it couldn’t easily be sunk even with counter-weights. However, counter-weights would keep a body down if already sunk.

Shinde remained awake in bed; the more he looked at the case, the more it seemed to defeat him and yet, he knew there would be that one clue that everyone would miss except Sherlock Holmes and that clue, if correctly pursued, would help solve the case. In this case, the clue would be that one can’t vanish in Mumbai or even out of it in a car without being detected at one of the cameras of a toll plaza. He had made extensive queries at all toll-plazas in the city and the suburbs and this particular Nano with its registration number hadn’t been sighted anywhere. Hence, if it were to be within the city, it could be either in the garage of someone’s house or abandoned in a remote place or perhaps in a watery grave. He made queries at Sanjay Gandhi National Park and found that the vehicle passes there didn’t capture the licence plate number and hence counterfoils of vehicle passes merely mentioned the licence plate number as verbally told by the driver. In any case, there wasn’t a single record of this particular Nano having entered or exited the park.

It was the happiest day of Veena’s life. On the auspicious day of Ganesh Chaturthi, both Mahesh and her parents had decided to hold an engagement ceremony for them, after consulting them. Lord Ganesha was associated with Shubh Ganesh (Good Beginning) and hence a betrothal on the day of Ganesh Chaturthi was to spell the beginning of a lifetime of happiness for the couple. After the ceremony, when he was leaving, Mahesh whispered to her that in the coming Navratri, any of her objections against not giving in to him won’t be valid. All that she did was to blush.

On the first day of Navratri, she joined her sisters and parents for Kali Pujan at home after the ghatasthapana. Now that she was betrothed, she was cautious not to over indulge in eating all the goodies that were prepared at home staring with Ganesh festivities and ending with the ninth night of Navratri. The last thing that she wanted to do was to put on weight and not look as comely as she normally did, during her forthcoming wedding.

During the dandiya, as she beat her sticks against Mahesh’s, he whispered to her, “Tell me when should I get the Nano?”

Veena realised that it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep him at bay. On the fifth night, the last day of Laxmi Pujan, she finally gave in. Close to midnight, when the dancing and music was still at crescendo, they simply vanished from the hall. He had already parked the Nano at a secluded place in the parking.

It wasn’t anything that she had wistfully prepared herself for. First of all, the smell of liquor on his breath was so detestable. At least on their first night together he could have avoided liquor. And then, the Nano didn’t have enough manoeuvering space. And finally, he didn’t appear to be mindful of her desires and was focussed only on giving himself maximu m pleasure.

It wasn’t any better in the next two nights of Saraswati Pujan. And finally, the Eighth day of Navratri was there.

No untoward incident of any nature had been reported around any of the water bodies of Mumbai including the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivali. To start with, that year, the rains had continued well up to the first week of October and the tell-tale signs, if any, had been obliterated with the rain and rapidly growing grass and shrubbery. Shinde realised that the British were of set habits and it would have been easier for Sherlock Holmes to find some clues or signs that were against the grain of the British. However, in India and particularly in Mumbai, chaos was indeed the order of the day. No forensic science skills really worked. Nothing.

The eighth day of Navratri was devoted to Goddess Durga when a Yajna or Hom is performed in her honour. Everyone has his or her favourites; Veena’s favourite was Durga, the Shakti, or Devi, the incarnation of Goddess Parvati. Whilst many people bemoaned the condition of women in modern India, Veena thought with justifiable pride that just a look at Hindu ancient scriptures would show the concept of Shaktism wherein metaphysical reality of human being is not masculine but feminine. Devi (Goddess), according to these texts, is not just Supreme but also Creator of Universe. She is the one combating evils and demonic forces that threaten peace, prosperity and dharma.

Veena had given herself freely to Mahesh because she was betrothed to him now and would be married in near future. More than the sexual pleasure, it was an act of love for her would be husband, her master, her life. There were small irritants like his habit of drinking even during a religious festival. However, she had faith in her love that it would overcome all these irritants. After all, in many different ways he was ideal for her. They had grown up together and as expected he had shown inclination to be with her rather than with Vibha or Vishranti. She wasn’t just content with life; she was ecstatic at the turn of the events.

That night, there was a much bigger crowd at the dance-hall than on other days. It usually happens on the eighth and ninth nights, being holidays. She and Vibha had gone for the Dandiya since Vishranti wasn’t feeling well and hence stayed at home. They had taken an auto-rickshaw  to the hall since Veena had spurned Mahesh’s offer of going by Nano. She had told him there was no way that she could think of anything or anyone other than Goddess Durga on those two days. He had said that he was disappointed because he had started enjoying the act with his future wife. Repeating a Hindi films dialogue, she had told him to wait since she was going to be completely his for life.

As they went through the swirling motions of Dandiya, Veena noticed that Mahesh had a far-off and disenchanted look. What was more, he was displaying more than usual interest in Vibha. Being a family friend, there was nothing unusual about a sense of intimacy that Mahesh enjoyed with Vibha or for that matter with Vishranti. However, she was feeling jealous of the kind of attention that he was giving Vibha. At one point in the night, she saw them in a conspiratorial conversation too. And it shocked her to see Vibha drinking from his hip-flask. She prayed that it would be just orange squash.

At about midnight, when she was dancing with her female friends, she suddenly noticed that Mahesh was missing from the hall. She looked for him here and there and couldn’t find him. Alarmed, she also noticed that Vibha too was missing. It was time for them to get back home and she knew that auto-rickshaws were difficult to find at that hour. She went outside to the parking lot to find an auto rickshaw before calling Vibha on her cellphone.

As she hailed an auto-rickshaw, to her shocked surprise she found Mahesh’s Nano parked at the same spot whereat, for the last three days, they had made love. She had turned down his offer of bringing the car even that night and hence wasn’t expecting it there at all. As she tiptoed to the rear of the car, there was discernible movement inside at the back seat and at one time, she caught a glimpse of his face with ruffled hair. There was hardly any doubt that he was there with someone; no one goes to the rear-seat of his car just to doze off in the midst of a dance.

By that time the auto-rickshaw that she had hailed had approached and now she must call Vibha to return home with her. She did and this she wasn’t prepared for: the answering tone came from inside of Mahesh’s Nano. Her face became white. She boarded the auto-rickshaw and was in a dazed state in the ten minutes ride home.

After about half an hour Vibha returned too. She knew that he had dropped her by his father’s Nano. Nothing was spoken between them as they went to sleep. The fact was that both remained awake for different reasons.

Shinde gathered all his facts. It wasn’t a suicide as given in his note. A man hell-bent on suicide, doesn’t cover his tracks to the extent that neither the vehicle he is supposedly traveling in nor his body is traceable even a week after the crime. No one associated with him, his family and friends, had reported anything unusual. If it was a murder it was a perfect murder since the victim had just vanished without a trace. His fiancee’ was devastated and so were both the families. There were no suspicions, no accusations. How was he, Shinde, supposed to solve the case? Sherlock Holmes was fictional and could plant clues in the story. In reality, in this particular case, there were no leads, no clues.

When Mahesh had vanished, as established by Shinde, Mahesh, Veena and Vibha had gone together to see a movie at a cinema hall close to their house. He had taken the two sisters by his Nano. Halfway along, he had simply disappeared. When he didn’t return at the end of the movie, the two sisters had taken an auto-rickshaw back home. The parents had confirmed the fact of two sisters being picked up by Mahesh for the movie and returning alone by auto-rickshaw. Mahesh hadn’t told the sisters where he was going and hence they had as little clue about it as Shinde had about the entire case.

Veena remained awake throughout the night. Her first reaction was self-pity. Here she was, recently betrothed and about to marry her dream-boy and then this happened. It shattered her life totally. When she and Mahesh had exchanged rings, just a few days back, she had felt that he had seen their future together and all that she had to do later was to tame some of his feral tendencies. Liquor wasn’t such a great challenge. However, a man, who, after committing to her, still looked for other avenues, had not been worthy of her trust.

In the wee hours of the next morning, she had turned to Goddess Durga to show her the way. The word ‘Shakti‘ came returning to her over and over again. The kind of love that Veena had in mind was similar to that of Goddess Parvati (Durga’s avatar), after immolation as Sati, returning to Lord Shiva. She felt that wedding was a sacred bond that lasted for many lives. And here Mahesh was, not just being licentious, but being so with her own younger sister; the one who was to look up to him as a brother. She watered down Vibha’s own role in the debauchery by taking into consideration his relentlessly goading her, as also under the influence of liquor. She would have trusted him as a devar (brother-in-law) or brother.

By the time, others woke up, her mind was made up. She said a silent prayer to Durga to give her Shakti, strength.

In the forenoon, she went to his house and as was usual for her, tidied up his room whilst he had a bath. Some of the books had started gathering dust and she not only dusted them but also rearranged them.

He suggested that they go out to see a movie. She consented and said they could take Vibha too with them. The parents approved of it since Visharanti in her condition couldn’t have accompanied.

He sat between the two sisters. The movie turned out to be boring. About half an hour after the movie started, he whispered to Veena, “Shall  we make use of the car?” She was already prepared for it. She said yes, indeed, that’s what she had been thinking of. So they sneaked out. Being a boring movie, many people were going out and coming in. Half an hour later, they were at their favourite spot near the lake.

He parked on the slope facing the lake, in a clearing in the woods. He took out a flask of liquor and two glasses and said now that they had already gone ahead and consummated their love, perhaps she could join him in having a drink. She said she wasn’t comfortable with the idea but if it made him happy, she would do it. After he poured out liquor in two glasses and handed over both to her, he got out to answer nature’s call behind the bushes and she was able to mix adequate quantity of GHB in his drink.

“Cheers”, he said, “To a lifetime of love and commitment”. She raised her glass and said, “May we be happy and content with what we are going to do.”

It didn’t take him much time to be knocked out on the driver’s seat. She lowered the window panes a little bit so that the water would enter the car when driven into the lake. It started raining. She prayed that it would be unnoticed both in sound and sight when the car was driven into the lake. In any case, there was no one around.

She put the car in neutral whilst it was still on hand-break, came from outside near the driver’s window, opened the door, released the hand-brake, locked the door from inside and banged the door shut. She went behind the car to give a push. It slowly started going downhill. Since she had taken out the ignition key, the tyres got locked straight and soon the car picked up speed and went over the cliff into the lake. It wasn’t long before the car sank.

She walked back to where she could get an auto-rickshaw. Some ninety minutes after she had left Vibha, she was back with her in the cinema hall.

Whispered Vibha to her, “Deedi, last night when you phoned me up…….”

“…..we were both at home, Vibha…..we didn’t know about the other, we should have known……Durga shows the way….”

ਉਹ ਵੀ ਕੀ ਦਿਨ ਸੀ?

ਇਹ ਘਟਨਾ ਤਦ ਘਟੀ ਜਦੋਂ ਮੈਂ ਸਤਵੀਂ ਕਲਾਸ ਚ ਸੀ ਅਤੇ ਹਿਮਾਚਲ ਦੇ ਮੰਡੀ ਸ਼ਹਿਰ ਚ ਅਸੀਂ ਰਹਿੰਦੇ ਸੀ।

ਸਾਡਾ ਛੇ ਸੱਤ ਮੁੰਡਿਆਂ ਦਾ ਇਕ ਗਿਰੋਹ ਸੀ। ਅਸੀਂ ਸ਼ਰਾਰਤਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਜ਼ ਨਹੀਂ ਆਉਂਦੇ ਸੀ। ਇਹ ਜ਼ਰੂਰ ਹੈ ਕੇ ਜਿਸਨੂੰ ਮੈਂ ਸ਼ਰਾਰਤਾਂ ਹੁਣ ਕਹਿ ਰਿਹਾ ਹਾਂ ਉਹ ਸਾਨੂੰ ਉਸ ਵੇਹਲੇ ਬਹੁਤ ਅਕਲਮੰਦੀ ਦੀਆਂ ਗੱਲਾਂ ਲਗਦੀਆਂ ਸੀ।

ਪਾਕਿਸਤਾਨ ਨਾਲ 1965 ਦੀ ਲੜਾਈ ਛਿੜ ਪਈ। ਪਹਿਲੇ ਦਿਨ ਹੀ ਅਸੀਂ ਘਰ ਦੀਆਂ ਖਿੜਕੀਆਂ ਤੇ ਕਾਲੇ ਕਾਰਬਨ ਦੇ ਕਾਗਜ਼ ਚਿਪਕਾ ਦਿੱਤੇ ਤਾਕੇ ਕੋਈ ਰੌਸ਼ਨੀ ਬਾਹਰ ਨਾ ਜਾਵੇ। ਨਹੀਂ ਤਾਂ ਡਰ ਸੀ ਕਿ ਪਾਕਿਸਤਾਨ ਦੇ ਲਾੜਾਕੂ ਜਹਾਜ਼ ਬੰਬ ਨਾ ਗਿਰਾ ਦੇਣ ਸਾਡੀ ਕਲੌਨੀ ਤੇ।

ਇਕ ਰਾਤ ਦੀ ਗੱਲ ਹੈ ਕੇ ਸਾਡੇ ਘਰ ਫੇ ਪਿਛੇ ਤਿੱਬਤੀਆਂ ਦੇ ਤੰਬੂ ਸੀ। 1962 ਦੀ ਲੜਾਈ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਦ ਉਹ ਇੰਡੀਆ ਆ ਗਏ ਸੀ ਅਤੇ ਮਜਦੂਰੀ ਕਰਕੇ ਗੁਜ਼ਾਰਾ ਕਰਦੇ ਸੀ। ਸਾਡੀ ਟੋਲੀ ਰਾਤ ਨੂੰ ਪੈਟ੍ਰੋਲ ਕਰਦੀ ਸੀ ਇਹ ਦੇਖਣ ਲਈ ਕੇ ਬ੍ਲੈਕ ਆਊਟ ਚ ਕੋਈ ਗੈਪ ਨਾ ਹੋਵੇ।

ਉਸ ਰਾਤ ਨੂੰ ਅਸੀਂ ਦੇਖਿਆ ਕਿ ਲਾਉਲੇ ਤੰਬੂ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਹਰ ਅੱਗ ਬਾਲ ਕੇ ਖਾਣਾ ਪਕਾ ਰਹੇ ਨੇ। ਅਸੀਂ ਸੋਚਿਆ ਕਿ ਜੇ ਛੇਤੀ ਅਸੀਂ ਇਹ ਅੱਗ ਨਾ ਬੁਝਾਈ ਤਾਂਹ ਬੰਬ ਗਿਰਣਗੇ।

ਅਸੀਂ ਸੀਟੀ ਮਾਰਕੇ ਤਿੱਬਤੀਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਕਿਹਾ ਕਿ ਅੱਗ ਬੁਝਾ ਦਯੋ। ਓਹਨਾ ਕਿਹਾ ਓਹਨਾ ਨੂੰ ਭੁੱਖ ਲੱਗੀ ਹੈ ਤੇ ਖਾਣਾ ਬਨਾਨਾ ਜ਼ਰੂਰੀ ਹੈ। ਅਸੀਂ ਸਖਤ ਆਵਾਜ਼ ਨਾਲ ਉਹਨਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਕਿਹਾ ਕਿ ਬਾਕੀਆਂ ਤੋਂ ਮਰਣ ਤੋਂ ਚੰਗਾ ਹੈ ਕੇ ਓਹ ਭੁੱਖ ਨਾਲ ਮਰਨ। ਨਹੀਂ ਤਾਂਹ ਅੱਗ ਨੂੰ ਟੈਂਟ ਦੇ ਅੰਦਰ ਲੈ ਜਾਣ।

ਸਾਡੇ ਗੁੱਸੇ ਤੋਂ ਡਰ ਕੇ ਓਹ ਅੱਗ ਨੂੰ ਟੇਂਟ ਦੇ ਅੰਦਰ ਲੈ ਗਏ।

ਅਸੀਂ ਆਪਣਾ boy scout ਦਾ ਕੰਮ ਕਰਕੇ ਘਰ ਆਕੇ ਸੌਂ ਗਏ।

ਥੋੜੀ ਦੇਰ ਬਾਅਦ ਦੇਖਿਆ ਤਿੱਬਤੀਆਂ ਦੇ ਟੈਂਟ ਚ ਅੱਗ ਲੱਗੀ ਹੋਈ ਹੈ। ਬੁਝਾਈ ਵੀ ਅਸੀਂ ਆਪ ਅਤੇ ਅਗਲੇ ਕਈ ਦਿਨਾਂ ਚ ਅਸੀਂ ਕਲੋਨੀ ਚ ਪੈਸੇ ਕੱਠੇ ਕਰਕੇ ਉਹਨਾਂ ਦਾ ਨਵਾਂ ਟੇਂਟ ਵੀ ਖਰੀਦਿਆ।

ਫੇਰ ਸਾਨੂੰ ਪਤਾ ਲੱਗਿਆ ਕਿ ਪਾਕਸਤਾਨ ਦੇ ਜਾਸੂਸ ਸਾਰੇ ਪਾਸੇ ਫੈਲੇ ਹੋਏ ਨੇ ਅਤੇ transmitter ਨਾਲ ਪਾਕਿਸਤਾਨ ਨੂੰ ਖ਼ਬਰ ਭੇਜਦੇ ਨੇ। ਪਤਾ ਇਹ ਵੀ ਚੱਲਿਆ ਕੇ ਆਮ ਤੌਰ ਤੇ ਇਹ ਜਾਸੂਸ ਸਾਧੂ ਬਣਕੇ ਘੁੰਮਦੇ ਨੇ। ਬਸ ਫੇਰ ਕੀ ਸੀ, ਸਾਡੀ ਕਲੋਨੀ ਚ ਜਿਹੜਾ ਵੀ ਸਾਧੂ ਆਇਆ, ਅਸੀਂ ਉਸ ਦੀ ਚੰਗੀ ਭੁਗਤ ਸਵਾਰੀ।

ਇਕ ਦਿਨ ਇਕ ਮੁੰਡੇ ਨੇ ਕਿਹਾ ਕਿ ਜੇ ਜੱਸੂਸ ਨੱਠ ਪਏ ਤਾਂ ਅਸੀਂ ਏਹਨੇ ਛੋਟੇ ਹਾਂ ਸਾਤੋਂ ਫੜਿਆ ਨਹੀਂ ਜਾਵੇਗਾ। ਮੇਰੇ ਕੋਲ ਹਰ ਗੱਲ ਦਾ ਉੱਤਰ ਸੀ। ਮੈਂ ਕਿਹਾ ਅਸੀਂ ਘੋੜਿਆਂ ਤੇ ਉਸਦਾ ਪਿੱਛਾ ਕਰਾਂਗੇ ਕਿਉਂਕਿ ਮੈਂ ਇਹ ਇਕ ਪਿਕਚਰ ਚ ਦੇਖਿਆ ਸੀ। ਇਸ ਚ ਦੋ ਕਠਿਨਾਇਆਂ ਨਜ਼ਰ ਆਈਆਂ। ਇਕ ਤਾਂ ਇਹ ਕੇ ਘੋੜੇ ਕਿੱਥੋਂ ਲਬੀਏ। ਦੂਸਰੇ ਇਹ ਕੇ ਘੋੜੇ ਦੌੜਾ ਨੇ ਵੀ ਆਣੇ ਚਾਹੀਦੇ ਨੇ। ਜਿੱਦਾਂ ਕੇ ਆਮ ਹੁੰਦਾ ਸੀ, ਦੋਨਾਂ ਦਾ ਹੱਲ ਮੈਂ ਲਬ ਲਿਆ।

ਤਿੱਬਤੀਆਂ ਕੋਲ ਖੱਚਰ ਸੀ ਇੱਟਾਂ ਲੱਦਣ ਲਈ। ਮੈਂ ਅਪਣੇ ਦੋਸਤਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਕਿਹਾ ਕਿ ਘੋੜਿਆਂ ਚ ਅਤੇ ਖੱਚਰਾਂ ਚ ਕੋਈ ਖਾਸ ਫਰਕ ਨਹੀਂ ਹੁੰਦਾ। ਬਾਕੀ ਰਿਹਾ ਸਵਾਰੀ ਕਰਨਾ ਸਿੱਖਣਾ, ਉਸ ਚ ਇਕ ਹੋਰ ਪ੍ਰਾਬਲਮ ਆਈ ਕੇ ਉਸਤੇ ਚੜਣਾ ਕਿਵੇਂ ਸੀ ਕਿਉਂਕਿ ਅਸੀਂ ਛੋਟੇ ਸੀ ਅਤੇ ਖੱਚਰ ਉੱਚੀ ਸੀ।

ਉਸ ਦਾ ਵੀ ਹਲ ਮੈਂ ਕੱਢ ਲਿਆ। ਮੈਂ ਮੁੰਡਿਆਂ ਨੂੰ ਕਿਹਾ ਕਿ ਖੱਚਰ ਨੂੰ ਖਿੱਚ ਕੇ ਅਸੀਂ ਅਮਰੂਦ ਦੇ ਦਰੱਖਤ ਦੀ ਟਹਿਣੀ ਥੱਲੇ ਲੈ ਆਵਾਂਗੇ ਤੇ ਮੈਂ ਟਹਿਣੀ ਤੋਂ ਚਡ ਕੇ ਖੱਚਰ ਦੀ ਪਿੱਠ ਤੇ ਛਲਾਂਗ ਮਾਰਾਂਗੇ।

ਅਸੀਂ ਸਾਰੇ ਰੱਸੀ ਨਾਲ ਖਿੱਚ ਕੇ ਖੱਚਰ ਨੂੰ ਟਹਿਣੀ ਥੱਲੇ ਲੈ ਗਏ। ਉਦੋਂ ਤੱਕ ਤਾਂ ਖੱਚਰ ਅਰਾਮ ਨਾਲ ਆ ਗਿਆ। ਫੇਰ ਜਦ ਮੈਂ ਟਹਿਣੀ ਤੇ ਚੜ੍ਹਿਆ ਤਾਂ ਉਸਨੇ ਹਿਲਣਾ ਸ਼ੁਰੂ ਕਰ ਦਿੱਤਾ। ਮੈਂ ਆਪਣੇ ਦੋਸਤਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਕਿਹਾ ਕਿ ਜੋਰ ਨਾਲ ਫੱੜ ਕੇ ਰਾਖਿਯੋ।

ਪਰ ਜੱਦ ਮੈਂ ਟਹਿਣੀ ਤੋਂ ਛਲਾਂਗ ਮਾਰੀ, ਖੱਚਰ ਨੇ ਰੱਸੀ ਖਿੱਚੀ ਤੇ ਦੌੜ ਪਿਆ। ਮੈਂ ਟੂਹੀ ਭਾਰ ਥੱਲੇ ਜ਼ਮੀਨ ਤੇ ਗਿਰਿਆ ਅਤੇ ਨਿੱਕਰ ਵੀ ਫਟ ਗਈ। ਅਗਲੇ ਕਈ ਦਿਨ ਪਿਛਵਾੜੇ ਚ ਦਰਦ ਵੀ ਹੁੰਦੀ ਰਹੀ।

ਸ਼ੁਕਰ ਤਾਂ ਇਹ ਕੇ ਲੜਾਈ ਖ਼ਤਮ ਹੋ ਗਈ ਇਸ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਕੇ ਲੜਾਈ ਚ ਜਿਹੜੇ ਸ਼ਹੀਦ ਹੋਏ, ਓਹਨਾ ਚ ਸਾਡਾ ਵੀ ਨਾਮ ਆ ਜੀਉਂਦਾ।

ਖ਼ੈਰ ਇਹ ਤਾਂ ਸੀ 1965 ਦੀ ਇੰਡੀਆ ਪਾਕਿਸਤਾਨ ਦੀ ਲੜਾਈ ਚ ਸਾਡੀ ਬਹਾਦੁਰੀ ਦੇ ਕਿੱਸੇ। ਹੁਣ ਤੁੱਸੀਂ ਇਹਨਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਸ਼ਰਾਰਤ ਕਹਿਣਾ ਹੈ ਤਾਂ ਤੁਹਾਡੀ ਮਰਜ਼ੀ।

All names and incidents in the story are fictional and any resemblance to anyone or anything real is purely coincidental. Historical details are however real and pains have been taken to re-report them as correctly as possible.

1975

Greased face, slimy hands, torn shorts, bare feet, he stealthily went around the crowd in front of the theatre. He was so small – he came up to hip level of most people there – that he was hardly noticed other than by those in immediate vicinity. However, the cop on duty there already was up to his tricks and had chased him many times with his danda. Yet, so determined was Chikoo to sell his five tickets in black that he came there again and again with his barely audible whisper, as he went around the crowd like a fruit-fly over garbage: Dus ka tees, dus ka tees.

He was named Chikoo because his father, now in jail, used to sell the fruit by that name on the foot-path, in a basket. He was in jail because an upper class woman purchased Chikoos from him and when she bent down to take the paper bag with the fruit, her gold-pendant broke and fell into the basket unknown to her and also to him. Later, she lodged a police complaint and the pendant was recovered from Chikoo’s father. The police beat him up black and blue and then marched him into a court and he was sentenced to 15 days of jail. Chikoo’s mother delivered him in the absence of her husband and everyone called him by that name because she sold Chikoos on the street in the absence of her husband and then came home to look after him. Also, he was very cute and Chikoo in slang meant a very cute boy.

A man made eye contact with him and he signaled him to follow him. They went behind the Chai-wala khokha on the side of the theatre and there two tickets and sixty rupees exchanged hands much before the policeman with the danda made his appearance.

The remaining tickets were sold in two lots of one and two respectively. Suddenly, Chikoo had 150 rupees with him whereas in the morning he had just 50. He went confidently to the cop, signaled him to follow him and near the chai stall gave him 50 rupees for allowing him to go about doing his business whilst keeping up the appearance of chasing him away every now and then. This was part of the game and Chikoo, at the age of six, had learnt it well.

Everything in Bombay (the name was changed to Mumbai, some twenty years later) worked on Black, Chikoo thought. And he was right to quite an extent. Black was the way of life in Bombay, later Mumbai and everyone was happy. Everything was available at an additional cost and Chikoo was to learn in his later life that everything meant everything. Very soon Chikoo had found that bigger money than what he made in front of the cinema halls could be made on the Bombay Central Railway Station by buying tickets of the long-distance trains and then selling them in black. Here, his assistants were not just the police guys but also the railway booking clerks.

His father, an upright man, had disapproved of his illegal ways but, after spending 15 days in the cooler, for no fault of his, he had started looking at societal norms afresh. In any case, it took him the entire day to earn fifty rupees. Whereas his son, at the age of six, was making that kind of money in an hour’s work: half an hour in the queue to buy the tickets and half an hour in the police protected environment to sell them off. Chikoo’s father was happy that Bombay was a safe city since police was involved in everything and actually facilitated all kinds of business.

1984

They still lived in the slums but thanks to Chikoo’s earnings, life was becoming better for them. They – his father and mother, one brother and a sister – were as happy as they could get under the circumstances.

One day, in the summers, his father was selling Chikoos on his allotted space on the pavement when an SUV driven by a rich kid, barely sixteen years old, went amok and ran over several of them on the pavement. His father was amongst the three who were killed on the spot whilst five others were admitted in the hospital with serious injuries. One of them succumbed to his injuries later.

It was an incident that shook the conscience of the city. In later years the city, which called itself the financial capital of the country, got used to periodic acts of terrorism such as bomb blasts. However, in that year, since it was the first major incident in the city, it was really shocking. Bombay was unlike Delhi at that time. Its police used to be compared to Scotland Yard in its efficiency. Delhi had its share of Billa, Ranga cases but Bombay was considered safe. The politicisation of police, criminalisation of polity and parochial tendencies hadn’t yet started showing their ugly heads.

The clout of the rich and influential was such that the legal wranglings continued for quite some time till the incident was off from public gaze. After that, the culprit got away lightly because of, as orchestrated in the court, his being a juvenile. It was rumoured in the media that palms were greased at various levels. Chikoo’s mother’s lawyer, who was also the lawyer for other victims, got them some money out of court. However, it came out in the media that he himself made many times more money than the victims. This is almost invariably the case in law-suits in India. In the olden days – of say, barrister Mr. MK Gandhi – law was a very reputed profession and there were any number of Hindi movies in which the lead actors would become lawyers. Nowadays, Hindi word for lawyer – Vakeel, that is – used in a very pejorative manner and there is a popular saying that if you come across a snake and a lawyer, you should kill the lawyer first.

March 1993

If the year 1984 was bad for Chikoo, it was even worse for the country. On the 31st October of that year, the third Prime Minister of India after her father Jawahar Lal Nehru and Lal Bahdur Shastri, was assassinated by her security guards Satwant Singh and Beant Singh when she was walking from her residence to the adjoining Congress office for an interview with British actor Peter Ustinov. The assassination was in retaliation for the Indian Army, at her orders, storming the Golden Temple (founded by the fifth guru of the Sikhs Arjan Dev in the year 1604) to flush out the armed followers of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, accused of waging a war against the state.

The year and subsequent years saw the transition of the Indian society from peace-loving to a society in turmoil. Indira Gandhi’s successor was her elder son Rajiv Gandhi who too was assassinated, five years and 32 days after becoming the PM, on 21 May 1991, by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, also known as Dhanu, a member of the Sri Lankan militant organisation called LTTE or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Rajiv Gandhi, of course, lived through the Bofors Deal Kickbacks scandal and allegations of black-money. As big time corruption scandals became a routine in India, there was a cartoon by RK Laxman (India’s most loved cartoonist who died on India’s Republic Day in 2015). In this cartoon, a petty thief in handcuffs is being led by a cop who tells him, “Your bad luck is that you stole fifty rupees; if you had stolen fifty crores, I could have been your security guard.”

Indeed, that year, when Chikoo was caught by a new cop in front of the cinema, he told him, “Chhodo sahib, bahut chhota black kiya hai, koi Bofor nahin kiya hai.” (Leave it, Sir, I undulged in very petty black, I am not involved in any Bofors deal).

Rajiv Gandhi’s successor was his erstwhile Finance Minister VP Singh who was sacked by him for going after black-money in such an obsessive way that he didn’t even spare his party, Congress’s, main fund contributors: the industrialists. He was then made the Defence Minister, which was considered a safe bet. However, here too he uncovered the Bofors Scandal and became an embarrassment to the government. He joined the Janata Dal and as Prime Minister, he took up the unfinished agenda of the earlier Janata Dal PM Morarji Desai in setting up the Mandal Commission in 1978 to identify socially or educationally backward classes in India so as to provide them with seat-reservations and quotas in educational institutions and jobs. This led to widespread protests and even self-immolations by anti-reservationist students.

Caste based hydra was, however, let loose in the country and its pinnacle was on 6th Dec 1992 when the Babri mosque was demolished by Hindu Kar Sevaks since they believed that the mosque stood at the same spot in Ayodhya, which was the birthplace of God-king Rama (or Ram Janambhoomi). This led to large-scale riots in the country. The most violent of these took place in Mumbai in which nearly a thousand people died mostly belonging to the minority community.

Just as the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi had once said, “An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind“, these riots were followed by retaliatory Mumbai bombings (12 of them) on 12th March 1993. This was the first time in the world that serial-bomb-blasts were perpetrated.

A total of 257 people were killed. Chikoo’s mother, brother and sister were amongst them.

Chikoo was just 24 years old when this occurred. His world was shattered. Suddenly, it wasn’t such a happy place as he had imagined where people paid underhand just to see their favourite movie or go comfortably by train especially during overnight journeys. He was alone in the world and everything looked black to him.

After the cremation he sat on a rock near the sea, aimlessly throwing pebbles into the waves, when he saw a man approaching him. He wasn’t in a mood to talk to anyone and he hoped that the man would just go past him. To his annoyance, he saw that the man sat on a rock next to his and also started throwing pebbles into the sea.

After about ten minutes, this man spoke as if he was speaking to the sea, “I can be your friend.”
He too replied in the same manner, “What do I require a friend for?”
And the man insisted, “Everyone requires a friend.”

In the ensuing silence Chikoo realised that the man spoke a fact that had started haunting him. He asked, “What do I have to do to become your friend?”

“We can discuss over tea.”

They went to a way-side tea-stall. The man’s story in patches was that he belonged to a governmental anti-terrorist organisation and in the aftermath of the Mumbai blasts it was decided to clamp down on and track the movements of certain organisations that were inimical to national interests. SIMI or Students Islamic Movement of India had been identified as one such organisation. Though it was founded in April 1977, it is only after the Babri demolition that it started country-wide violent protests and landed up on the wrong side of the police and anti-terrorist organisations.

Chikoo was scared in the beginning. But, all that the man wanted was for him to keep his eyes and ears open in his chawl and surroundings and report any untoward things going on. He asked how do I report? The man told him that one of their operators would pick up information from him along with tickets in black and pay him for the information much more than the black price of the tickets. The first time pass-phrase would be ‘black milega kyaa?’ (a question that nobody buying tickets in black ever asks) and his reply would be ‘nahin seth mere paas to green hain‘ (the actual colour of the tickets). His next pass-phrase would be given with the money for the tickets.

He told the man that it appeared dangerous to him but the man said they would take care of his protection. He agreed.

1993 Onwards

Initially, he would supply them with information about suspicious persons and happenings such as suspicious call at the local STD booth or suspicious meetings of a few of them and they would pay him; the information and money exchanging hands at the chai-wala place at the cinema. He noticed that the money was more substantial than what he was used to for selling tickets in black.

One night, he had an upset tummy and kept going to the toilet every now and then. As usual there was no water and whatever water was kept in a tin there had got over. The stench was therefore unbearable. So, past midnight, when the nature’s call came again, he ambled across to the sea and sat on his haunches in a small clearing between the rocks. He saw a flashing light approaching from the sea and when he looked towards the woods on the shore, he noticed another answering flashing light. After what appeared to be eternity, he saw a fishing boat beaching on the sand. Some people came from the woods and helped in shifting the boat’s cargo. It was unusual for a fishing boat at that hour. Also, he observed that the cargo wasn’t the usual fish-catch but wooden boxes. He was curious and followed them in the woods. There were six large size crates (more long than wide) and he noticed that holes had already been dug in the ground to lower them and cover them with sand and soil.

The next day, at the matinée show itself, he passed the information to one of the operators. They laid a trap and on the next night, at least two men smuggling arms and ammunition were caught red-handed whilst taking out the crates from their holes. The others ran away. These two men were also later killed in an encounter whilst making a bid to escape from police custody.

This made big news and although Chikoo was very scared, he was happy to have got a huge sum for the information.

With the newly acquired wealth, Chikoo’s lifestyle changed. He was an occasional drinker; but, now, he started drinking regularly. It helped him get over his fear of the happenings that he had become part of as also to forget his family that he had lost. The bar that he used to frequent was a dance bar and he loved those voluptuous dancers who danced there, especially those who came near him, brushed their bodies against his, and seductively took his money and hid in their bosoms with knowing smiles and winks. He had seen the re-run matinée show of the dacoit movie Mujhe Jeene Do and everytime a dancing girl came near him, he imagined her to be Waheeda Rehman and himself to be the dacoit Sunil Dutt.

Her name was Rehana. Chikoo knew that most of them, if not all, kept fictitious names such as Rehana, Asma, Shama and Shabana. One was even called Madhuri, named after the actress at her peak at that time. He had seen her Khalnayak with Sunil Dutt’s son Sanjay Dutt with its super-hit song: Choli ke peechhe kya hai? One month after Mumbai Blasts, Sanjay Dutt was arrested under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, in April 1993 and that made sensational news. Charges of terrorism were dropped later but he was convicted of illegal possession of armaments. When Sanjay Dutt was first jailed, in Chikoo’s circles, it was talked about that whereas the father had police after him in reel life only (Mujhe Jeene Do), Sanjay had police after him in real life. Anyway, Chikoo wasn’t interested so much in the life of Sanjay Dutt as he was in Rehana, the bar dancer, who had started showing more than routine interest in him. They had started meeting covertly in the day time whilst in the evenings and nights she performed her acts at the bar. One afternoon when they made love in his room in the chawl, Chikoo noticed that it was more than sex; she appeared to be in love with him.

He won’t have even dreamt of sharing this information with his shady contacts. In a world of extreme scare, danger and intrigue, she provided him with love, the greatest feeling on earth. At his young age, when he could get a lot of things which were denied to many people, love really had fascination for him. She soon fell into the habit of cooking for him and washing his clothes and he loved it when she would take a morsel of chapati in her manicured hand, wrap it around his favourite bheendi subji, and put it in his mouth. Suddenly, he had a home and he thanked God for the gift of Rehana in his life. Once or twice he had tried to find her real name and she had countered it with: “Kyun Rehana nahin pasand aapko? Rehana ko to Chikoo bahut pasand hai.” (Why, don’t you like (the name) Rehana? Rehana, however, likes (the name) Chikoo a lot). He had given up.

He was still supplying his contacts with information and they were still giving him money for it. Gradually, he felt that there would be no harm in sharing his life with Rehana since, in any case, very soon they had decided to get married. The day when they first talked of their marriage, she teasingly asked him what he would name her after marriage and he had equally jokingly responded: “Bheendi”.

And then, one day, it happened. She said that he must meet her people and propose marriage and she would make sure that they would accept. When he enquired about her people, she said she was an orphan like him; but, she had brothers and cousins who would be only too delighted to meet him.

He wanted to accompany her to her place but she said that traditionally the man visits the woman’s house and they would wait for him with bated breath.

As he came out of the chawl that evening, a black cat crossed his way. His mother was a great believer in such bad omens. But, he was in a hurry. All throughout the journey to her place by an auto-rickshaw, he kept thinking of her abundant charms, the way she tickled him when she caressed his ear lobes and even inserted her little finger inside, her wanting him again immediately after they made love, and her sleeping in the crook of his right arm.

When he got down from the auto-rickshaw and paid the driver, he noticed that Rehana wasn’t living in a chawl but in a house that was more than a little distance from the other houses in the area. But, then, she had been a bar dancer for several years and he reckoned that she could afford a house. On closer look, he found that it looked more like a dilapidated house. He was having second thoughts about entering the house but then a kindly man opened the door and ushered him in with, “Aa jaao Chikoo, aap ka hi intezaar hai.” (Come in Chikoo, we are waiting for you).

There were only men in the room, some five of them, and he thought he had seen one, in a skull cap, sometime earlier. One of them addressed him heartily: “Daro mat; hum tumhaare azeez hain.” (Don’t be afraid; we are your dear ones).

And that’s the time when he recognised the man in the skull-cap. He was the one who came out of the boat with those crates many years back on that dark night and wasn’t caught in the raid.

Suddenly, he was mortally scared and he made an attempt to flee. They caught him, there was no escape. They confronted him with proof of all that he had done in the last several years.

At the end of it, they carried him to an upstairs room and that’s where they put acid in his eyes and said, “You are proud of these eyes with which you observe things. Well, today onwards, you will see nothing.”

Suddenly, his world became black. Gandhi was right, after all…an eye for an eye….

Epilogue

Chikoo gradually learnt to survive as a blind man. There was no money in selling movie tickets in black after the advent of multiplexes. There was no money in selling train tickets in black after the online bookings and many people choosing to travel by air. He sat the whole day in the same spot that his father used to sit at, selling Chikoos. In his spare time, he liked to grope his way to the rocks next to the sea behind his chawl through his constant companion: a white stick. He loved the sound of the waves and gentle drenching of his face. One day, he felt a man first approaching and then sitting on a rock next to him and joining him in throwing pebbles into the sea. “I can be a friend”, he said and Chikoo recognised the voice. He kept silent. The man continued, “With your eyes gone, you can be even more useful than earlier since no one would suspect you. You can hear and feel and tell us about any suspicious activity.”

Chikoo sighed and said to himself: I thought I was the one who was blind.

Six years ago, she was born on the day of the Raksha Bandhan, a festival of the Hindus and the Sikhs that celebrates the love and duty between brothers and sisters. Hence, her mother had named her Raksha, one of the two common names based on this festival, the other being Rakhi or Rakhee.

Her mother Mubarak had found job as an ayah (a nursemaid or nanny) in a middle aged family in the Railway Officers Colony in Sarai Rohilla. After she had married a man, Gopal, she was advised by his family to change her name to Lakshmi. She was told that her chances of getting a job would be more with her name Lakshmi as compared to Mubarak. In addition, it was explained to her that just in case she was ever apprehended by the police, she was assured of a better treatment with her new name.

She was being paid 6500 rupees per month. In addition she was being given lunch and tea by her employer. Before this job, she had been a maid-servant at several households, earning petty money. She had obtained a smattering of English from these families, which had finally helped her to land the ayah’s job. Life wasn’t easy for her, her husband and their two children – a girl and a boy – living on Rupees 6500 a month.

It was much better when Gopal too used to bring money home through selling odd items in buses such as dant-manjan (dental-powder), combs, nail-cutters, soft drinks and even screw-drivers. But, one fateful day during the rains, he had jumped off from a slowly moving bus, as he often did, and landed in an open manhole, injuring himself badly especially in his legs. No proper hospital treatment could be given to him. His left leg later developed gangrene and was to be amputated in order to save his life. Initially, he had made a trolley with four small wheel-bearings fixed under a small board and he would propel himself on roads trying to sell his items. But, it had become dangerous since he was almost run-over several times by speeding vehicles.

Mubarak alias Lakshmi had then decided to run the family on her own. She had got a Ration-card made in the name of Lakshmi, which she carried with her in her black bag with a golden clip to close it. She had to pay underhand to get the Ration-card, as is often the case in India to get any official document made such as Driving License and Passport. She would have got a Matriculation certificate too; but, that would have cost more. Also, in her bag was her bus pass, about a hundred rupees just in case required and a letter of recommendation and good character given to her by her last employer, the wife of a Major in the Indian Army. This letter was in her previous name Mubarak but since it was on an impressive army letter head with the Indian Army logo, she carried it with her in case a need arose to prove her good conduct and character. She also carried her old Security Pass with her picture on it since the Army employer insisted on it.

She was comfortable with her job even though the hours were long and her memsahib was a perpetual nag. The place was not too far (within 5 km) from the Paharganj slums that they stayed in near the railway tracks and she could easily take a bus to and fro. One other nuisance was that her memsahib’s husband had been frequently making eyes at her. One day, when the memsahib was not at home, he had grabbed her from behind and pressed himself on her. She had escaped sternly telling him that she wasn’t that kind of woman. He had told her that he would be waiting anytime she changed her mind.

One day, her memsahib misplaced or lost her gold chain. She questioned Raksha first tactfully and gradually with strident insinuation. But, firstly, Raksha had not taken it and secondly, she was proud of herself being totally honest despite their poverty. She, therefore, vehemently denied having taken the chain. Finally, her memsahib consulted her husband on the phone. He said he’d lodge a police complaint. Later, a message was received by her memsahib through her husband for Lakshmi to report to the Police Station.

She reported to the Police Station in the afternoon. They made her wait for hours. After that a thorough search of her purse revealed to the police that her actual name was Mubarak. The Inspector at the police station said he believed her that she had not taken the gold-chain. But, her name change was a bigger crime. He said Pahargunj area was full of suspected trouble-makers from her community and that he could keep her in the jail for several months because of this.

She was now openly crying. The Inspector said that there was only one way out, which was that she could give him Rupees 5000 and then go scot-free. She told him through sobs that she was a poor helpless woman who won’t ever have 5000 rupees. He said it with finality that all he could give her was one week to arrange the money.

This was a hopeless situation and she feared for her husband’s life and that of their two children. There was no way out. It crossed her mind that she could buy pesticide and give to the family in the evening meal before taking it herself. Afterall, 68 years after independence, in some parts of the country, poor people, especially farmers, rputinely resorted to ending their lives by taking pesticide. Late into the night, a thought occurred to her but she brushed it aside as against human dignity. However, by wee hours of the morning, she had convinced herself that it was better than dying.

Next day, her memsahib refused to take her in. However, fortunately, her husband was at home and he told his wife that the police had found no evidence about her having committed the theft. She was taken in with a stern warning.

That afternoon, the memsahib went for kitty-party with her friends and Mubarak sensed in it a godsent opportunity. She approached the sahib for a loan of 5000 rupees. He said it wasn’t a small sum and the police was suspecting her to be involved with terrorists. Through tears she told him she was prepared to do anything to get the money. He told her that things had changed after he had proposed to her last time. And that, now, she had to please him whenever he felt like.

She had no choice. For the next one year, she pleased him whenever the memsahib was not at home and he was. She had wanted him to use protection; indeed, begged him to. But, he said he enjoyed it more the naturalway.

And that’s how Raksha was born.

In six years, she had learnt more than another child three times her age. From the age of three she had learnt to beg in and outside the railway station. She had learnt to wipe cars at the traffic signals and then expect to be paid; some did and some didn’t. She had even earned money by wiping and shining shoes. Her mother was happy that all three children were helping to run the family.

Azadi Diwas (Independence Day) was aporoaching and Raksha had learnt that people were egged to become patriotic during the days leading to I -day. This meant that I – day items like flags would sell easily and fetch them money. All the urchins were buying flags and selling them at twice and sometimes thrice the cost. She would obtain 50 rupees from her mother and give back 100 at the end of the day.

One day, she thought of making a big killing. She had learnt from her friends that for the last several days, there was a protest by retired faujis at Jantar Mantar and that these men and their women and children would pay readily and more to buy the tricolor flags: tiranga. She told her mother. Her mother was very worried about the distance involved. But, Raksha said she’d manage as indeed the other urchins did and that in any case it was the day prior to Independence Day and she expected to make huge profit. Finally, the mother acquiesced and gave her 100 rupees and bus fare.

It was the best day of Raksha’s life. Within no time she had sold many of her flags and had already got some 250 rupees or so in her pocket. She had concluded that these ex faujis cared for the flags more than anyone else.

Suddenly, she was tired. She kept the flags down and lay on the pavement and rested.

And that’s the time the police arrived in three trucks. They were in uniform with boots and quickly spread to the venue where the retired faujis were protesting peacefully. As Raksha looked in shock, they started pulling down the stage. When the ex faujis intervened, the police started roughing them up. Some were old and others very old. Some were wearing their medals and ribbons. But, the police didn’t spare any. There was one wearing a white kurta and pajama and a white turban, the kind they wear in Haryana and Rajasthan. The police snatched his medals pinned his shirt. The medals fell and the front of the shirt tore.

Raksha didn’t want to be noticed but the horror of it made her scream involuntarily. One of the police guys noticed her and hit her hard on her cheeks. It hurt and she cringed and wailed loudly. The flags fell from her hand. The police didn’t care and kicked her and trod on her flags and told her to leave immediately. She just lay there motionless, too shocked to move.

She didn’t know how long she lay there crying. But, when she came about again she saw the same kindly man in white kurta and white pajama and white turban bending over her. He made her stand on her feet and wiped her tears with his torn kurta. He noticed the tirangas on the ground, some with the boot-marks of the police. He bent down to pick each one of them by their small bamboo sticks.

When he had the complete bunch with him, he smilingly handed over the bunch to her and said with great dignity, “Don’t ever put down the tiranga. People like me gave our youth and our lives to hold it high.”

Raksha clutched the flags in her left hand, raised her right hand to her forehead and whispered: “Jai Hind“.

Muthu was wandering along the Marina Beach quite aimlessly. He often came here on Sunday evenings when he was free from college. A few metres away there was commotion and crowd. Some fishermen had fished out a body from the sea and already the police had arrived to investigate. Muthu had moved on. He had not much interest in death. But then, he hadn’t much interest in life too.

But now, as he sat on the warm sand, away from the commotion, he thought about Death; and that too, because he remembered that his ancestors had died in as nondescript manners as the body that had been fished out on the beach. His father had gone out fishing just as a cyclone was building up in the bay and returned just before it made land fall. As he was walking back home, a coconut dislodged from the tree and hit him on the head.  The coconut survived the impact; but, his father’s head didn’t.  Then, there was his grandfather who returned from fishing, was chased by dogs and when he bent down to pick up a stone to shoo them away, one of them bit him in his left calf. He later died of rabies.

His uncle and virtually the entire family had been wiped out at sea when they went fishing and a wave swept them away. No one survived.

Recently, one cousin of his, whilst fishing off Nagapattinam, strayed into Sri Lankan waters, was picked up by the Sri Lankan Navy personnel and nothing was heard of him after that.

Mutthu closed his eyes and prayed to Lord Venkateswara that he should be given a death that should be remembered by people. May not be as famous as MGR’s on the day prior to Christmas in 1987, in which 30 people committed suicide and 29 died of violence. But, nevertheless, people should at least remember him after his death.

Other than fantasizing, Muthu hadn’t done anything to have a beautiful death. He and his family and hundreds of other fishermen families had stopped dreaming of a beautiful life; they had concluded that it wasn’t even remotely in the realm of reality. All they could pray for was beautiful death.

The same uncle, who together with his three sons had met with a watery grave, were fishing in Palk Bay one fine summer day when they were captured by Sri Lankan Navy personnel. It made big headlines in the local as well as national dailies and it was reputed that this problem would be soon licked by negotiations. However, it had continued and then his cousin too fell prey to it. No one knew whether his cousin was alive or not.

Tamilnadu (the erstwhile state of Madras) was the leading state in the country for fishing at sea. For centuries, his family had been fishing along the thousand kilometres of the coast. It was tough going but they hadn’t known another way to earn a living. They risked their lives at sea just to earn a little more than a thousand rupees a month. His parents had, therefore, thought of a bright future for Muthu by giving him education. He helped with the fishing when he could but the family wanted him to become someone big by studying.

He was 19. He had been to sea many times with his father and once entirely on his own. He liked being there, battling against elements. There was no sleep at nights too since they had to show the light in case of ships passing close to them lest they should be run over. The best catch was when ships passed close to them, scared by the propeller movement and the noise they’d get caught in the net. Else, they had to beat the cans endlessly to attract them. The cans were, however, poor substitute for propeller noise underwater that really attracted the fish.

He had got a fair hang of the fishing skills. However, his father, before he died two years back, still wanted him to become something big by studying. He hadn’t yet figured out what that something big amounted to. As he heard the footsteps of Lakshmi behind him, he knew that once again they were going to discuss this and their future. He would always come out even more confused than earlier. All his attempts to dodge the topic hadn’t succeeded in the past. However, this evening he was determined to evade it as much as he could.

[lineate][/lineate]”Lakshmi” he told her hoarsely, “I have to share a secret with you”.[lineate][/lineate]”Hold on”, she said eagerly, “First I have to share something with you.”[lineate][/lineate]

She delved into an inner crease of her half-sari and took out a red coloured arm-band with beads. As he looked at the beads, he saw their names, in short, inscribed on the square wooden beads: LakMu. She told him that she had wanted the craftsman to inscribe the complete names Lakshmi and Muthu but he had told her that five letters on five beads was the limit. She didn’t tell him that she had spent all of thirty rupees on getting two identical bands made; one for him and one for her. Hers was pink and his was red.

“So now” she urged him, “What’s the secret that you wanted to share with me?”

He told her about his dream of eventually having a beautiful death; something that he would be remembered by. She sat on the sand next to him, put her head on his shoulder and told him never again to utter such nonsense. She said he had his life ahead of him. He was good at studies and very hard-working; who knew he might just become the Prime Minister of the country!

Oh, so they were back to discussing his future, he thought; a subject he hated. He brushed aside her hare-brained idea as totally impractical. You had to be born into a family that produced prime ministers or even chief ministers. He gave the example of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi and also of MGR and Jayalalitha. Rajiv Gandhi, after finishing his full term as PM after the assassination of his mother was out of power now. However, he was slated to sweep the forthcoming elections in a huge manner and was addressing all rallies as if he was already re-anointed as the Prime Minister. And all because he was the son of Indira Gandhi, the second longest-serving Prime Minister. Even after MGR died, they didn’t look beyond to find his replacement. They found his wife Janaki to be the heir apparent. Jayalalitha caused a split in the party being the other woman carrying forward the legacy, if not of MGR, but, at least of the party AIDMK. Lakshmi would be really out of her mind if she thought that someone as ordinary as him, the son of a dead fisherman, could become the PM. These were all life issues. He had resigned himself to having a beautiful death. Even though she had exhorted him never to bring up the issue, he repeated it with all the emphasis at his disposal. “You must bring a huge garland at my funeral”, he told Lakshmi and she left him in a huff with the expressed threat that she would never talk to him again if he talked in this vein again.

As she walked home, she was angry with him for having ruined the evening with a crazy and horrible dream of his. He was the brightest student in their First Year Bachelor of Arts class and particularly his knowledge of Political Science was already extraordinary. It was for this reason that she had dreamt big for him to become the Prime Minister of the country. Little did she know that with all his brilliance he entertained a deplorable dream of having a beautiful death. Didn’t he ever stop to think of her? She had known him for the last dozen years or so and it was already decided by the two families that eventually they would marry. However, this defeatist idea of his had drained her enthusiasm. She looked at the pitiable contrast. Here she was giving him an arm-band with the beads having LakMu inscribed on them; and, there he was thinking of beautiful death. Life could be cruel, she concluded.

She avoided him in the college the next day, even though he tried to block her way at least twice. In the afternoon,, when she was walking in the corridor with her best friend Jayanthi, he came close to her and whispered, “I am going to study to be a prime minister”. In the evening, she finally met him and he explained that Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minster in the making, was going to address an election rally in Sriperumbudur just 40 kms away and he had decided to attend and see for himself at close quarter what made a man a prime ministerial material. She patted him on the right cheek and said excitedly, “Muthu, you are already my Prime Minister.”

The next day, 21st of May, was a Tuesday and both Muthu and Lakshmi knew that beginning anything on an auspicious (maṅkaḷakaramāṉa) day of Tuesday was subha muhurtham. She had already started dreaming of becoming the wife of the prime minister. As he took the bus to Sriperumbudur, she whispered to him not to ever forget LakMu even after he became the PM.

Muthu reached the rally spot in the evening. Already the crowds were milling and no one had any idea as to when Rajiv Gandhi would arrive. Hours of waiting and he was getting frustrated. There were a lot of men in Khaki and they moved around importantly as if they had everything under control. Muthu’s enthusiasm to study to be a prime minister was already waning. How can I aspire to become someone who kept people like him waiting endlessly even before becoming the PM. They would probably have to wait to see him for days if he would actually become the PM for his second tenure.

The buzz was that he was addressing various rallies in the neighbouring state of Andhra and had taken an Ambassador car from Chennai and his cavalcade had left Chennai but he was stopping all over to address rallies.

Finally, there was a flurry of activity and the cavalcade had arrived. That was the time he noticed that a girl in spectacles, yellowish orange kurta and greenish dupatta had brought a long white garland for Rajiv Gandhi. Why couldn’t he, Muthu, think of this? This was the surest way to get close to him as people jostled to get a glimpse of the would be PM in a shawl. All that Muthu could do was to stare at the jasmine flowers in her hair from behind and even get a whiff of the fragrance. She, and another girl in braids and ribbons and another in sari got close to Rajiv Gandhi and all that he could do to study becoming a PM was to look at him over the heads of these women. He was near and yet he was far.

The girl garlanded him and bent down as if to pick up something. The last conscious thought of Muthu was to hear huge explosion.

It was late in the night when Lakshmi heard of this. Next day, it was on the television as well as in the newspapers. Rajiv Gandhi assassinated, the headlines said and there was a small mention of nearly 16 others killed in the blast. Muthu was amongst the nearly 16 others.

A beautiful death? Nowhere near; but, then, she thought, with pride, he must have been quite close to him, amongst hundreds who had gathered there, to have instantly died in the blast. Having been mentioned amongst nearly 16 others is the closest his love had come to be remembered after his death.

But, one thing she knew was that even as he died he would have clutched at the LakMu band that she had given him.

Disclaimer. Muthu and Lakshmi are imaginary names and persons and bear no resemblance to any person dead or alive.

He hated waiting for the bus at the stop below his office. At this time of the evening, several lakh salaried employees like him left the office. All were always in a hurry to get back home after a hard day’s work.

One’s position in life could be anything he had mused; but, in the evenings, what mattered was your position in the queue for the bus. In case one managed to stand with the first few in the queue for the bus, one could not only be assured of catching the bus but may also get a seat.

At one time, from Mantralaya to Bandra, he used to catch the local train but he had to walk great distances on either end from the local stations. Also, trains at this time of the evenings would be crowded. The only people who’d get seats at Churchgate would be the ones who’d travel backwards from Grant Road and Charni Road to Churchgate and then wait for the train to restart for Borivali.

It had taken him years to become a Head Clerk in his office in the Education Department; and now, instead of being a mere Godbole, he had become Godbole saab. He liked the ring of the title saab. It gave him an authoritative stature in the office. Minister madam trusted him so much that she had given instructions that all outgoing mail put up to her for signatures should be whetted by Godbole saab and should bear his initials just below the signature block.

He had met Anjali twenty years back and they were married for thirteen years now. She had given him everything that he could have asked for except for one thing that she had not been able to bear his child.

He had taken her for checks by gynaecologist several times. The gynaec had not been able to find anything wrong except to tell them that their anxiety was probably the cause. It may or may not have been; but, as time went by, it actually became the cause. The more time passed, the more was their anxiety at not having to have a child.

In their holidays, they had been to several holy places to pray for Anjali to become a mother and for him, Vikas Godbole to become a proud father. They had also been to Sri Sai Baba at Shirdi. But, they hadn’t been fortunate.

Just at the time they had almost given up, they found that their loneliness and anxiety had actually reunited them in more matured love. They longed to be with each other. She was at home during the daytime. She tailored clothes for the children and actually earned more with this hobby of hers than he did as a head-clerk. However, from the time he returned from office late in the evenings until next day after breakfast, they were virtually inseparable. They played Scrabble, went for walks on the sea-shore after dinner, and they watched television together. Once in a week they went to see either Marathi or Hindi movies.

Finally, God decided to be kind to them and she was expecting. Indeed, it was due anytime now. And that accounted for his rush home in the evenings as if his life depended upon it. Nowadays, thanks to Anjali’s condition, he was always the first or at least amongst the first few in the queue.

Standing in the queue everyday, he used to see an urchin approaching the queue for alms. He was a boy of about eight, unkempt, his nose dripping mucous, dressed in his tattered shorts and invariably in the same yellow shirt that obviously had seen better days. His feet were bare. He went from one person to the other, touching them on their trousers or sarees and suits, lifting his hand from their clothes, bringing it repeatedly to his forehead and saying, “Saab/memsaab gareeb ko kuchh de do. Subah se kuchh nahin khaya. Aap ka bhala hoga“. (Sir/Madam, please five something to this poor boy. Haven’t eaten anything since the morning. God will bless you.)

Most people turned their faces away from the boy and ignored him or just shooed him away. Some even began animated conversations about how beggary was the curse of India and how one had to be careful about such ruffians: “Before you can say Jai Ganesh, such guys would flick your bags and run away. You can’t trust these thugs.”

Vikas too had busied himself looking here and there in the first few days. However, once when the boy had tugged at his trousers hard, he looked down and looked straight into those pleading eyes; these were intense and bore into him. He could never look away after that. He was hooked. He would take out some coins and give the boy and now they had become friends; a degree of intimacy had set in as if they knew each other from ages.

He liked looking into those deep eyes searching his face for recognition. The looks changed from pity to joy when the boy sighted him. A smile would form on the corners of those young supple lips as if thanking him for what he was going to receive: a coin, a currency note, a toffee, a biscuit; invariably, Vikas Godbole got into the habit of carrying something for the boy.

Those eyes, those deep and eager eyes haunted Vikas. He was trying his best to read them, to figure out what story they carried for him. But, every time, he thought he came close to it, the bus arrived and he rushed home to be with the love of his life Anjali.

One day, immediately after his pay-day, he bought the boy a new shirt and a pocket comb. And today, the boy had changed his looks somewhat: hair were combed and he almost looked clean. As he approached Vikas in the queue, his heartbeat quickened. If it hadn’t been for the others in the queue who continued to sneer not just at the boy but also at the reckless habit of Vikas Godbole to show affection towards a street urchin, he would have wanted to hug him and pick him up in his arms. Vikas knew instinctively that he would be buying the young boy many more clothes and things in the future.

He reached out in his pocket, took out a few coins, and handed over to the boy. One of them slipped from his hand and rolled over to the road. Impulsively, the boy ran after it. He couldn’t have let go of a coin on a day when he needed it most to buy an ice-stick to add to the joy of wearing his new shirt for the first time in his life.

A speeding car had just overtaken a scooter and busy as it was in overtaking, it failed to react to the young urchin running after the coin. There was a screeching noise of the brakes, a fearful howl, the sound of metal meeting flesh, a scream, several shouts, blood and a body lying under the car, that of the urchin, honks, more shouts…….and then the sound of a siren.

Vikas broke from the queue and ran towards the car. Everything happened in a flash even after that. The car reversed a little, a cop appeared on the scene, an ambulance appeared, took the boy away and a police van took the car driver away. The police man parked the car involved in the accident on the side to make way for the traffic.

Vikas tried to get into the ambulance with the boy but he was pushed out. Later, when he had missed his bus and just sat on the kerb, he was trying to come to grips with what had happened. It was certainly his charity that had killed the child. He would never forgive himself for it. Should he have gone with the ambulance or with the police van? But, that would have required telling them what the child meant to him. In what way was he related to the child? Did he really mean that much? Was it simply because of those deep and keen eyes?

Vikas had no idea of how long he sat at the kerb and how much he cried. One hour, two hours, or even more; he had lost count of time.

Finally, it was dark and he resignedly caught a bus home. All throughout the journey he kept thinking of what could he have done before and after the accident. Could it have worked out any other way?

He reached home and found the door locked. It was unlike Anjali to have left home in this condition and that too without informing him. He reached into his pocket for his phone and then saw that there were as many as seven missed calls from her in a span of three hours. He got panicky and knocked at the door of his neighbour to enquire from them where Anjali was since she often informed them before leaving home. They informed him that she had gone into labour and had to be rushed to the maternity hospital.

He went running there. He was in a trance. He prayed to all the gods known to him whilst running.

The nurse told him that it was a difficult delivery but the good news was that his wife had given birth to a healthy male child. Could he see them? He was told that it was late and Anjali had been totally exhausted. He could go home he could come in the morning to see them.

He didn’t go home at all. He sat on the bench in the corridor and reminisced about his life with Anjali. He couldn’t believe it; he was a father after all those years of hopelessness. He prayed for her, prayed for his new-born son. But, every now and then his thoughts returned to the urchin in his new shirt, combed hair, his reaching into the pocket, taking out the coins, one of the coins rolling on to the road and the boy rushing after it for the last time in his life.

He hardly slept except for a few times when he dozed off due to sheer fatigue.

In the morning, he was taken to her bed. Both she and the child were awake. He hugged her and cried and then with tearful eyes he looked at his son.

Those deep and keen eyes looked back at him…..as if…..as if…..they hadn’t ever stopped looking at him.

Many of my friends and fans have asked me to write and publish a novel. I am doing the first part: to write. So, chapter by chapter, this novel, without any editing from my part, shall appear here on this blog. Please let me know in the comments if you like it. I shall also be looking at your comments if you don’t like it or any part of it; so that, if considered necessary, I can make amends. Alright, fasten your seat belts and prepare for this long flight.

One

The Jet Airways Flight from Mumbai to Goa was full. All flights to Goa are generally full at the end of the year; it being the favourite destination for Christmas and New Year Eve parties.

This was the last flight before Twinkle would have her holidays. She had joined Jet Airways three years back and, as in everything else in life, she didn’t entertain any regrets. She was an agreeable young lady with a radiant smile that all people close to her found infectious. Indeed, as far as passengers were concerned, it was the firm opinion of others in cabin crew that Twinkle had a kind of sobering effect on the passengers as if they were being served by one of their own. When Twinkle was selected for the Executive Class, none of the other crew objected; it was considered the most natural progression.

At the door, as the passengers came in, a lean and tall man, Twinkle gathered in his eighties, nearly tripped over an obstruction and she instantly bent to help him. He immediately righted himself, picked up his fallen walking stick and beamed a smile at her, “I think I can manage.” Just five words before the next passengers came in; but, Twinkle was sure those words conveyed far more than just the present tripping. It instantly occurred to her that perhaps he was making a statement about his entire life: ‘I think I can manage without any help from anyone. I am used to it’. However, the smile was not of derision or complaint, but, of acceptance, of being content with what life had dished out for him.

He was on seat 2F of the Executive Class space that had become her duty to serve. She offered to hang his jacket but he declined that. Later in the flight she realised why; he took out from one pocket his pouch of medicines. Later, when she offered him a newspaper he took out his reading glasses from another pocket and a pen to solve the crossword with. This man, she decided, didn’t depend upon people for anything. He was self-sufficient.

For the take-off, as she strapped herself to the folding chair, she could see him. He held both his hands together as if in prayer and closed his eyes. Many passengers did that and pretended that they were merely dosing off. However, he did that with great dignity as if he knew God would be instantly there when he’d close his eyes. Another glance and she found that a curious smile had formed on the edges of his lips as if in remembrance of something delightful. Perhaps, she thought a little mischievously, he was already in conversation with God. And then, it suddenly occurred to her that she was paying him far too much attention. It also surprised her to know that she couldn’t help it. There was something magnetic about this man in his eighties; she found herself being drawn to him, as if…as if…she forced herself not to drift into those thoughts and as soon as she announced about the seat belt sign having been switched off she jumped to her duties as a hostess.

There were eleven other passengers to be served but it occurred to her that she wanted to serve only him. “I don’t feel like eating anything”, he told her, “But, I have to since I shall be taking my medicine after that.” He didn’t indicate a choice and she didn’t want to be seen as fussing over; so, she decided that Continental Breakfast was what he’d prefer. He appeared to relish it but declined second helpings, even of bread. She noticed that the beverage was just black-tea. After the breakfast, she wanted to help him with his black leather bag in the overhead locker so as to take out the medicines, but, he took them out of a small plastic pouch in the right inner pocket of his coat.

After breakfast and medicines, he read the newspaper for a while and then started solving the crossword. He dozed off whilst holding the pen and the folded newspaper. She went to take the newspaper from his hands and she should have returned it to the pouch in front of his seat. But, curiosity got the better of her and she took the paper to her working space behind the curtain. She took the pen from his hand, capped it, and gently put it on the flat space between the two seats.

In her working pantry space, she found that the only word that he hadn’t solved was 16 Across and from the letters that were already inserted by him and the clue ‘Sometimes, even a small pebble thrown in a pond can cause_____, _____(7,7)’ she could guess the solution: UNDYING RIPPLES. She started guessing as to why had he left inserting the other letters; the solution was so obvious. Why? Didn’t he know? Was it too difficult? It then occurred to her that she was fascinated by the clue he had left for her to solve! Perhaps he wanted her to! She took out her pen and inserted the missing letters that didn’t make any difference in the other solutions either across or down.

His head had tilted to the right whilst dozing and she went back to insert a pillow between the head and the back-rest next to the window. She also reclined his seat to make him comfortable. Fortunately, he had kept the seat-belt on. She put the window shutter down.

Just before the landing, she went back to upright his seat, open the window shutter and perhaps to wake him up but, she noticed, there was no movement from him whatsoever. She touched him and found him rather cold. She hurried back to make an announcement requesting if there was any doctor on the flight. A kindly gentleman from the economy class approached seat 2F, made the motions of checking his pulse, eyes etc and shook his head, “I am afraid the passenger has died in his sleep.”

Despite her training, she almost screamed. She went and reported to the Captain and the Co-pilot and they made arrangements on the ground to receive the dead body. Since he was at the window seat, he won’t be in the way of disembarking passengers.

Whilst preparing him to be taken away, she wanted to know who he was. She felt for his boarding pass in the outside left pocket of his coat. As she felt for and took out his boarding pass, a picture fell out.

She glanced at the picture and nearly fainted.

It was the picture of her mother.

He had set out to explore a new world; a world where – as per the lyrics of the old Hindi song – there would be no sorrow or sadness, no tears; where there would be only Love as far as the eye would see and heart would feel.

First, there was a hill to be crossed. He had overheard many a wise people in his town telling about the wonderful new world that existed beyond the hill and beyond the rainbow.

He set out just before the crack of the dawn one day. He was alone. The going was tough not just because of his aloneness. It had rained just a while back and there was wetness in the air. Because of it the ground had become slippery. Even though the hill was beyond the valley and the stream, the thick vegetation was there to be negotiated and was making the going difficult. Some of the rocks too were slippery.

It was late in the afternoon when he reached the stream. The rainbow had been showing at the hill from the time the sun rose but even though he had headed straight towards it, it appeared beyond his reach. He wanted to continue going but the heat and toil had taken their toll and the stream beckoned him to take out his shoes and immerse his feet in the cool and clear water. He lay back his upper torso on the grass and his eyes closed.

Suddenly he heard a voice very close to him; it was a heavenly voice, a goddess singing exclusively for him. It appeared to him that the singing was sweeter and more heart-warming than that of Wordsworth’s Solitary Reaper though he was quick to admit to himself that he wasn’t really there when the great poet heard the reaper. Anyway, he wasn’t getting into having a dual with WW and turned all his attention to the singing, “Aapko apna koi dard na sehna hoga…” (You won’t have to bear the burden of any of your pains).

This was music to his ears. Suddenly, the scenery transformed itself into a paradise. The rainbow appeared so close that it was almost within reach. But, at this juncture, he had no desire to touch it since he had both his arms around her; the most beautiful person on earth and beyond. Indeed, he forgot all about climbing the hill. There was no need really because he had – he thought – found his new world there and then.

They set out to make their world more beautiful than any world anyone had ever seen. He worked in a farm and she amused herself in the hut by the stream. They often observed to each other that God must have been kind to them for having given them each other. Listening to each other, being with each other, loving and dreaming, dreaming and loving were the only things that mattered. The world that they had made protected them against everything, or so they thought.

Time passed….as it always does…

One day, she ventured out to go and look at the scenery upstream whilst he went to work at the farm. She came to a spot where the stream had formed into a near still pool. As she watched from behind the bushes she saw a number of men come to the spot, remove all their clothes and bathe in the pool. She was totally in love with her man but it appeared to her that this was, after all, innocent fun just to watch other men bathe.

That evening he asked her where she had been. She lied and said she watched the cattle at the meadow and enjoyed the sight; brown, white and black cows grazing with their calves. She deliberately omitted to mention about the bulls she had seen.

He knew instinctively – as one would in love – that it was a lie but he did not say anything.

Time went on, as it always does…

By this time she had taken to watching the men at the pool whenever she could. She liked the gleam of their muscles as they dried themselves in the sun. Gradually, she became familiar with the features of every man in the group. Everytime she lied to her own man. Everytime she was overcome by the fascination of seeing the men in the pool.

And then one day..

She took a dip in a smaller pool downstream from the men. It felt great. Why hadn’t her man ever suggested it? It was, she reasoned, innocent fun.

He was returning home a little early that afternoon as he had a headache. From a distance he saw his woman bathing in a pool with men. There was no need to lie now. He had seen it with his own eyes. That night when they lay in each other’s arms he asked her; to his shocked surprise he found that she lied about this too. Incredible, he thought. She said she was feeling so warm that she just thought of having a dip, and…she had no idea of men bathing so close to her.

Lies multiply and mutate like living oganisms. Now that she had gotten over a hump (my first lie?) she became quite crafty with it. For everything she had an explanation and often quarrelled with him for doubting her. “What do you want me to do? Quit bathing? Do you like dirty women?” she would confront him and made it look like he was a demon for having even doubted her.

He wanted to get over the trauma of her bathing in nude so close to men. Was it really as innocent as she made it out to be? But there was one thing that made it less innocent; the fact of her lying about it.

One day, when he slept, his dream came back to him. Next morning he got up and went to the stream and watched the sunrise. There soon formed an exquisite rainbow across the hill. Why had he paused? Why had he forgotten about the brave new world? Who had he set out to become and what had he become?

He took the first hesitant steps to go across the stream, to start climbing the hill. It wasn’t easy since he had really worked hard at making the world, their world. But, later he found he could do it. From the first stop up the hill, he looked back. There she was in her pool…and the men appeared close…very close.

The steep part of the hill was still to come but, he knew he had to keep climbing beyond the hill, beyond the rainbow.

He hit a rock.

He found he was with his feet in the stream and body resting on the grass.

An eternity had passed since he had closed his eyes….