Nine years back, in a
courtroom, Sandeep got to know that he is crazy. This year, close to that
October day, about a kilometre from that courtroom, members of the Tigers Club
(the Rao Marg branch) discovered a crisply burnt corpse in a park. There was no
evidence or reason to connect the two events.
The Rao Marg (Rao
Boulevard before nationalist fervour effected the change) is a sedate area,
colourful perhaps but not accustomed to the macabre. At the west end, there are
the courtroom and other government offices where the hoi polloi and the hoity-toity
voice their grievances, not really expecting that to be settled there. Moving
east, there are the affluent gated communities which house the Tigers Club and
its kind. The neglected park where the corpse was found comes next, followed by
a lively market. At the east end, there is a ghetto of the middle and lower
income lot, a tightly-packed beehive with queen bees outnumbering worker bees.
The Rao of Rao Marg was initially an eminent scientist of the pre-independence
era, given the honour of a street bearing his name even before his death. In
the post-independence era, there were not enough streets to carry the names of honourable
men and Rao, still alive, had to share the honour with a politician with the
same name. The two in fact died on the same day many years later but only the
politician was deemed a martyr. The generations that followed never learned
about the scientist, aided by a liberal education and a concise curriculum. The
martyr became the sole proprietor of the honour. It was in memory of that Rao that
the Tigers Club had arranged a Cleanliness Initiative on that fateful October
day.
Tigress Mrs Dr Sethu
(the ladies, gents and kids of the club are addressed as Tigress, Tiger and Cub,
respectively) was guiding her new protégé Ms Swathi in the cleaning endeavour. The
latter, a recent entrant to their gated community, was from some suburb of New
Jersey, USA. Mrs Sethu had ‘visited many relatives and friends in those parts many
times’, and so, she was the obvious choice as mentor. She enrolled her ward in
the gym, salsa and cookery classes, monitored attendance and performance, and prepared
the younger lady for the full-membership of their august club. But there, in
that park, the mentor was at a slight disadvantage.
‘Oooh, it reminds me
of New Jersey. I used to rake our lawn,’ Ms Swathi swept gleefully.
‘You had to do it?’
Mrs Sethu posed the rhetorical question (she did not expect others to have
answers that suited her). She had four servants – a strict follower of equal
opportunities, she had two maids for cleaning and cooking, and two man-servants
to drive their three cars, and to take care of the needs of her Cubs and husband
Tiger Mr Sethu.
Mrs Sethu handled her
broom carefully, and the ground even more gently. She kept a lookout for the club
photographer. She wanted perfect photos of the event in the newspaper and on
her social networking website.
It was the
over-enthusiastic Ms Swathi who disturbed overgrown shrubs in a corner
undisturbed by lovers, and discovered the corpse.
‘Oooh,’ Ms Swathi
cried.
‘What is it?’ Mrs
Sethu responded. Her tone expressed disinterest in any answer. She went to the
younger lady’s side and eyed the disagreeable object with distaste.
‘Oooh,’ Ms Swathi
cried louder.
‘Hush,’ Mrs Sethu
suggested, ‘let it be.’ Definitely not the stuff for her photos, she decided.
The others heard Ms
Swathi’s cries. They formed a grave circle around the intrusion. Not before
long, their hyperactive moral compass pointed out the right direction. Someone
called the police. At the same time, another posted on their club’s webpage,
‘Tigers find dead meat’ along with a photo of the group and the fried object.
That trended well on social networking sites under ‘#MurderInRaoMarg’. It was Ms Swathi who pointed out that it could be
the club’s tribute to Edgar Allen Poe’s famous story, and that earned her the full
membership.
The police wrapped up
their case quickly. The body was charred beyond their limits of investigation. They
could barely ascertain that it was a male, probably in his thirties or forties.
An erudite inspector suggested dental records and DNA analysis; he opined that
realistic books and TV shows on crime suggested that. A constable noted this
point in the report, with a question mark in brackets. The police first established
that the body was not that of any from the west end society. They then went
through the records of missing people. They conducted door-to-door enquiries in
the east end for three days and updated the files with new names. The same
learned inspector noted with exasperation, ‘everyone in the east end seems to
be missing’. That was not an exaggeration. There were many, criminal or not, who
liked to slip into anonymity. The singles shifted frequently like gypsies and
were difficult to track. There were also a sizeable number with kith and kin who
remained forgotten for too long. There were migrants too. The privileged were missed,
the majority just slipped through the net occupying no memory space. The police
recorded too many instances of, ‘I haven’t seen him for a long time…’ On the
fourth day, observing that the case generated little interest, online or
offline, the case was closed ‘till further developments’.
There would have been
further development in the case if the police had reason to focus attention on
items number 7 and 23 in the list of missing people. Item number 7 mentioned
that ‘Anand must have shifted to a place better suited for his expertise’ and item
23 carried the statement, ‘I saw Sandeep after a long time but he did not stay
for long’. The police should have probed about Anand, given his background, but
they cannot be faulted for allowing Sandeep to fall off their radar.
Sandeep and Anand
were born in the ghetto at the east end. Sandeep’s father was a gazetted
officer in the Secretariat; Anand’s a watchman in the same office. Their paths
rarely crossed in office. Both were in the temple management committee. They
also met in the bar close to office. They were not friends but treated each
other with mutual respect. Anand’s mother was a maid in Sandeep’s house till
she got the secure position of sweeper in a government office, but even after
taking that job, she used to help Sandeep’s mother when there were visitors or
functions. For Sandeep’s wedding, she took leave for a week to assist in the
cleaning and cooking.
Anand used to bring the
morning milk to Sandeep’s house. Anand and most of their gang studied in the
government school. Sandeep and the middle-class kids attended a cheap private
school in the ghetto. The standard of education in both schools was roughly the
same.
Anand was a few years
older than Sandeep, and he had the stature of the wise guru in the gang. Anand
was the captain of their local cricket team. He gave the reviews of every movie
that ran in town, first day first show. He was a storehouse of information,
about the temple, the legends, and the goings on in the east end, and the west
end. Sandeep suspected that these accounts had a liberal amount of fiction, but
the stories were too good to doubt. The guru knew about the prostitutes in the
area, and the ministers and the film stars that came and went. He even knew
what went on inside. He claimed that he lost his virginity at thirteen to a young
virgin prostitute. The local lads had their first puff with Anand, their first
drink too. He got them blue movies. He knew about every rape, murder and
robbery in town. He had ethics too. He insisted that his gang should consist of
gentlemen. They could ogle at girls, but never bother them. One young boy
boasted about pinching a young lass’s bottom and Anand thrashed that boy till
the young one promised that he would never again do or think of such stuff, not
even with his wife in the distant future.
Sandeep had one more
reason to be in awe of Anand.
When Sandeep was fourteen,
a troublesome family rented the house next door. They were a constant source of
bother – borrowing utensils which they never returned, complaining about the
coconut and jackfruit trees that encroached into their airspace, and laying
claim to any fruit that fell in their compound. Their daughter studied in
Sandeep’s school and she had never-ending heart-rending tales of woe about
Sandeep and his friends. The parents had slanging matches, and nearly came to
blows. In that same period, Sandeep suffered frequent bouts of fever and also
falling grades in school. Sandeep’s father mentioned this worry to his cronies during
a temple committee meeting. After the meeting, Anand’s father approached
Sandeep’s father.
‘I do not know if you
believe in astrology and related sciences. Do you?’ Anand’s father asked.
‘Not really,’
Sandeep’s father said.
‘I have studied it a
little, mind you, just a little,’ Anand’s father said.
‘Really...? I didn’t
know that.’
‘Ah yes, it is only
known to a few I have had the good fortune to help.’
The two men studied
each other, as if they were mentally agreeing to a contract, and to take their
trust and respect to a higher level.
‘Can you help my son?’
Sandeep’s father asked.
‘I can try.’ Anand’s
father touched the other’s arm gently. He nodded his head slowly. Sandeep’s
father felt a comforting calm.
They walked silently
to Anand’s house. They sat in the small drawing room. Anand’s mother came to
greet the visitor, enquired if they would like tea, which they declined, and
then withdrew to give the men privacy.
‘I feel a spell has
been cast on your son,’ Anand’s father said.
Sandeep’s father sat
upright, his body tense, eyes filled with worry, anger and quiet desperation.
‘Do not get agitated,
that is what the spell wants. We can beat that,’ Anand’s father said.
He described what had
to be done. Sandeep’s father listened with full attention.
Sandeep observed fast
for two weeks – he ate freshly-cooked vegetarian food; had cold-water bath
before dawn and dusk and went to the temple; stayed away from menstruating
women; he had to think purely, slept on the bare floor, gave up his
twice-weekly masturbation and read only his textbooks. His mother observed that
he developed a glow, even in such a short span.
On a Thursday, around
half past seven in the evening, Sandeep and his parents went to Anand’s house.
They gathered in a small thatched outhouse at the back. Anand and his mother
were also there to assist. Anand sat next to his father. Sandeep’s parents
stood outside watching with faith and trepidation. There was a large abstract
pattern on the floor, drawn with vibrant colours and natural powders. Sandeep
sat in the middle of that pattern, facing the fire in a brick-lined hearth.
There was no electrical light in that room. The shadows danced on the
whitewashed walls. It was an intense serious affair. Anand’s father gave stern
instructions during the procedure, and Sandeep followed it to the word;
whenever he faltered, Anand with equal seriousness showed the right moves. That
went on for an hour.
After it was over,
Sandeep swooned, experiencing a strange but sweet mix of light-headedness
together with a surge of confidence. When he regained consciousness, he saw
Anand’s father staring at him kindly. Anand took him outside, handed him a
glass of fruit juice and a sweet offering. Sandeep felt an increasing closeness
to Anand.
‘It was remarkable,’
Sandeep whispered to his guru.
Anand looked at him,
as kindly as his father, but did not speak.
‘Why didn’t you tell
me about this before?’ Sandeep asked.
Anand turned to his
junior, his face serious, eyes eerily cold and dark, ‘Do not ever speak about
it. Just pray. We are trying to remove the spell on you and we are also trying
to hit back. Unless we do it right, our efforts can boomerang and hit us,
ten-fold hundred-fold, to destroy us, you, your family, me, my family.’
He turned away and
refused to say another word.
Meanwhile, within the
room, Sandeep’s parents thanked Anand’s parents profusely. They tried to offer
money. Anand’s father refused that offer.
‘We are family, we
are in it together,’ he said.
Sandeep continued fasting
for two more weeks. He was definitely glowing then, with robust health,
confidence and vastly improved grades in school. After the fast, he ate meat but
he continued to pray hard, visited the temple twice daily and studiously
avoided any thought that might trigger masturbation. That went on for three
months. Anand observed that Sandeep paid more attention to trees and birds than
to his stories.
‘Take it easy,’ the
guru told the pupil, ‘operation successful, patient rescued.’
Sandeep reverted to
his normal self. His grades dropped again but that did not bother his parents too
much because their son was free of the recurring fever, and the troublesome
neighbours had shifted from their area.
Time did what it does.
Sandeep did
reasonably well in studies and got a job in a private company. He went abroad
for a few years. The old government jobs were still in demand, among the lower
classes, but the middle-class aspired for more. Sandeep was working abroad when
his parents found a suitable bride for him. He returned home, to the ghetto,
married a lovely girl and they should have lived happily ever after.
Two weeks after the
wedding, a friend from his days abroad visited the newly-wedded couple. The
friend, another lovely girl, wanted to treat the couple in a chic restaurant.
Instead of going in a car, they decided to be eco-friendly and walk the short
distance of two kilometres to the restaurant.
The friend, without
giving her actions much thought, walked arm-in-arm with Sandeep. He had not got
a hang of this during his stay abroad. Every time, that activity brought
constant worry, whether he should be on the left or the right, or if he should
let the traffic or muddy puddles decide the side. Despite these problems, he
never refused a woman his arm. Thus, on that day, he was rather engrossed in
his usual problem of deciding the best side to walk arm-in-arm; and, he did not
give much thought to the other woman, his wife, walking without any arm of his
in hers. Even if he had thought of her, he would not have known which arm to
offer her.
He and the two lovely
ladies, sans expression sans emotion, walked in that fashion, so strange to
those parts, on the narrow lanes of the east end. The college students at the
tea-stall studied the procession, and they too were confused about the right
side. The liquor shop guy paused his rapid covering of bottles with newspaper
and the long polite queue followed his gaze. They did not have much choice. The
government, ever mindful of the health of the ignorant masses, had shifted
every other outlet to the west end. The impeccably dressed middle-aged man who
used to be the area’s supplier of smut books and magazines in the pre-Internet
era winked at Sandeep. The barber stepped outside to admire. His customer, with
one arm raised like the Statue of Liberty and an armpit well-lathered for a
shave, followed the barber outside to appreciate the lovely sight. If only the
participants knew how they were admired.
After that dinner and
after the friend left, Sandeep’s wife confronted him. She came to the point
quickly and accused him of emotional infidelity. Sandeep was not sure what that
meant but he was sure that he had not enjoyed anything to feel guilty about.
So, he told her that she is crazy. He should have known better. She decided to
show him how crazy she could be; and, not to be left behind, he matched her
efforts. The next three years had short periods of nerve-wracking calm
separating long stretches of confrontation. When they were calm, they met
counsellors to sort out their problems. If they had used that time to talk to
each other, they could have figured out their problems. That remained unclear, even
at the end. That was nothing new. Gone are the days of abuse, insanity,
infidelity or impotency being the cause of marital breakdown. In their case
too, the real problem remained fuzzy. Maybe, his wife had expected a life
abroad; maybe, it was because they were still in the east end ghetto and not
getting any closer to a life in the west end; maybe, they just started off on
the wrong foot and remained on that. Who knows? It became another case of incompatibility
but did they go for a no-fault divorce? No, they were too bitter to let go
without an attempt to destroy each other.
The divorce case went
on for three years. Neutral observers in the legal profession noted that that
was hasty justice. They were still handling cases that had started in the last
millennium, and milking their clients dry.
In their second year
in court, the judge ordered them to meet a marriage counsellor appointed by the
court. Sandeep and his wife talked to the counsellor about their fights and
also about their earlier efforts with other counsellors. For the first time in
his married life, Sandeep felt that he was being understood. He opened up. He joked
about the arm-in-arm walk with another woman and his wife; he admitted that he
was not too happy with his job and that he felt insecure like most men in such
troubled times; and, quite gallantly, he told the counsellor that he was
sincerely sorry if he had hurt his wife. After an inordinate delay of nine
months, the marriage counsellor filed the report on the mental and physical
health of their marriage.
The judge opened the confidential
report in court and had no choice but to label Sandeep crazy. Their case ended then
when Sandeep’s wife got what she wanted.
Sandeep managed to
get a copy of that report by bribing a clerk. It was a concise report, about
five or six sentences. The report said that Sandeep had admitted to an
extramarital affair. It mentioned that that crazy affair had left him impotent,
and that they had had to seek psychiatric counselling for his craziness. The
report noted that Sandeep seemed insecure about his job and everything else;
and that he was insincerely apologetic without comprehending why he was
apologizing. It was so damning that even Sandeep for a moment wondered if it
was true. Later, he wondered how that marriage counsellor had been got to. He
asked his lawyer who made light of the matter. Too easy, the lawyer said, it is
very easy to label a person crazy, just a matter of a few bucks.
After the divorce,
Sandeep should have tried another alliance, and carried on with life. Instead
of that, he committed the blunder of thinking too much about life, his in
particular and in general terms too. That affected his career. He lost his job
in two years. For the next two to three years, he flitted from one job to the
next, till he decided that enough is enough. He changed track and decided to do
something different, to do some good work in the east end ghetto where he grew
up.
He became a teacher
and took tuition classes for underprivileged children of the area. That went
well for a few months. After one class, he saw a group of boys ganging up to
bully a girl. Sandeep saw red when one bully fondled the girl. He thrashed the
boy, like how his guru Anand used to. The boy’s parents reported that to the
police. For obvious reasons, the girl and her parents decided to lie low, and
never came forward to back Sandeep. The media had a field day. Some
enterprising journalists even dug up the court report labelling Sandeep crazy.
The police wanted to believe Sandeep but they could not. Fortunately, for
Sandeep, the boy and his parents decided to drop the complaint before it
reached the trial stage. Sandeep left the area and the state.
He was away for four
years. It is not known what he did then or where he was.
Nine years after his
divorce, he came back to the east end ghetto and took a room in a cheap hotel. His
parents had shifted from the area after his divorce, to escape the double shame
and stigma of a crazy divorce. He did not meet any of his old acquaintances.
Anand’s parents had died in an accident. There were rumours that it was not an
accident, and more a result of their son’s deeds.
Every morning and
evening, Sandeep went to the temple. He lived a simple, nearly austere life.
After two weeks, he met his guru Anand there on the steps of the temple. They
went past each other, and only a keen observer would have noticed that they acknowledged
each other with a slight nod.
Two days after that
meeting, Anand slipped into Sandeep’s hotel room around midnight. They hugged
each other, like long-separated brothers. Anand had not changed much, physically
fit, simply but well attired even at that late hour. He had done well as a
hit-man for hire. In the local parlance, he was known as a ‘quotation killer’.
Given a ‘quote’ for limb or life, he got the job done, without any questions
asked, and without any trace to his client. It was a lucrative business. People
found the judicial system too cumbersome, and it was easier and quicker to
raise a ‘quote’, for a reasonable amount of money, to settle deals and
disputes. During the divorce case, Anand had offered to handle the matter, for
free, for old times’ sake. Sandeep had declined his offer then.
Nine years after that
case, Sandeep wanted blood for being labelled crazy. Anand agreed to ‘hit’
Sandeep’s ex-wife. She still lived in that area, happily settled with a second
husband and couple of kids. Sandeep offered to pay the going rate for the
‘quote’, or even more.
‘We are family. We
are in it together,’ Anand said when he accepted the base rate.
They decided to meet
three days later, around midnight, but not in the hotel room. They were to meet
in the park on Rao Marg.
The next morning, after
placing the ‘quote’ on his ex-wife’s head, Sandeep woke up feeling a sense of
dread. He thought about what he had arranged, and he realized that all his rage
towards his ex-wife had dissipated during the night. He went to the temple but
could not enter, feeling guilty of a heinous crime. He wanted to contact Anand
but there was no way to cancel the ‘quote’.
Three nights after
their meeting, Sandeep waited in the desolate park at the appointed hour. Anand
came on time. Unlike their previous meeting, they did not hug each other. They
did not even greet each other warmly. There was wariness on either side.
Anand, looking
sheepish, said, ‘Sorry, Sandeep, they raised a larger quote on you.’
He was surprised when
Sandeep mumbled with relief, ‘Thank God.’
Anand was even more
surprised when Sandeep took out a thick iron rod from a carry bag and brought
it down on his head with considerable force. It was a quick end for Anand.
Sandeep had not
forgotten his guru’s old words, ‘Unless we do it right, our efforts can
boomerang and hit us, ten-fold hundred-fold, to destroy us, you, your family,
me, my family.’
Sandeep looked at the
dead body of his guru with compassion. After all his trials and lessons, in
court, and in life about which he had thought a great deal, he would have seemed
totally daft if he had not been prepared for Anand’s betrayal, and the
reverse-quotation. Sandeep dragged his guru’s body to a distant corner of the
park, doused it liberally with petrol that he had thoughtfully brought in a few
large bottles. He walked away after lighting the fire.
‘Operation
unsuccessful but patient survived,’ he chuckled.
Sandeep left the
state once again, promising never to return to the area around Rao Marg.
