A Cut-Like Wound (8 page)

That was all he needed now. First the white man speaking Kannada. And now this. Then he heard laughter and saw the most amazing sight of his boss and the foreigner clasp each other like long-lost friends. Did they know each other from their youth? Were they friends, perhaps? Only, Santosh couldn’t imagine Gowda ever having had a youth or a friend.

Gowda seemed to have been born with an expression that hovered between weary, tetchy and surly on the odometer of expressions. For that matter, he hadn’t in the course of the last twenty-six hours seen Gowda smile once. Pleasantly. As if he meant it.

And such was Santosh’s shock at seeing Gowda smile that he found himself on his feet again, escaping the clutch of the malevolent sofa that had been so determined to make him look foolish and ineffectual.

‘Look at you, Bob,’ Michael said, holding his friend at arm’s length.

‘Look at you, Macha,’ Gowda retorted, a boyish grin erasing the years from his face.

Bob. Macha. Boy speak. From those years in college when every boy, mate or acquaintance was a Bob or a Macha. When had Gowda used it last? It was all yaar and dude these days. His son couldn’t seem to speak a sentence to his friends without placing a dude in it somewhere.

‘We are two middle-aged men now. You have a paunch and I have lost most of my hair.’ Michael smiled. ‘Did you ever think this is how we would be in our forties?’

‘Almost fifty. I’ll be fifty in November.’ Gowda smiled back at him.

‘And to think that we should meet like this. Bloody destiny, Bob.’ Michael found his carefully cultivated accent dropping in a moment.

Gowda straightened. ‘Destiny! Is that what you call it? You know why we are here, don’t you?’

Michael nodded. ‘Mudde,’ he began.

Gowda winced and then smiled. He’d been called Mudde Gowda at college. For a while he had been the star of the basketball court, his lean, lanky frame cutting through the defenders and slicing the air as he leapt. Shooting baskets with an ease that forever after would be his early morning dream. The lift, the heave, that amazing grace.

‘It’s all that bloody ragi mudde he’s been fed as a child,’ someone had overheard the visiting college captain muttering. And the name had stuck. Mudde Gowda. Ball Gowda. Gowda with the balls to grab the ball.

‘It was the most horrible thing I ever saw, Bob, and I thought I had seen it all in my years of service in the fire brigade in Melbourne.’ Michael’s voice drifted away as he stepped back in time to the roadside near the grove.

‘We have to do this formally. I think I should ask my colleague to take your statement,’ Gowda said softly.

‘When do we meet?’

‘Anytime you want. Just give me a shout,’ Gowda replied.

Gowda’s phone rang. Michael’s eyebrows rose at the ring tone. ‘
Kabhi kabhi
…’ a song that Gowda had made an anthem in those college years when his world had revolved around two things: the basketball court and Urmila.

Every day after college, Gowda and his gang, including Michael, would walk down to Breeze on Brigade Road. The jukebox there was a point to congregate around and each of them had his own favourite. Michael had Neil Diamond’s
‘
Cracklin Rosie
’ and ‘
Song sung blue
’, Satish ABBA’s ‘
Dancing queen
’, Imitiaz Boney M’s ‘
Rasputin
’. And every day Gowda would complain about jukeboxes that pandered to colonial tastes and forgot that Indians may want to listen to Indian music.

‘Like what,’ Satish asked one evening.

‘“
Kabhi kabhi
”, what else,’ Imitiaz laughed.

‘Don’t you tire of hearing that song, Mudde,’ Michael asked curiously.

‘Bugger off, guys,’ Gowda said with remarkable calm. You couldn’t rile Gowda those days, no matter how hard you tried.

Later, Gowda would peel himself from the gang and go to the restaurant on the first floor of Nilgiris where Urmila would be waiting for him.

Gowda, Michael thought, had forsaken both basketball and Urmila but perhaps not…

‘You know she’s back in Bangalore, don’t you?’ he murmured.

Gowda stiffened. Then he affected a casual ease into his flesh and voice. ‘Who?’

‘Urmila. Are you telling me you’ve forgotten her?’

‘I haven’t. It’s been a long time … But how do you know?’

‘Facebook.’ Michael grinned. ‘We discovered each other on it…’

‘Oh!’ Gowda said, too ashamed to admit that he had heard about Facebook but didn’t know how it worked. Everyone he knew seemed to treat their computer like a slave, a pet, a companion, a minion that made life easier. Computers and he were on nodding acquaintance at best.

‘You are not on Facebook, are you?’ Michael asked suddenly.

‘I don’t have the time…’ Gowda put on his official voice, a bite with each syllable, then paused. What the fuck was he doing? This was his friend. Not a subordinate or an accused. ‘I am a bloody dinosaur,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s like the world changed when I wasn’t looking and I don’t know where to begin to comprehend the change. I don’t even know what this thing called Facebook is.’

Into the silence that followed Gowda’s declaration, Santosh walked in and said, ‘Sir, the station called…’

Gowda turned to him, eager to escape. ‘You’d better take his statement.’

At home that night, Gowda sat in the veranda. He had studiously avoided pouring himself a drink. He could hear laughter from above. What did they laugh about so much?

He rose and went to put on the stereo. Last night’s CD was still in it. As if on cue, the strains of Mukesh singing ‘
Kabhi kabhi
’ floated into the veranda and filled his head. Something lodged in his chest. He tried very hard not to think of her but Michael had brought it all back. He had been nineteen when he first met Urmila … He shook his head, trying to dispel his thoughts, when suddenly another laugh rang through the air.

The ensuing silence filled Gowda with disquiet. That’s it, Gowda decided. He would get a dog, whether Mamtha agreed or not.

Gowda laughed aloud, imagining the expression on Michael’s face when he told him, ‘Meet Inspector Roby. He was top dog in the narcotics department.’

Michael would seize on the pun immediately.

God, how he missed all of that. The asinine word games that Michael and he had played during their college years.
The fools in this life he led now wouldn’t recognize a pun if it stood before them with a tea cosy on its head, waving its arms…

All these years it hadn’t mattered that he inhabited a different world from the one he had envisioned for himself. But this evening, ever since the meeting with Michael, it was as if everything about him and his life had been held up for scrutiny and found wanting.

His phone burst into song. Gowda frowned. He glanced at his watch. It was one of his informers from the time he had been in the Crime Branch. What was he calling about so late at night?

‘Tell me,’ he murmured into the phone.

‘Sir, Gowda sir…’ The voice was hesitant. Unsure.

‘What is it, Mohammed? Go on…’

FRIDAY, 5 AUGUST

By now Gowda had worked out every moment to perfection in his head. The corner was important. It couldn’t be just any corner of any room. The corner had to be flanked by two cupboards. Preferably the olive-green steel Godrejs. Or even a grey metal filing cabinet. The purpose was to create an alcove in which the man would be forced to crouch with no room to escape.

Then there were the boots with spikes. Sturdy black leather boots polished to a gleam, with dagger points for spikes. When he slipped the boots on, they would hug his
feet and ankles, so when he stretched his leg and kicked the creature in the corner, he would feel the impact at the back of his skull.

The impact of all eighty-three kilograms of him slamming into a spot. The crunch of metal against bone. The shredding of skin and laceration of flesh. Kick. Kick. Kick. Till it screamed for mercy.

Gowda tried hard not to slouch, and allowed his pet fantasy free rein. This time the man in the corner had a face. Assistant Commissioner of Police Vidyaprasad. IPS Cadre.

Gowda had known a few fine IPS officers in his time. But ACP Vidyaprasad was not someone Gowda could summon any deference for, let alone admiration or respect. The man was a bloody joke. And what added to Gowda’s ire was the thought that this fool was so much younger than him, with not even half the experience Gowda had in the field. And yet the ACP talked down to Gowda as if he were a recalcitrant child who needed to be made to toe the line.

‘What’s this I hear about you going to meet the witness in his house?’ the ACP snapped. The senior officer had summoned Gowda to his office for his monthly quota of advice, recrimination and threats.

‘Why? Is something wrong with that? I have always seen that a witness is less guarded in his own environment.’

‘Sir.’

‘What?’ Gowda asked carefully.

‘When you talk to me, you need to say sir. Do I have to remind you that I am your senior officer?’

‘Oh!’An image swam into Gowda’s mind: the howl of pain from the ACP’s smashed mouth as Gowda’s boots slammed into his ribs once again. It offered a soupcon of comfort that would allow him to mouth the hated ‘sir’. With
a devilish gleam in his eye, Gowda murmured, ‘Sir, if that’s all, sir, may I, sir, leave now, sir?’

The ACP frowned. Was he being ridiculed? Gowda was a problem. Always had been. The man was a good police officer. If only he would stick to procedures and established police practices. Instead, he made it hard for himself and the department by choosing to do as he saw fit. Surely the man should know by now when he ought to back off.

The wireless crackled. The ACP cocked an ear. Gowda sighed.

‘What about that burns case? Don’t waste too much of the department’s time on that, do you hear me? Close it as quickly as you can. There’s no need to waste the department’s time or money on scum.’ The ACP flicked the case sheet in front of him and peered at the name. ‘You don’t even have a name for him, I see. This lowlife is of no consequence, alive or dead.’

‘A man was murdered. Whether he’s a lowlife or not shouldn’t matter,’ Gowda spoke quietly.

‘That’s precisely it. He is … no, was lowlife.’

‘That’s beside the point.’

The ACP’s eyes narrowed. ‘You know, as I do, that it’s going to be a C report. We have nothing to take it forward with. Not even a missing person’s complaint. What I am pointing out to you, if you want to know, is the likelihood of the DCP coming down on me. I don’t want to have to answer for your squandering of time and resources. Besides, it’s Ganesh Chaturthi soon. Do you realize that half of Bangalore is going to descend on the lakes near your station house to immerse their Ganeshas?’

Gowda thought of the giant painted Ganeshas; pink torso-ed, with painted-on gold jewellery and green robes,
mounted on a truck and led through the roads with much singing and dancing to the lakes in his station zone. Ganeshas who would dissolve into a heap of mud and carcinogens, killing the fish and polluting the water. For which he was to stand guard and aid the process. Gowda grimaced.

‘I want you to concentrate on law and order for that week when the Ganesha immersion begins.’

‘It’s almost a month away…’ Gowda murmured.

‘Well then, there’s Independence Day coming up … And there’s some information on illegal betting in your jurisdiction area. There’s a great deal you need to do, Gowda.’

Gowda stared into the middle distance. On the wall behind the ACP’s chair were a few framed photographs. The national leaders at their benevolent best. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you something,’ Gowda said suddenly.

‘What?’ The ACP tried to fathom Gowda’s expression.

‘Why do you have these photographs here?’

The ACP counted to ten under his breath. ‘Go, Gowda, just leave, will you?’

When Gowda was out of the room, the ACP pulled out a strip of Deanxit and popped one. How could any man get under his skin with such little effort?

Gowda glanced at his watch. He had asked Mohammed to meet him at Chandrika, at the junction of Cunningham Road and Millers Road. No one would recognize Mohammed there. Or him for that matter. He smiled as he thought of the expression on the ACP’s face. He had known his question would have the ACP foaming at the mouth. And that he would be asked to leave.