Six Suspects (4 page)

I find the letters from the girls especially disturbing.
Some of them are as young as thirteen. They want to run
away from their homes, forsake their families, for fifteen
minutes of fame. They have no idea what it takes, what it
costs, to make it in Mumbai. Even before they made it to
the casting couch, they would be lured by some grubby
photographer or smooth-talking agent to a steamy massage
parlour or sleazy brothel. And their brittle dreams of
stardom would crumble against the nightmarish reality of
sexual slavery.

But I take a leaf out of my own life story and do not
respond to these girls. I have neither the inclination to
intervene in their sorry lives, nor the power to alter the
trajectories of their doomed destinies. It is the law of the
jungle. Only the fittest will survive. The rest are consigned
to the dustbin of history. Or the trashcan of society.

16 June

Vicky Rai called again today. He has been pursuing me for
the last two years. A real pest. But Rakeshji says I should
humour him. He is a producer of sorts, after all, and he does
have clout.

'Why won't you talk to me?' Vicky Rai asked.

'Because there is nothing to say,' I replied. 'How did you
get my new mobile number?'

'I know you change it every three months. But I have
my sources. You have always underestimated my power,
Shabnam. There is much that I can do for you.'

'Such as . . . ?'

'Such as getting you a National Award. My dad can pull
a few strings in government. Now don't tell me you don't
The Actress
33
want a National Award. These Filmfare Awards and Hero
Honda trophies are OK, but eventually every good actor
and actress craves a National Award. It's the ultimate
recognition.'

'Well, I am not interested in awards at present.'

'OK, how about if I offer you a part in my next film?
It's called
Plan B
. I've already signed Akshay for it. It's going
into production next June.'

'I don't have any dates free in June. I will be shooting in
Switzerland with Dhawan saab.'

'If you can't spare a month, can you at least spare a
night? Just one night?'

'What for?'

'I don't have to spell it out now, do I? Just meet me in
Delhi and everything will be taken care of. Or would you
prefer me to come to Mumbai?'

'I would prefer you to end this call, and not bother me
again, Mr Vicky Rai,' I said firmly and switched off my
mobile.

What does the bastard think, that I am a saleable
commodity? I hope he gets convicted for the murder of
Ruby Gill and rots in jail for the rest of his life.

30 July

Jay Chatterjee is so frustrating; I want to tear my hair out.
Arguably the most brilliant director in the industry, he is
also the most eccentric. He met me at RK Studios today
and said that he had decided to cast me in his new film.

I started trembling with excitement. A Jay Chatterjee
film means not only a mega hit, but also plenty of awards.
He is the Steven Spielberg of Bollywood.

'What is it going to be about?' I asked, trying to control
my palpitations.

'It is about a boy and a girl,' he said.

'What kind of girl?'

'A very beautiful girl, from a very rich family,' he said in
his usual dreamy manner, fingers playing an imaginary
piano. 'Let us call the girl Chandni. Chandni's parents want
her to marry an industrialist's son, but Chandni happens to
fall for a mysterious drifter called K.'

'How mysterious!' I chimed.

'Yes. K is of this world and yet not of it. He exudes a
power, a hypnotic pull which sweeps Chandni off her feet.
She falls under his spell, becomes his slave and only then
does she realize that the stranger is actually the Prince of
Darkness.'

'Wow, the Devil himself?'

'
Exactement!
My plan is to narrate this story in two
voices, those of Chandni and K. It is the interplay of the
two stories, the dramatic tension in their relationship, that
will power the narrative. So what do you think?'

I let out a deep breath. 'I think it is stupendous.
Something never seen before in Indian cinema. It will be
another Jay Chatterjee masterpiece.'

'So are you in? Will you be my Chandni?'

'Absolutely! When do we start shooting? I'll commit
dates to you straightaway.'

'We begin shooting as soon as I cast K.'

'What do you mean?'

Chatterjee paused and fingered his straggly beard. 'I
mean that I want to create a new paradigm for the angry
young man. For K. I have been thinking, how long can we
continue to give audiences the same bicepped hunks
masquerading as action heroes or chocolate-faced nerds
pretending to be kings of romance? People want change, they
crave something new. I want K to be the harbinger of that
change. He will be the ultimate quasi-hero. Someone whose
persona combines the qualities of both a hero and a villain.
Hard, yet soft. Brutal, yet tender. Someone who has the looks
to melt your heart and the anger to chill your blood.'
The Actress
35

'Don't you think Salim Ilyasi would be perfect for this
part?' I asked.

'My sentiment exactly,' Chatterjee said morosely.
'Trouble is, Salim refuses to work with me.'

'But why?'

'I made the mistake of bad-mouthing his mentor, Ram
Mohammad Thomas, in some interview.'

'Then what are you going to do?'

'Try to find another Salim Ilyasi. Till then, the film will
just have to wait.'

Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous? A film
held up, not for want of a script or a director or finance, but
a hero who doesn't even exist. But then, that's Jay
Chatterjee. And when he says wait, you wait. So I'll wait.

2 August

The following letter arrived today, marked 'Private':

Respected Shabnam Didi,

Hoping you are fine with God's grace. Myself Ram Dulari
respectfully touching your feet. I am being Maithil Brahmin,
nineteen years of age, living in Gaurai village of Sonebarsa
block of district Sitamarhi and being only girl in village who
is Class Six pass.

Myself now in great difficulty. Big floods coming to our
village and drowning everything. Our house and cattle being
washed away, respected father and mother dying very
unfortunately. I am being saved by army boat. First I am
staying in very bad camp made of torn tents in Sitamarhi
but now myself living in best friend Neelam's house in
Patna.

Myself not knowing anything about you because in
village there being no big sinema hall like in Patna. But
Neelam seeing lots of your fillims and calling me your
younger sister. She is taking photu from her camera and
asking me to be sending you.

I am being very good cook knowing very many types of
recipes including
gulab jamun
and
sooji ka halwa
. Nice
sewing also doing and knitting one sweater in only two days.
Since myself being Maithil Brahmin, I am cooking food
strictly as per rituals, full vegetarian, and all fasts and
festivals being observed properly.

Kindly contacting me at above address and helping me
out by taking me to Mumbai and giving me shelter and job.
God showering you with full blessings.

With feet touching to all elders in family and love to
children,

Your younger sister

Ram Dulari.

There was nothing remarkable about the contents of the
letter. I receive dozens of such offers from young boys and
girls, willing to work as bonded labour in my house, simply
for the privilege of sharing space with me. But I was
intrigued by Ram Dulari's reference to herself as my
younger sister. I immediately thought of my real sister,
Sapna, who would also be nineteen. She was probably still
in Azamgarh with my parents, though I couldn't be sure as I
had had no contact with her, or them, for the past three
years. They had erased me from their lives, but I had been
unable to erase them from my mind.

So I extracted the pictures from the envelope. They
were standard 6 _ 4 glossies. I looked at the first one, and
almost fell off my chair. Because staring back at me was my
own face in close-up. The same large dark eyes, small nose,
full lips and rounded chin.

I quickly glanced at the second photo. This one showed
Ram Dulari in a cheap green sari, leaning against a tree. Not
only her face, even her build was similar to mine. The only
visible difference was the hair. She had long, lustrous black
tresses, whereas my current hairstyle was a chin-length bob
with the latest asymmetrical fringe. But this was an
insignificant detail. I knew I was looking at my spitting
image. Ram Dulari was my
Doppelg?ger
.

What struck me about the photos, beside the uncanny
resemblance to me, was the fact that Ram Dulari seemed so
unselfconscious. There was no artifice, no pretence, no effort
to appear like me. She was just made that way. This was a
girl unaware of her own beauty and I immediately felt a
sense of kinship with her. Here was I, living in a luxurious
five-bedroom penthouse apartment in the best city in India,
and there was she, a luckless orphan, barely managing to
survive in the heartland of Bihar where marauding gangs
roamed free and unchecked. I resolved in that moment to
help her, to send Bhola the very next morning to Patna
to bring Ram Dulari to Mumbai, and to me.

I don't know what I will do with her. I have enough
servants already, even good Brahmin ones. All I know is that
I cannot leave the poor girl to her fate. I cannot be a silent
spectator to her suffering. So I will intervene in her destiny,
alter her fate.

But in so doing, will I be altering my own?

T
HE CRYING
emanated from the middle of the clearing, a long
wail punctuated by two short ones, like a funeral dirge. The
arc of grief rose to a peak, tapered off, then rose again, mirroring
the rhythm of the ocean waves crashing against the jetty a short
distance away.

It was the beginning of October. The fury of Kwalakangne, the
south-west monsoon, had abated, and the days had started to
become hot once again. Stepping out in the scorching sun at noon
required constitution and resolution.

Melame and Pemba approached the clearing, where six
wooden shacks with corrugated asbestos roofing stood on stilts.
A couple of young boys wearing shorts were noisily playing
football in front of the huts, oblivious to the wailing in the
background. A thin, mangy dog lay flopped on the ground, its
tongue hanging out. The smell of chicken shit hung in the air.

Melame paused before the third shack and waited for Pemba
to push open the door. The room inside was small and sparsely
furnished. It contained a high wooden cot with a mosquito net
supported by four bamboo sticks. A clay pot rested on a wooden
stool. The walls were adorned with cautionary posters provided
by the Welfare Department dispensary, warning against polio,
tuberculosis and AIDS. An ancient ceiling fan whirred overhead,
bringing some respite from the heat. In the right-hand
corner, on the wooden floor, lay the naked body of a man
approximately sixty years old. His eyes were closed, but his
mouth was incongruously open, gaping in amazement at his own
death. There were two people, one on either side of the body,
crying in unison. One was a wrinkled old woman, wearing nothing
but tassels made of sea shells around her waist, her withered
breasts hanging like udders on a cow. The other was a young man
wearing a loincloth and sporting a plain clay wash on his face
and body, the sign of mourning. He got up as soon as he saw Melame
and Pemba.

'Melame is very sad to know that his friend Talai has gone to
the great beyond,' Melame said gravely as he embraced the young
man. For a couple of minutes they communed in silence, eyes
closed, cheek against cheek.

'When is the funeral, Koira?' Pemba asked the young man.

'This evening,' Koira replied.

'I didn't know Talai was sick,' said Melame.

'He wasn't,' said Koira. 'My father just had mild fever
yesterday. Mother applied some moro leaves to bring the
fever down, but by this morning he was gone. Just like the wind.'

'Look after your mother,' said Melame, gently patting Koira's
shoulder. The old woman continued to wail, taking no notice of
the visitors. Melame and Pemba said their goodbyes and stepped
out of the shack into the sweltering heat once again.

'That's the third death this season,' the older man said, his
voice quivering. 'The legions of
eeka
are increasing.'

Pemba nodded grimly. 'When malevolent spirits multiply,
things can only get worse. At this rate, our tribe will soon become
extinct, like the dugong.'

'Ah, the dugong! I have almost forgotten what it used to taste
like,' Melame replied wistfully, smacking his desiccated lips.

'But Pemba still remembers. For my initiation ceremony I
actually speared a dugong,' said Pemba.

'You were a great hunter. One of our best,' Melame responded
approvingly. 'But look at today's youngsters, celebrating
tanagiru
by drinking beer and coca, that too made by the foreigners!'

'You are right, Chief. Well, what can I say? My Eketi is no
better. He roams around the Welfare Office all the time, waiting
for handouts. They say he sells honey and ambergris to the welfare
officials in exchange for cigarettes. I have caught him several times
smoking them. It makes me hang my head in shame,' Pemba
replied in a low voice.

They trudged slowly in the direction of the turquoise ocean,
wiping the perspiration from their brows. Bordered by casuarinas
and coconut palms, the creek looked green, shady and inviting.
They could see two white motorboats moored at the jetty. On the
other side of the jetty were the cottages of the welfare staff. They
passed the powerhouse, where the generator was making a racket
as usual, and the dispensary, where Nurse Shakuntala was sitting
all alone, fanning herself with a magazine. The next building was
a dilapidated old warehouse, which now served as the school.
They saw Murthy, the teacher with the slick, oily hair, standing
with six tribal kids in the playground. He was distributing paper
flags to the children, who wore identical blue shorts and white
bush shirts. 'Now look,' they heard him instruct, 'when Minister
Sahib arrives on Sunday, you have to stand in line at the helipad
just like this and start waving these flags. And I want each one of
you to give him a big smile. Now show me smiles, all of you.' He
raised his right hand, in which he gripped a wooden ruler. The
children gave nervous, toothy grins.

'Looks like another VIP is coming. Now all of us will be
ordered to do cleaning and dusting and made to put on those
horrid clothes,' Pemba said in irritation.

'Can there be anything more demeaning than parading our
children before the
inene
?' Melame asked, his voice bristling with
anger.

'No, Chief,' Pemba concurred. 'We have been made slaves in
our own land.'

They passed behind the little temple built three years ago by
the welfare staff. A square block of concrete with a white dome, it
housed a stone image of Hanuman in mid-flight holding up a
mountain, the entire thing painted a garish orange. They glimpsed
two figures inside the temple, bowing their heads before the
monkey god.

'Isn't that Raju and Taleme?' Melame asked incredulously.

'It does look like them,' said Pemba, craning his neck to peer
into the semi-darkness of the sanctum sanctorum.

'Now Melame has seen everything.' The chief shook his head
slowly. 'Our men have even forsaken our god.'

'That is because our god has forsaken us. Why is Puluga
causing all these deaths? You need to do something, Chief, and
quickly,' counselled Pemba.

'I think the time has come to consult the
torale
,' replied
Melame. 'Today we will all be busy with Talai's funeral. But let us
have a full Council meeting tomorrow morning. Spread the word
quietly. We will meet inside the forest, at Nokai's hut, where the
prying eyes of the welfare staff will not be able to spot us. That
welfare officer – what's his name, Ashok – is particularly nosey.'

'Quite right, Chief. He has been taking an unhealthy interest
in our tribe. The children have nicknamed him Gwalen – Peeping
Tom,' Pemba laughed.

'I think he is more dangerous than a snake. Ensure that he
doesn't get wind of our plans.'

'Yes, Chief.' Pemba bowed his head.

The forest was a palette of greens, brushed with patches of pink
and white. Climbing orchids burst from branches and clumps of
pink lilies poked up here and there like anthills. Triangles of
Deodar trees stood like sentinels against the sky. The jungle
thrummed with the sounds and scurry of life. Clouds of
mosquitoes hummed their monotonous song. Invisible parakeets
and parrots cried out from tree branches. Cicadas screeched from
shrubs and bushes. Monitor lizards and snakes slithered through
the underbrush.

Melame stood in a little clearing under the shade of a lofty
garjan
tree, directly in front of the medicine man's hut, and
surveyed his flock. The women were busy as usual, making tassels
of nuts and sea shells, gathering firewood or braiding their hair.
The men were working on a log with their adzes, trying to fashion
a canoe.

Melame breathed in a lungful of fresh air, still redolent with
the aroma of morning dew, and looked longingly at the tree-lined
vista in front of him. This little stretch of forest was the only
surviving patch of green on the island. The settlement in Dugong
Creek was littered with tree stumps. Every day ramshackle trucks
loaded to the brim with timber rumbled down the Little
Andaman Trunk Road, which ran along the island's edge, slowly
denuding the island of its forest cover. Virtually every part of the
island was now dotted with rice fields and coconut plantations.
This was the islanders' last refuge, the only place where they could
still hear birdsong and be themselves, naked, free and alive.

'Is the bait ready?' the chief asked Pemba, who nodded and
pointed to a large earthen pot lying at his feet. Melame, looking
satisfied, tapped on the door of Nokai's conical hut, thatched so
low that it could only be entered by crawling.

'Go away,' the
torale
shouted from inside. 'Nokai has been
having bad dreams. He cannot step out of his hut.'

Melame sighed. The medicine man was a reclusive, reticent
oracle who hardly ever ventured out of the forest and was notoriously
difficult to please. But without his powers of medicine and
magic, the tribe couldn't survive. He could stop a storm simply by
placing crushed leaves under a stone on the shore; he could divine
a gathering illness from the lines on a man's face, and advise a
carrying woman whether she would give birth to a boy or a girl
simply by tapping her belly. The
torale
alone knew how to avoid
malicious spirits and propitiate friendly ones, how to protect the
clan during a lunar eclipse and what to do to counteract a curse.
Melame was convinced that short of bringing a dead man to life,
Nokai was capable of working any miracle. So he persisted, holding
up the earthen pot.

'See, Wise One, what have we brought. It is turtle meat,
absolutely fresh. Pemba caught it just yesterday.' Melame opened
the lid, letting the smell of the meat waft into the hut. If Nokai
had a weakness, it was for turtle meat.

The bait worked. Presently the door of the hut opened and a
wizened hand snaked out, grabbed the pot and dragged it inside.
After a long interval the door opened again and the
torale
gruffly
invited them in. Melame and Pemba slithered through the
opening.

The hut was quite spacious inside. It contained a single raised
sleeping platform in the centre. The ceiling was decorated with all
kinds of objects – animal skulls, nautilus shells, bows and arrows
and pieces of multi-coloured cloth. There was a wooden pan on
the ground full of strips of dried boar and snake meat. A crackling
fire burnt in the far corner in another earthen vessel. Nokai sat in
the centre of the hut on a majestic tiger-skin rug, believed to have
been a gift from the King of Belgium, whom he had once cured of
the usually fatal black water fever. The earthen pot was lying in
front of him, licked clean.

The medicine man peered at them with his hollow eyes. They
glinted like pools of water in the near-darkness of his hut. 'Why
have you come to bother me?' he demanded gruffly.

'Our race is in trouble, Wise One,' Melame replied. 'Our wild
pigs have disappeared, turtles have become as scarce as the
dugong, and our tribe members are dying like flies. Talai was
the third one to go. Why are the spirits angry with us?'

'All this is happening because you lost the
ingetayi
,' Nokai said
sternly. 'The sea-rock was a gift from our greatest ancestor Tomiti.
It was engraved by Tawamoda, the first man. As long as we had the
sacred rock, we were protected. Even the deadly tsunami caused
no damage to our tribe. On the contrary, we were blessed by a girl
child. It is only since the
ingetayi
disappeared that our tribe has
fallen on hard times. How could you allow our most sacred relic
to be stolen?'

'I really don't know, Wise One,' Melame replied sheepishly.
'We kept the sea-rock hidden deep inside the Black Cave at the
far edge of the creek. None of the
inene
ever ventures that far. It
is a mystery who could have taken it.'

Nokai gave another burp, groped about amongst the bones,
rattles, charms and sea shells scattered across the tiger-skin rug,
and came up with a large pearl oyster shell. 'Look at this,' he said.
'Once this was a living body, but today it is just a dead, empty
shell. How? Because the spirit which resided in this shell has
gone. Puluga resided in the
ingetayi
. When the
ingetayi
left
Gaubolambe, Puluga left the island too. Now we are without his
protection. The friendly spirits are angry with us for letting our
God go. They are the ones causing all this havoc, these deaths. It
is the curse of the
onkobowkwe
. Naturally, the person who stole
the sacred rock will also be cursed. The spirits will not spare him,
but they will not spare us either, for allowing the
ingetayi
to be
stolen.'

'So what do we do? How do we save ourselves?' Pemba asked.

'There is only one way. Someone will have to go and recover
the sacred rock,' Nokai replied.

'But for that we must first find out who has taken the
ingetayi
,
and where it is residing now,' Melame said. 'Only you can help us
locate it.'

'Yes, Nokai will help you locate it.' The medicine man nodded.
'But in return I want enough turtle meat to last me the rainy
season, a big pot of honey and at least five nice pig skulls.'

'Granted, Wise One. Now just tell us who has the sacred
stone.'

Nokai dragged the earthen vessel containing the fire closer to
him. He rummaged through the items on the rug again and
extracted a large lump of red clay and some brown seeds. He
threw the seeds into the fire, where they burst with a bang.
He smeared the red clay all over his face and body. He then went
to the sleeping platform, raised the thin mattress and brought out
four large bones from underneath it. 'These are my most prized
possession. The bones of the great Tomiti himself.'

Melame and Pemba kneeled in deference to the great ancestor.
Nokai sat down on the rug once again, spreading the four bones
around him. Then he put his head between his knees and
appeared to go to sleep. Melame and Pemba settled down to wait.
They were familiar with the medicine man's routine. He was
preparing to visit the spirit world. The brown seeds and the red
clay would repel malevolent spirits, the bones of the ancestor
would attract benevolent spirits. They would enter the hut,
bringing a cold draft in their wake. Being blind, they would feel
the
torale
's body all over, making him shiver with cold. They
would then truss him up like a pig, load him on their back, and fly
into the sky.