Those Pricey Thakur Girls (26 page)
Read Those Pricey Thakur Girls Online
Authors: Anuja Chauhan
And so Debjani has to listen to Anjini and Eshwari eulogize about Dylan all the way home. They have clearly taken the sighting of Mrs Shekhawat as a licence to gush upon the hitherto taboo subject of her son.
‘He’s doing so well, just see! Travelling to Canada and all. He’s like an avenging
crusader
fighting for… for whatever it is he’s fighting for. It’s that mouth that makes him so hot – what did his mother say that day? Notice the strongly corded neck, leading up to the jaw of a cowboy, to the mouth of an angel! Waise, I like his eyes too. Dabbu, I really think you overreacted about that stupid article, so what if he wrote it, he must have felt bad, no, that’s why he coached you afterwards. Juliet aunty clearly still likes you. And you would have looked so pretty in church – in wispy cream lace, with lots of flowers. Not everyone can carry off cream, you know, Ma, but Dabbu can. Because she looks just like me.’
Mrs Mamta sighs. ‘Girls, let’s talk about something else. Why are you here again, Anji? And how’s your goodness project going?’
Anji, who has no happy answers to give to any of these questions, promptly shuts up. But she has made her point.
‘I wish I could lobotomize myself or something,’ Debjani mutters to herself as she combs her hair agitatedly in her room that night. ‘Cut out great fat chunks of my brain and just throw them away. I might forget all the GK I mugged up for the DD job, but at least I won’t have these bloody
memories
.’
The comb snags upon a knot, jerking sudden, stinging tears out of her eyes.
But it was such a little kiss. Too little to count, surely. Maybe you imagined it?
She dashes her knuckles into her eyes savagely, blows her nose, banishes all thoughts of a blue checked handkerchief from her mind, pulls her Jaipuri razai over her head and goes determinedly to sleep.
‘You were aiming for three solid witnesses, weren’t you?’ Hira asks Dylan in the
IP
office in Ballard Estate. ‘One civil services officer, one party worker and one common man? How’s that going? You managed the officer but the poor sod’s been totally discredited now. Do better with the other two, tiger.’
‘Surely you haven’t swallowed that trumped-up embezzlement charge?’ Dylan swivels around in his office chair, dishevelled and stubbly, and stares at his boss out of grimy, reddened eyes. ‘You know it’s fake, right?’
The freshly washed, shaved and delicately scented Hiranandani looks down at his young protégé and sighs. ‘When did you last go home to bathe and sleep?’
‘He’ll go,’ Varun Ohri steps in hastily. ‘He’s got some stuff he’s got to wrap up. And why should he doll up for us, anyway? We’re not chicks.’
Dylan looks around, taking in the unlovely sight of the
IP
newsroom, full of paunchy, crumpled men drinking tea and eating batata vada. His eyes light up with genuine affection. ‘You’re better than chicks,’ he says sincerely.
Everyone beams. Varun hands Dylan a steaming glass and a batata vada placed upon a greasy newspaper square. Dylan bites into it.
‘Waise, you’ll kill all of us, working so hard, behenchod,’ Varun grumbles as Dylan chews. ‘Take it a little easy.’
But Dylan can’t help himself. The tapping of typewriter keys is the only sound that focuses him nowadays. He feels at peace only when the words are leaping out of his fingers in a white heat, marching in orderly black rows across the screen, spilling onto the edit page and creating havoc in the body politic.
‘You’ve got everybody all stirred up,’ Hira tries to explain to him. ‘People are clamouring for something to be
done.
We need to get all three witnesses out there – boldly saying stuff that can put Motla and gang into prison – or the readers will turn against us.’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Dylan says thickly to Hira through a mouthful of batata vada. ‘You know the embezzlement charges are fixed, right?’
‘Immaterial,’ Hira replies lightly. ‘This paper is interested in getting Motla his just desserts. Anandam Dhas’s charges won’t stick. So, what’s your plan?’
‘You
know
,’ says Dylan, stretching out in his chair, ‘that ex-party worker in Canada. He’s promised complete disclosure.’
‘Good,’ Hira says. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t do a bunk on you too, like so many others have. And what about the third witness? Somebody who actually lived in Tirathpuri, and was there that night?’
‘I’m working on it.’ Dylan crumples up the greasy newspaper and chucks it into a bin across the room. ‘I’ve sent out feelers all over Tirathpuri. They know I’m sympathetic. Somebody will bite.’
Hira nods. ‘Okay, go get the interview. And get a little R&R too. The ladies are complaining that you’re starting to lose your looks – and you know that’s the only reason we keep you around.’
Dylan grins, not looking too worried about this feedback. He knows he blotted his copybook with the
IP
girls last Saturday night, when he took the prettiest one of them to the International Film Festival of India, made her sit through two rather sordid films – one Iranian, one Korean – and dropped her home, unloved and mystified, five hours later.
‘Fine.’ He gets to his feet. ‘I got all that. Now will the two of you stop clucking over me like a pair of maiden aunts?’
‘We used voting lists to figure out where the Sikhs lived. Hardik Motla gave us kerosene and iron rods.’
The government of India has famously stated that ‘when a giant tree falls, the earth shakes’. But Kailash Tomar, an ex-party worker now settled in Canada and working in a gurudwara to ‘atone for his sins’, remembers those three dark days following the death of the then PM rather differently.
‘The news broke on AIR first, that it was Sardars who had murdered the PM. It made us very angry, because we loved her like a mother. Then we heard that Sardar families were distributing sweets and dancing to celebrate her death. That made me furious. But my wife said, let it go, jaane do, what can you do now? So I just prayed for my leader’s soul, wept and went to sleep.’
‘But later that night, the bulawa came. We were picked up in jeeps and driven to the residence of our leader, Motla saab. He was heartbroken too – his kurta was torn, his hair uncombed, there were tears spilling from his eyes. He came to the front gate and addressed us. There were no mics, but we could hear him clearly. He said, ‘An eye for an eye – a life for a life.’ He repeated it two-three times, louder and louder, till everybody became quiet. Then he said, ‘Here are the voting lists for my whole constituency. It will help you track down every single Sikh family – find them and make them wish they had never been born.’
As his people handed out bottles of liquor and jerry cans of kerosene, we took up the chant:
Blood for Blood! A Life for a Life!
They distributed hockey sticks and iron rods too. Then we got back into our jeeps and, drinking and chanting, drove down to the trans-Yamuna area. The Sikh colony of Tirathpuri was very quiet, too quiet. They were hiding, of course, by then they knew we were coming and that we would seek them out.
Rest all what to tell you, saab, it was like there was a fever upon us. I did things that night that I never want to think of again. I became a demon, a haivaan. Men, women, children, old people, I spared no one. My shirt was soaked in blood, petrol and alcohol. We had been told that the army would be called the next day, so when the sky grew lighter, we got back into our jeeps and drove away. When I got home I just slunk quietly into my bed and slept for two days. My wife said nothing.
Nobody came looking for me later. Nobody at all. Motla saab kept his promise.
But Karma came looking. Karma took away my son, he was only ten years old – he got polio and died. My daughter died in her husband’s home in a kitchen fire. My wife got sick at heart. She only lies in bed and stares.
And so now, to seek forgiveness for my sins, I clean the shoes of devotees in this gurudwara. None of the people here knows what I have done in India. If they find out, god knows what they will do to me. But even that I am willing to face.
You can print my name, photo, everything. I hope, once I have done this, Karma will release its hold on my wife and she will become well.
DSS
‘Hey, who’s that downstairs in the
schwoonng-schwoonng
car?’ asks a gangly intern, leaning out of the window of the
India Post
office in Ballard Estate. ‘Looks like a big shot. Do you think he’s coming up here?’
Nobody replies. The intern scoops up his table tennis ball and goes back to his game, while downstairs, the door of the gleaming white Ambassador slams shut, seemingly extinguishing the swirling red and blue VIP light. Guards armed with walkie-talkies race ahead deferentially and commandeer the rattling elevator. Two minutes later, Hardik Motla glides out onto the second floor, steely smile well in place, a rolled up
India
Post
in his hand, passes through the double glass doors emblazoned
Truth. Balance. Courage.
and endeavours to make eye contact with the thin Parsi receptionist.
‘I want to meet Shri Purshottam Ohri.’
‘Bade-papaji doesn’t sit in office any more,’ she replies, her carrying, high-pitched voice dismissive.
Motla’s smile doesn’t falter. ‘Then, that…’ His long thin fingers twitch and snatch a name out of the air. ‘That Hiranandani chap will do.’
‘Do you have an appointment? Ya aise hi?’
He smiles even wider and starts to reply, but before he can, the phone on her desk rings. She picks it up.
‘Is that Hardik Motla?’ Hira asks gleefully.
‘I don’t know.’ The receptionist looks the man standing before her up and down dubiously. Then she cocks one deep purple-tipped finger at him. ‘You are Molta?’
‘Motla,’ he corrects her.
‘He’s
saying
he is,’ the receptionist reports back to Hira, her voice redolent of doubt.
‘Send him in!’ Hira’s voice practically purrs down the line. ‘I haven’t had lunch yet. What happy happenstance!’
The receptionist puts down the phone.
‘You can go, Mr Minolta,’ she says, managing somehow to convey the impression that he has barely made it in by the skin of his teeth. ‘Just walk right down the corridor. It’s the last door…’
Dylan is playing carrom with the guys in the production room when he is summoned to Hira’s room half an hour later. He strides in, a little wary. Word has got around that Motla is in the office.
‘You wanted to see me, Hira?’ he asks in his deep, pleasant voice.
‘Come, come, Dylan,’ Hira says hospitably. ‘Mr Motla was asking for you.’
Dylan crosses his arms across his chest and nods. ‘Hello.’
Motla, sitting next to Varun Ohri on Hira’s low sofa and thus at a slight height disadvantage, puts down his Shiv Sagar mausambi juice glass and gives Dylan the full blast of his creepy rictus.
‘Mr Motla had some questions,’ Hira says, assuming a sombre expression. ‘He was wondering how, um, reliable our sources are. How accurate.’
Dylan glances briefly at Motla, and back at Hira.
‘Just our sources, generally? Or…?’
Hira’s eyes seem to twinkle. But his voice is very grave.