NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
7
At last Adhirath got to meet his friend in the thana. The conversation had to begin with the talk about the enquiry against him. Nowadays Adhir has to prepare like a martyr about to be marched to the gallows to face questions. However, it was different with Nitesh. He got snippets of news and about teh goings-on in the department.
“No idea when it will be done, no clue,” said Nitesh.
“Yaar, it would be good if it were finished early. If they want to dismiss me let them do it. Staying at home like this, my life is ruined. There is nothing to do man, I just can’t bear it anymore.”
“Lucky you,” said Nitesh, “you can sleep as much as you want. No work, nobody to answer to and still you get half the salary. Nobody is going to hold you accountable for the rise in burglaries. Jaraas you to crack the murder that took place last night. Look at me, I have been lying here in this rotten room. Can’t even sleep outside. Mosquitoes will carry me away, there are so many of them. On top of it, it was so bloody bright outside. Full moon night. You can’t even switch off the moon.”
“What is the story of that murder?”
“What story? She was a whore, that bitch. That very day she had been identified. Everybody in the village knew her. Used to work in some beauty parlour. In this very market. You know what kind of businesses goes on behind the curtains there. Massages, of all sorts. Looks like there was more than one man, must have held her tight, that is how they managed to slit her open in such a straight line. Must have had a lot of practice in cutting. From here to here,” said Nitesh running a finger from his chest to the thighs in a sharp straight line.
Adhirath shivered.
“On the day of Holi,”said Nitesh with his brows raised. “played Holi with blood. Had she been sitting at home like a decent woman, had she had a job in some office she would be playing with her kids now. This is the consequence of playing parlour parlour.”
Adhir scrutinised Nitesh carefully. Both had been together in training college. Singing romantic film songs they had heard in their teens tunelessly. Crazy about Neetu Singh. Reciting Sahir’s poetry heard from Hindi films... “kabhi kabhi mere dil me khayal aataa hai...” struggling to get the Urdu pronunciation right. Now he could not find a single sign of those days in the expressions of this friend of his. The delicate soul of poetry did not seem to find even a toehold in this solid body of his. Now it always was fuck this one’s mother and that one’s sister. Does a thana make you like this? Are abuses stored in the maalkhaanaa of the thana that are used once in a while to begin with and then they become part of your personality? Perhaps the year long suspension from the job had pulled him out of that maalkhanaa, that and Pushpa’s daily admonitions to not use abuses on front of the son and also ask his dad to not use them before the child. He had had to place his hand on the child’s head and swear that he would not use cuss words at home, but his dad was made of sterner stuff. For many years Pushpa had insisted on living away from his family, she found it difficult to live with the constant abuses there. Even in the lane. The tent people verbally raped the mothers and sisters of everyone they talked about all day long. At home his dad would fill in the gaps. Pushpa had actually become a little tough to live with ever since she got posted to the women’s helpline, that is what Adhirath thought. The first time he had met her in the thana this hawaldarni was not like this.
“It is work, man, our job. Even a whore should not be killed. Was the murder related to her profession? What did happen? She went thinking there will be two clients and there were four, she refused ? Or they asked her to do something she would not?”
“Who knows. I don’t know what awful kind of people go to such women. On top of it these villagers! Man, I tell you those villagers we used to see in Bombay films, remember those characters? Simple, innocent rural souls, who always spoke the truth? Made fools of us. You won’t find a single such person in the village. Saale, they have all fallen silent as if someone has taped their mouths. Nobody has seen anything. The guard, he is a bastard of his own kind. That day we could not find him. Went again in the evening and then we found him. That too we got the information with great difficulty from someone. We dragged him here, gave two tight slaps too, you know...he is an outsider. Even if you kill, him no villager will come here to protest. Now this fellow, he locks the gate and opens it for everyone. Says nobody came there. In fact he was not there at all. Says he went to play Holi. Tell me, he must have gone only in the day. Where was he at night? Says he was high on bhang and passed off in the room of some other guard at some farmhouse two kilometres away. “
“He wasn’t around, so who found the dead body?”
“Three louts. They say they never go to the farm. Sometimes go to get mulberry and even that the guard gives them so there is no need to go in. That day the guard wasn’t to be seen so they went in. The body was under the mulberry trees. So they ran to the Pradhan. He called us.”
“Strange isn’t it? The villagers would hardly let an outsider play Holi with them,” commented Adhirath. “ So where did he go?”
“Who knows? Possible that the villagers did let him play for a while then he went off to another farmhouse. There are just farmhouses on both sides of the road there. Wonder where the fields of the villages are.”
“Must have been sold, all the land of the Village.”
“No, there are some fields. Some of the villagers do sharecropping in the farmhouses also.”
“Oh, well, then you won’t be able to leave the thana. I had thought we could go watch Munnabhai MBBS.”
“Yaar I have heard that it is a great fun film. But the day we join this job we have to divorce the rest of life. Talak, talak, talak,” said Nitesh. Both laughed loud.
“What do you think, was it a planned murder?”
“Am finding out. Do you know what is interesting? In the village everyone says, ‘ladki dekh raakhi hai,’” he said imitating their tone, ‘Lekin naam vaam na jaante. They had seen the girl but did not know her name. Of course they wouldn’t know the name of the parlour. Even her mother did not know. All she could tell us was that she worked at some parlour. In this little market, do you know how many parlours there are? All of seventeen! Seems as if nowadays women get themselves done up before they even go to buy vegetables. We went round asking everyone, showed her picture to people. Then we discovered that she worked for a parlour, yaar look, here, so close to our thana, in a parlour called kiliopetra. I asked what kind of name is this? Got to know that she was some queen of Egypt, very beautiful. And she used to plaster her face with our gwarpatha. They call it aloe vera. So now that thing has a big market. Take eight anaas worth of gwarpatha, churn it in a mixer, slap it on the face and charge hundred rupees for it. I am thinking of getting the missus to run a parlour. Another interesting thing, here she had told people her name was Renu. And her mother told us some other name. Now tell me, if she had to just have a job in a parlour why would she change her name? The actual business was something else. Parlour people know nothing. That day the parlour was closed anyways. They said her work was okay. She was pretty so she also got many clients. She had been taught to say that the parlour uses local products. Women, I tell you, so easy to fool them. I have to go out now. Have to go meet the owner of that farm. In Preet Vihar. Will you come? Your house is on the way, I can drop you there. By the way, you seem terribly interested in the case.”
Adhir smiled and said, “What is there for me to do at home , why should I go so early? I am bored yaar. Have been thinking my skills will rust away. I will come with you. If I get reinstated I should not turn out to have forgotten everything.”
“And here I thought you were coming along to help me,” Nitesh complained mockingly.
“Why do you need help? You alone are enough to crack the case,” Adhir said.
The last one year had stolen some of his arrogance and had given him enough cleverness to accept the truth that however close a relationship, a little bit of flattery keeps irritants away. It is good to talk about honesty but never good to practice it.
“Some people are very lucky,” Nitesh was saying. “This village girl. Who would have bothered about her death? But look saali went and got murdered in a farmhouse. Now she is making headlines.”
Adhirath nodded in agreement. Soon Nitesh would also be in newspapers if he arrested the murder accused.
“I am not in uniform,” he said.
“Let them think that a plainclothesman has come along, someone from CID. As if they know about police procedure. This much knowledge only seasoned goons have.”
“They have more knowledge than us,” said Adhirath bitterly.
“That is true. You are paying the price for it,” said Nitesh and slapped a morose looking Adhir’s back. “Yaar that mama of bhabhi is very interesting. This is the first time I had to deal with him. Got two addhas from me. One for postmortem, the other for being the friend of his son-in-law!” both laughed uproariously.
email: anjalides@gmail.com
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