NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
17
As he walked from the bus stop he could clearly see the house with the dome. No need for an address, the name of a street or the number of the house.
“Tell saroj madam, the police is here,” he said to the guard sitting inside the open gate. The man stared at him suspiciously. “Will you go or should I give you one?” he barked in a voice that left no doubt about his training as a cop. Without an uniform a man has no status, he thought. Had clothes been made to cover the body or as flags to advertise class and status? Gnashing his teeth Adhirath went in.
This time Saroj met him under the dome. There were fewer stars on the ceiling of the dome. Curtains swayed to and fro as if dancing to some unheard music. She was in a salwar kurta. Black flowers were embroidered on the cuff of her white salwar and the black kurta had a long white yolk with black flowers embroidered on it. He had never seen such fine embroidery, the stitches almost feathery. She is truly a black and white film, thought Adhirath and he recalled the yellow dupatta with its fringe of coloured beads.
“Listen, I don’t have a search warrant but I thought I should see your bedroom once, if you have no objections…”
“Have to go somewhere. Meeting a friend. I was about to leave.”
“No problems,” said Adhirath. “It will take only a minute.
He fished out the button from his pocket and showed it to her. Saroj was not startled.
“Where did you find it? How much we looked for it on Holi. He even dropped the idea of wearing a kurta. Wore a T shirt. I only told him that he could wear the kurta with one less button. The topmost button is always open, who will notice if that button hole is not studded? How does it matter? Even papaji had to admonish him. That is when he agreed. Went and changed into a kurta. In this family it is the custom to wear new clothes and gold and silver ornaments. Without it they don’t play Holi.” A calm voice. No sign of any disturbance on her composed face. You can lie even without losing your poise.
“Had to ask you something,” Adhirath said. “You said that your husband did not open the door even after loud and persistent knocking. You didn’t call him on his mobile?”
“I did. Twice. I could hear it ring outside the room. But he did not pick it up.”
Adhirath felt his mind go around the words. There was something the matter. What was it?
“You didn’t know that girl at all?”
“Who?” Saroj asked, her neck bent to one side.
What was the name of the girl? Adhirath felt taken aback. The girl with the yellow dupatta? She with the turquoise kangan? Pros? Randi? Beauty parlour girl? The one from Amirpur? The girl whose dead body was found in the farmhouse? How many epithets to describe her character and not one clue to her personality. She must have had a name. She had many, he knew. When did names become part of one’s identity? When there was no language, when people killed animals trapped in pits with rocks and tore them open to eat, did they have names then? When did they come to have names? Children are told how primitive people hunted animals and he had seen such sketches in his son’s text books, why don’t they teach them when people began to form distinct identities and when they came to be associated with names? Had her mother told him her name? Of course she had.
“The girl whose body was found in your farmhouse? You didn’t know her name?” Adhirath said with a twisted smile, looking straight into her eyes.
“She said her name was Mohini. I didn’t believe her.”
“Why?”
“They don’t have such names in the villages. Mohini, Manisha, servants don’t have such names. Had there been a film star of that name I could have believed that the parents named her after them but truly, there is no film star by the name of Mohini.”
Adhirath shook his head. Names indicators of status. Of castes. Of class. What a civilization humans had evolved.
“Why did she come here?”
“I told you. The driver got her. Once. Said she was some distant relative of his. Had done some course of a beautician. He said I could get her to do everything done in parlours, here at home. He thought if I liked her work I could introduce her to the people I know and she could build a clientele. I refused.”
“Why?”
Saroj looked at him as if he was a curiosity.
“I go to Claridges for my facials. Would I let this country bumpkin do my facials?” She threw her head o one side in a gesture of contempt. “Is it not enough that I have moved to this …” She bit her tongue.
“Moved in here…what?”
“Nothing.”
“There is something. Where are you from? Where is your parental house?”
“Civil Lines, it used to be there. Now it is in Panchsheel.” Saroj pressed a button on her mobile. “I have to go. This button…” she let the words trail.
“Is it case property?” Adhirath completed the sentence for her.
She smiled again, slowly. That is when her mobile began to ring. She pressed a button and said very softly into it, “Hello my dear, was just about to leave.”
Having heard something from the other end she said, “Oh no!” then laying the phone on the table she said, “My friend, whom I had to meet, can’t make it. All of a sudden some guests have arrived at her place. We have a horrible habit in our country of going to people’s houses unannounced without consulting their convenience. Come, let me show you the bedroom.”
Adhirath followed her through a room to a wooden staircase with carved banisters and without touching them he climbed up to the first floor. It opened onto a bow shaped landing with four doors opening on it. Saroj turned left to the last door and went in. Adhirath had never been able to imagine the kind of bedrooms the rich would have but he could never have imagined what he saw. He had expected grandeur and opulence, not the simplicity that faced him. No chandeliers, the ceiling was white, no gold leaf on it. No thick pile carpet on the floor. No carving on the headrest of the bed. The stuffed armchairs looked like they had been covered with some jute cover. No sculpture. No ‘scenery’ on the bare walls. There were lamp shades in some faint yellow paper. But everything was beautiful. Except the green of the thick curtains and the red bedspread there was hardly any colour. It exuded beauty in every corner, in the faint red stripes of the bedspread, in the material of the curtain touching the floor, in the lamp shades, and the crystal bowl on the table next to the bed with a single yellow flower without a stem floating on water. He looked around. There was no other door leading outside. A door opened into the bathroom that passed through a dressing room in which he could see dresses of men and women behind thick glass doors of the wardrobe. There were durries in the bathroom and a vine climbed around the huge mirror. He touched the leaves. It was a real live plant, not a plastic creeper. He came back into the room and moved the curtain aside. It covered a French window that opened into a balcony from where he could see the side of the house. He came in and shut the door automatically bolting it and noticed that the bolt was about a foot long, made of brass. A very old brass bolt it was. He looked around again and saw Saroj standing near the foot of the bed watching him.
“Over there, there is a way out, let me show you,” she said.
Adhirath was struck dumb. Saroj went out onto the landing and took him to the room at the other end from where a staircase led downstairs. The room was like a storehouse of games. A billiard table stood in the centre in its green suede cover and against the walls were cricket bats, wickets, tennis racquets and such things. Tall boxes of cricket balls stood around, some open some sealed. Adhirath looked at each bat longingly. If he could give Varun even one of these things he would come to believe his dad was a superman. His cricket bat was made of some cheap wood, not the obviously willow one here. He played cricket with plastic balls and stuck anything in the ground for stumps.
“Shall we leave?” asked Saroj.
Adhirath nodded.
“Today you have come alone. He didn’t come with you? Your friend, the real policeman?” Saroj asked in her composed tone as if making ordinary conversation. Adhir’s eyes widened in surprise. Saroj’s smile widened too.
“I am in the police too,” he said.
Saroj laughed, a simple polite laugh, not a derisive one.
“That button has yet not become case property,” Saroj said. “I had guessed the very first time I saw you both.”
“Some policemen work in mufti, in plainclothes,” said an annoyed Adhirath.
“Daddyji does not pay attention to these things. He may not even have asked for your IDs. He is obsessed only with his astrologer and the avoidance of this colour or that food.”
Adhirath glanced back pointedly at the open bedroom door as he turned towards the stairs. Red bedspread. The father-in-law had been asked to avoid the colour red that is why the daughter-in-law was happily lolling on a red bedspread was she?
“I am not superstitious,” said Saroj and took the stairs down. Downstairs she said, “I did not even offer you tea Mister…?”
Adhirath told her his name.
“A very unusual name,” said Saroj. “It is close to lunch time. Will you stay for lunch?”
“But you were going out somewhere,” he said.
“Yes, but it got cancelled. You were here when my friend called. I am not going to have lunch. I am talking about your lunch. I will only eat with my son after fetching him from school. That is why I never fix any appointment for lunch. Only today I was making an exception and see, it got cancelled. Now I won’t go anywhere. So, will you have bite?”
Adhirath refused. He had gone to Lakshmi Nagar after dropping his son to school and after roaming around for a while had had poori chole in a roadside shop. The pooris dripped oil. “Do you fry them in mobil oil? He had screamed at the shopkeeper. He could still smell the strong spices of the chick peas cooked in a hurry with the aid of baking soda. He was tempted to eat here, in their opulent drawing room, who knows, she may even seat him at the table in the dining room. He wanted to see what the rich ate.
“No,” he said firmly. “Must go. I too have to fetch my son from school.”
“Ok, let me drop you somewhere,” Saroj said. “Have to go to DPS, in Noida. I can go a little earlier.” She went in and Adhirath sat down to count the stars twinkling under the dome.
“You have a lot of free time in your job. You can even go to bring your son home from school,” said Saroj as she drove her car out of the compound onto the road. “Where should I drop you? where do you live?”
“Mand…Madam, drop me at Lakshmi Nagar,” said Adhirath.
“So that button…”
“Do you want it?”
“where did you find it?”
“Tell me if you want it,” he said.
“Will you give it to me?”
“No. Whether you believe it or not, it is case property. And I am in the police force.”
“It can become case property any time,” said Saroj. “No, I don’t want it.”
They were close to Lakshmi Nagar. Adhirath asked her to drop her at the red light. The car slid smoothly to a stop. Before shutting the door once he got down he said to Saroj, “I have heard that your farmhouse is to be sold.”
“I have also heard so,” said Saroj and smiled, bent towards him and closed the door.
email: anjalides@gmail.com
*****
