NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
36
Parduman told him he had unlocked the house and opened the back door, then he came to the front and locked it from outside returning inside from the back door and bolting it. He had got some bread and munchies with him. At night when Cheti would run away he would go out and get himself vegetables. When Cheti spent nights away from the place he lit candles and quickly cooked himself something. There were some rice and lentils in the kitchen. Once he had had enough time to kill himself a rabbit and cook it.
“The day the inspector came here to search the farmhouse, where were you?” asked Adhirath.
Parduman kept quiet for some time. Adhirath thought he was about to laugh at the stupidity of the police, and he perhaps would have had he not been scared of Adhirath. His lips twisted a bit.
“Here, I was here,” he said. When the jeep came, I heard it and ran out the back door and hid behind the threes at the end of the farm.”
Even then, they may have noticed that the back door was not bolted. Did they not suspect anything? Could Nitesh have not noticed it? Did Udairaj see it first and quietly slid the bolt in?
“How much did Udai pay you? Out, this time the truth,” Adhirath said.
“Four, four lacs,” Parduman stammered.
“How much did you pay the Jhandapuri youth?”
“Only fifty thousand till now,” Parduman said. “They are asking for a lot sahib, full tow lacs.”
“Now my last question. What was Udairaj wearing when he came here that night?” Adhirath asked.
“Kurta. May have been white. It was splotched with the colours of Holi. Pajama. He changed his clothes here. He wore another kurta.”
Adhirath picked up the ten thousand that Parduman now palced before him and handing it to him said, “Keep it back in your pocket.”
“You want more, sahib? All the money is here, I have buried it here.”
“Take my advice. Go tell the police everything. You may get some leniency when the judge decides on punishment. The court may show some mercy.”
Parduman kept quiet.
Adhirath left him there and told Bharat the whole story.
“Parduman too must have lost his head. One, the villagers showed him how little he mattered, they did not even allow him time to zip up his trousers and went and sat on the woman he had with him. On top of it Udairaj accused him of turning the house into a brothel. He was going to lose his cushy job. He blamed the woman for this and cut her up. His clothes must have got drenched in blood. Udairaj was standing at a distance, he may have caught a few drops of the spray. He simply took off the kurta and gave it to the servant to get rid of it. A truly spoilt rich man.”
Adhirath did not like drinking rum in the day. But a small drink with Bharat was necessary. So he poured himself a finger and gulped it.
“Yaar tell me something, when people don’t have their own vehicles how do they come here?”
“By train,” said Bharat.
“you can’t get a train all the time.”
“No, you can’t. In the morning there is the milk train. From six in the morning to nine many trains pass through. Local trains also. For milkmen. In the evening too you can catch a trains keep arriving till quite late. If you walk a kilometer or two from Jhandapur bazaar you can also get a tempo. You get buses too. Tempos start plying early around six in the morning.”
Quite possible that Udairaj came by train or tempo with a cloth wrapped around his face. Pretending to be a Holi reveler. Somehow Adhirath could not imagine Udairaj putting in so much hard work to get here.
email: anjalides@gmail.com
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