NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
39
After a brief silence he continued. “She,” Udairaj pointed a finger at Saroj and said, “had really spoilt him. She got him as part of her dowry. Earlier he used to work for her aunt, her mother’s sister. His father was their domestic help. When this fellow got trained as a driver they hung him round our neck like a necklace given in dowry. He is good as a driver. But she depended a lot on him. Could not do without him. Has to go to the parlour, Parduman must take her. have to fetch blouses from the tailor, he will do it. have to buy stones for the house he will take bahuji to the place. Which driver does not steal money given for fuel? You send him to the workshop he will pocket some money. Then he began to loot us in the name of pesticides, fertilizers, daily wage labourers on the farm. I did not bother in the beginning. We had enough. But when domestic manufacture began to suffer, foreign companies pitched their tents here then every small expense began to matter. I thought let me sell the farm. At one go we will be rid of all our problems. That is why ii went there one afternoon.”
“Really?” asked Adhirath. His voice dripped with sarcasm.
“Ok, that was much before the crisis set in. I went there, for whatever reason. What do I find? The man is sprawled in our bedroom with that woman. But the noose he had put around his neck was very colourful. She was young. And to tell you the truth she had a lot of practice in pleasing men. She knew a lot of ways to do the same thing. The only problem was she talked too much. As long as she kept her mouth shut nobody could guess she was a low class woman form a village. Looked real upper class. Later, I also got her highly fashionable clothes. But the moment she opened her mouth it was clear what she was. Bad pronunciation. Broken English. But English she insisted on speaking. She began to steal also. Once I spent the night there. Took off all the four buttons of the kurta and kept them on the bedside table. Found only three in the morning. A gold button studded with a diamond. I searched everywhere, looked under the bed, behind the table. Nowhere. She began to show me her purse to prove she had not taken it. I had to hold my peace. I told him, that Parduman, to make her understand that I had had enough of her.
“He is also a snake of the first water. The thing with old servants is that they know everything about the family. On top of it he was a favourite with bahuji. Look at his gumption. He brought that woman here. not once but two or three times. He would ask papaji to get her some work, or ask her to get her makeup done by her. He told them some other name but so what? I can’t recall what name he had said she had. Anyway, it was clear, he wanted to scare me. I told him, go tell Saroj whatever you want to tell. Why should I be afraid? I am a man. Women came to me in droves. What will happen? At the most she will divorce me. Let her.”
Adhirath was impressed by the indifference Saroj was displaying. There was neither any feeling of revulsion on her face nor was there any anger. Udairaj had emptied his glass. He went in to fix his own drink. Adhirath felt that his frank admission of his two timing his wife had disturbed him more than it affected Saroj. Could it be that being ill treated by him for years and suffering all kinds of humiliation this woman was trying to dump a murder case on him as a form of revenge? The job of the police is not a good one. They have to keep fighting off the chill of reality to keep their own relationships warm. Pushpa was right, if the tension gets too much she would leave him, there are no diamond bracelets or acres of land to hold her back.
Udairaj had returned. Placing his glass on the table he asked Adhirath if he could get him one too. Adhirath’s head shook in the negative automatically. Udairaj began to sip at his drink and looked straight at his wife.
“Then they changed tactics. Told me she was pregnant. Now she became very bold. Now she wanted a house for herself. How would I know whether she was pregnant or fibbing? I could not take her to a doctor. I would now have to keep her hanging around for at least six months, only then I would know whether it was the truth or not. I thought let me have fun for a few more months. I even told her that this is an obstacle to our enjoyment so she should get rid of it. get an abortion. But she did not agree. Began to pose like she was mother India or something. Said she could not take a life! what is the fault of the child, why should it be killed, it is a sin. She had been sleeping with God how many people, umpteen, I am sure, and that in her book was not a sin, this was.
I called Parduman and said get rid of her. I meant he should pay her off or hand her over to someone else. Anything, but I did not want anything more to do with her. he misunderstood me. One day he came and said it will cost me five lacs. I asked him what he meant. He says to me, she won’t return, ever, to harass me. I said will she go away for good for such an amount, considering what she had been asking for. He said yes,. So I bargained a bit and we settled on four lacs. He said to me to be nice to her for some days, after that he would take care of her. so I began to mollycoddle her. she would say, will it look nice that your second child will grow up I a dark room, go to a government school. So I said sarcastically, why will he be born in a government hospital, why will live in poverty, you start living here, on the farm! I will buy you some land nearby. She took me literally. Told the manager, that she would soon be his boss, she would have her own farm nearby. She simply did not know where she belonged. However pretty a sandal is nobody turns it into a necklace.
“Parduman had told me that the deed will be done on the day of Holi, that she would leave the town for good. That day we had a big party here. I had gone upstairs and was standing in the balcony. I don’t know why I had gone there. He was carrying a crate of coca cola to the basement. His mobile must have rung. He placed the crate on the ground and took the call. It was very noisy down here, loud music was playing so he stepped a little further away from the entry to the basement and began to talk. He had to raise his voice to be heard. I heard him too. He was saying get to the farm, I will come there, now it is going to be your property anyway. Then after a while he said, okay, I will pick you up from the bazaar, meet me where you meet me usually. I got suspicious. He had told me she would go away for good today and now he is asking her to come to the farm. I could have collared him there and then and asked him. But then I thought it will better to catch them red handed.”
“So when you said, ‘get rid of her,’ you meant driving her out of town? Nothing else?” Adhirath asked. He was tempted to down the glass of vodka.
“What else could it mean? In the factory we always use this phrase. If a worker starts acting over smart we say, get rid of him, set him right. We don’t go killing them, that is not what we mean.”
Adhirath raised him several salutes in his head. He had begun to think that torture chambers with padded walls are an absolute must to run the country or nobody would ever admit to any crime in such civilized interrogations like these over vodkas. In the white corneas of Udairaj’s eyes except for the slight yellowness of an alcohol laden liver gone sluggish there was nothing, not even the shadow of any hesitation.
“I made the excuse of being unwell. Bolted the door from inside. Only after mamaji left did I venture out. Our room has a latch key, and does not open without a key. I took the key and locked the door, she did not have the key to it. I had left the mobile phone inside the room. I crept downstairs from the other staircase. The stairs lead to a door outside on the other side of the house that is generally left open so that if I return late nobody has to get up to let me in. I had slipped the keys of mamaji’s car while I had been chinning with him. That was easy. My clothes were painted in many colours. There was no need to change them. It was good camouflage. Had anybody who knew me even run into me, he would have thought I was too drunk and had not had a bath. So what? It can happen on Holi. I put on a cap and got into the Esteem. Nobody seems to have seen me. everybody was either drunk or tired. They had all passed out. Servants were sleeping inside. The children, my son and his cousins and friends, were in the basement. Even then anybody could have seen me. I was lucky. Nobody did.”
Udairaj fell silent. Saroj turned her face towards Adhirath. A neutral, expressionless face. She was so still that even the platinum snake around her throat did not tremble at all.
“Why did you not take the car up to the farm?”
“It occurred to me on the way. They would be warned by the headlights of the car. That is why I left the car at the turning of the village. Where the main road turns into Jhandapur. A little distance away from the station. It was a moonlit night. It did not take me long to get to the farm.”
“He walks at least five kilometers a day. Goes to the gym. He keeps fit,” said Saroj speaking for the first time. Both looked at her.
What was it in her tone? Praise for her good looking husband? Envy, for having lost such a fit body to a spring flower, a Basanti? Or was it a simple confirmation of his ability to walk it to a farm on his lean limbs to use them for murder?
email: anjalides@gmail.com
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