NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
45
“Been a long time, ustad,” said Bharat when he saw him. “A lot happened behind your back.”
Adhirath said, “let us take a look at the farm.”
“And this trunk? You want to leave it here on the bike?”
“Will someone steal it?”
Bharat shook his head. No people don’t steal so openly. Not here. Bharat picked up the trunk from this back of his bike and placed it inside his room and got onto the bike. Adhirath asked, turning the motorcycle towards the farm, “What is the news? Will the farm be sold?”
“Doesn’t look like it. One day madam came here after you stopped coming. She has given Cheti a raise. Nachchatar has been asked to come check the farm and its work off and on as a part time supervisor. She will pay him for it.”
This was news for Adhirath. When they reached the farm Cheti came running to open the gate. A tractor was ploughing the field behind the borderline of trees near the pond. It was now getting to be unpleasantly warm in the city but here it was still cool and breezy.
“I wanted to see the black partridge. I so wanted to see it,” said Adhirath.
Both sat down on a bench near the neelkamal pond. The bench was a thick slab of misshapen stone with fossils of lichen resting on bricks.
“That Parduman was caught,” said Adhirath. “By now the police may have fished out his clothes and the murder weapon also.”
“I told madam to keep a dog here. At least it barks when someone comes,” Bharat said.
“He did not do it alone,” said Adhir. “But the rich man will get away.”
“Nothing ever happens to the rich. What did I speak the truth or what? You agree don’t you?”
Adhirath nodded.
Even then Bharat looked very happy. “We were the ones who gathered all the evidence. the police got them only later. Those fellows, they told the police what they saw,” said Bharat. “Jhandapuriyas are delighted. One of them bought a new mobile phone only yesterday. What a glossy thing it is. Those three got drunk under that same chaukhamba, the day Parduman was caught.”
“Why are the Jhandapuriyas delighted?”
“Where did the murder take place? In Chandola. Who helped the police nab the murderer? Jhandapuriyas. It is something to be proud of.”
“I went to the thana before I came here,” said Adhir. “Nitesh wasn’t there. That is why I managed o talk to Parduman. He is in the lockup. He says three lac seventy seven thousand rupees were on him when they nabbed him. Twenty seven thousand of them were his own savings. But the police did not show the money in the seizure list. Only two policemen had found the money, Nitesh and an ASI while the rest were busy elsewhere. Fifty he had already paid the Jhandapuriyas. He said that may be Udairaj paid the Jahndapuriya some more money to rat on him and become witnesses for the prosecution.”
“I am impressed, man,” said Bharat.
Cheti brought them tea.
Adhirath told Bharat the story of the diamond studded button.”This button I found here was not the one that she had stolen earlier. The one she stole I found in her trunk. This was the one that fell off in the struggle. When Basanti was grappling with Udairaj to get free, it got tangled in the threads she had around her wrist and came off. The threads were still around it when I found it. The buttonhole in his kurta may have a tear. It was a new kurta so the tear can prove a lot of things. Has that kurta been shown in the list of items seized? I wonder.”
“So you found the second button too?” Bharat said looking into Adhir’s eyes.
They got up and made two rounds of the little pond. Cheti was running after the tractor shouting some instructions. Perhaps he was telling the driver how much grass had been left behind by his plough.
“We have something to do,” said Adhirath.
“Say.”
“We must go to Amirpur. To meet Basanti…no Suryabala’s mother. I had promised to tell her who killed her daughter. Will you come? Have to give her the trunk also.”
“Let us go,” said Bharat.
email: anjalides@gmail.com
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