Kumbhpur Rising Read online

  “Yes I want more,” Neeraj said. Shot came pawing around his leg and sniffed at his leg. Neeraj bent to pick up the tom and stroked it as he spoke “I want a fair trial where you would stand up and tell the court that you were fully aware of Dixit’s drug lord connections. I want Shibu Mitra to testify that he had allowed Dixit to buy or sell after the markets closed at least on three hundred occasions. I want all of us to plead guilty as charged and face it like men”

  “And go to jail together? You are nuts!” Sanket said dismissively.

  “Afraid of going to jail, boss?” Neeraj asked and smiled.

  “It’s not about going to jail. Shibu, I and other board members feel that since you introduced Dixit to us, you were largely responsible for this mess. The rest of us were just along for a ride, so to say,” Sanket said but now his voice had taken an edge of uneasiness.

  “Let’s define playing along for a minute boss. Last June in Phuket I had told you about Dixit’s drug connections, and the possibility that two of his buddies with us were there for a cocaine distribution trip. You were cool enough to say that most of us drink and smoke, so who are we to judge how people get their kicks? You remember that don’t you?”

  “Look I meant...”

  Neeraj cut him off, “You are the articulate one boss. I knew I was running with a scumbag drug dealer, but at least I never tried to rationalize it. You were the one with all the witty explanations and analogies. If washing his dirty money in the world’s biggest Laundromat is playing along, I would love to know how you define involvement,”

  Sanket did not lose his temper like Neeraj thought he might. He seemed a little sad as he kept his glass down and stood up.

  “I agree that we went overboard a bit, but the first step is always crucial in these cases. We all feel that somewhere deep inside you you have an almost criminal streak. Look at it from the point of view of publicity. When people read in the newspaper and see on the television that the guy who sank millions of rupees in a scam was a loner and a divorcee they may feel, well, almost reassured. The day married and respected people like me and Shibu do time, your average investor loses faith in the market permanently and that I can not allow to happen”

  “So this backroom deal that you have cut is basically for our future generations?” Neeraj asked. He knew his boss to be a bigoted hypocrite, but this line was a little too slick, coming even from him.

  “Sounds contrived doesn’t it?” Sanket asked, allowing himself a small smile “but as a great man once said as times change, we need to change with it,”

  “I am sure the great man did not have you in mind when he said that. As for that criminal streak of mine, the only difference between us is that you wear better suits,” Neeraj said. He was now standing near the living room window that overlooked the Juhu beach. Up from there, the steady stream of traffic looked like a toy car rally. Neeraj held Shot in his arms as the tom purred. “What if I refuse to play along?” he finally asked Sanket.

  “It’s your words against ours. All of us, me, Shibu, all the directors will testify that only you knew about Dixit’s source of funding and rest of us were in the dark”

  “I see, but there is something you have not taken into consideration boss” Neeraj said, and opened the window. The noise from the outside came in, and settled like an invisible cloud of dust between them.

  “I don’t think so” Sanket said and looked up at Neeraj. Right then he felt a strange chill starting somewhere near the base of his spine. It started there and rose to the back of his head like a tidal wave. He felt that maybe talking to Neeraj alone was not such a good idea after all. Neeraj’s expression had hardly changed, but there was an air of menace surrounding him that was impossible to miss. And he was still. Very, very still.

  And the next moment the unnamed fear hit Sanket with full force. This time it felt far worse, the taste of fear mixed with the taste of whisky creating the most unpleasant sensation. He was suddenly convinced that inviting Neeraj when he was alone at home was probably the worse decision he had ever made. His underling apart from having a criminal streak was also a cold blooded murderer and the streak he had so breezily referred to earlier would probably result in Neeraj strangling Sanket right there with his bare hands.

  He was convinced of all this because Neeraj, without warning and any change in expression, had thrown Shot the cat, out of the window. The beginning of fear in Sanket’s mind was the barely audible cry of surprise the animal made, when it was hurled eleven storeys down amidst busy late-evening traffic.

  “The heart attack county boss, you forgot how we all live in the heart attack county. If the traffic doesn’t kill you, then the fear does, just see what happened to Shot” Neeraj said. He was mimicking Sanket’s exaggerated hand gestures with one hand.

  His was pointing his 9mm at Sanket’s face with his other hand.

  Chapter 3

  Rajat

  I woke up the next morning at around seven as usual. The phone rang as I had settled with my morning cup of tea. It was Happy’s, oh- not- so- happy wife, Rani.

  “Rajat, Rani here, am I disturbing you?” she asked.

  “Not at all madam” I said and muted my television.

  Rani is Happy’s faithful wife. They were married when Happy was in the final year of his engineering, and Rani in her second. Happy had given up engineering to support his wife’s education, and taken up a job selling vacuum cleaners as a door-to-door salesman. It was a six year streak of success, which took Happy from the door-to-door selling to being the CMO of a dot com start up with one point five million as fixed salary. From there it was downhill once again.

  “How are you Rajat?” she asked.

  “Ok” I said, unsure of how to answer. After ‘I will do something,’ ‘ok’ has to rate as the best non answer ever. “How are you Rani Madam?” I asked in return. It was three years since I had last reported to Happy, but I still couldn’t bring myself to call his wife by her first name alone.

  “Pulling along, I need your help actually,” she sounded hesitant.

  “Tell me,” I replied.

  “It’s about Alok, I am not sure… well I am almost sure I am imposing on you guys” she trailed off; I could hear faint sniffing noises from the other end.

  “Anything for the boss madam, he is like an elder brother to us.” For a personal banker, I suck at reassuring.

  “Since you guys last came home, Alok seems to be growing more and more depressed. It is all I can do before we have to … institutionalize him. He is slipping in to another world most of the time….” This time there was no mistaking the sound of crying. I felt a buzzing in my ears.

  “Please calm down madam,” I said.

  “Sorry…I wanted to take him to the Chotala Baba’s temple” she said.

  I knew the place. It was around thirty kilometers from Pune. This Chotala Baba was apparently some kind of a miracle worker, rumored to be a hundred years old. This guy was the hope of many people like Rani, who had no rational hope to hang on to. I did not believe in such things normally, but naturally I did not say so.

  Rani spoke as if she knew that I did not believe in this. “Sometimes faith is all you are left with Rajat and I hope this Baba will help Alok. Will you guys help me take him there?” she finally asked.

  “Help you take him there?” I asked, puzzled.

  “His mood swings are becoming more and more severe Rajat. I can not count on him to behave anymore. Two days back when we went for a walk in the evening, he slapped me in full public view without any provocation whatsoever. I… I don’t think I can handle him if he gets physical,” she finished, in a broken quivering voice.

  That was the lowest point of the phone call. When I had met Happy six months back, the meeting did not go well and all of us knew that our ex-boss was getting ready to be a resident of the Funny Farm Inc. But it was only when I heard Rani talking about the practical difficulties in traveling with him for even two hundred kilometers, that I realized what it must
be like to sleep next to that man every night, living with the knowledge that you were with a time bomb that could go off the next minute or the next year.

  “I asked my brother to come but he said he does not believe in this nonsense. Will you guys help me? Please?” she finished.

  I ran a mental check list of people Rani might have in her mind, when she called me. Rakesh, Ragini Kumar, and probably Sanjeev Dey. Probably but unlikely, since among all of us he was the only one still happily married.

  “Of course I will. Let me call the rest of the guys and arrange everything. When do you want to go there?”

  “Baba meets people on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Rani left it there. It was Sunday but something in her voice told me that she did not want to wait till Thursday.

  “I think we can manage it this Tuesday, I will call you by noon.”

  “Ok, I don’t know what to say except thanks Rajat…” she began sobbing softly again.

  “The least we could do, you take care now,” I said and hung up. My tea had grown lukewarm so I left it, and lit my second cigarette of the day. I was already making the first of the four phone calls I was supposed to make.

  Let’s see who was on my dialing list right now. A recovering alcoholic, a cross-dressing gay, a call centre executive who supplemented her income by hooking and that odd happily married man!

  What a bunch of losers we were!

  Chapter 4

  Excerpts from Mr. Alok Shukla’s therapy sessions with Dr. Sanjeev Yardi M.D. (Psych)

  Dr. Yardi- So Mr. Alok would you like to tell me more about the attack that you always speak of?

  Alok- Maybe yes, I would. But now it does not seem so real.

  Dr. Yardi- I see. Maybe the surroundings are not so conducive.

  Alok- Yeah that is part of it. I mean all these Van Gough fakes on the wall, these roses in your vase. You can not think about anything but love and hope here. And probably they do not exist outside of this room. You see the predicament?

  Dr. Yardi- Would you perhaps like to talk about love then?

  Alok- No, no. Let’s stay focused on the moment, as I used to tell my team.

  Dr. Yardi- If you say so.

  Alok- (recording is of poor quality since the subject is pacing the room) Look doctor, our civilization is thousands of years old. You know what is the most common unnatural phenomenon that binds this history together?

  Dr. Yardi- You tell me.

  Alok- It is violence. Violence and oppression. I think the greatest lie any good book ever told is that the meek shall inherit the earth. Either it is a lie or the inheritance is taking too long.

  Dr. Yardi- Which one?

  Alok- What?

  Dr. Yardi- Which one of these do you prefer to think?

  Alok- It is not a question of preference Doc. I used to think that might is right has been the coda of this world for far too long. But with the attack imminent may be the meek shall inherit the earth after all. I mean look at our history, every time two nations go to war, who loses? The little people! Every time a bomb goes off in Jerusalem, who gets blown to pieces? Yes sir, it is those little candy store clerks and the grandmothers walking their grandkids to the Sunday Bazaar. Every time one nation invades another, the invader loots the conquered bare. I remember reading somewhere that Genghis Khan raped more than two lac women in his life time. That is two lac helpless, oppressed, conquered, poor women whose only importance in the history, is in reference to a maniacal despot’s obsessions. Jews in WW2, six million of them. All died gruesome, horrific deaths, just because they were born in a race that one crazy ex-painter did not care about. Do you think all those little souls will be at rest? Do you think a little Jew girl who died in Hitler’s gas chamber, an eight-month pregnant woman raped and torched; do you really think their spirits would be dead and done with too?

  Dr. Yardi- Do you believe in ghosts Mr. Alok?

  Alok- Do you believe in logic doctor? This attack is not about ghosts, it is about living people, all of us, we are walking survivors of some of the worst atrocities that human beings have inflected upon their fellows. I just feel that the earth can bear the weight no more.

  Dr. Yardi- And so comes the attack?

  Alok (sits down) – Exactly!

  Dr. Yardi- Any special place or community that you think will attack? Is it like one community going after another for wrongs in past?

  Alok- No, no nothing that direct. That happens only in movies where Amitabh grows to become a cop or a hoodlum, and avenges his father’s murder. I am talking about something a little more broad based, and that’s what scares me.

  Dr. Yardi- Why does it scare you?

  Alok- It is like that six degrees of separation game with Kevin Becon. You know you can link any actor in Hollywood to Kevin Becon in six links or less.

  Dr. Yardi- Interesting, how does it work?

  Alok- Name any one actor.

  Dr.Yardi- Hmm say, Christopher Walken.

  Alok- Piece of cake, Walken starred opposite De Niro in Deer Hunter, who in turn starred opposite Jack Nicholson in the Last Tycoon, who in turn starred in A few Good Men that also had Kevin Becon.

  Dr. Yardi (smiles) - So what to do you mean by the attack is like six degrees of separation with Kevin Beacon?

  Alok- A Jew gets killed in Berlin, his spirit wonders around to England, and get inside the head of a football fan. The fan goes to watch Chelsea playing Bayern Munich and when his home team is trailing 0-3, he takes his frustration out on a German Banker whose great grandfather once worked in Hitler’s army. The banker probably hates Hitler more than the Jews, but he dies nevertheless. It is not about a community, it is about earth doc, I think earth has been soaking in to the blood of the innocent for far too long, and now they are seeking retribution.

  Dr. Yardi- I see,

  Alok- You do? Then why the fuck you are not scared?

  Chapter 5

  Three years back the now defunct 3 POINTS.COM had organized an all women’s gala party on women’s day, the 8th of March. Typical of any dot com in the late nineties, no expenses were spared. The best hotel in Mumbai with drinks flowing freely and a special performance by the ‘Stereo Nation’. Later that night, when most of the female employees were too drunk to remember their way to the loo, came the ‘coupe de’ grace’, a male stripper’s strip tease.

  The women went mad howling and shrieking, throwing money at the male strippers, and pulling at them with unsteady hands. A few really drunk women even went on the stage to dance with the strippers. When the fun was done, those women too were down to their bra - panties, and the stripper’s bodies were bruised and bleeding from the nail scratches.

  Now one of the women who had enjoyed the strip tease, (though not on the stage with the bored men and the screaming women) remembered that night, and thought of the irony of going from the client to the service agent, so to say.

  Last night, a middle aged advertising executive had taken Ragini Kumar to his hotel room, and asked her to entertain his two clients. The entertainment included a slow stripe tease by Ragini (no garters and stockings, a simple taking off her working clothes with the kind of moves that can be found seductive only through an eye glazed through an evening’s worth of large whiskys). After that both of them had taken turns with her. Normally Ragini preferred drunken johns because they came early, and did not notice if you left early. Unfortunately that night was an exception. Both her clients had a real gentleman’s capacity to hold their drinks coupled with an animal’s lust for a woman. The walls of the room must have been soundproof, Ragini thought; otherwise somebody would have heard her screams.

  It was nearly three in the morning, when both of them were asleep. By then Ragini had a swollen lip and a grey eye with breasts so sore, that it hurt to breathe.

  She had called the ad agency guy from the adjacent hotel room, and shown him her condition. The bastard tried to argue that it was part of the arrangement, and finally Ragini had to threaten to start screaming and gather the whole g
oddamned hotel. The threat worked a little, after fifteen minutes of such haggling; he passed her twice the agreed amount that came to ten thousand bucks.

  Sitting in the Irani café the next morning, Ragini opened the purse and saw the money. A bitter smile was all her swollen lips could manage.

  ‘Boy talk about earning your salary, Happy would have been proud of me’ the crazy thought made her giggle, but she forced it down. She was not sure she could stop once she began.

  She stared at her reflection in the full size mirror next to her and wondered how long before she could begin accepting clients again. She was manhandled before, and she knew that the bruise on her lips could be concealed with make-up, but the grey-blue tint around her eyes, would take longer to heal. Anyway she was in no hurry. She had collected double her usual amount, and in a marked departure from her usual behavior, she had also flicked a pure diamond ring from one of the assholes. She was thinking about the possible procedure to sell it, when her mobile phone rang.

  “Hi Rajat if you are looking for a good time tonight, I am busy” she said.

  “Hell no...” Rajat stammered and Ragini laughed.

  “I am just pulling your leg, how are you?”

  “I am ok, you?”

  “Ok if you discount a few scratches here and there,”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. So tell me, how come you are calling on a Sunday morning?”

  “Rani Madam called”

  Ragini took a moment to place the name “Oh yes Rani, how is Happy?” Ragini was the only one of their group who still called him Happy. The irony of his name and his current situation did not affect her. Perhaps the irony of having watched male strippers once had desensitized her to lesser ironies.

  “Not good, not good at all” Rajat replied.

  “ohh” Ragini said.

  “Madam needs our help Ragini, there is a holy man near Pune, and she wants to take boss to him. Only, she is not sure she will be able to control him if he gets...” he trailed off.