Omair Ahmad: Delhi Noir

Or maybe one of them had remembered and lost them, and they had been caught with their bloodlust high, like rapists rendered suddenly impotent.

“And then I arrived in the alleyway, and even before my eyes had registered what was there, I lit the match and brought it to my cigarette, to the profanity that was to save me that day.

“Maybe it saved me from something, maybe it didn’t.

“The cigarette fell from my open mouth, but the matchbox was still in my hand. The leader of the gang held out one commanding palm.”

Arjun Singh paused and summoned the will to continue. Despite the care he had taken at maintaining the youthful façade, he looked old, very old. She could now see the signs of the artificial stiffness caused by botox injections.

In a soft voice Arjun Singh continued: “It has been almost twenty-four years now, but I saw God that day, in the eyes of the man I betrayed. I heard him plead, ‘Bhagwaan ke naam mein...’ (‘In the name of God...’)

“But I was carrying profanity that day, hiding behind it, using it to keep myself safe. And when that one hand stretched out to demand the matches, I gave them.”

Arjun Singh stopped again, taking a long, shuddering breath.

“Twelve years went by until I could find the courage to make my way back to that alleyway. It was blackened and sorrowful still, and something spoke to me. And for another twelve years I retraced my steps, day by day, week by week, year by year. I’ve made myself back into the man I was at that time. I have even watched all the films backwards from then to the present.

“Look,” he pointed at a large framed photograph on a wall. “Isn’t that me?” And Suhasini had to agree. From a distance, Arjun Singh had walked backwards in time and looked like the man he had been twenty-four years ago. In a soft voice, he concluded, “Only two days are left, and I need to walk back that way. I need to go back there and say ‘No’ to the man who had asked me for the matches that day, to Rajan Pandey.”

For a few long minutes Suhasini just sat there. As the story had unfolded she had found herself leaning back in the chair, leaving way for the tragedy to spill out. She could find no words to respond. It was all mad, fucking mad. She had heard her own mother talking about being forced to flee the area of British India that had become East Pakistan. This part of the world was full of tragedies and full of mad people. Arjun Singh’s insanity was just of a different flavor. Triloki must have thought it was manageable and worth it if he had taken on the job. Nevertheless, she couldn’t figure out how to react. It was Arjun Singh who broke the long silence.

“I thought I was going to have my chance to face him. Triloki found him, identified him. But now Triloki has disappeared.”

It was then that she asked, “What about the diary?”

And suddenly she saw the shrewdness flash in his eyes. The man might be insane, but he hadn’t earned this money or his reputation as an antique collector by being stupid.

“What do you know about the diary?” he asked suspiciously.

“Triloki left me a note,” she offered, and it only made him more suspicious.

“You’re all in this together!” he suddenly shouted. “Get out! Get the fuck out! I told him I wouldn’t give up the diary. I told him. Get out!”

She rose slowly. There was no idea what he was going to do. “All right, Mr. Singh, I’m leaving. But you called me, not I, you.”

Arjun Singh just glared at her. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted Triloki,” he muttered.

And that was just one step too far. “You trusted him? I don’t know what the diary is, but one thing I know for sure is that you didn’t trust him with it.” Furious, she pulled out Triloki’s letter from her back pocket and threw it at him. “Read it, you mad bastard. Triloki thought he was doing something for nothing. He risked his life for you, and he lost. I’ve been calling him on his cell phone, and some person pretending to be him picks up the phone. In all likelihood he’s dead. All for you and your fucking weird crusade. Keep your motherfucking diary, and rot!”

She turned and stormed out of the house, too angry to think. As she made it out of the gate, she felt a thrust of regret. She shouldn’t have thrown the letter at Arjun Singh. It was probably the last thing Triloki wrote, and now that crazy antique collector, that Sikh-in-denial, would have it.

Jumping into her car, she revved the engine and left the streets of the area, of Jalebi Central, in a burst of exhaust smoke.

It was late evening and she was back at her office when Arjun Singh called. She didn’t pick up. He tried three more times until she finally answered. “Mr. Singh,” she said, “I’m not interested in working for you. Get somebody else.”

“Ms. Das, please.” There was terrible strain in his voice. “I apologize. I have worked all my life toward this day. I’m sorry I overreacted.”

“Mr. Singh, you are a rich man, no doubt you can hire many private detectives. Please do so, and stop bothering me.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t understand about the diary. It’s the private diary of one of Rajiv Gandhi’s personal secretaries. It’s a record of everything that happened during those riots, seen from the prime minister’s office. After I rescued myself, after I confronted Rajan Pandey, I planned on helping all of those who died in those days to find some measure of justice, and this is my only tool.”

And now it all became clear to Suhasini. “And it would be the perfect bait for a person like Pandey,” she said.

“But I can’t sacrifice the justice of thousands for my own deliverance.” She could hear the anguish in his voice, but her mind was already running ahead of her. She could see how Triloki must have planned things, how he had failed without the diary.

“You don’t have to sacrifice anything,” she said. “You can offer to sell it to him, and he’ll come to you. He has to. The diary is political dynamite, and all he knows about you is that you are an antique collector, somebody who can be paid off with money. Triloki set things up with an inspector at Nizamuddin. I’ll make sure he’s there. You can lure Pandey with the promise of selling him the diary and then confront him. We get Pandey, and you don’t lose the diary.”

When Arjun Singh didn’t answer right away, she said, “Mr. Singh, this is the only way,” and was surprised at the pleading in her own voice. It seemed very important to her now to complete this thing, to make sure that Triloki’s last assignment was finished properly, his penance completed.

Maybe it seemed that way to Arjun Singh as well, because he said, “I should have trusted Triloki. I’ll trust you instead.”

“Thank you, Mr. Singh.”

“Please,” he replied, “please, just make this work,” and hung up.

She looked at her phone and didn’t know what to do next. The name Rajan Pandey niggled at her, and she realized that she didn’t know how to contact him. If he was the fixer he was supposed to be, then there would be no real way to access him, not for somebody like her. On an impulse she dialed Triloki’s number on her second cell phone.

This time it was the smooth voice that picked up. “Hello?”

“Rajan Pandey?” she asked.

If she hadn’t been concentrating she would have missed the hesitation, and the slight rise in the pitch of his voice, as he replied, “Sorry, you have the wrong number.”

“No, I don’t, Mr. Pandey,” she said. “It’s you that has the wrong number. In fact, you have the wrong phone, Triloki’s.”

“Suhasini Das,” the voice said.

“Very good, Mr. Pandey,” she answered.

“You aren’t inviting me to an inauguration again, are you?”