Tarquin Hall - The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing

Soon after, Mr. and Mrs. Gill, who were both devotees of Maharaj Swami, had escorted their disgraced daughter to the Abode of Eternal Love and implored their guru to give her ‘direction’. Manika had found the place ‘tedious and boring’ at first but then had undergone a ‘spiritual awakening’. According to several different sources, she had seen a vision during a special darshan conducted by the Godman.

Neetu Chandra said Manika ‘wasn’t the same person’ after that. All she talked about was Maharaj Swami. The two drifted apart. Seven months passed. Then on the night she died, at around eight o’clock in the evening, Neetu received a distressing call from her friend.

“She wasn’t making much sense. Just babbling about how she hadn’t slept in days and she’d been having these terrible nightmares. I told her to get the hell out of that bloody freak show, but she said she couldn’t trust anyone. She said she’d told her parents but they didn’t believe her. Told them what? I asked. She didn’t answer. She sounded afraid, just broke down in tears. I told her to stay put and I’d drive up to fetch her.”

Neetu Chandra had set off from Delhi early the next morning. By the time she arrived, Manika had been discovered drowned in the Ganges. The police had quickly concluded that she had gone for a swim near the ashram at eleven o’clock at night.

Mr. and Mrs. Gill maintained that their daughter had drowned by accident. But according to Manika’s friends, she couldn’t swim and was scared of the water.

No suicide note was discovered.

Handbrake, at the wheel of the Mercedes four-wheel drive Puri had hired in order to make the right impression at Maharaj Swami’s ashram, turned off Highway 58 south of Haridwar. The single-lane road passed through waterlogged, emerald-green paddy fields fed by the mountain meltwater of the Ganges. Here and there, farmers stood in mud up to their ankles tending to their crops, and zebu, humped oxen, dragged wooden plows through the rich, oozing mire.

The holy city of Haridwar, where drops of the elixir of immortality are believed to have been spilled by the celestial bird Garuda, announced itself with a line of budget hotels with names like Disney Inn. The idyllic rice fields gave way to the all-too-familiar detritus of dusty dhabas, vegetable carts and car-repair shops with oil-stained forecourts.

Skirting to the east of the old city, the Mercedes crossed over the fast-running cobalt waters of the Ganges. A giant statue of Shiva, his neck garlanded with a spitting cobra, towered over the road. Behind the deity lay the Har ki Pauri steps, where millions come every year to bathe and cleanse their sins, and behind them the white domes and peaked rooftops of temples, shrines and ashrams. Farther on, they passed three sadhus walking barefoot away from the city into the hills. With their matted dreadlocks, loincloths and tridents, they resembled cavemen out hunting woolly mammoths.

“Would you mind if we reviewed our cover story? I’m getting a little forgetful in my old age.”

The voice belonged to Mrs. Duggal, who did the occasional freelance assignment for Most Private Investigators since her retirement from the Indian Secret Service. Puri had asked her to pose as his wife for the day and she was sitting next to Facecream.

“Most certainly we can,” agreed the detective. He repeated the details again: the Garodia family’s home address in Singapore, the name of the school Queenie had been expelled from, the names of her paternal grandparents and so on.

Mrs. Duggal, who was expected to do a good deal of crying during their visit to the ashram, tested the menthol stick she kept in her handbag for such situations. Rubbing it beneath her nostrils quickly brought on tears.

“Most convincing,” said Puri approvingly.

Mrs. Duggal patted her face dry with her handkerchief. “It is always a pleasure to work with someone as talented as yourself, Mr. Puri. I would never recognize you in all that getup,” she said.

“So kind of you,” replied the detective. “Actually, disguises have always been my speciality. Once I take on a role, Vish Puri is put aside and I become the character. Sometimes I don’t even recognize myself. So engrossed I become.”

Puri admired his disguise in his makeup mirror: stick-on henna-dyed moustache, eyebrows and wig – all a lurid orange-red – and a hawkish nose.

Mrs. Duggal and Facecream exchanged a playful glance.

The Abode of Eternal Love was spread over a vast estate in the foothills of the Himalayas. Had it not been for the bronze statues of the Hindu saints along the driveway and the comings and goings of the devotees dressed in white kurtas and sarongs, it might have passed for an American university campus. Manicured lawns dotted with shade trees and benches snuggled between new, utilitarian buildings. White picket signs pointed visitors in the right direction:

DARSHAN HALL; ANANDA RESIDENCE; ABODE OF KNOWLEDGE;

ATM. The well-tended flower beds around the edges of the car park were decorated with bark chips.

The main reception, with its sliding automatic doors, split air-conditioning units and computerized registration system, also contradicted all preconceived notions of modernity being at odds with spirituality.

Maharaj Swami, according to the stacks of free literature available to visitors, had attained samadhi after meditating naked in a cave high up in the Himalayas for seven years. His devotees could achieve the same while living in well-appointed dormitories, eating freshly prepared vegetarian food, attending pranayama yoga sessions in the marble-floored gazebo, listening to Swami-ji’s daily discourses and following a pancha karma detox system.

For those with ‘health issues’, the Abode of Health, a multimillion-dollar two-hundred-bed hospital, also offered treatments for every conceivable condition, including cancer and AIDS. An Ayurvedic cure was also offered for homosexuality, which Maharaj Swami considered a ‘sickness and disease’.

While waiting in line at the front desk, the Garodia family – of Marwari stock and currently visiting from Singapore, where Lakshmi Garodia ran a multi-crore textile business – found themselves in good, middle-class company. Behind them stood a young couple from Delhi working in IT who had come to spend three days at the ashram.

“We’re looking for something more to life beyond work and shopping and more work, like higher thought or something, you know,” said the husband, who had paid almost a thousand dollars for the Fast Track to Yourself package.

“Lakshmi Garodia up from Singapore only,” announced Puri in a sonorous tone to the young lady devotee behind the desk when it was his turn.

He placed a Garodia Enterprises business card on the counter. It listed a Singapore office address, a website and a number that Flush, Puri’s computer and electronics whiz, had rerouted to the Communications Room inside the Most Private Investigators offices.

“I called one day back only to enroll my daughter, Queenie,” said Puri. “We were invited to attend darshan at four o’clock.”

“Yes, Mr. Garodia, we’ve been expecting you,” the devotee said with a seraphic smile. She stood and pressed the palms of her delicate hands together in a namaste.

Puri reciprocated, as did Mrs. Duggal, aka Mrs. Garodia.

“That is your daughter?” asked the devotee.

Facecream was standing on the other side of reception with her back against the wall, listening to her iPod. It was turned up full volume. A thudding beat leaked from her headphones. She was mouthing the lyrics while looking suitably oblivious.

“Yes, that’s Queenie,” said Mrs. Duggal with a sigh.

The devotee regarded the young woman in the tight jeans and high heels with a curious, whimsical smile.