Nury Vittachi - The Feng Shui Detective

The young woman initially had some difficulty entering the garment firm’s offices, but a phone call to Ravi helped sort out the problem-the Associated Foods executive had a cousin on the board of Deshpande’s. Access was quickly arranged.

The handbag factory was noisy, dark and chaotic. Joyce McQuinnie soon found herself in a small room, loaned by a junior manager, talking to Mrs Kumari Sekhar, an attractive 29-year-old woman who looked too young to have children of eleven and twelve. The young Westerner was fascinated by the Indian woman’s large, dark-rimmed eyes and wondered whether it would be unprofessional to ask what sort of eyeliner she used.

Better stick to business. Feeling very adult, she explained to the young mother that she was working for her late husband’s company’s Far Eastern shareholders, and just wanted to see if there was anything she wanted to talk about, anything to clear up.

‘You mean like returning of office properties?’ the woman asked in a strong Delhi accent. ‘He never took anything home, only paper clips, occasionally he would be having a pen with the company name, only like that. You can come and see in my home. There’s nut-thing.’

‘No, no, I am not like being the big nasty corporate big brother or anything, no way. We’re just like, really sorry he died and stuff. I just wanted to know if anything was wrong, whether he had any like, problems or anything?’

‘Oh, I see,’ said the widow. She thought for a while, and then leaned forwards, not conspiratorially, but as an apparent gesture of trust. ‘Nut-thing. He had a bad cold one time last year, couldn’t shake it, and sometimes a bad stomach, but basically he was so healthy. Used to boast that he never went to a doctor. Never took a pill. No, he was healthy in body. When he started to go downhill, my brother-he’s a doctor-checked him out and just told Sooti to take more exercise, go to his bar a bit less. You know he liked to go out with his friends before coming home.’

Joyce unwisely took a generous sip of the tumbler-full of unidentifiable yellow-pink liquid which had been placed in front of her. She grimaced and nearly spat it out when she found it was lukewarm milky tea containing at least three spoonfuls of sugar. She tried to turn her scowl into a smile.

‘He went out boozing and stuff lots?’

‘Oh no, I am not meaning he was a drunkard or anything like that. His father was a Muslim. Sooti used to be a teetotaller too. Then, maybe a year ago, he started to have one glass of wine or a Kingfisher with his meal. Maybe he would have two Kingfishers, or maybe three if it was a long evening. But still moderate. He was never drunk. Never in his life was he drunk.’

‘Did he stay out late very often?’

‘Never. Usually came home about 8.30 or nine, not late.’

‘Did he gamble?’

‘Never.’

‘Borrow money?’

‘No.’

‘He sounds a cool dude.’

‘Kul-doot?’

‘I mean, like a good husband.’

‘He was. Very very good man.’

‘It must have been awful for you. Him being so young. How are you like, you know, getting on?’

‘Oh, it was a shock all right, but I am over it now. Nearly four months ago he died. We did the mourning properly.’

‘What about, er, money and stuff? You have two kids, right?’

‘Yes, certainly, the loss of income was a worry at first. But we saved a lot of money and Sooti had two life insurance policies. We do not need to worry. We have a house. My parents are still alive and live nearby.’

‘That’s really neat. The insurance companies have already paid up?’

‘One has paid, the other has agreed to shortly. Because he was so young…’ She paused, apparently rather uncomfortable about something.

Joyce gave her a look which she hoped was a mixture of friendliness and concern.

The widow continued: ‘I do not like to tell everyone this, but you are from his boss, who already knows this. Because Sooti was quite young, only forty-two, the pay-outs are actually quite large. We are very fortunate that he took such policies out. I do not really have to continue working. In fact I have handed in my resignation and am leaving at the end of the month.’

‘That was lucky,’ said Joyce.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The gods have been very kind.’

‘Yeah, cool. Like, er, did you take out this insurance a long time ago?’

‘Quite a long time. A year, maybe two years ago. Not me. I don’t know much about all that. Sooti handled it all, but left the policies in my father’s strongbox for me to get if anything happened to him.’

‘Great,’ said Joyce. ‘I’m really glad to hear that you and the kids will be okay. Do you mind if I just ask you a question about your eyeliner?’

Late that afternoon, Ravi, who was clearly taking his role as genial host seriously, asked the visitors if they wanted to eat out or be entertained in some way. ‘Or would you like to go home? I understand you are staying at Mrs Daswani’s place in UP. I can arrange a car to take you back there. Any jet lag to sleep off?’

Wong said: ‘We like to have dinner at a club. The club where Mr Sekhar used to go to after work.’

Joyce added: ‘Yeah, you see we’re having some trouble visualising what went wrong in that room.’

‘Fine,’ said Ravi, waving to a small man with a large head. ‘Peon!’

A noisy taxi ride in a tiny, cramped old car, grossly mis-named an Ambassador (anything less ambassadorial would be hard to imagine) took them first to Janpath, a main road in the centre of New Delhi. From there, they turned eastwards onto a road crowded with cars and bicycles, and drove over an old bridge into a more suburban area. ‘They really do use their horns instead of their brakes,’ commented Joyce, watching in horror as their vehicle simply pushed carts, bicycles and pedestrians out of the way.

After twenty minutes driving, they entered an area of high-class suburbs. The roads were still wide, but the press of population was much less. With its grand avenues and tree-lined streets, the young woman decided New Delhi was interestingly different from the old city, at the same time more stately but less charming.

Then the roads suddenly became narrow and the houses less prepossessing. The small car took them to the Go Go Club, in a dingy, ramshackle street on the northern outskirts of New Delhi.

Despite its name, the Go Go Club was a rather Spartan basement canteen. The inmates, clusters of middle-aged men energetically shovelling rice into their mouths, seemed content enough, judging by the loud and animated conversations in which they were engaged. They stopped talking for a minute to examine the foreign visitors, but the noise quickly returned to its former level.

The magnolia paint on the walls was peeling slightly, but the orange-hued light fixtures gave the restaurant a warm appearance, and the smell of hot, spicy food was undeniably enticing, particularly for Wong, who had a taste for any food which bit back.

Ravi ordered, and the two visitors were quickly presented with a huge selection of dishes. There was no meat, because Ravi was a vegetarian, and the potato curry was a more fluo-rescent yellow than anything Joyce had eaten before. But the food was delicious. Joyce took tiny bites, and drank six glasses of water. While eating, they chatted with club manager Anish Butt about Mr Sekhar’s visits.

Butt, a scrawny man of about seventy with a neck wrinkled like a turkey’s, champed his nearly toothless gums and spoke at length about The Deceased, whom he had known, he said, for at least twenty years.

‘Oh yes, indeed, The Deceased’s father used to come in here and Sooti came as a boy. Then he got the job with Associated and he came on his own steam. Three, four times a week, and then the last year he used to come almost every day, on his way back from work.’