Vikram Chandra - Love and Longing in Bombay

The station house was hardly alert in the sudden, sultry heat of the afternoon when Sartaj held the watch up to the light. It was indeed a Rolex, large and heavy and very yellow, with a pleasing glistening feel under the thumb. Moitra, the Bandra inspector who had pulled it out of her desk, was leaning back and rubbing her eyes with the palms of her hands.

“Big fucker,” Moitra said. “It should tell more than the time.”

Sartaj was turning it over and then over again. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” Moitra said. “Moon phases. The time in Tokyo. Whatever shit people think they need to know.”

“We all want to know the time in Tokyo. Come on. Let’s see him.”

In the detection room Ghorpade groaned as he came through the door, hunched over and shuffling.

“Have you been third-degreeing him?” Sartaj said.

“For what?” Moitra said. “Why to waste energy? He’s a fucking bewda . By tonight, for a drink, he’ll confess to killing Rajiv Gandhi. And haven’t you received the memorandum from up high? No third degree, ask them questions with love and caring and tenderness.”

She laughed. It looked to Sartaj that the confession might actually come sooner than nightfall, judging from the trembling of Ghorpade’s hands. “Sit down,” he said flatly. It was his interrogation voice. He knew his head was leaning forward from his shoulders, and that his eyes had become opaque.

“Have fun,” Moitra said as she left. For a long moment afterwards Sartaj could hear her whistling down the corridor.

“We found the man, Ghorpade,” Sartaj said.

“What man?”

“The one you knifed.”

“I’m a bewda . I don’t kill anyone. I just wore his watch.”

Sartaj had to lean closer to him to hear the words in the voice full of phlegm. Ghorpade had a small, lined face, dry lips, and days of grey stubble on his cheeks. He stank of sweat and monsoon damp.

“Why did he let you take it?” Sartaj said.

“He was lying down.”

“On his back?”

“No. Face down. So I took it.”

“Did you know he was dead?”

Ghorpade looked up with yellowed eyes. He shrugged.

“Was he in the gutter?”

“Yes.”

“Was it full of water?”

“No. It was just starting to rain. There was just a trickle.”

“Was there any blood?”

“No.”

“None?”

“No.”

“What time was it?”

Again Ghorpade shrugged.

“Did you look for a wallet?”

“It wasn’t there.”

“Why didn’t you sell the watch?”

“I was going to. A little later.”

“Later till what?”

“I just wanted to wear it for a while.” Ghorpade wrapped his arms around himself. “It was a good gold watch.”

“Do I look like a fool to you?”

Ghorpade shook his head, slowly.

“But I must look like a fool to you. Otherwise why would you be telling me this fool’s story?”

Ghorpade was quiet. His ruin seemed complete.

“All right,” Sartaj said. “I’ll be back to talk to you more. You think about what you’ve done. About this children’s story you’re telling me.”

Ghorpade was absolutely still, with his head lowered.

“I’ll be back,” Sartaj said. He was almost at the door when Ghorpade spoke, and the words were indistinct, and his face was turned away. Sartaj took the three steps back and leaned forward, narrowing his eyes and blinking against the smell that hung over Ghorpade. “What did you say?”

Ghorpade turned his face close to Sartaj, and Sartaj saw that he was really not very old, young perhaps, in his thirties. “I’ll be dead,” Ghorpade said.

“Nobody’s going to kill you.”

“I’ll die,” Ghorpade said. There was no fear in his voice. It was a statement of fact, and it required no sympathy in response, or any other kind of emotion. Sartaj turned and walked away.

*

The door to Chetanbhai Ghanshyam Patel’s sixth-floor apartment was made of dark wood inlaid with criss-crossing copper bands and raised ivory studs, with Chetanbhai’s name in gold at the centre. It was a door that belonged in some last-century haveli , with an elephant parked outside and durbans in safas. Now a window opened at the middle of it and a young face peered out through the bars.

“Yes?”

“Police,” Sartaj said. The boy’s eyes took in Sartaj, and the bulk of Katekar’s shoulders behind him. Sartaj was watching him carefully. This was something that Parulkar had taught him: go to their homes, watch their fear, and you will learn everything.

The door opened and Sartaj stepped in. “Regarding the matter of one missing person Chetanbhai Patel … Your good name?”

“I’m his son. Kshitij Patel.” He was about nineteen, a little shaky.

“Who else is in the house?”

“My mother. She is sleeping, not well. She was very worried. The doctor has given her some medicine.”

Sartaj nodded and walked past him. The drawing room was large by Bombay standards, and cluttered with brass lamps and furniture and many-coloured hangings on the wall. The sofas were huge and an alarming red. On the wall to the left there was a long painting of a brilliant sunrise and another of a sad shepherd. Against the back wall there was an Apsara pouring water. Sartaj walked over to it and saw that she was almost life-size, with deep round breasts and huge eyes. She was all white, plaster, and quite startling to find in an apartment in the Narayan Housing Colony, far north and west of Andheri West.

Kshitij was watching him, and Sartaj felt the edge of his resentment without surprise. He used his ability to stalk into people’s lives as another tool. What they felt about him was usually instructive.

“Please come to the morgue with us,” Sartaj said.

In the long moment then he saw recognition, regret, the usual struggle for control, and then Kshitij said, “Yes.” But he did not move.

“Do you want to put on some shoes?” Sartaj said. He followed Kshitij into his room, which was shocking in its austerity after the gaudy brilliance of the rest of the house. There was a shelf stacked neatly with books, a desk, a bed, and a calendar with a goddess on it. There was a window that opened out onto an expanse of swampy vegetation. It had begun to drizzle again. “Is there somebody to take care of your mother?”

Kshitij looked up from his laces, startled. He blinked twice and then said, “I will tell my neighbour.” Sartaj noted his thick black Bata shoes, his well-worn white shirt and brown pants. When they came out of the bedroom Kshitij shut the door firmly behind him. “I’m ready,” he said.

“I need a photograph of your father,” Sartaj said.

Kshitij nodded, turned, walked away. The photograph he brought back was a picture of a happy family, Chetanbhai and his wife in front, stiff and square shouldered in a blue suit and green sari, and Kshitij behind, standing straight in a white shirt, his hand on his mother’s shoulder.

*

He was remarkably steady at the morgue. Sartaj was impressed by his self-possession in the face of the damp walls, the yellow light, and the searing smell of formaldehyde that brought tears to the eyes. Sartaj forgave him a little then for his drab owlishness, his youth entirely lacking in dash or energy or charm. There was a sort of blunt and unprepossessing iron in him. Sartaj had brought some there who had been broken down by the dark corridors even before the room with the rattling metal trolleys and the atmosphere of congestion, but Kshitij identified his father without a tremor. He stood with his arms folded over his thin chest and said, “Yes. Yes.” Outside, as they swayed in the police department Gypsy jeep, on the pitted roads, he asked, “Has the police found out anything about the murder?” When Sartaj told him he couldn’t talk about the investigation he nodded understandingly and lapsed into silence. But afterwards, at the station, he couldn’t stop talking. He drank cup after cup of tea and told Sartaj that he was premed at Pateker. He was an only son. He wanted to specialize in neurology. He had been second in the state in the H.Sc. exams, falling short by three marks mostly because of a bad mistake in Physics, which was his worst subject. It had been a sort of trick question in electricity. But other than that everything was moving according to plan.