A Cut-Like Wound (6 page)

Gowda nodded.

‘Do you like bikes?’

‘Kumar sent me here.’

The tattoo artist smiled. ‘Ah, so you must have seen what I did for Freddie … that took several hours and multiple sittings.’

‘How long will this take?’

‘About three hours max and it will cost about seven thousand five hundred rupees. Though for you, I would do it for five K.’

‘Why?’ Gowda frowned.

‘I am a biker too. I have an old Bullet that Kumar fixed for me … and Kumar doesn’t send me clients ever. So you must be someone special.’

Gowda watched as the stencil was placed on his arm. When it was done, the tattoo artist bound his arm and gave him a whole list of do’s and don’ts. ‘You can take the bandage off after an hour and no wetting or bathing for the next twelve hours,’ he said, walking him to the door.

The tattoo made Gowda feel special. It was not about the symbol of a bike as much as the freedom it suggested. An open road, the song of the wind, the thump of the engine, the dream of a lifetime to keep going without ever pausing.

He traced the wings on the wheel with the tip of his finger. It still filled him with awe that he had actually gone ahead and done it. Mamtha wouldn’t approve, he knew. So he kept it a secret. He had made sure his arms were covered when he was with her, wearing a T-shirt even to bed.

He looked at it one final time. Then he dressed and walked into the kitchen.

He looked around him. The counters were bare except for four bottles of water that stood in a row. One bottle of water stood on his bedside table. In the fridge were four plastic boxes and a bowl. The ceramic bowl held curd that had turned firm without souring. One of the two plastic boxes held potatoes and peas cooked precisely the way he liked them. The other held a small portion of chilli chicken he had brought back from the restaurant the night before. His wife couldn’t have done better, he thought wryly, pulling out the containers of rasam and rice. He poured the rasam into a steel saucepan and put it on the stove. He stood watching the rasam simmer.

Shanthi, the maid, knew his habits and tastes. She knew
how he preferred his coffee and where he liked his newspaper kept every morning. She sorted his clothes and sewed on missing buttons. She laid out his handkerchief and socks every day and replenished the toiletries in the bathroom. She told him what groceries were needed every month and shopped for the vegetables and meat herself. She said little and glided through the rooms, an apparition taking care of his needs without reproach or complaint. In fact, other than sleeping with him, Shanthi had slipped into the role of wife with a casual ease that saddened rather than pleased him.

It occurred to him that his marriage couldn’t amount to much if he scarcely missed his wife.

The ping of the microwave.

Rasam and rice, Gowda thought as he toyed with his food, must be the loneliest dinner written in the destiny of any man. A meal you ate because anything else was too much of an effort. A culinary straw you clung to because the familiar taste and aroma, its suggestion of heat and spice evoked memories of a time when your mother stood at your elbow making sure you had everything you wanted. As it slid down your throat, you knew a strange pang: if there was someone else across the table, there would be accompaniments – pickles, vegetables and conversation. Not this silence, broken only by the sound of the metal bracelet of his watch clanging against the rim of the steel plate.

Gowda put the plate into the sink and ran water over it. He stared at the lone plate in the sink and the saucepan in which he had heated the rasam, and the plastic box that had held the rice. He had never felt this alone before. At almost fifty, he had nothing to look back upon. Not even a real memory to clutch at.

From the first floor that was let out to a young couple
and their dog, he could hear the dog’s nails as it scratched at a corner of the room.

Gowda paused as he wiped his hands on a towel. He knew what he would do. He would get a dog. Not a silly fluffy yappy dog that his wife may approve of, but a proper dog with a loud bark. He would call Guru at the Dog Squad for his advice. Suddenly Gowda grinned. Maybe they had a retired inspector dog he could bring home. It was a thought. Two police officers past their prime, seeking consolation in each other’s company.

Gowda walked into the living room and rifled through his CDs. He chose a Mukesh CD and slid it into the music system.

He lit a cigarette and sank into a cane chair in the veranda. His house was the only one on that road. On either side and opposite were empty plots. A line of silver oaks demarcated each plot from the other. At first the developer had kept the plots spruced up for customer visits. But when the recession happened and people were laid off, the bottom fell out of the real estate market and the developer stopped bothering about cutting the grass and trimming the casuarina that lined the roads. Weeds took over. Shrubs grew and trees spread their branches, fearing neither the electricity department’s routine lopping off of branches nor the ruthless home builders who sought to fill every square inch of land they had paid for with brick and mortar. Some days it occurred to Gowda that he lived in the middle of a forest. He woke to bird calls, and when it rained, the frog chorus croaked all through the night.

Four years ago, when Gowda broached his plan to build a home in Greenview Residency, Mamtha had been appalled. She had hated the thought of moving from Gowda’s
family home in 5th Block Jayanagar. After Shimoga, where Mamtha had grown up, Jayanagar had been everything she had imagined Bangalore to be. You stepped out of your home into a bustling street of shops and people. And yet, it was like what Shimoga had been. There was Suma Coffee Works, where she could buy the coffee-chicory blend she liked. There was Shenoy’s, where she could buy her choice of condiments and short eats; and a sweetshop that sold the best obattus and chirotis. Brahmins Café and MTR were nearby. Mamtha had loved it there. It was also convenient for her as she was posted at the Vanivilas hospital in Chamarajpet, which was only a fifteen-minute drive away.

After living in south Bangalore, the thought of moving across the city into the wastelands of north Bangalore worried her.

‘It’s just the other side of the city. Why are you behaving as if I’m suggesting we move to Outer Mongolia?’ Gowda said.

‘It may well be for me,’ she snapped. ‘What do I know about that part of Bangalore?’

‘The new airport’s coming up there,’ he said, clutching at any straw.

‘And how many times do I go to the airport?’

Gowda had retreated behind his newspaper. He had seen his father do this with great effect when his mother was spoiling for a fight. Behind the newspaper, he held his breath, wondering if she would tear it out of his hands. But Mamtha was not given to such outbursts of emotion. She stared at him and walked away.

She had sulked for the next few weeks but Gowda pretended not to see her distress and went ahead with his plans. The developer had given him a whopping discount on the market rate.

‘This is all I can afford,’ Gowda had tried to placate his wife every now and then as the house took shape. ‘At this price we’d get a hole in a wall somewhere else, but here we have a plot that is five thousand square feet. We can even have a garden!’

Mamtha glared at him. ‘Did I ever ask you for a garden? For that matter, do you know the difference between a mango and a turnip?’ She turned on her side and went to sleep.

Gowda had come to love the quiet and so when the first truck load of stone arrived two years ago for a plot at the end of the road, he felt as if his private space was being intruded upon.

But Mamtha had welcomed the thought of neighbours. ‘About time!’ she had said. ‘It will be nice to have some people and noise instead of the cheep-cheep of birds all day.’

Gowda hadn’t spoken.

Despite Gowda’s daily glowering at the construction workers, the new house had been built and an elaborate housewarming ceremony held. Gowda and Mamtha had attended the puja, one reluctantly and the other compensating with an overdose of effusiveness. But after a few months the owners were transferred to Mumbai. Gowda had watched the movers’ truck arrive with a grin and, when they left, he had walked around with a light step.

Mamtha hadn’t said much, but when Roshan’s medical seat at Hassan came up, she had broached the idea of a move. Gowda had refused to even consider the thought. And then Mamtha played her ace. Someone needed to keep an eye on Roshan, she didn’t trust him to be on his own. She would have the hospital find her a house right in the heart of Hassan.

‘Maybe when you are here on your own, you will be
ready to consider moving away from this wilderness,’ she had said as she packed.

Gowda didn’t think he could live anywhere else. He liked it too much here. But he had to buckle in and let the first floor out when Mamtha insisted. ‘We’ve sunk everything we had into this house and Roshan’s medical admission,’ she said. ‘They are a young couple and will be no trouble. And I’ll know that if you need any help, there will be someone around.’

Night had settled in and from the first floor, he could hear sounds of muted conversation. His tenants were back from wherever they had gone to. Had Mamtha and he ever behaved like newlyweds? He had been busy using up all his energy being angry with the system and she had her nose in her medical books. By the time his anger had run its course and she had become a qualified doctor, the baby had arrived. Suddenly they were parents worrying about inoculations and school admissions.

He heard the man say something and the woman laugh. They laughed a lot, those two. Had they, he and Mamtha, ever laughed like that? he wondered.

Gowda turned his head and watched the phone as it vibrated on the glass table. He picked it up and peered at the screen.

It was SI Santosh. Gowda felt his mouth stretch in a grim line of its own volition. What now?

Santosh could barely keep the excitement out of his voice as the words tumbled out. ‘Sir, I picked up the post-mortem report from the mortuary just now.’

‘And?’

‘Shall I read it out to you, sir?’ Before Gowda could tell him to save it for the next morning, Santosh began, ‘More
than eighty per cent of the body surface is burnt. The trunk and anterior abdominal wall are almost completely burnt. The line of redness, the blisters with serous fluid, the presence of acid mucopolysacharides and enzymes all indicate that he was alive when burnt. And, sir, the pathologist has also stated that either kerosene or petrol was used to start the fire since the burns had a sooty blackening and a very characteristic odour.’

Gowda grunted impatiently. ‘We knew that’s what would show up. So what was the need to call me at this hour? Tell me, what has got you all worked up?’

‘Sir, around the neck there are ligature marks, but it is a cut-like wound extending into the jugular.’

Gowda sat up. ‘And?’

‘Glass particles were found in the wound and under his fingernails. A manja-coated ligature was used. Again. And, sir, similar lacerations on the face like the one mentioned in the Horamavu homicide.’

Gowda felt a prickling down his spine. A flaring of life. Perhaps it wasn’t over till it was over.

THURSDAY, 4 AUGUST

Gowda rode his Royal Enfield Bullet to the station house earlier than usual. It wasn’t much of a place, but in the last five years he had grown attached to this rented building that stood in a quarter-acre plot on the outskirts of Neelagubbi village.

Land had been earmarked for a permanent station house, tenders from building contractors had been invited, and one day it would eventually get built. But until then, this green-washed building with its small poky rooms and rented furniture was Gowda’s fiefdom.

In the summer, when water dried up in the lake, a stench rose up from the slimy mud. And in the evenings, giant swarms of mosquitoes would descend on every living creature in the station house. Head Constable Gajendra would order a constable to fill a bandli with eucalyptus leaves and burn them so smoke would drive those ‘bloody bastards’ away.

‘We are all going to die of dengue fever,’ he would remark darkly every summer. ‘We should move from here, sir.’

‘It’s only mosquitoes,’ Gowda would murmur, swatting one against his arm.

‘Mosquitoes,’ Gajendra would retort, ‘do not care if you are a policeman or a pimp. They want blood to fill their bloody bellies. Like our corrupt politicians. No one is above or below their bloodsucking.’