Delhi Noir (21 page)

Chotu is from Garhwal. He is fair-skinned, has shiny black eyes and big hands. He is moody and irritable when with us. In front of Mrs. Bindra he is subservient and self-effacing, always ready to please. He misses the rain and the mountains, the company of his friends. He’s fond of his drink. We do a lot of that sitting in the park opposite the main market or in Sadiq’s rickshaw while he peddles us around. Chotu stares at all the fancy women with their oversized sunglasses and opulent cars. He finds it strange that I remain indifferent to the sensual world around us.

We have another hangout—the first floor. The golf-playing Mrs. Bindra, wife of the dead Rear Admiral Bindra, owns C-47, Defence Colony. She lives on the ground floor. Between Mrs. Bindra’s plush, dark home and the terrace lies a vacant first-floor apartment. A young woman committed suicide here several weeks before I moved in. No one has been bold enough to rent the place after that incident. Chotu feels her ghost is still around. He describes her as being very sexy, very aloof.

She worked for a bank and lived on her own. At night she had boyfriends over. Chotu used to clean her apartment on Sundays. He had a key to the flat. He was the one who found her dead body dangling from an Orient ceiling fan.

The three of us go there sometimes, either in the mornings when Mrs. Bindra is playing golf or when she’s out-of-station, visiting her only daughter in Bombay.

It’s one of those weekends. Mrs. Bindra is in Worli, visiting her daughter who works for Hewlett-Packard. We have taken over the first floor. The curtains are drawn. The rooms are empty so our voices echo, bounce off the walls. In the vacant space our low voices acquire a rumbling, basslike quality.

Chotu and I are sitting on folding chairs. Sadiq is on the floor surrounded by the tools of his drug habit: silver kitchen foil, a new one-rupee coin which he uses as a filter, a mutilated Bisleri bottle serving as a spittoon. I use wax matches to light the foil from underneath while he chases the dragon.

Afterwards, he lies down. Every once in a while he gets up and goes to the toilet to puke.

Chotu is drinking. He has finished half a bottle of country liquor and is ranting about his boss. There’s too much work.

He was initially hired to cook but now does a host of other jobs at the same salary: dusting, cleaning, driving, shopping for groceries, walking the dog, ironing the clothes, driving Mrs.

Bindra around. She hasn’t given him a raise in two years. He says he could kill her. I say I would if I were him. He tells me to watch out; he just might one of these days.

I am smoking thin joints of Stadium ganja. I’m only half-listening to Chotu. The more I smoke, the more I think of

Arpita. I’m fighting my memories but it’s a losing battle.

We are like hikers, heading toward a common summit but from different directions. At the moment we are all trekking along on our solitary paths; very soon we’ll be united at the summit. We will exchange high-fives, shake our fists, plant flags.

At around 3 in the afternoon I feel like eating. The ganja has made me hungry. Chotu is drunk but steady on his feet. He’s willing to join me. Sadiq is lying on the bare floor with his eyes shut. When I poke him he doesn’t budge. His clothes are so dirty I can’t make out what he’s wearing. His body is wrapped in rags. I realize I haven’t looked at him much all these months we have been together.

Chotu and I decide to go to Sagar Restaurant in the C-block market. I’m wearing a green polo T-shirt and faded blue jeans. Chotu’s wearing a plain red shirt and dark-brown trousers. The doorman at the restaurant hesitates for a moment, then decides to let us in. He bows and says, “Please,” pointing toward the windowless ground-floor section. He knows me by face: I eat here almost every other day. Chotu doesn’t cast his eyes around the other tables; he stares at the floor and follows me. We sidestep a couple of barefoot attendants on their knees in the narrow aisle between the tables. They have brushes and dustpans and are cleaning the floor. Not a single crumb will escape their deft hands and keen eyesight.

We make our way to the first floor where a group of Punjabi ladies are playing bingo: “Two-saven, twanty-saven, one-zero Downing Street.” Their restless children sit at another table and order ice-cream shakes and kulfis. Some of the women cast suspicious glances at us when we enter.

We sit down at a corner table and place orders for Mysore masala dosas. Chotu leans back and looks around in disgust as if we are sitting amongst mounds of smelly garbage.

After the late lunch, Chotu and I stroll around for a while: Chotu checking out women’s feet, I staring vacantly at passersby. Fortunately, everyone comes to Def Col with their maids in tow so the two of us together don’t attract much attention.

We find a cycle-rickshaw near Kent’s Fast Food. We take him to the Flyover Market. We need more booze and cigarettes. Chotu is grumpy and disgruntled. He says he can see this life of slavery is not going to go anywhere. He wants money. His present job is not going to earn him that. “Seven days of nonstop work,” he complains, “and at the end of the month a fuck-all salary. She gives me food and shelter. That’s supposed to be enough. Whatever little I have left I send home. I never had any money I could spend on myself. I’ll never have that.” He wanted a motor scooter but Mrs. Bin-dra refused. Chotu claims it would make the shopping quicker and easier. “But no. She insists I do everything on my bicycle.

This is no place for bicycles, brother. I am tired of cars honking me out of their way.”

At the Flyover Market I take him to Nirula’s for a drink of water. His lips are chapped and dry. He looks dehydrated. He is on his third glass when I notice one of the red-uniformed employees walking toward us. I asked Chotu to hurry. We leave before he can reach us.

We buy whiskey from the off-license under the dingy Flyover Market. The sound of the traffic is loud. Invisible trucks and buses roll past above our heads. We are the small fish covering the ocean floor while the big fish hunt closer to the surface. I buy cigarettes from a man sitting opposite Central Bank. We walk home in silence. Chotu has stopped complain-ing for the time being. While walking over the small bridge across the nullah, I see cows grazing in the grass down below. They look sluggish and bored.

When we get back, Sadiq is awake. He is doing a line. He seems happy to see us. He tries convincing us to join him but neither of us is interested. Then, turning to Chotu, he says, “So, are we doing it tomorrow or not?”

Chotu seems irritated. “For that you’ll have to stay off the brown for a bit, you know. Finishing someone off requires brains and energy. You have neither in the state you’re in right now.”

Sadiq tells Chotu not to be deceived by appearances. He says he is ready, that he is an able and strong man—as a boy he fought a cobra with his bare hands; as a young man he fathered no less than four children.

Chotu says, “Okay, I trust you. We’ll need some of that old vigor tomorrow. Not that Mrs. Bindra’s a cobra, but still …”

By evening I had been taken into confidence. Initially I was a little apprehensive, even paranoid. Why were they sharing this with me? Had they stumbled upon something related to my own past? But that was impossible. As far as I knew they had no friends or acquaintances in Bombay. Had the police come snooping around then?

But as they talked amongst themselves I realized it had nothing to do with me: It was all about them and their plans for freedom. They just trusted me. We had been hanging out together for the last few months. They knew our backgrounds were different. Still, I didn’t behave like other men of my class; I didn’t even seem to know any. Chotu and Sadiq were fully aware that they were the only friends I had. No one came to visit me and I hardly left my room. I suppose a strange kind of desperation bound us together, gave us the illusion of belonging to each other’s worlds.

The plan was simple. Mrs. Bindra was supposed to return from Bombay the next afternoon. Chotu would go to Palam and pick her up. He would serve her lunch, after which Mrs.

B would lie down to rest. Sadiq was supposed to arrive around this time and park his rickshaw further down the road. When Mrs. B was fast asleep, Chotu would give the all-clear sign to Sadiq. He would then slip in through the open front door; together they would overpower and kill the old lady. They would break open the almirah in her bedroom—that, according to Chotu, was where Mrs. B kept all her cash and valuables. They would stuff the booty in two empty bags, get on Sadiq’s rickshaw, and head up to the main road to catch a bus to New Delhi Railway Station.

They wanted my opinion. I said the plan sounded okay.

They didn’t tell me where they were going to go afterwards.

I didn’t particularly want to know. Servants murdered their masters all the time in Delhi. Every other week the newspapers carried stories of elderly couples being drugged and clobbered to death. I often wondered: If the motive was robbery, why kill? Why not steal and scoot? Anyway, this seemed to be how they did it in Delhi.

Later that evening we went to the Vaishno Dhaba in the A-block market. On the way back we stopped by a construction site. An old house had been pulled down recently and a new one was coming up in its place. The front stood in darkness.

The roof had already been laid. A laborer’s family was living inside. One could see a faint light in a back room. A transistor radio played film music.

Chotu seemed to know exactly what to do. He took us toward the boundary wall to the left of the house. The ground was uneven and embedded with pieces of broken tiles and shards of glass. Some iron rods were lying next to the wall. Chotu picked up three. We walked back to the rickshaw, constantly looking over our shoulders, hoping no one had seen us.

Sadiq and I piled into the rickshaw, laying the rods flat on the footrest. Chotu wheeled us to C-47. They asked me if they could store the rods in my room for the night. I had no problem. Still, I was curious, so I asked Chotu why he didn’t keep them in his room. He said he would but he didn’t want to take any chances. The ironing lady across the road was a bitch. She was always trying to get him into some kind of trouble with Mrs. Bindra. She poisoned the old lady’s ears with tales. Once she’d told her that each time she was away, Chotu had whores in his room. This had gotten Mrs. Bindra very exercised.

She had promptly marched up to his room for an inspection. He had been embarrassed by the pictures on the wall: Mallika Sherawat, kneeling on the ground in a red satin dress; Kareena Kapoor in white bra and denim microshorts, a basque cap on her head. Not finding anyone, she had asked him to take the pictures down: “Give these people a roof to live under and they turn it into a brothel.” He’d taken them down only to put some of them back up as soon as she left. But the damage was done: Mrs. B’s ears had been poisoned. Despite her age—she was seventy-six—Mrs. B was given to climbing the stairs all the way to the top of the house, especially when she returned from a trip.

Chotu slipped the rods under my bed. He had also procured a kitchen knife which he had sharpened at the Kotla market. He went and got it from its hiding place in his quarter. I kept it in a drawer in my wardrobe.

After this we said goodbye. Sadiq had to go home. This was probably the last time he was going to see his family.

Chotu returned to his quarter and slipped into bed with one of his sexy, pixelated women.

The next day, Chotu returned from the airport with a very vexed Mrs. Bindra. I could hear her complaining about something. I could hear Chotu saying “Ji Madam” repeatedly, to appease her.

Gradually the sounds died down. Silence returned to C-47. The guards, mongrels, and lanes of Def Col returned to their customary afternoon stupor. At around 3, exactly three hours after Mrs. Bindra’s return, Chotu knocked on my door.

He seemed calm and distant. We didn’t greet each other. He brushed past me and gathered the knife and the rods. We didn’t exchange many words. He asked me to take care of myself and I asked him to do the same.

I went out on my cramped balcony. Sadiq was standing a little distance from the house, under a neem tree. I saw Chotu step out of the front gate. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Even the ironing lady had closed shop, it being time for her siesta. A cuckoo bird sang doggedly and insistently. A parrot shrieked somewhere.

Chotu signalled to Sadiq. He threw away the bidi he was smoking and began walking toward C-47. I heard them shuf-fle in quietly. Silence followed. After a minute or two I heard Mrs. Bindra’s raised voice. She sounded more angry than scared, but then again, I could have been imagining things.

Her voice vanished as abruptly as it had started up. The sound of loud hammering followed: the sound of Chotu and Sadiq forcing a lock open.

I stepped back into my room and bolted the door from the inside. Arpita was sitting on my bed painting her toenails. I had a knife in my hand. I shut my eyes for what seemed like a very long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. I missed her terribly. I desperately wanted to hold her and press my nose into her breasts. I wanted to fall at her feet and suck her freshly polished toes.

I stand by the window overlooking the school playground. It is empty at this hour. Babblers hop about on the ground. They look as busy as ants, pecking at random, immersed in their ceaseless chatter.

After about twenty minutes I catch a glimpse of Chotu and Sadiq walking down the part of the road that curves around the edge of the playground. They are on foot and carrying one bag each. They could be going shopping, getting Madam’s mixie fixed. Within seconds they have turned the corner and are out of my field of vision.

I know I am never going to see them again. They are going to start anew. I wish I could do the same. Murder has liberated them but trapped me in this horrible prison. They have a plan; I don’t.

Yet plan or no plan, things will take their own course. Mrs. Bindra’s corpse will rot. There will be a smell. The ironing lady will raise an alarm. The police will knock on my door one of these days. I will tell them whatever I know about Chotu. I will give them directions to Sadiq’s house in Kotla. Maybe I’ll tell them what I did to Arpita.