Doing wrong, p.19
Doing Wrong, page 19
“Very well, sir, let us assume you have … remembered correctly …”
What weight of mockery he put on that “remembered.” He might as well be pointing his finger and proclaiming me as a liar.
“… what you did that night. But the Ram Lila episodes do not last too long. So what were you doing after?”
What can I say? What is it likely I would have been doing? What would have kept me away from any witness?
“Did you come home, sir? What time did you come home? To within one hour, let us say? I know you Banarasis do not go in for the clocks and the watches.”
So now even he is accusing me because I am a Banarasi. The little gnawing Bombay rat. Well, tell him. Give it to him, hot and strong.
“No, Inspector, we do not consult our watches at each and every moment like you hustle-bustle Bombayites. And on the nights of the Rama Lila itself we are even worse.”
Yes, keep to the Ram Lila. It is my certificate of goodness. If I can make him believe in my following Lord Rama’s teachings. If I can lie enough, despite those teachings. Lie about doing right.
“Those plays are there, Inspector, to teach us. And I, for one, take what I have seen to heart. After the play that night I walked about asking and asking myself had I kept up to my resolutions to do good and to be good.”
And next year? Next year if I am here to see the play that night, what will I be able to say of the year past? That during it I committed one murder? That I told lie upon lie to stop myself being found out? That I contemplated having this little rat here made away with? Even that I was forced into making the most ridiculous false statement about the age of my own grandson?
But if I had not told these lies, told the lies I am telling even now, then I would not be here to see the Ram Lila once more. I would have been hanged as a murderer. Hanged outside of holy Banares. With my next life destined to be as the lowest and vilest of the low.
No. I cannot endure that.
Lies it must be. Lies and lies and lies. Till at last lying saves me, the truth-telling man that used to be.
Oh, and are you coming at me again, sharp-toothed mongoose?
“Sir, while you were walking and pondering also did you perhaps stop and buy a paan? I am knowing you Banarasis are so much liking to munch your India-famed paans …”
What is he saying? What is this-all about paans? Am I going mad? Has he driven me mad with his questions-this and his questions-that?
But listen to him. Listen. Beware of some trap, even in paans. “India-famed paans.” He is trying something with his flatteries.
“Sir, you are one well-known figure in this city. Will some paan walla have recognised?”
Ah, does he hope I will find some paan walla, bribe him? And then does he think he could break the fellow down? Well, I am not so easy to catch, Mr. Inspector.
“Inspector, after watching that play I was altogether too concerned with the state of my soul to go buying paans.”
Oh, I am too old to be caught by such a schoolboy trap. You must do better than that, my fine inspector.
“Then, sir, after however much of pondering, you were returning at last here?”
Quickly, think. No, must be safe to say I came back here. But keep it vague. Vague.
“Of course I came back home. What else should you think I would do? I came back. I went to my lonely bed. You know my wife was expiring some years past? And in the morning I rose up and went, as always, to Mother Ganga.”
Who has lost the power to bring me, cleansed of sin, to the new day. Yes, admit that.
But not to him. Not to the rat. For him the look of calm and confidence. As if I had indeed just stepped from Ganga Ma, renewed.
“And you cannot say, at all, when it was you were returning here?”
The best you can do, little mongoose? You are losing the scent itself.
“Not at all, Inspector. Not one least little bit.”
“But someone will have seen you come in, no? You have servants, isn’t it?”
Yes. And, thank God, they go to bed early. I can speak the plain truth here.
“All sound asleep by that time. Whenever it was.”
Unless one of them was up, knew I was not in my bed. But they cannot have done. They would not dare come into my room. No. No, I am safe here. Safe.
So where will he go poking-poking next? Or is it over? No, do not hope. Wait. Be ready.
“You do not keep a watchman?”
Ha. Karim. So, thank goodness, I was getting rid of him. They will never find him now, not however far they are looking.
“Why, yes, I do. Or rather I did. A fellow by the name of Karim, something of a rogue. A Pathan. But, I am sorry to say, the fellow has vanished. Some articles missing. Nothing of value.”
That should do it altogether nicely. Tie up the whole business. No ends left to be picked at.
“Vanished, sir? You mean he is absconding altogether?”
“Yes. Exactly, Inspector.”
How right I was to chase that blackmailer out. And no sign of him since. You will not get anywhere in this line, mongoose.
“But you have an address for him in his native-place? That is the procedure police are recommending to all with servants in Bombay.”
This will get you nowhere, my little friend. Nowhere at all. Why don’t you go home to your Bombay and its procedures-procedures?
“But here, Inspector, with Nepal not so far distant there is no point in keeping such details.”
So your way blocked, I think, my friend. Gaps in the defences filled. If only with more and more puffings of airy lies.
But he is going to try something more, I see. Well, try. Try, little mongoose.
“Mr. Verma, you have stated you have never met Mrs. Shoba Popatkar.”
Well, he has chosen a good place. Give him that. If there is anywhere I am truly weak, it is with her. If Srivastava should ever tell him that when I telephoned he reported to me that she had read the Recollections and that at once I was furious, then he will begin to guess perhaps why I … why I had to do what I did. Perhaps then he would be able to go to the High Court, or to somewhere, and get legal permission for the hundred-and-one-year ban to be broken.
Thank God, he has no idea that it was I myself who was imposing that.
“But if you would search your memory, I believe you must find some occasion when you were meeting her. She came here, so a ticket examiner was telling me, many times over the past years.”
Hah. On the wrong trail now, mongoose. Sniff, sniff, sniff.
“Inspector, how often must I repeat? When I make a statement I tell the truth. That and nothing more. It is my lifelong habit.”
Cannot tell him that too often. Why cannot he believe it? And get out of here?
“And now you are telling the truth itself when you are saying you have never, not once even, met Mrs. Popatkar?”
Oh, you have struck hard there. You may have been repeating only one damn question, but you have showed me to myself: “I tell the truth. That and nothing more. It is my lifelong habit.” It was my habit. Once. Or almost my habit. I did try. I wanted to be a truth-teller. And I was. I was. For the greater part. Yes. For the greater part I was.
But now … now I must give out one full lie. About the truth itself.
Lean towards him. Put as much of force into it as I can.
“Inspector, I have told you the truth itself. Why must you keep asking and asking?”
Is it enough? Have I done it? Will he leave me alone now at last?
No. He is thinking. I can see it. What is he going to find to ask now? Something new altogether?
“Mr. Verma, the first time I came to see you it was to make one simple request.”
What is this? He came to ask to go through the Recollections. He cannot have learnt now what is in them. Have come to know why I dare not let them be read.
This is the worst I had to fear. The very worst. And, now when I had begun to think it was all over, it has come.
What is he going to say? Listen. Listen.
“It was to take your permission, as chief trustee, to read the Recollections of the late Krishnan Kalgutkar.”
Go on. Go on, damn you. Come out with what you know. What you have known all along. If it can be.
No. No, no, no. That cannot be. He cannot have found out. He cannot.
“Sir, I was informing you then I required to see the said Recollections in view of the fact that Mrs. Popatkar had read same shortly before she was murdered. Mr. Verma, I am now repeating that request.”
Nothing.
I feel nothing. I have nothing to say. There is nothing for me to do any more now.
I suppose I must answer. Somehow. Say something. Say, “Read then, read. Find out everything. Arrest me. Take me out of holy Banares. Hang me. Condemn me to a hundred thousand more lives to be lived”? Or say, “No, no, you may not see those Recollections”?
And what will he do then? He will only get permission some way.
“Inspector Ghote, I must tell you again. A ban is a ban. No one can read those Recollections for one hundred and one years. No one. No one.”
But … but yes, there is a chance for me here. A tiny chance. I send him packing now, and then, fast as I can go, to Srivastava’s library. Get hold of the Recollections. Burn them. Destroy them. Then let them suspect whatsoever they like. They will not have proof.
Yes. Yes, that is the thing to do.
TWENTY
Just only one thing more to do, Ghote thought. Since I did not get the confession I was hoping for I must find one thing more to go with to the Senior Superintendent and make out a hundred percent good case for an arrest.
And that must lie in those Recollections. So, to the B.H.U. and Mr. Srivastava. Persuade him just to let me look. A matter of perhaps one hour only. Or should I march in like Mrs. Popatkar herself and demand to see? I could do that. Mr. Srivastava is not the fellow to oppose me with fisticuffs if I am seizing whatever keys he has. But …
But I would not like it to come to that.
And, if it did, there would still be problems. How would what I did affect the case when it is coming to court?
No, better to try first the soft approach. And—yes—it would be a damn good thing to have Mishra by my side. He would know some Banarasi way perhaps to get round Srivastava. Or to persuade him to turn a Nelson’s eye to what I am doing.
H. K. Verma did not leave it long after the Bombay inspector had left. He gave him just enough time to get clear of the immediate area—I would not put it past that mongoose to follow me—and then he heaved himself from his big chair, padded into his bedroom, took the matches—Cheetah Fight brand—that always stood by a candle there in case of a power cut, picked his stoutest pair of chappals from the almirah and set out.
He found he was possessed of a sense of burning urgency. No need for it, he kept telling himself. Why should that Bombay rat go out to Srivastava at this very moment? As likely as not the fellow would not even try to see the Recollections at all. He would feel the one-hundred-and-one-year ban is not so easily got past. Oh yes, he could try to get legal permission to break the trust. But that would take him months. Even years. So no danger there.
Yet he could not stop himself counting every second.
Hurrying and pushing through the narrow galli leading from the house. Thrusting aside pilgrims, their faces dazed with bliss. Barging past the less holy, making Banares one stop on a sightseeing visit to north India, wide-eyed, looking this way and that, pointing out the most ridiculous things to one another—“Look, that painter is putting an elephant on the wall there.” “Yes, look, Maharaja himself in the howdah”—kicking a goat out of his path, almost knocking down a man strolling towards him reading a newspaper, its pages held wide. Pushing on, pressing on.
On along Bengali Tola, where already down at the ghat the dhobis must be busy slapping and slapping at the garments they were washing.
Push on. Press on.
And at last a taxi.
Shout out. Catch the taxi walla’s eye.
Yes, thank Bhagwan. He has seen me.
“To the B.H.U.”
“Ji haan, sahib. Ninversity.”
“Yes, yes. But B.H.U., mind. I do not want to find myself at Sanskrit University.”
“Nai, nai. B.H.U.”
But the traffic was appalling. Every few yards, it seemed, they were brought to a halt.
A handcart loaded with baskets of flowers had somehow been tipped over. The baskets had rolled all over the roadway. Tight-crammed marigolds still in place, circles of blazing orange. Looser flowers blowing to and fro, brilliant red and pink petals everywhere. And the man taking them to the flower market at the Chowk running here and there, wailing in despair, stopping to dab up a handful, running back to his cart, trying to heave it upright once more, running out again to snatch at another tumbling ball of brilliant petals.
H. K. Verma sat fuming. Should he at least get out of the taxi and push a ten-rupee note into the man’s hand? An act of charity.
“Drive on, drive on!” he shouted to the taxi walla. “Go past those people. Get up on the pavement.”
“I am going as fast as I can, sahib. Will the world end in ten minutes only?”
“Drive on, I say.”
And at last they got going again.
Soon to be stopped by a long camel train, paying no attention to any other traffic, the tall, swollen-bellied animals, with their burdens swinging down at either side, indifferent to whether they were moving flat-footed over the sands of Rajasthan or working their way along a Banares road. And then, as indifferent, it was a “rolling” sadhu, making his way to some sacred destination, some particular one among the city’s two thousand temples fixed on weeks or months ago as the only right aim in life. Painfully slowly he measured his length on the dusty roadway, got to his feet, carefully stood exactly at the point his hands had reached, lay down again, scrabbling a mark on the road surface with his fingers, got to his feet once more.
But too holy a man for any taxi driver to pass, unable as he was to make a wide enough detour.
“Go on, man. Go on.”
“Sahib, I cannot.”
“Yes, you can. Go past him. You need not touch one hair of his head.”
“Sahib, no.”
“Five rupees if you start this second.”
“Oh, sahib, how cruel you are to a poor man.”
“Go. Go.”
And they went.
Did one of the wheels run over that hand, flat there on the road?
H. K. Verma refused to let himself think about the tiny bump he thought he had noticed. It might have been anything, he told himself. Anything. A stone. A stick. A piece of jackfruit husk. Anything.
Well, I could come back this way, see if he is still making his way along. Look at his hand. Do the needful.
Another halt.
He peered ahead to see what the trouble was. A big, shiny tourist bus, SUPER DE LUXE COLOUR VIDEO boldly on its side, white faces under a variety of bright cotton hats at every big glinting window. It was manoeuvring with difficulty into the narrower road leading down to the Harishchandra burning ghat where the guide would, no doubt, tell the story of how Raja Harishchandra, lover of truth to the very core, in order to keep to his vow had beggared himself to the point of having to act as a funeral-pyre attendant.
What for do tourists like that want to come here? What of benefit to their souls, if they have them, can there be in Banares? They are wishing to stare and smear only. To make fun even of our Hindu legends and customs. “You know they burn your body when you’re dead? And they put corpses in the Ganges. Total pollution.” No. No, I must not be bitter. They do have souls. They may not be Hindus, but they are men and women. They are capable of leading good lives. They need whatsoever of help they can get to do so. And if the sights of holy Banares are assisting them, let them take the help.
At last, after three or four more manoeuvrings back and forth, the glittering bus disappeared. HORN PLEASE painted in elaborate multicoloured letters under its big, rounded back window.
They advanced a little further. But the tangle of traffic caused by the tourist bus, jammed trucks, cars, autorickshaws, scooters, cycles—each and every one hooting and ringing, ringing and hooting—had extended for a quarter of a mile or more beyond. All too soon they were forced to a halt once more.
He managed now to contain his fury. No use shouting at this fellow driving. He has done his best. It is his duty to push his vehicle along as fast as it is proper to take it, and that duty he has done.
Nevertheless, he could not prevent himself sending rage-hot glances out at the houses and shops to either side.
The BE GOOD AND DO GOOD TYPING AND XEROX CENTRE. Two typists in its open front, heads down, pounding away at their big, old machines. Their duty to type. CUTE AND CRISP COPIES IN SECS. Good work.
But … Be good? Do good? Had he himself done what was his duty?
Perhaps, after all, he had. After all. If it had been his duty to become Minister for Social Upliftment … If that was what this life of his had been destined for at the last … And then, Mrs. Shoba Popatkar, with her obsession with the mere telling of the truth, with her wholly self-centred passion, had stood in the way. So, if that was right—if it was—it was the good thing he had done. The good action.
No fault of his, in that case, if the jockeyings of Delhi politics had prevented him becoming Minister. That can have had no bearing on what had happened.
But was that what had happened? Or had he simply given way to rage then? As just now he had done in telling this fellow here at the wheel to drive over that rolling sadhu? If it was his hand they had driven over …
Ah, moving again at last.
And now Asi Road straight ahead. In a minute or two, surely, they would come to the bridge across the little River Asi just before it joined with the Ganges. And then it would not be so long till they reached the B.H.U. campus, just over the Panchkroshi Road. And once inside the campus with its radiating semicircle of clear, wide roads it would take no time at all to reach the library, Mr. Srivastava and the Recollections.
