Banquet on the Dead (18 page)

‘Ah, is that so?’

‘Not because she did not like my grandmother. She did—she probably liked her more than I did, in fact. But my grandmother was a rich woman, sir, and people here like to talk. There were some who said I came here only out of hope that some gold will spill my way, if you know what I mean.’

‘Has it?’ Hamid Pasha asked immediately.

The ironical smile made a reappearance. ‘It has, yes, but my grandmother and I have agreed that it was not charity; it was payment for my ten years of service—
professional
service—to her and her sons.’

‘
Achha
. But I am sure people do not see it that way.’

‘No, they don’t. Just the other day a friend of mine came to my house, and we were sitting on the balcony. He looked out at the building where the communist party lives, and he said to me, ‘What have
you
got to fear? All this is yours.’ That night I told Durga that we had to make preparations to move out.’

‘Was your grandmother happy with your decision to move away?’

Koteshwar Rao sighed. ‘No. For that matter none of them was. It would mean that I would not be here on call to attend to them. And my grandmother was always— afraid, I think. She was a pit paranoid when it came to health matters.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Yes, food always tasted or smelled funny to her. This was food she had made herself. She always made her own food, till almost the very end.’

‘Is she that sort of person? Did she get paranoid in that way about other things too?’

‘Oh, no, sir, as I told you she was a very balanced woman. She had a perfectly sound head.’

Hamid Pasha asked, choosing his words carefully, ‘Maybe, then, her paranoia over food became more severe after the poisoning incident?’

Nagarajan saw lines reappear on Koteshwar Rao’s face. It did not appear to sit with him very well that they had already come to know about the poisoning. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I did not know you knew about it.’

Hamid Pasha shrugged and said airily, ‘You know how it is, miyan. One hears things.’

Koteshwar Rao pushed his hair back. ‘It was arsenic,’ he said, and paused. ‘I think it was around six or seven months ago. Ammamma complained about the buttermilk. She said it smelled funny. She insisted on getting it tested, so I did, just to keep her happy. I found traces of arsenic in it.’ He inclined his head to one side. ‘Funny thing is, arsenic is odourless.’

‘And there was not enough to kill her, was there?’

‘No. Not enough to kill, but there was more of it than I would be comfortable with. We don’t get so much arsenic in groundwater around these parts.’

Hamid Pasha nodded. ‘Do you know who made the buttermilk for her? Did she make it herself?’

‘No, buttermilk comes from upstairs every night. Venkataram Mamayya has a few buffaloes up at Puthoor, so he gets milk from there. And his wife used to make the buttermilk for my grandmother.’

‘Ah, indeed. But this must have been a long tradition? Something that must have been going on for years?’

‘Yes,’ said Koteshwar Rao. ‘Who knows how long she has been poisoning it for? We only detected it recently.’

‘Ah, so there is no doubt in your mind then, that she was the one who poisoned it?’

‘We-ll, I did not confront her directly, but I sent her a message through Venkataram Mamayya, and there was a big row in their house that night. All of us could hear it. I told you—the walls are not very thick.’

Hamid Pasha nodded.

‘And we monitored the buttermilk from then on for a while. There was no arsenic in it from then on. I—I did not tell anyone other than Venkataram Mamayya about this, of course. It will only make people more nervous than they should be.’

‘What do you mean by that, miyan? It was not serious, then, this poisoning?’

Koteshwar Rao sighed, and he appeared uncertain as to how to string his words together. ‘Well, sir, the amount of poison in the milk was too little to cause any harm, you understand. Maybe over a period of time— maybe if the same dosage had been maintained for two more years or so; maybe then we would have started seeing symptoms. But as it was, it was quite harmless, you could say.’

‘But if it is so harmless, why would she even bother with the poison?’

‘I do not know. And since it stopped, I thought it would be best—in the interests of the family—to ignore the matter. Maybe I shouldn’t have.’

‘Did your grandmother stop complaining about the milk after that?’

The doctor grinned, and when he grinned he looked very much the young thirty-year-old he was. There was something boyish about the lopsided curl of the lips and the sudden switching on of the eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘So I still had to carry out tests on samples every now and then and assure her that everything was fine.’

‘Ah, so it was not the poison that she smelled.’

‘I told you—arsenic has no smell. It is all psychological, sir. The relationship between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law have been—let’s say they have been “cold”.’

‘But if that is the case, why did she not reject the buttermilk altogether?’

‘Ah, but that would mean openly acknowledging the bitterness. It had to be thinly disguised, you see.’ A remnant of the grin still played on his lips. ‘And I don’t think it would have done her conscience any good to throw away the stuff. And maybe in her mind she knew that it was all psychological. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away.’

Hamid Pasha nodded seriously. ‘Yes, a woman of common-sense, as you say.’

‘But a woman all the same,’ the doctor said. Something buzzed, and his hand went to his waist and unbuttoned a little black leather cover. He brought out a pager and had a quick look at it before replacing it. ‘I have stayed here too long. My patients are waiting for me at the clinic, and I still haven’t even had lunch.’ He turned back to the well. ‘But this place is like that...’ Then he turned around and straightened himself. ‘I should get going now. If you have any further questions for me, you can get hold of me at night. Or you can pop down to the clinic if it is urgent.’

With that he nodded at each of then in turn and walked away, along the path.

As soon as he was gone, Hamid Pasha sprang into action just like he had in the morning in the old lady’s room, and threw a command in the Inspector’s direction: ‘Look!’ He bent at the knees, staring at the ground where the big depression was, and taking slow, steady steps along the edge of the well and then back again, murmuring to himself all the time. Every now and then he looked at Nagarajan and said, ‘Look!’

He disappeared behind the brick wall, and Nagarajan too started looking in the front, amid the grass, in the mud, by the stones and around the old crowbar that lay next to them. He did not know what he was looking for, just like Hamid Pasha didn’t either, he imagined, but he willed himself on to look.

About ten minutes later Hamid Pasha emerged from behind the wall. He held between his fingers a tuft of grey-black hair. He held it up to Nagarajan and said, ‘Touch-me-not plants, hain? They always hook on to
something
.’ He slid his hand into his pocket. Kicking the stones in his path with his good leg he stalked out towards the main gate, signalling to Nagarajan to follow. ‘Come, we are done here.’

14

A
BROKEN TILED ROOF
, termite-ridden walls, a rickety wooden door with a rusty lock hanging by the bolt, and a film of dust everywhere one looked—’old house’ really lived up to its name. This was the house in which Kakaji had been born, and in those days all of what was now called ‘Kakaji Colony’ was farming land. The Big Boom had not yet happened; either way, Kakaji’s father had been a farmer with minimal education. He would never have taken up the project that Kakaji had made his own after he returned from the city, armed with a Bachelor of Commerce degree. He proposed to his father that half of his farming land ought to be converted into ‘real estate’, a term that his father was unfamiliar with, and was therefore leary of.

He told his son that theirs was a family of farmers and that Kakaji (he was probably not called Kakaji back then) should become a farmer too. All this talk of ‘real estate’, he said, was a sure way of wasting good, food-bearing land. And when you wasted land, he told his son, you wasted money.

But the old man did not live long, and the first thing Kakaji did upon claiming his inheritance was to go ahead with his plan. Half his land he still tilled, but the other half, especially the outer sections which were more or less barren anyway, he converted into business property. He made friends at the required places in the registration office and at the police station—both were quite receptive to his proposed ‘gifts’—and within half a decade he was more landlord than farmer.

When he began his accountancy practice he found it so profitable that he found no need to continue cultivation— the rewards one got out of it did not seem to him to warrant the effort one had to put in—so he repeated his conversion process on the remaining half of the property and sold the first half to the highest bidders. When an official from the postal service came to visit the area he dined at Kakaji’s place, stayed the night, and left the next morning assuring him that he would do his best to make sure the landlord’s name became immortal.

Thus was born Kakaji colony.

Kakaji breathed his last when his three sons and one daughter were no more than children, but he left his widow with more than enough to spare. If Kauveramma had been a naïve woman, perhaps Kakaji’s wealth would have dwindled at the incessant clawing of the vultures that had gathered, but the woman took to the situation, after a suitable period of mourning, with remarkable equanimity. She was said to have told a friend at the time that if she could manage a household, she could equally manage an estate. The difference was only in dimension, not in nature.

It was around that time that Kauveramma decreed that a house should be erected—a big house, enough to house her whole family—and when it was finished, it was named Kauvery Bhavan. The old house in which the family had stayed before naturally became the servants’ quarters.

Now, Kauvery Bhavan itself was showing signs of age, and the ‘old house’ was literally on the verge of caving in. Nagarajan thought the time was perhaps ripe for
another
house to be constructed on the grounds, though with Kauveramma gone he was unable to think of anyone among the current lot who would have the foresight or planning required to even start—let alone manage and finish—the project.

From inside they heard the sound of muffled breathing interspersed by an occasional snore. Nagarajan guessed it must be siesta time, so he stepped forward and tapped the bolt against the door a couple of times.

They heard movement inside, and presently the door opened. Two large eyes peered at them from round lenses set in fat, reddish-brown spectacle-frames. When Ellayya recognised them he muttered a hurried greeting at both and opened the door fully. ‘Come in, babus,’ he said. ‘Come in, please.’

‘Let us talk here, outside, Ellayya,’ Hamid Pasha said. ‘It is nice and fresh outside.’

Ellayya stepped out and closed the door behind him. He had a huge, bulbous nose and a pair of ears that would have looked apt on a baby monkey. His grey hair was cropped right down to the roots, and two of his front teeth forced their way from between his lips and peered out, giving him a perpetual, stupid grin. He had a habit of blinking rapidly while talking.

‘Such an unfortunate accident,’ he was saying, and his eyes welled up like they had in the morning at the well. ‘She was a mother to us all. A mother.’

‘Tell me, miyan,’ Hamid Pasha said, feigning innocence, ‘how often do you go out without putting your glasses on?’

‘Me, babu, never, because I cannot see without my glasses.’

‘Tell me, how bad was Kauveramma’s eyesight then?’

Ellayya blinked, and Nagarajan got the impression that he was hard at thought. ‘I am not
sure
,’ he said slowly, ‘but she was quite an old lady, babu, and she could not have seen much without them—for sure.’

‘Also, what makes you think that she did not wear her glasses that day? After all, you never forget to wear yours.’

Ellayya blinked again. ‘Well, it sounds reasonable, babu, doesn’t? If the old lady went to the well, where she never goes, it sounds reasonable to me that she went there by accident. And the only way that accident can occur is if she could not see where she was going. And the only way
that
could occur was if she was not wearing her glasses.’

‘Hm,’ said Hamid Pasha, ‘so you were guessing that she forgot her glasses based on your assumption that it had to be an accident.’

‘It was an accident,’ Ellayya said simply.

‘Quite so,’ Hamid Pasha said, nodding. ‘Now will you tell us where you were on that day? I gather there was some work happening out at the compound wall and at the main gate. Were you involved in any of that?’

Ellayya snorted, and his brows came together. His big nostrils started quivering, and the appearance was of a bull that was ready to paw the dirt. Nagarajan gathered the man was, for some reason, angry. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I told Saami saab that I will do all the work. I just asked him to give me a couple of days. But he said he wanted the work to be finished on that day. He wanted both jobs to finish on that day.’

‘So he did not allow you to help out?’

‘Oh, he told me I was free to help out, but I was only trying to save him some money, you know. Why pay outsiders money when people in your own house can do the work for no money at all? But no, he would not listen, not Saami saab.’

‘So what
were
you doing that day? Did you come out of your house at all?’

‘No, sir,’ Ellayya said sulkily. ‘I was sick. I had some medicine in the morning and slept. I only woke up when they told me Praveen babu had found Kauveramma in the well.’ His eyelids fluttered repeatedly again. ‘Like a mother, she was, to all of us.’

Nagarajan could guess at the nature of the ‘medicine’ that Ellayya took that morning. He felt he could smell some of it on Ellayya’s person even now. He must have taken some of it this morning too, when he was not ‘feeling well’.