BLOOD RED SARI (4 page)

The turn off to Varkala looked much the same except for the oversized hoarding advertising a housing colony with the dreadful name ‘Papanasam Paradise’. ‘All apartments sea view!’ boasted the signboard. She wondered where those sleek glass-and-steel multi-storey towers were scheduled to rise. Surely not here? Still, the crunching of sand beneath the Esteem’s tires, the glimpses of the blue ocean behind the swaying palms, the smells of drying fish, and that peculiar odour that was home eased her heart and made her resolve to act calm and dignified. She owed that to Lalima’s memory. Whatever else had happened here, it took away nothing from what Lalima and she had shared for that one glorious summer. She bumped her nose on the half-wound window trying to see the cliffs as the car took the last curve; and suddenly, as the old mossy gateposts appeared, she felt a terrible longing to see Lalima’s fifteen-year-old face again, laughing with her tongue out in that peculiar canine way, just for a minute or two, just one glimpse. Oh damn. Oh fuck. She couldn’t do this alone. She had to, she must, she would.
Damn you, Lalima. You ditched me and left. Again. And this time you went so far, even a passport and visa won’t get me there
.

The old house looked the same, barring one or two minor changes. There was a dish antenna perched on one corner of the roof and most of the roof tiles were broken or displaced, no doubt during one of the several winter monsoon storms that hit this part of the coast hard three years ago. She had read about the storm and felt vaguely guilty for not being there, as well as relieved that she wasn’t. Looked like Philip, Graham and Isaac hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet, or perhaps, judging by the overall rundown condition of the garden and grounds, the rusting iron gate off its hinges and overgrown well-mouth in the courtyard, they simply couldn’t be bothered. She admonished herself with a pang of remorse:
There could be another reason and you know it. They might not be able to afford repairs.
But a part of her, the mean bit, snorted and said,
Yeah, sure, but I bet they found money to drink every day. Besides, how much would a few tiles, some general maintenance cost?

She walked around the house, putting off the inevitable as long as possible. The ancient Chevy Nova – its tires gone, resting on rims that had warped over time, streaks of rust like veins of copper in a mine visible beneath a thick patina of encrusted dust, leaves and bird droppings – was in the back garden, which now resembled a wilderness. It made her sad to see the vehicle in that condition. They had had quite a few happy times in that car, before Achchan fell ill and died and things went from sad to fucking miserable in the Matthew household. She remembered one particular long trip that they took to Mariam Appachchi’s house in Mundakottukurussi where the Big Fight happened. It was undertaken before the night of the Big Fight, and that trip was pure gold, or as close to it as was possible in the Matthew household. She could still remember how happy she had been, thinking that maybe now things would be all right, they would be a real family at last, the way Lalima’s family was, or Varkey’s. For the first several hours of the trip, things had actually been wonderful, with all of them singing old songs and everybody still sober, and the sheer pleasure of going somewhere, anywhere, had suffused her with a warm, fuzzy hope. But after they stopped for lunch, ‘just one quick beer’ had led to another and then to several more, and then they were back on the road. And as the kilometres sped by, the exhilaration of being together rushing headlong along a country road had begun to wane, and the bickering and drunkenness began, and then the arguments and fights and slapping and punching and abusing and shrieking and threats of murder and maiming. It was then that she had come to realize with growing horror that it was actually worse than before; she was trapped in this metal coffin with her mad, violent family; and now, looking back, she knew that it had been then that she had finally accepted that she must leave this madhouse and seek a new life elsewhere. It had taken her another three years to get out, but that day had been the beginning of the end, even before they actually reached Mundakottukurussi and the Big Fight happened. As for that delightful event in the Matthew family history …

She shuddered and was about to turn away from the rusting hulk when something caught her eye. She leaned over, frowning, and peered through the murky filth coating the rear left passenger window. What was that? It looked like a chain of some sort, attached to a leather collar. Yes, a dog collar and chain. What was it doing inside the car? Had they been keeping a dog in there? But why
inside
the car? And those brown splotches and dried patches on the faded dirty upholstery, surely they couldn’t be …
blood
?

A gust of sea breeze, redolent of salt and fish, swept through the grove of kallu palms behind her family’s property, and the resulting shirring sound was a soothing reminder of childhood afternoons spent daydreaming or reading with Lalima. It made her grieve again for those lost years and for the years that could have been, should have been. Perhaps that was why she didn’t hear someone approaching behind her.

Something cold and hard pressed down on her right temple, causing her to freeze instinctively. Her eyes cut right briefly and she had a sense of a pair of long dark cylinders looming in her peripheral vision.

‘Well, well,’ said a raspy voice that she instantly recognized as Isaac’s. ‘The prodigal daughter returns. Didn’t you read the sign, sister dearest?’

She kept her voice deliberately casual and sarcastic, knowing that displaying fear would only worsen her situation. ‘I forgot my glasses in my ass. Could you fetch them, please?’

He cocked the shotgun in response; she could feel the reverberations of the bolt in her skull, the barrels were pressing that hard against her head.

‘I referred to the sign that read “Trespassers will be Prostituted”.’

She kept her hands still, but moved her fingers just enough to snap them smartly. ‘Of course. And you would be the friendly neighbourhood Pimp-in-Charge, right?’

He made a harsh throaty sound, then the pressure of the shotgun left her head just long enough for him to swing the length of the gun around to whack her with the wooden grip; a hard whack, hard enough to dislocate a shoulder or concuss her.

She was ready for it, though. And moved cobra quick to meet it.

2.2

IT WAS ONE OF
those days. Due to the renovation work going on in the courtroom that was usually used for regular hearing matters of the category, court was being held in the extension building where accessibility was never as good as in the main complex. Then, someone had unloaded several boxes of court documents from a vehicle on the access ramp and Nachiketa had to wait several frustrating minutes for the boxes to be moved so that she could roll into the building. Finally, some good Samaritan did the needful, and she gritted her teeth and thanked him, hating how it made her feel, hating that someone had to take pity on her. She promised herself that she would file a complaint, but even as she rolled into the courtroom, she forgot all about it.
They
were there today. In force. The whole lot of them.

The Shah family: her mother-in-law glowering at her with those beady thyroidical eyes; her two sisters-in-law, both with their mother’s bulging optics and almost comically identical glare; assorted uncles and aunts and cousins and god knew who else; and of course, at the end of the line, looking a little bit fatter and angrier as he seemed to look each time she saw him, her great pati parmeshwar – husband who was like a god. Never mind that he was a mean, nasty, misogynistic, money-grubby son of a bitch, he was her husband, and that itself made him a god according to the ‘values’ of their community. She dearly wished she wasn’t confined to this wheelchair only so she could prostrate herself before him, touch his feet one last time and then grab hold of his ankles and send him crashing to the floor, hopefully breaking the bastard’s neck. She let none of this show outwardly, of course, greeting the court clerk politely and slipping him the case brief and waiting patiently till he informed her that her case number was indeed on the top of the docket for the day. That was satisfaction enough for her, because today was judgment day, hopefully, and it would be so, so sweet to see the expressions on their fat faces as Justice D.K. Pathak laid down the law.

But when the judge swept into court, she realized with a shock that it wasn’t D.K. Pathak. It was Honourable Mr Justice R.K. Jain instead. How had that happened? She tried to catch the clerk’s eye, but he was engrossed in the usual business of sorting and sifting through briefs to pass on to the chair in the correct order. She thought of sending Shonali an SMS asking her what was going on, but it would have been pointless. Besides, the DHC had probably started using the much-threatened jamming device due to the ongoing Judges’ Assets case that was going on
in camera
. In any case, court was already in session now and the clerk was already reading out the list of case numbers and noting the extension dates for each one.

Then she noticed the expressions on
their
faces. The Shah dynasty of Shahibaug. They seemed curiously content. That was when she felt the first whiff of suspicion. She tried to rack her brains to remember if R.K. Jain was one of those rumoured to be a ‘pliable’ judge, which was the preferred euphemism among her esteemed colleagues. She had no idea, but surely their mass presence here, combined with the unexpected change of the presiding judge, that too on judgment day, signalled that something black and squirmy had likely fallen into the lentils, na? By then her number had been called and the judge was already making disapproving noises at her and the defending party’s lawyers, who were all suited-booted hotshots from a firm large enough that her entire practice would probably fit into a single overnight case used as carry-on baggage by one of their junior-most assistants. She suddenly lost all the good mojo she had brought with her and knew that fate had just tossed the horseshoe at her skull. Clang.

‘Begging your pardon, but Honorable Mr D.K. Pathak is well appraised of this matter and was about to pass summary judgment, so please Your Honour.’

The Honourable Mr Justice R.K. Jain stared down at her bleakly from his bench, and in a long-suffering tone mumbled something about D.K. Pathak proceeding on indefinite leave for personal reasons and that he would be taking over D.K. Pathak’s caseload, if, of course, Madam Attorney-at-Bar Mrs Nachiketa Shah had no objections to the same. That drew a few titters from the front row, and she hardly needed to turn her head to know the source.

She tried again, asking for an extension, a continuation, time to review, etc., but she was summarily turned down each time with a bored, disdainful yet curiously methodical precision that told her all she needed to know about the good justice R.K. Jain. Bought, sold, sealed, delivered. Giftwrapped with a red ribbon.

She was on the verge of giving up – if only for the day, that is, she had come much too far to ever truly give up – when she caught sight of a familiar set of faces. That perky young news reporter from NDTV News – or was it CNN IBN? One of the English news channels, at any rate. And several others. A whole shebang of TV and print news reporters all lined up and ready to byte. Of course. They were here for the Judges’ Assets matter. It was big news, headline and breaking-news stuff. Not her piddly little nobody-nothing case. But they were here nevertheless. And so was she. And if she was going to be railroaded and outmanoeuvred yet again by the great Shah dynasty, she was damn well going to kick in a few teeth, even if only metaphorically.

She turned back to the bench. ‘Honourable sir, I request you to consider the primary facts in the case one final time before passing summary judgment.’

R.K Jain frowned, and even the court clerk blinked rapidly and raised his head to peer owlishly at her from above his stacks of files and papers and chits. But before anyone could object, she was launched and rolling like an Olympic ski racer down a too-fast slope.

‘That man, my husband Shri Jignesh Ramchandra Shah, married me for one reason and one reason only: to use me to siphon off my family’s money. The truth was revealed immediately after the ceremony itself. Our honeymoon was cancelled because he cashed in the tickets and hotel reservations and kept the money, just as his mother and sisters took away every single one of the wedding presents. Over the next few weeks, every single thing of value I had brought with me, including my personal jewellery, they took – by cajoling and pleading at first, then by demanding arrogantly, and finally by use of force. Then the demands began. He needed cash to shore up his new venture, a new car, a new flat. My parents were not badly off, but they didn’t possess unlimited means either. When my father tried to put his foot down, the abuse began. At first, I was only harangued and yelled at and slapped around a few times each day. Then I was beaten and locked into a storeroom and left for days without food or water or toilet facilities. Then the real horror began. My husband left on a business trip and my mother- and sisters-in-law came into the storeroom where I was sleeping in the dead of night and began to beat me mercilessly with cricket bats and stumps. All the time, they kept yelling at me that if I wouldn’t pay in cash, I would pay in kind. “Tara hadkanu maas kadi leisu” was a favourite phrase they shouted over and over again – which translates into “We will take even the marrow from your bones”.