Delhi Noir (16 page)
I shaved closely and wore dark glasses and clean pants, shirt, and shoes. “Soon I’ll stop being a burden on you,” I told my friend. He shook his head at me indulgently, but I knew what I had to do.
I walked one last time toward Basant Lane. I entered the colony compound with confidence, my backpack over my shoulder. The guard at the gate saluted smartly. I climbed up the stairs in Sarika’s building two at a time.
As I had expected, the front door of her flat had a large lock on the outside. The servant’s door appeared bolted and locked from the inside—Bibiji was trapped. But the neighbor’s service entrance was open; they illegally sublet their quarters and people always went in and out. I stepped through and walked along the servants’ balcony toward Sarika’s side. It was quiet. If anyone saw me, I would say I was Mrs. Khanna’s nephew, locked out by my aunt.
I straddled the dividing wall between the two flats, hanging precariously off the parapet as I crossed over. A vein in my temple throbbed. I found the door to Sarika’s kitchen latched from inside, but I was a contractor’s son and knew railway construction. I cracked open the foot latch with a few kicks, then leaned against the lower part of the door. It strained open a few inches. I reached into the gap with my crowbar and pried down the top latch.
I found Bibiji cowering on the living room floor. She hiccupped and gurgled as I tied up her hands and wrapped a strip of cloth around her mouth. Her eyes widened when I used my knife to cut the rope. She fell down as if dead. I picked her up and took her to her room.
For an hour I examined every item in the household: refrigerator magnets, ashtrays, the doll case, confidential files in Mr. Khanna’s desk. I lay on Sarika’s bed, but it felt strange and unfamiliar somehow. I searched through open cupboards for money, though all I found were bedsheets and pillowcases.
I heard the front door open and close, and then the squeak of the inner deadbolt being drawn. If only we had taken such precautions before. I waited in Bibiji’s room, where the old woman lay facedown, groaning occasionally.
Sarika screamed once, seeing Bibiji trussed up like a goat, but I had my knife out and Sarika was a smart woman. I made her sit down in a chair and tied her hands and ankles. She was wearing a polo shirt, light jeans, sneakers. She had cropped her hair below her ears. It made her look even more like a boy. Her hands smelled of fresh nail polish. Her left eye twitched and she cringed at my touch, but she stayed quiet.
“I came to settle our business,” I said, keeping my voice steady even though my temples were pounding hard.
“The network is gone,” she replied, leaning forward. “I told your friend with the long face.”
“Mr. Khanna shut it down?” I said, trying to sound reasonable.
“
I
did,” she shot back. “Ashok knew about the boys, but not yet all the ladies.”
“There were other boys?” I burst out without thinking.
Contempt flashed across her face. “Poor Mukesh,” she said, despite her position. “You were only the cheapest.”
I winced and shut my eyes. I clenched my aching head between my fists, the knife in my hand. When I opened my eyes, she was attempting to rise.
“Don’t move!” I shouted. I was finished with her indignities. “I’m only asking once: Where is the money?” I held up the knife.
“There is two thousand in the almirah. Untie Bibiji and I’ll get it. But if you ever return, my husband will be waiting.” Was it fear or amusement in the curl of her lips?
“I’m not a thief who needs to hide. I came for my due, not charity.”
She looked at me as though I were an exasperating child. “Then why threaten
me
with this bandit act? Ask the one who has it.”
“Mr. Khanna?”
“My husband doesn’t need your money,” she said scornfully. “Your sad-faced friend. I wondered why you sent him. I could tell he was unreliable with just a glance.”
I felt punched in the gut. My legs became unsteady. “Why would you lie?” I cried hoarsely.
“What kind of company are you keeping? You’ve forgotten everything I taught you.” She’d risen to her feet despite my admonition. She held out her hands in a wordless demand to be untied. She was commanding me, just as she always had, from the day we met in her flat to the last time she farmed me out as her bull.
I stood staring at her open-mouthed. I should have known she’d efficiently neutralize my threats. Cornered and defeated, I raised my knife to slash her ropes, but just then, a sharp knock on the front door startled us both.
“Sarika,” a gruff, familiar voice called out. “Open the door. Are you alone?”
For a moment I thought time itself had unwound—a strange, sick sensation.
“Good work, Mukesh,” Sarika said. “Did you alert him before coming?” But there was a false note in her bravado now.
“What is he doing here?” I hissed, as the knocking changed into banging. The room was beginning to spin.
“He must have posted his man outside. Did you think of that when you made your plan?”
The pounding grew insistent. Bibiji groaned. Mr. Khanna was making loud threats that he’d break the front door down, that no barrier could keep Sarika from him. The bolt on the door, though strong, couldn’t hold him out indefinitely.
“What should I do?” I asked, my gut in my throat. I was completely in her hands once again.
We heard the cracking of wood and metal. But instead of panicking, Sarika grew thoughtful. Slowly, her face took on an expression of perverse satisfaction, like those moments when she would examine her love bruises. “Stab me,” she whispered, like an endearment.
I looked at her in fear and disbelief.
“You have to,” she said calmly. “Remember, the ropes won’t convince him.”
“I couldn’t,” I said, trembling like a man with convulsions.
“Do it,” she ordered. “Now! Quick.” And she smiled the most chilling smile I have ever seen. “Bring it here, I’ll help you.”
I ran back to Paharganj. I kept waiting for shouts from behind me, a crowd chasing me down. Instead, people backed away when they saw the blood on my shirt. A foreigner with matted hair, wearing a torn shirt and lungi, said, “Man, are you okay?” but I brushed past him. When I got to Johnny’s, my luggage was lying outside his door. My clothes were there but the money was gone from my suitcase. The lock on the door had been changed. I peered inside through a crack in the courtyard-side window. The room was empty. I pulled out a fresh shirt. My fingers were so rigid, my hands shook so hard, unfastening and fastening buttons took an eternity.
I abandoned my luggage and went to the cemetery. The workers grinned and told me Johnny Sahib had already left on a holiday. I came out in the bright, hot street and wanted to find a place to lay my head. There was so much time till nightfall. I stopped by an open gutter and heaved. Sarika didn’t have to help me in the end; the knife had slipped into her side with effortless satisfaction. “It feels like heaven,” she’d said, her fair face twisted in pain. She had fallen in an awful corkscrew motion, on her knees then her hands. “First-class first,” she’d said, before she closed her eyes. Did she know it felt good to me too? Hell was the look on Mr. Khanna’s face as we passed each other in the living room, my bloody knife in my hand.
I wandered through the alleys and byways of Paharganj for hours. I ventured by New Delhi Station but there were too many police cars. Eventually, it was dark. I knew I had to run but first I needed to rest. I scoped the cemetery perimeter until I found a place I could clamber over. With difficulty I scaled the wall and jumped inside. I found a freshly dug grave and crawled in. The earth was cool as I lay on my back. I stared at the inky sky and waited for dawn’s unforgiving light.
Delhi University, North Campus
T
he first time I saw Zorawar Singh Shokeen was through the small gap between the doors connecting my room in Shokeen Niwas to the adjoining one. He sat astride a large, naked Punjabi woman in her late thirties who had buttocks that even film star Asha Parekh would be proud of. She was on her knees, at the edge of Jishnu Sharma’s cot. Jishnu da (MA, Previous, English, Ramjas), meanwhile, was in my room looking as usual philosophical and tragic. His left hand was buried in his loose, discolored Tweety Pie Bermuda shorts which he never washed. In fact the shorts were so stiff with profligacy that the story went that once during an argument in the hostel over who was supposed to pay for the Old Monk khamba that Friday night, Jishnu da in anger had taken off his shorts and thrown them in Farid Ashraf’s face. Though Farid managed to turn his head in time, he cut his fingers on the razor-sharp edges of Jishnu da’s shorts. The next day Farid (third-year History Honors, KMC) had to get a tetanus shot.
So right now, with his left hand Jishnu da was “making baingan bharta,” in his own immortal words. Eight or ten boys from the neighboring rooms were clustered in mine, their faces shining with barely repressed lust, the air dank with sweat and Navy Cut smoke. It was 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a hot July day in 1992 and I had just returned to my room after my first day at Zakir Husain College. A week earlier I and my friend Pranjal Sinha had arrived in Delhi from Patna and landed up at Shokeen Niwas. Pranjal had taken admission in Hindu College reading Economics while I got English at Zakir.
“He has taken her once in the chut, then in her mouth, now he is doing her ass,” Pranjal informed me in a cool matter-of-fact way, after taking a long drag from his cigarette. He added as an afterthought, “Jishnu da too is on his third shot.” Then he bowed and beckoned me to the slightly ajar door.
Zorawar Singh was holding onto both of “Madam’s” breasts with their large purplish nipples for balance, and was anally fucking her with much gusto. Her real name was Mrs. Midha and she was a section officer at Delhi University but everybody called her “Madam” because a few weeks back, Jishnu da, along with Farid Ashraf and Ramanuj Ghosh (second-year BA, Pass, Ramjas), was standing outside Sho-keen Niwas when Zorawar Singh drove up with Mrs. Midha in his white Gypsy.
Zorawar had stopped the car and asked Jishnu da whether he had gotten admission for one of his candidates in Ramjas College, which he had asked him to follow up on.
“Uncle, you don’t worry. The boy will be taken in through the sports quota after the third list. I have spoken to the teacher in charge. He was being uncooperative at first but I ‘convinced’ him in the end.”
“Very good. Keep following it up though. These Ramjas people are bastards. Remember, this is for the Kaana.”
“Uncle, it looks like it will rain tonight. We are all feeling a bit chilly.” Jishnu smiled ingratiatingly and pointed to Farid and Ramanuj.
“Toh, madam ki le le.” (“Here, screw the madam.”) Zorawar Singh had pointed toward Mrs. Midha, who was looking stonily out of the other window through her white plastic–framed sunglasses. To emphasize his point, Uncle gestured with his fist, moving it back and forth rapidly. Jishnu and the boys didn’t know where to look. Then Zorawar Singh, laughing at their discomfort, had taken out two hundred-rupee notes from his shirt pocket and given them to Jishnu da. “Buy a bottle of Old Monk rum. You know what rum is, don’t you? Regular Use Medicine. It will take care of the chill.”
So from then on, Mrs. Midha was universally known as “Madam” in Shokeen Niwas.
Zorawar Singh looked as if he was concentrating hard on some faraway problem. His eyes were closed. From time to time Madam would turn her face away from the pillow and look back and call “Oye” as if she was hailing someone from the balcony. She too was concentrating hard it seemed. After five minutes of this, Zorawar Singh suddenly opened his eyes and shouted, “Jai mata di!” From the bed Jishnu da commented, “Game over.” Now his eyes were closed. With a loud
plop,
Zorawar withdrew his dark, rapidly shrinking cock that a donkey would be proud of, and Madam slumped to the bed with a last feeble “Oye.” A thin watery stream of semen trickled out of her anus.
Zorawar Singh Shokeen, mid-level political broker and property dealer, was our landlord. A strapping six-foot-two half-Jat half-Gujjar from Chandrawal, full-bearded with a dandy’s taste in clothes. He usually wore deep pink or lemon-yellow silk shirts with gold cufflinks that brought out his peaches-and-cream complexion. His eyes were light brown and matched his beard. He was forty years old and for the last ten years had been the terror of Chandrawal, Shakti Nagar, Roop Nagar, Kamala Nagar, Vijay Nagar, Mukherjee Nagar, and other areas adjoining Delhi University. He was rumored to be close to H.K.L Bhagat, still then the undisputed New Delhi Congress boss and whom Zorawar called “Kaana” with the proud contempt that only close familiarity breeds, an obvious reference to the vain Bhagat’s damaged eye.
Sometimes Zorawar would be picked up from Shokeen Niwas in a white Ambassador car with a red flashing light on the top, tinted windows, and a Black Cat commando in the front seat. Zorawar would quickly slide in back beside a small gnomelike silhouette and then the Ambassador would reverse at full speed and turn toward Bungalow Road.
Jishnu da was the de facto caretaker of Shokeen Niwas. In his first year he had endeared himself to Zorawar Singh, showing great presence of mind one evening when an enraged Sikh husband of a woman Zorawar was screwing arrived at the doorstep of the hostel with a Matador van full of sword-wielding Sardars. Zorawar was at the time doing his thing to the lady, who was on her knees at the edge of the bed with a mouthful of pillow. In Jishnu da’s room, of course. Hearing the commotion, Jishnu da peeked out from the balcony and, gauging the situation correctly, promptly locked his room from the outside. He then gathered a couple of boys from the other rooms and headed downstairs to meet the Sardars who were trying to break open the front gates.
After instructing the boys, young kids from Chapra who had arrived only a week earlier, to just stand behind him coolly and not say a word, Jishnu da draped his cotton check-towel over his shoulders like a warrior’s mail. With enormous pluck, he then opened the front gate, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and demanded quietly, “Madarchod, what the fuck do you want?” or something to that effect, to the Sardar who was banging on the door with the steel hilt of his sword. Taken aback at the sight of this emaciated five-foot-five rangbaz in a sandow ganji of indiscriminate color and Tweety Pie Bermudas, not to mention the towel over his back, the Sardar replied, “Where is Zorawar Singh Shokeen? He has kidnapped my wife.”
