MIRA ROAD MYSTERY

The locality of Naya Nagar in Mira Road lay some fifteen kilometres north of Chopra’s own home in Andheri East, a satellite suburb of the ever-growing metropolis, bounded on one side by the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and on the other by the relatively unpopulated Uttan coastal district.

An enclave of largely Muslim residents, Naya Nagar enjoyed a boisterous reputation, one that Chopra had yet to experience first hand. He had never come to this particular part of the city, and it took a while for him to find his bearings.

He finally located Ghazalbhai Jewellers on a short street named Pathli Gully.

The road was exceedingly narrow—indeed, as Chopra slid his van to a halt he could see a bullock-cart owner and a rickshaw-van driver engaged in a heated argument over right of way. The argument had been going on for some time, judging from the way local residents had pulled up chairs and were sipping glasses of tea as they commented on the merits of each combatant’s position.

Chopra abandoned his van, extricated Ganesha from the rear, and set off on foot.

He paused at a barber’s shop to ask directions. The shop was besieged, not by customers but by locals watching the cricket on the shop’s tiny television set. Every time India’s premier batsman Sachin Tendulkar hit another four everyone would cheer, and the barber, holding a strop razor, would swing his head around. His client, with a froth of shaving foam around his chin, would also swing about, risking slashing his own throat.

Ghazalbhai Jewellers was at the very end of the street.

This was the second time he had been inside a jewellery store in the past few weeks but the contrast could not be greater. The last occasion had been an emporium catering to the rich, a palace of glitz and glitter. This time he was in the type of hole-in-the-wall store found in every mercantile quarter in the country, a family-owned business run by craftsmen who had forgotten more about the art of jewellery making than any of the chain-store tycoons had ever known. In India, families became connected to their jeweller over generations. The jeweller was there for every major occasion: births, celebrations, marriages, even death. Jewellery was passed from mother to daughter, from father to son. Each piece had its own story to tell, and the jeweller sat at the very centre of this vast web of familial intrigue, a magnet for gossip and news.

In the store an old man with a white beard and a prayer cap was peering down at a glittering necklace on a velvet swatch spread over the counter. He looked up as Chopra entered, peering at him myopically through a loupe wedged into his right eye. Beside the man a youth in an astrakhan cap was staring raptly at a young girl trying on a succession of gold bracelets. The girl’s mother, a leathery dragon, glared at the boy. “Put your eyes back in your head,” she snapped. “Just because you were friends in school doesn’t mean you can get fresh with my daughter.”

The boy coloured.

“Mother,” said the girl, also blushing.

Her mother grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away. “Come on! I don’t want that goonda ogling us.”

Us? Chopra doubted that the boy had been ogling the mother.

“But what about the bracelet?” protested the boy.

“Hah, I wouldn’t buy a bracelet from you if it was the last one on earth.”

“But she is still wearing it!” he cried desperately.

The woman appeared not to hear. She stormed from the shop, leaving the boy to look pleadingly at his father.

“Don’t worry, son,” said the old man mildly. “When she calms down she will be back. She is one of my oldest customers.” He turned back to Chopra. “How may I help you, sir?”

Chopra reached into his pocket and brought forth the bracelet. “Did you make this?”

The old man took the piece and examined it through his loupe. “Why, yes,” he said. “I made this for Aaliya, Aaliya Ghazi, old Mansoor’s daughter. I believe she had it commissioned for her cousin. He recently arrived in the city, to offer support following the death of her mother.”

“Aaliya’s mother is dead?”

“Yes. She passed away six months ago. She was a good woman.”

“What is this cousin’s name?”

“I think she said his name was Ali, if I remember rightly.” He scratched his chin. “Frankly, it was all a little puzzling. I’ve known that girl since she was an infant. She’s never mentioned a cousin before. She told me that this Ali left the city when she was a child—before she and her mother moved into this area, together with that deadbeat father of hers—and has only now returned. He is the closest thing to a brother she has, hence the inscription.”

Chopra felt his pulse quicken. “Where can I find this Ali?”

The jeweller stared at Chopra. “How did you come by this? And what is your interest in Aaliya?”

Chopra hesitated, then decided to tell something akin to the truth. “My name is Inspector Chopra, and I am following up a lead in a recent crime, the details of which I cannot reveal.”

“Aaliya involved in a crime?” The old man laughed, and handed the bracelet back. “That girl has the sweetest disposition of anyone I’ve ever known. The day she’s implicated in a crime is the day I’ll lie down in my own grave. Of course, I’ve never met this Ali, so I cannot vouch for him. Aaliya lives close by. Why don’t you talk to her?”

Chopra noted the address, and thanked the man.

The house was small, at the far end of a badly lit lane of similar homes, with thin plank-board walls, tin roofs, worm-eaten window frames, and plywood doors gnarled by sun and monsoon rain. A kerosene lantern lit the sagging porch. On the porch a broken water pot squatted beside a much-abused bicycle. A lizard scuttled away as Chopra approached.

“Hullo!” he shouted, announcing his presence.

Nothing.

He poked the door, and discovered that it was unlocked.

Chopra stepped inside, into a cramped living room set up with a small TV, a kitchen area, and a single battered sofa upon which a large man was splayed, his big belly rising up and down as snores emanated from his robust frame. A hairy-knuckled hand dangled on the floor. Beside it a bottle of unlabelled liquor rolled around, pushed back and forth by a trio of squabbling mice.

Chopra had seen many wasted lives over the years. Some were wasted through neglect, some through poverty, some through a simple lack of opportunity. But the most criminal waste, in his opinion, was that begat by the vice of alcohol. He had seen many men laid low by such demons of their own making, and it both saddened and infuriated him.

He looked around the room.

The walls were bare, with peeling whitewash. The only adornment was a single poster, framed in glass. It was for an old Bollywood movie Queen of the Kohinoor Circus, though the names of the actors were not mentioned. Various circus animals were ranged behind a woman in a scanty acrobat’s leotard with a beehive hairstyle, clearly the star of the movie.

He’d never seen the film, but there was something familiar about the woman.

“What are you doing in here?”

Chopra turned to face what he assumed was a young woman, wearing a black burka, her face obscured behind a gauze veil.

“I’m sorry,” said Chopra. “The door was open.” He held up the bracelet. “I am looking for Aaliya Ghazi. Or rather I am looking for the man she gave this to.”

The woman’s hands slid off her hips. Chopra could not be sure, but he sensed she was shocked.

Finally, she spoke. “I am Aaliya. But you are mistaken. That bracelet does not belong to me.”

“The jeweller told me that he fashioned it at your specific request.”

“He is mistaken,” she snapped. “Now please leave before I fetch my neighbours.”

Chopra realised he would get no further by staying. Trying to strong-arm a Muslim girl here would not go down well. Besides, it was not his way of doing things. His intuition told him that something was not right.

That would have to be enough for now.

“Very well,” he said. “I will leave. But I may be back. This is an important enquiry. A life is at stake. It will not simply go away.”

He walked past the woman and out into the night, where he found Ganesha investigating an old tyre with his trunk.

“Come on, boy,” he said loudly, knowing that the girl was watching. “Let’s get back to Andheri.”

Chopra walked back to the van, drove towards the house, and parked around the corner, before killing the engine.

He waited in the dark, hoping the girl would give herself away, or else that the elusive Ali might make an appearance. A thought suddenly occurred to him. When confronted by a stranger in her home, Aaliya had threatened to fetch her neighbours. Most people would have threatened to call the police. Was Aaliya afraid of the questions a policeman might ask?

His phone went off in his pocket.

Cursing, he extricated it from his trousers. “Yes?”

“This is Lal,” said Lal. “You must come to Antakshari right away.”

“Why? What has happened?”

“Something awful,” said Lal, and hung up.

Rangwalla looked around the spacious rear cabin of the limousine, taking stock of his travelling companions.

As the vehicle had made its way out of Marol, headed north, he had learned that the four eunuchs he was accompanying had been at the Red Fort for varying lengths of time, and had all been personally chosen by the Queen for the assignment. They were heady with excitement at the money they would make from a few days of relative idleness. Inevitably, speculation was rife as to the true motives of their mysterious benefactor.

“Well, if you ask me,” said Rupa, a slender eunuch in a purple sari and hooped earrings, “he is probably one of those shy types working himself up to what he really wants.”

“As long as he doesn’t try any funny business,” said Mamta, a large eunuch with a flat face like a shovel, broad and open. “The last one who tried that with me got a pounding.”

Rangwalla could well believe it. Thick muscles corded Mamta’s arms, the biceps stretching the short sleeves of her powder-green sari blouse.

“I never took you for a shrinking violet, Mamta,” said Parvati, a dumpy eunuch with a benign forehead and wide-winged nostrils. She was older than the others, Rangwalla felt, though it was hard to be sure under the layers of make-up.

“It wasn’t that,” countered Mamta. “I had gone there to collect a debt. He thought because I was a eunuch he could humiliate me in front of his friends.”

Rangwalla knew that the use of eunuchs as debt collectors was a recent innovation. After all, eunuchs spent much of their time collecting baksheesh from local businesses in return for their blessings. Sometimes the cash was handed over willingly, more often with great reluctance. But it was always handed over. When one thought about it logically, no one knew more about collecting money from those who didn’t want to pay than the eunuchs.

“One day we will live in a world where no one will humiliate us.”

As one they turned to stare at the fifth member of the group, a eunuch who Rangwalla found disturbingly attractive—certainly she was the most feminine-looking and in her pale pink sari, in the right light, could have passed for any pretty young girl in the city.

Her name was Kavita and she was the youngest of the bunch.

And then, as one, the others burst out in cynical laughter.

“The poet speaks!” said Rupa.

“When that day comes, my dear,” said Parvati, “you and I will be dust and bones.” She removed a flask from her undercarriage, and took a quick sip, winking.

“And what about you?” asked Mamta, peering at Rangwalla. “Do you believe in paradise too?”

So far Rangwalla had successfully deflected attention from himself. At the beginning of their journey he had pre-empted his companions’ questions by recounting the cover story Anarkali had provided him with, namely that he was an old acquaintance of the Queen—answering to the name of Sonali—who had been summoned to the Red Fort that very morning. The Queen had insisted he go on this trip. He knew that this perfunctory explanation did not satisfy the eunuchs, but so far they had resisted the urge to delve deeper. The Queen had made a decision. Who were they to question it?

Rangwalla was glad he could hide behind this shield of silence. The truth was that his discomfort had grown steadily. He had never been in such close proximity to a group of eunuchs before. His guts coiled each time he inadvertently brushed the eunuch beside him. In spite of his stern words in defence of Anarkali back at the restaurant, he felt that such chivalry was fine at a distance, but this close, he found his fragile principles wilting.

Before he could respond, the limousine ground to a halt.

The driver twisted in his seat, and passed a package through the screen. “The Master wishes you to put these blindfolds on.”

“I told you,” said Rupa. “Didn’t I tell you? The kinky games have started, and we haven’t even reached his mansion yet.”

“It is only because the Master does not wish to reveal the location of his residence,” explained the driver.

“And why not, eh?”

“It is the Master’s wish,” said the driver calmly. “I cannot continue until the blindfolds are on.”

Grumbling, the eunuchs pulled on the blindfolds.

What next? thought Rangwalla, as the limousine moved off.