That evening, Mukta told her husband about the policeman’s visit.
“And what did he ask?” said Ashok, masticating a matthi and sipping his tea with some relish. After his back-breaking eight-hour grind as a typist in the Ministry of Rural Industry, he didn’t really want to be bothered with a detailed report of the policeman’s visit. He had been a dutiful son and had already done enough for his domineering mother, who always treated him like a child. He had bribed the morgue assistant to jump the line for a quick postmortem, lit her pyre, consigned her ashes in the holy Yamuna, and, on the chautha, the fourth day of mourning, fed seven brahmins to ensure that his mother’s soul speedily reached its heavenly abode without any interruptions from the dark creatures of the netherworld. Let his robust wife now handle this police inquiry, which, he believed, was just a routine exercise. She wasn’t a weakling, after all. Didn’t she once tell him that she had played on her school’s kaabadi team?
Still, he nodded perfunctorily when Mukta detailed the day’s proceedings. “He asked me how it happened and who saw it,” she said. “I rattled off the same story I’ve told the whole world a hundred times. He also asked for a recent picture of Mataji and one of me too.” Mukta sighed. “I’m tired of all this.”
“So am I. I wish you hadn’t taken her to that temple.”
Why blame me when it was your mother who wanted to see the evening prayer?”
“I’m not blaming you, dear,” Ashok said, trying to mollify his wife. “Look, I don’t think they’ll bother us about this again.” Like his late father Ramlal, Ashok was a quiet, peace-loving clerk who avoided trouble of any kind, so much that he wouldn’t take a crowded bus if he found the conductor badmouthing a passenger traveling on the footboard.
Less than forty-eight hours had passed since he’d met Mukta Agarwal when Raghav Bakshi received a second anonymous call from the same woman. “Have you visited quarter no. 761?” she asked, sotto voce.
“Yes, but I found nothing suspicious there.”
“So you too have been taken in by her cock-and-bull story? Slipping on the banana peel and all that bakwas.”
“Look, if you want us to dig deeper, you have to come out in the open and give us a written statement.”
“I can’t do that. But do you know about her affair with one of the neighborhood boys — a jawan?”
“I think you’re digressing,” Bakshi said, feigning disinterest. But he had already pressed a button on his telephone that would record the conversation. Mukesh the techie might even be able to trace this elusive caller.
“Tell me your name,” he said.
“Anamika.”
Bakshi was about to needle her with more questions, but Anamika — or whoever she was — had hung up. As he sat there twirling the ends of his mustache, his lips slowly spread into a smile. The information he’d just acquired could be valuable. He briefed Mukesh and then summoned Ram Bhaj, a freelance informer who was his man Friday. A three-day watch on Mukta Agarwal would be good enough to ferret out her little secrets.
Mukta knew she was under watch, but she ignored her stalker since she had other things on her mind. She felt sick one morning, vomiting twice in ten minutes. Having missed two consecutive periods, Mukta knew those passionate afternoon sessions with Rakesh had given her something more tangible than orgasmic delight. The young soldier and the distraught housewife had consummated their relationship, built clandestinely over a period of six months, during one opportune week in October. Rakesh was on leave and Kamla was away at her daughter’s place in NOIDA. What Ashok couldn’t achieve in three years, even with the help of those exotic medicines prescribed by a renowned “sexologist” of Daryaganj, Rakesh did in seven days flat. Impressed by his performance in bed and assured by his declarations of unending love, Mukta had told her new lover she wanted to divorce her husband. Rakesh promised to marry her once he was posted away from the killing fields of Kashmir.
Bakshi hadn’t been very happy with Ram Bhaj’s initial report, which contained nothing more than Mukta’s haggling with the greengrocers at Indira market and buying muffins and cheap noodles from Supreme Bakeries in Sector 8. Mukesh the techie wasn’t very helpful either. All his efforts revealed was that Anamika, literally “Lady Anonymous,” had called from a PCO in Sector 18 NOIDA.
“Dig deeper,” Bakshi hectored his minion, “or you’ll get a mighty kick on your gaand.”
The threat of an immediate sack worked wonders on Ram Bhaj. He quizzed, cajoled, and threatened the Sector 7 women into revealing Mukta’s secrets, which, he knew, would put his demanding boss in good spirits.
“Mukta has a lover called Rakesh who is a fauji,” Ram Bhaj reported to his boss.
“Good,” said Bakshi, reaching into his drawer for a sachet of paan masala. He had just returned to his seat after beating a confession out of a suspect. Punching and whipping suspects gave Inspector Bakshi the same thrill he felt when fucking a woman who wasn’t his wife.
“The lover’s parents live in quarter no. 353, directly opposite the CPWD Enquiry office,” Ram Bhaj continued. “They’d been meeting on the sly since May this year but it wasn’t until October that they actually shacked up. Rakesh had come home from Kashmir on a week’s leave and Kamla Agarwal was away at her daughter’s.”
“Great,” Bakshi grinned. This was what he called Class A material. “Who served up this chaat-masala?” he asked, just to make sure he wasn’t being fed bazaar gossip.
“Two elderly women who knew Kamla Agarwal.”
“And what did the young women say about Mukta?”
“A lotus in a dungheap.”
“Really? How fascinating! And what did they say about Kamla?”
“She was a tyrant. She treated her bahu like dirt, even worse because Mukta didn’t bring any dowry and couldn’t conceive after six months of marriage. They said Kamla made three attempts on Mukta’s life within the past year: The first time it was poison, dhatura seeds, then she tried pushing her daughter-in-law over the terrace. The last time she sprinkled kerosene on Mukta’s clothes and tried torching her.”
“Lucky woman, she’s still alive and kicking after all that! Why didn’t she run away to her parents?” asked Bakshi.
She went to her parents after the poison, Ram Bhaj explained, but they sent her back saying they already had too many mouths to feed.
“What about her husband?”
Ram Bhaj curled his thin lower lip in disdain. “He’s a weakling, a coward who slunk away to the terrace when his mother turned the heat on his wife.”
“You haven’t told me the whole story, Ram Bhaj.” Bakshi was stroking his mustache again. “Am I right?”
The lackey grinned. “Your brain works like a computer, sir. I am sure you will get the ACP’s post very soon.”
“Stop oiling my butt and spit out the gem you’re holding in your gullet.”
“He is impotent, sir,” the informer whispered.
“Who told you this?”
“Neela, Mukta’s close confidante.”
“Hmm.” Bakshi wanted to whistle, but he straightened himself up in his chair and assumed an official air to indicate that their meeting was over. “Good work, Ram Bhaj. Keep it up.”
Bakshi pondered the case before him. If Kamla’s friends knew about Mukta’s affair with the virile fauji, Kamla herself must have known what her bahu was up to while she was away. Bakshi needn’t be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that upon discovering Mukta’s adultery, Kamla must have taken her tyranny to new heights by the first week of November, around the time when she had her great fall from the temple top. Perhaps the tortured bahu had pushed the tyrannical saas down the stairs after all.