“I am a married woman, inspector,” she said. “My husband—”
“You needn’t worry about him,” Bakshi cut in. “He is impotent, after all, and you have taken lovers from time to time to fulfill your needs. Haven’t you, Mukta Agarwal?”
Mukta winced. That snooping bastard had dug out all her secrets. She stared hard at Kamla Agarwal’s beaming likeness, which seemed to be jeering at her from the wall.
“I know about Rakesh, and Anand too,” Bakshi continued. “I can produce a couple more names from your past, your glorious Meerut years, if you’d like. Why not add one more name to your list of lovers, eh?”
“I am not a veshya, you loocha-lafanga shaitan!” Mukta hissed. “Go and mount your sister if you’re so horny.”
Bakshi smiled at Mukta’s outburst. This was the right moment to plunge the knife deeper and twist it a little for greater effect. “I like spirited women,” he said airily. “Look, I have twenty-one incriminating documents in this file. Each one of them is a hissing cobra that can raise its hood and strike you dead when you are on trial. Unless, of course, I kill them.
The question is, do you want me to destroy these hissing cobras?”
In spite of herself, Mukta began to nod.
“Good. You are a sensible woman, Mukta. Shall we start our first session right now? This divan looks pretty good for a roll.”
“When are you going to destroy those papers?” Mukta asked, realizing she was stepping into a dark tunnel without a torch.
“I will kill one cobra after each session.”
“Impossible!” The very idea of being ravaged by this gorilla for three weeks nauseated her. “I’d rather go to jail.”
Bakshi didn’t like negotiating terms with victims, be it over money or sex. But he also understood that what was most important in this delicate situation was a good beginning. More hissing cobras could eventually slither out of their holes and crevices, ensuring the continuance of his pet project until he discovered a new and more appetizing female suspect within his fiefdom. “Well, if you are so fastidious, dear, I will destroy three cobras after each session. Right?”
Mukta wanted to shout, Wrong! But she knew she couldn’t stop this randy bastard from molesting her.
It was when the inspector had gone to the bathroom after his third rape session that Mukta managed to take a peek at the nest of hissing cobras. The papers the inspector had been blackmailing her with and destroying so scrupulously at the end of each encounter, she discovered, were actually pages from a recent police report on cybercrime. Mukta covered her face with her palms to hide her pain and fury when Bakshi returned, whistling “Crazy Kiya Re” from Dhoom 2, last summer’s chartbuster. He’d presumed that with her big bindi, voluminous sari, and other signs of backwardness, Mukta was a perfect specimen of “behenji,” a woman from one of the Hindi-speaking states where English wasn’t a compulsory subject. But Mukta had studied up to class eight, and in addition to showing her prowess in the school’s kaabadi team, she had also learned just enough English to read the newspaper headlines and understand what they were all about.
“Don’t worry, sweetie, we just have a dozen cobras to destroy,” Bakshi said, squeezing one of her ample breasts.
“I’m not worried,” Mukta said, removing her palms from her face. “I was just wondering how many women suspects you’re helping out these days.”
The inspector tweaked her nipple and winked. “Jealous, huh? Well, at the moment there’s just one, but she’s not as young and sweet as you.” He kissed her and then looked at his watch. “Got to rush back to the office for an important meeting with my subinspectors. See you next Monday.”
Mukta didn’t tell Ashok about the inspector’s biweekly visits because he’d just throw a tantrum without actually offering to protect her. If — and it was a big if — the inspector kept his word, her suffering would come to an end in another two weeks. She couldn’t, however, withhold her other secret from Ashok. Her vomiting had stopped but her small bump would soon be visible.
“Do you really love me, Ashok?” It was a Saturday night, they were in bed, and he hadn’t started snoring yet.
“Of course, Mukta. Haven’t I snapped my ties with my sister Savitri for you?”
“I am sorry for that,” she said, and pecked him on the cheek. After all, until Rakesh rescued her from her dud marriage, Ashok was definitely her best bet. He had never joined his mother or sister in humiliating her. And since Kamla was no longer around to complicate matters, Mukta could now afford to be brutally honest with her husband. If he insisted on a divorce, so be it. “I’m going to be a mother, Ashok.”
Her husband sat up bolt upright on the bed. “You aren’t joking?”
“Are you blind or what? Haven’t you seen me puking almost every morning?”
“Yes, but I never thought...” He broke off and looked searchingly at his wife’s face. But Mukta couldn’t meet his gaze.
She lowered her eyes and whispered: “You aren’t the father of my child.”
“Oh!” Ashok clutched his throat as if he wanted to strangle himself. His jaws hardened, his eyes became flinty. “Who’s this lucky guy, may I know?”
“Rakesh, the fauji from quarter no. 353. We met—”
“Bas!” He snatched a pillow from the bed and dashed out of the room to spend a troubled night on the divan.
But Mukta knew Ashok would eventually cool down. He wanted to be a parent as much as she did. He would soon realize that what happened between his unsatisfied wife and the hot-blooded jawan was inevitable, if not providential.
And she was right. Ashok returned to his wife in the wee hours and quietly lay beside her. She turned and drew him to her bosom as if he were a child.
“Kamla is haunting my dreams,” Mukta said when Bakshi visited her on Monday afternoon. “She looks so horrible, with blood dripping all over her face. And she stares at me as if I were responsible for her death. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep.” Mukta started crying. Sex with a crying woman could be disastrous, so Bakshi stroked her head and made some soothing noises. Ah, these chicken-hearted middle-class housewives. Whether they lived in R.K. Puram, Sarojini Nagar, or Lodhi Colony, they were all the same. Even before the police had filed a First Information Report, they rushed to the nearest thana to spill their story. How boring! A woman from Vasant Vihar or Greater Kailash would strangle her husband in the morning and dance the night away with her boyfriend at Athena or Climax, one of those thousand-rupee-a-drink nightclubs. And if the law finally came knocking at her door, she’d just throw wads of five-hundred-rupee notes at everyone concerned, even the lowly chowkidar. Bakshi wanted to work among these smart, filthy-rich people, who drove BMWs and Benzes, carried BlackBerrys, and attended glitzy parties at the Hyatt or Maurya Sheraton. But till that prize posting came his way, he’d have to make do with the whimpering Mukta Agarwals of the babu colonies.
“I want to visit Malai Mandir and pray for Kamla’s unhappy soul,” Mukta declared, sniffing.
Bakshi grimaced. This woman was really going too far. She needed a little roughening up to clamp her mouth shut and spread her legs wide open. Harita, his reedy wife, also needed a mild thrashing now and then, especially when she complained too much about his philandering. The whining bitch had run away to her parents with their two daughters after he’d given her an egg-sized bump on the forehead and a few welts and bruises on her back. He normally would have kept her home with just a hard slap, but then Harita threw a vase at him and accused him of fucking their fifteen-year-old daughter on the sly, buying her silence with a sumptuous allowance.