His eyes parted reluctantly. A frail beam of light entered from the window. Outside, the rushing feet of school children reverberated in the alley.
He had survived the night somehow.
The sound always filled Jagdish with a vague sense of disappointment. A regret, perhaps, of days past. He had graduated the year before, barely scraping by. Not finding interest in any course of study, he had lingered behind while all his classmates had moved to the city. Now he was left alone, wandering the village streets aimlessly. All these thoughts crossed his mind in the space of a few seconds, as he picked up his face from the pillow, which he had covered in a pool of saliva.
He slung a cloth bag over his shoulder, asked his father for some cash, and set off to buy groceries — an errand that both knew he would not return from till evening. The village streets were empty. The static droning of TV sets, mingled with the commentary of a cricket match, came from the corner shops or the overhead apartments. The few people that were on the street hurried towards these. Jagdish had no interest in cricket, another reason that he had no friends.
He thought of the girl he had met at Harikund Temple. Her soft voice still lingered in his ears, like an unforgettable melody.
‘If I had her, life would be worth living’, he said to himself. ‘Will she come as promised?’
He cursed himself. What was her favorite flower? Her favorite fruit? Her favorite scent? Her favorite color? Why had he not asked her these questions, and a dozen others? Girls like that need gifts to impress. Did he hope to get her by just staring at her? Fool!
But there was something about her that made him doubt himself. Such beauty, could it be real? And if it were, could it be untouched? He thought of her hands, which held nothing, and perhaps were created for nothing to be held. Her perfect ears, her perfect lips and her perfect nose. He could not see her eyes, as he walked alongside her, but there was no reason to suppose they were any less perfect. And finally, her form. As she walked away, he had felt a warm sensation traveling downwards from his throat. It came to him now again, out of pure recollection, at this untoward time.
Unbeknownst to him his feet led him away from the shops and the houses, until the village had altogether fallen behind. If you or I had met him on the road, hailed him, and asked what he was thinking or where he was going, he would have been unable to provide even a half decent answer. He walked without intention, without desire, without urgency. Nothing around him interrupted his trance. The road was damp with the night’s rainfall, strewn with wet twigs and pine needles. Overhead, silent clouds gathered again.
The smell of boiling maggi wafted through the air. His nostrils twitched, and his stomach grumbled. He took a seat at the shop and ordered a plate of the instant noodles. This he washed down with coke in a glass bottle, which came out of an ice box. He looked around him for the first time. He had come a long way from the village, crossing his school on the way. Even as he sat, he heard the afternoon bell, signaling the end of the day’s classes. Was it his old habit that had led him here?
He turned around upon hearing a familiar voice. Sure enough, it was Bharat. His uniform looked like he had crawled through a trench, and a conspicuously light schoolbag hung over his shoulders.
‘My word, fancy seeing you here, Jagdish’, he said. He pulled out a cigarette from somewhere and fixed it between his lips. ‘I didn’t think you knew about this shop. It’s new, you know. Wasn’t here at your time.’
‘A year ago, you mean’, grumbled Jagdish. ‘And I haven’t been here before.’
‘Really? Then why’d you come all this way? Oh wait, don’t tell me you’re going to the Inspection Bungalow?’
The Inspection Bungalow? For the first time that day it crossed his mind. It was the subject of discussion in every household in the village. In a quiet place like this, strange incidents were doted upon with a grotesque enthusiasm. The Bungalow had been such a source of gossip for a week, ever since the caretaker, Girish Chand, went missing. It was a little way above the village, at the border of a deodar forest. This was indeed the road that led to it, although why he had turned this way, Jagdish could not say. His face assumed a blank expression as this thought crossed his mind.
‘You’re really going there?’, continued Bharat, blowing smoke into the air. ‘Excellent! Not without me, I hope! I need a kick after that chemistry lesson. Let’s see what’s got the oldies gaping at the village, shall we?’
The road climbed gently upwards, and every now and then, a low hanging cloud would be suspended above their heads. After a short walk, a smaller path shot upwards from the road. A gate closed across this path, but it was not locked, and so they went right through. Climbing this path got them to the Bungalow and the surrounding estate. It was a sprawling building, of British make, with large grounds surrounding it. The deodar forest loomed right behind it, dark and misty, like an endless cavern. The trunks of these trees were thick and tall, dwarfing the Bungalow.
There was a small wooden lodge before the main building, which served as the house of the caretaker. They were making for this, when they heard a cry behind them. Turning around, they saw Manu Negi, the village constable, striding towards them. He had a cane in his hand, and a faded brown shawl across his shoulders that dropped to his feet. Although lank in frame, he had a cleft chin and a prominent jawline, which made his appearance somewhat impressive. The number of times he could be seen ogling himself in the barber’s mirror at the village square seemed to suggest he was aware of this.
‘Oi! You troublemakers! Where do you think you’re going?’ he shouted, as he caught up with them.
‘Us? We’re not going anywhere!’, said Bharat sheepishly.
‘Girish Chand is my father’s cousin’, said Jagdish, with more composure, but little more truth. ‘We were checking in to see if there was anything we could do to find him.’
‘Find him?’, returned Negi, with a scowl on his face. ‘You two think you’re the Crime Branch! Don’t you know this place is off limits?’
‘Off limits? But why?’
‘Enough with your whys and your hows! I said so that’s why!’
With this he started swinging the cane over his shoulder, at which the two boys fled. They ran a short distance down the path, then climbed up a wall and ducked under it.
‘That asshole!’ growled Bharat. ‘What’s his business to be here?’
‘The inspector must have installed him here, in Girish Chand’s absence’, said Jagdish. ‘Clearly whatever happened here has caused an investigation.’
‘Is that so? Well, we’re not going to let a two-bit policeman like him get between our investigation’, spoke Bharat, with a smile on his face. Jagdish looked at him in surprise.
They were watching Negi saunter along the path which they had left. Below them, a lady in a green and red saree carried a pot of water on her head. Negi would steal glances in her direction every now and then. He called to her, but she ignored him. Bharat got up on the wall with a pebble in his hand. ‘It’s a long shot’, Jagdish whispered to him, but Bharat did not stop. He let fly the pebble. It went spinning down the slope in a glorious arc, and struck the pot clean at the side. The pot crashed in an instant, and drenched the lady from head to toe.
She let out a shriek. No sooner had this happened, that Negi bounded towards her with long strides. No sooner had this happened, that Jagdish and Bharat leapt out of their hiding place and ran up the path to the lodge.
‘That should keep the third-rate hero busy for a while’, grinned Bharat.
A deathly stillness seemed to surround them as they approached the lodge. Even the sound of their feet on the stone pavement seemed to disturb the perfect silence in the air. The latch across the front door had a lock, but upon going around the side, they discovered one of the windows to be unfastened. They entered through this, and in a moment were standing side by side in Girish Chand’s lodge.
‘So, this is the old man’s place. I must say, it’s a bit fancier than I expected’, said Bharat.
The interior was furnished in a late Victorian elegance. Dark oakwood panels covered the walls, making it hard to see at first. The tables, chairs and mantlepiece were all plush and decorative. It was clear that this was no mean outhouse, but rather a sibling to the original Bungalow. It was indeed hard to imagine that the premises were occupied at all, but for the impeccable state in which the interior was maintained. Every nook seemed to be spotless, and every piece of woodwork glistening. The only sign that Girish Chand had lived there was a low legged cot in a corner by the door, and a red metal halogen lamp on the windowsill opposite. Both these articles seemed to stick out despondently amidst the luxury of the premises.
‘I must say, Girish Chand had the happiest job in the village, living in a place like this’, said Bharat, looking around.
‘And yet he ran away’, replied Jagdish. ‘Something spooked him good.’
‘Oh well, sure, it can get lonely here perhaps. What was stopping him from bringing in a few friends each night?’
‘Listen, people don’t come here often. I’m seeing it for the first time.’
‘Was he actually your father’s cousin?’
‘No. They knew each other since they were kids, though. He would drop by once every few months. He’s the dinnertime favorite now, ever since he disappeared. Say … do you smell something weird?’
‘You too? I thought it was just me. I noticed it when we got in, but it’s only been getting stronger. Is it all this old furniture?’
‘No, it’s something else. It’s like an incense.’
Jagdish bent down at the fireplace and poked around the ash. Bharat glanced at the remainder of the room. Walking over to where Girish Chand kept his bed, he gave a call.
‘Say, look at this!’
A thick volume of the Ramayana lay beside the pillow. A small idol of Lord Hanuman in an altar was placed upon the side table. Around the entire bed was a white chalk line with faint traces of salt upon it. This, upon examining, they found upon every window sill and threshold in the building.
‘What’s this?’ asked Bharat.
‘It’s a Lakshman Rekha, a protective line’, replied Jagdish. ‘He’s put it along every entrance into the house, in order to ward off evil spirits. No ghost can enter a place protected by this sacred boundary.’
‘The old man really was frightened, wasn’t he?’
‘Looks like it. It’s not something ordinary. He would have had to get a priest to do this for him.’
‘Seems like it did him little good. Maybe the ghost came in from the chimney.’
‘Shut up! Don’t make fun about such stuff. What’s that?’, he parted the blinds of the front window and peeped out. ‘Negi is coming back. Damn that horny bastard! Come on, let’s get out of here!’
The two of them leapt out of the back window. Making a wide circle from the lodge, they got back to the entrance of the estate unnoticed, and slipped out of the gates. On the way back to the village, they were kept occupied by fervent conversation. The successful execution of their investigation had filled them with a glorious thrill. Even though they had come off none the wiser from their adventure, they considered themselves to be the most learned people in the village, surrounding this mystery. All in all, they were quite certain that between the dozen theories they had manufactured, the mystery was more or less solved. They also expressed their disappointment at the appointment of lack luster policemen like Manu Negi. They wondered how such mediocre men ever made it into the police force, and that if he could make it as a constable, surely, they themselves should look forward to the position of an inspector to start off their careers with. Undoubtedly such an opportunity should present itself, when they would make public their solution of the case.
With all these dreams swimming in his head, along with the feeling of satisfaction of a day well spent, Jagdish went to bed that night. In the morning, the sound of the children going to school upset him less than usual. He had dreamt himself in the uniform of a high-ranking police officer, and had coached these very children in the science of observation and deductive reasoning. He strode up to his favorite tea shop rather confidently in the afternoon, and ordered his chai with a strong dash of ginger.
It was then that he overheard some of the men sitting behind him. A chill went down his spine.
A constable had left to relieve Negi at the Inspection Bungalow in the morning. He was nowhere to be found. Manu Negi had gone missing too.
