THE DIARY OF AN UNREASONABLE MAN Page 10

  ‘Thank you Dr Bhatia. I’m sure our viewers will find that information useful,’ Dhwani said and smiled at the camera.

  ‘She’s so beautiful.’ It was Abhay again.

  ‘Abhay …’ I warned him playfully.

  Dhwani turned to the camera and started:

  ‘Yes, right here in Mumbai, the Anarchists have struck again. This time their target of choice is the large number of men frequenting illegal or decriminalized brothels in the city’s red-light districts. In an attempt to publicly shame and single out these people, we believe the Anarchists fed them a radical new chemical, through harmless-looking paans. The consumption of the chemical resulted in the green coloration we see here in these photos …’ Dhwani trailed off as some specimen photos flashed on the screen.

  The voiceover continued, ‘If you are suffering from this condition, our in-house medical consultant advises you to visit a doctor immediately.’

  It was smooth sailing from there. The headlines kept pouring in:

  ‘The Anarchists Claim Mumbai’

  ‘Consumerism, Prostitution, Marketing’

  ‘Selling It Right’

  ‘A New Form of Rebellion’

  ‘Who are the Anarchists?’

  ‘Vandalism Sparks Debates’

  The Times of India had a near regular feature on us. It was asking people what we should take on next. There was a poll and people were writing in. The Hindustan Times wrote about different types of protest, public-political statements over the ages.

  It was great to see the support that we had garnered through our activities.

  There was a debate on. There were questions being asked. There were problems being recognized. Our detractors lambasted us and our supporters defended our actions vehemently. Fruition? Not quite yet.

  Shahnaz saw to it that they introduced a call-in segment for a show on Now 95. They put her in charge of it and she spent a lot of her time answering questions about the Anarchists. She was finally in front of the camera, instead of sitting behind it.

  In the midst of it all sat Akram.

  ‘First they drop dung on my ministers, then they kidnap the airwaves of one of our most watched television channels and now this … triphenyl whatever … this is total complete bullshit. What is this nautanki? What the hell do these people think of themselves?’ he raged.

  ‘A bunch of miscreants. That’s all they are. Vagrants,’ he said as he took a huge swig of his extra-hot glass of tea.

  He turned to Mukherjee, his trusted junior. ‘What do you think? What do you make of all this?’

  ‘I think there are many other criminals out there who have done much worse things.’

  ‘So you do agree with me. These boys are criminals to you too.’

  ‘Not exactly, sir, they haven’t harmed anyone as such … nothing really life threatening or anything. They are just speaking their minds, making sure people listen to them, pay attention to them.’

  ‘They are cowards who are laughing at us. This is their sadistic little game …’ Akram bellowed.

  ‘What about guys like Basu and Sarkar?’ Mukherjee pointed at the photographs on the notice board in the police station.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They are wanted for multiple homicides, sir. I think they’re laughing at us louder than the Anarchists,’ he argued with Bengali panache.

  ‘It’s been several years and we haven’t been able to get them,’ his boss admitted. ‘But those two are a different kind of scum. At least I have their photographs here. I know who I am up against. I know how they work. But these guys …’ He lifted a newspaper. ‘These guys are playing dirty.’

  ‘What is the real problem, sir?’ Mukherjee asked astutely, sensing that Akram wasn’t revealing everything.

  Akram fell back in his chair and looked up at his map of India beside him. ‘I have received orders from above.’

  The tension gleamed on his forehead. The old, murdered ceiling fan screeched along in the brief moment of silence, degree by degree. ‘I have received orders to shoot them at sight.’

  ‘The Anarchists? They’ve done nothing!’

  ‘Speak softly.’ Akram gritted his teeth.

  ‘The number of people that they have managed to annoy is incredible. From corporates, big guys with big money in imported suits, to the vermin of the underworld, they’re all out to use my gun and me to get these boys. There are different kinds of pressure being applied, Mukherjee. You have no idea …’

  The younger man chuckled. ‘I see, sir. But what good is a shoot-at-sight order, if you don’t know what they look like? Fortunately, none of us can identify them.’

  ‘Fortunately?’

  ‘We can’t do it, sir.’

  ‘I have to deliver results soon. Else we’ll be castigated. Transferred. Shamed by the mad media of this city and nation.’

  ‘The media loves these boys, sir.’ Mukherjee was stating the obvious and he knew it.

  ‘Of course they do. They’re getting unusual stories regularly, they’ve got a cult to build and sell. But the mediawallahs are fickle. Unka koi bharosa nahin. At present they are in the Anarchists’ camp, but who knows what will happen later. We only know one thing: for better or for worse, we can’t escape them.’

  ‘Let’s go talk to the television channel lady again.’

  ‘Shahnaz Khan?’

  ‘Yes. We may have missed something the first time around. It’s the only lead we’ve got to go on.’

  17. BUILDING MY ‘CAR’MA

  Abhay woke up late that day. He came out of his room looking like he had been in a plane crash.

  ‘I have a terrible headache,’ he proclaimed in the hoarsest voice I had ever heard.

  ‘No, you don’t!’ I shot back.

  ‘Ah, Pranav’s power of suggestion at its best. Thanks, man, I feel a lot better.’

  ‘What do you want? A hug?’

  He poured himself a glass of cold water; he took his first sip, not before requesting me to shut up.

  ‘How are you not reacting to this? Have you gone blind?’ I asked, affronted at how easily he seemed to have ignored the scene in the living room.

  He looked up at me. His expression of melancholy changed to one of surprise.

  ‘What on earth is going on in here?’

  ‘Essay number three, “Corruption and its rats”,’ I announced.

  Never before had our ordinary drawing room been filled with such a wide array of items. He took a quick pan of everything that lay around me.

  ‘Fuck! Is that a real rat?’

  ‘That’s Larry. Moe and Curly are back there.’

  ‘What is the matter with you? Most people try to get rid of rats and you just brought an entire family on board here …’

  ‘Calm down, they’re all in separate cages.’

  ‘It’s far too early in the morning for all this. I need some Jam.’

  ‘I need more buckets. These won’t do the trick. By the way, we have got to do this tonight.’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ said my excited partner in crime while pushing in his ‘Vs.’ CD.

  Before he could press play, the phone rang.

  It was Shahnaz and she was not extremely appreciative of his curt and moody ‘Hello’.

  ‘Who peed in your rasam Mr Krishnan?’

  ‘Uh, no one … and we drink coffee in the morning; the day doesn’t begin and end with rasam.’

  ‘My humble apologies,’ she effused.

  ‘Talk to her,’ he said distractedly as he threw the receiver to me and went on to blast ‘Dissident’.

  ‘Hi Shahnaz! How are things this fine morning?’

  ‘I just wanted to tell you guys that Inspector Akram and his little helper man Mukherjee came to my office today.’

  ‘Hmm … how come?’

  ‘They waited for my entire show, in the room outside. They’ve still not fixed the window in there, you know?’

  ‘What did they want to talk to you about?’

  �
��The same old questions.’

  ‘It’s probably not safe to talk on the phone then. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m still in my office.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said as I thought of how we could meet and talk without raising any flags on Akram’s radar.

  ‘I’m done with work till about three now. I’ll need to come back by then.’

  ‘That’s cool. Abhay will pick you up in about twenty minutes.’

  ‘What? Why?’ he shouted from the kitchen.

  ‘I need some stuff for the next …’

  ‘The next?’ Shahnaz asked excitedly. ‘What are you guys doing this time?’

  ‘Quiet.’

  ‘I’ll head out as soon as I finish my coffee,’ Abhay grumbled.

  ‘That’s cool. So Shahnaz, he’ll come by in about an hour then. With Abhay, coffee usually includes other ablutions too.’

  ‘You bet,’ he reiterated.

  ‘Not a problem. See you soon,’ Shahnaz said as she hung up. I put the phone down.

  ‘What could the cops possibly want with her, so many days after the incident?’ I thought aloud.

  ‘Maybe they’re on to us. Maybe they’re waiting outside now!’ He was perturbed and more awake now.

  I tried to reassure him in my most professional and matter-of-fact manner.

  ‘No one’s waiting outside. Here’s a list of the things we need. I’m going to firm up the sequence, locations and work out the issues that we currently face with this.’

  ‘Yes sir. Never did a corporal have a better lieutenant, sir.’

  ‘You aren’t a corporal, Abhay. You’re …’

  ‘It’s okay, señor. No need to explain. I was just kidding. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must relieve myself.’

  He left the room.

  The next song on the album was ‘Rats’. I smiled to myself and went back to my little clipboard, sketching routes and covering angles. The previous day’s recon had proved to be useful.

  I had never been fond of ostentatious displays of wealth and well-being. Be it at weddings, in garages or on mantles. It was often the easiest way for the corrupt to invest their ill-gotten gains. Such had been the case with a duo of powerful gentlemen.

  Abhay’s first job out of university was at a big manufacturing plant called the Royal Bharat Chemical Company. For the first few months he worked and served them diligently. He was one of their rising stars. Time went by and his morale started to wane.

  It was at the dosa place that he sat with me and Shahnaz, cribbing.

  ‘It’s just not right.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure.’

  ‘How can they not care?’

  ‘Yeah man, aren’t there forms and papers to fill for any refuse to be disposed of?’ I asked.

  ‘There are. You have to be cleared by the BEIRC, the Board for Emissions and Industrial Regulation Controls. They send inspectors to the plant who are supposed to ensure that the company is fully compliant with all the rules and regulations regarding toxic waste disposal.’

  ‘I don’t understand it then …’

  ‘The paperwork is all doctored.’

  ‘You’ve seen the forms?’

  ‘For the thousandth time, yes! I sat with Mr Chopra in the fucking meeting. We were in the smaller boardroom. Our presentation was quite short and perfunctory. The guys from the regulation department just nodded at everything.’ Abhay was seething.

  ‘Go on …’

  ‘They removed five slides that I had prepared detailing the harmful effects of the material. It was supposed to be a plan talking about how we were going to handle it, you know … fix it, clean it and then dump it. We could make fertilizer from it.’

  ‘They took it out?’

  ‘Yes. They went right ahead and said it was harmless. And those bastard BEIRC inspectors who came and watched me working in the labs had no questions. They told me I was doing a great job.’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘Yeah … I can’t work there any more, man. I have to quit.’

  ‘Leave then. Join someone else, you were at the top of your class and this experience ought to hold you in good stead.’

  ‘I’m not worried about getting another job. I’m worried about what they’re going to do to that poor village.’

  Shahnaz had comforted him and said it was best to walk away.

  I had sat there in my rage, my rage that could go nowhere.

  Until now.

  18. TOXIC VEHICLE

  They gave it its due importance and built it up better than we could have, had we been the news crew. Dhwani Sinha spoke with immense pride. Her voice quivered as she delivered this little piece over the television; we sat watching it with bated breath.

  ‘Traffic has its own set of problems in Mumbai. More often than not people like you and I have a tough time making our way through the chaotic mess every morning to get to offices, schools and wherever it is the day has to take us.

  ‘Today the roads were jammed for a different reason. This morning, traffic at the junction of Sadiq Road and Shivaji Marg came to a standstill because of a most unusual roadblock. It was the Anarchists once again! And this time they seem to have chosen to take on one of Mumbai’s top government officials and also the owner of a growing multinational to make their statement …’

  The camera moved forward, shifting focus from the presenter to soak in the cause of all the mayhem. It was just as we had left it, only now the frame was swarming with mystified policemen, frenzied reporters and a clique of camerapersons cataloguing every inch of the spectacle in their cameras. Dominating the scene were two ‘beautiful’, enormous cars parked such that they were jamming all three lanes of Shivaji Marg: a gleaming black Mercedes and a shiny silver BMW. Both the cars had a dirty and thick green liquid poured over the back seats. Perched on the roof of the Mercedes was a signboard that had clearly been ripped down from a building; it read ‘Royal Bharat Chemical Company’. It was being held in place by a makeshift stand and some rope. The BMW showed a massive blow-up portrait of the same green liquid that was pooling in the interiors of the car pouring out from a grand pipeline, into a pond. The sides of the cars bore our signature, ‘the Anarchist Project’, in bright red paint. Fumes climbed high from the vehicles and the stench was unbearable. All the onlookers stood cupping their mouths, a policeman in the thick of it was throwing up, his eyes watering.

  A brave and determined front for the police department greeted Dhwani and the other reporters clamouring for a sound bite.

  ‘I am sorry. Traffic will have to be diverted through a different route. We can’t move the cars yet, our boys are still doing their rounds, gathering evidence and picking up the pieces of this … this lurid publicity stunt,’ a visibly annoyed Inspector Akram said. ‘They’ve gone too far. From our preliminary enquiries we know that these cars belong to some of the top minds that run this city. This is plain and simple destruction of private property.’

  ‘What is inside the cars, sir?’ Dhwani asked.

  ‘Well, you all have to be more patient. We are studying them,’ he said and pointed to his deputy, Mukherjee, in the background who was examining the cars. ‘As soon as we are able to confirm the nature of the substance, we will inform you.’

  Ignoring the circus around him, Mukherjee circled the cars, checking every inch of the road to see if there were any clues. If there had been anything useful, it was long lost, trampled under the feet of the charging army of tamasha-loving onlookers and journalists who had taken over the place before the police had arrived. Shaking his head disappointedly, he then hunkered down and peered into the Mercedes, giving the front seats a thorough once-over. His mask and gloves aided him in examining the mess before him.

  ‘They mutilated it,’ he thought to himself as he rummaged through the torn lining of the seats. His hands rested on a box that had been placed near the accelerator, hidden from view. He carefully removed the box from the car and stepped back to gather his thought
s. With silent trepidation he opened the lid and there it was, staring him in the face. A quiet, repugnant and ever so dead rat.

  ‘There’s a dead rat in the driver’s seat!’ he exclaimed.

  A laboratory technician who had been deputed to the scene to help gather evidence took a closer look at the box and the dead rat lying in it.

  ‘I think this poor guy probably died overnight, in the car. There are nibble marks on the inside of the box,’ he volunteered helpfully.

  ‘He suffocated?’ Mukherjee was confused. ‘Stop talking in riddles. What do you mean by he died overnight in the box? There are holes in the box.’

  ‘I could be wrong and we will know for sure only when we test the liquid in the car but I think that the rat choked on the fumes from the liquid. The fumes definitely seem poisonous; we are coughing and gagging standing here. I think the holes lining the top of the box were to let air in. Probably to kill the rat.’

  ‘What a bloody mess! If that liquid is poisonous, we cannot remove any of this without a proper containment unit. And that is going to take forever. I will tell Akram sir to call for the containment people. But first things first, we need to get rid of these fellows,’ Mukherjee said as he jerked his head toward the media people crowding around Inspector Akram.

  Mukherjee walked over to Guru, a junior deputy in Akram’s team, ordering him to get rid of the media. Without batting an eyelid, Guru answered unequivocally, ‘No point in asking, Mukherjee sir. Boss is still briefing them and you know as well as I do that these guys won’t move till they get all the information.’

  But Mukherjee was not paying any attention to Guru. He was looking at the cars and at the sludge on the seats. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together in his head. He grabbed Guru who was heading off to herd some photographers away from the cars. ‘To hell with them, man. This is starting to make sense to me. I think the gunk on the seats is actual refuse from the plant. Like the photograph up there.’