| Published on 02-01-2008 In General | | Viewed 1653 times | | Written by
T. S. V. Hari | 
Our little haven of togetherness can no longer be my abode
The crooked finger of heaven's gaunt curator beckons
I leave with hands folded to honour the red halo behind
Will our seed avenge this travesty of faith if at all?
A single, heavy blow had been delivered on the base of the man's skull with a sledgehammer by the heaviest amongst the hired ruffians.
Forced to do so, standing beside the railway tracks near Ultadanga in north Calcutta, the woman had watched her artiste husband from a different faith, die slowly attempting to sing his lyrics as his limbs were into their final twitches, 26 years ago.
Soon afterwards, the victim was to be "found" on the railway tracks by the police, prompted by the generous bribes and promptly dismissed by them it as "suicide."
Long after being renamed Kolkata several years hence; the city was scheduled to hear the tale's unending final chapters.
"How could you try to sing even while dying?"
As her brain finished replaying the terrible audiovisual of the past, Rajshri wiped her tears.
"Neither me, nor our child have failed you, darling!"
Rajshri muttered the words as the executive Gulfstream jet took off from the Nethaji Subhash Chandra Bose Airport at Dum-Dum in the northern suburbs of Kolkata towards the setting sun.
Her tongue rolled the cyanide capsule, pregnant with death, playfully along her palate and perfect teeth.
Emerging from the air terminal's apron through the VIP gate, Rajshri quickly located the six-figure alphanumeric identity of Kolkata's peril on roads called "Ambassador" in the parking lot. It looked like an oversized snarling, squat bulldog.
Without a word, she got into its passenger seat and slammed its rusty door shut.
Its pot-bellied Bihari chauffer clad in a tan, dirty uniform had been told to take the well-dressed, aristocratic, fair, middle-aged woman to Kolkata's docklands in the south western section of the city.
Neither of them knew that the Nawab of Awadh – Wajid Ali Shah – after being deposed by the colonial British from Lucknow – had lived near their destination – now – a poor quarter called Metia Burj on a generous pension between 1856 and 1887, singing and dancing till the end.
"You are not meant to converse with your passenger at any point of time. Just take her there," his hirer with Mongoloid features had said that morning in halting Bengali.
Twisting the steering wheel anticlockwise and turning the vehicle towards the first of the three flyovers that would eventually lead him towards the predetermined goal and a small fortune, the driver realised that his ramshackle car's engine had begun emitting a deafening wheeze.
The 26-year old jalopy was worth no more than scrap metal. Yet the man who hired him had promised to pay Rs.20000 for the trip and had already parted with half of that.
The smiling driver's cheap wristwatch said it was 4.05 pm.
Twelve km away, almost in the same direction, Agurchand Roopchand Jain – or simply ARJ – answered a telephone call in his office in the city's busy Esplanade area's left ventricle called Dharamtala Street renamed Lenin Sarani by the Communist government.
ARJ had never looked at the St Thomas Church on the opposite side of street, framed by his glazed office window or through it towards its end that linked it to thoroughfare once called Chowringhee – incidentally named after someone from his religion. It was now called Jawaharlal Nehru Road – after India's first Prime Minister.
ARJ listened to the flat voice on the phone carefully.
"As per your instructions, Tapasya and Ardeshir were accorded protection before, during and after their civil wedding. The driver who took them and your wife to the airport is not from these parts and hence, will not remember them. When the plane lands in Zurich's Kloten airport, it will be half past midnight there. After they spend the night at the Hilton nearby, they will fly to Lugano in a smaller aircraft. Your chalet, by afternoon tomorrow, will become their property and…" the voice continued.
"Good!" ARJ eventually said.
A moment later he received another call.
"All your foreign holdings have been sold through the London Stock Exchange and their proceeds – exactly ₤660,253, 961.71 are now in your numbered account in the bank in Lugano," the British born broker and banker Ephraim Benesh informed ARJ.
Not many in the world know that Lugano, a small, secretive city in southern Switzerland, situated close to the Italian border, with an approximate population of 130,000, located beside a lake by the same name, provides the services of numbered bank accounts to trusting foreign clients. At the last count, it had 36 banks with a total asset base equivalent of a trillion Euros.
"I know, EB. I have seen it. Its managing director Franco Bertoni sent me his authentication a minute after you transmitted yours," ARJ said, looking at his desktop computer's screen.
"The beneficiaries' accounts will be credited immediately after they identify themselves."
Disconnecting, ARJ wondered as to what the Jewish EB in London's fashionable Oxford Street would think if he knew that he had been speaking a minute ago to a person from the shadowy world of Naga terrorists based in the north eastern edge of India who had links with the Chinese drug-peddling underworld anchored in Hong Kong, in turn controlled by a little known remnant of the Baader-Meinhof gang that had quietly mutated, crossed the political spectrum and become neo-Nazis and to infiltrate the organisation of America-born "Farmbelt-Fuehrer" Gary Rex Lauck – hated by the Jewish community globally.
"A secret, complex deal connecting terrorists, Nazis and Jews without any of them knowing the whole truth can never have any comebacks," ARJ whispered to himself.
"You have a duty to perform, Agurchand."
"I have always obeyed you."
"I know that your conscience may not agree with my methods because of the established non-violent tenets of our religion.
"
"I have never questioned you."
"We do not want our pure bloodline defiled – even if it means spilling others' blood."
"It is your wish."
"You will marry my business partner's daughter …"
ARJ was silent though turmoil boiled inside him when he heard his father's intentions.
"I am avenging all our ancestors who were killed, raped and robbed by invaders who still call us infidels."
The calm voice of his vegetarian father – who was planning a cold-blooded murder--had unnerved ARJ.
"I am sure you have heard the proverb from our dialect…'When Roopchand – or money – is the end – buttressed by unshakeable faith – all means are fair.' It is also your middle name. Now, that accursed…"
ARJ had closed his eyes in abhorrence after seeing the hatred-generated glint in his father's eye.
ARJ knew what he had to do would need a long time and careful planning.
A drawbridge connects two streets in one of the little known areas of southwest Kolkata – Kidderpore. An inlet of the Hoogly flows below it almost soundlessly. When the tide ebbs, most of the river's dirty sediments are dragged into the river, whose muddy waters transport them to Ganga Sagar, the point at which it meets the Bay of Bengal.
The bridge's midsection was the rendezvous.
As predicted, the driver saw a stranger clad in a single dhoti waiting as he approached. Centimetres from the thin gap in the middle, the car's clutch plate and crankshaft collapsed with a loud clang.
The Bihari let himself out and heaved a sigh of relief when he was given Rs.10000 – the second part of the agreed sum.
"Run away now," the man commanded.
The chauffer suddenly heard a gasp from the passenger.
In the semi-darkness, he saw Rajshri's chest heave as she swallowed water from a tetra pack muttering an inaudible prayer. In the fading light, the driver could read the words in Hindi – "Ganges' Water."
Suddenly her head flopped at an unlikely angle betraying the fact that she was dead. Already into his hurried stride, the driver did not wait to see that the man who had paid him money was inserting an incendiary device into the car's engine, powerful enough to reduce it to a useless, skeletal, metal junk and the body inside it, to ashes. The toughies on either side of the bridge ignored him.
Elsewhere, in his office, ARJ handed over the sheaf of legal documents he had signed to an advocate, a notorious troublemaker.
"Though your deed is legal, it may be contested by your father, father-in-law and other relatives. While your family will eventually lose every paisa of its known assets and its prestige be ruined beyond repair, you may also be left with nothing," the lawyer said.
"I know what I am doing," ARJ retorted curtly.
The lawyer walked out without as much as a goodbye.
He had already been paid well.
The solicitor didn't know then that ARJ had emailed scanned soft copies to several newspapers in Kolkata, including the Ananda Bazar Patrika, Statesman and Aajkal only a few minutes back. Assets worth more than Rs.24,000 crores had been irrevocably gifted away by the very man who was meant to guard them.
ARJ's mobile rang again.
"The taxi's junk and the woman's ashes have been disposed off. Almost nobody saw the incident. The evidence will never surface," the voice said.
Since Rajshri's remains had become part of River Ganga, it could result in her salvation, ARJ reckoned.
"A priest with a working knowledge of explosives – what is the world coming to?"
"You killed my friend Rashid, father-in-law, not because he dared to legally marry your daughter, but only due to the fact that he did not subscribe to our religious denomination. Along with my parents, you perpetrated an injustice on us by forcing me to wed his grieving widow. Rashid's poor family could not even legally record its protest as your monetary clout prevented it. But, Rajshri was already pregnant. I vowed that I would safeguard the human seed and the woman's honour with my life. She has completed a death pact with her late husband as her life had served its purpose.
"Their offspring is out of your physical reach as is your wealth because I have given it to her, her husband and his impoverished mother. Out of her own will, Tapasya – my life's penance for your sins – has lovingly married someone who also doesn't belong to our religion. All your combined sinister designs have come to naught. But I have to make you pay more, so that you can never undo what I have done," ARJ muttered under his breath as he stared malevolently at the oil paintings of the two men he was addressing. He was to have dinner with his father and father-in-law – one schedule he would not keep.
After pressing the button in his desktop to reformat the hard disk, swallowing his cell phone's SIM card, the businessman retrieved his blue-nosed automatic pistol from the drawer, brought it near his right temple and dialled the cell phone number of D Dhurjati, Kolkata's commissioner of police, with his left hand.
"Hello!"
Without a word, ARJ pulled the trigger.
When he heard the shot's crack, Dhurjati was shocked he knew the caller had already been identified by his mobile's LCD screen as "Toady" – the nickname by which ARJ was known to the powerful in eastern India.
Agurchand Roopchand Jain had been the blue-eyed boy of the business community in Kolkata as he had seemed to be a willing tool to every member of the networked rich. He had been the obsequious middleman for all dirty deals including his own marriage.
Totally clueless, Dhurjati began barking orders into the wireless microphone to establish the cause of death and location of a man whose compromising largesse had been legendary.
Almost 120 years after the unsung death of Shah, a man in Kolkata, unlike the Nawab, had defeated his masters and in turn rippled the Hoogly so strongly that it would need a long time for the slush to subside. |
|
|
|
|
| Social Web |  |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
Processing please wait ...
Top Stories
