NOBODY LIGHTS A CANDLE
Anjali Deshpande
30
Sathiya!
The whole area trembled in his presence. Nobody knew where he had come from. Some said he came from Amroha some said he was from Bihar. It was difficult to say where he had arrived from. Not just in Mandawali, he was a feared man in neighbouring areas too.
He bragged openly that, “Nobody can touch me, I haev killed sixty people, that is why I am Sathiya.”
Sathiya, from Sath, for sixty in Hindi.
He operated a cable network and whether you got the reception or not you had to pay the full amount. He had many goons in his employ. Small time criminals. A thin man. You could count his ribs, he was so thin. Always he kept the top three buttons of his shirt open. When Adhirath was posted in the police station the first picture he saw in the file of habitual criminals was that of Sathiya. He wasn’t much to look at. Medium height. Unremarkable features. But he was a history sheeter with a rap sheet a mile long. Drugs, rioting, wielding knives, there was not a major crime in the Indian Penal Code that he was not accused of. It appeared as if he was out to prove that he had the skills for every kind of criminal activity. Had he not strutted around arrogantly and had people not given him the right to way slithering out of his sight the moment they saw him it would have been difficult to guess that this man in the dirty trousers ruled the area. The pavement sellers in the Monday bazaar, the fish monger who set up shop on the slab of stone covering the gutter, nobody could run a shop without paying protection money to Sathiya. It was a working class colony. Small single room tenements were piled one on another in narrow lanes or around tiny courtyards and there were stories of many girls he had picked up and returned after a few hours or days. It was also said that even young boys too were not safe. Three murders had been committed while Adhirath had been posted there. The crime graph had climbed so high that it was difficult to justify their jobs and yet they could not lay their hands on any evidence. The only way to bring down the graph was to refuse to file first information reports but even that method had begun to fail. It was not possible that every crime was committed by Sathiya but it hardly did any harm to other criminals to lay all of them at Sathiya’s door and he himself never denied it.
After the first murder Adhirath had got him dragged to the police station and had had him thrashed the whole night. But the man was tough nut. Never opened his mouth. Constables were scared of touching him. At least twenty or twenty five people must have seen him commit the crime at the dhaba where Sathiya had gone to have his dinner. A little daal had splattered on the table, not on his filthy trousers. Sathiya issued an order, the boy who served him would lick it clean. The poor boy agreed to do it. He folded his hands and begged forgiveness several times. The dhaba owner came and pushed the boy to Sathiya’s feet and admonished him. The more they tried to placate him the angrier he got. He cleared his throat and spat on the daal that had fallen on the table and said, “Lick it, you mother…” the boy was frightened. He tried to turn and run away. Sathiya leapt at him, caught him from behind and ran his knife along his throat. A young boy who had run away from home. Making a measly living here in the city. He had nobody even to claim his body. Who would risk his life for a nobody?
“Where are you from, you bastard?” Adhirath had asked Sathiya.
“Even my mother does not know whose seed I am, how can I tell you?” Sathiya had said shamelessly.
No use, his constables had told him. He has the backing of an MLA of a neighbouring sate and that MLA has the backing of an influential minister. He supplies to them. Many things. It was said that the Minster was fond of boys of tender age. Nobody talked of the Minister’s taste in flesh but their eyes danced when he was mentioned. Who knows what else the man supplied. When things got too hot in the state for him the MLA had helped him relocate and Sathiya had become a headache for this area in Delhi.
“Let him be what he is, this is Delhi, not a state, that we will let go of a criminal because a politician asks us to,”Adhirath had said.
But they found not a single witness. The boy’s body lay in the morgue unclaimed. The police his mother, the police his father. After a month or so finally it was the police that cremated him.
By the time of the second murder Adhirath had got to know Sathiya quite well. He had killed a shopkeeper. But it was a repeat of the same story. no witnesses. It was said that the shopkeeper had protested against the hefty protection money being asked of him and had refused to pay even after being threatened with death. Adhir would run into Sathiya on his rounds of the area. Sometimes he would be near the fishmonger who sliced fish in the light of a battery operated lamp, sometimes eating alu tikki at the kiosk in the market and at times perched on his motorcycle making catcalls and lewd gestures at young girls.
After the third murder Adhirath had called him to the police station and had talked to him. This time it was a woman. Perhaps she had taken some small loan from him. She had a young daughter. One day Sathiya kidnapped the girl. The next morning he brought her back. And told them he would come whenever he felt like and take her away for however long it pleased him. When he went to her house three days later he discovered that the woman had sent her daughter back to the village. Her son already lived out of the city for he had a job elsewhere. The woman’s body was found in her house, she was lying on her face, her sari was raised above her waist, her throat resting on a small kitchen knife, her tongue sticking out was stained with her own blood. Even hardened policemen who had seen all sorts of murders found themselves trembling.
Adhirath had himself kicked him viciously.
“Tell me if you have done it,” he had screamed. “Or else we are bound to find out.”
“Like you found out the last time?” Sathiya had laughed long and loud. Adhirath had beaten him with his baton. “One day you will die just like this, the way you kill others.”
“Why you don’t like your skin or what? One day I shall peel it off of you,” Sathiya had retorted.
Adhirath had completely lost his head that day. How many abuses he had hurled at him. He was not even aware that so many of these he had tried not to hear his father use lay buried in his subconscious and were now pouring out like vomit from his mouth on Sathiya. Even his subordinates were stunned. They had never seen him so furious. They thought now he was coming of age, now he shall become a true full blooded cop.
Two inspectors had dragged him away. Afterwards Adhirath’s body kept shivering for ten minutes. Even at night he had attacks of the shivers several times.
“Some day I will kill him,” Adhirath had said.
The SHO had talked to him for about half an hour. It was not possible. Adhirath also understood once he calmed down. It is easy to say that he is the killer but till now the police had not managed to even get hold of the murder weapon. He always kept it on him. After he slit the throat in the dhaba he had washed it with the water in the jug and pocketed it. The little knife they had found under the woman’s throat had not been used to kill her, it was hers and it was a stage prop. The knife he had used to cut her throat and gash her tongue was probably still with him. Adhirath’s job was to investigate. The job of punishing him was that of the court. How can any investigations be complete if the criminal places the weapon before the police and says, ‘yes, this is the knife I used, take it from me if you dare’ and no witness would agree to say that they had seen the knife, seen the blood gush out like a fountain from the throat of a victim, heard a scream of the victim? That dhaba owner, said he was leaning inside the tandoor slapping rotis in it, how could he have seen anything? He heard a scream and looked up to see boy lying on the floor in his death throes and soon he was dead. Who knows who killed him? The people who were having dinner all ran away. They did not spend another minute there to even pay their bills. He suffered such a big loss. Sathiya is not going to take pity on him if he tells him about his losses, he will charge his full tax. What use is the police, if he had to pay a criminal even after he lost money?
Truly, what use was the police? Nobody ever called the police station to say let Sathiya go but he never stayed behind bars for more than a few days at a time. The court kept upbraiding them saying their job was shoddy, they never complete any procedure, never file a charge sheet on time…don’t do this…don’t know how to do that. Sathiya was on bail, permanent bail.
That is when Adhir discovered why he had got this posting so close to his house without paying a penny as a bribe. The police station required two SHOs, one for Sathiya and another for the other work of the thana. Everybody was making money hand over fist and growing fat. What can the police not do if it wants to but first it must want to do it. Here there was an excuse to not want to do it and some basis for it too. Placing their boots firmly on the fear of others everybody was extracting taxes, protection money, even from Sathiya. When he would face a threat they would put him in the lock up for a few days. It was a good system. It ran smoothly. But it seems Sathiya got too big for his boots. Otherwise what could have been the reason for the cup of their patience to overflow?
Adhirath was on leave. Pushpa had had a strange kind of fever. For two days she had been hospitalized. It was the second day after her discharge. HE had applied for and got a full week’s leave. He was at home. It was noontime. That very day he had got eh cooler cleaned and had got new pads put in. He had put it on. The fragrance of water being sprinkled on the dry vetiver grass emanated from the cooler making the room feel fresh and cool. Pushpa was dozing. Her gown rode over her thighs. His fingers played a little hesitantly on them appealing for some responding quiver, some encouragement, some invitation. In the pale skin of an exhausted and weakened Pushpa recovering from the double assault of microbes and medicines he had felt the half consciousness of awakening. The pressure of his fingers increased, Pushpa moaned, and sank into his embrace. Adhir was after all his name, he had to live up to the impatience the name denoted. He felt a frenzy overtake his hands. When did they get time to themselves nowadays? Nights he spent with culprits in the lock up. Or doing it quickly and silently to not disturb the son’s sleep. They could not afford to forget themselves and moan in ecstasy. And people are constantly talking of freedom of expression Here you don’t have the freedom to forget everything and express your love for your own wife. Their bodies were not in a mood to even tolerate the trembling air between them, they were merging into each other, forgetful of the world.
He really wishes he had not picked up the phone that day. But he had. The enchantment of the rhythmic movement of bodies and emotions was shattered. The salty taste of her perspiration behind his teeth faded away. He knows Pushpa has till now not forgiven him the treachery of that hot and fragrant day.
email: anjalides@gmail.com
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