Death in Mumbai (2 page)

From the time it broke, the story of the killing of Neeraj Grover was owned by television. Crime, not Bollywood, is our salutary entertainment. We end our days with
Sansani, Vaardaat
, and
Dus Tak
, in the company of hirsute anchors, each noisier than the other. I too came to the story through a visual medium. Late one evening, I walked into the photographers' bay at the office
of Mumbai Mirror
, the newspaper I edit, to see my colleague Raju Shinde produce a series of powerful pictures of Neeraj's parents breaking down upon seeing their son's assailants at the police station.

Their grief-strained faces, and their fight for control, were immensely affecting. But, most of all, as Raju reported, it was Neelam Grover's ringing question to her son's killers—‘Why? Why did you kill Neeraj?'—that arrested attention. There has been no answer.

MEENAL BAGHEL

July 2011, Mumbai

B
OOK
I

The Journey: From Mysore to Mumbai

1

T
HE
K
ILLING

‘You, lady, are my number one suspect.'

—Rakesh Maria, Head of the Mumbai Crime Branch,

to Maria Susairaj

T
HE HEART OF
Oshiwara lies on land reclaimed from slushy backwaters in the late seventies. Large swathes of Mumbai have been ‘reclaimed', as if the sea were an encroacher against whom a case had been filed and won. When Ekta Kapoor moved here in 2000 to set up Balaji Telefilms, Oshiwara was in her words, a ‘dump'. ‘
I
was quite horrified at having landed in such a rotten place. All you ever saw were arty-type people with big bindis.' Television's most famous backroom girl wears her hair stylishly cut, and is dressed on a working day in a tracksuit. It hints as much to her get-up-and-go attitude, as it does to her preoccupation with her weight.

In the decade since Ekta's arrival, this North Mumbai district has become the nerve centre of the entertainment industry, renewing Mumbai's sagging energy after most of its manufacturing industries moved to other parts of India, offering cheaper real estate and investor-friendly policies.

In reality, the nation's popular culture filtered out from just one unremarkable, potholed back alley of the Shah Industrial Estate, where Balaji Telefilms and the Yash Raj Films (YRF) studios stand at right angles, surrounded by a foundry, a derelict warehouse, and an unkempt ground that is hired out for receptions during the wedding season.

While the snooty guards at YRF shoo away aspiring stars for daydreaming at its impenetrable gates, Balaji, in keeping with the more democratic nature of its medium, has a notice at the door that spells hope: ‘Leave two photographs with the watchman, if we like them we will get back in two days.'

Aside from the shiny, glass-fronted buildings that have mushroomed on the marshes, there has also been a sartorial sea change from those big bindi days that so horrified Ekta. Now the neighbourhood was full of mini-skirted brides flaunting their choodas along with their stilettos, and men in distressed jeans and sleeveless ganjis baring bench-press biceps and showing off fake tattoos. In India's capital of make-believe, even rebellion is a ‘look'.

On a sullen, clammy April evening in 2008, television executive Deepak Kumar was sitting at the coffee shop at Fun Republic, a one-stop entertainment centre, a few yards away from these dream factories. He sprawled into a
steel and rattan chair and ran a hand over his buzz-cut as he discreetly observed the ladies. He was waiting for the rest of his gang to arrive. The ‘Coffee House Nomads', as the group called itself, met at this Café Coffee Day each evening after work. The waiter knew their preferences, and the café offered them a chance to sit under the open sky, escape the dingy sets and frigid editing suites. Here, they could pretend that the great Mumbai obsession, ‘time pass', was a legitimate pursuit.

Deepak Kumar and his closest friends, Nishant Lal and Neeraj Grover, were in their twenties and had come to Mumbai within a few years of each other, united in their ambition to work in television. They had a common link to Delhi—they shared its Hindi heartland sensibilities, and also a camaraderie that is particular to young bachelors.

Deepak Kumar worked with a television production house, Shreya Creations, steadily rising to become an executive producer. Neeraj, the lean and hungry hop-skip-jump man, had just quit Balaji Telefilms and joined Cinevista as creative producer, but was already in talks with Synergie Adlabs; while Nishant, the long-haired leader of their group, was his own boss, conceptualizing shows for different channels.

Neeraj had been the last to join the Coffee House Nomads, a year ago, in 2007. He had stood out in the Fun Republic foyer for his good looks, talking up a storm as he paced around the flyweight tables, nervously transferring an unlit cigarette from his fingers to his lips and back, making loud references to working with Amitabh Bachchan, for whoever cared to listen.

Nishant, blowing smoke rings in the air, his large, gentle eyes missing nothing, had watched the boy with amusement. Neeraj had turned up again the next day, approached their table for a light, and introduced himself.

A Kanpuria!

As they had suspected, Neeraj had landed in Mumbai just a few months ago. He was working on a Kannada ad film for Dabur with the superstar. The three young men got talking. Neeraj turned out to be a jolly, witty boy who got all the jokes. Nishant, who had been working on a show called
Aaghaz
, urgently needed an actor for a day and Neeraj, with his clean-cut good looks and lean frame, fit the bill. The three began to hang out after the shoot, revelling in the warm flush of sudden and deep friendship. No topic was exempt from their boisterous discussions: movies, sport, cars, bikes, Vijay Mallya (whose lifestyle they aspired to), parents, friends, travel, gizmos, and—with Neeraj around—inevitably, women.

With the awe that is characteristic of ordinary monogamous mortals, Deepak Kumar watched a succession of young women sashay into their lives, offering him vague, glassy-eyed hellos before transforming into animated, honeydew goddesses around Neeraj. ‘Mere hisse ki ladkiyan bhi tumhare hisse mein rehti hain!' (Your lot includes my share of women too), the thickset young man often grumbled good-naturedly, by now resigned to taking vicarious pleasure in his friend's amorous triumphs. Though sometimes these could get him into trouble. Neeraj had recently violated the sacred code—don't dip your nib in the office ink—by getting involved with a young woman
who worked with him at Balaji, and who was a part of their gang. When he turned his charms on her and presented her with a bauble as a ‘pretend' engagement ring, she hadn't been able to resist his proposal, risking her relationship with her steady boyfriend.

When Neeraj got bored after a couple of months and moved on, the jilted woman, sullen, hurt and angry, had blamed Deepak for not warning her about the new girl. But he really hadn't known. Neeraj made his moves faster than Vishwanathan Anand did playing speed chess.

For the last few days, Neeraj had been talking about an actress from Bangalore called Maria Susairaj. He had helped her audition for Balaji's big upcoming show,
Mahabharat
, that March. The two had met earlier in 2007 and had recognized the spark of attraction between them—but before it could blossom into something deeper, Maria had shifted back to Bangalore to work on a Kannada film,
Ekdant.
After they reconnected for the
Mahabharat
audition, they kept in touch regularly over the phone. Maria, Neeraj told his friends, was coming back to Mumbai in the last week of April, and today's coffee house discussion was devoted to Neeraj's opening gambit.

Nirvana lies less than a kilometre away from Fun Republic, past the offices of film producers and big movie posters that dwarf the sky; between a police station so small that cars confiscated from criminals have to be parked illegally on the road, and a petrol pump modelled on Delhi's Baha'i
Lotus Temple. The soot, the exhaust fumes, and the film of fuel have left the petrol pump looking like an overripe cabbage instead.

Beautiful, skinny, young white women limber across the dirty open corridor that leads to the dance rehearsal hall like welcoming apsaras, oblivious to the April heat, pirouetting, pouting, and arching a leg in the air while the peon from the next door office passes by without a second glance.

Behind thick, soundproof walls lay Nirvana, a hall where auditions for Bollywood films and reality TV shows were held. Inside, the air conditioner was on full blast, and the music system blared ‘
Mauja hi Mauja
'. ‘1-2, 1-2 Kick! 1-2, 1-2 Kick!' A young choreographer instructed like a drill sergeant shaking her head—the Caucasians didn't get it. They danced stiffly, using their shoulders—the Indian girls danced with their hips, much more sensually; but they weren't white-skinned.

From the corner of the room, senior choreographer Deepak Singh raised a placatory hand, a small frown marring the repose of his comic-book Buddha face. He stretched his lithe, sweat-slickened body and instructed his assistant, the young drill sergeant choreographer, to organize another batch of Russian and Ukrainian girls for auditions the next day.

The day was not going well for Deepak. It had begun with a rather unsettling call from Maria Monica Susairaj. She was the ex-girlfriend of a friend from Bangalore, Pavan. They had all known each other at a dance training school that Pavan ran called Studio 5678. The actress,
known as Maria in Mumbai, but always as Monica to friends and intimates back home in Mysore and Bangalore, had called to announce that she was arriving in Mumbai on April 29 to give acting one final shot. She asked if she could stay with Deepak Singh for the next few days, until she found her own place. The choreographer was taken aback by the directness of her request, but she had been sweetly persistent. ‘Just for a few days… Please, please. I'll find another place soon. My dad is willing to give me the down payment for a flat. Help me out this one time.'

There was something disquieting about Maria's constant flitting from city to city, from one ambition to another. She and Deepak had met in Mumbai just a month ago, in March 2008, when she told him about her engagement to a naval officer. They had gone to the Lokhandwala market together to buy some shirts for her fiancé. ‘I am finally ready to settle down,' she had said. If she was marrying in a few months and shifting to a naval base, why did she want to move into a new flat, and, why after the many disappointments, when none of her previous visits yielded that elusive film role, did she want to chance her luck again in Mumbai? Deepak Singh ran his hand through his limp ponytail, towelled himself dry, and moved decisively towards the exit of the dance hall. What Maria Monica did with her life was none of his business; nor did he particularly care. After the success of two televisions shows, his own life was on the up, and he was on his way to becoming a known choreographer, something he and his friends had only dreamed of back in Bangalore. He would offer her his hospitality for a few days, for old times' sake. It was what
you did when someone from Studio 5678 moved to strike it big in Mumbai.

In private, friends often jestingly likened Neeraj to a ‘C-grade' Casanova. He could be indiscriminate, trying for every girl, with his silly jokes: ‘Jo hansi, woh phansi' (If she falls for your jokes, she falls for you). Even so, when his friends finally met Maria at their Café Coffee Day adda, they were surprised at what they saw. She was mousy, with pronounced dark circles under her eyes, and looked much older than Neeraj's twenty-five years. She hardly spoke, and when she did, she was soft-spoken to the point of being inaudible. She seemed vulnerable, and not like the tough television girls that were Neeraj's staple. She told them she had studied engineering in Mysore, then mentioned ‘a diploma in interior design', amending it to say, ‘No, actually, I have studied dance.'