The Gypsy Goddess (14 page)

Now, what do I tell my she-has-a-knack-for-finding-out-everything mother? Will she not be ashamed of me? When she sits on the edge of my bed and strokes my hair and appears ready to lift the world on her shoulders, should I tell her that he winked at me? I think it would be wiser not to burden her with my stories. I should work it out for myself.

Was he not suggesting something when he said that crabs, like concubines, must be tasted on the sly? When he ran his hands along the barrel of his shotgun in short, smooth strokes, did he have sex on his mind? Since he was not a product of our poke-on-Facebook times and had, instead, made his earthly appearance as early as the eighteenth of November, one thousand nine hundred and
twenty four, was philandering with women a meritorious deed that asserted his masculinity? Did his rapes evoke immediate envy among other landlords?

Did his story scare me? Yes. Did he pull any tricks on me? None that I am aware of. Did we get drunk together? No, seeking a share of his scotch was not the politically correct thing to do. Did I send him consenting signals, as other women often blame me of doing? No. No. No. Reader, I have not married him. I was in the mood for some Dostoevsky that day, my mind was swinging with my mood, and, reminding myself that men were despots by nature, I maintained an icy exterior, almost as if I was frozen by fear.

I had every reason to be afraid. He was a woe to women in five villages: Vandalur, Irukkai, Vadugachery, Thirukannangudi, Kilvenmani. People kept a tally of women he had raped, the virgins he had ordered to be sent to him, the girls who were never seen again. Because it was a shame that concerned them, because I was a visiting stranger from faraway, because telling their stories would not undo the suffering, the women spoke in outlines, under conditions of anonymity, buying into the belief that their trust would not be broken and hoping I would be spared the horrors they have had to face.

I was also cautioned by old men, who might have been excessively revolutionary in their youth, that merely uttering the name of this man would spread terror in forty
other villages for thirty other reasons. I had everything on a tape-recorder somewhere, but, that morning, the fear of upsetting him far outweighed the fear of him. Terror bred strange tales of extrajudicial deaths and summary disappearances and inquiry commissions and exhumations, so I chickened out, I wormed out, I went crawling to meet him.

Under these excruciating circumstances, I relied on reliable heresy to form my understanding of the man before I met him. I gathered some sure-as-stamp-paper facts. And a lot of stories. Sometimes the villagers went overboard, such as when they alleged that a goat was slaughtered for his every meal. The area of expertise of these villagers extended to all branches of storytelling. One villager described Gopalakrishna's house as being dark as a harlot's den of passion, but, once inside, I found enough light to draft a memorandum-disguised-as-a-letter, drink coffee, carry on a filler conversation about his brown Alsatian and his red Plymouth and his ash-coloured Ambassador, and indulge in other such non-harlotic activities.

These narratives moved beyond biography to geography: an old woman at the village claimed that there are five ponds around Naidu's home but given my panic and tearing hurry on that afternoon, I never stopped to notice the kind of exacting details that are normally jotted down into iPads by wannabe novelists. I was also informed by this
kind lady that the Pallars and Paraiyars and other lowered castes are not allowed to walk past the street where he lives. She suggested, unlike Google Maps, that in the interests of my own safety, I take a one-foot-wide, worn-out path that snakes around his backyard. Being a half-caste, quarter-caste, quarter-quarter-caste of dubious multi-casteness, I lost all opportunity for transgression when I was fetched to his home in his own ash-coloured Ambassador.

I had managed to get there without pissing him off straightaway. Sitting in the comfort of his home, I contemplated the stillness enveloping the rest of the locality and wondered if nobody in the neighbourhood stepped out for fear of offending him. Or, perhaps, there were other reasons. I will learn it all, learn it soon. (Such as his removal of hair, from everywhere.)

In the course of that afternoon, I allowed my roving eye to even size up this middle-aged man: white
banian
, white
vehti
, the Singapore green belt, his loaded revolver, his thighs rubbing against each other as he walks around the room. His eyes, drunk on decadence, sized me up in turn.

Observation
: He seldom smiles in the middle of work, but when he does, his rice-white teeth shine.

Direct Inference
: He doesn't chew tobacco or betel-nut
like any other vulgarly rich landlord-villain, who licks the corners of his mouth to titillate women.

Indirect Inference
: He wants to present a clean image.

Observation
: In that house of many, many rooms, he spoke as though he was revealing the secrets of the universe, and even a minute hint of distraction was sufficient to drive him into a murderous rage. His agent stayed still and silent all the time, but I cannot emulate his feat. Unable to cope at first, I later follow the cues of his Alsatian: watch him attentively, stay silent, nod at regular intervals, maintain a respectable distance.

Direct Inference
: Gopalakrishna Naidu has not only an instinct for strategy, but also a love of spectacle. He is clamouring for an audience.

Indirect Inference
: In spite of all appearances of intimacy, the relationship between the landlord and his agent resembles that of a mistress and her maid-servant.

Observation
: Apart from his agent and me, the only other person in his home is the old man who cooks for him. Perhaps other people live there too, perhaps they all move about noiselessly. There is no real way of knowing because they are all silent. I listen carefully, I sometimes even miss his words, but I do not know what lies beyond our room in his low-ceilinged home.

Lastly, it is vaguely comforting to realize that this entire exercise of milking every word dry, and mulling over the character of this man, has taken me only four hours and fifty-five minutes. In that short span of time, even as he supposedly sat in anticipation of death, Gopalakrishna Naidu has played the part of humble farmer to perfection.

part three

BATTLEGROUND

8.
Expression of Countenance

It was Inspector Rajavel's turn to look at the dead and make a list. He inspected them head to toe and front to back, instructed the photographer to snap them from all angles, informed the doctors that they would only be allotted six hours to complete the entire post-mortem, and summoned up the courage to carry out the important task of filling out the inquest forms. He also took the precaution of surrounding himself with his favourite constables, those of the most pleasant disposition, and, from time to time, he consulted the five-member village council who were given the onerous task of identifying the bodies. Though he was a genial man most of the year, he realized that the silent stares of the villagers aggravated his asthma, so he shooed them away. Quite naturally, he also developed a sudden aversion to dirge-singing, breast-beating old women.

If and when he were to rise in rank, he decided to redesign the standard templates that policemen had to fill out for every case of theft or suspicious death. Most of them
required the repetition of the same sequence of events in three different formats, and a few of them, like the inquest form he was completing, posed rude, impertinent questions. It required him to list identification marks of the deceased, describe the corpse closely observing all cavities (nose, ear, mouth, vagina and etc.) in good light during daytime, indicate the nature of the visible wound (incised, lacerated, bruised, fractured), look for ligature marks and signs of struggle, comment on the expression of countenance and the position of limbs, and report the presence of blood (liquid or clotted), saliva, froth, vomit or semen at the scene of crime. He was certain that the problem with these forms was not merely the absence of specificity, but also the thoughtlessness of generalization – perhaps a naive idiot had demanded the fingerprinting of every corpse that went to the coroner, but only a cold-blooded sadist could have come up with an instruction to the reporting police officer to note down the facial expression of a fire victim.

Although distracted by such disturbing thoughts, he managed to complete the work at hand, and went about looking after other procedures.

It would be cruel not to appreciate Inspector Rajavel's labours, and criminal to suppress the facts of the massacre. Therefore his observations have been shared hereunder, and the tabulation shall tell this tale.