Ode to Broken Things

Ode To Broken Things

May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.
So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway.

Pablo Neruda

Dedicated to the memory of my two Didas,
Latika Chatterjee & Binapani Sengupta,
fabricators of fables and magicians of storytelling…
and Delip Kumar Dutt, son of the Malaysian soil.

And for the vanquishers of my personal demons…
Prasanta, Arohan, Arush

Dissected to its constituent parts, Malaysia was a hopeless mess of conflicting priorities, mutually unintelligible languages, contradictory cultures and blinkered religions. Malaysia’s politics were divisive, its economy exploitative, its pillars of authority buttressed by an impenetrable scaffolding of draconian laws upheld by a parliament in which dominance seemed to matter far more than debate. There was no reason for Malaysia to have survived this far…

But Malaysia had.

Rehman Rashid,
A Malaysian Journey

It is estimated that between 1900 and 1940 alone, a total of about 16 million Indian and Chinese immigrants landed in Malaya. This century has witnessed only one other move ment on this scale – the migration of Europeans to the United States of America totaling some 19 million during the same four decades.

Kernial Singh Sandhu,
Some Preliminary observations of the origins and characteristics of Indian Migration to Malaya

When his cellphone rang at two in the morning, Colonel S picked it up and, still blurry from sleep, thought, Stupid bitch, she’s finally done it. The person on the line spoke slowly. When Colonel S understood what he was being told, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, rushed out, and got into the car, heading for the abandoned construction site in Shah Alam. A band of fear briefly tightened around his heart as he saw the figures in the darkness.
This was it then!
But the figures seemed diminished by the tall
lalang
waving in the slight breeze and he could feel the moist night, satiny with humidity, cloaking him in its susurrations. The clouds erased the moon.

He could see the princeling, an important senior minister in the Malaysian cabinet, flanked by a junior minister. The prince-ling was tall and looked even more stooped in the moonlight as he struggled to light his cigarette. His wife stood ramrod straight next to him, her hennaed red hair a blurry fuzz under the scarf covering her head.

Colonel S allowed himself a smile. So this was going to be a circus with a prime-time audience. The princeling may have political clout in Malaysia – the royal blood flowing in his wife’s veins didn’t hurt – but he could be so easily manipulated by friends like the young minister, now standing by his side.

The two bodyguards flanking the princeling swivelled their heads simultaneously; there was the sound of a car approaching. As the princeling’s nervous fingers dropped the lit cigarette, the young minister ground it into the wet soil deliberately, both of them turning away from the headlights. The wife drew her scarf tightly around her face. A red Proton Saga slowed to a bumpy stop, killing the headlights, and the tyres squelched into the mud.

A woman opened the back door. There was a slight scuffle, then another woman was dragged out from the back seat. She was blindfolded, and Colonel S could see the blood glistening on her forehead in the dim light. The woman whimpered softly, a plaintive cry in the silence of that deserted stretch of land. Colonel S felt the humidity soak into his shirt as they all stood waiting in the moist stillness.

Then the princeling tilted his head in a nod. It was as if the noise of the tropical night started as a simmer of twitters and chirps and flutters and squeaks, breaking the spell. Colonel S jerked his head towards the pole. The two bodyguards dragged the woman (she struggled against the soft ground which refused to yield to her splayed toes) leaving an anguished trail. Her blindfold slipped off, and the wispy black material crouched on the ground like wounded batwings in the night.

As he watched the woman being tied up, her hands and feet secured with ropes, the clouds parted and Colonel S could see her face. He had known that she would be beautiful, but he had not expected this degree of loveliness or youth. This woman had been loved by many, he already knew that but, at this moment, as the moonbeams shone on her face, he understood why she had driven the young minister and the princeling to such impropriety. He looked at the princeling’s wife – a woman well past her youth, heavy in jowl and body, narrow in mind – her eyes glinted feline in the gloom.

He felt a moment of doubt, then reasoned that he had no cause to be squeamish. Colonel S – no one ever called him by his name, for his surname declared that his ancestors once walked with the prophet (Peace be upon Him!). His ancestry, coupled with his dizzy rise to the top of the military hierarchy after earning a Doctorate in Materials Science from the United States, made him into a Malaysia Boleh Hero. Yes We Can!

Thanks to the diverse appetites of the princeling and his cronies, he had the country by its balls. He was one of the main executors of the national destiny.

Tonight, he was entrusted with the execution of this young woman. It would not be his first, but she was a mother of two. He had seen women being stoned to death for sleeping with men – not here in Malaysia, but he had seen it happen. As he clasped the C4 explosives around her sweaty neck, he allowed his fingers to linger a little longer than was necessary. She was a whore, he reminded himself, and one
who knew too much
.

She probably knew too much about Colonel S too. He wasn’t going to take any chances.

She had been there, in Paris and Madrid, when the cronies of the government netted a hundred and fourteen million euros in that submarine deal. Then on to Sweden where party loyalties were fed and bought for another of their projects. The prince-ling would swear on the Koran that he had never seen this woman, let alone touched her, but his wife knew better. It was the wife, calmly watching Colonel S circle this woman’s body with explosives, who proved more dangerous to this beauty than the secrets whispered during any pillow-talk.

The woman stirred, murmuring softly. Colonel S found himself pausing, straining to hear her last words. She was from Tibet, but spoke seven languages fluently, and had come to Malaysia as a government translator. She had been very good at her job, until her competence and beauty got her noticed by the highest bidders in the government.

She had lived in a fancy condo in Kenny Hills, flown first-class to the bright lights of big cities… and now this ignominious end in a deserted field in Shah Alam. He refused to feel sorry for her; she had lived too well. She could be saying anything in one of those seven languages, but he didn’t have to listen.

He felt tired.

Colonel S straightened her head, which had dropped to one side, and felt a line of drool on his fingers. His work was done. He tightened the last explosive around her right wrist and stood back.

One of the bodyguards stepped forward. He was holding a small revolver in his hand.

“There is no need,” Colonel S began.

“Just making sure.” The bodyguard aimed the revolver in line with her chest.

“You’ll set off the explosives…”

“Don’t worry, boss. I watch already, where you put everything. Sure shot, this one.”

Before Colonel S could protest any further, two shots rang out in quick succession. He turned his head instinctively, away from the girl, and watched the young bodyguard’s face in its malice.
That idiot aimed for her breasts!
He shoved the man backwards savagely, signalling for everyone to stand further back.

His ears, adjusting to the silence after the gunshots, waited for the warbling to begin again. The clicks and rattles, castanets and chirrups – the song of the night seemed reluctant to begin.

But no matter. He straightened his back consciously; he was ready. He put his finger on the detonator and the field lit up with a burst of thunder, spraying gristle and bone as a human being exploded into hundreds of pieces, the blood splurging out of a punctured heart. Then there was the smell of singed flesh and burning hair, as tiny tongues of fire licked the ground.

Agni drove along the pristine roads of a new township, built along the fringes of an elite golf course, its gloss reflecting a pride in appearances. No bohemia here to mar the landscaped views; only rows of manicured structures, trimmed and tamed, like all the expensive new townships of Malaysia. Her car glided along the smooth black roads, and Agni admired the mirrored image of cream and white buildings in the tinted windows. Everything glowed softly in the rays of the setting sun.

The Malay night watchman called out as she entered the lobby of the office, day-bright with the glow of a thousand bulbs. The marble floors gleamed as Agni walked carefully up the slight slope on her high heels.

“
Apa khabar
?” she replied more heartily than she felt.

There was a new Chinese guard at the reception desk beyond the main door. He held up her identity card and asked “Aag Nee Bee Na?”

He drew out the syllables of her name, making it sound Chinese. She should have been used to it by now. Jostling with
Dravidian
names impossible on the tongue, hers was too easily mangled by non-Indians. But, after having been an Agnes for too long in a small Texan town, she allowed no liberties.

“Agnibina,” she corrected. Reclaiming the card, she swiftly swiped it to open the automatic door.

The cubicles looked like a maze in the semi-darkness. A low wall merged into a network of walls, stretching into long windows designed to frame the spectacular view. The wave pool at the giant water park across from the office building was switched off and the water lay still, reflecting the pink Moorish domes of the theme park hotel flecked with lights twinkling in the descending night.

She headed for the lit office next to her own. Rohani was already there, staring at a screen. She waved at Agni with red fingertips, which had been dipping into a half-empty packet of pickled tamarind.

“Sorry for dragging you down here today. Hope I didn’t interrupt a hot date?”

“Yeah… well, Abhi can deal with it by now.” Agni sank into a chair. “So what do we have?”

“Not sure,
lah
. A lot of action at the airport.” Rohani rolled her chair to the left to make room for Agni. “The security people are already looking into it, but meanwhile I just got these videos – taken in the last two weeks.”

“And…?”

Rohani shrugged. “You see first.”

On the screen, an old man sat facing the tall glass windows. The reflected neon lights skimmed over the chrome window frame and set him in a halo. He could have been a fortuneteller or a mystic, so deeply did he gaze into the night. The tent-like roof of Kuala Lumpur International Airport soared high above his head as he stared straight ahead, oblivious to the clamour within the huge hall and the clatter of rolling luggage being dragged to international destinations. The carpet was dense, blue patterned in the flying-kite logo of the national airline, and the background hum of the airport was a loud soundtrack.

Agni adjusted the volume level as she watched his left hand pat the pocket of his shabby
baju
. His sarong skimmed the floor, showing glimpses of feet clad in scuffed black sandals. The folds of his skin sagged below his eyes, but his wrinkled hands grasped a mobile phone firmly, the nubs of his knuckles clearly outlined.

The footage was very clear, taken on state-of-the-art surveillance cameras. She fast-forwarded to the next date, and the next. It was like watching the same tape, although he made the trip to the airport only three times a week, on random days.

He always chose a seat close to the cameras. “And he’s there today? Now?”

Rohani nodded. “The old fellow’s probably just a harmless geriatric with nowhere to go.”