Ode to Broken Things (12 page)

Agni mocked him gently. “And just when I thought you might be more Charles Bukowski than Khalil Gibran, Professor.”

Jay folded the poem, and put it carefully in his pocket. “I think it’s time you stopped calling me, Professor, don’t you?”

Agni looked at her watch. “I was supposed to be at the airport fifteen minutes ago. Shall we go?”

Colonel S looked out of the windows of the reclaimed factory in Nilai. The immense stretch of concrete lay desolate except for his lone car and the guard’s small motorcycle.

Again, he regretted his lack of attention to a small detail – the fact that Jay’s cellphone did not roam in Malaysia. And Jay was refusing a local siM. Which left Jay unreachable for long hours, to roam like an unyoked cow, instead of doing the job he had been brought here to do. But Colonel S could not push Jay too far, too soon; he needed to save his energy for bigger battles.

Colonel S punched the keys on the computer, getting into Jay’s personal files, and searching for something he could use.

He briefly wondered what this girl now looked like, that granddaughter of Shapna’s. Colonel S had severed all connections with that family the night Zainal and Siti disappeared. Shapna had been a whore, had brought up Shanti to be a whore, and Colonel S had no doubt that the granddaughter would also be an easy lay for Jay. Unfortunately, he couldn’t wait for Jay to tire of this girl.

Sluts were so common in this country. Women who were never taught to cover their bodies and pray five times a day, washing themselves and their minds with a habitual holy ritual… there were too many migrant breeds. More kept coming in, like that Tibetan girl. Promiscuity spilled over to politics, and then it became a national problem, when the cure was basic modesty as explained in the Holy Book. Why was that so hard to implement?

Not that all Malays would agree with him on this. When Siti’s daughters were growing up, Colonel S remembered the new way of Islamic dressing, the
fesyen dakwah,
as an extremist joke, something that Muslim parents like Zainal and Siti would smile about.
Aiyah, don’t know which is worse, lah, having my daughter return in a miniskirt, or a tudung!

Colonel S had never married. Zainal’s family had filled his own life. Despite everyone’s urging, he had never found a woman pious enough to marry for life. Women, he decided early on, were an unnecessary complication, leading men to indiscretions beyond their control.

If left to the mini-dressed Chinese and belly-baring Indian women, the men in this country would all be as castrated as that Jay Ghosh and his whoring father. This country was still full of pious Muslims because the women of the
ummah
were the backbone of this country, and Colonel S would always be thankful for that. Which was why killing a Malay woman was something he had trouble doing. Killing any woman was hard, and he still thought of that Tibetan woman, especially her incandescent beauty on that moonlit night. But killing his first Malay woman had been harder, breaking her neck and throwing her into the swampy marshes… and he had been so young.

He scrolled through the data detailing Jay’s work in designing and modifying polymers for biomedical applications. Jay’s work was closely associated with local hospitals, and included the prestigious National Heart Centre as well as a well-known cancer centre.

His prodigy had done well for himself; Colonel S allowed himself a measure of self-congratulation. Jay had been a miserable child, abandoned at that fire in an amusement park and left to die, then abandoned through his teenage years with a distraught mother for company while his father fucked Shapna. Jay’s mother, Ila, was a strong woman, no doubt about that. There were no tantrums, no embarrassing signs of trauma, and she was always there for her two sons. When her children went on stage at school plays, she was always in the audience, and stood behind the
rosogolla
stall at the Deepavali fundraiser, smiling, with only her children by her side.

Jay had learnt well from her. To hold his anger close to his heart, and to never let that howl escape. But Colonel S had seen the trauma, and mentored Jay into a position of prominence in Seattle. Colonel S had done all this, even after Jay’s father, like so many foreigners, had chosen to abandon Malaysia and emigrate elsewhere.

He didn’t fully understand the responsibility he felt for Jay, and Jay did not treat Colonel S with the godlike respect that Colonel S had for Zainal. If you saved a child, over and over again, did he become so much your own that you forgave his shortcomings?

All this was a small matter in the greater scheme of things. Jay was brilliant in his science, so what if he was emotionally crippled? He probably could not love anyone in any way after what had happened with Shanti. Colonel S just needed Jay’s unflinching loyalty.

He flipped through the sections describing new work with the biodegradable polymers, the injectable implants and nanoparticles, all leading to more effective gene and drug delivery. His own work was nowhere near as reconstructive. It was as if he and Jay now stood at opposite sides of the same spectrum, using the same technology for very different ends.

Jay’s work in developing and testing fully biodegradable stent technology would be the most applicable for the cause. The mechanical integrity would last for as long as three or four weeks – giving them the gift of enough time. The properties of cellular-friendly polymer had reduced scarring too. Warriors around the world suffered due to the limits of thermoplasticity in their present method, but Jay’s expertise would solve a lot of the problems.but he would do it. The two bodyguards were in jail for the death of the Tibetan model, but the online bloggers were sniffing at his heels. Colonel S would need to intelligently manoeuvre the balance of blame and patriotism that the present plan required.

The muezzin’s call from a nearby mosque reminded him it was time to go.

It was a pity that Jay was turning out to be just like his whore-worshipping father… It was a good thing that he, Colonel S, knew how to control such men. He already had a lifetime of practice from holding the balls of all the adulterous Malaysian politicians he dealt with on a daily basis.

Abhik glanced at the clock on the dashboard as the sudden rain started raking fingers of water down his windscreen. His meeting with the Sisters in Islam had taken longer than he had anticipated, and he would be late unless he drove faster.

The radio blared
Theocracy or Democracy? The burning issues today… Welcome to our discussion for the evening and in the studio today we have…

The Hindsight 2020 campaign was such a fuck-up. The leaders were determined to march on the streets again, campaigning for minority rights but, as police permission for such a gathering would not ever be granted, Abhik would have to bail out people again. The Prime Minister had personally signed the order for the five ringleaders to be indefinitely detained. The Hindsight 2020 leader who had fled to London to petition the British Government was not making any headway.

It was too chaotic. He only hoped that there would be no bloodshed but, with the accusations of discrimination and marginalisation flying back and forth in the media, he could hear the increasing stridency on both sides.

Happy Deepavali!
He brutally cut off the chirpy advertisement on the radio. No one else seemed to care about anything important in this country.

There was so much going on in Malaysia that Agni should be a part of, but if she chose to spend all her time escorting older American men around town, there was not a damn thing that he could do about it.

Yet he and Agni had been taught the same brand of patriotism in the same school. All the Malaysians at the international school were headed for an overseas education; having choices in this country was only for the rich. Yet, how encompassing the words of the Malaysian national anthem sounded:

Negaraku, tanah tumpahnya darahku

Rakyat hidup bersatu dan maju

My country, the land where my blood flows

Citizens live united and progressive

When the fifth grade teacher, Mrs Narayanan, had taught them the words in school, she got misty-eyed and talked about the womb-blood of the newborn falling onto the ground and becoming one with the country, tying the infant forever to the land of its birth.

“Cock,” Abhik had sniffed in an undertone, already a rebel at eleven. “Someone should tell her to stop watching the stupid Tamil movies that fill her head with such rubbish.”

He had put up his hand and challenged Mrs Narayanan. “How about the immigrants then? Whose womb-blood fell in another country?”

Mrs Narayanan heaved her ample bosom and replied, “When a man leaves his home to toil in another, his sweat and tears fall and mingle into the new earth, which then adopts him to give him a new motherland.”

“She’s completely
gila,
” Abhik had loudly whispered, one finger corkscrewing his right temple for added effect.

He had always been so certain that his future lay outside Malaysia. But Agni bought into the image of blood emerging from the umbilical cord to mingle with the land, creating a bond stronger than any other. When he and Agni both left, urged by their relatives to seek a more level playing field on foreign shores, they both came reeling back.

Abhik knew he wanted this imperfect existence on a congenial soil, where the sarong
kebaya
and the
sari
, the gaudy and the plain, were perfectly interchangeable. He loved the
Rojak
salad of the land, the crisp green cucumber as distinct as the rubbery squid, the whiteness of the egg a contrast to the crush of the peanut, all sweet and sour and hot and pungent, all mixed up together in a clash of the senses.

This land was like no other. There could be no substitute for this cacophonous warp and weft of dissimilarity that sparkled in the brilliant sunshine. There was so much interbreeding in the country’s history that Malaysia now sold its
Truly Asia
charms in glossy brochures; this orgiastic spawning of the Indian, Chinese, and Malay races had occurred because sex knew no boundaries – Agni was proof of that. In Malaysia, how could one begin to distinguish the pure Malay ‘sons of the soil’ from the mongrel breed?

His phone buzzed, and over the speaker he could hear the familiar voice:

“Confirm already, client in the office in two hours. Where the fuck are you?”

The client didn’t come in the next two hours; he made them wait for six. Abhik waited with the elderly Punjabi lawyer and one of the clerical staff, the three of them sitting in the meeting room, each one silently counting the many ways things could have gone wrong.

The Punjabi lawyer, a senior partner at the firm, was in a wheelchair. His white hair was hidden under a navy-blue turban, but his lush white beard barely hid the wrinkled mouth that had shouted for human rights in Malaysia for nearly six decades of an illustrious career. The Punjabi lawyer now represented the Tibetan model’s family in the Malaysian courts. As the murdered woman’s father roamed the halls of the Malaysian justice system, this lion-lawyer gave him the only glimmer of hope.

Not that the lionisation was easy, even in old age. Last month, he had been surrounded by a heckling group of young Malay political wannabes and he could not steer himself out of their enraged mass. All because he had made a reference to a popular Bollywood movie to express his commitment to winning –
Singh is Kinng
– and the youths had seized on the phrase as an insult to the Malay monarchy.

This lawyer had fought back – but he was getting old, and tired. Abhik saw his head slump gently forward as a soft snore escaped his pursed lips.

There was the click of a door opening, and the client walked in. The elderly lawyer’s eyes were wide open again as Abhik looked at his watch; it was eighteen minutes past ten at night.

“Mr Singh. Abhik. Thank you for waiting.”

The meeting room was lit by a single hanging lamp and resembled a police interrogation room. None of the men in the room made a move to switch on more lights as they settled into their chairs.

The client had baggy circles under his eyes, and sported stubble marked by uneven greyness. He was a well-known blogger and a respected academic, as well as a government critic. The royal blood flowing in his veins made his anti-government messages an easy target for charges of envy; the princeling’s wife was this man’s first cousin.

He gratefully extended a hand for the coffee and then stared into its murky depths. Abhik noted how dishevelled this usually well-groomed aristocrat looked today, his shirt so crumpled that it appeared he had slept in it.

Singh cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming… This will mean a lot to my client’s case, but I hope you fully understand the danger to yourself.”

The client smiled. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

The statutory declaration was laid out on the table painstakingly by the elderly lawyer. Abhik thought he detected a shake in the gnarled fingers as he skimmed over the words again, those lines implicating the princeling and his wife. Now on the table for everyone to see in black and white were the words:

My informer states that Colonel S was the person who placed
the C4 on various parts of the victim’s body witnessed by…
I make this statutory declaration because I have been reliably
informed about the involvement of these three people who have
thus far not been implicated in the murder, nor called as
witnesses by the prosecution in the ongoing trial at the Shah
Alam High Court.
I also make this statutory declaration because I am aware that it
is a crime not to reveal evidence that may help the police in its
investigation of the crime.

The client picked up the Montblanc pen on the table and signed with a deep indentation.

Singh picked up the papers and scrutinised them again, rustling the two pages.

“You say here that you have been ‘reliably informed that a senior minister has received a written report from military intelligence confirming what you have revealed’. Are you sure you want to say this?”