The Benefit Season (32 page)

‘
Vishal married? That
Moroccan? And he was flying to Seychelles? He was supposed to do
that with me- he promised it would work out fine!’

‘
What was to work out fine
dear? What was the plan?’

‘
Why don’t you ask him
yourself? It was his bright idea!’ she said, flaring at the
nostrils, aggression taking over fear, now that the beans were
being spilled.

The don slapped his hands. The two crooks
darted toward the building to fetch Vishal. ’I always knew
something like this was going to happen,’ he said. ‘ A loving
husband isn’t he, setting his wife up?’

‘
Eloped, wow!’ Arjun
muttered, waiting for the man whom he thought he’d killed. A large
weight seemed to lift off his shoulders. Escape, the thought of
which had so far not crossed his mind, he now began to seriously
consider. Escape by taking on all three of them with the butter
knife, once Vishal arrived and confirmed that he was still alive
and kicking, and not dead and dusty under some highway- thus
setting Arjun free. The men returned presently, hauling a visibly
distraught Vishal, in flesh and blood, between them. They seated
him opposite the don, and returned to their positions behind the
boss.

‘
Welcome’, the boss boomed
with mock cheer. ‘Join us, newly wedded, Muslim brother! Have you
been saying your five-times prayers, man?’ the gangsters ripped in
laughter.

Vishal fidgeted in his seat and looked
imploringly at him and then at Monal and Arjun.

‘
Now that we are all
gathered here, praise be to Allah, who has fed us and given us
drink, and made us Muslims! O you who believe! Fear Allah and speak
the truth! And do not mix truth with falsehood or conceal the truth
while you know it! And beware of lying, for lying leads to
immortality and immortality leads to hell! So speak
man!’

Vishal sank back in his chair, his large,
muscular frame curled shamefully.

‘
Tell us where the money
is. Repeat everything you told me’.

‘
I…I will resolve it with
her Bhai. Just give me time. Let me go…let us go, and we’ll give
you your money in a week’.

‘
Enough! Just repeat what
you said, dog!’ the boss shouted angrily, foam gathering around his
lips. ‘I don’t make a living letting creeps steal from me! I have a
reputation, goddammit!’ The tigers rose from their slumber, and
snarled softly.

‘
She has it. Ask her. Ask
him’, Vishal said, cowering, avoiding looking at them.

‘
Nonsense! He’s lying!’
Monal made to rise but the tigers rose to their feet and bared
their sharp white teeth at her and boomed a deep guttural growl,
sending her plunging back into her chair. ‘Please Vishal, give them
back their money, and let’s get our life back’.

Vishal just shook his head and began
sobbing. ‘Please…please, why are you lying? You stole it from the
house to start a life with your lover! Why did you run away from
the house then?’

‘
It was all his idea!’
Monal screamed, hysterical now. ‘He got greedy- he didn’t want to
give such a huge sum of money back! He wanted to make it appear to
the whole world that I’d run away with another man because I was a
victim of some kinky domestic violence. He identified Arjun the
very day he’d come for the placement interviews. He said he was the
innocent and foolhardy and honorable kind of a guy who wouldn’t
back out on a commitment to a girl. He said he would fool you also
into believing it and that some day you would grow tired of looking
for us. He was even prepared for a bit of your torture. And he
survived because he loaded up on morphine well beforehand. He felt
you wouldn’t kill him though because you would always need him for
the insider information. He promised we would make a new start in
Seychelles or the Caribbean or South Africa where you wouldn’t be
able to trace us and gamble on cricket- which he knows the inside
of, and live up the luxurious life. Not to say the least he was
already badly in debt – what with his fancy cars and mortgages and
Arabian babies and his drug hassles!’ there, she had blurted it all
out. She sat back and folded her arms across, and looked relieved
now that she’d got it all out of her system.

‘
Bravo!’ Vishal said,
grinning through his tears and clapping. ‘What a performance!
Bitch!
Sati savitri
…Indian bride! To think that such a one would keep
karva chauth
fasts for
the long life of her
pati-parmeswar
! Wow! Shame on you! To
lie in front of strange men, to shame me with your lover, to steal
from your own house, to wreck our marriage thus!’

‘
What marriage? What
husband? Look who’s talking-
Jenab
Chand Mohammed!’ she said, nearly laughing
despite the muddle she was in, and began clapping too in confusion.
Vishal, not to be outdone, began to clap harder and faster, till
the couple began to compete hysterically, upsetting the tigers, and
humans too. The once elegant society couple had been reduced to
blubbering idiots.

‘
Enough!’ boomed the Bhai.
‘Who the fuck has the money- will somebody please tell me
here!’

‘
He’, said Monal, pointing
at Vishal.

‘
She’, said he, pointing
back.

‘
He’!

‘
She!’

‘
You!’

‘
No you!”

‘
No no you
you!’

‘
No no no!
You!’

The don, having had quite enough, stood up,
blew out his size 56 chest, and hollered, ‘ away with them! Throw
them in the dungeons with the tigers. If they don’t decide by
morning who has the money- set the tigers on them! And let them
only take one small nibble at a time till these bastards come to
their senses!’

The two thugs hastened towards the three of
them and led them to the dungeons deep below in the dark belly of
the old fort, digging their AK-47s in their sides. The tiger
handlers too followed, bringing up the rear with two very upset
looking beasts. Arjun laughed as he was led away. The others looked
at him strangely.

Though still held, he had been set free! He
had been foolish, yes, a little horny too, but he was no thief or
murderer, even though the other party deserved to be wiped off the
face of the earth! That was going to be somebody else’s sorry fate
now- not his! He’d been cleverly set up and led astray by the
people he’d blindly trusted and highly regarded. One or both of the
other two captives had foolishly stolen the gangsta’s money, and
they were going to pay for it. The gang may not let him off, but at
least they mightn’t heap barbarism upon him and turn him into a
smoldering heap of rubble. Tiger or no tiger, guns or not, whatever
the number of hoods that you would throw at him, Arjun was
confident of escape. He worried not for himself, he worried for
Aarti and his mother and to some extent even that aborigine Khosla;
how they would be coping and worrying themselves sick over him. At
long last he had a chance to make up to his loved ones back home,
and he sure as hell was going to take a crack at that chance.

ϖ

They were led two levels down towards the
right wing of the fort. At many places where the rainwater had
crept in and licked away at the mortar joining the stone slabs,
large chunks of the wall had tumbled down onto the narrow, damp
passage. They stepped over the fallen boulders and reached the
caged cells meant for them. Light could not penetrate the
underbelly of the fort and the dungeons were dark and deep- save
for their dimly lit corner. Ropes dangled from several shackles
grouted into the high ceiling in their cell. The ropes dropped at
the floor into rusty iron tubs filled with water. Wires connected
the tubs to a crude electric source of large batteries. The
prisoners were made to remove their shoes and socks and step into
the water tubs. Their hands were raised high above them and tightly
bound to the ropes. A big table covered in green linen contained
several surgical instruments glinting a spooky orange in the
firelight of flickering torches lit with cottonseed oil.

A cage of iron bars separated them from the
tigers put in the next cell. Shamim tested the cage by pressing a
plunger embedded in the wall next to the iron door of their cell.
The cage could be raised or dropped by the plunger. Every time the
cage moved, it made a loud clanking noise that eerily bounced off
the clammy stone walls and passages till it was swallowed by the
dungeon’s vast entrails lurking several uncharted levels
underneath. The tigers were not restrained. They paced about the
cage, looked curiously through the iron bars at the captives slung
from the ceiling above, licked their whiskers and settled down in
wait. They weren’t hungry now, but soon would be thrusting for
succulent human flesh. The idea was to let the prisoners make up
their mind about telling the truth, or face electric charge.
Finally the tigers were to be set upon them for nibbling little
bites, till they confessed where the gangster’s money was.

To Arjun it appeared that none of them was
going to be let out alive, any which way. As for him, he wasn’t
going to let the mob make the decision. He expected them to wait
for nightfall before they started questioning, or torturing them.
Before that Arjun planned to make good his escape. The men had
left, shutting the creaking, crumbling wooden door leading to the
dungeons.

Vishal was becoming increasingly miserable,
he’d begun to whine softly to himself. He slumped from the ropes
instead of staying on his feet, and jerked frequently in pain.
Sometimes he cried out aloud, ‘Please…o’ my shoulder…it hurts so
much! Give me something for the pain…please’. Sometimes he shrieked
too, but mostly he labored under his breath, moping to himself.
Monal was coping better. She seemed calm and mostly stared at the
dank floor. She swung from the rope sometimes and kept shifting to
keep the blood flowing. She seemed used to restraints. Arjun
calculated the distance between himself and the table placed ahead
of him. It must have been 8 to 9 feet away. He thought he could
swing on the rope and topple the box containing the scalpels to the
floor. Then he could grip one of them between his toes and swing
his legs up and sever the rope and free his hands. Then, after
helping himself to a few of these shiny knives, he would simply
walk through anybody who tried to stop him. The men seemed lazy,
pudgy, used to the good life, and incapable of putting up any
resistance without a weapon. He swung a few times and realized that
he could easily touch the table with his heels. Monal looked
sideways at him and understood his plan. She winked and nodded. He
looked away, he had no further truck with this scheming woman and
he wanted no part of her in his plan. He turned his wrist to look
at his watch. He had a couple of hours before he made the move. He
shook his hands and arms to keep them from going numb, and
waited.

‘
Are you going to take me
with you’, she asked, breaking the eerie silence.

‘
Take you
where?’

‘
Seychelles’, she said
mockingly and laughed.

‘
You aren’t taking any of
this seriously, are you?’

‘
I can read the future- I
know what’s going to happen’.

‘
It doesn’t look like
you’ve been a very good prophetess so far. More like an out of box
Cassandra whom nobody takes seriously’.

‘
Ah… hmm’.

‘
Get real- you are
following this man blindly’, Arjun said, nodding towards her
husband. ‘He is bad news- rain on your parade!’

‘
He is my
husband’.

‘
Yeah? Last I remember he
was shoving both of us in a pit. How did he come alive by the
way?’

‘
You shot him with a
blank’.

‘
And you knew
it?’

‘
I guess so- it was his
plan’.

‘
Shut up bitch!’ Vishal,
who’d briefly come to his senses and had heard the last bit of talk
shouted.

Monal ignored him. ‘Ask away’, she told
Arjun, swinging as if she was a little girl in ponytails in a
park.

‘
Is this also a part of
the plan. Which is why it makes you so sure that you’re going to
walk out of here- why you’re so cool? You’ve had a vision of things
to come?’

‘
This is not our plan-
quite unexpected, actually. He never expected the cops or the mugs
to catch up with us. He thought they would give up looking for us
and we would be scuba diving in the Caribbean and docking at the
marinas in Europe’.

‘
And you believed the pipe
dreams! O god! And on his goading you seduced me! There was no
love, was there?’

‘
You seduced him!’ Vishal
screamed in agony.

She laughed again, ignoring him. ’You,
Arjun…are a child! Where’s love in this world honey, except for the
self and money?’

‘
I can’t understand why
you two have been going to such lengths to put pretenses up? One
kidnaps me; the other rescues me. One seduces me; the other accuses
me. Why the doublespeak- fair is foul and foul is fair?’

‘
Well…’ she said dreamily,
’ it’s a long story. What’s the point now that all is lost? Tell
me, do really you want to hear it?’

‘
I am not busy! No calls
for me- nothing else to amuse me’.

‘
Well then, here it goes.
You know what we do – we manage cricketers and hobnob with anyone
and everyone in that exalted star-lit galaxy. Vishal has been
heavily into fixing matches with the help of match officials,
journalists with an ear and eye on the keyholes of dressing rooms,
and finally the players themselves- not all, but mostly the ageing
and second rung cricketers who have tasted the good life and want
to make a fast buck before they are erased from the team sketch.
Enter the punters and the mafia dons who plough in the big, dirty
money. Decent, uppity people don’t deal with these kinds of people.
But they are far more comfortable with someone from their own
society and club-class…’