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‘Have a drink,’ I said, ‘it will make you feel less cold.’ ‘Not really. Alcohol actually leads to heat loss. It is heat coming out that makes your skin feel warm.’ ‘Golu, seriously, stop the JEE chemistry. It’s New Year’s Eve,’ I said.
‘Hello?’ I said as I heard a voice. ‘Hello, Zara. Don’t hang up, okay?’ ‘The person you have dialled cannot be reached. Please try again later.’ It was the Airtel lady, the emotionless bitch. If only she knew how important this call was to me.
‘Stop it, bhai. She will see all those missed calls and freak out.’ ‘I don’t care,’ I said. Once you have already faced the humiliation of giving the other person multiple missed calls, it doesn’t matter if it is two or three. Or seven. Or ten.
Chandan never made it to IIT himself. He used to be a chemistry professor at Venkateswara College in Delhi University. Ten years ago, he started taking JEE chemistry tuitions in the garage of his Malviya Nagar house. Business grew and finally became Chandan Classes. He now rented a three-storey house in Malviya Nagar, in the same lane as his own home. Fifteen full-time faculty members worked for him. Seven of them were IITians, a fact he never stopped gloating over. ‘Yes, I never did IIT. Now look, IITians work for me,’ was what he said to parents of new students who were worried about Mr
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‘Did anyone call the girl’s phone today? It rings, right?’ ‘Two missed calls, sir. From a contact called Raghu Cutie Pie.’ ‘I will call him right away. You check the location of Raghu Cutie Pie last night from the cell tower.’
I have never been happier to see Baba Ramdev’s grin. I just didn’t want the channel to go back to Zara. Of course, nobody cared about what I wanted. Within minutes, Arijit was back, this time with something he called ‘an esteemed’ panel. Six people—socialites, ex-cops, somebody who ran a think-tank on Kashmir and a retired IIT professor—occupied six little windows on the TV screen. How do news channels do this? How do they line up so many jobless people from different areas of expertise so fast?
I haven’t slept all night. Aren’t we doing our best?’ the inspector said. One minute I was an accused. The next, I was expected to behave like a supportive spouse. ‘Yes, you are, sir,’ I said, ‘doing your best.’ ‘So why are they flashing “Clueless Delhi Police” on TV?’
I tossed and turned in bed for an hour. I could not sleep. But I wasn’t thinking about Zara and crying like I had been doing every night; tonight my mind was on something else. Did Laxman Reddy actually kill Zara? The question kept ringing in my head. Yes, he had a motive. Zara had slapped him in public. There was circumstantial evidence too. He left his seat that night. He could well have done it.
My GUESS, it was the fiance
The inspector took out his wallet. The cashier at the café looked aghast at the preposterous idea of a policeman paying and quickly declined. The inspector smiled and put his wallet back in his pocket. We collected our beverages and took a seat near the window. ‘So this is where young people, what do they say, hang out?’ Rana said, adding three sugar sachets to his coffee. ‘Two hundred rupees for coffee. Daylight robbery.’ I wondered if not paying at an establishment counted as daylight robbery too.
‘How much do you get? In hand.’ I looked at him, surprised. Saurabh politely looked in the other direction. ‘Around 45,000 rupees a month,’ I said. ‘See, even you make more than I do. I get, after all deductions, 42,000 rupees a month.’ I guess he hadn’t counted the unlimited free Starbucks lattes in his package.
‘I have fifteen years of experience,’ Rana continued. ‘You started what? Four-five years ago? Is it fair?’ I shook my head, feeling guilty. I felt personally responsible for the central government’s compensation policies.
When you have been with someone, you never imagine they can be intimate with someone else.
‘That’s good. But why are you telling us all this?’ Both my parents were by now staring at me with horror. I took a deep breath. ‘I like her, maa,’ I said. ‘What?’ my mother said, as if I had admitted to necrophilia or something.
‘Yeah, but we could do it the other way too,’ I said, and flipped over the laminated menu. ‘You want to try gobi paranthas?’ ‘Did you chicken out?’ she said in a lowered tone. ‘I am not chickening out, okay?’ I said, my voice loud. ‘Yeah, bhaiya, don’t eat chicken here. Not safe.’ Rajpal had returned from the washroom.
‘He wanted a relationship with Zara,’ I said calmly. ‘He propositioned her several times.’ ‘What?’ Mrs Saxena gasped. The whistle of a pressure cooker in the kitchen disrupted our conversation. ‘Black daal in the pressure cooker?’ Saurabh said, sniffing in the direction of the kitchen. I glared at him. Mrs Saxena exploded. ‘Are you insane? My husband? One of the world’s best researchers in his field?’ Then the cooker whistled again. Saurabh jumped up from the sofa. ‘I’ll go turn the gas off, Mrs Saxena,’ he said. ‘Two whistles are enough for black daal, right?’ She nodded grimly.
I emptied out the contents of the safe and placed them in the middle of Zara’s bed. Safdar, Saurabh and I sat around them. I then picked up the items one at a time. The first was a passport. ‘That’s Zara’s passport,’ Safdar said. ‘Should I make a list?’ Saurabh said, taking out his phone. ‘Sure,’ I said. I dictated the contents as Saurabh noted everything down on his phone.
Amateur Detectives are on roll, huh?
‘I have a problem in life, uncle. I have always found it hard to “just move on”.’
Alright, now on serious note.
Yes, I started this book expecting it to have wild surprises since in recent years reviewers have been somewhat harsh on CB.
So far the book taking turn towards genre "children's detective book but actually aimed at adults" and now I have started enjoying this category.
Always cues to CB for making books a easy read.
On another note may have liked this continuing as Keshav and Saurabh's Detective adventures series.
I have seen highlighted line as feature line in movie "Faster Fene", who is famous child detective (fictional) in Marathi, my favourite as well.
‘I ordered fresh chole bhature. Have one at least,’ I said. The intoxicating aroma of fried dough and spicy chole hit Saurabh’s nose, but he battled every instinct and ignored the food. He continued to read his five-inch thick Organic Chemistry textbook, which was heavy enough for bicep curls in the gym. He continued to stare at the hexagonal structure of the benzene molecule for no particular reason.
‘I will tell you. Can you please eat the chole bhature first?’ I said. ‘Look, this bhatura is so fluffy.’ I shunted the plate of food towards him. Saurabh looked at the plate like he had found his missing child after several years. ‘I didn’t even have breakfast,’ Saurabh said. ‘Why?’ ‘To show you I am upset,’ Saurabh said, and tore into a bhatura.
‘There’s nothing big I plan to do. I just want to talk to Sikander. He’s Zara’s family, after all.’ ‘The stepbrother? The one who probably carries around an AK-47 like a phone powerbank?’
This is kind of reason why the book has children's book tone. IRL you can't expect everyone to be honest, straightforward version.
This comes from my experience in school when I had asked accused questions believing he will help the case directly and then same with accuser. In the end it didn't help me much and other socially smart people did have better understanding and helped the teacher.
‘Good. I want us to reach a dead end. So you stop this murder-case obsession.’ ‘And do what instead? Teach bored students how to crack an impossible entrance exam?’
Paharganj would make a great setting for a video game. Navigating the streets while remaining unhurt could be the challenge. Saurabh and I dodged auto rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, cows, donkeys, motorbikes, hawkers and thousands of pedestrians as we made our way through the narrow by-lanes.
‘Saurabh, seriously—’ ‘Shh. Decided.’ I looked at Saurabh. His fat, round face made him look like a Pixar teddy bear. ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘If someone murdered me, will you also solve my case like this?’ ‘I would tell the murderer to kill me instead,’ I said. Saurabh blushed. I laughed.
Lolz
Even though I didn’t like to admit it, I felt good that someone as smart as Raghu was thinking along the same lines as me.
Three months later ‘A little higher,’ I said. The carpenter and his assistant raised the sign above the shop by six inches. I read it out loud. ‘Z Detectives’.
Yes! yes! Yes!!
