Shivraj Sharma, whose very first visit to the Laughing Club had ended so dramatically and in such turmoil, was first on Puri’s list of interviewees. His title was superintending archaeologist; it said so on the door to his office deep in the vaults of the National Museum, a stone’s throw from Raj-path.
The contents of his office also left the visitor in no doubt as to his occupation. Crates containing broken bits of pottery and fragments of idols coccooned in Bubble Wrap were stacked on the shelves. The walls were papered with maps indicating the territory occupied by the Harappan Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished between 2,600 and 1,900 BC. Pinned to a board were satellite images of the area lying between the Himalayas and the Arabian Sea, with a line indicating one of the possible routes of the lost Sarasvati River.
“I am happy to see you, but I spoke with the police yesterday and told them everything I know,” Sharma explained to Puri. His tone was amiable but betrayed a boyish insouciance common amongst India’s so-called creamy layer.
“As you can see I’ve a good deal of work to get on with,” he added, indicating the manuscript that lay on the desk in front of him. “I do hope this won’t take too long.”
Sharma was pushing fifty, smartly dressed in a striped shirt, silk tie and blue blazer. He had visited the temple that morning and was wearing a fresh, rice-encrusted tilak on his forehead and a knotted kalava on his wrist. He wore thick glasses, and like so many people in Delhi today, his eyes suffered from the pollution – hence the bottle of eyedrops, which, judging from his damp eyelids, the archaeologist had used moments before the detective had been shown into his office.
“Sir, just five minutes is all that is required,” said Puri.
The plump man in the safari suit and Sandown cap standing in front of Sharma’s desk, business card in hand, was not the boisterous Vish Puri who had kept his son-in-law Har-tosh entertained last night with generous amounts of Royal Challenge. Nor the supremely confident, tough-talking version, either. Face-to-face with a learned, well-to-do type, he was deferential.
This was an instinctual reaction. Academics were up there with ministers and virtuoso musicians, and such erudite surroundings genuinely awed him. But his deportment did his cause no harm. Obsequiousness was what Indians of such standing – barre admi, big men – were used to, and as Puri was well aware, allowing their conceit and assumption of intellectual superiority to go unchallenged often proved beneficial.
“Very well, but five minutes is all I can spare,” said Sharma with a sigh, not deigning to stand or shake his visitor’s hand. He motioned Puri into a chair.
“Most kind of you, sir, and quite an honor, I must say,” said Puri. He glanced around the office with a childish glint in his eye. “Such a fascinating field you work in. So much of history and culture. I myself take great interest in the Mauryan dynasty. Something of a golden age we might call it.”
“India was certainly a very different place in those days, Mr…” Sharma referred to the detective’s business card. “… Puri,” he read, squinting down through his bifocals. “But my speciality is Harappan culture.”
“Fascinating,” Puri said, beaming.
“Currently my department is involved in extensive underwater marine work off the coast of Gujarat. There is every indication that we have located Dvaraka.”
“The lost city of the Mahabharata.” Puri’s eyes widened in awe.
“This find, together with the discovery of the Sarasvati River and a good deal of other evidence unearthed in the past forty or so years, leaves no doubt as to the indigenous origins of Vedic culture,” added Sharma.
The controversial nature of this statement was not lost on Puri. It suggested a Hindu nationalist bent, a rejection of the theory that Aryan tribes brought the holy Hindu scriptures to India from elsewhere. But he merely said, “Just imagine what India would be like had we not had so many of invasions. Is it any wonder everything has gone for a toss?”
Sharma met Puri’s gaze in silent, meditative appraisal.
“It is undeniable that certain, shall we say, alien belief systems have been foisted on us that have no place here and have done considerable harm to our indigenous culture.” A slight smile played across his lips. “But that’s not what you came here to talk about, now, is it, Mr. Puri?” said the archaeologist.
“Correct, sir,” answered the detective, fishing out his notebook and opening it to a new page. “Just a few questions are there.”
Sharma gave a vague nod of encouragement.
“I would be most grateful if you told me what happened yesterday morning exactly,” said Puri.
Sharma sighed. “As I already told the police,” he said slowly and deliberately, “it is extremely difficult for me to answer that question.”
“I understand you dropped your glasses, is it?”
“That’s right, Mr. Puri. And without them I can hardly see a thing. Everything is just a blur. So I was groping around in the dark for a while, so to speak.”
“What point exactly you dropped them, sir?”
“Just after Professor Pandey started telling his silly knock-knock joke and everyone started laughing again. I saw this mist forming on the ground. Where it came from I can’t say – and then there was a flash. It startled me and I fell over backward. That’s when my glasses came off.”
“You started laughing, is it?”
“I did not. The others were all howling, though. I could hear them.”
“You were able to move?”
“Perfectly able, Mr. Puri.”
“And by the time you got your glasses back on, Dr. Jha was lying dead and the Kali apparition, she was gone?”
“Exactly.”
“So you never saw her?”
“I saw a figure but it was blurred.”
Puri asked if he had seen the murder weapon.
“Again this is all in the statement I made to the police.”
“Yes, sir. Just I am cross-referencing. Sometimes these things get in a muddle.”
“I did not see the murder weapon,” Sharma stated categorically.
Puri scribbled in his notebook and then asked: “Sir, how you felt afterward?”
“Awful, obviously. It was a great shock. It’s not every day this sort of thing happens.”
“You told Inspector Singh you had a headache, is it?”
“That’s right. I came home and used some Muchukunda.”
“That is what exactly?”
“You’ve never heard of it, Mr. Puri?” Sharma tut-tutted and wagged a finger at him. “It’s an Ayurvedic remedy. A paste that is applied to the forehead. Much better than aspirin. It’s been used in India since time immemorial.”
Puri tried making a note of it, but his pen didn’t work. He chose another from the four in the outside breast pocket of his safari suit, but that one didn’t work either. The same was true with the next.
“Just the humidity is wreaking havoc,” he said by way of an apology.
“Here, take mine,” said Sharma impatiently.
The detective wrote down ‘Muchukunda’, checked that he had got the spelling right, and then asked: “You saw anything unusual, sir?”
“Unusual? Mr. Puri, I believe the entire incident falls under that category, does it not?”
“Yes, sir. You saw any suspicious persons around the place?”
“After Dr. Jha was murdered the place was mobbed by people. Dozens of them sprang from nowhere. It was complete chaos.”
“You didn’t see any ice cream wallahs, for example?”
Sharma gave him a quizzical smile. “So early?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I did not.”
Puri could sense that his time was running short; he got in his next question quickly.
“Dr. Jha was known to you?”
“I met him yesterday for the first time,” Sharma replied briskly. “And now, Mr. Puri, I must get on with my work. I’m giving a lecture at the Habitat Centre this evening and I need to prepare.”
“Actually, sir, one last question is there.”
“Last one?”
“Undoubtedly, sir.” Puri paused. “Just I wanted to ask, it was your first time at this Laughing Club?”
“That’s right.”
“How you came to join exactly?”
“I heard about it through somebody – a friend, I think. I’m in need of exercise so I thought I’d give it a go.”
“Forgive me, sir, but you look fit already, if I may say so.”
“Well, looks can be deceptive, Mr. Puri. I am in as much need of exercise as the next man. And they say laughter is good for you.”
“You enjoyed it, sir?”
“Now that’s four more questions, Mr. Puri, and frankly I fail to see the relevance. But seeing as you ask, I did not enjoy it. There’s something very unnatural about forcing yourself to laugh. It didn’t feel comfortable.”
“You won’t be continuing membership, sir?”
“No, Mr. Puri, it’s not for me. And now if you don’t mind, I’ll take back my pen.”
Second on Puri’s list was N.K. Gupta, senior advocate.
Puri had no difficulty locating his house near Bengali Market, but he found the front door locked and barricaded from the inside. A big swastika had been painted in red on the doorstep to ward off evil.
“Go away! I don’t want to talk to anyone!” Gupta shouted from behind the door after Puri rang the bell three times.
“But it is Vish Puri this side. I’m looking into – ”
“I don’t care who you are!” interrupted the lawyer. “Those media persons have been banging on my door all day. All I want is to be left alone! I’ve got nothing to say to anyone!”
It took the detective a good ten minutes to persuade Gupta to come to the front window.
Even then he refused to put on the lights or fully pull back the curtains. He stood a couple feet from the window, his face barely visible.
“None of us is safe!” he exclaimed. Puri caught a glimpse of his wild, tormented eyes. “She will return and murder us all!”
“Most unlikely,” replied the detective soothingly. “What you saw was someone pretending to be the goddess, only.”
“How do you know? You weren’t there. I tell you that was no human being! It was the goddess herself. I looked into her eyes! She breathed fire!”
“All a trick of some sort,” said Puri.
His words were wasted; Gupta could not be persuaded. And yet the advocate retained his legal faculties and, despite his ranting, provided the detective with a remarkably intelligible account of the murder: how he had been unable to stop himself laughing and felt transfixed by ‘an invisible force’. He remembered the caws of the crows, the barks of the dogs and the mysterious mist. Kali had ‘materialized out of thin air’ and floated above the ground.
“She was absolutely hideous! Her arms writhing, the skulls around her neck clunking together. I can’t get that noise out of my head. And her voice, Mr. Puri! Her voice! Like… like the screams of murdered children!”
Gupta came closer to the window and looked left and right down the street.
“What about a severed head? You saw that, also?” asked Puri.
“Yes! Yes! It was dripping with blood!”
“You recognized his face – this gentleman who had been apparently deprived of his body, that is?”
Gupta faltered. “I… I didn’t see it clearly,” he admitted.
“There was no blood found at the scene apart from that belonging to Dr. Jha,” Puri pointed out.
Sharma grew agitated again. “I’m telling you what I saw.”
The detective asked about the sword.
Gupta said he had seen it driven through the Guru Buster’s chest. But what had become of it he could not say.
“I covered my eyes. After that I can’t remember much.”
“When were you able to move your feet?”
“Immediately after she disappeared.”
“And it is my understanding you had a headache, is it?”
“Yes, and it won’t go away, Mr. Puri! It will never go away!” He gripped his hair with his hands. “Just like her voice! It’s like she’s here now, calling my name!”
Mr. Ved Karat lived in New Rajendra Nagar. A political speechwriter for the Congress Party, he was also at home trying to recover from the ordeal of the day before. He too was badly shaken. In his case, though, it was the shock of witnessing the murder that had affected him. The goddess herself had not scared him.
“In fact I found her quite magnificent to look at,” he said, sitting in his living room still wearing his pajamas and dressing gown. In one hand he held a glass of fresh nimboo pani, to which he had added a pinch of black salt. “She had an extraordinary aura about her, an emanation of raw power. In a way it was awe-inspiring.”
Karat, too, had been unable to stop himself laughing and his feet had gone ‘leaden’. He described the mysterious mist and the severed head and a ‘blinding flash’ before Kali appeared, ‘levitating high above the earth and breathing fire’. The speechwriter had also witnessed Dr. Jha’s death and seen the sword sticking out of the poor man’s chest after Kali had ‘miraculously disappeared’.
When Puri explained that it was yet to be found, he seemed surprised.
“Someone took it?”
“Murder weapons are often getting removed from the scene. Most probably some unscrupulous fellow took possession of it.”
Karat went on to explain what had happened next: how he had stopped laughing the moment Dr. Jha was killed; how he had rushed to his aid.
“There was so much blood. I felt his pulse, but he was already gone.”
“After you had any headache?”
“I felt nauseous, but no, no headache,” said Karat.
“When were you able to move your feet?”
The speechwriter had to think for a moment before answering. “I believe it was soon after she vanished,” he said.
Puri reached the residence of Professor R.K. Pandey, the Laughing Club instructor and organizer, late in the afternoon. A detached four-bedroom house in West Shalimar Bagh, it was surrounded by a seven-foot wall.
“Very nice to meet you!” Pandey greeted the detective at the front door with a warm, welcoming smile. “Are those rubber soles you’re wearing? There’s a chance of an electric shock, you see.”
Puri looked down at his shoes with a quizzical expression. “They are made of natural rubber. From Kerala, I believe.”
“Excellent! Then do come in.”
Puri followed him through the front door and inside the house, which smelt of pipe tobacco. A collection of old computers, TVs, vacuum cleaners, electric razors, calculators and tangles of wires cluttered the place. Circuit boards, soldering irons and current testers lay on a workbench positioned against the far wall. In the center of the room stood an old washing machine that had been gutted of its innards; it looked like a robot that had suffered a nervous breakdown.
“I’m building a rudimentary thermoelectric generator,” explained Pandey as he knelt next to his creation, tightening a wing nut with a spanner.
“Pardon?” asked Puri.
“It converts heat into electricity. This one creates cold air from hot! Does the job much cheaper than solar power. Think of the potential here in India. This one’s for my class, to show my students. Bright young minds!”
“It’s dangerous?” asked Puri with a frown, hovering by the door.
“You can never be too careful, can you? Not when you’re dealing with electricity. That’s why I asked about your shoes. Rubber provides insulation. Look at mine!” He lifted his right foot in the air to show Puri his boots. “See?”
“Very good, sir,” said Puri, stepping tentatively into the room.
“Are you here about Dr. Jha’s death?” said Pandey, beaming. He sounded positively excited by the prospect.
“I’m doing my own investigation,” explained the detective, puzzled by the man’s exuberant mood. “His murder should not and must not go unsolved.”
Pandey looked up from what he was doing. “Good for you,” he said, smiling. “And you’re of the opinion nothing paranormal occurred?”
“At the present time, I am concerned with your opinion, only,” he answered.
“I’d be happy to tell you what I saw,” said Pandey with an ironic smile. He stood up, put the spanner on his workbench and picked up his pipe. “Frankly, it’s baffling,” he continued, emptying the bowl of the pipe into a dustbin and then filling it with fresh tobacco. “As an electrical engineer, I deal in data, verifiable results – in proof. But what happened yesterday… well, I can’t explain it. Whatever that thing was – goddess, deity, apparition – it levitated three feet off the ground. That is not within the capabilities of mortal man.”
“Must be a trick of some sort,” suggested the detective.
“An illusion?” Pandey shook his head as he lit his pipe and the smoke wafted up over his face and hair. “I saw no wires, no stilts, no platform.”
“Surely, sir, you and other members were confused, no? Something was affecting you – some narcotic or gas. Could be it had you seeing things that were not there.”
“Hallucination? It’s possible, I suppose. I did have a headache, which could have been an aftereffect.”
“Concerning the levitation,” said Puri. “What if some sort of magnetism were used?”
“An electromagnetic field? Interesting!” Pandey pondered the idea for a moment. “I suppose it would be possible for someone to levitate using such means. But nothing like that has been done before. You’d need a lot of equipment – a power supply, for example.”
“What about a projection of some sort?” asked Puri.
“Another interesting idea! But no, I’m afraid it couldn’t have been. Whatever killed Dr. Jha was definitely three-dimensional.”
Pandey went on to relate his version of events. He maintained that the ‘avatar’ had stood twenty feet high. Only after she had disappeared had he been able to move his feet again. The one major discrepancy was what had happened to the murder weapon.
“Again, I cannot explain how it happened scientifically. Metal cannot disintegrate of its own volition. That’s impossible. And yet I saw the sword turn to dust,” said Pandey, suddenly letting out a short giggle.
Puri eyed him curiously.
“Why no one else saw it happen?” he asked.
“How they missed it, I can’t imagine.”
And the ‘miraculous’ appearance and disappearance of the goddess?
“The flashes could very easily have been man-made,” the professor conceded. “They caused temporary blindness.”
“You saw any ice cream wallah after?”
“No, but then I was busy trying to save Dr. Jha’s life.”
Puri referred to his notes.
“Mr. Ved Karat tells he died right away. He searched for the pulse but found none.”
“That may be, but my first instinct was to get him to the hospital.”
Puri changed tack.
“How long you knew him – Dr. Jha, that is?” he asked.
“Two years or so. Since he joined the Laughing Club.”
“You were close, sir?”
“We became friends, yes.” Professor Pandey looked up toward heaven and raised his voice, saying, “A more courageous or generous man never walked the face of the earth.”
Again, the detective found himself flummoxed by the man’s lightheartedness.
“Why you didn’t attend the cremation?” he asked.
“But I did, Mr. Puri. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“Sir, when it comes to faces my mind is better than any camera. That is because it is never running out of film. I am one hundred and fifty percent sure you were not there.”
“All I can say is that in this instance you are mistaken,” said the professor, apparently untroubled by the detective’s assertion. “I was one of the first to offer my condolences. Perhaps you came late? I might have had my back to you.”
Puri wondered if Pandey might have been the man with the video camera but decided he was too tall.
“One thing I’m getting confusion over,” continued the detective. “Dr. Jha was your good friend. Yet you are not at all saddened by his demise. Very jolly, in fact.”
“I can assure you that I am absolutely devastated,” answered Pandey. “Suresh was a dear, dear man. But it is not in my nature to grieve. I believe in a positive outlook at all times. We only have one life and it’s my opinion that we should make the most of it every minute of every day. That is why I do laughter therapy. Laughter cures all our ills. It keeps us in a positive mental state.”
“There are times when crying is necessary also, no?”
“Perhaps. But laughter is so much better! It is the antidote to all the miseries of our planet. My answer to Suresh’s passing is to hold a Laughter Memorial for him. I am inviting everyone who knew and loved him to come to the Garden of Five Senses day after tomorrow. Together we will enjoy a good chuckle – the best thing for our grief. I do hope you can make it.”
Puri said that, regrettably, he would be ‘otherwise engaged’.
“Very good, very good, very good,” said Pandey, beaming again as he showed Puri to the door. “The best of luck with your investigation. I sincerely hope you find whoever – or should I say whatever – did this.”
“Allow me to assure you, sir, Vish Puri never fails,” said the detective in a dry, even voice. “No amount of hocus or pocus or jugglery of words will prevent me.”
Pandey walked him out to the gate and opened it for him.
“One thing before you go,” said the professor. “Do you know any good jokes? I haven’t heard one today.”
The detective was not in the mood for jokes. At best, he found Pandey’s buoyant mood inappropriate.
“Nothing comes to mind,” he answered.
“Next time, then,” said Pandey with a grin. “Keep smiling. Remember, laughter makes the world go round! Ho ho! Ha ha ha!”
Puri hurried across the street, fleeing from the sweltering heat and humidity, and called to Handbrake to get the Ambassador’s engine started. The driver, who had been trying to keep cool by the side of the road, jumped to attention and did as instructed. The car trembled into life, and within a minute or so the dashboard vents began to produce wafts of tepid but nonetheless welcome relief.
Puri sat back in his seat. His underwear was damp and was clinging to his skin. It was not the only thing making him feel uncomfortable. Something wasn’t right – about Pandey, that is.
“Number one,” Puri told Tubelight over the phone after they discussed plans to meet at Shadipur Depot at eight o’clock. “This fellow is positively merry. Like he is celebrating, in fact. Yet his friend has been viciously murdered. Second, why he said he attended Dr. Jha’s funeral when he did not?”
Puri saw no contradiction in a man of science also believing wholeheartedly in the miraculous. That was a common Indian characteristic. Still, there was something about his version of events that did not ring true – the description of the disintegrating sword being the most obvious disparity.
“Want him tailed, Boss?”
“Night and day. This fellow is up to something. Undoubtedly.”
Puri also asked Tubelight to check into Shivraj Sharma’s background. “That one has skeletons in his cupboard. No doubt there are one or two in his basement, also.”