Two hours later, after eating his fill of paapri chaat with lashings of tamarind chutney at a roadside stand, Puri descended underground on an escalator at Central Secretariat.
As the honking of the traffic faded and the air turned pleasantly temperate, he found himself in a cavernous, fluorescent-lit netherworld of gleaming floors and untarnished walls.
He bought a token for a few rupees at one of the efficiently run ticket counters, passed through the security check and automatic barriers, stood in an orderly line on the platform and boarded a shiny silver train.
Being whisked through tunnels more than twenty meters below the surface of the capital at fifty miles per hour was a great source of pride for the detective – as it was for most Delhiites, some of whom, he suspected, ventured underground just for the thrill of it. The construction of the Metro was a phenomenal success story. The first section had been completed to international standards within budget and ahead of schedule. The secret of the system’s success lay in the fact that it was not run by politicians and bureaucrats – as was the case with the Calcutta underground, which was a disgrace – but an autonomous, for-profit entity. It bore testimony to the capabilities of India’s private sector – “world-class beaters,” in Puri’s words.
The Metro had brought about something of a social revolution as well. Unlike on India’s trains, there was only one class of travel available. Passengers drawn from every religion and caste were forced to rub shoulders and treat one another with a certain cordiality – a phenomenon unthinkable in Delhi until relatively recently and one that remained a rarity in much of rural India.
Still, Puri rarely used the Metro. The truth was he didn’t enjoy traveling in what could often be cramped conditions. Nor did the anonymity it imposed appeal to him.
“Equality is all very well,” he had told his friend Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh at the Gym recently when they had been reflecting upon an appeal by the chief minister for the middle classes to use public transport. “But let other people enjoy. I myself will keep my car and driver.”
He had only opted for the underground this evening because he knew his Ambassador would be too wide for the narrow lanes of the slum where the magician lived.
His plan was to get off at Shadipur, where Tubelight would be waiting for him; from there they would continue their journey in the operative’s auto rickshaw.
The Metro journey required one change at Rajiv Chowk, where a digital display correctly predicted the arrival of the next train.
En route, Puri found that he was able to use his mobile phone. He called a number programmed into his speed dial.
A woman’s drowsy voice answered.
“I woke you?” asked Puri.
“I was just getting up.”
“I’ll see you tonight?”
“What time?”
“Should be nine, ten at the latest.”
The detective hung up and then called home.
Monika, one of the maidservants, answered. ‘Madam’ was out, she explained.
Puri tried Rumpi’s mobile next.
She sounded distracted and was coy about where she was and what she was doing. He could hear Mummy’s voice in the background.
“What are you two up to?” he asked.
“This and that, Chubby.”
“More shopping, is it?”
There was a slight pause. “Yes, you caught us at it. We’re picking up a few things for the twins.”
“Well I would be reaching late. Tomorrow I would be going to Haridwar at crack of dawn, also,” explained the detective.
This was code for, “I expect to be fed when I get home,” and Rumpi knew it.
“Don’t worry, Chubby,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of food.”
The contrast between the sedate Metro and the feverish world above left Puri wondering if he had not imagined the underground journey.
It was not uncommon for him to experience such a sense of dislocation when working in Delhi these days. The India of beggars and farmer suicides and the one of cafes selling frothy Italian coffee were like parallel dimensions. As he slipped back and forth between them, he often found himself pondering the ancient Indian axiom that this world is but maya, an illusion, a collective dream.
Riding in the back of Tubelight’s auto rickshaw as it bumped, shuddered and zigzagged along the turbulent byways of Shadipur quickly snapped the detective out of his reverie, however.
The slum, one of Delhi’s largest, was inhabited almost entirely by street entertainers: puppeteers, snake charmers, bear handlers, acrobats, musicians, troupes of actors who performed plays with social messages, the odd storyteller and jadoo wallahs. But the view through the scratched, convex windscreen was depressingly familiar: a sooty ghetto of ramshackle brick houses smothered in cow dung patties. Plastic sheeting, chunks of concrete and twisted scrap metal were draped over roofs. Canvas tents were pitched amidst heaps of garbage, where filthy, half-clad children defecated and played.
Eyes – curious, anxious, searching, cloudy with cataracts – stared out from doorways; slit windows; smoke-filled, pencil-thin alleyways. Puri caught glimpses of dark-skinned women with half-veiled faces cooking chappatis over open fires. Families crouched on charpoys eating from shared bowls with their hands. Young men stood out in the open in their underpants, washing themselves.
Like any jungle, it was infested with animals. Mangy mutts ran snarling alongside the auto rickshaw; chickens and ducks clucked and squawked as they scurried out of the way of the oncoming vehicle; monkeys hanging from electrical cables illegally tapping the power grid screeched overhead at the intruders on their territory.
Tubelight pulled up outside a narrow, ramshackle house.
“This is the place,” he said in Hindi, looking around nervously. “I’ll have to wait outside.” He added quickly: “To keep an eye on my auto.” And then: “Someone might steal it.”
“I am to face the jadoo wallah alone, is it?” mused Puri in English. “Let us hope he does not turn me into a frog.”
“Let’s hope, Boss.”
“But he said he is willing to talk to me, is it?”
“I told him you wanted to see some magic and were willing to pay. The rest is up to you.”
Puri knocked on the door. A young boy answered, looked the detective up and down and motioned him inside. They crossed a small, drab room and stepped out into a courtyard. From there, they mounted a flight of concrete stairs that curled around the outside of the house like a python.
Akbar the Great, descendant of courtly magicians, was sitting on a charpoy on the roof. His eyes were those of an anxious man, one who had lived his life by his wits and expected trouble around every corner. Still, he greeted his visitor with a respectful salaam and his right hand placed over his heart.
“Please forgive the conditions in which we must welcome such an honored guest,” he said in a lyrical Urdu rarely heard in Delhi these days. Akbar the Great’s wrinkled face was surmounted by an impeccably clean topi. His white beard reached his chest. “Once we entertained Mughal emperors. Babur, Humayan, Aurangzeb – all loved our magic. In those bygone days, they rewarded us with precious stones – rubies from Badakhshan, diamonds from Golkonda. But now we are reduced to performing on the streets for a few rupees, constantly harassed and beaten by the police. Earlier today we were outside the Red Fort and they chased us away and hit us with their lathis.”
“There is no need to apologize on my account, Baba,” said the detective, who knew only too well that India’s Muslims, the largest minority in the world, were amongst its most marginalized. He sat down on a chair facing the magician. “It is an honor to meet you. I am told that you are the greatest magician in all of India.”
Akbar the Great acknowledged this praise with an assuming nod.
“I’m known from one part of India to the next!” he declared with a flourish of his worn hands. “There is not a village or town where I have not performed. Ask anyone and they will have heard of Akbar the Great – he who can pull thorns from his tongue, swallow steel balls whole and bring the dead back to life!” His patter sounded well rehearsed; he delivered it as he might to an audience on the street. “But nowadays people are not interested in magic. They all want to stay at home and watch TV, an invention of the evil one, Shaitan!”
The boy who had answered the front door, one of Akbar the Great’s great-grandsons as it turned out, served tea in chipped cups as the Muslim call to prayer sounded over the slum. Beyond the roof’s precipitous edge lay the jutting, irregular rooftops of Shadipur – homemade TV aerials, laundry lines and plastic water tanks superimposed against the setting sun.
“I was told you have come to see me perform,” said Akbar the Great, as they began to sip their tea. “My fee is five hundred rupees.”
“Forgive me, Baba, but I did not come here to see your show,” said Puri.
“Oh?”
“I am seeking information. And for this I am willing to pay one thousand.” Puri took the money from his wallet.
“What kind of information?” Akbar the Great sounded suspicious, but his eyes were fixed on the crisp hundred-rupee notes in the detective’s hand.
“Baba, I need your guidance. I am investigating the murder of Dr. Jha, the Guru Buster. You must have heard that he was killed yesterday morning on Rajpath. I believe the so-called Kali apparition was nothing of the kind. It was an illusion. I would like to understand how the levitation in particular was achieved.”
Akbar surveyed him with a deep frown.
“You’re a policeman?”
“No, Baba. I am Vish Puri, the private investigator.”
“You’re working for someone?”
“Only for myself. The victim was a friend of mine.”
Akbar the Great thought for a while, stroking his long beard, and then said something in a strange language to his great-grandson. With a nod, the boy stepped forward, held out a hand for the money and took it. Then the magician said: “How it was done is irrelevant. Perhaps it was real jadoo! Perhaps it was only a trick. Who knows? It’s what people believe that is the important thing.”
“What do you mean by real magic?”
“Genuine miracles performed by those with genuine supernatural powers, of course.”
“You believe such things are possible?”
“The Holy Koran is full of examples. So are the Bible and Ramayan. Water can be turned to wine. Many things happen in this life that cannot be explained.”
“Do you have these powers, Baba?” asked Puri.
The old man smiled for the first time. It was a kindly, avuncular smile, the detective thought to himself.
“Alas, I’m only a humble magician,” he said. “I do simple tricks and entertain people. But what the audience believes… well, that’s another matter. When I bring a chicken back to life – as I often do – they ask me how it is done. If I tell them it is a magic trick, a sleight of hand achieved by distraction, they get very angry and accuse me of hiding something from them! To appease them I have to say that I get my powers by sleeping at the cremation ground. Then they’re satisfied and stop accusing me of being a fraud!” The magician smiled indulgently. “You see,” he added, “people need to believe in these things. They want to be fooled, but they do not want to be made fools of!”
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
“I will perform a simple trick for you,” he said. “It’s not part of my normal routine, so I don’t mind explaining how it’s done. It might help you understand how easily people’s eyes are deceived.”
Soon Akbar the Great was lying on the roof’s solid concrete surface. The boy, who was regularly chopped to pieces on the streets of Delhi only to be miraculously reassembled again, announced in a loud, confident voice: “Make obeisance to the feet of Indra, whose name is one with magic, and to the feet of Shambara, whose glory was firmly established in illusions!”
Puri watched with rapt attention.
“During his travels across the length and breadth of India, my great-grandfather Akbar the Great has collected many magical objects. Rings, cloaks that can turn you invisible, a bottle that houses a terrible djinn – heaven forbid that it should ever escape!”
The boy held up a dirty blanket.
“It was high up in the Himalayas that he was given this from a man with three eyes! Now, it may look like an ordinary blanket to you. But anyone lying beneath it will float off the ground and up into the air!”
He draped the blanket over his grandfather.
“I will now make Akbar the Great, greatest magician in all of India, float up above the roof!” he declared – and as an aside, he added with the cheeky humor characteristic of Indian street jadoo wallahs: “Let us hope Baba did not have too large a lunch or he will be too heavy!”
The boy closed his eyes, held his hands over his greatgrandfather’s body, moved them around as if he was divining for water and spoke the magic words, “Yantru-mantra-jaala-jaala-tantru!”
Nothing happened for ten seconds. He repeated his incantation. And then Akbar the Great’s body began to shudder and rise upward.
The magician floated to a height of roughly three feet and remained there, suspended in midair.
For the life of him, Puri could not see how the trick was done. There were no wires connected to the blanket; no one was holding Akbar the Great up; no box had been slipped under him; there was no trapdoor. “You’ve got some kind of lifting device under there?” he asked after the magician had gently floated back down to earth.
“The jasoos is clueless!” cackled Akbar the Great with delight. “Where are your powers of detection now, sahib?”
There were hoots of laughter from the five or six other members of Akbar the Great’s family who had by now gathered on the roof. Puri bristled; he did not like to be made a fool of.
“Are you going to tell me how it is done?” he demanded.
“I told you earlier, I got my powers at the cremation ground!”
The laughter reached a crescendo and then the magician pulled back the blanket.
Beneath lay two old hockey sticks, one on either side of him. A pair of shoes and socks identical to those Akbar the Great was wearing were attached to the ends.
“As the blanket was laid over me, you were distracted and didn’t notice when I made the switch. Then I raised the sticks under the blanket and, at the same time, elevated my head. My feet and backside remained on the floor the entire time.”
“By God! I would never have imagined it could be so simple,” exclaimed the detective in English, clapping enthusiastically. And then reverting to Hindi again he said: “But whoever killed Dr. Jha yesterday was not under a blanket. The video taken by the French tourist shows Kali floating free. How was that done?”
Akbar the Great shrugged. “That I cannot answer,” he said.
“Can you at least tell me who is capable of such a feat?”
Puri’s question was met with a stony silence. Akbar the Great said something to the boy, who in turn told Puri politely but firmly: “My great-grandfather is getting very tired and needs to rest.”
The audience had come to an end. But the detective managed to get in one last question.
“Tell me, Baba. Could a rationalist have pulled off this illusion?”
Akbar the Great shook his head. “Rationalists learn simple tricks that are done by traveling sadhus, like holding pots of boiling oil in their bare hands or piercing themselves with needles. The man you are looking for is no rationalist. He is an illusionist. Or perhaps someone who knows real magic.”
Puri and Tubelight made their way back through the slum.
The meeting had proven useful but also frustrating.
“Could be Akbar the Great is knowing the identity of the murderer,” said Puri. “Question is: Why protect him?”
“There’s probably some kind of magician’s code, Boss,” suggested Tubelight in Hindi. “If they’re anything like my family, they’re sworn never to reveal the identity of another member of the clan. Maybe the murderer’s a blood relative. In which case they’ll never give him up.”
It was only after the auto rickshaw had pulled into the main road that Puri discovered a piece of paper in one of his trouser pockets.
It had a name and address written on it.
“Manish the Magnificent. Hey Presto! GK1 M Block Market.”
He showed it to Tubelight. “Someone slipped it into my pocket!” marveled Puri.
“Want to go to GK, Boss?”
Puri checked his watch. It was nearly eight. “Jaldi challo!” he said.
Manish the Magnificent’s picture appeared on a board on the pavement outside the entrance to Hey Presto! – “magic, comedy, music and more.” He was wearing a maharajah’s garb: bejeweled turban, silken robes and fake whiskers. Puri recognized him instantly nonetheless. His real name was Jaideep Prabhu.
“So you’ve been reincarnated after so many years, is it, Jaideep?” said the detective to himself. “Takes a master of disguise to see through one, huh.”
The hostess at the door led him into a restaurant-cum-bar bedecked with mirrors, rotating disco balls and velvet-upholstered booths. It was packed with good-looking young people. Laughter and cigarette smoke filled the air.
Puri sat down at a small table near the stage, where a jazz pianist and saxophonist were playing Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’.
“By God! Eight hundred for whisky!” he exclaimed out loud when he read over the drinks menu. “That’s for the entire bottle, is it?”
The young waiter, who had a ponytail and an overly familiar bearing, eyed the man in the safari suit, Sandown cap and aviator sunglasses with undisguised bemusement.
“Hey, man, what time are you on tonight?” he asked.
“Pardon?” replied Puri sharply.
“You’re one of the stand-ups, right?”
The detective, who rarely lost his temper, could barely restrain himself. “Listen, Charlie, I am a private investigator and I am here to see your boss,” he growled through gritted teeth. “Give him this.” He handed the insolent young man his card.
“‘Vish Puri, managing director, chief officer and winner of six national awards, confidentiality is our watchword’,” read the waiter out loud. “That’s hilarious! I can’t wait to see your act.”
The detective banged his fist down hard on the table. “I am not an act!” he exploded. “Now go tell Jaideep Prabhu that Vish Puri is here!”
The other customers were all staring.
“OK, dude,” said the waiter, holding up his hands defensively. “I thought you were… so you’re for real. Wow! I’ll give the boss your card. Relax, OK? Now what can I get you?”
“Bring one peg whisky and soda. No ice. And don’t call me ‘man’ or ‘dude’! You should call elders ‘ji’ or ‘sir’!”
“Fine, sir. But just so you know… my name’s not Charlie.”
The waiter headed off to the bar to fetch his drink.
Puri sat back in his chair, fuming. Some of the other customers were still eyeing him. They looked amused. Why exactly, the detective could not fathom. Self-consciously, he checked his cap to make sure it was sitting squarely on his head.
How he hated these new ‘trendy’ haunts! Like the malls, they were indicative of a crass materialism and hedonism undermining the family values that underpinned Indian society.
Take those females at the next table, for example, Puri thought. Baring their legs in public, drinking alcohol, using gutter language: totally disgraceful. Or those two nancy boys over there, the ones in silk shirts and big sideburns. By God, they’re holding hands actually! What the bloody hell kind of place you’re running here, Jaideep? he wondered.
Puri felt a letter to the editor of the Times of India coming on. Perhaps he would juxtapose his views with those of the late Dr. Jha. The rationalist had not been a fan of this crass, Americanized culture, either. To him education and knowledge had been all-important.
But they had held opposing views on the role of religion. Dr. Jha had often referred to dogma as the ‘root of all evil’. The detective, on the other hand, regarded a belief in the divine as essential. Without it, in his view, society would disintegrate.
“The boss says to tell you he’ll be backstage after the show, sir,” said the waiter when he returned with Puri’s drink.
The jazz musicians finished their set, the lights were dimmed and then a mist began to creep across the stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a voice offstage. “Tonight you will be astounded and spellbound, taken to new heights of expectation and reality! Prepare your mind to travel to new frontiers, beyond time and space! Prepare to be dazzled by the greatest magician in all of India!”
A flash and a puff of smoke and Manish the Magnificent appeared onstage. His sudden appearance engendered a round of applause and he bowed regally.
“For my first death-defying trick I will need a volunteer from the audience,” he announced.
One of the leggy women at the nearby table was chosen and made her way up to the stage, sniggering and exchanging looks with her friends. The magician produced a pistol.
“I would like you to examine this and tell the audience if it is real.”
She did so and agreed that it certainly looked real, and then Manish the Magnificent made a show of loading the weapon with bullets. To prove these were ‘live ones’, he asked that a paper target on a stand be placed at the back of the stage. Once it was in position, he fired three times. The target, drilled with three round holes, was then shown to the audience.
“Now it’s your turn,” he told his young volunteer. “Only your target will be this tin can, which I will balance on top of my head!”
“Are you crazy?”
“Trust me, I am a professional!”
“Go on! Shoot!” a voice in the audience shouted encouragingly.
The young woman, whom Puri suspected was a plant, eventually agreed to his request. She took aim and fired. And lo and behold, Manish the Magnificent caught the bullet between his teeth.
“Next I will grow a mango tree from this pit before your very eyes.”
The magician planted the pit in a pot and watered it. Soon a green shoot appeared. Within a few minutes this had grown into a miniature tree that bore fruit, which he picked and threw into the audience.
One of India’s oldest tricks followed: a young boy climbed into a basket and Manish the Magnificent drove swords through it. The blades appeared bloodied, but the boy emerged miraculously unscathed.
Last came a version of the Indian rope trick.
The magician began by sitting next to a basket and playing a pungi, used by snake charmers. The end of a rope stood erect like a cobra and began to rise up into the air. When it had reached a height often feet, the boy climbed up the rope and, apparently out of nowhere, picked some coconuts.
After the show, Puri found Manish the Magnificent in his well-appointed office, puffing on a fat cigar. By now, he had shed his whiskers and turban.
“Mr. Vish Puri, sir,” he said, shaking the detective limply by the hand and then motioning him into the chair in front of his desk. “It’s been a very long time. But not long enough.”
Ten years had passed since Jaideep had robbed Khanna Jewelers in Karol Bagh in broad daylight.
Posing as a customer, he had swapped fifty lakhs’ worth of diamonds for glass replicas without any of the store attendants noticing. The detective, working on behalf of the owners, had caught him as he tried to sell the stones. Subsequently, Jaideep had been sentenced to six years in Tihar jail. Puri, unaware at the time that the thief was a trained magician, had never figured out how he had pulled off the robbery. Now that he had witnessed Jaideep’s conjuring skills, however, the mystery was finally solved.
“I’m not going to beat around bushes,” said Puri. “I want to know your location yesterday morning between six and six thirty exactly.”
The magician smiled through the haze of cigar smoke that separated them. “Ah, so that’s what you’re doing here. You’re investigating the murder on Rajpath. And you think I’m the guilty one.”
“Answer the question,” directed Puri.
“I’m flattered. But, you see, I couldn’t have done it.”
“Why exactly?”
“Because I am a reformed individual, Mr. Vish Puri, sir. I have been successfully reintegrated into society.”
“Don’t do jugglery of words,” scolded the detective. “Once a crook, always crooked. Now tell me where you were.”
Jaideep drew on his cigar and blew a big cloud in his visitor’s direction.
“Like any sensible person, I was in bed, of course. Naturally I was not alone. I think her name was Candy. She tasted sweet, that is for sure.”
“Anyone else can confirm?”
“Naturally my servants will be only too happy to do so. My driver, also. I can provide you with Candy’s number as well if you like. She provides a very reasonably priced home service if you’re interested.”
Puri did not rise to the bait.
“There can be no doubt this murder was done by a master illusionist,” he said. “There are only a handful of you fellows around. So if you’re not the one, must be you’ve a good idea who he is, no?”
“You expect me to give you names? Why should I?”
“Because I am something of a magician myself. You don’t believe me, is it? Very well. Allow me to show you one trick I learned long time back.”
The detective took his mobile phone from his pocket.
“This is my portable device. Nothing out of the ordinary. But see here this button? When I press it – hey presto! – one number appears. Know to whom it belongs? Inspector Jagat Prakash Singh, Delhi Police. Now there is nothing up my sleeve. Nothing hidden. See? But should I have need of pressing this green button, in seconds, only, Inspector Singh would answer day or night. Now… Inspector Singh is a very motivated young officer. I am quite sure he would be most interested in knowing where so much of money came for buying such a fancy club as this and what activities you are up to, also. That is aside from pulling so many rabbits from hats.”
Jaideep met Puri’s hard, uncompromising stare. He laid his cigar down on the lip of an ashtray and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Sitting in your bar for past forty minutes, only, I saw three crimes committed. Number one, your hostess was supplying drugs to customers – cocaine, looks like. Number two, the barman was watering down the whisky. Third, you’re having so many rats in your kitchen.”
“How could you know that?”
“Rats are always there, Jaideep.”
The magician scowled. “OK, Mr. Vish Puri, sir, you can put away your mobile. You’re right. What was done yesterday on Rajpath – the levitation, I mean – it’s never been achieved before, not out in the open. It’s a first. And before you ask, I have no idea how it was done. I’ve watched that video a dozen times and I can’t figure it out. Someone worked very hard to perfect that illusion. It’s a masterpiece.”
“Who did it?” The detective was still brandishing his phone.
Manish the Magnificent hesitated.
“Who?” demanded Puri.
“There are only three individuals capable of pulling off something like this,” said the magician. “The first is currently in intensive care, so you can rule him out. The second is a certain Bengali and he’s on tour in Europe.”
Puri made a note of their names all the same.
“And third?” he asked.
The magician paused, licking his lips, which had become dry.
“These days he’s known to people as none other than the great, all-seeing, all-powerful… Maharaj Swami.”
“You said ‘these days’.”
The magician looked suddenly coy. “That’s not the name he’s always gone by.”
“You knew him before, is it?”
“Oh, yes, I knew him. But what I’m about to tell you didn’t come from me. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly.”
“And you’ll leave after this and not come back?”
“Is that the way to treat a guest?”
Manish the Magnificent retrieved his cigar from the ashtray and blew on the tip until it glowed orange again.
“Very few people know what I’m about to tell you,” he said. “But the great Godman grew up in Shadipur in a family of magicians. His parents were Hindu, but they died when he was four and he was adopted into a Muslim family. His real name is Aman. We were neighbors and both grew up assisting the older jadoo wallahs on the streets and learning magic tricks. When we were old enough, we became partners and started working for ourselves.”
“Allow me to guess,” said the detective. “You got into criminal activity and eventually there was a falling-out.”
The magician eyed him warily. “Something like that. It was about twelve years ago. He suddenly disappeared one day along with a great deal of my money.”
“And?”
“Naturally I tried to locate him, but he was nowhere to be found.”
Some cigar ash fell into Manish the Magnificent’s lap and he brushed it away.
“Life went on,” he continued. “I went to prison – as you well know. Then a few years ago I was watching TV and Maharaj Swami comes on. I didn’t recognize him at first. Not with all that getup. He’d made himself look a lot older. He was also changed physically – he’s mastered yogic prana-yamic breathing. But the moment he started conjuring objects out of thin air, I knew it was Aman. I’d recognize his technique anywhere.”
Puri thought for a moment and then said: “One thing I am getting confusion over. Assuming it’s true your former partner betrayed you, why you’ve got tension about revealing his past?”
“Haven’t you heard, Mr. Vish Puri, sir? Maharaj Swami is now one of the most powerful men in India. The prime minister doesn’t go to the toilet unless he okays it. He could make life very uncomfortable for me.”
It was obvious to Puri that although the magician had made a pretense of not wanting to reveal what he knew about Maharaj Swami, he was only too happy to pass on what he knew.
“I take it you would not shed too many of tears in the event Swami-ji ended up behind bars,” he said.
Manish the Magnificent smiled. “Not many, no.”
“Then we have something in common – us two.”
“I suppose so,” the magician answered begrudgingly.
“Very good! So what else you can tell me about your friend Aman?”
“Only that he’s the most gifted magician I’ve ever come across. If anyone could have pulled off the illusion on Raj-path, it’s him.”
“What about his character?”
“He’s a perfectionist. I never knew him to give up on anything.”
“Any habits – drugs, alcohol?”
“Nothing.”
“Women?”
“He was always nervous around them.”
Puri made a note of this.
The magician remembered something else.
“Aman had this habit of collecting things – little mementos from places he’d been,” he said. “Railway ticket stubs, menus from restaurants, postcards. It was a kind of obsession with him. He used to keep a diary as well. He left it out once and I read some of it. He had written down everything that had happened to him – dates, names – along with notes and diagrams on the magic tricks he was developing.”
“He kept all these things where exactly?”
“In a silver metal trunk.”