BLOOD RED SARI Page 13

  ‘NGOs,’ Advaita said. ‘Indian NGOs.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So the Collective is on it. So is …’ she rattled off the names of a dozen NGOs that Nachiketa and she either worked with or whose managers they knew. She ran a long fingernail – painted black with silver dots – down the side of the sheets; they gave off a rasping papery sound. ‘These are most of the major NGOs in the country, and most of the minor ones too. Everyone I know is involved with one or more of these.’

  Nachiketa shook her head slowly, still not understanding. ‘So what does the list indicate?’

  Advaita picked up another paper, and another, holding the sheets up gingerly by the corners, as if touching them would dirty her hands. They trembled in the draft from the air-conditioning vent. ‘According to these documents, every single one of those NGOs is ultimately financed and controlled through a series of shell companies and other NGOs.’

  She put down the pages and picked up another, continuing to pick up and drop papers to illustrate her point as she went on. ‘Ultimately, if you follow the financial trail back, these documents claim that all these NGOs, which make up most of the major charities in the country, are being financed by these hedge funds and corporate investment funds.’

  Nachiketa’s head was beginning to throb, and so were her hands and the side of her neck and her cheek where she had been mauled by the flames. ‘You’ll have to spell it out for me, Addy. I still don’t understand. So all these NGOs are connected financially in some way. So?’

  Advaita dropped all the papers back on the bed. ‘So if you believe these documents, all of them are being financed by the same interlinked investment funds in the US, Europe and Asia, and that these funds are basically using these NGOs to recycle their profits and launder them.’

  Nachiketa lay back on the bed, her head swimming. She still didn’t get it. ‘So where are they getting their profits from, these funds? I mean, why do they need their profits laundered? Aren’t these funds legitimate?’

  Advaita nodded slowly. ‘The funds are legit. But the source of their profits isn’t.’

  She was about to continue when the door of the private room opened and a man came in.

  9.3

  THE ROOM WAS THE way she remembered it. Though she’d been here about two years earlier, the room had looked this way even when she was a child. The same old-fashioned furniture, rolltop desk and carved wooden bed, rosewood side table and carved Queen Anne chairs, all worn from decades of use and badly in need of polish. It would have looked classy if well-maintained and viewed in a house in Alipore or Golf Links, but here, in this dingy, dimly lit room with the torn cotton mattress and cheap sheets and clothes lying higgledy piggledy, it only looked impoverished.

  The professor was seated in his armchair, the one with the wooden slats that swivelled outwards so you could hook your feet on them and lie back. He was doing that now, dressed in the same old kurta–pyjama, an old clothbound book lying open on his lap, reading by the light of a single lamp in the corner. Probably reading one of the same old books she had always seen him reading, one of a set of Modern Library Classics as old as the furniture in the room. He looked older and thinner than ever, if such a thing were possible. How old was he now? She had no idea. But it had to be over ninety.

  ‘Sheila,’ he said. ‘Come, come.’

  ‘I have a taxi waiting down,’ she said. ‘I won’t stay long. I have to see the Hakkadi also tonight.’

  He pursed his thin lips as he straightened his legs, lowering them slowly to the ground. ‘The Chinaman. Your trouble must be very bad, huh? Big trouble, aachey?’

  She nodded slowly. ‘Big trouble.’ She held out the envelope. ‘This is the file I was talking about on the phone.’

  He indicated the bed. She put it down on the corner of the bed, then sat beside it. She respected the professor too much to just leave like that. He was one of the last links she had to her mother’s family. He was her mother’s uncle, her matula mama, although she had always called him ‘professor’. He looked at the envelope and she could see the eagerness in his eyes. Even at this age, he relished a new puzzle, a challenge. That was why he chose to live here in this seedy rundown one-room, half-terrace flat on Shakespeare Bazaar, rereading his old classics and earning a rupee or two by tutoring a graduate student from time to time. ‘One of the great economic theorists of his time’, The Telegraph had called him – Telegraph London, not Kolkata, although the Kolkata Telegraph had printed a fair share of hyperbole about him as well over the years. The Guardian had blamed the commercialization of economics for the vanishing of the great economic theorists, naming him in the very brief list. But that had been twenty-some years ago. Now, he was just an old man who spent his last years rereading books and eating hidol-shidol because it was cheap and nourishing.

  ‘You could feed the whole country putimaachi,’ he had told her once. ‘Every Indian would be fed daily, we would all be healthier and better nourished, and we would be able to focus our energies on more important things. Like ending war and replacing the capital-free market with a more sustainable long-term system.’ She had been eleven at that time but had listened intently, absorbing every word. ‘Don’t take everything your matula mama says seriously,’ her mother had told her in the rickshaw on the way back home – this was back when rickshaws were still drawn by men, not motors, in some parts of Kolkata, and were cheaper than trams or buses. ‘He means well, but he thinks about economics so deeply, he forgets that there are other things in the world.’

  He leaned forward, reaching for the envelope. She picked it up to hand it to him, then paused. He looked up at her, frowning, teeth bared because he was leaning so far forward, he was almost bent double. ‘Professor, men tried to kill me for this package,’ she said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone you have these documents, don’t discuss this information with anybody. Do you understand?’

  He grinned, showing the last seven or eight teeth he had left. ‘Who I will talk to, rey? You see any economic planning committee convening here?’

  She handed him the package. He almost dropped it, not expecting its weight. She put it on his lap. He opened the flap and reached inside. She put a hand on his thin wrist. The skin was cool and wrinkled like muslin cotton, it felt rougher than the frayed sleeve of the kurta he had on. ‘I will call you tomorrow and you can tell me what you think this means. Okay?’

  ‘Roger Wilco,’ he said, winking his bright brown eyes at her. ‘Will can do, sergeant-major!’

  She paused at the door before leaving and looked back. He was already poring through the documents, examining the rows and columns of figures and computations and statistics as eagerly as a hungry child eating at a wedding feast. She hoped she was doing the right thing by involving him. She had no choice: she needed an expert to confirm her suspicions and decipher the things she couldn’t understand.

  The odour of putimaachi followed her down the green staircase to the street and into the taxi where the Bangladeshi sighed wearily and started the engine as if he had been kept waiting all night and a day.

  The driver’s attitude of sullen indifference cracked when he saw her destination. ‘Burj Banglar!’ he said. ‘Amara sekhane?’

  ‘Turn left off the Bypass,’ she said. ‘Then go straight via—’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ he said vehemently. ‘I know!’

  He increased speed, cutting off a dawdling Honda Civic to get off the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. Sheila had been here only a couple of years earlier and it was impressive how fast the area was developing: the whole countryside seemed to be one vast bed of construction. Yellow metal giants towered and loomed and hulked everywhere: cranes, earth-movers, trucks and machines she didn’t even know the purpose of. Skeletons of half-constructed towers dominated the skyline, rising above a forest of stunted buildings. Redwood trees in the concrete jungle. Farther back, they had already passed the four-tower cluster on Prince Anwar Shah Road, until recently the tallest buildings in Kolkata. Now,
there were a half dozen others coming up that promised to be twice as tall, even among the tallest in the country. In Kolkata! Who would have believed it? It was expected in Mumbai, where even billionaires weren’t satisfied with lavish mansions and raised entire skyscrapers to house their families and their egos, but not in aamaar Banglar. But Banglar had changed. Perhaps this was the new Banglar, creaking and rattling and groaning in its metal womb to rise above the stunted past of British occupation, babu corruption and Communist regression.

  The Bangladeshi was actually humming by the time they turned into the road that led to the building she was visiting; she couldn’t identify the tune but it was definitely not Rabindra Sangeet. She sympathized with his enthusiasm. The building was an impressive sight from afar and grew only more impressive as they approached. An elongated diamond glittering in the night, illuminated in some kind of scintillating pattern that must make Chowringhee elders snort in disgust and pull their drapes tight to avoid being kept awake by bhadralok envy. Despite the name, it was apparently not related in any way to the similarly named Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest building. She supposed the name was aspirational rather than literal, making clever use of an existing brand word.

  Something occurred to her and she leaned forward. ‘Burj shobdo-ta … ki Arabi?’

  He paused in his humming without losing the beat. ‘Tower. Burj mane tower.’ He gestured at the diamond looming ahead.

  She sat back, enlightened. Being Bangladeshi and Muslim, she had guessed he would have a little more familiarity with Arabic than she did. So burj simply meant ‘tower’. That made her feel silly. Since the word simply meant ‘tower’ it could hardly be copyrighted. Right now, it was a lonely tower, isolated in this emptiness by its choice of location. Was this reclaimed marshland or was it the bigha owned by the royal family of Darbhanga? She couldn’t recall. But it was a good kilometre from the Bypass turnoff and the road being still unfinished, it was rough going. There was a construction site on her left and large earth-digging machines were noisily at work, creating noise in a decibel level so high, she could only hear the Bangladeshi humming intermittently. The name of the song came to her unbidden: it was the title song from the new Aamir Khan movie, the one in which he played an eighteen-year-old autistic mute seeking revenge on the men who had murdered his parents and special ed. teacher.

  Her cell phone rang when they were still a few hundred yards from the building. She would have missed it, except it was on vibrate-ring. She pulled out the iPhone and looked at the screen. It was a miracle it had survived her flight from the foreign assholes and the fight in the metro station, but it seemed okay, snug in its black rubber condom cover. She didn’t recognize the number but the city code was one she didn’t recognize either, and that was unusual. It was an Indian city, but that was all she could tell. The time was just past six-thirty though it was dark already, thanks to Indian Standard Time. Unlike the continental US which had almost the same longitudinal width as India, the subcontinent followed a single uniform time for the whole nation. That meant that the sun rose and set much earlier in the east – where she was – than on the western coast of the country. In other parts of India, it might still be working hours. This could be a telemarketer. For some reason, she didn’t think it was. Out of sheer curiosity and some sixth sense, she took the call.

  Ten

  10.1

  ‘HELLO, COULD I SPEAK to Aadila Shah, please?’ Anita said. She glanced around. It was nearing closing time, judging from the way the crowds were heading in the general direction of the exits. She would have to leave too, unless …

  ‘Who’s speaking, please?’ said a very cultured voice with a perfect English accent.

  ‘My name is Anita,’ she replied. Security guards were genially waving the crowd on. They were a few dozen yards away but weren’t looking in her direction yet. She remained seated on the bench. ‘It’s important.’

  The voice told her to hold on for a moment. She could hear music playing somewhere in the background. It sounded like jazz. Something by Coltrane, though she couldn’t be sure. She had never been a big fan of jazz but had briefly been involved with a woman who was a blues singer and had made her listen to all the classics, especially when in bed. It brought back sweet memories. Where was Charmaine now anyway?

  Someone came to the phone. Only now did she realize that the cell phone call had been forwarded to a landline. A younger voice said, somewhat breathlessly, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Aadila?’

  ‘Aadila’s on a trek.’ The younger voice shouted something over the Coltrane and someone else answered in the background. ‘She’ll be back Sunday night. You can reach her at her office Monday morning.’

  ‘It’s a bit urgent. Hasn’t she carried her cell?’ Anita asked. The security guards had reached her and one of them was gesturing to her to move on. She nodded to him, trying to smile around the HTC.

  ‘She has, but you know those hills; no signal,’ said the girl. ‘If it’s urgent you can always try Sadia’s cell.’

  Anita didn’t want to get into who Sadia might be. ‘Is this … her sister?’ she took a wild shot.

  ‘Um, no, this is her daughter Aasma speaking,’ said the girl, not particularly bothered by the question.

  She sounded so helpful, Anita decided to brave another, more foolish question. ‘Err, Aasma, this is going to sound a bit dumb, but could you tell me what your mother does?’

  The answer came pat without any hesitation, ‘Yeah, she’s an accountant, na. A.S. Shah & Associates. Are you a client?’

  The security guard was gesturing to her to get up. Anita nodded and started to rise from the bench she was sitting on. Her foot cramped with the pain and she almost doubled over in agony. It had been fine so long as she was walking around but she had spent the past few hours just sitting here, eating peanuts and sipping a fruit drink she had bought at a vendor’s stall, and it hurt like hell now when she tried to step on it. Son of a … ‘… Bitch,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’ the voice on the HTC sounded shocked. ‘Hey, who is this?’

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean you. I hurt my foot, that’s all. Yes, I’m a potential client. Your mother was recommended by a mutual friend, another client. Is there any other way I can get in touch with your mother this weekend?’

  The girl sounded a bit dubious now. Way to go, Anita. Call a teenager a bitch and expect her to tell you all about her mother. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you should try the office on Monday, okay? I have to go now. Bye.’

  ‘No, wait—’ Anita said, but the girl had already hung up. She didn’t blame her.

  The security guard was looking at her doubtfully. He had spotted the bloodstains on her neck and shoulder and seen the way her foot hurt. ‘You are wokay, madam?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be fine,’ Anita said, then in a fit of mischief, ‘just put my foot in the crocodile’s pond, that’s all.’

  She limped away, grinning inanely.

  The grin vanished after a few yards.

  Her foot hurt with each step. Finally, when she was by the rhino habitat, she knew she couldn’t make it this way. Even if she managed to limp out of the zoo in this state, she wouldn’t go fifty yards before being noticed. There would be police outside the zoo as always. She had mingled with the crowds when coming in this morning, but now, the crowds had thinned out suddenly, and a woman fitting the description, limping this way, moving at a snail’s pace, would be easy picking.

  She stopped and leaned against a concrete wall. In a field of wet mud, a pair of rhinos stood and munched grass. The air smelt of rhino shit and wet mud. She tried to think. What were her options?

  Not much, if I don’t get some medical help fast.

  She had a sudden burst of inspiration. Seeing a security guard coming towards her from the opposite direction, she waved him down. He came up, smiling in the friendly Malayali way. ‘Closing time, madam,’ he said.

  She pointed to her foot. ‘I th
ink I stepped on a broken bottle. My foot is hurt,’ she said.

  He lost his smile and clicked his tongue. ‘You want me to call ambulance, madam?’

  ‘No, no need for ambulance. I need first aid,’ she said. ‘You have first aid?’

  ‘Yes, madam, we have doctor and first aid.’ He pointed in another direction, past the tiger section. ‘Animal hospital.’

  ‘Please, could you help me there?’ she put on the sweetest smile she could manage, raising her arm to indicate she needed to lean on him.

  ‘Yes, of course, madam,’ he said, offering his shoulder. He was a thin skinny chap, but strong enough to take her weight. She grunted as his foot kicked her injured toe accidentally. It felt like it had swollen ten times its size although there was no swelling visible with the shoe on. She leaned on him and together they limped in the direction he had pointed.

  The first aid clinic was a proper emergency facility. A doctor and a male nurse attended to the patients who came to the single-room clinic attached to the zoo’s main animal hospital. The authorities clearly gave it the importance and facilities it required. There was a boy with a gash in his hand and his mother and aunt there, and an elderly man lying on a cot who appeared to have got too much sun. The doctor examined her foot and looked up at her through his brown-rimmed spectacles, frowning. He was a youngish man about her age in his early to mid-thirties.

  ‘This injury is from today?’ he asked, his tone suggesting it wasn’t.

  ‘No, doctor. I stubbed my toe last night before going to bed. It hurt when I put my shoe on in the morning but I thought if I walked on it, it would be okay. Why?’ she asked, keeping her face straight. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Toe is broken. I think foot is also fractured.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We will need X-ray. I’ll have you taken to the hospital.’