was suddenly at hand.
Dr. Daruwalla was a coward. That Mr. Lal had fallen on the golf course, without a net, was no reason not to tell Inspector Dhar the upsetting news. Quite simply, the doctor didn’t dare tell Dhar.
It was characteristic of Dr. Daruwalla to tell belabored jokes, especially when he’d made a disquieting self- discovery. Inspector Dhar was characteristically silent—“characteristically,” depending on which rumors you believed. Dhar knew that Farrokh had been fond of Mr. Lal, and that the doctor’s strident sense of humor was most often engaged when he sought to distract himself from any unhappiness. At the Duckworth Club, Dhar spent most of lunch listening to Dr. Daruwalla go on and on about this new offense to the Parsis: how the recent Parsi dead had been overlooked by the vultures attending to Mr. Lal on the golf course. Farrokh found a forced humor in imagining the more fervent Zoroastrians who’d be up in arms about the interference caused to the vulture community by the dead golfer. Dr. Daruwalla thought they should ask Mr. Sethna if
She’d deliberately positioned herself at her table so that she could stare at Inspector Dhar, who never once returned her gaze. Dr. Daruwalla assumed it was just another case of an immodest woman seeking Dhar’s attention—in vain, the doctor knew. He wished he could prepare the second Mrs. Dogar for how rejected she would soon feel from the actor’s obliviousness to her. For a while, she’d even pushed her chair away from the table so that her fetching navel was beautifully framed by the bold colors of her sari; her navel was pointed at Dhar like a single and very determined eye. Although Mrs. Dogar’s advances appeared to go unnoticed by Inspector Dhar, Dr. Daruwalla found it most difficult not to look at her.
In the doctor’s view, her behavior was shameless for a married, middle-aged lady—Dr. Daruwalla calculated that she was in her early fifties. Yet Farrokh found the second Mrs. Dogar attractive, in a threatening kind of way. He couldn’t locate exactly what it was that attracted him to the woman, whose arms were long and unflatteringly muscular, and whose lean, hard face was handsome and challenging in an almost masculine way. To be sure, her bosom was shapely (if not full) and her bottom was high and firm—especially for a woman her age—and there was no question that her long waist and aforementioned navel were enhancing contributions to the pleasurable impression she made in a sari. But she was too tall, her shoulders were too pronounced and her hands appeared absurdly large and restless; she picked up her silverware and toyed with it as if she were a bored child.
Furthermore, Farrokh had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Dogar’s feet—actually, just one of her feet, which was bare. She must have kicked her shoes off under her table, but all that Dr. Daruwalla saw was a flash of her gnarled foot; a thin gold chain hung loosely around her surprisingly thick ankle and a wide gold ring gripped one of her clawlike toes.
Perhaps what attracted the doctor to Mrs. Dogar was how she reminded him of someone else, but he couldn’t think of who it might be. A long-ago movie star, he suspected. Then, as a doctor whose patients were children, he realized that he might have known the new Mrs. Dogar as a child; why this would make the woman attractive to him was yet another, exasperating unknown. Moreover, the second Mrs. Dogar seemed not more than six or seven years younger than Dr. Daruwalla; virtually, they’d been children together.
Dhar caught the doctor by surprise when he said, “If you could see yourself looking at that woman, Farrokh, I think you’d be embarrassed.” When he was embarrassed, the doctor had an annoying habit of abruptly changing the subject.
“And you! You should have seen
It irritated Dhar when Dr. Daruwalla spoke such absurdly unnatural English; it wasn’t even the English with a singsong Hindi lilt, which was also unnatural for Dr. Daruwalla. This was worse; it was something wholly fake— the affected British flavor of that particularly Indian English, the inflections of which were common among young college graduates working as food-and-beverage consultants at the Taj, or as production managers for Britannia Biscuits. Dhar knew that this unsuitable accent was Farrokh’s self-consciousness talking—he was so out of it in Bombay.
Quietly, but in accentless English, Inspector Dhar spoke to his excited companion. “Which rumor about me are we encouraging today? Should I shout at you in Hindi? Or is this a good day for English as a second language?”
Dhar’s sardonic tone and expression hurt Dr. Daruwalla, notwithstanding that these mannerisms were trademarks of the fictional character Dr. Daruwalla had created and that all of Bombay had come to loathe. Although the secret screenwriter had grown morally uncertain of his creation, this doubt was not discernible in the unreserved fondness that the doctor felt for the younger man; in public or in private, it was Dr. Daruwalla’s love for Dhar that showed.
The taunting quality of Dhar’s remarks, not to mention the sting of Dhar’s delivery, wounded Dr. Daruwalla; even so, he regarded the slightly spoiled handsomeness of the actor with great tenderness. Dhar allowed his sneer to soften into a smile. With an affection that alarmed the nearest and ever-observant waiter—the same poor fellow whose daily course had coincided with the shitting crow and with the troublesome tureen and ladle—the doctor reached out and clasped the younger man’s hand.
In plain English, Dr. Daruwalla whispered, “I’m really just so sorry—I mean, I feel so sorry for you, my dear boy,” he said.
“Don’t,” Inspector Dhar whispered back. His smile faded and his sneer returned; he freed his hand from the elder man’s grip.
Tell him now! Dr. Daruwalla told himself, but he didn’t dare—he didn’t know where to begin.
They were sitting quietly with their tea and some sweets when the
“I am hoping you are excusing me, Doctor,” the duty officer had begun; his English was a strain. “I am being most sorry I am taking
“You are not examining the body, Doctor?” the policeman asked; he persisted with his English.
“Certainly not,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.
“You are never touching the body, saar?” the duty officer asked the famous actor.
“I are never touching it,” Dhar answered in English—in a flawless imitation of the policeman’s Hindi accent.
Upon departing, the duty officer’s heavy brogues had scraped a little too loudly on the stone floor of the Duckworth Club’s dining room; thus had the policeman’s exit drawn Mr. Sethna’s predictable disapproval. Doubtless the old steward had also disapproved of the condition of the duty officer’s uniform; his khaki shirt was soiled by the thali the inspector must have encountered for lunch—a generous portion of dhal was slopped on his breast pocket, and a brightly colored stain (the obvious orange-yellow of turmeric) lit up the messy policeman’s drab collar.
But the second policeman, who now approached their table in the Ladies’ Garden, was no mere inspector; this man was of a higher rank—and of a noticeably elevated neatness. At the very least, he looked like a deputy commissioner. From Farrokh’s research—for the Inspector Dhar screenplays were scrupulously researched, if not aesthetically pleasing—the screenwriter was certain that they were about to be confronted by a deputy commissioner from Crime Branch Headquarters at Crawford Market.
“All this for
As the most recent Inspector Dhar movie had pointed out, the official salary of a Bombay police inspector is only 2,500 to 3,000 rupees a month—roughly 100 dollars. In order to secure a more lucrative posting, in an area of
