dogs that had been lazing in the shade of the trees along Rajpath had started to surround the group of men, howling and barking. Dozens of crows were also circling overhead, cawing menacingly.
The sky seemed to darken. Thunder rumbled. There was a blinding flash. And then, in the middle of the group, a terrifying figure appeared.
Hideously ugly, with four writhing arms, a jet-black face and a large tongue slithering from her bloody mouth, she wore a garland of human skulls around her neck.
The men, still laughing but struck by sheer horror, recognized her instantly as the goddess Kali.
“Unbeliever!” boomed a screeching witch’s voice as the mist rose up around her.
The goddess pointed one of her long, wizened index fingers at Dr. Jha and rose up into the air, hovering several feet off the ground. In one hand, she wielded a bloodstained sword, in another a man’s severed head.
“I am Kali, consort of Shiva! I am the Redeemer! I am Death!”
A jet of fire shot from her mouth.
“You! Who have dared to insult me! You who have dared to mock my power! You will taste blood!”
The goddess glided through the air toward Dr. Jha, spewing more flames. The cawing of the crows and the howling of the dogs grew louder.
“Mere mortal!
Dr. Jha was now face-to-face with the goddess, still unable to move his feet thanks to some invisible force. He looked terrified and yet he was still laughing.
“Now die!” screeched Kali in a chorus of voices.
She raised her sword and drove it down into his chest. Blood flowed from the wound and spewed from his mouth. Clutching his chest, the Guru Buster uttered a last guffaw and then fell backward onto the grass, dead.
Three
Puri’s day began without any indication that he would soon be investigating a ‘supernatural occurrence’ destined to capture the imagination of the entire nation – a case that he would later describe as ‘a first in the annals of crime’.
His Ambassador pulled into the car park behind Khan Market at ten o’clock. Handbrake was dispatched to replace the windscreen while the detective walked his usual route to his office.
Now the most expensive commercial real estate in all of India, Khan Market was home to new boutiques selling exorbitantly priced cushion covers and ‘size zero’ Indian couture. Trendy bars and restaurants had sprung up, the nocturnal playground for Delhi’s nouveaux riches. Where a greengrocer had once traded, trays of American-style mac-adamia chocolate chunk cookies were on offer at 80 rupees each, more than a day’s wage for most of the country’s working population.
But a number of the old family-owned businesses still thrived and the place remained scruffy and unkempt, retaining – in Puri’s eyes at least – a reassuring character lacking in the new sanitized shopping malls. Paint blistered and peeled from concrete walls, and spaghetti tangles of wires and cables hung overhead. Many of the shop signs leaned at angles. And the Punjabi princesses who flocked here with their proprietorial airs, high heels and oversize designer sunglasses had to negotiate cracked, uneven pavements cluttered with sleeping pye-dogs and hawkers.
“Kaise ho?” Puri called out to Mr. Saluja, who stood outside his tailor’s shop, overseeing one of his employees sprinkling water on the pavement to keep down the dust. The key wallah was also getting ready for the morning trade, laying out his medieval tools on a potato sack on a small patch of pavement: hammer, chisels, long metal files and a giant rusty key ring holding the uncut blanks he would use to make duplicates for his customers.
Mounting the steep, narrow steps that led up to the Most Private Investigators offices above Bahri Sons bookshop, Puri was greeted with a warm smile and a ‘Good morning, sir’ by Elizabeth Rani, whose desk took up a quarter of the small reception.
The first thing he did upon entering his office – that is, after turning on the air-conditioning – was to light an incense stick in the little puja shrine below the two frames hanging on the wall to the right of his desk. One contained a photograph of his father, Om Chander Puri, the other a likeness of Chanakya, the detective’s guide and guru who had lived around 300 BC and founded the arts of espionage and investigation. The detective said a short prayer, asking for guidance from them both, and then buzzed in his secretary.
Elizabeth Rani brought his post and messages and ran through a list of mundane matters that required his attention: “Kanwal Sibal’s wife birthed a son. You’ll visit them or I should send nuts and fruit?”
Door Stop, the tea boy, then brought Puri his morning cup of kahwa, Kashmiri tea steamed with saffron, cardamom, cinnamon, sugar and slivered almonds.
The detective savored the sweet liquid while bringing himself up to date with the cases on his books. Most Private Investigators was as busy as ever. So far this month, the agency had dealt with seven matrimonial investigations, which required background and character checks to be done on prospective brides and grooms having arranged marriages. An insurance company had hired the firm to ascertain whether a certain Mrs. Aastha Jain, seventy-four, had died of natural causes during the annual pilgrimage to Gangotri (the detective had found her alive and well, living it up in Goa under an assumed name). And Puri had brought to a speedy conclusion the unusual kidnapping of Mr. Satish Sinha’s father. Sinha Senior had been reincarnated as a monkey, and the detective had located him by following the local banana wallah’s best customer home.
Still, it had been a while since he had dealt with a truly challenging, sensational case. The Case of the Blue Turban League had been a good six months ago.
As for nuclear scientist Rathinasabapathy’s crisis, well, that was standard fare, albeit satisfying and decently remunerated work. Puri was looking forward to his client’s visit at twelve o’clock, when he would dazzle him with his results. In preparation, he spent ten minutes putting all the photographic evidence in order.
It was then that he noticed something outside his window – a loaf of white bread dangling like bait on a string.
It dropped out of sight. But soon a carton of cornflakes appeared. A minute later, a carton of Mango Frooti.
Zahir, who was blind and owned the tiny general store next to Bahri Sons, was restocking from the storage space he rented upstairs.
Puri was not altogether happy about this practice. Only recently he had been in the middle of a meeting with a distressed client whose husband had been murdered when pots of instant masala noodles had started knocking against his window. But beyond cutting the string with a pair of scissors, there was little to be done.
Besides, Puri was particularly partial to some of the products stocked by kindly Zahir – like those nice coconut biscuits, for example. And sometimes, when they appeared in his window, he hauled them in and settled his bill later.
It was almost uncanny the way packets of coconut biscuits often appeared around the same time every afternoon.
Soon after eleven o’clock, Elizabeth Rani entered Puri’s office, her voice trembling as she placed a copy of the
“I thought you would want to see this, sir. It’s terrible news, I’m afraid. Such a kindly old gentleman he was. Really, I don’t know what the world is coming to.”
FLOATING GODDESS STABS TO DEATH LAUGHING GURU BUSTER. COPS CLUELESS.
“By God!” exclaimed the detective, sitting up straight in his executive leather chair. He studied the coverage of Dr. Suresh Jha’s murder intently, letting out several sighs and, on three occasions, a pained “Hai!”
The newspaper quoted the members of the Laughing Club, who described how, after killing Dr. Suresh Jha, the ‘apparition’ had ‘vanished in a big flash’.
“She was at least twenty feet high, a terrifying sight, like something from a nightmare,” said eyewitness Professor R.K. Pandey. “I thought we would all be killed.”
