Hindustan Times
Down by the Lodhi Gardens
Soundtrack: Eye in the Sky by Alan Parsons Project
For those familiar with the Lodhi Gardens in winter, it’s a large, undulating space of green, brown that’s full of people milling about in various thicknesses of wool and polyster. At the centre of the expanse stands the rectangular block of stone that is the Bada Gumbad, built in 1494, a 3D gateway not to be confused with the tomb of Mohammed Shah, the last of the pre-Mughal Sayyid dynasty closer to the main road.
NOTHING ABOVE IT…YET: The Bada Gumbad, Lodhi Gardens
All this Rick Frangine knew. The Haitian-in-exile would come many times to the Lodhi Gardens with his then girlfriend, a Sheikh Serai girl called Sharmila, also an IIT Delhi graduate (mechanical). Today, he was on his way to the Gardens to meet Inderjeet, who was already there, unaware of the history of the structure against which he was leaning and smoking his second cigarette. Inder knew that the man who he was supposed to meet was grieving. He had vaguely followed the news of the earthquakes in Haiti, a country that he looked up on the internet to find exactly where it was (it was to the right of Jamaica which in turn was below Cuba which was in turn to the right of America, the only piece of landmass Inder knew before any interner-prompting). But his friend Jagdish had set up the rendezvous some weeks back and had said that it would really be worth his while to meet Mr Frangine.
“You can’t smoke here,” a reed-like man in khaki told Inder while he contemplated on whether he should keep the lovely Jamshi Narimanpointwalla away from his secrets, one of which included that of him not being a real opthalmologist. To like someone is essentially to tell her about yourself, give the full wiki. But it’s about you using the person to create the persona that you always wanted for yourself. And neither did Inder want to be what he really was, nor did he want Jamshi to know that.
A big bunch of people sitting on the grass and eating sandwiches and drinking from paper cups broke his thought. The policeman was just an apparition and anyway, Inder was going to stub out his cigarette. Which is also when his mobile rang out the tune ‘Masakali, Masakali‘.
“Inder here.”
It was Rick.
“I’m standing in front of the tomb, the main structure…”
“This isn’t the tomb,” said the man with a frizzy beard and tired eyes a foot or two away from him who put his phone down from his ear and smiled at him. As they shook hands, Inder murmured inside his head, “Smartass.”
“Should we go somewhere or sit here?” He asked Rick, whom Inder had expected to look crumpled, bedraggled and straight out of a CNN news capsule.
“It’s a lovely day. We can be here,” Rick said with a gentle smile that reminded Inder of an uncle he had who had a permanent smile on his face that would disappear only when he was upset.
“So…”
Rick was expanding his travel agency business that he partnered with someone else. He needed someone who knew people in Delhi both as possible clients as well as officials who could ask for more manageable bribes and get things moving. Inder, with his contacts in Delhi government made during his office stationery-stint could be helpful.
Inder offered Rick a cigarette that the foreigner accepted. Unknown to Rick and semi-known to Inder, the travel agency was going to be a front for another operation. The real game was in smuggling meat products into the country. Restrictions imposed by the government on bringing in meat products were supposed to end in 2004. They weren’t. And Delhi, above all other cities, was growing in its hunger for various kinds of meat, especially top end varities like sausages, ham, pork cuts from Europe and America. His friend Amar Singh had even told him about two of the 5-star hotels getting 90 per cent of their beef steaks from smugglers who brought in the meat through standard luggage carried by travellers.
THE REAL MERCHANDISE: Pork sausages
All this Rick needn’t know. He was already a stranger in a strange land, no matter how long he may have spent his university years here in this city. And certainly, he had other worries now to deal with than to start an operation that could land him in jail — Indian jail.
As the two spoke about plans, one of them showing the other documents and papers in the early afternoon winter sun, the bunch of picnicers in front of them, speaking loudly, playing antakshari and clowning about had suddenly gone quiet. Inder barely noticed the change. Perhaps someone in the group had said something really hurtful — like speaking about a woman’s gap in her teeth or how he had met his ex-boyfriend, oops. But as he picked up his head and scanned the other people — in the distance on the right was the anti-smoking cop — Inder saw everyone looking up.
Rick was still talking about how their first office in Bangkok had really managed to take advantage of budget tourism after the economic meltdown (“except we don’t call it ‘budget tours’ with its associations of backpackers, weedsmokers and venereal disease-carrying doleful drop-outs; we prefer the term ‘family tours’”). He looked up hoping to see some looming airplane travelling too low and looking gigantic.
But there was no sound of any jet engine. No sound at all. Which is when he saw it, exactly at the same time one of the picnicers dropped her paper cup letting its red liquid spread down the lap of her white salwar kameez and a scream that sounded like a scene from an old movie when the girl finds Ranjeet walking menacingly towards her.
It was a balloon, a large brown coloured hot air balloon hovering in the air. Except it was not in the usual shape of a balloon but that of one of those Republic Day floats. As it slowly glided closer towards them at the Lodhi Gardens, people could hear the bawling sounds of chidlren from up there. The balloon itself looked like a small stadium. A figure dressed as a tiger was cowering in the corner of the small standing area space. The kids, with headbands and crying, looked terrified even in the distance. One of the mini-structures — Inder could barely make out the fact that it was supposed to symbolise the India Gate — had come undone and was flapping about like a curved tail on the side.
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY: An unhijacked Republic Day float
“That’s, that’s a runaway balloon!” Rick said, his eyes widening and his feet making him stand up.
Which is when everyone heard the clamour of jeeps and white ambassadors rush towards them. There was a slight breeze and after the morning fog at the Republic Day parade, it was much warmer now. But the balloon wasn’t close enough to the ground for anyone to do anything. A helicopter emerged out of the corner of the sky, careful to keep a distance from the balloon and its passengers. The balloon now was directly above the pinched end of the Bada Gumbad’s dome. The men in black bandanas had rushed to where Rick and Inder were and pushed them out, out, out so that they were now outside the perimeter of a ring of, well, men in black bandanas and a few other men in brown khakis without any bandanas at all.
“Everyone remain calm. This is an army operation. Please move out of the Lodhi.” an anonymous voice sounded over a speaker.
In the semi-melee, Inder remembered the picture of the eye-balloon by Odilon Redon that he had thought of when he first encountered Jamshi’s lazy eye. But this was no eye in the sky. It was more like a truck in the air. A camera crew had just arrived and in the enthusiasm to record what was happening for the Republic Day home-on-a-holiday nation of TV watchers the reporter and cameraman had forgotten the counter-enthusiasm of what security forces to contain a national crisis could work up.
In the slap and punches and falling of microphone and camera that followed, Rick tugged Inder as they both scampered behind another structure in the vicinity. No one was here but they had a full view of what was happening above and below, in front and around the Bada Gumbad. Almost half an hour passed, the floating truckful of children and figures in costume having moved upwards rather than glided sideways. It was as if after coming above the Lodhi Gardens, the balloon had decided that it would now move away from the ground, not pass along it.
Inder’s heart was pumping much more than extra blood. It seemed that it was carrying large pockets of air too. Both of them kept their head low as they looked on from an old crumble of a window. The whole area had now been vacated of the people who only less than an hour ago were having a good, relaxed fun Republic Day out in the winter sun.
Then Inder saw a line of black-bandana-ed men take up positions away from the Bada Gumbad. One man in a navy blue shirt and trousers was barking out orders in Hindi that neither Inder, not equipped with the best set of ears, nor Rick, who knew no Hindi, could make out.
This was not a good time for his phone to break into ‘Massakali, Massakali’ again. But before it could continue the opening stanza, Inder clicked it on. It was Jamshi.
“Hi. Heard?” she was talking in installments as if her brain was transfixed on the television. “Oh my god! It’s like… It’s…”
“Jamshi, what? What is it?” Inder said in hush tones that sounded more sandpapered than whispered still from behind a window opening on which it was clearly scrawled ‘Ravi loves Ratna’ below a telephone number with one word, Gautam, written next to it. “Inder, you not watching or what? Terrorists have hijacked one of the Republic Day floats. They are showing various mobile camera footages of the float floating across India Gate…it was moving south, but the bloody TV guys are running the same pictures over and over again! You have to see, Inder. All they know now is that it’s the LTTE, no, no, the LET, and the main hijacker is wearing a tiger suit!”
“Jamshi, I have to…”
[STRIPED: An amateur mobile phone picture of the suspected main hijacker
He tried calling, but the mini-stack of graphs in the corner of his phone had vanished. No signal.
But then it happened, and it happened with a crack that sounded like a round of paper bags blown up with air being popped one after the other. The men in black bandanas were shooting at the now fast receding upwards balloon.
A terrible shriek was heard. But it wasn’t from any of the balloon’s passengers. It was the simultaneous rush of air from various points seeping out like a dozen gas cylinder leaks. Even before it hit the ground, or even any part of the Bada Gumbad, the truck in the sky had burst into flames. By the time its remnants fluttered to the ground like a giant charred piece of paper, Inder was shaking like a leaf while Rick, his mouth open and breathing like a pregnant woman in mid-delivery, slumped to the rather unclean, dry mudstreaked floors of the tomb of Mohammed Shah of the Sayyid dynasty, repeating over and over again, “Oh man oh man oh man…”
Inder took out the last couple of cigarettes in his packet offering one to Rick without a word. Neither of them cared to light their cigarettes. And neither of them was planning to move until… until what, they had no freaking idea.
[Next week: Meat the government]
(5 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...
