Banquet on the Dead Read Online Free

in the well. It’s a bit of a tradition, by the looks of it. The doctor has learnt swimming in that well, and now he has taught his son to swim in the same well. You know how it is.’
    ‘Acha. I imagine that tradition will stop now after what has happened.’
    ‘Yes,’ Nagarajan said. ‘I imagine it will.’
    ‘So what did the doctor say? He said the woman hit the water as a corpse?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But that is understandable, is it not? She was a woman of eighty. Say she toppled over by accident. Her heart would be very likely to stop out of fright by the time she hit the surface, would it not?’
    Nagarajan nodded. ‘That’s what I told him too. I told him that the case did not warrant looking into again. But he insisted that his grandmother had a very strong heart.’
    ‘But it is not a question of strong or weak, is it, miyan? It is a question of fright. I am scared of heights. If I am to fall off a building, I know for sure that I will hit the ground as a corpse.’ Hamid Pasha cast his pipe away, much to Nagarajan’s relief. Then he said, ‘Did the doctor say anything about the old woman’s attitude to water?’
    ‘You mean whether she could swim?’
    Hamid Pasha impassively considered Nagarajan for a moment. ‘Miyan,’ he said, ‘the woman sank. So she obviously could not swim. What I meant was whether the doctor told you that the woman was scared of water?’
    ‘Oh,’ said Nagarajan, ‘the woman was terrified of water. He explicitly mentioned it to me.’
    ‘That is interesting, is it not? On one hand that invalidates what the doctor was saying, because if she had a natural fear of water, her heart would have likely stopped before she hit the water—but that raises another point, does it not?’ Hamid Pasha massaged his neck and looked down at Nagarajan.
    ‘Yes,’ said Nagarajan. ‘If she was so scared of the water, why was she at the well in the first place?’
    ‘ Shabhaash, miyan! Maybe she had a daily routine which took her to the well?’
    Nagarajan shook his head. ‘No, I asked him. She avoided the well like the plague. In all of his life, the doctor had not seen her come to the well even once.’
    Hamid Pasha sat forward in his chair. ‘Now that is interesting. I am starting to think there might be something to it, after all.’
    ‘I thought so too—dash it, I wish I could just close the damned case, but there might just be something to it.’
    ‘Yes,’ Hamid Pasha said, stroking his beard. ‘Let us go there tomorrow, shall we, miyan, and have a look around the house? If we meet any people willing to talk, we will talk to them, ask a few questions; poochne mein kya jaata hai ?’ It doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?
    Nagarajan picked up his hat and stood up. ‘So I will see you at the station tomorrow? Let’s say, nine in the morning?’
    Hamid Pasha stood up too. ‘ Zaroor, miyan . Khuda Hafeez. ’ Go with God.
    ‘Namaste.’
    The door closed behind him, and as he set his hat on the head and inserted the key into his bike, he heard Hamid Pasha’s guttural voice behind him.
    Kyun hume maut ki paigaam diye jaate hain
Yeh sazaa kam hai ke jiye jaate hain?
Why do I get sent the message of death;
When living is such a punishment in itself?

3

    ‘A BIG HOUSE , this,’ Hamid Pasha remarked.
    They were sitting on the concrete ledge in the shade of the big neem tree opposite Kauvery Bhavan. It was a cloudless morning. The sun, faithful to its early-March duties, was beating down with purpose. Hamid Pasha spat out a mouthful of zarda into the dust and resumed his examination of the house.
    It was a double-storeyed white building situated a good thirty metres in from the gate. An old oak tree stood in the front right corner of the plot and spread its branches out, framing the house rather picturesquely when viewed front-on. Even from this distance the solidity of the large teak doors and ornate design on the windows were easily visible. A staircase to the first floor started at