The Benefit Season Read online

  The don slapped his hands. The two crooks darted toward the building to fetch Vishal. ’I always knew something like this was going to happen,’ he said. ‘ A loving husband isn’t he, setting his wife up?’

  ‘Eloped, wow!’ Arjun muttered, waiting for the man whom he thought he’d killed. A large weight seemed to lift off his shoulders. Escape, the thought of which had so far not crossed his mind, he now began to seriously consider. Escape by taking on all three of them with the butter knife, once Vishal arrived and confirmed that he was still alive and kicking, and not dead and dusty under some highway- thus setting Arjun free. The men returned presently, hauling a visibly distraught Vishal, in flesh and blood, between them. They seated him opposite the don, and returned to their positions behind the boss.

  ‘Welcome’, the boss boomed with mock cheer. ‘Join us, newly wedded, Muslim brother! Have you been saying your five-times prayers, man?’ the gangsters ripped in laughter.

  Vishal fidgeted in his seat and looked imploringly at him and then at Monal and Arjun.

  ‘Now that we are all gathered here, praise be to Allah, who has fed us and given us drink, and made us Muslims! O you who believe! Fear Allah and speak the truth! And do not mix truth with falsehood or conceal the truth while you know it! And beware of lying, for lying leads to immortality and immortality leads to hell! So speak man!’

  Vishal sank back in his chair, his large, muscular frame curled shamefully.

  ‘Tell us where the money is. Repeat everything you told me’.

  ‘I…I will resolve it with her Bhai. Just give me time. Let me go…let us go, and we’ll give you your money in a week’.

  ‘ Enough! Just repeat what you said, dog!’ the boss shouted angrily, foam gathering around his lips. ‘I don’t make a living letting creeps steal from me! I have a reputation, goddammit!’ The tigers rose from their slumber, and snarled softly.

  ‘She has it. Ask her. Ask him’, Vishal said, cowering, avoiding looking at them.

  ‘Nonsense! He’s lying!’ Monal made to rise but the tigers rose to their feet and bared their sharp white teeth at her and boomed a deep guttural growl, sending her plunging back into her chair. ‘Please Vishal, give them back their money, and let’s get our life back’.

  Vishal just shook his head and began sobbing. ‘Please…please, why are you lying? You stole it from the house to start a life with your lover! Why did you run away from the house then?’

  ‘It was all his idea!’ Monal screamed, hysterical now. ‘He got greedy- he didn’t want to give such a huge sum of money back! He wanted to make it appear to the whole world that I’d run away with another man because I was a victim of some kinky domestic violence. He identified Arjun the very day he’d come for the placement interviews. He said he was the innocent and foolhardy and honorable kind of a guy who wouldn’t back out on a commitment to a girl. He said he would fool you also into believing it and that some day you would grow tired of looking for us. He was even prepared for a bit of your torture. And he survived because he loaded up on morphine well beforehand. He felt you wouldn’t kill him though because you would always need him for the insider information. He promised we would make a new start in Seychelles or the Caribbean or South Africa where you wouldn’t be able to trace us and gamble on cricket- which he knows the inside of, and live up the luxurious life. Not to say the least he was already badly in debt – what with his fancy cars and mortgages and Arabian babies and his drug hassles!’ there, she had blurted it all out. She sat back and folded her arms across, and looked relieved now that she’d got it all out of her system.

  ‘Bravo!’ Vishal said, grinning through his tears and clapping. ‘What a performance! Bitch! Sati savitri…Indian bride! To think that such a one would keep karva chauth fasts for the long life of her pati-parmeswar! Wow! Shame on you! To lie in front of strange men, to shame me with your lover, to steal from your own house, to wreck our marriage thus!’

  ‘What marriage? What husband? Look who’s talking- Jenab Chand Mohammed!’ she said, nearly laughing despite the muddle she was in, and began clapping too in confusion. Vishal, not to be outdone, began to clap harder and faster, till the couple began to compete hysterically, upsetting the tigers, and humans too. The once elegant society couple had been reduced to blubbering idiots.

  ‘Enough!’ boomed the Bhai. ‘Who the fuck has the money- will somebody please tell me here!’

  ‘He’, said Monal, pointing at Vishal.

  ‘She’, said he, pointing back.

  ‘He’!

  ‘She!’

  ‘You!’

  ‘No you!”

  ‘No no you you!’

  ‘No no no! You!’

  The don, having had quite enough, stood up, blew out his size 56 chest, and hollered, ‘ away with them! Throw them in the dungeons with the tigers. If they don’t decide by morning who has the money- set the tigers on them! And let them only take one small nibble at a time till these bastards come to their senses!’

  The two thugs hastened towards the three of them and led them to the dungeons deep below in the dark belly of the old fort, digging their AK-47s in their sides. The tiger handlers too followed, bringing up the rear with two very upset looking beasts. Arjun laughed as he was led away. The others looked at him strangely.

  Though still held, he had been set free! He had been foolish, yes, a little horny too, but he was no thief or murderer, even though the other party deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth! That was going to be somebody else’s sorry fate now- not his! He’d been cleverly set up and led astray by the people he’d blindly trusted and highly regarded. One or both of the other two captives had foolishly stolen the gangsta’s money, and they were going to pay for it. The gang may not let him off, but at least they mightn’t heap barbarism upon him and turn him into a smoldering heap of rubble. Tiger or no tiger, guns or not, whatever the number of hoods that you would throw at him, Arjun was confident of escape. He worried not for himself, he worried for Aarti and his mother and to some extent even that aborigine Khosla; how they would be coping and worrying themselves sick over him. At long last he had a chance to make up to his loved ones back home, and he sure as hell was going to take a crack at that chance.

  ϖ

  They were led two levels down towards the right wing of the fort. At many places where the rainwater had crept in and licked away at the mortar joining the stone slabs, large chunks of the wall had tumbled down onto the narrow, damp passage. They stepped over the fallen boulders and reached the caged cells meant for them. Light could not penetrate the underbelly of the fort and the dungeons were dark and deep- save for their dimly lit corner. Ropes dangled from several shackles grouted into the high ceiling in their cell. The ropes dropped at the floor into rusty iron tubs filled with water. Wires connected the tubs to a crude electric source of large batteries. The prisoners were made to remove their shoes and socks and step into the water tubs. Their hands were raised high above them and tightly bound to the ropes. A big table covered in green linen contained several surgical instruments glinting a spooky orange in the firelight of flickering torches lit with cottonseed oil.

  A cage of iron bars separated them from the tigers put in the next cell. Shamim tested the cage by pressing a plunger embedded in the wall next to the iron door of their cell. The cage could be raised or dropped by the plunger. Every time the cage moved, it made a loud clanking noise that eerily bounced off the clammy stone walls and passages till it was swallowed by the dungeon’s vast entrails lurking several uncharted levels underneath. The tigers were not restrained. They paced about the cage, looked curiously through the iron bars at the captives slung from the ceiling above, licked their whiskers and settled down in wait. They weren’t hungry now, but soon would be thrusting for succulent human flesh. The idea was to let the prisoners make up their mind about telling the truth, or face electric charge. Finally the tigers were to be set upon them for nibbling little bites, till they confessed where the gangster’s money wa
s.

  To Arjun it appeared that none of them was going to be let out alive, any which way. As for him, he wasn’t going to let the mob make the decision. He expected them to wait for nightfall before they started questioning, or torturing them. Before that Arjun planned to make good his escape. The men had left, shutting the creaking, crumbling wooden door leading to the dungeons.

  Vishal was becoming increasingly miserable, he’d begun to whine softly to himself. He slumped from the ropes instead of staying on his feet, and jerked frequently in pain. Sometimes he cried out aloud, ‘Please…o’ my shoulder…it hurts so much! Give me something for the pain…please’. Sometimes he shrieked too, but mostly he labored under his breath, moping to himself. Monal was coping better. She seemed calm and mostly stared at the dank floor. She swung from the rope sometimes and kept shifting to keep the blood flowing. She seemed used to restraints. Arjun calculated the distance between himself and the table placed ahead of him. It must have been 8 to 9 feet away. He thought he could swing on the rope and topple the box containing the scalpels to the floor. Then he could grip one of them between his toes and swing his legs up and sever the rope and free his hands. Then, after helping himself to a few of these shiny knives, he would simply walk through anybody who tried to stop him. The men seemed lazy, pudgy, used to the good life, and incapable of putting up any resistance without a weapon. He swung a few times and realized that he could easily touch the table with his heels. Monal looked sideways at him and understood his plan. She winked and nodded. He looked away, he had no further truck with this scheming woman and he wanted no part of her in his plan. He turned his wrist to look at his watch. He had a couple of hours before he made the move. He shook his hands and arms to keep them from going numb, and waited.

  ‘Are you going to take me with you’, she asked, breaking the eerie silence.

  ‘Take you where?’

  ‘Seychelles’, she said mockingly and laughed.

  ‘ You aren’t taking any of this seriously, are you?’

  ‘I can read the future- I know what’s going to happen’.

  ‘It doesn’t look like you’ve been a very good prophetess so far. More like an out of box Cassandra whom nobody takes seriously’.

  ‘Ah… hmm’.

  ‘Get real- you are following this man blindly’, Arjun said, nodding towards her husband. ‘He is bad news- rain on your parade!’

  ‘He is my husband’.

  ‘Yeah? Last I remember he was shoving both of us in a pit. How did he come alive by the way?’

  ‘You shot him with a blank’.

  ‘And you knew it?’

  ‘ I guess so- it was his plan’.

  ‘Shut up bitch!’ Vishal, who’d briefly come to his senses and had heard the last bit of talk shouted.

  Monal ignored him. ‘Ask away’, she told Arjun, swinging as if she was a little girl in ponytails in a park.

  ‘Is this also a part of the plan. Which is why it makes you so sure that you’re going to walk out of here- why you’re so cool? You’ve had a vision of things to come?’

  ‘This is not our plan- quite unexpected, actually. He never expected the cops or the mugs to catch up with us. He thought they would give up looking for us and we would be scuba diving in the Caribbean and docking at the marinas in Europe’.

  ‘And you believed the pipe dreams! O god! And on his goading you seduced me! There was no love, was there?’

  ‘You seduced him!’ Vishal screamed in agony.

  She laughed again, ignoring him. ’You, Arjun…are a child! Where’s love in this world honey, except for the self and money?’

  ‘I can’t understand why you two have been going to such lengths to put pretenses up? One kidnaps me; the other rescues me. One seduces me; the other accuses me. Why the doublespeak- fair is foul and foul is fair?’

  ‘Well…’ she said dreamily, ’ it’s a long story. What’s the point now that all is lost? Tell me, do really you want to hear it?’

  ‘I am not busy! No calls for me- nothing else to amuse me’.

  ‘Well then, here it goes. You know what we do – we manage cricketers and hobnob with anyone and everyone in that exalted star-lit galaxy. Vishal has been heavily into fixing matches with the help of match officials, journalists with an ear and eye on the keyholes of dressing rooms, and finally the players themselves- not all, but mostly the ageing and second rung cricketers who have tasted the good life and want to make a fast buck before they are erased from the team sketch. Enter the punters and the mafia dons who plough in the big, dirty money. Decent, uppity people don’t deal with these kinds of people. But they are far more comfortable with someone from their own society and club-class…’

  ‘Like Vishal?’

  ‘Exactly. Like Vishal, and like his svelte wife’, she nearly bowed, and blushed, like the lady she was- supposed to be. ‘He was their respectable front, and his, I. So a large amount of money was parked with us always, belonging to punters, middlemen, and mafia alike. We got nothing out of it except a measly commission. It hurt Vishal to have so much money slipping through his fingers and none of it sticking. So he decided to help himself to some of it’.

  ‘He? You just followed him?’

  She shrugged. ‘When times are good and luck is on your side, no one likes to believe anything bad can happen to them. You are riding a high horse and it’s hard to get off. And so far he’d been a good provider; I didn’t mind playing along’.

  ‘So? How do I come into the picture?’

  ‘So, the difficulty is how to make a clean getaway with other’s property? A well-spun tale of make-believe that lasts over several days and even weeks to be convincing enough, and enough witnesses to vouch for it is what seems the need of the hour’.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘In our society it is common for the husband and wife both, to keep paramours outside marriage. Many also engage in sado-masochism. The plot was to usher in a handsome stud- like you, sway the victimized wife, and let the sparks fly. Then when enough money collects, let the wife escape the torment of brutal domestic violence and sexual abuse with her knight in shining armor- of course along with the money to kick start a brand new life at the same or higher scale than she was used to’.

  ‘So it wasn’t me seducing you- I was being suckered’.

  ‘When enough people in the office and around had had a darn good idea that we two were an item you suddenly left. It made Vishal desperate- we couldn’t have let our quarry feel shy of its manifest destiny and bolt. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He decided to waste no more time; and what better timing than to have us flying the coop on the day of your engagement, and my wedding anniversary. The symbolism of it all… oh the passion; not a day more two turtle doves spending asunder.’

  ‘Then why bother to rescue me? Why not just finish me off, bury me under that road and walk away from it all?’

  ‘When the mob and the cops were looking all over for us? Not a great timing! They would have found us out and as someone said; unseamed us from the nave to the chops. And we are not killers, you see’, she smiled through her sweaty arms at him. ‘We hadn’t yet decided what to do with you- you see we hadn’t bargained on this Haryanvi cop on our tail. She’s quite the best they have, and incorruptible. She shook the chessboard.’

  ‘Then why rescue me? Why not leave me there?’

  ‘It was a borrowed property, its services leased at exorbitant costs. Moreover, word spreads fast in the hood about kidnappings. People begin to ask questions and there are territories that have to be respected, and keepers of those territories compensated. It was all getting a bit out of hand’.

  ‘Then why pretend to kill Vishal?’

  ‘To make you keep your head low and to keep you from reaching out to the cops or your family. To make you feel you were a murderer on the run. And to have you all to myself! And by helping you escape from the farmhouse and by helping you on the run, to earn your faith and gratitude’, she said bitterly, and
spat. ‘And Vishal wanted to buy time while we lay low- while I lay low rather- all the while he was planning on ditching me for that wiggly Bedouin- Chand Mohammed!’

  ‘What does your crystal ball say now?’ Arjun angrily splashed his foot in the water, sending sprays out of the tub. ‘It might be a good idea to kick the water out of the tub’, he rued.

  ‘What good then? They’ll probably fill it again. Or they mightn’t, who cares’.

  ‘It’ll buy time- they’ll have to fetch it from the grounds’.

  She shut her eyes. She felt exhausted, but relieved also, for telling Arjun the truth. But would he ever trust her again? Would he help her escape? She doubted it. But it made her feel good to tell him that at least it hadn’t been her idea to ensnare him. But who cared? She’d been an active, willing and collaborative partner all along, hadn’t she? She was too exhausted to judge anybody, including herself. Vishal had let them both down. He’d even unpardonably gone ahead and married that squiggly-bellied nymphet and was in the process of leaving her and Arjun at the mercy of these dogs- dogs with the tigers. He deserved divine reckoning. He’d always been like this; rash, impractical, selfish, cruel and dreamy, in the same or in some other order. The pain was wracking her body and numbing her mind. There was just this much, and no more a woman could bear. She looked sideways at Arjun in hope- he seemed to be dozing off. She returned to her waking dreams. When things had been good, it was paradise. The same things had taken a turn that she had never imagined. She felt overwhelmed in the face of overbearing destiny and the odds. She was crushed and felt resigned to her fate.

  Though through the fog of despondency and excruciating suffering the faint notion of prayer visited her befuddled senses, she was so out of the practice of god or religion, or wise counsel, that even now, prayer did not touch her lips, nor did supplication move her heart.

  ϖ

  The laughter of birds calling to their own to return nest wards woke Arjun from his painful slumber. The sun must have begun to set outside for the shadows that fell through the broken wooden door at the ground level had become long and dark. There was no further time to be wasted. The men would be here anytime after downing a peg or two, to doubly enjoy the incarceration. Arjun keenly waited for any sound in the dungeons then began to swing, after shaking his arms and legs out of numbness. He managed to topple the box of scalpels close to him. Pushing the heavy tub aside with his feet, he grabbed the longest knife with his toes. Then he swung his legs up and began to chafe at the rope binding his hands. The knife must have fallen many times, and it was nearly a half hour later that he managed to fray one of the ropes and free a hand. Then he untied the knot around the other hand too and set himself free. Both Vishal and Monal had begun to urgently whisper to him to let them loose too. But he ignored them and went to the door to their cell. It was heavy, made of iron grills and mesh. And locked. He peered through the bars to see if any keys were hung on the walls outside, but no such luck. He was locked inside!