Crime fiction: Retired cricket umpire Russi Batliwala investigates a high-profile murder

Russi Batliwala paced up and down his living room, the tuft of black hair stretched across the bald patch at the top of his head bouncing in step with him. It had been twenty minutes since his taxi app had informed him that his driver would be there “in five minutes”.

He was gripping his phone with his pudgy fingers when it let out a weak beep.

Thank you for your patience. Your driver will be reaching the pick-up location soon.

“Reaching the pick-up location soon, I believe. My foot!” said Russi. “The chap hasn’t moved an inch from Dadar Circle in the last fifteen minutes. My dear bapaiji – bless her grandmotherly soul – would have walked here faster, despite her arthritic knees and permanently swollen ankles.”

He slumped into a large worn-out leather chair, which creaked in protest as he adjusted his pear-shaped frame into it.

“Bad enough I need to go to this bloody cricket club dinner, now I will be properly late for it,” he said. “Sherbanoo dear, I wonder if there is some sudden traffic jam. Or worse, has this taxi fellow gone for his own dinner while ensuring I am late for mine?”

Sherbanoo shuffled in her cane chair in the corner of the room. She had been Russi’s housekeeper for twenty-five years, from the peak of his umpiring days to the devastating accident that forever changed his life, and beyond, well into his retirement. Sherbanoo knew Russi better than anyone else. But even she hadn’t quite figured out whether his questions in such situations were meant to be answered or not. Venture a response, and he would either leave it unacknowledged or interject with a “rhetorical question, dear”. Remain silent, and that would likely invite a rebuke along the lines of “Sherbanoo dear, as far as I know, nobody else lives in Flat Number 2, Peer Manzil, Parsi Colony other than the two of us and your assortment of stray cats. So till these felines learn Gujarati or English, you can assume my questions are for you.”

Sherbanoo didn’t take any of these inconsistencies to heart, simply assuming that they were part of the deal with clever people. And to her, Russi bhai was definitely clever, even if sometimes a little difficult to decode.

After all, cricket umpires have to be the cleverest among us, she reasoned. Who else could at once watch the bowler’s foot, the angle and trajectory of the ball, the batter’s footwork, the face and edge of the bat, then decipher the movement and sounds these make, and come to a split-second decision from among dozens of possibilities – all in the din created by eleven clamorous players and thousands of screaming spectators? Russi bhai had done this at the national level for years, most of it with just one functional eye. Yes, aapro Russi bhai is a clever man, Sherbanoo reminded herself. Not always easy to understand, but clever.

But why, then, has he not asked Gopal, his driver of ten years, to ferry him to this important dinner at the Pavilion Club, she wondered. That’s not very clever.

Having concluded that Russi’s enquiries on the whereabouts of his errant taxi driver were in the rhetorical category, Sherbanoo fired a question of her own: “Why isn’t Gopal here to drive you to the club, Russi bhai?”

Russi sat up from his slouch and the leather chair protested again.

“I had sent him to buy my research books this afternoon from Flora Fountain, dear,” he said. “But it turned out that Ismail had run out of copies in his bookshop, so he asked poor Gopal to wait till he arranged for new ones. I thought of calling Gopal back and sending him there some other day – but then, those books are quite important as well…”

He tailed off sheepishly when he noticed Sherbanoo’s unimpressed stare. She knew exactly what those “research books” were. A new bunch of tomes on detective work and investigative methods to add to Russi’s ever-increasing library of crime literature! She couldn’t for the life of her understand why Russi buried himself in those ghoulish books, and was worried that he had begun fancying himself as a local Sherlock Holmes ever since he solved the mystery of their neighbour Pestonjee Aunty’s stolen necklace (the culprit turned out to be her grand-nephew Khurshed, who’d flicked it to repay his gambling debts).

“These books are magnets for dust,” said Sherbanoo, running her finger across the dusty covers of two fat volumes of 99 Things Every Detective Must Know that had found a permanent home on the dining table. “Then you go about sneezing like a Diwali ladi-pataka.”

“A few sneezes are a small price to pay for all the knowledge squeezed into these pages, dear,” said Russi, fishing out his handkerchief and delicately wiping the offending pair of books like a jeweller polishing his most prized gems. “You have already seen it serving society – so far maybe only our building society, but that doesn’t matter.”

Sherbanoo’s frown grew deeper, but Russi kept going, steadfastly avoiding eye contact.

“Of course, all this works only because of my undoubtedly sharp umpire’s mind,” he said. “Actually, rascal fielders on the cricket ground are quite similar to scoundrel crime suspects, you know. Both are experts at deception – the fielders when they appeal with full sincerity no matter how obviously notout the batter is, the suspects when they put on their saintly faces and plead complete innocence. But the cricketers’ overacting didn’t put shendi on Russi Batliwala back then, and there’s no chance any criminal’s overacting will put shendi on him now. Impossible to be fooled when you have full knowledge of the lawbook and see every small detail before making any decision.”

Russi paused, chuffed with his quickly constructed case for his sleuthing pursuits, even though he was certain it would effect no change of heart in its intended audience. He carefully placed the now dust-free books back in the same spot on the dining table they had previously occupied.

“We will need a new bookcase if more books are arriving,” declared Sherbanoo.

“Ah, for that, I have another solution, dear. It involves reorganising the crockery cabinet, which has far too many things for our simple household,” replied Russi, a mischievous glint in his eye.

His phone beeped before he caught Sherbanoo’s heavy sigh.

“But we can discuss that once I have returned,” he said. “My ghelsappo taxi driver is finally here and I must jump in before he decides to scoot off for some after-dinner kulfi-custard.”

Russi sprang to his feet, stood before the wall mirror beside the door and smoothened the fabric of his untucked white cotton shirt. He proceeded to whip out a comb from the back pocket of his trousers and effect a final, smoothening flourish on the tuft of hair across his bald pate.

“Trim taraak – that’s what my bapaiji would have said.” He was clearly pleased with what he saw in his reflection. “Sherbanoo dear, it’s time for me to wine and dine with India’s cricketing elite. Wish me luck – with the greasy food and the greasier people!”

Excerpted with permission from A Murder is Fixed, Madhav Nayak, HarperCollins India.