When young girls turn up dead in a Mumbai slum, Detective Lalli uncovers an unimaginable truth

Prologue

Pinki was the first to go. It was past six when her mother noticed Pinki was missing. The older children, just home from school, were clamouring over chai-chapatti. She gave them each a dollop of mango chhunda to keep them quiet, and went out looking for Pinki.

Somebody remembered seeing Pinki an hour ago, playing by herself near the pump. But she wasn’t there now. The older children darted through the slum’s labyrinth calling out to her. Other kids joined them, yelling out her name.

Pinki’s father came home at seven. They searched the slum once more, turned the place inside out.

Nothing.

Pinki was five, too young to cross the main road. Her mother couldn’t believe she had ventured out on her own.

At nine they went to the Police Chowki. The police promised to look, and perhaps, they even did.

They were still looking for Pinki three days later, when Jamila’s mother sent her to the store for a bar of soap.

A-1 General Store on the main road had a side entrance where they sold goods at cut price. That’s where Jamila was supposed to go, but she never got there.

Jamila was six.

They were still looking for Jamila two days later, when Pinki’s parents found a parcel on their threshold at 6 am.

It had been left propped against the door. Pinky’s father had to give the door a hefty push to open it, the parcel was that heavy. It fell with a soft thwock that made Picky’s mother scream.

It was a parcel, done in newspaper, trussed with string.

A parcel, as big as a large pillow.

Or, a small child.

By that time, Mary was missing.

By that time too, all the children were prisoners. Their parents kept them close, watched them like hawks, snapped if they complained.

Every house bristled with suspicion.

In the midst of such surveillance it was incredible that Mary should vanish, but vanish she did.

Mary’s mother took her to the golawalla. Mary was a long time picking a flavour and her mother stopped to chat with a friend.

Mary skipped about, sassing the golawalla. She chose a lime green gola and walked back to her mother, sucking intently on the deliciously acid treat.

When her mother turned around, Mary wasn’t there.

The next morning, they found Jamila.

By now, everybody was on the lookout for big newspaper parcels.

It took them two more days to find Mary.

By then, Sindhu had disappeared.

A constable had patrolled the place ever since Jamila disappeared, but he saw nothing, or did nothing.

At Miravli Police Chowki, the paperwork went really fast.

The police were considerate and sympathetic. They assured the parents they would manage matters without an autopsy. The bodies were cleaned up and sent back by afternoon. The police even helped with last rites.

Children stopped going to school. All day they sat cramped in small dark rooms listlessly watching TV, quarrelling or crying till they fell asleep.

Eventually, when Sindhu went missing, Inspector Tambe of Miravli Chowki spoke to the press.

Tuesday, 21 March

March was not meant for murder. Not March, flirting a pink froth of blossom on newly green trees. Never March, busy with birdsong, brisk mornings, close afternoons and a swift swoon into night, adrift on a tide of stars. Not this March, so tender with unexpected love, not now.

But this was March, and here was murder, and I in the midst of it.

It happened at Kandewadi.

At our Kandewadi.

I can say it now. Even before murder, there was chaos. It burned in me, a slow fever I could not localise. Nothing had changed – except that I was in love. It skewed everything. Unhinged, the days swung and rattled past, leaving me clueless. The others didn’t seem to notice, not even Lalli. They only noticed my happiness and didn’t enquire into it. And then the call came, plunging us all into chaos.

The call interrupted dinner. I had agonised over that dinner for nearly a month.

Savio, still on the phone, caught my eye and said “Kandewadi.”

“Our Kandewadi?” I asked. He didn’t reply. His face changed, and he looked away. The next moment, muttering an apology, he was gone.

Did I imagine it, or was the air relieved?

Certainly, with Savio gone, conversation became easier. The company, liberated from some unspoken constraint, grew intent on our guest.

Nobody commented on Savio’s abrupt departure. The food vanished with amazing docility. Arun was telling his Siachen story, and they were listening, spellbound. I should have been relieved, but the look on Savio’s face haunted me.

Arun finished his story to a flurry of questions.

Dr Q, whose idea of action sports is wrestling his umbrella open in a shower, wanted to know about skiing. And as for Shukla, whom I had invited in a moment of wild generosity, Shukla clamored for pictures. Even Lalli asked about the highway through the Karakoram.

It was as if Arun, like Arda Viraf, had toured heaven and hell and returned to tell the story.

Now and then they threw me a bone, but I was quite content to watch them silently.

They adored Arun.

And what a relief that was.

Or should have been.

I realised I was distracted. I needed to know what had happened at Kandewadi.

I went to the kitchen for the dessert and made a sneak call.

“You don’t want to know, not now,” Savio growled.

“Just tell me it isn’t those kids.”

He didn’t answer.

I needn’t have sweated over the darned dessert. Walnut fudge ice-cream. They would have scoffed those walnuts whole, shell and all, listening to Arun yarn about the Great Wall of China.

It was only to be expected, I suppose. I had been talking Arun nonstop for a month. They mentioned him frequently too, as in: That Guy (Savio), Our Mathematician (Dr Q), Ek-Do-Teen-Char (Shukla).

Only Lalli referred to him by name.

I hadn’t realised they were expecting something weedy and retiring.

Lalli’s eyes widened when Arun entered, and a morose silence overtook the rest of the company.

Then Dr Q quickly got courteous and Savio made a few polite remarks. It was left to Lalli to draw Arun out, and that didn’t take very long.

Shukla became attentive when Arun mentioned his Siachen adventure, and then Savio got that phone call.

Past the Great Wall, Arun had them hooked on a numbers game, and Shukla, who’s a Sudoku addict, settled down to really enjoy himself. Suddenly, I wished them all gone. I was glad they were all so madly enthusiastic about Arun, but I wasn’t planning on having them crowd me out of his life.

Finally, it was over. Farewells were said, and I picked up the car keys, eager to romance the moon.

“Oh, Shukla’s going my way,” Arun said, with a consoling squeeze, but he seemed glad enough of the company. I heard Shukla’s asinine bray all the way down to the gate.

“What did he say?” Lalli asked, as I shut the door and came in bleakly.

“Eh? That – that Shukla was going his way.”

“Yes – they seemed simpatico. But I meant Savio. What did he say it was?”

Back it came hurtling, that rush of doom.

Kandewadi.

Our Kandewadi is not the big one at Girgaum that everyone knows. Our Kandewadi is a small slum sunk off the Andheri-Kurla Road, a maze of tin shacks and lean-tos, winding in and out of a sputter of small industries. Metal works, mostly. These factories were all you ever heard in Kandewadi. Their jagged metallic clangour was the white noise that mapped most of the day.

Every morning, at precisely 11 o’clock, these sounds stopped. Workmen laid down their tools and came out of their sheds. In little shops and kiosks, tradesmen dawdled, making customers wait.

For 10 minutes, everything stopped, everyone bided time. Savio and I had watched this curious pause a few months ago. We were on our way to Ghatkopar when Savio looked at his watch and pulled up, saying there was something he wanted me to see. I followed him into the galli that branched into Kandewadi – and walked right into the caesura.

The stillness was near absolute.

“What are they waiting for?”

“Here they come.”

Children dressed for school oozed out of the pores of Kandewadi. It was time for the afternoon shift. Some had parents to chaperone them, but most were unescorted, the older girls keeping an eye on the little ones.

One thing set them apart from children elsewhere. They didn’t rush out. They walked with a sedate air of enjoyment, almost a sense of occasion.

They were all extremely spruce, the girls particularly, their hair ribbons in crisp bows.

The workmen stared as they passed.

The children took no notice. They didn’t smile or wave or call out to their dads. They walked past, their chatter subdued till they reached the main road.

Once they had crossed the road, they erupted, running and frolicking the rest of the way to school.

The men relaxed too. Laughter loosened the air. The radio blared. Men strolled over to the kiosk. Someone called out to the chaiwallah for a cutting. A general ease settled in as work resumed. Even the machines sounded more harmonious now.

Greenlight, by Kalpana Swaminathan, Bloomsbury