The Shona Baby

You would think that being a gun-toting denizen of the dumps would be a glamorous livelihood, wouldn’t you? Well, let me, the deadbeat detective of Delhi, disabuse you of the notion. The correct answer is: not if you have a gaggle of relatives.

After I had recovered my memory and solved a kidnapping case, I had shifted into my grandfather’s house. There, I solved another big case. I had defeated the perfidy of certain villains who were cheating assorted aunts, uncles and overseas cousins, of substantial money, though unprofitably. They weren’t even good cheats, I tell you.

While my elder brother strutted around as if he had hand-held me through detection classes, and attempted to convert me to calling bullets ‘rounds’, my aunts and uncles were duly laudatory. However, being relatives, they ended up thinking of me as some sort of unpaid minor genie, emphasis on minor. If they were not pestering me with the detection of mislaid spectacles (in the fridge) and sundry household items, they were calling me over to show me off to visiting friends and neighbours. Even as a child, I would howlingly resist attempts to get me to “say a poem” or “do a dance”. Certainly, I had no intention of falling for these pathetic entreaties now. The only good that came of it was that I was able to practise my frowns and fierce faces.

(It is truly disheartening to realise that the effect of your blackest scowl is marred by your image in the minds of the audience. These people still thought of me as pig-tailed Chhutki, 1.1 metres tall. Unfortunately, I am still not tall enough to look down my nose at them, unless I tilt my head back a whole lot. Or I can always do it metaphorically.)

So I preponed my next visit to the lawyer.

Thing is, I have to get my share of my grandfather’s house transferred in my name. The lawyer initially gave me a time frame of six months, but that deadline is sneaking away every time I glance away or even blink.

The lawyer isn’t usually happy to see me. She repeats that she will send me Updates by message on my phone. If I cunningly ask why no Updates have been sent in 11 days, she sighs and says it’s because nothing has moved, and exhorts me to remember that the Fruits of Patience are Sweet. Well, they’d better be leaking saccharine at this rate.

This time, though, when her long-suffering receptionist-cum-typist-cum-filing clerk slouched into her room upon her muttered command of “Enter”, he popped right out and said that Madamji would see me immediately.

I leaped up, anticipating an Update, and salivating over imaginary Fruits.

“You’re a detective, right?” she asked, “Specialising in kidnapping cases?” I almost blubbered with joy. This was better than an Update. It was a Job.

I paid off the auto at the turn and walked to the house of the Client. I tightened my coat and pulled my hat down a bit. Good first impressions need a hat. Any hat. Raincoat and raincoat hat were my mainstays till I could afford something more conventional.

As I pushed open the squeaky gate and approached the open front door, a commotion erupted inside the house. It started with a yell, followed by the most blood-curdling screeches I had ever heard, along with the barking of the world’s loudest and most frantic dog. I found myself inside the house. (This is one of my few enduring unsolved mysteries - I often find myself having teleported into the midst of commotions, without any idea how I reached there). As to why I moved towards the commotion rather than away from it, it should be obvious. If it was the Client emitting death-cries, I would be out of a Job before even being paid the auto fare.

By then, furniture and china was crashing, a woman dressed in a horrible kaftan was screaming for Miss Princess to Stop, a man dressed in pyjama-kurta and vest was yelling for Shah Jahan to Stop, and a woman dressed in a saree was holding her hands to her chest and screeching a single high EEEEEE.

Amazing voice she had - she kept it up in volume and pitch for long enough to make Lata Mangeshkar envious, had she been around.

The commotion was under control, at least from my point of view. My deductions: a cat and a dog were chasing each other all over the room, with their presumed owners pleading for a global ceasefire with as much effect as the UN, while a slim, young, middle-class woman was practising to win Indian Idol.

Alas, they were all too preoccupied to respond to my throat-clearing and tentative “Excuse me”. I thought of firing in the air for crowd control, as the police do. But the bullet might hit some furniture, or one of the crazed animals, or even the Client. Risky. So I picked up a piece of a large vase from the mess on the floor and threw it at the cat-dog border skirmish. It smashed right next to them (I have very good aim), and both of them leaped apart. Kaftan Woman grabbed the dog’s collar and Vest Man grabbed the cat. Though both animals realised they’d been duped, to save face, they continued to yap and screech until the cat was locked in another room. The dog, it turned out, was from the neighbouring house.

The Siren was dispatched to return Miss Princess to the neighbours, where she (it was a bitch, not a dog) continued her unfinished assault on the neighbourhood ears and made enough racket for two dogs. Two dogs that did not like each other. In fact, she seemed at times to achieve almost a harmony in barking, managing to bark with loudness variations and echo effects. Certainly, she was not melodious.

While the Siren, having dried her tears, served tea and biscuits, the Clients (husband and wife) briefed me on the Case.

“Julius is Missing,” said Vest Man.

I whipped out my pen and pocket spiral notebook, and started taking notes. What a name, I tell you. What were they thinking? Any kid with such a name is just asking to be assassinated.

“Description, please.”

“Oh, he’s the most adorable,” said Kaftan Woman. “Brown hair, those melting eyes. So intelligent and obedient. My shona baby.”

Ok, nobody describes their offspring that way, unless the heart has grown a lot fonder by their absence.

“Height, weight, clothes, last seen where and when, please,” I said crisply. I already had brown hair and black eyes down in my notes.

“About so high,” said Vest Man, holding his hand about two feet above the ground.

Nah, they couldn’t have lost their baby and be so calm, if tearful. Could they?

“I don’t know his weight, though. What was he wearing, darling? The blue or the red jacket?”

“Let me check,” and Kaftan Woman disappeared into the house, eventually returning with a weird blue object. It had a patterned back, two tiny arm-holes and almost no front. It did have a sturdy black border, and a sturdy black belt, with a strap and strange double buckle in the back. She was also carrying a fancy dog leash. Deduction: Julius is a dog.

“We last saw him yesterday in the evening,” she said. “He slipped out of the gate. I’m sure The Help left it open,” she added, looking askance towards the kitchen where the Siren was splashing dishes in the sink. “Even though she says she did not.” Yes, she said The Help. “The help these days has no loyalty. No loyalty.” To a dog? Seriously?

“Er, what kind of dog, please?” I changed the topic to something more useful.

“A cock a spaniel,” said Vest Man, which didn’t help me much, since I cannot tell these foreign dogs apart. Was this one a part-bird? “Wait, you’ll want the pet-degree certificate,” he said. He pronounced it without the t in pet. Such a fake accent, I tell you.

“I’d prefer a picture,” I quickly said. I really don’t care to know the results of dog exams. Wonder which university gives them degrees? But he insisted on showing it to me. It was a pedigree certificate, apparently, not a pet degree, unless the University doesn’t know how to spell either. Julius had a Sire named Sir Cornelius, a Dam called Mysore Beauty (how does a dog own a dam in Mysore?), and an implanted microchip with a serial number. I wondered if the chip opened a Swiss Bank account. (Hey, I saw an action movie in which the spy had a chip like that, don’t laugh, and even dogs can have Swiss Bank accounts if their owners are rich enough, so there). Julius also, he casually mentioned, cost a humongous ₹65,000 as a puppy. I could have got them 130 local puppies for that amount - and made a profit at that.

I was suitably impressed by the fashions of the rich, but it didn’t last long, as I was then tortured with about 200 photos of the missing dog, and five videos.

“But this is Miss Princess,” I objected when I saw the first picture of a sad-looking brown dog with floppy ears, sitting and scratching itself behind an ear, while being smothered by a grinning Kaftan Woman.

Kaftan Woman was most offended. “Miss Princess is merely of the same breed. I’m not even sure if she’s pure-bred. But such a badly brought up little bitch. Always barking, barking, and sniffing around Julius.” She sniffed. I wasn’t sure if it was in disapproval or as a demonstration.

“And where did you hunt for the, ah, Missing?” I asked.

They eagerly described all the favourite haunts of the dog to me: the garbage bins of the neighbourhood, the local park, the nearby children’s school, the Siren’s room, where he “adorably” ate her leather slippers. They had hunted “all over, absolutely all over”, with the help of some neighbourhood kids, who enjoyed calling Juuulius, Juuulius well into the night and past bedtime for most.

Vest Man explained that Kaftan Woman had been “in tears, in absolute tears”.

The Siren was, meanwhile, back with a broom and dust pan, sullenly sweeping up the detritus of the war of the pets. Kaftan Woman held back her tears long enough to sharply point out minute fragments of china and glass that the Siren had missed, and sent her off for a mop as well.

The distraught couple had then proceeded to develop a low opinion of the police and the DSP, because he had thrown them out of the Police Station the minute he had realised that he was not looking for a kidnapped toddler at 2.30 am, but what he called a “mere dog” (“Imagine!”). Finally, in the morning, they had approached the lawyer as a last-ditch effort. Since she had sent them a real detective exceedingly promptly, they were now convinced that privatising the police would be an “extremely good idea, extremely.”

Presently, I escaped from the house, bearing a colour printout of a photo of Julius, the one in which he was sitting and scratching himself. More importantly, I had a signed contract for detective work, my fees (half paid in advance, most reluctantly), and a Suspect.

I lurked outside the gate for more than an hour before the Siren emerged from the house, tying some money into the corner of her saree, the voice of Kaftan Woman in the background reminding her to get the Good Mutton for the Children.

I coughed significantly. The Siren jumped.

“You’re as good as Lata Mangeshkar,” I said, admiringly, before she could unleash the EEEEEE that would no doubt win her a TV show some day.

Well, it was easy-peasy after that. A few minutes of questioning her, followed by more minutes questioning the main culprit whom she promptly surrendered, and the case was solved.

However, the bigger issue, for me, was how to get the second half of my fees. I had long since deduced that Kaftan Woman and Vest Man were typical rich people with nothing better to do than bargain down the hard-working middle class - me included. These types never appreciate my lightning fast solves. They act as if they were cheated out of several litres of my sweat, whereas no sweat is mentioned anywhere in my contract. I’ve checked.

Another issue was that, while every detective must do a grand reveal, I doubted that I could do it in the Police Station. Though the DSP is a friend, I somehow felt he’d be embarrassed to see the climax of a case that he’d thrown out just the previous day.

I took the problem to the lawyer. Since she had no current Updates for me, she agreed to help on the condition that I didn’t ask for Updates for at least two weeks (I bargained it down from a month).

So that’s how the Clients, the Siren, and their next-door neighbour congregated in the lawyer’s office that evening. The Clients handed over the rest of my fees to the lawyer “to hold”. She said it was short. They all re-counted. It was short. Ha, I was right to be suspicious!

I was still gazing at the lawyer in admiration a few hours later. She had ensured the matter didn’t go to the police. She even stopped the whole lot from yelling at each other after just about two hours of screaming insults, most of which were new to me. She had got the Clients and Miss Princesse’s daddy (there is apparently an extra e in that name, and if he’s Miss Princesse’s daddy, then he’s Mr Princesse, right?), to agree to settle out of court and out of the police station.

I had explained how Mr Princesse had bribed the Siren to leave the gate open (for a measly ₹1,000, she had told me), and had grabbed Julius when he sneaked out. He had then hidden him in his basement along with Miss Princesse, his “coochie-woochie baby”, resulting in the extra harmonics in the barking. Motive? In order to sell their pedigreed puppies. I might as well tell you that most of the insults were aimed at the dogs, both neighbours being viciously polite to each other at all times.

The long and short of it is that Mr Princesse will return Julius to the Clients immediately and also pay them a lakh (a whole lakh!) for what the lawyer calls stud fees, as well as give the Clients “one (1) offspring of the union”. In return, they will not insist on having him arrested. I think they fear the DSP won’t oblige, so they didn’t waste too much time conceding that, though they did claim it was out of sheer neighbourliness. Mr Princesse also agreed very promptly once the lawyer pointed out that the Kennel Club wouldn’t issue the pedigree certificates without the concurrence of Julius’ (cough, cough) parents. He’d be left with ₹500 puppies instead of ₹50,000 puppies. After that, it was only a matter of bargaining, with thousands and lakhs being bandied about. Bargain sealed and pending formal documentation, they all got quite friendly and had got to mutually agreeing that The Help Has No Loyalty, No Loyalty when I left them to it.

The Siren has the status of prosecution witness, so she’s keeping her job. She claimed the bribe as compensation for her slippers, which the lawyer convinced the dog parents to all agree to, though both sides initially laid claim to it. Imagine, wanting his bribe back once he was caught! Personally, I think Kaftan Woman and Vest Man can’t do any of their housework themselves and will let the Siren get away with much worse than accepting a few minor bribes, especially if someone else is doing the bribing.

The lawyer is so pleased with me for getting her more fees, that she will be sending her clerk to the registry next week to chase up my paperwork, free of cost to me. She has promised me a definite Update well before the two weeks are up, and maybe even a Fruit.