Chapter 17 - The Factory

The next morning they were in Mr. Mehta’s ageing car, driving to his factory, or what remained of it. The atmosphere in the car was solemn, almost funereal. The air-conditioning in the car whirred in an effort to break the silence in the car. Mr. Mehta who looked sullen might have woken up in the wrong side of his bed and Maan was in no mood to go. The driver of the car had an upturned moustache much like the guard outside Mr. Mehta’s house. Abhijit, who sat in the front, seemed quite amused. He felt sure that Mr. Mehta also had a gardener and a cook with upturned moustaches. He tried to imagine the maids in Mr. Mehta’s house all with upturned moustaches and then he stared back at Mr. Mehta, sitting in the back of the car and noticed the abject nakedness of his upper lip. His lips seemed to quiver like the petals of a rose (what was it, the ‘Provence’ rose?) and lacked the resoluteness of the rest of Mr. Mehta’s physiognomy. Surely he must have had a moustache in his youth. In fact he really felt like asking Mr. Mehta his opinion about moustaches and where he had got all his mustachioed employees. He imagined Mr. Mehta making a trip to the deserts of Rajasthan and picking up camel-loads of employees with upturned moustaches. He could visualize a queue of men in front of Mr. Mehta, who sat in a bench under a large umbrella saying, “No your moustache is not thick enough, next please!” At that moment Mr. Mehta’s lips quivered, and his fingers instinctively scratched where his moustache should have been. Maan of course was trying to look as disinterested as possible. He looked like a petulant child who had been forced into the car that would take him to school. Abhijit had appeared early in the morning to Maan’s place to Maan’s disbelief and horror. Maan had opened the door saying, “No it can’t be”.
Abhijit had replied, “But it is!”
To which Maan had waved his hand and said, “Go away, you are a dream” and had tried to close the door.
But like a smart salesman Abhijit had put his foot in at the right moment and shoved his way into the house saying, “We are such stuff, as dreams are made on, And our little life, is rounded with a sleep.”
Maan muttered something like, “Exactly, and I need my sleep”, but he knew he would have to go along with Abhijit.

Forthwith, they reached the factory and it looked quite charred. Mr. Mehta’s lips quivered even more and Maan felt very sorry for him. The courtyard that led to Mr. Mehta’s main office had had a small garden, which was charred too. The office building looked relatively unscathed but the workshop was in ruins. Maan knew only too well about all the machinery in it and the effort that had gone in to procure the machinery and erect the plant. The roof had caved in as though someone had dropped a giant bowling ball from the sky. The left side of the workshop, which stood two stories high, had incurred extensive damage as if the bowling ball had bounced a couple of times inside the workshop and had rolled out through the left side. Mr. Mehta stood with his hands on his hips and a pitiable expression on his face. He stood as if he had just the seen the ball roll out and now wanted the ball to roll on over him.
“It is him, who else!” he suddenly said and shook his head.
“Who?” asked Abhijit.
“Sunil. I don’t think you know him”
The name did shake Maan, like a child tugging at his trouser, but then surely there were a thousand Sunil’s in Mumbai.
But he had to ask, “What happened exactly?”
“It was very late at night. Bhole Ram was here”, and he pointed to his watchman. Abhijit couldn’t help a smile when he noticed that Bhole Ram had a moustache too. Bhole Ram came ambling towards them and gave them a salute. He had a bandage on his head and his face showed that he had been roughed up a bit.
“It must have been the police that roughed him up”, thought Maan. Then he asked, “Is he a witness?”
“No no. The scoundrel sneaked up from behind him and hit him on his head to knock him unconscious. It was around 11 pm according to Bhole Ram and he was sitting there by the gate. Bhole Ram stays there, right behind the office and somehow his home had escaped any fire. That is why the police had roughed him up a bit to find out the truth.” Maan smiled to himself.
Mr. Mehta continued, “I have known Bhole Ram for 30 years now and he is a man to be trusted. He says by the time he regained consciousness the place was already in flames. He gathered some neighbors and called me on the phone. But with all that inflammable stuff in the workshop you can imagine, it all happened very soon and there is very little one can do in such situations. The fire-brigade office is right here in Worli and they were here in no time. They could contain the fire from spreading too much. Some how the arsonist knew very well about the layout of the plant. He knew that portion of the shop floor where you dare not play with fire”. And he pointed to the left side of the workshop.

“The police even thought that it could have been something I had planned, and I got a call from Inspector Khan yesterday to discuss just this. I have already named Sunil and he is the only one who could have done this. Many of my plant workers in fact were quite sure about it. They saw him the previous day at my office. I had him thrown out. Can you imagine, he had come to see me! They marched up to his house and beat him up. I didn’t ask them to do it. But I think he deserves it. He stays quite close by, from what I hear.”
And he rolled up his sleeves as if he intended to go after Sunil himself.
“Have they arrested him then?” asked Maan.
“No, would you believe it, he is absconding. Saala Harami.. I wish I could lay my hands on him. Let me show you what he’s done.”

And they walked towards the workshop. Mr. Mehta was very animated as he described the damage in detail. The pillars of the workshop stood brazenly as if indicating that it was not because of them that the roof had collapsed. The broken fragments of the roof that had evidently dropped in from above blocked the metal staircase that led up to the upper floor of this two-storey workshop. Mr. Mehta showed the site of the explosion and explained why he felt it was not accidental.

“Here! This is where he came in. There was a wall here and he jumped over it. Then he came this way. The chemicals we use are explosive in nature but that is why we take precautions. The shop floor was closed and everybody had left. I myself was in office till around 8 in the evening. How could there have been a fire unless someone did it deliberately? That is what I have been telling to the police from the start. It couldn’t have been an accident.”
“Yes, that’s right Mr. Mehta. But there was a thunderstorm that night. Couldn’t it…or perhaps an electric spark or a short circuit?” asked Abhijit.
“That sort of thing can be determined by the police? Can’t they find it out?” asked Maan.
“Yes that’s what they are doing right now. They have all the evidence. In a way it doesn’t matter if it were caused by a thunderstorm. I would still be insured. But somehow I have a feeling it is he, Maan. It’s not all about the money that is lost in it, but about how he has brought down the place I have built over so many years. I want that swine caught and punished. Here we are. Come this way to the storeroom. It is underground and a lot of my stock is actually unaffected. They seem to have survived the fire.”
They took a dark narrow pathway that led to the basement of the workshop and Mr. Mehta took out from his pocket a small torch. He tried opening the latch.

The door latch seemed to have jammed and Mr. Mehta kept trying with his keys to loosen the latch. He shook the latch with all his might. The light from the torch reflected from the door and the latch, and exposed beads of perspiration from his forehead. Mr. Mehta had his silvered hair cropped very short and the perspiration made his hair shine in the reflected light. They waited and waited for what seemed like a very long time. It gave Maan time to wonder about it all. Was it really arson? Could it have been just an accident? What did Sunil have against this man? Is it the same Sunil that he had heard of? Why would he barge in to Mr. Mehta’s office the previous day? Why was he thrown out? Maan felt that he couldn’t have asked such questions, but he wanted to know the answers. Abhijit stepped forward quite gaily and asked Mr. Mehta to move away. He tried knocking the door, but Mr. Mehta stopped him with, “Ah! You will break the latch!”
Abhijit wondered to himself, “But isn’t that the point!”
For some reason both looked at Maan, and then Mr. Mehta started checking his cell phone for a signal.
“No signal”, said Maan. His face had lit up with the light from his cell phone. Mr. Mehta still had the light on the door. In the darkness, they heard a noise in the workshop. They were silent and listened. The noise approached the pathway and then it stopped abruptly.
“He must have noticed the light”, thought Maan.
At the same time, Mr. Mehta turned around and shouted, “Who’s there?”

Both Abhijit and Mr. Mehta ran up the pathway to check who it was. They had been gone a while, when Maan standing in the darkness noticed someone walking down the pathway. He walked down noiseless and effortlessly, his feet barely touched the floor. But he hadn’t yet seen Maan. As he passed Maan, Maan held him from behind and the intruder was caught by surprise. He was tall and powerful and Maan felt that in a moment, as he held Maan’s hand in a vice like grip, pried open Maan’s arms from around him and turned to face Maan. He tried to punch Maan in the face but Maan swayed away. So he held Maan by his hands and kicked him in the stomach with his knee. Maan winced with pain and fell down to the ground. The intruder stood and stared at him. It was pitch dark but yet he stood and stared at him. Was he waiting for Maan to make a noise, or shout for help? Then he ran away just as noiselessly as he had come. As he was lying down in pain Maan noticed in his pocket a sharp instrument. He took it out and remembered it. It was the knife with the engraved handle. Mr. Mehta’s voice could be heard approaching from a distance. The sound echoed in the open workshop. He was saying, “I am sure I heard someone. This is so strange.”
Maan stood up and brushed off the dirt from his shirt. He started opening the latch with his knife.
“It must have been a cat. Ah! Where did you find that thing? What’s the matter? Are you ok?” said Abhijit.
“Nothing. I slipped and fell down”, said Maan.

The sharp edge of the knife glistened in the torchlight. The latch opened. Mr. Mehta walked into the storeroom and showed the array of batteries in the storeroom.
“This part of it has not been harmed by the fire. And I have quite a bit of raw material here too.”
As the torch swayed around the room, it sometimes fell on the distant corners of the room that were so far away. The light lit up rows of stacked up containers, barrels and the like. The room was quite big in its dimensions and the storehouse seemed to contain a lot of material.
“Can you have it shifted out of here?” asked Maan.
Mr. Mehta stopped abruptly as he was walking in the storeroom and said, “You are right. There must have been someone up there. You have never been to this part before Maan, have you?”
“No”, said Maan from the far end of the storeroom. “He must have left something that he came back for.”
“What? I can’t hear you”, asked Mr. Mehta.
“Nothing. Have the police inspected this part of the storeroom?”
“Yes I believe so.”
“Ok lets go”, said Maan, with finality and started walking towards the exit of the storeroom. “Why am I getting involved in this?” he wondered.

They walked out into the sunlight and found Bhole Ram waiting for them with an umbrella. Mr. Mehta came up panting and motioned for Bhole Ram to hold the umbrella to his head. Then he started walking towards the office building, with Bhole Ram trailing behind him holding the umbrella to his head. Abhijit found it rather curious and couldn’t suppress a smile. The sun was beating down on them so ferociously that Abhijit decided to follow Mr. Mehta to his office. But Maan stood rooted to where he was.
“Aren’t you coming in with us”, asked Abhijit.
“No I have an errand to run. Let me catch up with you later today. I will call you I promise. Please tell Mr. Mehta I am sorry and I have something really urgent to attend to,” and he turned around and walked away without giving Abhijit a chance to respond. Maan’s original intention was to leave for home. He had no mind to get involved in what was to follow. Mr. Mehta would draw an elaborate list of claims that he would be making from the insurance company. They would discuss plans for reconstruction, damage to machinery, cost for repair, purchase of new machinery, schedules, costs involved, current orders, future orders, etc. There would be follow-ups and meetings and discussions. This is exactly what Maan had been running away from and he was in no mood to be sucked into it. At least not right now. He wanted to go back home, but why was he walking the other way? He checked himself and turned around to walk towards where he could catch a taxi. But there was something in his mind that annoyed him very much. He decided he had to find out and he turned back resolutely towards Kamala’s home. How long was it since he had been there? Must have been a few weeks. Who knows? Maan had lost all sense of time. Would he go in there again through those narrow alleys? He remembered Manoj and how he had helped him up when he had tripped and fallen down. He remembered the smile on Manoj face. Why did he feel so annoyed at Manoj? He brushed aside his thoughts and suddenly noticed how deserted the place seemed. It was the same narrow alley in which he had seen so many people. There were kids playing, old ladies sitting outside, young men doing their ablutions before a running tap, women drying chilies. There was so much activity the last time he had been there. He remembered with dread how he had walked with the old man, how he had felt knocked around by passersby, perhaps even laughed at.
“It must have been a different time of day”, he reasoned to himself, as he kept walking. Yet it was strange that all the doors were closed and even the windows were shut.

The houses were cringing from fear, weren’t they? The houses were trying to look elsewhere, trying to seem not to care. Here and there he would see friendly stray dogs wagging their tails enjoying the complete emptiness of the place. One of them walked up to him and sniffed him. It seemed to ask, “What’s up buster? What are you doing here?” An election poster hung from the street lamp was swaying in the wind. The poster had probably been there for a while since the elections were over a long time ago. Besides, it was nobody’s business to climb up the street light and bring down the poster. The face of the leader smiled a cloying, officious smile and he had his hands in a trademark ‘namaste’. There were messages in 3 languages beside the face, extolling him and asking for votes. It was a common sight in Mumbai and usually Maan would not even have noticed the poster and the politician in it. Yet at that time, in the complete absence of human beings, the poster raised a poignant question in Maan’s mind. Whom will he ask for votes from now that everybody is gone? As if on cue, the dogs barked in the background. Maan turned around and waved at the dogs and the dogs wagged their tails in return. Maan passed the election poster and noticed at the end of the alley a patch of khaki color. He knew at once why nobody was in sight. As he walked towards the mossy house at the end of the alley he noticed many policemen clad in khaki. These were of course the constables, waving their rods, adjusting the caps and spitting pan into the mossy walls of the house. They were obviously not enjoying standing in the heat. One of them cracked a joke and the whole pack of constables started laughing to it. The inspector must have been inside. As Maan walked towards them, they stopped laughing and looked at him curiously. They didn’t expect anyone in the alley, especially not someone that looked like Maan.