Hello! Olleh!
I
was doing nothing in a lazy, slow sort of way, when I got the call. It fairly
jolted me, the “jannngg” of the phone ring. After disentangling my legs from
the armchair’s, I put ear to phone. Or was it phone to ear? I don’t remember
now. It is not important.
Right.
So I was putting ear to phone or vice versa. I uttered the important word, the
password for every one of my confidential tele-conversations.
“Hello?”
“Olleh!¹” The
answer was crisp and to the point. The popular return password, given before
any business was discussed.
“Is
that you?”
“Yes,
it is I.”
“I?”
“Me.”
“I
or me? Don’t confuse and tangle me. Now I’ll have to ask you the untangle
question. Tell me, how many letters does ‘Thippagondanahalli²’ have and how
many are repeated?”
“Eh?”
“Okay.
It is you. Now pack your case and get ready to travel. Secret mission. Don’t go
and tell your neighbour or borrow his suitcase. Usual preparations. Don’t
shave. Meet me at the car park of Metro, the station, not the bar, near your
house at 6:35 sharp tomorrow evening, pronto, without fail. In case you are
going to get delayed by traffic, call and inform beforehand. Right?”
“Right!”
Khat³. The call was cut.
Our department was careful to keep calls short and to the point.
I
rose to my full height. And remembered that I hadn’t been told how many guns to
pack. Shoot! I’d have to call back now and find out. Shoot, shoot! And while I
was at it, I must also find out who called me. Shoot, shoot, shoot! How could I
have been so careless? I called back the number which had called me. On the
second ring it was picked up and he seemed to know what I was going to ask, for
he uttered just two words, the first of which was “Two”. The second was
“Aleph”.
Khat. The call was cut.
I
understood. One, I was to pack two guns. Two, it was Aleph beta (“son”), the third-in-command, who called me.
I
quickly changed into my teens and jees, no, actually my jeans and tees, and
took an autorick to Comm Street. At the first corner, there is a shop which I
patronise. The shopkeeper, simply known as Bhai
(“Brother”), sells good quality peanut chikkis⁴
at reasonable prices. He also clandestinely deals in other exotic stuff, a fact
known only to a select few. Sometimes he lets me pay later, when he is
confident I will return from my mission. Bhai
saw me approach and laughed. Comedian. Everything looked funny to him.
He
attacked me with questions. “Kya ba?
What ba? Tume aati kathi lekin aati nai?
You say you are coming but not coming? Kya
kissa? What matter? Sab khairiyath?
All well?”
I
replied, somewhat diffidently “Arrey, pooch
nakko, bhai-jaan. Arrey, don’t ask, brother-life.” So he stopped asking.
“Manje do gunnaan diyo. Gimme two guns. Abhich. Right now. Phataphat. Fatafat.”
“Kisi ko maar daaltin tume? Are you going to bump
off someone?”
“Shshsh!
Secret! Tume pooch nakko, hume nai
bataatin so. You don’t ask, I won’t tell.”
“Ho-oh? Do lyaaza. Is that so-oh? Two minutes.”
He
stepped out and shouted, “Arrey Chhotu,
do cutting cha leko aa re. Arrey Chhotu, bring two cutting teas.” And
promptly a small boy appeared carrying a steel frame holding several small
glasses of what looked like tea and handed one over to me and one to Bhai. I took a sip. It tasted like
gunmetal and brought back memories of that eventful day in Stanbull when that canteenwala had shoved the barrel of a
gun into my mouth and demanded payment for the measly cup of cutting chai which he had served me. First time I
tasted gunmetal. Those days, plastics had not become popular and guns were
still made the traditional way, from metal salvaged by melting old Kadahis⁵ (frying pans). It was this self-same
Bhai who paid up for me. We go back a
long way. He has never let me pay for chai
after that.
Sending
Chhotu off and making sure no one was
watching, Bhai reached out under the
bench he was sitting on and pulled out a small steel trunk secured with a
length of naada⁶. Safe. Apparently
the naada knot needed a password to
open. He quickly muttered “pappa pippi puppu
pow” and yanked. Voila! The knot
unravelled.
Taking
another look around to see that no one was around, he quickly opened the trunk
and pulled out some seven or eight menacing looking guns. He explained that
they were made by his own chachajaan (uncle-life),
from tough unbreakable PVC, the same material used for making overhead water
tanks. I nodded. Yesss! Just what I wanted. I checked them all and selected a
blue Mausa Tadap (Saat Par Paanch or .65) calibre and a yellow Mausi Dhadak (Tees
Par Teen or .33) calibre. These Mausas and Mausis were good. They showed no
mercy. As long as they were with you, you were in relative safety.
After
a quick bargain and a promise to pay soon, very soon, I shoved the Mausa into
the waistband of my jeans at the back and the Mausi into my left sock and
ambled off. A couple of minutes later I realised I had forgotten something
crucial. I went back and asked for bullets. Bhai
gave me two of the latest “Gudbud” non-gradable hard plastic bullets – a large
one for the Mausa and a small one for the Mausi, along with two small rolls of
tough parachute-nylon string – one end to be tied to the ring at the end of the
bullet and the other to a similar ring at the tip of the barrel so that
immediately after the bullets hit their targets, they could be yanked back. It
was an ingenious retrieval design called “Wapas”, invented and patented by a
bulk trader in bhujiya sev⁷ who was
experiencing difficulties in collecting payments from his dealers. I was also
given a cleaning cloth free of charge. Bhai
knew how to take care of his special customers. I thanked him and pushed off. I
was armed to the teeth and ready. Don’t mess with me!
GLOSSARY
1. Olleh = a commonly
used return password, the Hello returned.
2. Thippagondanahalli =
The name of a village and of the reservoir situated there which used to supply
water to the city of Bangalore. An 18-letter tongue twister word, in which 6
letters are repeated, one of them twice and two of them consecutively.
3. Khat = the sound
made when a telephone call is cut decisively. Dons especially like to end calls
this way.
4. Chikki = a sticky
toffee made from peanuts and boiled jaggery. Minus the peanuts, the jaggery
toffee was known in the Bangalore of the nineteen sixties as “Stickjaw”.
5. Kadahi = a
bowl-shaped frying pan traditionally made of iron, with handles or ears on
either side.
6. Naada = the string
that is used to tie pyjamas around the waist. Also used to secure suitcases and
boxes. A naada knot is nearly impossible to unravel.
7. Bhujiya = a savoury
snack which originated in the town of Bikaner in Rajasthan and which doubles as
a life saver on Earth.
(Bhu
= Earth; Jiya = Life; Sev = Save)
- © Shiva Kumar 2017
