Kathmandu airport was missing its usual maddening chaos. The blue-shirted security guards lolled around in their usual laidback fashion. But that was the only thing that seemed like a normal day at the airport, a tired-out Singhabhadra mused. For Singhabhadra, it was the fourth or fifth visit. He had begun to lose count and apart from the Yak and Yeti, there was little of Kathmandu that held any fascination for him.
To be honest, despite his visits, he had just about explored Durbar Square and walked around Thamel. Beyond that, he was more acquainted with the boardrooms of Nepal Tourism Corporation. Interminable meetings with marketing sub-committees, core groups, India specialists, and board members left him with a throbbing headache. This time was specially bad. Yet again, Nepal had plunged into crisis, possibly the blackest in its history. The Crown Prince had mowed down his family, indiscriminately shooting at everyone but strangely accounting for the King, his father, the Queen, his mother, and his younger brother. The Crown Prince had proceeded to shoot himself, survived for a day, was crowned king while on life support as the tradition of the Kingdom went, and died a few days later. The new King and his son were neither revered like the dead king nor were above controversy. The son, yet to be anointed crown prince, had a colourful history to boot, having used his four-wheel drives to run amok on the streets of Kathmandu.
Singhabhadra mused about the two days past where he seemed to be representing India, the country and its media which had gleefully latched on to the sensational tragedy and spent every minute in the immediate aftermath extravagantly speculating on every minute detail. Singhabhadra had made the transition to a public relations consultant after ten years of being a fairly indifferent hack with an acknowledged flair for writing and little more. Singhabhadra could write a beautiful piece and, on his day, could be fairly provocative.
But, after ten years, he had little to show either in name or fame or, for that matter, a good story. He had worked, weevil-like, into the gut of the publication and shaped himself into a manager who could put a few pages together, write the odd editorial and generally keep the organisational wheels turning. Along the way, he had made many friends, few enemies and a general reputation of being a good guy to have around.
When he finally broke lose, it had little to do with lack of professional satisfaction, more to do with a wife and a child who couldn't be supported on a salary. A salary that hadn't dramatically changed since he had chosen to stay camped in the same place for five years-- a very, very long time to stay in one place. But the five years of helping youngsters get going was a cheque that he cashed in discreetly when he moved into public relations. In a profession bereft of too many hands that either understood the media or how it worked, Singhabhadra became a natural success as he impressed his first clients with his journalist credentials.
Unlike most days, the sole flight scheduled for the evening was RA 217 to Kathmandu. A bandh had been called in the country by the expanding Maoist forces which had finally started striking at the heart of Nepal after the revolutionary forces had spent the past two years culling a thousand hapless policemen in little, remote outposts. Singhabhadra tiredly tried to block out the loud recounting of woes by a distraught Indian. Duped, conned, saved by the golden chain that many Indian men wear as a matter of form, the man had scraped together the money to book his way home.
Singhabhadra tried to keep his focus on the homely policewomen who did duty on the x-ray machines that passed for security at the Tribhuvan International Airport. Their tight light-blue shirts played up the generous mammaries. Their broad backsides swayed to a sensuous beat as they loitered lazily, hand in hand, on the pink marbled waiting area. Somehow, to Singhabhadra, these alabaster skinned women of generous proportions, with huge vermillon-and-crushed rose tikkas on their foreheads, were infinitely more sexual than the muscular blondes, redheads and gone-to-seed western tourist showing more than an ankle and a knee with bra-less breasts lolling under barely adequate tops scattered around the lounge.
Though firmly monogamous (as much by conviction as by lack of opportunity), Singhabhadra could not now find much sexuality in the archetypal white skinned beauty unless they were completely naked. Not that he had seen one in flesh and blood. But hours of surfing free pornographic sites had somehow removed all the thrill of seeing an arm and a leg. Now, he figured, he would need to see them spreading their glory to feel a stir in his loins. Singhabhadra had become the Internet impotent. His wife would have to labour hard to get him to a decent enough erection and he himself would shut his eyes tight and fantasise about dogs fucking women or five black men and a blonde before he reached his climax.
Singhabhadra grimaced in annoyance as a disheveled Nepali flopped down next to him. Over time, he had developed an acute discomfort for all kinds of smells. Whites smelled of many days of unwashed sweat, a kind of paper rot smell; women in his office smelled either oily or day old beef; carpets smelt of dust piles; closed rooms where the air conditioning had failed smelled invariably of fart in the air. And Nepal to him smelt of goats. It was as if the whole country smelt of goats. He would smell it in the carpets, in the linen, in the corridors. It was not unlike the vomity smell that emanated from coconut-oiled heads that were exposed to the sun for too long and prevalent in the South of India. Or the jasmine hair oil which seemed to be applied liberally on heads in the East. Or the sweetly pungent smell of mustard oil tainted by the odour of fried fish flesh that overpowered him in the visits to Bengali homes.
But right now, sitting in Tribhuvan International Airport, Singhabhadra was being assailed by the pungent sting of khaini as the Nepali next to him meticulously ground tobacco and lime into fine dust. Seeing him watch with what he took to be interest, the Nepali offered the khaini to Singhabhadra. "In my regiment, they used to say that I ground the finest, like God's mills", the Nepali offered by way of conversation as Singhabhadra hastily turned the offer down. "It keeps the nerve going."
Singhabhadra knew that a conversation was in the offing but he had no intention of participating in one. "Hanh ji sahab, it keeps the nerve going. Many years ago, it is this pinch which saved my life," the Nepali continued undaunted as Singhabhadra desperately scouted around for an escape. "It was Sanjay Sinhji," the Nepali said quickly, having practiced over the years the art of capturing uninterested audiences. Singhabhadra raised his eyebrows. That name he had not heard for a long time. Son of the former Indian Prime Minister who crashed his chopper onto a mountainside; the principal architect of a period of insane dictatorial governance where women and men were rendered infertile; the scourge of the old guard in the Freedom Party... this was one tale he had not heard.
Singhabhadra hesitated enough for the Nepali to know that he his audience was captive. He slowly kicked his chappals off and leaned forward, "Hanh sahab, he would have killed me, there was no doubt. Here was this huge box of gold and here was I, the only witness who could read in his eyes the mind of a thief".
The Nepali took his time stuffing the khaini, gulped noisily as the juices flowed freely and wiped his hands on a mustard brown stained hand cloth. Singhabhadra tried to keep his interest out of his expression. He still did not know where this was leading to. "Have you heard of Jaigarh fort sahab? It is on the hill atop Amber, twenty minutes from Jaipur. We had found this khazana, saheb. Under the water tank. That is where the maharaja kept his treasures. We took it out and I opened the lid for the betichod. When he saw what I had seen, there was murder in his eyes saheb. That is when I took my khaini out and begin to grind it as if nothing had happened. That haramzada apparently could not tolerate khaini and he turned apoplectic in rage. But he forgot what I had seen, abused me for taking khaini in front of him and told me to get going and get rid of it… but for the khaini, sahab, I would be dead."
Singhabhadra suddenly lost interest. It was a trifle too tame, a trifle too fanciful. For all he knew, by the looks of the Nepali, if he had ever been in the Indian forces, he would probably never have risen beyond sergeant. Unlikely, Singhabhadra reasoned, that he would come anywhere close to Sanjay Sinhji. He quickly rose before the Nepali could go on, "And where did the gold go?" The Nepali spat a rust red stream at the fancifully copper plated trash cans, "They never did let it go to the government. Nathuram told me many years later that they had put it in Chand ki baoli in a village off the Jaipur-Agra highway. Sala died. I don't know whether he did every manage to get that gold out from there."
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