Jewel-less Crown: Saga of Life - BS Murthy (polar express read aloud txt) 📗

dialed the Police Commissioner's residential number. “You may know I’m not the one to slight those who help me.”

When Rawal in relief led him to Suresh, finding his son shell-shocked in the lock-up, Gautam himself was shaken to the core. When the son broke down seeing his father, the father could not hold back his tears either. But realizing that his nerves would unnerve Suresh even more, Gautam decided to put on a brave face.

To the approving nods of Rawal, Gautam averred that it was no more than a case of juvenile delinquency, and thus the courts were bound to treat it likewise. After all, there was no need for Suresh to worry over much for the sentence was going to be light. And to address his son’s troubled psyche as well, the father showed an understanding to his misdemeanor. And to assuage his son’s apprehensions on account of Sneha’s absence, Gautam said that she was hell-bent on accompanying him and that it was he who dissuaded her from coming. Anyway, it was difficult for any mother to go through all that and in his situation; it would be delicate for Suresh as well to face his mother. Gautam tried to inject a dosage of optimism into his depressed son with the assurance that all would end well as he would line up a battery of ace lawyers to free him from his predicament.

In spite of his own enthusiasm, as Suresh remained gloomy, Gautam feared that his son might sink into depression. And to avert its happening, he thought that he should spring into action without any loss of time. But on second thoughts, he felt it prudent to wait for Sohan Singh’s arrival. In time, when the fuming Singh made his appearance, Gautam needed all his suave to plead mercy for his son. However, it was Suresh’s countenance that softened Singh’s ire and that made Gautam heave a sigh of relief. Thus, leaving Suresh to Rawal’s care, Gautam rushed to draft in Vijay Mehrotra, the eminent criminal lawyer.

In that nocturnal briefing, Mehrotra heard Gautam with all the sympathy due to a valued client’s predicament. But in the end, he duly showed Gautam the tight spot into which his brat had put himself in. When the desperate father said money shouldn’t be a constraint, the wily advocate assured that he would apply his mind to judicially undo his son’s wrongdoing, of course, at the first hearing itself. Carried away by his own conviction, Mehrotra even dismissed the whole thing as no big deal at all. Nevertheless, he said that the Gautams would have some bad press to contend with to start with. But then, public memory being proverbially short, he averred, they would be able to put all this behind in no time. In the meantime, said Mehrotra, all that the Gautams needed to do was to remain calm, and loosen their purse strings to buy justice for their son.

And to make a skeptical Gautam feel at ease, Mehrotra sketched the contours of the countervailing defense against the weight of the incontrovertible evidence. At the end of the briefing, impressed with Mehrotra’s methods, Gautam was sure that an unconditional acquittal for Suresh was on hand. Assured of the likely twist of justice in the trial court, Gautam in relief headed home in his Rolls Royce. But soon, his apprehension about the imminent fallout of it all on his life and his wife’s times dampened him no end.

‘How thin is the line between glory and infamy!’ thought Gautam sinking in the back seat. ‘Doesn’t it seem thinner than the second’s hand that splits the time frame at every turn? The shine of the year gone by and the shame of the one on hand, oh, what a contrast they make! How all those guests so welcome at the dusk seem unwelcome even before it is dawn! But, how the course of the discourse at the Misty Nest might have turned after all that! Oh, the ugly turn of events, are they any less embarrassing for the guests? Maybe some of them could be gleeful as well, won’t they? Indeed, how life could turn on its head overnight! Would Sneha ever be able to cope up with all this? And don’t we need to camouflage the scandal before it ceases to interest? Well, one needs to be thick-skinned to brave it all. Thank God, I’m up to it anyway. It’s as if life had prepared me to face this day!’

When Gautam reached Misty Nest, he found it inundated by the neighbors as well. As everyone rushed up to him in the portico itself, he tried to make it up by alleging that his rivals had falsely implicated an innocent Suresh. It was easy to see, he said with his trademark composure, all this was to scandalize his family and ruin his reputation in the same vein. It was like hitting two birds with the same stone. But he assured them nonchalantly that he would come up trumps after all, the indomitable fighter that he was. Apologizing for having spoiled the party, he got rid of them all one by one by bidding goodbye.

Though the Gautams felt relieved for having seen the back of their guests, yet they were overwhelmed by the tragedy that befell on them, and that denied them even a wink all night. If anything, the dawn made it worse for them as the glare of the scandal splashed in the newspapers irrevocably blurred their vision for days to come.

As the reportage of the crime, dubbed as Mehrauli Murder Case, tended to bring the background of the accused into focus, it irked the Gautams no end. What with the condemnation coming thick and fast from all quarters, it soon turned into a nightmare for them. One newspaper went overboard, suggesting that the Gautams too may be tried as the abettors of the crime for a lack of their brat’s bringing up. Then and only then, averred the eloquent editorial, that the country’s courts would be perceived as concerned with social justice.

But what kept the news alive for weeks on end was its potential to embarrass the ruling party for its patronage of the Gautams. Thus, in time, it all turned out to be a trial by the media, well before the case was committed to the session’s court. As the crime caught the public imagination as well, the investigative journalists worked overtime to pull out skeletons from the Misty Nest’s closets. The competitive yellow journalism that followed, tarnished the fair name of the Gautams, and shamed them in the process. Such was the media one-upmanship that even a magazine dubbed the decade-old general insurance claim of the Gautams as fraudulent while a tabloid insinuated that Sneha had all along promoted Gautam’s business interests by entrusting her charms to the care of men who mattered.

It was only time before the women’s groups joined the fray demanding justice to the victim’s soul with a rope to the culprit’s throat. The religionists, for their part, lamented over the depravity of the youth and attributed the same to the lack of faith in God. Of course, the conformists raised the decibels of the debate by deriding the baneful influence of the alien lifestyle on the age-old culture. The social scientists, as though not to lag behind, attributed the rise and fall of the Gautams to the deteriorating value system in the society of the day. The political pundits, however, attributed the rise of Gautam Prabhu to the position of power and prestige to the perils of the License Permit Raj. That he was on the verge of being nominated by the party in power to the Rajya Sabha, they averred, underscored the inimical politico-business nexus that was in place. And what a peril that posed to the nascent Indian democracy was anybody’s guess. But, waiting in the wings, the human rights activists made no noise till then. It seemed as if they were hoping that the accused would be sentenced to death to enable them to get on to the centre stage. Whatever, well before the scandal ceased to make news, the remarkable transformation of Gautam Prabhu, a former Engineer of the Public Works Department, into the most influential lobbyist in New Delhi became a matter of common appreciation.

In the mid-fifties, it was said, Gautam, with a ravishing wife and a burning ambition to make it big in life came to New Delhi from Andhra Pradesh. Having mastered Hindi meticulously and cultivating people methodically, he soon came to specialize in wheeling and dealing. Sneha Gautam, who eventually made waves on the cocktail circuit, nevertheless, made her debut with her Sneha Travels. Dazzling her influential clientele, soon enough, she reached far and wide in the travel world. But that was not all. Combining her unquestionable charms and questionable morals, she laid the foundation for the edifice of her husband’s global empire. It was like she was the spark that ignited Gautam’s ambition to make it to the zenith of wealth.

Having begun life in a by lane of Karol Bagh, the Gautams soon set their eyes on the avenues of Defense Colony, only to dominate its landscape in the end. Their palatial bungalow, evocatively named Misty Nest, became the owner’s pride and the neighbors’ envy, indeed of Lutyen’s Delhi. Sadly for the Gautams though, and deservedly so as many thought, the veil of respectability that shrouded their vulnerability lay tattered. And that unmistakably exposed their shameful visages to the public gaze.

Owing to the fear of compromising their own reputation in their company, their former friends started distancing themselves from the fallen couple. What with the prospect of their only son ending up on the gallows staring in their face, troubled and shamed, the Gautams went into a cocoon in their Misty Nest. Moreover, used as they were to the hustle and bustle of life, the informal boycott in place seemed to weigh down heavily upon their social spirit.

Thus, in time, as the make-believe world they had built around them came crashing down, the Gautams remained in seclusion in their duplex dwelling. But, it was from that very setting, until not so long ago, that the Gautams had mesmerized the socialites of the country’s capital, and strolled like colossuses in its portals of power.

 

Chapter 2

Trauma at Tihar

 

 

When Suresh Prabhu was produced before the metropolitan magistrate, he appeared disjointed. That was the day after his arrest, and as he looked traumatized, Vijay Mehrotra sprang up with alacrity. Seizing the chance to corner the prosecution, he accused the police of having tortured Suresh to extort that incriminating admission. And in the end, he dubbed the confessional statement as but a dubious document. Whatever, as the indicted appeared incoherent, and since Rawal too showed no inclination for his continued detention, the magistrate sent Suresh on remand to Tihar.

Though Gautam pulled the strings to ensure his smooth stay at the gaol, Suresh found it hard to face his lot. However, sensing that the accused was insensibly sinking into depression, in time, the jail doctor sent an SOS for psychiatric care. In the specialist counseling of Dr. Prakash Gupta that followed, Suresh unfolded his schizothymic mindset that baffled even the expert. At length, the specialist was able to place the bits and pieces of Suresh’s troubled mind in the jigsaw of his psychic frame thus:

From his early childhood, Suresh had craved for his mother’s affection but had to settle for ayahs’ attentions. Upwardly mobile by the time he turned three, Sneha had no time for the apple of her eye. After all, she was engaged with her business during the day and partying in the evenings. But the veritable toy world that Gautam erected at home for him, gave Suresh a false sense of belonging. Thus, having grown up materially fulfilled but emotionally deprived, he had a bewildered childhood.

Moreover, his insatiate longing for the maternal love insensibly snowballed into an Oedipus complex in his adolescent mind. It was