THE PUPPETEERS OF PALEM Read online

  Rudrakshapalem, known to everyone in the region as Palem, is an understandably close-knit community where everyone, as the saying goes, knows everyone else. Common sense dictates that such places ought to be relatively free of crime and wrongdoing, because the closeness of the community would make it hard for a crime to go unnoticed, and that should, all things being equal, act as a deterrent to an aspiring criminal mind. The fear of getting caught is the most powerful negative emotion that a wrongdoer experiences.

  Yet, in this very village, seven deaths occurred, not very long ago, over the space of a few days. This is not unique. Last year, Amaravati, another apparently idyllic and picture-perfect village, hosted the murder of a young woman who was drowned in the Krishna. The year before that saw the killings of four children by their mother in Bhimavaram. All tiny, innocent villages and all of them providing the backdrop for gruesome deaths.

  The great horror and mystery writers of our age delighted in setting their novels in villages and towns like these. One can see why—a village offers the easiest way to prepare a cast of characters bound together in a small geographical location. Also, it appeals to the romantic in all of us. Even though we have moved on to live our lives in cities, going back to the ‘good old days’ where life was simpler and friends were fewer (and perhaps closer), even if vicariously through a book, calls out to the cave-dweller within all of us who loves nothing more than to sit around a fire at the end of a long day and exchange stories.

  So while small villages are ideal settings for a work of fiction, they don’t very well serve the purposes of a real criminal. So it came as an intriguing surprise indeed to the authors of this little book (and we hope to you too, dear reader) to discover the number of crimes that have taken place in our villages over the last two years—and probably longer.

  The most recent of them all is also the most horrific. Seven people were killed, and more would have met the same fate if it were not for fortuitous (and brave) interference by two boys who happened to catch the criminal just as he was about to act. If the boys had reached the scene a few minutes later, most of Palem would now be lying in clumps of ashes and the death toll would have been a lot higher than seven.

  What kind of man would want to kill the people he grew up with? What kind of man would be so inhuman as to want to see the destruction of the place that had given him birth, bred and sheltered him? What sort of mind are we looking at here? Can we reconstruct some of the murderer’s thought processes if we knew a few facts about his character? And the seven victims—what role did they play in all of this? Why did they have to pay with their lives? Will studying their character shed any light on why this happened?

  They say that a village, home to a variety of characters and personality types, is a veritable microcosm of humanity. If that is true, the evil must be balanced out by the good, the angry by the sage, the timid by the heroic. The case of Palem presents this perfectly, with the man who wanted the village burnt on one hand and the disabled boys who defended their hometown on the other; David on one side, Goliath on the other. This is one reason why we have chosen this case as the main focus of our study—the hope that it will offer us a glimpse into the psychology of a larger slice of human nature.

  We cannot promise to have the answers, but we consider it a worthwhile expenditure of effort to ask the right questions. If we can probe, and somehow pierce, the mind of the Palem murderer, we can hope to better understand, if not forgive, men of his ilk. Perhaps it will go a little way towards unearthing the real roots of incidents like this one, and equip us with possible ways of preventing future occurrences of its kind.

  Equally, if we can understand what it is within us that goads us into standing up for something we believe in, sometimes even at risk to our lives, we can possibly make it a habit. Then maybe more of us will become as heroic as the boys in this story. And more of us will take on odds that may seem insurmountable to us at first sight.

  For who knows… maybe it is all in the mind, dear reader.

  Chapter Six

  2001

  Seetalu squatted on the ground and ran her fingers through the dust. She brought her hands to her nose and smelt them. Then, out of habit, her fingers traced the twist in her lip. With her tongue, she felt around for the grains sticking to her lips and spat them out.

  Tasteless. Odourless. Just like people.

  The night before her mother jumped into the well, she had said that someone would come for Seetalu. That she would not be alone. She had told her that the villagers would keep saying things—the same things she had heard all her life—but she was not to take notice of them. She was to believe that someone would come along for her.

  After all, she herself had found someone, had she not? Seetalu would too.

  It was only after she attained puberty, exactly a year after her mother’s death, that Seetalu understood a great many things. Answers to many questions came rushing to her. Why she had always been friendless; why people had always had this strange expression on their faces when they looked at her; why Avadhani Thatha used to smile so much at her; why her mother had gone to such great lengths to explain to her that someone would come for her. Yes, even for her.

  She licked one more grain of sand from her upper lip and spat it out on the ground. Someone had come for her. Not just some. Many. Saraswatamma’s brother, Karnam Prabhakarayya’s son, Indrajit Reddy’s brother-in-law—yes, all of them had come for her at one time or the other. They had told her she was beautiful. They had told her they would marry her. But they always insisted she turn the lamp off. They always left in the dead of the night, before she woke up. And they never visited during the day.

  Pigs.

  She heard footsteps around the bend, coming towards her hut. They were light and quick—steps of either a woman or a child. Seetalu wondered who it might be. The village was asleep. It wouldn’t be before 3’o clock that the first of them would start stirring. And no one came to Palem from outside.

  She stood up and waited.

  The first thing she noticed was the band. It was an old five-paise coin tied around the woman’s wrist with black twine. Somehow, when she looked at it, she thought of Ellamma Cheruvu.

  She made her uneasy, this woman. She was obviously from the city, with her skirt and shirt and ponytail. She came and stood in front of her, looking at her with her head bent to one side. The five-paise coin, worn almost black with age, still managed to glint in the sunlight.

  She ought to recognize this woman. But all she could think was Ellamma Cheruvu. What that meant, she didn’t know. And that made her angry. She gritted her teeth and spat at the ground.

  ‘Who are you?’

  The woman smiled—a smile that was so beautiful, you felt like striking it off her face with a slap. Or with a knife. With something. Why couldn’t she think of anything but that damned lake now?

  Lake. River. River?

  ‘You don’t remember me?’ the woman asked.

  ‘What do you think, geniuf? Do I look like I am in the mood for games?’ Her childhood lisp was almost gone, but it slipped out now and then. Though, of course, the words always sounded right in her head. But then her head did not have a twist in it.

  ‘Sarayu,’ she said.

  It is funny, Seetalu thought, how one word can bring back everything you’ve forgotten. Sarayu, the river. Sarayu, the only person in the world who looked at her without making a face (the only other person in the world, that is), as if she were just another human being. No disgust, and more importantly, no pity. Sarayu, on whose wrist she had tied the five-paise coin, standing on the banks of Ellamma Cheruvu all those years ago.

  ‘Sarayu!’ she said.

  ‘Yes! How are you, Seeta?’

  ‘Good!’ She thought about that. Really? But she said again, ‘Good.’ Then she surveyed her from top to bottom. ‘Why have you come back?’

  ‘Why? Are you not happy to see me?’

  ‘Why have you come back?’ She could not tell why,
but suddenly Seetalu felt it would be best for Sarayu to leave as quickly as she could. ‘Palem has changed.’

  Sarayu looked around her. ‘Yes, so I see. I don’t remember seeing so many crows around. Or so much… dust.’ She dusted her frock. Yellow-brown grains fell to the ground.

  ‘Oh yes, we don’t bother cleaning up anymore. The more we clean, the more dust gathers.’

  ‘And why is the village so dead?’

  Dead. What a word to use. She had always thought of the village as sleepy or sleeping, which was what people did most of the time. But now, dead seemed more appropriate.

  ‘We don’t wake up until late in the day,’ Seetalu said. ‘There is hardly anything to do.’

  Sarayu laughed. The same, short laugh she had laughed that day when Seetalu had cried on the banks of the lake. ‘I cannot live without you,’ Seetalu had said. Sarayu had laughed just like she did now and had said, ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘So Palem has not changed much,’ She looked down at the soles of her shoes. ‘Man, someone needs to clean this village up.’ She traced a finger along her shoe and held it up to her. It was dry and powdery. ‘And what is this stuff?’

  Seetalu shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just dust. There is no water in Palem anymore.’

  Sarayu rubbed her thumb over her forefinger, examining the texture of the substance. Her brows were knit in a frown.

  ‘You need to leave, Sarayu.’

  ‘Hmm?’ she looked up. ‘I just came here.’

  ‘But why? Why did you leave your nice, comfortable plafe in the city and come here?’ Seetalu looked around, though there was nobody else in sight. Sarayu was right. The village was dead. Except for the goddamned crows that never stopped cawing. And the bees. Oh, how they buzzed and buzzed.

  ‘Sarayu,’ said Seetalu, taking her arm and pulling her close. ‘There is something wrong about this place.’

  ‘You think so? Avadhani Thatha said the same thing.’

  ‘Thatha? You met him?’

  ‘No, no, he wrote to me.’ She reached into her bag and handed Seetalu a letter. ‘Told me he wanted to talk about something. Said something was not quite right. I think he just misses us all too much. How old is he now?’

  Seetalu took the letter and read it in silence.

  Sarayu walked past her. ‘Let’s go. Does he still live in the same hut? Maybe we can get him to tell us some of his stories. I still remember the one about…’

  Seetalu followed, neither listening nor interrupting. All she heard was the cawing of the crows and the buzzing of the bees. And the clacking of Sarayu’s brown designer sandals on the dusty earth. When she finished reading the letter, she stopped. ‘Are all of them coming, Sarayu?’

  Sarayu answered without looking back. ‘Yes.’

  Seetalu said, ‘Then you go ahead. I will come to Thatha’s plafe later.’

  Her mother had been right. Someone was going to come for her.

  Bees and lizards.

  If there were two things that Aditya hated about Palem—absolutely hated—they were bees and lizards. He walked down the narrow lane past the new Shiva temple. (It had been ‘new’ when he was a kid. He saw one of the pillars fallen down at the entrance; not so new anymore, he thought.) He remembered running down this very path that day, a chamanti in hand, eager to present it to his mother. In his excitement, he had failed to notice that one of the petals seemed to move. Just as he had crossed the temple, the petal had risen and something orange and black had come out from underneath.

  He had seen it and wanted to drop it instantly. He had wanted to run away from it. But it was too quick for him. Before he knew it, his hand had swollen to twice its size and he was on the ground, howling in pain.

  He looked up at the wild trees that grew around the temple. On every bough there was a comb. Had there been so many of them back then?

  He sneezed. His eyes started to smart. His nostrils tickled. His throat burned. All the dust, he thought. He had always been allergic to dust. It had flared up when he had left Palem and lived in Hyderabad. He had always had to take medicines to keep it in check. He had thought this trip to Palem would mean a welcome holiday from popping his pills. After all, Palem was a village most people in the state did not know existed. The place did not even have a bus service. Surely it would be free of dust.

  Or so he had thought. Obviously no village was too remote to be polluted. There was no escaping it. If you wanted development, you had to contend with things like pollution too. Except, he thought, looking around, where was the development?

  The huts and houses seemed exactly the same as before, if not more dilapidated. Most of the mud walls were broken. The doors were half-eaten by termites. Metal gates were coated with a layer of rust. The roofs and the ground sported a thin film of yellow-brown dust that had settled over time. Otherwise, the ground was parched and cracked. Occasionally, a crow swooped down and picked up a worm.

  And by the way, he thought, where was everybody?

  It was nearing 2 p.m. It was hot, yes, but Palem had always been a busy little village. They used to say you could walk out of your hut at any time, day or night, in Palem and you would find someone to talk to. And now, in the middle of the day, here he was, absolutely alone.

  The words in Thatha’s letter played in his mind. He had dismissed them as the idle concerns of an old man—maybe even opportunistic lies told by a dying man who wanted to meet once more the kids he had once loved—but now, Aditya wondered if there might not be something to what he had said after all.

  It might be nothing; possibly just a generational change. Maybe the new generation in Palem adopted a lazier approach to life. Maybe the new Palem was a quieter, more forbidding village. Perhaps, he would still have a great time and it would end up being the holiday he had hoped for. Whatever Palem had become, it was still the place of his birth and childhood. Nothing would change that.

  But it was not the same, he thought. Some things are not meant to change. Some things were supposed to be the same so that you could come back to them and feel as if everything was all right. Like mothers. And places from your childhood. But Palem had not kept its promise. Palem had betrayed him by not remaining the same, by changing so much that he could not recognize it.

  He stopped walking and looked at the front door of the house he had stopped by. An old nawar cot stood leaning against the front wall. An empty bulb holder hung by a red-and-green coiled wire. Aditya could almost hear the flicker of the old sixty-watter that used to be there.

  Avadhani Thatha has upgraded, he thought with a smile and opened the gate.

  Chapter Seven

  1984

  The man stood, leaning back against the tree. It was not really a man. It was a shadow of a man, but not blurry and soft like shadows usually are. Sharp. Tack sharp. The second, smaller man lay against another tree, facing the first, knees propped up. His chest heaved and dropped. In the background, right between them, the Shivalayam stood bathed in white light.

  The man raised his hand. He held something sharp in it. Was it a knife? No, not just any knife. A large butcher’s knife with a jagged edge. Looked like Ibrahim Bhai’s knife.

  They talked loudly and animatedly enough, but he couldn’t hear them. He tried to move closer but he couldn’t. No matter how much he walked toward them, the same distance remained. The temple in the background, though, grew bigger and bigger. Now the man’s head was silhouetted against the garish white walls.

  He could feel himself getting worked up, but he didn’t know why. It was probably irritation at being left out of the conversation. Anger at not being able to draw any closer to these people. He didn’t know who they were. But he wanted to look at them.

  The attacker mumbled a few words; the victim interrupted him. He was pleading with him, that much he could tell. But about what? The man shrunk back against the tree and held up the knife close to his face, staring at it. He was going to drop it.

  Don’t drop it.

  He didn’t
know how he knew the man was going to drop it. Some things you just feel and don’t question, he realized. And you don’t think that it is right for the thing to happen and then you wish it did not happen. Oh yes, how you wish it did not happen. But the world was such; it did not care what you thought and what you wished for. Things happened anyway.

  The man lowered his hand, pointed the knife down at the other and said something. Their voices came to him in a low-pitched assortment of grunts and moans. There was nothing intelligible about what they said. Or were they speaking some language he did not know? Who would speak anything but Telugu in Palem?

  It was Palem. The Shivalayam in the background proved that.

  Did the man just listen to his wish and not drop the knife? Rub your forehead.

  The man rubbed his forehead with the sleeve of his free hand. His clothes were in tatters. Torn flaps of cloth hung off his body.

  This was a dream, he thought. That was the only explanation for everything—for the receding distance, for the clear shadows, for the unusually white temple walls, for everything around. But he had not had a dream like this before—everything looked so real. Even now, he could feel the dampness in the soil under his feet. And the smell of rotting lizards by the road, probably crushed by a passing ox-cart in the dark.

  The smell of death, by the temple of the god of disease and destruction.

  The man took a step, a tentative one, towards his victim. The other man shrank back against the tree and said something. The holder of the knife hesitated.

  Don’t.

  He stayed in his position and shook, like a toy whose key had gotten stuck.

  Kill.

  He did not move.

  Kill!

  The man steadied his position. He said, ‘I have to kill you.’

  ‘No,’ the other fellow said. Their voices were still ape-like grunts, but he could make out the tenor of the words now.