“I do, sir,” I said firmly.
After Col. Bhagat left, I tried to tell myself that I had faced down machine guns without flinching. Making nice with some royals was a cakewalk compared to that. But if that were true,why did I feel like a noose was being tightened around my neck slowly?
For the first time since that fateful night, I felt a sense of purpose. I was finally doing something to erase the guilt that lashed me every time I thought of Mani. I rang the bell, and Hira Singh slid into the room silently, as was his way.
“Jee Hukum?”
“Hira Singh, I remember seeing a record book of local royal families in the library when I was a little boy. Is that still around?”
“Of course, Hukum. That’s your grandfather’s pet project, and the late Hukum - your brother - made sure to update it every few years.”
“Excellent,” I said, rubbing my hands together gleefully. “I’d like to see it right now, please.”
That big red tome was on my desk within minutes. It was an old-fashioned chopdi with a thick red canvas cover, filled with rich cream-coloured sheets of handmade paper, bound with the traditional twine we used to bind all our important documents. I recognised my grandfather’s elegant cursive, as well as my father’s, but my throat tightened with pain when I came to the sections written by my brother. Bhai Sa’s handwriting had deteriorated because of his illness, and the last few pages were written in a barely legible scrawl.
Still, the book was a goldmine of information about the local families, and included hand-drawn maps of their original land boundaries, which had slowly been updated with printouts of the latest records as all the local landowners had sold off parcels of their lands to developers or to the government.
I made a note of all the families whose lands ran up to the border between India and Pakistan. Because only people with free access to that border could provide safe passage across it. You couldn’t build tunnels under someone’s land without theirknowledge. I texted Col. Bhagat to send me maps of the existing tunnels that the special forces had sealed until now, so that I could narrow down the possible culprits. Then, I called one of my oldest friends, a man who had successfully driven the local mafia off his lands and was working to shut the down - His Highness Randheer Shekhawat, the Maharaja of Trikhera.
“How the hell did you get dragged into this mess?” he grumbled.
“I have a personal stake in this, Dheer. I need to find the rat who’s running the cross-border smuggling.”
“It’s not as easy as that, Samrat. The bastards are more organised than the corporate world. Each part of the business is run like its own department, and nobody knows anything about any department other than their own.”
“How do I find the guy who arranges for the use of private land to build their tunnels?”
“Well, there’s only one man who can help you with that. Have you heard of Kirorimal Talati?”
“I think he used to visit my father when I was a boy. He helped Daata Hukum mediate a land dispute that had gone on for years. Can you arrange for me to meet him at his house? He’ll be less inclined to turn down my request for help if I’m a guest in his house.”
“Done,” said Dheer, and he was as good as his word.
The next day, I showed up at Kirori Ji’s door promptly at seven pm, after Dheer wrangled a dinner invitation for me.
“Khamma Ghani, Hukum. Welcome to my humble abode,” he said, without any sense of irony, considering that his humble abode was a grand haveli just outside Jaipur.
I bent and touched his feet in a sign of respect, and his shrewd face became even sharper. Kirori Ji was a very smart man. And not easily taken in by obvious shows of respect, I noted.
“As you know, Kirori Ji, I have just taken control of the estate after Bhai Sa’s death. And I wanted to touch base with you since Daata Hukum spoke very well of you.”
“Of course! And I’ve always been a loyal servant of the house of Deorangir,” replied Kirori Ji. “You can count on my support in every way.”
His family treated me to a grand dinner in true Marwari style, and it was after the post-dinner paan that Kirori Ji sent the rest of his family scurrying out of the room with a nod of his head. I knew it was now time to talk business.
“Kirori Ji, earlier this evening, you said I could count on your support in every way. Is that true?” I asked bluntly.
“Word of a Rajput, Hukum. How can I help you?”
“Well, I need some information, and it’s a sensitive matter. I’m sure you’ve heard of some cross-border tunnels being sealed by the special forces. There was one that was quite close to my land, and try as I might, I couldn’t find the name of the person who owns that land. The land deed is in the name of some company, but I think that’s a shell company, which is in turn owned by another shell company. How do I find the person behind the company name?”
Kirori Ji groaned heavily and turned to glare at me.
“Didn’t you have enough of war-mongering when you were in the army? Why are you stirring up more trouble for yourself?” he asked angrily.
“I can’t believe you’d ask a Rajput if he’s tired of war-mongering,” I said dryly. “It’s like you don’t know us at all.”
“Trouble-makers, the lot of you,” he replied in disgust. “None of your fathers ever gave me so much trouble, but the new generation of Trikhera, Jadhwal, and Mirpur royals practically turned every strand of hair on my head grey in the last year alone. And now you show up to add fuel to the fire!”
