Kalkoot- The Lost Himalayan Secret Read online

  That was when he saw the body on the pavement.

  ***

  For a few seconds, Sam just stood still, shocked and disoriented, even as his mind was suddenly flooded with memories going back many years.

  Memories of loss, of a progressively increasing distance from the Colonel, the warmth of love replaced first by the insufferable burden of expectations, and then by coldness and distance. Memories that he had tried to avoid by drowning himself in the din of his job, the allure of short, unfulfilling relationships and the lights of the city.

  That night at D’Mello Road, Sam banished the memories once again, and collected himself, bending down to look.

  He knelt closer. It was a man’s body.

  Not a woman. Sameer heaved a sigh of relief, and immediately felt guilty for it.

  The man was wearing a security guard’s uniform. Probably the guard at the ATM.

  But his momentary relief had given way to a sinking feeling in the stomach.

  Now there was no question of going with the theory that they had had a car breakdown. Or that Ananya simply didn’t get to charge her phone.

  Something had clearly happened here. Something bad.

  ***

  Where was she? What had happened to her? What if she was no longer alive?

  For a few seconds, Sam was gripped by a seemingly bottomless fear. The sweet scent of Ananya’s perfume, the moistness of her lips, her dimpled smile and simply her presence, all seemed to come back to him. And then, in one swift swoop, it all seemed to be on the verge of slipping away from him. Forever.

  At that instant, Sam knew that this was somebody he loved more than life itself. And that he had been really, really stupid to have shied away from his feelings all this while.

  Somewhere in that tense moment, Sam found himself starting to pick up the pieces. He summoned up all the will that he could muster from everything that he loved, every memory that gave him strength, and made a resolution.

  He would never shy away from his feelings again.

  He loved her. Deeply. And he would find her. Even if he had to go to the ends of the earth for it.

  ***

  The sub-inspector in the police jeep patrolling D’Mello Road was in a bad mood.

  It was his wife’s birthday, and he was supposed to have taken her to the movies. But the police had received a warning about impending mafia movement near the docks, relating to a smuggled drugs consignment, and his boss, the inspector, had asked him to stay back late.

  As the sub-inspector’s jeep traversed the empty roads, he spotted a young man on the opposite side of the road, loitering suspiciously in the by-lane near the Western India Co-operative Bank ATM, bending down and seemingly looking at something from different angles.

  ***

  Sam panicked as he saw the police jeep approaching.

  Should he explain things to the police? But he was the only one present on the deserted road right at the scene of a murder. Fat chance he had of convincing them.

  Besides, he would lose valuable hours, maybe even days, trying to establish his innocence. He could not afford that.

  Sam made his decision in less than a second. He had to flee.

  The police jeep was approaching fast. It would be pointless running along the main road.

  Sam started running into the by-lane, away from the main road. The late nights notwithstanding, he was still reasonably fit and retained a trekker’s stamina.

  He hoped that the lane would not finish at a dead end.

  He was around fifty metres ahead when he heard the police jeep screeching as it turned into the by-lane.

  As Sam looked ahead, he realised that his worst fears had come true. The by-lane abruptly finished into a wall opposite. There was no opening or gate in the wall.

  He was at a dead end. There was nowhere to run.

  ***

  Sam’s survival instincts took over, his mind racing wildly.

  Should he try to barge into one of the rooms in the old building adjacent the wall and take hostages? Even at that chaotic instant, it seemed like a ridiculous idea. Besides, the building seemed deserted. Probably not a residential building.

  As he looked up at the floors in the building adjoining the wall, an idea struck him.

  He hoped that his trekker’s instincts were still reliable. Otherwise it would be curtains for him.

  ***

  In a split-second maneouvre, Sam ran up to the building, jumped up and grabbed hold of a ledge extending from the first floor. He hoisted himself up, and then moved up further to a ledge extending from the second floor.

  The second floor ledge was at the same level as the wall, and pretty close to it. In one swift move, he jumped up to the wall, grabbing on for dear life as his hands got badly scratched and precariously started sliding down from the top of the wall.

  The police car meanwhile had reached the end of the lane, making another screeching sound as it abruptly braked to a halt. It was now only a few metres away from him, albeit at a lower level.

  His heart almost pounding out of his chest, Sam hoisted himself up the wall and jumped on to the other side, just as a policeman got off the jeep and fired a shot from a revolver.

  ***

  Sam fell heavily on to the other side of the wall. A mountain of garbage cushioned his fall, averting a situation where he might have ended up with at least a few broken bones.

  Sam was in shock, but not from the fall. He never thought he would ever be shot at by a revolver. He had to touch himself all over to believe that the bullet had indeed missed him.

  But there was no time to waste. The policemen might not have his trekking skills, but it would not take them long to figure out a way to scale the wall. Besides, the police jeep might be trying to reach him from the front end. And the policemen would almost certainly have called for backup.

  Sam took a look around. He was in a defunct mill, a common feature in this part of Mumbai.

  To his surprise, there was a fair bit of activity in the mill building opposite. Sam dusted himself as he got up from the garbage heap and ran towards the place.

  It was a bar-cum-discotheque set in the mill building, again a common feature in this part of Mumbai.

  As Sam looked at the high-end vehicles in the parking lot and saw the valet leave his post to park a car, an idea struck him.

  It was a crazy idea, but then he was a desperate man.

  ***

  Sameer had read that missing persons cases were like heart attack patients.

  After a heart attack, the first few minutes were the most crucial.

  Ananya had gone missing, and the best time to trace her was in the first couple of hours. After that, the trail would most likely go cold.

  Sameer could not spend these hours stuck in a police station, trying to prove his innocence.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures. He had to do the unthinkable.

  ***

  Sam walked up to the valet post, snatched a car key from the rack, and pressed the unlock button.

  One of the cars in the parking lot blinked.

  As luck would have it, it was a BMW 7 Series.

  Sam hesitated. A big car would attract too much attention. But then he could do with a car that could take high speeds. And had the ability to accelerate from zero to a hundred kilometres per hour in the shortest possible time.

  Sam had already turned on the ignition by the time the valet got back to his post and realised what had just happened.

  ***

  As the BMW raced at over a hundred kilometres an hour on the narrow Mumbai roads, Sam drove to the first destination that came to his mind.

  It would have to be NISS. The WIC Bank ATM was out of bounds for him now. The only place where he could even remotely hope to find any clues would be the NISS campus, where Ananya stayed and Bavdekar worked.

  The odds of finding any clues did not seem high. The murder of the ATM security guard suggested that it was probably a spur-ofthe-moment
crime. But he did not have a choice.

  Behind him, he could hear what seemed like the sounds of multiple police sirens.

  Sam wondered whether his picture would have been caught in the CCTV feed either at the ATM or the bar at the mill. If yes, then he might be a marked man much sooner than he would like. He switched off his mobile phone, just in case it might be tracked.

  The BMW’s tires screeched as Sam swerved into a lane yet again, desperately attempting to zigzag among a maze of roads to try and lose his pursuers.

  He decided to lose the BMW in one of the lanes and get a cab instead. That might buy him some time as the police might lose the trail.

  ***

  Mumbai, Monday, 2.10 a.m.

  The bumpy, clumsy ride in the cab was in sharp contrast to the ride in the BMW. On Sam’s left, the green campus of the National Institute of Social Sciences came into view.

  Sam shivered a little as memories of the man’s body on the pavement near the ATM, bloodied and with eyes staring vacantly into space, clouded his mind. Had Ananya met the same fate?

  ***

  Mumbai, Monday, 2.35 a.m.

  Sam was inside Ananya’s room at the NISS campus, speaking to Namrata, Ananya’s roommate.

  The room was a typical twin-sharing hostel room. They were sitting in Namrata’s half of the room.

  Sam struggled to steady himself as he spoke to Namrata. ‘What kind of research was Prof. Bavdekar into?’

  ‘Well, he is an expert on Himalayan flora and fauna.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘His claim to fame is a series of books that he wrote eighteen years ago, comprehensively detailing the plant and animal life of the Himalayas,’ Namrata said. ‘The books are still held up by the International Council on Climate Change as definitive guides on chronicling the biodiversity of any region.’

  ‘Anything that could have gotten him into trouble?’ Sam asked.

  Namrata shook her head.

  Sam walked across to Ananya’s half of the room to check for clues.

  He staggered back momentarily as he detected a faint whiff of a familiar scent, and a lump formed in his throat as he realised it was from a bottle of perfume stacked in a corner of her desk.

  Elizabeth Arden 5th Avenue.

  He had asked Ananya what perfume she was wearing during their first date at Café Royal. That was when she had mentioned that 5th Avenue was her favourite perfume.

  He liked the scent of the perfume. Especially on her. And he would make it a point to tell her that when he met her again.

  If he met her again.

  ***

  A worried Namrata took Sam to Professor Bavdekar’s office.

  ‘Professor Shrikant Bavdekar, PhD, Padma Shri’, the nameplate proudly proclaimed.

  To their surprise, the room was not locked.

  As he turned the knob and entered the room, a chill went through Sam’s spine.

  The room was in complete disarray. Professor Bavdekar’s room had been combed. In a hurry.

  ***

  A search of the room yielded no clues. It resembled an earthquake zone, but it was not clear what the intruder had been looking for.

  Sam shook his head as he walked across to the telephone. ‘Let’s see what we have here,’ he said to Namrata as he pressed the redial button.

  The last dialled number was a US number starting with 1-510. Probably California, Sam thought as he made a mental note of it.

  The phone went through to the voicemail of a person called Professor Hudson. The voicemail recording did not specify any further details.

  Namrata said, ‘He just got back last week from a trip to the US. Maybe he met Hudson there.’

  ‘Maybe you could check out what Professor Hudson is into,’ Sam asked Namrata.

  They were just about to leave when Sam noticed a small green light in the corner of the phone handset. Probably an indicator that there was a voicemail message.

  Sam pressed the voicemail button on the phone. It asked for a password.

  Sam knew that few people bothered to change their voicemail passwords. In a world with too many passwords, it was an unnecessary burden to remember yet another password for voicemails that nobody else was likely to be interested in.

  Sam hesitated, then keyed in ‘1234’ on a hunch.

  Lo and behold, it worked!

  The voicemail message was left at 11.35 p.m., just over two-and a-half hours ago.

  The man who had left the voicemail had a distinctive baritone voice. He could have given Amitabh Bachchan a run for his money.

  The message was long and at the same time cryptic. ‘Hey, Zico, Pele here. Drop everything and meet me in Goa. 8.30 p.m. tomorrow, Monday. In front of the band at Ephesus Hotel. And watch out for people following you. This is getting dangerous. Very dangerous.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Deonar, Mumbai, Monday, 2.45 a.m.

  Sam and Namrata stared at each other, incredulous.

  ‘Zico, Pele. Unless the yesteryears’ Brazilian soccer team is holidaying in India, these sound like bloody code words,’ Sam said. ‘What kind of kinky stuff was the Prof. into?’

  A bar of chocolate was lying in one of the drawers in the shelf adjoining the main table.

  Sam had a sweet tooth, and he liked to nibble on chocolate when stressed. There were only two cubes of it, and Sam took one out.

  No sooner had he put it in his mouth than his face contorted into a weird expression. ‘Eww, what is this?’ he exclaimed.

  He took it out of his mouth, taking a disgusted look at it, when suddenly his eyes widened.

  The contraption he held in his hand was not chocolate.

  It was a USB drive, shaped like a chocolate cube.

  That’s why the thugs had missed it when they had combed through Bavdekar’s room.

  ***

  The Mansion, Monday, 3 a.m.

  A micro-transmitter installed under the table in Prof. Bavdekar’s room relayed the entire conversation between Sam and Namrata to an ornately decorated room many hundred miles away, in a building known to its occupants as the Mansion.

  Bruce made a phone call to a person called Deedar Singh.

  Deedar Singh had missed both the voicemail and the USB drive while combing Professor Bavdekar’s room. Bruce quivered slightly. The Doc would not be happy with that goof-up. He was on a thin leash now.

  ***

  Sam’s attention involuntarily went to a notepad in one of the drawers.

  Bavdekar had scribbled ‘KaalKoot’ in it, with a double underline.

  A vivid set of images came to Sam’s mind from the course on Indian mythology that he had taken while in college.

  KaalKoot. The deadliest poison in the universe, with the power to annihilate all of creation.

  The ancient Indian texts, the Puranas, talk of a metaphorical churning of the cosmic ocean, undertaken by the deities—the devas—and the demons—the asuras. The goal of this Samudra Manthan was to obtain amrit, the nectar of immortality.

  Sam clearly remembered the story of the Samudra Manthan. The churning released a number of things from the cosmic ocean, the most terrifying of which was the supremely lethal poison known as KaalKoot or Halahala, which was so powerful that it could destroy all of creation. As the devas and asuras started to be felled by the venom, they rushed to Lord Shiva, who redeemed the universe by swallowing the poison himself. In the process, his throat turned blue, earning him the name Neelkanth, the Blue-throated One.

  As with most mythological stories, this one, too, was replete with allegorical references—the cosmic ocean representing the mind, and KaalKoot representing the toxicity that comes up to the surface as the mind is churned through spiritual practice and meditation.

  Or so Sam believed.

  Bavdekar had gone on to scribble in the notepad: ‘Can we stop KaalKoot?’

  Sam stared at the notepad, wide-eyed.

  The abode of Lord Shiva, who had swallowed the KaalKoot, was believed to be in Mount K
ailash, deep in the Trans-Himalayas.

  Bavdekar was an expert on plant and animal life in the Himalayas.

  Was there a connection? Or was Sam’s mind simply playing tricks on him?

  KaalKoot. The primordial plague, with the power to destroy the universe.

  What sort of stuff was Professor Bavdekar into? And how the hell was Ananya linked to all this?

  ***

  Sam’s head was whirring. There were too many smoking guns here. Ought he to turn himself in and let the police take over? Should he hang around NISS and figure out what Professor Bavdekar was really up to? Or maybe go to Goa following the crazy voicemail?

  He had no idea how to choose between the options. A wrong call on this would mean curtains for Ananya.

  The voice message seemed the wackiest of the lot, but it was also the most frantic.

  Sam remembered something the Colonel used to tell him as a child, about trusting his instinct.

  Namrata and Sameer looked at each other. Both their lips formed the same word.

  ‘Goa.’

  PART III:

  THE PRIMORDIAL PLAGUE

  GOA

  CHAPTER 13

  Mumbai, Monday, 3.10 a.m.

  Namrata and Sam were in Professor Bavdekar’s room at NISS.

  ‘We should be informing the police,’ Namrata said.

  ‘Err . . . I’m not really on very good terms with the police right now,’ Sam stuttered. ‘I’ll take the USB drive and head to Goa. You file a missing persons’ report with the police, inform Ananya’s parents and trace out Professor Hudson.’

  Sam’s heart skipped a beat as he said this. He had met Ananya’s mother when she was visiting Mumbai recently. Ananya had considered introducing him as her boyfriend, but he, ever the commitment-phobe, had insisted on being called a ‘good friend’.

  Sam could not help feeling a pang of guilt. He had let things drift with Ananya.

  If only he could get a chance to make it all up to her.

  He was jolted back to reality by Namrata’s voice. ‘There’s a vehicle rental place right opposite our campus. If you drive fast, you can get to Goa within twelve hours.’