POST: "Book review: 'Aarushi by Avirook Sen reviewed by Irfan Syed on his Blog 'Irfinity'.
GIST: "Avirook closely reported on the
trial
(which began in May 2012 and concluded in September 2013, with the
Talwars’s conviction and sentence of rigorous life imprisonment), but
followed it up even after. He’s now crystallized all of that reporting
into the book. And put his mind, heart, soul and belief into it. For
somewhere, like ‘Talvar’, and like many rational-minded people, he too
found the final decision sticking in his throat more than that
khukri or scalpel or whatever....Avirook builds on the solid foundation he’s laid at the beginning throughout the
three chapters,
layering them with significant details, pertinent questions and
counter-questions, poignant observations, heart-rending accounts, and
even sideline notes of inanimate objects (the accused person’s stand in
the Ghaziabad court that seems to be on its last legs), lending some
succour to the spirit-leeching narrative.........Chapter 1,
The Investigation, recounting that by the
three teams (the UP police and then the two CBI teams), grips you early
on and doesn’t let go till its end. You are taken back to the days of
the reporting on the case, feeling the same kind of involvement, though
in a telescoped timeline. And thanks to Avirook’s detailing and writing,
you now feel one step closer – as if you were a part of the
investigating team, a neighbour, or a CCTV camera in the Talwar house.
The emotional intensity festers and keeps rising, reaches a crescendo –
you feel like you’re pulled in and spinning in the vortex along with the
dentist couple – and then crashes with the decision of the magistrate
to not accept the closure report but send the case to court. In between is
one of the most heart-wrenching narratives
ever accounted, so searing it could only have been fact and not
fiction. All undertrials would be taken to court handcuffed in the same
vehicle. As if this wasn’t uncomfortable enough for Rajesh Talwar, one
day, he found himself handcuffed to/with Krishna, the main accused by
the first CBI team. When pleading against this (with the writhing
“Don’t do this. This man has killed my daughter.”), the police only replied,
“We have just one pair of handcuffs.” You somehow recover from that and reach the end of the chapter. Where
there are two special post-script pages, along with photos, of the case
of the
“erroneously numbered” pillow and pillow cover. You somehow feel you can’t recover from this one. The chapter also proffers a telling portrayal of the
second CBI team’s investigating officer, A. G. L. Kaul – he had corruption charges against him in the past. Truth is stranger than fiction, you shake your head. If Chapter 1 is a logical and psychological rollercoaster, Chapter 2,
The Trial,
takes you in only one direction: down. Page after page, account after
account, as the Talwars run from one court to another (for various
appeals and petitions, including bail for Nupur) and finally as Rajesh
waits during the defence lawyer’s closing arguments with countless
duffel bags of documents to provide to the judge if asked, you slowly
begin seeing the writing on the wall: Guilty. Rigorous life
imprisonment. Your heavy heart looks for a silver lining: at least the
court did not pronounce the death sentence (which the second CBI team
asked for). Cruel as it may sound in this case, there may be a god after
all.
Chapter 2’s
sketches, perhaps to counter the impending miserable outcome, are more
humanistic. A luminous one is that of the
defence criminal lawyer,
Tanveer Ahmed Mir,
which talks about his robust voice, how an incident from his youth
spurred him toward criminal law, how he felt this was a “beautiful case”
as it had “acquittal written all over it”, and yet how his “greatest
failing” was that he could not get the trial pushed to after the judge’s
retirement.
And then you have the
mother of all background stories, of
Bharti Mandal, the Talwars’s
house-help during the time of the murders. Avirook visits the
basti
where she lives; it’s a maze where he loses his way until her husband
comes to his help. He looks at the squalor amidst which they stay, but
which they feel is better than the distant West Bengal village from
which they hail. You learn how Bharti was only a stand-by: she had been
working with the Talwars as a sub for only seven days during their
regular maid’s leave. And this was the woman on whom a key part of the
testimony, and eventual conviction, rested. Bharti said in court right
at the beginning of her deposition,
“I’m just saying what I’ve been coached to say (by the CBI team).”
Later, when inquired by Avirook, she admits not realizing that the
testimony she gave went toward incriminating the Talwars. You don’t know
which of her two statements sounds more crushing. But Avirook leaves the
most chilling portrayal for the last. Chapter 3,
Dasna Diaries,
recounts two years of the Talwars in Dasna Jail, by which time they’ve
become “veterans” (Nupur’s words) and seen a complete switch of
personalities – Rajesh, the softie of earlier who beseeched with
“I couldn’t even put a needle in her (Aarushi’s) mouth during dental work”,
seems to have become the strong one and Nupur (whose biggest crime it
would seem was not crying “like a mother who’s lost her only daughter
under gruesome circumstances” on national TV) the crushed one. The diary
is one that Rajesh penned during the initial days of imprisonment “to
make sense of everything”, which he eventually gives to Avirook. Sen
publishes excerpts of it in the book. But goes beyond. He now includes
follow-up-portrayals, what happened to the various cast of characters,
thus lending symmetry to the book. You feel some justice delivered
finally when you learn Kaul died of a heart attack. And then Avirook
visits the judge’s house.
Judge Shyam Lal, known as
Saza
Lal (Punishment Lal, as he was known to convict in most of his
judgments), had aimed the case to finish before his retirement day: he
pronounced the verdict four days before his last day. During his visit,
Avirook comes to learn about the judge’s life-long fascination, or
aspiration, for English. A fascination that found its way into the
stuffy-sounding 201-page verdict that the judge delivered: ‘
who have
been arraigned for committing and secreting as also deracinating the
evidence of commission of the murder of their own adolescent daughter—a
beaut damsel and sole heiress…’ He wrote it along with his son.
When Avirook comes to know this, he asks the son some details, and then
making calculations, slowly makes this realization, deadpan: Lal and his
son had started writing the verdict before the defence team had started
making its closing argument. The handcuffs’ incident pales in
comparison. But Avirook is not done yet. At the very end, he proceeds, or attempts, to answer
the question a nation, and a couple, wrung all its neurons over:
who did it?
He features excerpts of the transcripts of the various scientific tests
of the domestic helps. You are left wondering: how can anyone make any
other conclusion from this? And left asking for one more follow-up
portrayal: that of the domestic helps. But who knows which part of the
world they’d be in by now after being allowed to go scot-free? With the quality and depth, sincerity and sensibility Avirook puts
in, the book is a supreme effort. So much so that, especially knowing
the reportage given to this case, you just might forget that Avirook is a
very good writer. Though for once, the writer may not mind the
attention going to the subject(s). Or the injustice they were caused. Hope you’re in a better place, Aarushi. For your parents though, it’s been quite the opposite.