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V Gangadhar

Of detectives and square tomatoes

Two news items in the dailies caught my eye. One dealt with the arrival of Joginder Singh, head of the Central Bureau of Investigation to Bombay. The other speculated on the possibility of growing tomatoes which were square in shape.

Joginder Singh, of course, is the top cop or top sleuth in the country. I would rather call him top cop because I don't know if he is qualified to be labelled top sleuth. Top sleuths sleuth all the time, solving one case after another. They do not have time to meet the press or get their photographs in the media. This is what Singh had been doing since he became director, CBI. In fact, he is not my idea of a top ranking detective.

Where does the square tomato come into all this? As soon as I read about the news item, I immediately remembered someone who would have preferred hens to lay square eggs. It would have made his world more orderly. The person in question is none other than Agatha Christie's famous creation, that miracle of a Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Poirot was rather finicky about his appearance and insisted that everything in his flat should be in its appropriate place. Hence his desire for square eggs. They fitted in nicely with his concept of an orderly house!

The mention of people like Joginder Singh and Hercule Poirot take my mind back to the days when I was introduced to crime and crime fiction. That was several decades ago. Tamil had its own quota of thuppariyum kathaigal (detective stories) which caught the attention of thousands of readers.

The film studios in the south, which churned out hundreds of movies every year, occasionally came out with a crime thriller where the crime played second fiddle to kadal (love). The detective had to be true-to-life and that meant, when he was not sleuthing, he had chase the heroines around the trees and sing songs.

During the late 1940s, the popular Tamil magazine Anar Da Vikatan serialised the adventures of thuppariyum Sambu (detective Sambu), the hilarious accounts of a failed bank clerk who strayed into crime detection. Sambu was short, ugly, bald and endowed with a huge nose. He carried a tattered umbrella and walked around in torn dhoti and coat. He was what the Tamil brahmins commonly referred to as asadu (nincompoop).

Yet, aided by good fortune, he went on solving crime after crime, became the mascot of the local police and a public hero. New Scotland Yard bestowed the ultimate honour on Sambu by inviting him to London where he solved a case which had baffled the Yard policemen for nearly two years.

Sambu was the creation of the late Devan, one of the best Tamil short story and fiction writers of his time. In our house, as soon as the new issue of Vikatan arrived, there was a scramble to get hold of it and read the latest Sambu adventure. Week after week, Sambu caught murderers, recovered stolen jewellery, unmasked robbers, exposed kidnappers... all through sheer good fortune.

Those who benefitted from Sambu's sleuthing gifted him with bungalows, diamond necklaces, gold rings and cash. Some two years back, while on a visit to Madras, I looked into a Tamil book shop and came across several volumes of Sambu stories. I grabbed them, finished them at one setting and discovered that age had not withered nor customer staled the infinite variety of Thuppariyum Sambu.

Tamil faction had other detectives also. Tamil Vanan, novelist and founder-editor of the children's magazine, Kalkandu, created the detective Shanker Lal who figured in the thriller, Marma Manidhan (Mystery Man). Unlike Sambu, Shanker Lal was a serious detective and drank numerous cups of tea while following the trail of criminals.

Tamil Vanan had the habit of building up the suspense which invariably ended in an anti-climax. This happened in the crime stories which were serialised in his Kalkandu. The last paragraph of the serial would, for instance, end something like this: "The night was pitch dark. The rain fell in torrents and the wind howled. The lonely bungalow, which was located outside the town and had a reputation for being haunted, swayed in the wind. As Shanker Lal explored the different rooms, he came across a closed door. Somehow, he had an intuition that the clue to the murder mystery lay behind that door. As he watched in fascination, the door began to open slowly, inch by inch. The creaking noise held him spellbound."

The episode would end here with a 'To be continued next week'. For six days, I would toss sleeplessly, wondering what kind of horrors lay behind that closed door. When the new issue of Kalkandu arrived, I grabbed it and turned to the pages where Marma Manithan was featured. Tamil Vanan would have begun his new chapter with the sentence, "As the door slowly opened with a creaking noise, a brown cat emerged and mewed loudly." Well that was the 'climax' for you!

I also read a number of crime-and-punishment Tamil novels. One of them dealt with the adventures of Digambara Swamiyar, where the detective was a holy man. Today, people like Chandra Swami are accused of committing a number of crimes but, in the Tamil crime fiction of the 1950's, Digambara Swamiyar wore all kinds of disguises and performed great feats of courage in order to unmask the villains. Modern Theatres, Salem, one of the most famous studios in Tamil Nadu, made a film called Digambara Swamiyar, which, I think, I saw even or eight times. But, each time I came out of the theater, I told myself, "Oh, the book was far better."

It was amazing how many books, films and short stories were based on the theme of crime. R Krishnamurthy (popularly known as Kalki), one of the outstanding authors of his time, excelled in historical novels which were as good, if not better, than those of Sir Walter Scott. One of his memorable historical novels titled Sivakamian Sabatham (The Vow of Sivakami) revolved around the Pallava-Chalukya wars and the final conquest of Pulakesi by Mahammala Pallavan who built the famous Mahabalipuram near Madras. The novel also portrayed a tender and tragic love affair between the Pallava king and the dancing girl, Sivakami, the daughter of the sculptor who was the inspiration behind the construction of Mahabalipuram.

I read the novel, which was serialised in Kalki when I was eight or nine years old. What impressed me more was the spy networks established by the two kingdoms, which played and active role in the war. Centuries before the CIA, MI5, MI6, and Mossad were conceived, the Tamil kings had excellent spy networks. The chief spy of the Pallavs, Shatrugnan, was killed in the end. This saddened me. But then, even in John Le Carre novels, good men do die for the sake of their country.

Illustration: Laura Fernandes