Murder he wrote

The Bikini Murders by Farrukh Dhondy. Published in 2008 by HarperCollins Publishers, A-53, Sector 57, Noida 201301, India. Pp: 272 Price: Rs 395.

Farrukh Dhondy is certainly a versatile writer; he has to his credit collections of short stories, novels, biographies, screenplays and television serials. He vehemently denies his latest novel, The Bikini Murders, is based on the life of the notorious Charles Sobhraj but there are nevertheless several parallels and resonances.

The novel starts in a casino in Kathmandu where Johnson Thhat, a serial killer, is arrested by Inspector Ganesh Pradhan for the brutal murder of Mary Ann Smolinksy. Just as the first scene of Shakespeare’s Mac­beth with the three witches creates a sense of evil and gloom which hangs like a pall over the entire play, the shady atmosphere of the casino acts as a precursor of the relentlessly bleak setting of the novel. Thhat is imprisoned and when he requests a visit from Ganesh Pradhan, the inspector is torn between feelings of hatred for the murderer as well as curiosity to see what he has to say for himself.

Farrukh Dhon­dy: shades of black

Dhondy has aptly chosen a few crucial lines from D. H. Lawrence’s poem Snake as an epigraph to the novel. In this poem, the observer who watches a snake drinking water from a trough is placed in the same dilemma as Ganesh Pradhan: one of revulsion for the snake and a sense of attraction as well. On the one hand, he feels that the snake is venomous and should be killed, and the man who performs the task is valiant; on the other, he compares the snake to a god, a king, a lord of life and believes that only a petty human being would perform such a cowardly deed and deprive the snake of his regal existence.

In an interview Dhondy himself mentions that writing about "a serial killer or a pair of serial killers, held my gaze as the snake did Lawrence’s.” It is evident that Thhat exerted a strange mixture of disgust as well as attraction on the author as well as the Inspector but it is debatable whether Dhondy manages to evoke a similar response in the reader. One wonders whether the first person narrative in which most of the book is written, is the best vehicle for telling the story of a seasoned criminal. We certainly get under the skin and in the mind of Thhat, but then everything seems to be uni-dimensional and seen through his eyes and from his point of view which occasionally seems to be limiting.

The most interesting part of the book is the early life of Thhat and Dhondy is at his best describing the criminal’s childhood which is certainly brutal and grim; the author does not provide an easy answer to his behavior by suggesting that this violent childhood was the reason for his later development into a serial killer. We are introduced to Thhat as a young boy aged five on his way to school; he has diligently learned the numbers from one to 20 and now suddenly has discovered the magic of 21 which is the number of corpses lying on the streets of Saigon. In fact, the number 21 appears over and over again in the novel and acts as a leitmotif. It is no coincidence that he started his life of crime on his 21st birthday when he meets his Indian father for the first time and agrees to smuggle precious gems to Bangkok. He is accompanied on this mission by the sultry Ravina, his father’s mistress, who gradually becomes a very important person in his life. She instructs him not only in the fine art of murder but in matters of sex as well and, initially, their Bonnie and Clyde partnership succeeds very well.

As the title suggests the novel does oscillate between graphically described sex-scenes and gory descriptions of murder and the eventual disposal of the corpses. But Thhat is no ordinary criminal and Dhondy paints the portrait of a man who is not only a violent, cold blooded murderer but also one with an intelligent and perceptive mind. He uses the police force, the jail officials and the entire bureaucracy as pawns in a game of which he shows himself to be a master. He is seldom caught and, if he is incarcerated, it is because he feels it is preferable to spend 20 years of his life in an Indian prison rather than face extradition to Thailand which would certainly result in his execution. He is the master planner. If he wants to escape from prison for a week of sex and sand at Goa with his French girlfriend, Virginie, he dopes the guards; when he realizes that prison is a safer haven than death, it is he who pulls the strings, rings up a police officer and masterminds his own arrest. It is ironic that he finally meets his comeuppance not through the law or the police but by the betrayal of a loved one.

The backdrop to the novel is unremittingly gloomy. There are hardly any good characters in the novel. The only time some concern is shown for another human being is when Thhat refuses to divulge the name and the identity of his accomplice Ravina who has escaped. Graham Greene once mentioned that the choices in life were not between black and white but between different shades of grey. In The Bikini Murders, there is no grey and the choices seem to be between different shades of black, if that were possible. If Thaat and Ravina are hardened criminals, hardly any character in the novel possesses any redeeming qualities. The entire police force as well as the administration of the prisons are all seen in an extremely bad light; all is apparently driven by corruption and the overwhelming greed for money. No one seems to be exempt from this. Virginie, who is a journalist and with whom he has a passionate affair, has no qualms in using him as a journalistic scoop to her own advantage. Even the insignificant photographer who accompanies her lies blatantly to Thhat merely to further his own cause in the affections of Virginie.

The grim scenario does seem monotonous and trying in spite of an extremely tense and surprising conclusion. The reader who would like to identify with some character in the novel would certainly find it an impossible job. One occasionally longs for the cheerful and lovable characters which populate Dhondy’s interconnected stories in Poona Company. These eccentric characters etched with so much affection and compassion continue to live in our hearts long after we have put the book away.