LITMIR.BIZ

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a pie chart from the information collected. Some kids counted the cars that passed their house between certain hours and then presented the most popular colour of car in a chart. Someone else did something about how many different meals were made from one bag of potatoes. I gave myself a little mission of tracking a neighbour called Mrs Knowles. She was an old woman who lived alone and didn’t go out much, so I thought I’d make a pie chart showing how many minutes a week she was away from her home. I also took note of any visitors. She only ever wore two cardigans, pink and blue, and my research showed she wore the blue one more often. On one day when I hadn’t seen much movement for a while, I pushed a newspaper through her letterbox but left it hanging out a bit, so if she pulled it through I’d know she was okay. In all my time in school this was one of the only things I ever got a good mark for. After that, my teacher used to ask how Mrs Knowles was keeping and if she was getting out more. I like to think I came up with Neighbourhood Watch well before it had been created.

      The boss of the agency said I would be partner to Detective Aakash. He looked like a detective from Miami Vice: smart-casual jacket, jeans, shoes and shades. I got some coffee and cake from the café next door to the detective agency to keep our energy up during the case. It’s also the sort of thing you see detectives do in films when they’re on a mission.

      Trying to find a person in such a heavily populated place was not going to be easy. I thought I’d seen the bloke we had to find about seven times just on the walk to Aakash’s car. Luckily, one of the other detectives from the agency was already tracking him and said he had been seen at a local shopping mall, so we made our way over there.

      KARL: Do you change your look so people don’t notice you following them?

      AAKASH: Yes, yes. Just yesterday I visited a hair salon, and he just changed the shape, so that I can change my look. I mean, these are very small assignments. We also go on some very, very big assignments, some corporate assignments also. Glasses are the biggest friend of a detective. We can judge anybody by looking into the eyes of someone, but when we are with the glasses – you cannot read the mind of anybody.

      This would be a problem for me. I can’t change my look. If you’re bald you can’t change which side your hair is parted. So I popped on some shades to help mask my face. I looked really gormless. Aakash must have looked like he was driving a bluebottle about.

      We pulled up and waited. You can pull up where you want in India. Maybe this is why the roads are so busy. They’re full of detectives following people and blocking up roads. I had the photo of the man and was looking for him. It’s a game of patience, which I think I’m pretty good at. When Suzanne goes shopping she dawdles too much and I just wait in the car, so I think I’d quite like this type of job. You’re your own boss in a way, and you don’t have to be too brainy either. A lot of TV detectives are simple people. Columbo is my favourite detective and he had a glass eye, and the criminals always thought he was slow. Ironside was in a wheelchair. Miss Marple was an old woman. My weakness could be getting one GCSE in history.

      KARL: So is he working today?

      AAKASH: He is working, but he’s on the field today.

      KARL: On the field? What does that mean?

      AAKASH: Field, I mean work that’s outside the office.

      KARL: So that would be a good time to see a woman if he had someone else on the go?

      AAKASH: Exactly, exactly, exactly.

      After fifteen or twenty minutes, the man we were after turned up. It was quite exciting. The shop he came out of was next to a McDonald’s. Was he going to go in? ‘He’s supposed to be a vegetarian,’ I said. Aakash pointed out that they do sell veggie burgers. You could tell he’d been in this game for a while. I suggested that it might be quicker if I get out and walk up to him and ask if I could borrow a cigarette as a test, but he told me that we should stay back in the car for now. I think we could have found out some useful things about the person if we’d got more involved. We could have checked his temper by nicking his parking space before he had a chance to pull in. That always gets a reaction from people. Surely living with someone with a bad temper is more dangerous than someone who eats burgers?

      I made notes of what I saw. He had a rucksack, which I thought was an odd bag to take to a work meeting. I suggested he could be having an affair and have a change of clothes in there. He was smiling a lot while talking on his phone. Could be another woman. It didn’t look like a business call. But none of this was any use, as we needed evidence. He just kept walking around a car park. I don’t know what he was up to. Never mind his future wife, I felt like telling his boss he was wasting time hanging round car parks all bloody day when he should have been seeing a client.

      As he left the car park we slowly kerb-crawled, keeping on his tail. I was just having some of my cake when Aakash jumped out the car and ran across the road, as it looked like we may have lost him in the crowd. I stayed and ate the cake. It was good stuff. Chocolate with an Oreo biscuit crunch. Five minutes later Aakash came running back. He had managed to get a really clear photo on his phone of the bloke buying a drink from a stall while smoking a fag. Caught red-handed.

      Aakash’s phone was constantly ringing. I asked him if it was to do with this case, and he told me he was also working on another assignment looking for a lady who had been missing since the night before. It seemed odd to me that there was a woman missing and we were chasing a bloke to check that he didn’t eat burgers or smoke fags. It was fun for a bit, but it was all quite silly, really. I’m not sure someone lying about smoking is enough of a reason to end a relationship.

      THE BIG DAY

      The next day I was to witness a wedding in Bangalore to see how it’s really done in India. Seeing as I’m not into the kind of weddings people have back home, I wasn’t holding out much hope that I’d be keen on one of these big affairs. Weddings here are massive. The two wedding planners, Vithika and Divya, had asked me to help out.

      KARL: Stressed?

      DIVYA: Yes, it’s a big day.

      VITHIKA: We’ve been working a long time for this wedding. I hope you’re ready for it.

      KARL: How much time have you spent planning this one?

      DIVYA: About two months goes into the planning.

      KARL: That’s normal?

      DIVYA: Yeah.

      VITHIKA: And also so much changes every day, you know. It’s four days of events.

      KARL: The wedding goes on for four days? Why’s that?

      VITHIKA: Well, we have rituals, celebrations. We just finished the dancing and singing, the day before yesterday. Yesterday was painting-your-hands ceremony. Today’s the actual wedding.

      KARL: That’s mental. I mean, four days. That’s too much.

      VITHIKA: Unless you experience something you don’t know what it is like. When you go to the wedding and see the parents and the close family members you see how much they are part of the bride and groom’s life. I think the other thing to understand is, in India a wedding is also about social status.

      DIVYA: It’s a statement of your wealth. It’s a statement that you’re now married, and it’s the beginning of a new life for the whole family.

      KARL: And how much are we talking?

      DIVYA: I think they start about $200,000.

      KARL: How much?! That’s mad.

      VITHIKA: You have to understand that people here spend more money on just a couple of occasions and they save all their life for them. The parents, when the daughter is born, they start saving for her

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