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stones of various shapes, crosses, rattles and even parchment made of snake skin. She also had a
black cat called Bossu, which was very mean and nasty.
'The first time I discovered that there was more to Julie than met the eye was when I was
attacked in the Bronx by a mugger with a knife. I was lucky to escape alive, but received a deep
gash in my arm. Julie wouldn't allow me to go to the hospital. Instead, she applied some herbs to
my arm and recited some chants, and within just two days the wound was completely gone, not
even a scar remaining. And then she told me that she was a voodoo priestess.'
'Voodoo? What's that?'
'You don't want to know, my friend. Voodoo is a religion in Haiti. Its practitioners worship
spirits called loas and believe that the universe is all interconnected. Everything affects
something else. Nothing is an accident, and everything is possible. That is why people who know
voodoo can do all kinds of amazing things. Like bringing a dead man to life.'
'You must be joking.'
'No, not at all. These dead people are called zombies. I told you I am drunk. And a drunken man
always tells the truth, right?'
'Right.' By now I am drawn completely into his story. I forget to ply him with more whisky and
cashew nuts.
'Julie turned my life upside-down. She had been a poor cleaning woman, but now she wanted to
be a part of high society. She forgot that she was married to the brother of a rich industrialist, not
the industrialist himself. She wanted money all the time. Money which I couldn't give her
because it didn't belong to me. It belonged to my brother, to the company.
'She forced me into stealing. It started with trifling things a few dollars pocketed from a false
taxi claim. Then it moved on to bigger things. Money received from a client and not shown on
the ledger. A contract signed, the advance received and not sent to head office. Over time, the
embezzled amount became half a million dollars. And then my brother, who lived here in
Mumbai, discovered it.'
'Oh, my God! What happened then?'
'Well what do you think? My brother was furious. If he had wanted to, he could have got me
arrested by the police. But blood is thicker than water. I begged for mercy and he forgave me. Of
course, he transferred me from America, put me in a small office in Hyderabad and insisted that I
repay at least half of the embezzled amount over a twenty-year period out of my salary.
'I was quite happy to accept these terms. Anything to avoid going to jail. But Julie was furious.
"How can your brother behave with you like this?" she egged me on. "You have an equal stake
in the company, you must fight for your rights."
'Over time, her constant nagging began to have an impact. I started thinking of Arvind as a
devious and cunning man who had given me a raw deal. Then one day Arvind came to
Hyderabad to visit my small office. He found evidence again of some petty thievery and lost his
temper. In front of all the staff he abused me, called me names, said I was good for nothing and
threatened to terminate my association with the company.
'I was devastated. For the first time I felt like hitting back at my brother. I recounted the incident
to Julie and she became incandescent with rage. "The time has come to teach your brother a
lesson," she told me. "Are you ready now to take your revenge?" "Yes," I replied, because my
brain had been numbed by his insults. "Good, then get me a button from one of your brother's
unwashed shirts and a little snippet of his hair." "Where will I get a snippet of his hair from?" I
asked. "That's your lookout," said Julie. Hey, why don't you give me another peg?'
I hastily refill his glass. 'So how did you get your brother's hair and a button from his shirt?'
'Simple. I visited him for a day in Mumbai, stayed at his house and pulled a button from a shirt
he had just put in the laundry basket. Then I found the barber he used and bribed him to give me
a lock of his hair the next time he had a haircut. I told him I needed it for an offering to Lord
Venkateshwara in Tirupathi.
'So within a month I got Julie both the button and the hair. What Julie did next was amazing. She
took a male doll made of cloth with all kinds of funny black lines on it. She stitched the button
over the doll's chest and stuck the hair on the doll's head. Next she killed a rooster and drained all
its blood in a pan. She dipped the doll's head in the rooster's blood. She then took it into her
room, uttered various incantations and applied strange-looking herbs and roots to the doll. Then
she took out a black pin and said, "The voodoo doll is ready. I have infused it with your brother's
spirit. Now, whatever you do to the doll with this black pin will happen to your brother in
Mumbai. For instance, if I press this pin on the doll's head, your brother will have a splitting
headache. And if I stick it deeply into the button, your brother will have severe chest pain. Here,
try it." I thought she was joking, but just to humour her I pressed the black pin into the white
button on the doll's chest. Within two hours I received a call from Mumbai to say that Arvind
had had a minor heart attack and had been admitted to Breach Candy Hospital.'
'My God! That's amazing,' I cry.
'Yes. You can imagine my shock. Not because Arvind had had a heart attack, but because now I
knew that Julie had indeed created a black-magic voodoo doll.
'Over the next two months, the doll became a little secret toy for me. I poured all my frustration,
all my latent resentment against my brother into it. I took a perverse pleasure in causing him pain
and suffering. It became a source of demented amusement for me. I would take the doll to
Mumbai and watch Arvind squirm on his lawn while I gently teased the button on the doll with
the black pin. Gradually I started employing the doll on occasions when others were also present.
I took it with me to a five-star hotel where Arvind was entertaining some Japanese clients. I sat
unobtrusively at a corner table. I heard my brother speaking. ". . . Yes, Mr Harada, we do have
plans to open a subsidiary in Japan, but the response from Nippon Button Company has not been
very positive. We are also " Suddenly I inserted the black pin into the doll's head.
"Owwwwwww!" my brother screamed and caught his head with both hands. His foreign clients
left without having dinner.
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