Many old constables and other officers who now entered the lobby instantly recognized me.
“Arjun Sahib, how are you? Things are not the same without you.” Dharampal, the friendly constable had come towards me with tears in his eyes.
I had helped him once when he was caught taking a bribe, since then he held me in high regards.
“Dharampal, I don’t have much time. Where is Pratap?”
He shrugged his shoulder. “Sahib, I don’t know about the whereabouts of Pratap sir.”
“Anyone from the intelligence team here?” I enquired.
“Haan Sahib, Tia mam is working from home.”
Then it triggered – she was the one person who could help me. Tia Majumdar, yes, the same Tia, whose father was shot because of me. Pratap had used his contacts to get her a job in the intelligence department. But I was the last guy she would help. There was no other option for me; I had to take any chance if I wanted to help Aditi.
Without any further thoughts, I left for Tia’s residence. I still didn’t know how would I ask for her help, but it was a shot worth taking. I drifted my attention to the call again.
“What’s that?” Ajeet enquired. After a few seconds, he laughed hysterically.
“Love Flintstones, do you?” he uttered in the midst of all the laughing. I remembered what he was referring to. Aditi had a ‘Love for Flintstones’ tattoo on her left wrist which she had got in college because I loved the Flintstones. This was when we were dating briefly.
“Or, you are still in love with someone who likes Flintstones,” his voice turning sinister. Aditi whimpered.
He continued in anger, “Oh, the attention that man could get, and still he gets more. He is just full of himself, with all his jokes, sarcasm; unnecessary humor if you ask me. Look what it cost him, a dead wife, no job, living life like a screw-up ready to drop dead any minute. Yet people are rushing over to pick him up. I mean, just to delay the inevitable.”
“Don’t-” Aditi started, sobbing, “Don’t say that.” A couple of footsteps then she shrieked again, making me shiver.
“Oh! Did I touch a nerve there?” Ajeet continued, in the middle of Aditi’s sobs. “See, but that’s what I meant. Tell me girl, has Arjun ever said that he loved you? Has he ever expressed any feelings about you, the same feelings with which you are drooling all over him?”
“He is my best friend-”
“Then where is he now? Is he here to save you? Shall I check the door, ready to meet my doom?”
Aditi let out some fresh sobs; Ajeet scoffed, “If it were me, I would have saved you. Arjun never cared for you, but I did. I loved you, from the moment I saw you in college. The second I set my eyes on you, I was ready to make you mine. I tried to tell you, but he stole the show every fucking time. I followed you, waiting for you to be alone but if I gave up a dime for every time you were with him, I would be poor as shit. That asshole ruined everything for me. I had to make do with the photos I took of you, and I had to cut him off in more than half of them.”
I grabbed the bike handle tightly in disgust. How had I missed those things? I remembered Ajeet as a bit shy, but he still used to hang with us all the time. My thoughts were interrupted by his sinister voice again.
“So why should I stop now, if I have a chance to cut him off from you one more time.” Then I stopped my bike in shock, paying no attention to where I was going as Aditi’s painful shrieks, and cries drowned my ears, “Noo, Nooo, you bastard, don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her; face me, you coward,” I shouted and gasped, grasping blindly in front of me and making a few passers-by panic. The shrieks stopped after a painful few minutes, and she fell silent.
“Aditi! Aditi!” I panted before remembering she can’t hear me.
I snapped out of it, realizing that I was in an alley inside CP. I was racing past 120 KPH as per my bike’s speedometer, but still, I felt it took forever. It was very hard to concentrate on the road without getting distracted by the new developments on the call. I wanted to spill his guts and tear him off limb by limb. I just knew that I had to save her. I reached a familiar looking house and put my finger on the doorbell with dread. The ‘Majumdar’ nameplate at the front of the house triggered all kinds of nightmares in my mind. I wanted to kill myself then and there but this was not about me, it was about Aditi. With fear engulfing my mind, I rang the doorbell.
DING-DONG
Tia opened the door in a minute and looked at my face with disgust. If she could have killed me, she would have done that without wasting any second, and she had every right to do so. I deserved all the hatred.
“You have the nerve to show up at my door! You scoundrel,” she shouted.
She was about to slap me, but I barged into her home.
“Who do you think you are, I am a Police officer too and not a suspended one.” She shouted.
The house looked cozy, but it was evident that it lacked something or someone. There was no decoration, just the necessities –enough for only one member. She lived alone as her father was still lying in a hospital, all thanks to me.
“I know that you are a Police officer, that’s why I came to you for help. I would have gone to Pratap, but he is not there at the station; Alan is out of Delhi; trust me I had no other option. I need your help.”
“Get out of my house, you pig! You have done enough for me and how could you even think that I would help you?”
“It’s not for me; it’s for someone else. My friend, Aditi’s life, is in danger. This phone call is the only key to find out more, and I need someone to track the location of this call so that I can help her.”
She had calmed a little but still looked indifferent. “I know what I have done is unforgivable, believe me – I don’t want to live anymore but this is not about me, it’s about someone else’s life, and we are wasting precious time here. An innocent soul is getting tortured, and we can save her.”
She nodded. The hatred hadn’t stopped, but it was compartmentalized. She still had the same cute facial expressions, she looked like a doll, but her anger was like hell. However, all of my thoughts went spiraling down when I heard something over the phone.
“HELP ME!!!!”
“Tia, can you please trace the call?”
“I will try,” she replied and began setting up her equipment.
“I know you can; you are in the Police force because of your hacking skills.”
“Please Arjun, there is no need for small talk; I am not doing this for you.”
I nodded. I wondered what on earth caused this to Aditi. She never told me that she was in danger. I diverted my attention towards the phone call again and wished that the torture would soon end.
“Bitch, we don’t have much time. The big bosses need me to be quick about it. I, being a good friend, am giving you more than enough chances for a shot at life. Give me the information otherwise it won’t end well for you.”
There was no reply from her side; she just sighed in vain. I couldn’t hear her pain and suffering like this. I borrowed Tia’s phone and dialed Pratap’s number, but it was in vain.
“I will kill you Ajeet, you fucking bastard!” I shouted and sat on the nearby couch helplessly.
Tia was taken aback but didn’t stop working. Ajeet was relentless; he wanted the information badly from her.
“How long will it take?” I asked impatiently.
“I am triangulating the coordinates; we should have the exact location in about five minutes.”
I nodded and looked at the mirror hung on the wall in front of me. I couldn’t recognize my face; it looked tired and lonesome. I was thirty but looked more or less like someone in his fifties. The unkempt beard and mustache covered my entire face. I looked dreadful. At that time, I saw something which startled me. Shikha was staring at me from the mirror. She had an outwardly presence about her.
“Babe,” she whispered with a smile on her face.
“Yes, darling.”
“You are a complete loser of a ma
n!”
Her words stung like a thousand knives piercing my chest. She never talked to me like that, we had our fights, but this was never her behavior.
“I lost my life because of you, and now another girl is meeting the same fate, because of you. You know that you are all alone, right? Nobody could stay with you, even dying is a better option than staying with you. If only I had married a real man and not a loser like you.”
I knew that this was not real, but it killed me from inside. I knew that I was alone but never like that somebody would rub this in my face.
“You promised me that you will always take care of me, then what happened Arjun? You let me die just so that you can carry on with your miserable excuse of a life. It should have been you, who should have died that day.”
My throat choked, words failed to come out of my dry mouth and the pain in my chest intensified.
“If you are even half of a man, then go save Aditi’s life. She had your back every time; you owe it to her.”
I rubbed my eyes, and she vanished from the view. This was not the same Shikha that I remembered. She felt cold-hearted, but I knew that what she said was correct. I was incompetent; I couldn’t save my loved ones or keep my promises. I looked at Tia; she was thrashing her fingers on the laptop’s keyboard. I instantly looked at the clock; it had just been two minutes. There was a silence on the call, but Aditi was still fighting. Maybe he had lost hope or conceded defeat to her strong willpower. I felt optimistic, which was a strange feeling for me; I hadn’t felt positive since Shikha left me. My eyes went to the same mirror in the hope of catching Shikha again, but I saw another face in it. Aditi was in her favorite dress – the red kurta and blue denim jeans that she used to wear at our college parties. She looked happy and safe there, which was relieving.
“Hello Police babu, remember me?”
I had a smile on my face. She used to tease me by calling me Police babu every time. I hated it, but she used to love it.
“It’s been too long Arjun, we should meet sometime. I have tons of stories to tell you.”
I nodded. “I promise you I will meet you soon and will treat you at KFC – you can have your favorite chicken wings there.”
She giggled. “Do not break your promise and stay happy always. Follow your heart.”
She was never complete without her catchphrase – ‘Follow your heart.’ She would always find an excuse to say this to me. Suddenly, her expression turned grim and she said, “Arjun, save me, please. I don’t feel so good here.”
Then, she wailed unnaturally making me fall to the floor in shock, “I loved you! I trusted you! Why didn’t you have my back? Why didn’t you save me? WHYYYYY-” and the nightmare ended. Tia had realized that something was off and she had brought a glass full of water for me. I gulped down the water and stood up. These visions killed me – they made me realize what was at stake.
“Tia, tell me yo-you have got something,” I asked after a pause.
“Yes, she is at Paharganj.”
“FUCK! I didn’t even think of searching her home once. She lives in a flat at Paharganj.”
She had given the location in under five minutes; she indeed was good.
“If only I hadn’t wasted my time and went straight to her place.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You couldn’t have known that she would be at her home. Now go, save your friend.”
“Thanks, Tia. I was an ass to your family, and yet you helped me.”
She nodded and opened the front door indicating that I shouldn’t spend more time there.
“How is your Dad now?”
That was the moment she lost her cool, tears started rolling down her cheek, and she literally pushed me out of her house. However, I had a bad feeling that Aditi couldn’t survive much longer like this. She was in a terrible state. Without wasting any more seconds, I started my bike. I knew her place; it wouldn’t take more than ten minutes to reach there. I checked on the call again – there was a complete silence followed with Ajeet laughing.
“Bitch, eat this.”
I wasn’t prepared for what was next to follow. There was an ear-deafening sound of a gunshot on the call, and my phone fell from my hand.
SPLATTER
Tia placed the empty glass in the sink and sighed. She hated Arjun; he had almost killed her father, Shantanu. A part of her had wished that her father would die and get rid of all the suffering because she couldn’t see him like that. He couldn’t speak, move, eat, drink, or relieve himself – in fact, he couldn’t do anything on his own. The instruments at the hospital were the only proof that he was alive. She still remembered the hardships she went through. There was no one in the family to help her. Arjun had tried to send her money, but she had returned it. She didn’t want anything to do with him. She wasn’t good at anything except her hacking skills. Shantanu was disappointed in her when she was caught hacking a major seller’s website.
“Beta, you have so much potential in you. Why are you wasting your life like this?”
She had nothing to say and immersed herself in the plate of rice and hilsa fish, her favorite fish.
“If you continue like this, I will have to find you a nice Bengali boy very soon,” he added cheerfully.
“Baba, I won’t repeat this. I will never get into any such trouble in the future.”
“That’s like my rosogolla,” he exclaimed and hugged her.
She had promised herself that she wouldn’t do anything that would hurt her father. Hence, post the accident, she had started tutoring some school kids to raise some money for her father’s treatment, but it was not enough. There was no one except her father who loved her truly. Her younger sister Suparna, who was in Pune hadn’t talked to her in years. After the hacking incident, she had cut off all ties with Tia. Shantanu had tried a lot, but the relationship between the sisters had strained permanently.
“You are a disgrace to the family. Do you know how much Baba suffered because of you? We are the laughing stock of the society, all thanks to you.”
“Sorry, Su! Baba forgave me, can’t you too?” she had apologized.
“No. You are dead to me. I don’t want anything to do with you. Now leave my room immediately.”
“Su, you two are sisters. You should not fight like this,” intervened Shantanu.
“Baba, I won’t be able to marry peacefully now because of her. All of the neighborhood and the relatives are already joking that there is a convict in the Majumdar family.”
Tia sniffled hiding her tears. Shantanu shook his head in despair. “Suparna, she has realized her mistake, and I promise you that I will marry both of you to really good families.”
“Baba, my sister has been to jail. How can anything be good now?”
With this, she stormed out of the house in anger. She came to the hospital only once when Baba was admitted where she had accused Tia of everything.
“Baba is here because of you. You sent him outside that day when he was shot, right?”
“Su shut up, he is my baba too,” Tia said crying all over.
“I bet that you aren’t even his real daughter. You must be adopted; I am glad that ma is not alive here to see your true face.”
Tia had stormed out of the ICU crying and didn’t return that night. Suparna never came back; she had severed all ties with her sister. Tia tried calling her multiple times, but she never picked up her call except for that one time when a guy picked up. Then Tia realized that she was living with her boyfriend in Pune. Tia had lost all hope until she received a phone call.
“We have been noticing your skills from quite some time; would you like to work with us?”
It was a call from Intelligence Division Head at Delhi Police. This was not the standard selection procedure and felt like a horrible prank but still, Tia gave it a shot, and it indeed was true. She was at the trainee position and got reasonable salary plus medical insurance perks. It was the biggest irony that Police had caused her all the pain, and now t
he same Police came to help her out. She had finally settled in and thought that she could move on until today when she heard her doorbell.
She had drifted too far in her thoughts and shook her head. Arjun had gone after getting the location, and she prayed that he could save his friend. Not everyone should face the same fate like her dad. She felt conflicted and knew she had to call her best friend Deepti to feel better.
“Hi yaar! I am feeling confused.”
“What happened fatty?” Deepti replied teasingly on the other end.
“Nothing, Arjun was at my house. He left a few minutes ago.”
“Damn! You are on a roll baby, good for you. I always thought that you would end up with Sid, but you are expanding your horizons.” Deepti mocked.
“Shut up Deepti. I told you already that I have left my old life and my dark past behind. After what happened with my sister and Baba, I had to change; there was no other option.”
“Tell me all about Arjun!” she asked in a sing-song voice.
“He is the same cop who shot Baba.”
The last sentence choked Tia’s throat, and she sipped a glass of water herself.
“What was that asshole doing in your house? You are in the Police department too now; you could have arrested him.”
Tia didn’t say anything to that. She felt an urge to kick Arjun right in the stomach.
“He wanted some help, I have helped him, but still I am feeling weird.”
“It’s alright Tia, that’s perfectly normal. That guy stole your life from you, yet you helped him. You are a kind-hearted soul.”
Tia smiled. She knew that talking to Deepti would make her smile. “So when are we meeting?”
“I want to go shopping with you, let’s go today,” Deepti replied ecstatically.
“Okay boss, thanks for cheering me up though.”
She suppressed a tear thinking about her friend’s last statement, but her attention was directed towards something else. She had disconnected the call, but it took another five to ten seconds to end. She heard a click sound and immediately realized what had happened.
Death and Dishonor Page 4