Friending Ganga helped me cope. She never suspected the truth of what had happened that night, but she was happy for me – I had been spared a life with rapist Anshul, and he had, in a way, got his just desserts. I got her a Daily Needs franchise at the DTC, and even though her husband showed up now and then and accused her of sleeping with rich sahibs for money (he had seen the ten thousand she had come back with that day), she was happy.
I found I couldn’t get the stuff rapist Anshul had said about my parents out of my head. They were flawed, and fucked up. It was high time I stopped accepting everything they said to me as gospel truth and started thinking for myself.
That made me feel a bit better.
I started gymming, and working hard at Todi Corp, and after a while, decided to start dating again. I’d burnt my boats with you, but I figured it was a big world, I’d find somebody else, equally nice.
Slowly, though, I realized that Kashi Dogras were thin on the ground in the real world …
Still, I liked Leo – he was charming, and funny and really handsome. Besides, he was wildly ineligible and long-haired and used to be a waiter and grew up in an orphanage so that would drive my parents nuts. Dating him was like sweet revenge on them for making me break up with you and getting me involved with rapist Anshul.
But then one evening in the DTC’s kitchen garden Leo started giving me all this Roman Catholic, Exorcist bullshit about how he sensed a ‘presence’ hovering in the beetroot patch behind me. Somebody has died violently here, he said, and their blood is crying out for vengeance. Naturally, my blood froze. Then he sucked in his breath and widened his stupid, hooded eyes, and whispered that he could see a disembodied spirit floating behind me. And like a total chutiya, I whirled around and stammered, ‘Anshul?’
God, I’m SUCH a little idiot!
Now of course I know that Leo got his info from Guppie Ram ji, but back then, I really thought it was divine revelation. So I blabbed out the whole story to him, and once I did, he showed me his real face. It was like the whole Anshul nightmare all over again. Except that Leo added goody-goody religious righteousness to the mix. He told me all piously that I had sinned but that Jesus still loved me and that I should repent by donating money to that freaking orphanage he was so obsessed with. The hypocritical self-righteous bastard! He didn’t even have the guts to fucking call it blackmail! He called it penance!
I coughed up the damn money – it wasn’t much anyway. Leo really was SUCH a small-timer, I was almost insulted when he bleated out ‘50 lakhs.’ Anyway, I transferred the money and froze him out, and he slunk away for the time being …
But then something else happened. I realized that Gagan Ruia was starting to look more and more stupid around me. He used to totally hero-worship Anshul and after he heard the story of my tragic engagement, he began to build me up as this amaze, #goals chick or something in his brain, because one night, after he ate too much dahi kebab and red velvet cake at our house, he asked me to marry him.
Now this wasn’t a bad deal at all. The Ruias are super super wealthy and very powerful. Gagan’s an oaf, of course, but it was a ‘Prince for my Princess’ match all over again. And I was sick of the Ghia-Lauki gang feeling sorry for me. And so DONE with my parents. And with romance. Besides, unlike Anshul, Gagan is actually quite stupid and biddable and easy to control. Also, if I married him, I thought I could actually have a shot at redemption! Do something good on a mega scale with my life. For women like Ganga and all, you know? Like legit good social work, the kind you and your GF do. Something that would make you look at me with respect! Maybe I could even join politics? I’d make a damn good politician, everybody always likes me – it’s because I’m so tender-hearted and sweet.
Anyway, right after Gagan and his dad made the rishtaa formally and we accepted (secretly, because I told them the Poddars would feel bad if we made a big announcement) bloody Leo bounced back into my life and told me I had to MARRY HIM!
Like, WTF?
He said he felt personally responsible for my salvation and my soul and wanted us to spend our lives together!
!!!!!
Of course, I was smart enough to recognize this as complete cock. He was just a bloody social climber – obsessed in a weird love-hate way with the DTC and being a legit member of Delhi High Society. He had got his hooks into me, and was planning to simultaneously leech off me and preach to me till I died. So, I decided it was MUCH better if HE died.
(That’s the other thing with killing people. If you’ve done it once, it’s always on your list of available options. It’s the last option, of course, if you’re essentially a good person, like I am, but it’s an option nonetheless.)
But I wasn’t sure of how and when to do it …
Then Urvashi auntie became obsessed with her rainwater-harvesting system and wanted to instal it in the kitchen garden of all places! I couldn’t have them digging that thing up and discovering the bones of rapist Anshul – whom I’d been fake-mourning for three years!
I liked Urvashi auntie, but I didn’t know how to stop her – so when Mukki uncle got into a big fight with Leo on Tambola Sunday, I figured it was the perfect time. If I bumped Leo off that very night, while the memory of the quarrel was fresh on everybody’s mind, there would be so much whispering about Mukki uncle having maybe done it, what with his late-night gymming and everything, that she’d be sure to lose the election!
Arya had already slipped me some Pinko Hathni in a fit of generosity – he likes me, always has, ever since I was dumb enough to hook up with him on the library terrace that one time. He probably doesn’t even remember giving it to me, he was so high at the time. I had taken it out of sheer politeness, but then I started thinking that it may be the perfect thing to use on Leo …
Meeting you that day threw me off slightly. But then you pissed me off by seeming so fond of Leo, and flexing so much about how happy you were with your new chick that I was like, okay, theek hai, I’ve made my slimy bed and now I’m just gonna have to lie in it.
Murder is much easier if you know you’re going to commit it twenty-four hours in advance. Urvashi auntie had already placed the balloons perfectly. I had a key to the gym – it used to be the plants nursery before it was renovated into the gym and the lock on the door was the same. All I had to do was sneak out of the house over the back wall, walk across the road all bundled up in a dull shawl, release the balloons through the window that didn’t lock, open the gym with my old key, pour the Pinko into the flask and walk out again. I was home in under ten minutes.
Of course, I was super lucky, but I think if you’re killing total assholes then luck tends to be on your side.
I slept fitfully. At about 3 a.m. I woke up all clammy and shivering and had a panic attack, and thought about dashing across the road and emptying the contents of the flask into the bathroom sink. I even dreamt I did that, and the relief was exquisite. But then I woke up again … and made myself think about a whole life with Leo in it, having to listen to his religious homilies, his double standards, his obsession with class and caste, his preaching and his leeching, the power he would always have over me … and that made me strong again.
I lay in bed and pictured him riding his Hayabusa into the Club – he was as punctual as fuck – parking it, entering the gym, glugging down the Creatine …
I was probably in the shower, getting ready to show up all innocently for the six-thirty class, when the bar rolled onto his windpipe …
I didn’t feel guilty at all, not even at the church funeral – he totally had it coming.
I was now all set to reinvent myself, marry biddable Gagan Ruia, and get on with my plan to empower deserving young women like Ganga. But then two things happened.
ACP Bhavani Singh rolled up, cute as a chikoo and keen as a cheel, and I was rattled. I hadn’t thought that Delhi Police could actually be efficient. I’d thought they were all idiots. I mean they’re always in the papers fo
r either being spectacularly incompetent or spectacularly violent.
And the other thing I hadn’t bargained for was the return of my feelings for you. You know how a Chocolava cake collapses and oozes molten chocolate when you just touch it with a spoon? Ya, suddenly that was me every time you even looked in my direction. I think it’s because I thought I’d burnt my boats with you – dumping you for Anshul so badly – and when I realized that you weren’t bitter, and that you didn’t hate me, and that you’d even found it in your heart to forgive me, I just … I fell in love with you again. I guess my class-twelve psychology teacher would say you represent the simple, innocent world I’d inhabited before I started murdering people. Or maybe I had PTSD, like the soldiers in Iraq. At the Club that Monday morning, when I’d just found out that the Pinko had worked and that Leo was dead, I felt so drawn to your sweet, clean decency that I collapsed in your arms, sobbing.
Basically, I suddenly couldn’t manage without you any more. I needed you like a drug – you were the only thing keeping me sane. I knew you had a girlfriend now, and a life of your own, but I sought you out like you were my Pinko Hathni.
And then chikoo-cheel Bhavani and you teamed up! What a mindfuck!
I almost told you the whole story the evening you came to my bedroom and asked me about that stupid ‘Secrets’ song. That song had been typical, sadistic Leo chutiyapa – he loved to watch people squirm, it was all part of his ‘penance’ shit – and of course Bhavani zoomed in on it at once. But I thought fast. I told you Leo had been blackmailing me because of Mammu’s kleptomania – she is a klepto, of course, but only Paapu and I knew it, so I thought I might as well throw her under the bus. It worked out pretty well, because not only did you buy it, you also got all protective and gooey-eyed around me – the way you used to be before I dumped you for rapist Anshul. And Bhavani bought it too – and I was safe again.
But then Bhavani dug up that video of Guppie Ram ji talking about a body pushing up beetroots in the damn kitchen garden …
The moment I heard about that, I panicked. I knew nothing about DNA testing, I had no idea how much of Anshul’s body would have wasted away, or what would be left of it. I was too scared too google it, in case somebody was monitoring my search history … I decided the only thing I could do was somehow make everybody believe that rapist Anshul had survived the Garhwal accident and was still alive. If he were alive and stalking me, he couldn’t possibly be pushing up beets in a vegetable patch, could he? And so I wrote those letters, and pretended I’d been getting them for over two years.
Looking back, it was probably a silly move – it attracted Bhavani’s attention to the Anshul angle, but I think he had been suspecting the body was Anshul’s ever since he found those blue shards in the mud with the skeleton …
But then I realized pervy Arya had been peeking at me through the peephole in the Rose Garden loo, and I thought he could be useful. So I worked him into my jealous stalker story.
When Ganga’s husband showed up alive, I had to act fast because now everybody was asking, well, if it isn’t Ajay Kumar in the beetroot patch, then who is it? And I knew Bhavani wouldn’t take too long to figure out it might be Anshul …
So I dropped something on my shorts and lured pervy Arya back to the Rose Garden loo again, then ‘caught’ him peeking at me through the peephole while I washed them, dressed only in a T-shirt and panties, and yelled at him so badly that he went straight home and OD’d. Just like I had hoped.
But it turns out he couldn’t do even that properly!
He’s SO pathetic.
I’d planned to plant a suicide note confessing to both the murders in his bedroom when I visited his home after he died – written in the same style as the anonymous ‘A to my B’ letters I’d stuck on my windshield. It was really sensitive and would have made Roshni auntie cry buckets and given her the perfect closure – but of course I never got to use it and tie a neat bow on this whole mess.
Arya really is quite useless!
And Bhavani Singh is really quite a chalaak chikoo. Look how he figured out that stuff about Urvashi auntie’s baby! And how he got me to confess by pretending he thought you’d done it.
He’d figured out you’re my real weak spot. Not Gagan Ruia, I barely even think about him any more – he was always a dose of isabgol, anyway. Besides, his evil father’s made him drop me like a hot potato, anyway. TBH, every time I talked to Gagan, I wondered how I would live out my whole life with such a boring man – but then I decided that if he became too irritating, I could bump him off in some clever way. Make a clean hat-trick of it.
Ganga still loves me. She says I’m her heroine. And that when I get out of jail I should join politics. She says that all I ever did was rid the world of a few assholes. Rapist Anshul, Blackmailer Leo. And let’s face it, nobody – not even his mom – would’ve really missed Stoner Arya. It’s not like he’s going to kick his addictions and find a cure for cancer tomorrow.
And General Mehra’s killed more human beings than me and he’s been awarded medals for it!
I’m actually a really good person.
I’m sure the courts will see it my way.
It turns out that Bhavani didn’t really have any proof against me – he was just acting on a hunch he got after snooping around in the building where Anshul used to live when Ganga was cleaning for him. If I’d kept my head, and allowed them to take you away, Bhavani wouldn’t have been able to make anything stick.
But I’m glad I stood up for you.
Even if it was all a trick.
And you were in on it.
Hopefully it makes up in some small way for the shit I’ve dumped on you my whole life.
Leo put me off religion with all his chutiyamatic hypocritical sermonizing, but surely, confessing to clear your name was a sort of penance, after all?
Maybe it’s a promo code I can use in the courtroom.
Frankly, even bumping off Anshul Poddar should count as a promo code in the courtroom. I wish Cookie auntie had taken a video of THAT. Of the blue Shivling connecting with his saanp head and the blood spurting and the shards and the Swarovskis flying everywhere. NGL, I would watch that on repeat. I would watch that on repeat in SLOW-MOTION.
I love you, Kashi Dogra.
I don’t want to drag you into my fucked-up life any further, but d’you know any good lawyers?
Kashi folds up the sheets of paper, and hands them back to Bhavani. ‘D’you think I should defend her?’
Bhavani’s square, homely face is sympathetic but grave. ‘No.’
Kashi rakes the hair off his forehead and looks at the ACP bemusedly. ‘I think … I don’t know what to think, I guess! I feel foul for her – she was such a sweet little girl – entitled and privileged of course, but also so sunshiny and confident and eager to please, and then, somehow, she got so … Shit! It’s hard to find the word. So … so corrupted!’
‘Yes,’ Bhavani says sadly.
‘Poor little Bambu Todi. And look at Leo – growing up in an orphanage, with all sorts of grudges and inferiority complexes and a twisted view of religion, with bitterness gnawing at his heart constantly! Preaching and leeching, as Bambi puts it, and wanting to marry a murderess! The whole thing suck balls.’
Bhavani sighs. ‘Vakeel sa’ab.’
Kashi looks up at him, scowling. ‘What?’
‘Don’t take the case.’
‘I didn’t ask for your advice,’ Kashi says shortly.
Bhavani smiles. ‘Actually, you did. And so we’re giving it – your problem is that you are a Mother Teresa-type. Your heart is too big.’
Kashi flushes. ‘You’re making fun of me.’
No.’ Bhavani shakes his head. ‘But we will say this – make your heart a little smaller. Focus.’
‘Matlab?’ Kashi glares at him with resentful, defensive eyes.
‘Lighten up! Forget the world’s problems! Go to Kal
ahandi. To the lady who is building a roof. Tell her you have taken some time off to be with her, and that she should also take some time off to be with you.’
‘But …’ Kashi frowns. ‘But I start work today. And I have no tickets…’
Bhavani shrugs genially, his eyes twinkling. ‘So?’
Kashi stares at him, hope rising as sudden as a wildfire in his heart. Kuhu Bannerjee. Abrupt, simple, straightforward Kuhu. Talking animatedly about architecture, listening to him, laughing with him, walking with him, showing him her village, her school, her children, her famous roof.
‘I could check the flights,’ he says slowly. ‘Fly to Bhubaneswar and drive to Kalahandi.’
Bhavani chuckles and slaps him on the back. ‘Now you’re talking, vakeel sa’ab!’
Galvanized to action, Kashi leaps to his feet and starts throwing things into a bag. He barely even notices when Bhavani leaves.
It takes him just about half an hour to buy a ticket online, stuff some clothes, toiletries, Kuhu’s COD books, and his laptop into a cabin baggage–sized bag. Marvelling at how simple everything is if you want it to be, he calls an Uber.
Fortune is truly favouring him today. He’s connected to a driver right outside, dropping somebody off, who is game for an airport drop. Kashi slams the front door shut, hefts his bag and hurtles down the stairs like a maniac.
The passenger has still not quite exited the Uber when Kashi rushes up and throws his rucksack in.
‘What the fuck, bro!’ She says indignantly, in a strong, musical voice. Then her eyes widen. ‘Kash? Where’re you going?’
And Kashi just stands there and drinks in the sight of her – travel-weary, a little sweaty, her kajal smudged, her kurta crumpled and her eyes just a little unsure of her welcome. And his heart does exactly what Bhavani Singh had advised it to do – it becomes smaller and smaller until all it can hold is her. There is a tightness in his chest and the sting of tears in his eyes as he closes the distance between them with one hasty step and clasps her firmly to his heart.
Club You to Death Page 33