The first one read: I lied to you.
The one right beside it read: I’d kept the pieces of cloth in the books inside the bed box.
They had driven out of the Residency Enclave by then.
25
Reading the two Post-it notes, Rivanah got goosebumps all over her body. She sat stiff as Nivan drove the car rather unsteadily. Perhaps he too was unnerved by something. For the first few minutes, Rivanah kept quiet, hoping Nivan would clarify what he meant when he said he kept the pieces of cloth inside the bed. Was he the Stranger? It sounded absurd.
‘Could you please—’ she began, but Nivan grabbed her hand. She stopped. He moved his hand from the gear and quickly stuck another Post-it on the dashboard. Rivanah looked down to realize he had a bunch of those notes beside the gear. The note said: Sshhh.
Nivan stuck another one.
I have checked myself and the car. Are you sure you aren’t bugged? Just nod if you aren’t. Or else, check.
Rivanah remembered how her dress had been once bugged by the Stranger. She tapped the edges of her shirt, the sleeves, the shoulder, the buttons, the trouser and finally her footwear. Nothing seemed suspicious. She nodded to Nivan. He put another note on the dashboard:
Don’t talk till I stop the car.
Nivan drove to the western express highway and then, paying the toll, entered the 7-km-long Worli Sea Link. At night, the city skyline on both sides of the Sea Link made Mumbai look like a teenager’s first love: too good to be real.
The car slowly came to a halt in the middle of the Sea Link. They both stepped out. Nivan went in front of the car and opened the bonnet. Rivanah joined him.
‘Are you being pursued by someone?’ Nivan asked, without looking at her. She nodded hesitantly.
‘Same here,’ he muttered.
‘What do you mean?’ Rivanah said, as a breeze ruffled her hair. She tucked her hair behind her ears. Nivan looked around and then, staring at the car’s engine in front of him, said, ‘Two years ago, it started with a rather harmless note saying: Be ready, Nivan.’
The scene inside the Meru cab when she arrived in Mumbai for the first time flashed in her mind: Be ready, Mini.
‘Then one message after another started coming in. Pieces of white cloth in which the messages were embroidered in black thread.’
Nothing made sense to Rivanah.
‘I went to the police as well but it didn’t help. The person isn’t just a stalker. He made me do weird things like . . .’
‘Like?’ Rivanah’s throat was dry.
‘Like . . .’ Nivan glanced at Rivanah and said, ‘Make sure you were employed in our company.’
While I was left with no other option but to seek your company out, Rivanah thought and said aloud, ‘Do you mean you always knew who I was?’
‘You were just a name to me, and one of the tasks I was given by this . . .’
‘Stranger.’ Rivanah completed his sentence for him.
Nivan nodded.
‘And you had to do it?’ she asked.
Nivan nodded again. Just like she had to do what the Stranger wanted.
‘So I had kept the cloth pieces inside the bed box. Those were given to me. Did you get them as well?’
‘Yes. I did,’ Rivanah said, matching Nivan’s soft tone. ‘But didn’t you try to find out who the Stranger is or why he is pursuing you?’
‘I tried my best but couldn’t. I don’t even try to trace him any more. But I am sure my moves are under observation,’ he said in a resigned tone.
Hence the Post-it notes, Rivanah thought and said, ‘Are you still in touch with the Stranger?’
‘I was never in touch with him. It was he who never left me.’
They fell silent.
‘I sensed it the day you came to my cabin and told me about the pieces of cloth. And tonight, I only wanted to make sure if it was what I thought it was. That you too are a victim of this mysterious frenemy, who coincidentally we both refer to as the Stranger,’ Nivan said as he closed the bonnet.
‘Let’s go back. Please don’t mention this conversation to the Stranger, in case you are in touch with him.’
Rivanah nodded. As they got back inside the car, Rivanah was tempted to ask Nivan if he had a personal secret because of which the Stranger was in his life—just like Hiya was her secret which the Stranger wanted her to pursue. And whether his and her secrets have a link. Rivanah took one of the Post-it notes. Nivan’s eyes followed Rivanah as she opened the glovebox. She found a pen and immediately scribbled on the slip. She showed it to Nivan.
Is the Stranger making you seek some secret?
She sensed a tinge of discomfort on Nivan’s face as he stepped on the accelerator and murmured, ‘I can’t tell you.’
Which means there is one, Rivanah concluded. She checked her phone which she had left inside the car. There were five missed calls from her father’s number. She didn’t call back.
When Rivanah returned to her flat, her parents kept hounding her, enquiring where she had disappeared. They stopped bothering her when she told them she was with Nivan. It seemed to make them happy. But Rivanah wasn’t happy. After what Nivan had told her, she only had one priority now: to find out about Hiya Chowdhury. That’s the link to the Stranger. And why would he involve Nivan in the scheme of things? So many times she was on the verge of inquiring about Hiya—and the sketch—to her parents, but she didn’t. If her parents were to tell her something, they would have done so by now. She would have to find out in a different way.
Retiring to her room, Rivanah put the sketch back on the sketch stand and kept staring at it. Was the sketch the sole clue in the entire puzzle? On a hunch, she stood up, removed the sketch and stared at the blank page on the stand. She took a deep breath and walked to her dressing table. She brought her eye pencil and stood in front of the sketch stand once again. Letting her instinct take over, she started sketching. When she was done, Rivanah’s sketch quite resembled the one that had been on the stand earlier. It scared her, but she knew she was right. The sketch was a clue. She took a good picture of the sketch and uploaded it on Facebook with a question: Whom does she resemble?
She kept refreshing the page but there came no likes or comments. Frustrated, she slumped on her bed again. It was around 4.30 a.m. when her eyes opened suddenly. She checked her phone. There was one comment on the picture. She immediately tapped on the notification. Someone by the name of Binay Das had liked the picture and left a comment: Isn’t that our college-mate Hiya? And Rivanah knew she was closer to unveiling the mystery than she had ever been. She left a message for Binay asking him to call her on her number the moment he saw the message.
She couldn’t get much sleep that night. It was 8 a.m. when her phone rang.
‘Hi, this is Binay here. How are you doing, Rivanah? It has been so long. Where are you?’
She remembered Binay from college as someone who would take fifty words to say what could be said in five.
‘Binay, don’t get me wrong, but I need to know something urgently. We will talk properly later.’
‘Sure. What happened?’
‘You commented on the picture I put up.’
‘That’s Hiya Chowdhury, right?’
‘What do you know about her?’
‘About Hiya? The usual, that she was our batch topper and the one who committed suicide.’
‘That’s it?’
‘And you two were fierce competitors.’
Just the kind of information I am looking for. ‘Anything else?’ she said.
‘Ummm. Can’t think of anything else right now. Why do you need to know about Hiya, all of a sudden?’
‘Just like that.’
‘Okay. Where are you, by the way?’
‘Mumbai.’
‘Great, I’m in Pune. I can come down this weekend if you—’
‘I’m really busy this weekend, Binay. I’ll call when I’m free. You take care. Bye.’ She quickly cut the line and blocked the number.
She had no room in her life for guys who mistook her friendliness for availability.
Rivanah now had two clues: she had sketched Hiya’s face again and again, and the two had been fierce competitors in college. The fact that her father told her she used to sketch in school could well be a lie. But why would this sketch and stand be in this flat? And a sketch stand was in the Krishna Towers flat as well. Something told her she was there and yet not there.
‘Didn’t you sleep properly?’ her mother asked walking into her room.
‘Yes, I did. Let me go for a bath, Mumma. Need to go to office early today.’
Mrs Bannerjee sensed something was not all right.
‘You better be back early today,’ Mrs Bannerjee said, as her daughter entered the bathroom. ‘Your baba and I are leaving tonight, remember?’
The latching of the bathroom door was the only response.
At work, Rivanah wrote down the supposed dots on a piece of paper. Telling Nivan about it verbally could be risky. Writing it down was the best option—like they had done in the car the other night.
Parents are hiding something . . . Hiya Chowdhury’s sketch in my flat . . . she’s my college-mate who hanged herself . . . I was able to sketch her face even though I supposedly stopped sketching long back . . . Hiya was my competition in college, but I don’t remember anything about her . . . in fact, recently I forgot all about her, though I had gone to unearth the missing link in Kolkata . . . father’s colleague—Mr Dutta—seems a shady character . . . Argho Chowdhury is Hiya’s cousin, but I doubt he is involved in this. These are the dots which, I’m sure, lead somewhere. What do I do? Please suggest.
Rivanah reread it and, once convinced she had written whatever she had in mind, went to Nivan’s cabin. A look at her and Nivan knew it wasn’t an official visit. She quietly passed the note to him. He read the note and seemed pensive for some time. Finally he wrote back on the paper:
Your past is in Kolkata. Don’t you think going there will take us closer to the mystery?
Rivanah read the note and then looked up at Nivan.
26
‘You can ask Nivan to stay with us. Why else have we built so many rooms in our house? Only for guests to come and stay,’ said Mr Bannerjee the moment Rivanah told them she and Nivan would be returning with them to Kolkata on account of some office work.
‘Thanks for this, Nivan. I really needed someone to—’ Rivanah had told Nivan when he said he would accompany her to Kolkata. He had cut her short and said, ‘There’s nothing to thank me for. You forget that we both are victims. And my itch to know who this Stranger is just as strong as yours. He made me manipulate your selection in the company. I really want to know how you and I are related. If at all, that is.’
Rivanah could identify with Nivan’s sentiments. The fact that they were sailing in the same boat gave her hope. Of late, she had been missing Danny. Or was she missing someone’s safety net around her? Was it again the Cinderella Syndrome popping up like the psychiatrist had once told her? It was worse that she couldn’t talk to the Stranger. It wasn’t the time to engage in any philosophical prattle with him. It was time to end whatever shit he had been involving her in.
The Bannerjee family met Nivan after the security check in the airport. Mr Bannerjee was extra talkative to him. Rivanah had requested her family not to ask Nivan to stay at their place because it looked thoroughly unprofessional. Mrs Bannerjee, on the other hand, whispered to her daughter, ‘Mini, is something going on between you two?’
‘No, Mumma,’ Rivanah said and excused herself to go and fetch a Coke. Anything to avoid her parents. This was something she had expected to happen. Nivan and the Bannerjee family split up and went to their assigned seats after boarding. Rivanah’s parents fell asleep soon after take-off, while Rivanah watched darkness fall outside the window. In a matter of just two years, she was done with two guys—Ekansh and Danny—and now, suddenly, the rest of her life looked like those white balls of cloud—empty. She felt an urge to cry but checked herself. She went to the lavatory and looked at herself in the small mirror and wondered if she hadn’t really changed. Life had only dug out another Rivanah from within her. Not Life, she corrected herself, there was another name for it—the Stranger. Since she had come to Mumbai, her life had been all about him. She hoped this visit to Kolkata would end the mystery. Rivanah was walking back to her seat when she heard her name. She turned around and saw Nivan sitting in the last row. The entire row was empty. Rivanah gladly joined him.
‘Did the Stranger get in touch?’ he asked.
‘Not after last time.’
‘I thought so. It only means we are following what he wants us to follow.’
‘I agree.’
‘I was wondering if you know anyone in Kolkata who would be able to give us any information about Hiya Chowdhury.’
Rivanah thought for a minute and said, ‘Ishita, a friend of mine. She was the one who told me I’d forgotten about Hiya suddenly.’
‘Hmm, okay. This forgetting part confused me, actually. How can a person forget something all of a sudden, unless it is some sort of amnesia?’
‘I know. But the weirdest thing is, although I’d forgotten everything about Hiya, I remembered the Stranger.’
Nivan’s eyes remained on Rivanah for some time as if he was trying to figure out what the reason could be.
‘Anyway, we should meet your friend first,’ he said.
‘Sure.’
Rivanah soon joined her parents and found them still asleep. She didn’t wake them up lest they probed her more about Nivan.
The flight landed on time. Nivan headed to ITC Sonar Bangla, while Rivanah and her parents took a cab home. She couldn’t wait to call Ishita. Once home, Rivanah went straight to the terrace and called her.
‘Hey babe, what’s up?’
Rivanah could hear loud music. ‘Go to a quieter place.’
‘Give me a second.’
As Rivanah held on, Ishita spoke a few seconds later.
‘Better?’
‘Much better. I’m in Kolkata.’
‘Cool. Let’s catch up tomorrow then?’
‘Yes. Can we catch up in the morning itself?’
‘I have to go to work, my dear.’
‘It’s urgent.’
Ishita thought for a second and said, ‘Can you come down to sector 5?’
‘I can come anywhere.’
‘Great. There’s a CCD near my office. Let’s meet there. 10?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘All fine?’
‘Almost fine. Let’s talk tomorrow.’
Rivanah then dialled Nivan’s number but had to end the call abruptly since she heard someone say two words.
‘Hello, Mini.’
Rivanah looked towards the water tank which was not very well lit. She was sure the voice had come from there. Fear written all over her face, Rivanah tried to locate the obvious source of the voice.
‘How come you are here?’ she blurted.
‘I go wherever you go, Mini,’ the Stranger said. He was merely a voice coming out from somewhere near the water tank. In a flash, Rivanah leapt towards the switchboard and pressed the switch for the light above the water tank. Nothing happened—except, a lightbulb rolled towards her.
‘Try, try, try till you succeed,’ the voice said. Rivanah picked up the bulb cursing herself for thinking she was smarter than the Stranger.
‘What do you want?’ she said.
‘I’m happy for you. Finally you are getting where I always wanted you to.’
‘Do you mean I’m close to finding the link between me and Hiya?’
‘I only say things. What I mean depends on how smartly you interpret my words, Mini.’
‘And when am I going to—’ Rivanah stopped as her phone flashed ‘Nivan calling’. She silenced the call and continued, ‘When will I see who you really are?’
‘Trust me, knowing my identity isn’t going to help you in any way.’
‘Would it hurt you if I get to know you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But this is unfair,’ Rivanah said. She waited for a response but there was none. Is he gone? Rivanah took a few unsure steps towards the water tank and then walked more confidently. But there was no sign of him. She was about to turn to leave when the Stranger leapt out of the darkness and held her tightly from behind so she had her back to him, pressing her mouth with one hand while grabbing both her wrists with another. She tried to free herself but he was too strong for her. Using his thumb and index finger of the hand which was pressing her mouth he clipped her nose. Her entire body was trying to break free but in vain. He appeared to be enjoying the fact that she was growing more and more breathless by the second. Her resistance became even stronger, and she knew that if she didn’t breathe in the next five to ten seconds, she would die. A mental countdown had begun. And just when it reached 1, the Stranger released her. She inhaled as much oxygen as she could while the Stranger whispered in her ears, ‘Remember this experience, Mini. I’ll tell you later why.’
As he released her, Rivanah sat down on her knees trying to catch her breath. She wanted to look for the Stranger but felt stifled. She was sure the Stranger had disappeared by then. Her phone once again flashed ‘Nivan calling’. She picked up.
‘Hey, did you get through to your friend?’
‘Yes.’ She was still gasping for air.
‘What happened?’ Nivan sounded concerned.
‘He was here.’
‘What? Are you all right?’
‘Now I am. Don’t worry.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He knows what we are looking for.’
‘We? He said that?’
‘No. He meant me, but I’m sure he knows.’ Rivanah finally stood up.
‘I’m sure too.’
‘Ishita will meet us tomorrow morning. I’ll message you the address.’
‘Okay. I’ll wait. You take care. See you.’
Rivanah heard her mother calling her downstairs. ‘Mini, what are you doing on the terrace?’
‘Mumma, a bulb on the terrace has fused. We need to replace it,’ Rivanah said and went downstairs, the Stranger’s last words still echoing in her mind: I will tell you later why.
Forget Me Not, Stranger Page 15