Marry Me, Stranger

by Novoneel Chakraborty

  Rivanah and Danny exchanged a stern look and together looked at Abhiraj again who continued saying, ‘I thought of seducing you away from Danny. So I gifted you the studs and the negligee. When you seemed to respond to the messages I sent you from the unknown number, I was convinced that you didn’t love Danny as much and that if I pushed you a bit, you may actually be mine. I was happy when you two broke-up in the mall. I thought after Danny, you would give me a chance. And I swear I don’t have any clip of yours.’

  Does it mean it was a coincidence that the real stranger and Abhiraj’s message came in one after the other? And did she link it all like a fool because both came from unkown numbers? Rivanah wondered.

  ‘What’s the password?’ Kamble said taking Abhiraj’s mobile phone from the constable who had confiscated it from Starbucks. Abhiraj told him the correct password. Kamble searched his phone but didn’t find any clip. He kept it with himself to be checked by an expert team.

  ‘Do you believe this guy?’ Kamble asked Rivanah.

  Abhiraj looked pleadingly at her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Please Rivanah. My career will be over. I did what I did only to woo you. Nothing else. I never in my wildest dreams thought it will all come down to this,’ Abhiraj said.

  Kamble gestured to the constable who held Abhiraj by his arms to take him away to the lock up when Rivanah stopped them. She went close to Abhiraj and sniffed him. It was not the deodorant that she was expecting.

  ‘Answer me honestly Abhiraj. Do you use “Just Different”?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Rivanah looked at Kamble and said, ‘I don’t think he is the man.’

  ‘Why?’ Kamble said.

  ‘If he never used “Just Different” deodorant then he isn’t the stranger.’

  ‘How are you so sure?’

  ‘I have smelled him closely thrice. In McDonald’s as well as the night I was attacked and also once when he approached me in the elevator of my building. He uses the “Just Different” deodorant from Hugo Boss.’

  ‘Who approached you?’ Abhiraj asked.

  ‘A stranger.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Kamble looked at the floor once with one hand on his hips and the other scratching his chin and then told the constable in Marathi to go and search Abhiraj’s place for the deodorant.

  ‘Can I call my father?’ Abhiraj pleaded. Kamble took his father’s phone number and called him himself. Mr Mukherjee promised him that he would take the next flight to Mumbai.

  ‘I think you should inform your parents too,’ Kamble told Rivanah.

  She looked at Danny for help.

  ‘Excuse us please,’ Danny told Kamble and pulled Rivanah to a corner.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t want to tell my parents about this.’

  ‘But Abhiraj’s parents may tell them about it.’

  ‘I don’t think being arrested for stalking a girl is something his father will tell my parents. But if I tell my parents about all this, I’m sure they will emotionally blackmail me to resign from work and get back to Kolkata. I just know it. And then...’

  ‘What are you more scared of really?’

  ‘I don’t want to lose touch with you. I know you won’t be able to shift to Kolkata even if I do.’

  ‘Hmm. Can’t you just request Abhiraj’s father not to tell anything to your parents?’

  ‘That’s the only way out, it seems.’

  ‘And what is it about the “Just Different” deodorant. You never told me about it before? Even I use it.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell this to the police,’ Rivanah cautioned him.

  ‘Come,’ Danny said and together joined Kamble again.

  ‘Sir, I think we will not divulge the matter to her parents as of now.’

  Kamble first looked at Danny and then at Rivanah. Studying their faces he said, ‘As you wish.’

  ‘It means the stranger is still out there watching me,’ Rivanah said.

  ‘Relax. Let’s first confirm if what Abhiraj is saying is even true. Then we will think about what to do next,’ Kamble said.

  Rivanah knew Abhiraj was correct. He couldn’t have followed her since the past eleven months. It was only a matter of wrong timing that his messages were construed as being the stranger’s. Perhaps, knowing this, the stranger had intentionally kept a distance from her all these days. He had been watching this comedy of errors silently, she thought, feeling her dry throat.

  ‘May I have some water?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Kamble said and asked a constable to get her a glass of water. As she finished drinking the water, she kept the glass on the table. Danny was at a corner answering an important phone call. They were asked to wait till the constables brought Abhiraj back. Kamble went to check on another thief who had been brought in. Meanwhile Rivanah checked her phone. There was a message and a few Whatsapp messages. She viewed the message first:

  Inky pinky ponky,

  Mini had a donkey.

  Donkey caught, Mini smiled a lot,

  Inky pinky ponky.

  ‘Kamble sir,’ Rivanah stood up holding her phone. Kamble as well as Danny rushed to her.

  ‘What happened?’ Kamble said.

  She handed him her phone. Kamble read the message and said aloud, ‘Mother fucker!’

  ‘What happened?’ Danny said.

  ‘This is my wife’s phone number. She told me she had lost it yesterday.’ Kamble sat down on his chair feeling angry and frustrated.

  28

  When was the last time you made a mistake Mini? A terrible, terrible mistake?

  Rivanah read the message again for the umpteenth time that morning. She had answered it for the stranger but he didn’t seem to accept it. Could this have the clue to the puzzle that this stranger was?

  Five days had gone by since Abhiraj’s arrest in Starbucks. Ishita was in her office while Asha had gone to her hometown. Rivanah had her bags packed since morning. It was time to shift someplace else. Danny had a friend who was shifting to the UK for six months and was more than willing to rent out his friends the two-bedroom flat that his father owned in Lokhandwala.

  The constables didn’t get the concerned deodorant at Abhiraj’s place. When the analysis of the messages sent to Rivanah from different phone numbers came in, it was clear that the clip was sent from a different location that was closer to Rivanah’s place while the message that Abhiraj sent was from Andheri west. The last message that was sent from Kamble’s wife’s phone number confirmed that Abhiraj was not the stranger. It was indeed a coincidence that Abhiraj started luring Rivanah using unknown numbers and she misunderstood him to be the stranger.

  On Abhiraj’s request, and with slight help from Rivanah, the police agreed not to tell his father on what ground was he brought into custody. He was allowed to leave when Rivanah withdrew her complaint. Kamble promised her that he would not rest till the stranger was caught even though they had no leads as such. Kamble did question the slum kids but again reached a dead end. Rivanah could have told Kamble about Malati and Ratna but didn’t. The police would harass them and it was something she didn’t want them to go through, knowing well the innocent mother-daughter duo had nothing to do with all this.

  The stranger had not messaged or tried to contact her since Abhiraj was caught. That was five days before. She hoped it was finally over because now the stranger knew the police was involved. Pursuing her in spite of it would be a risky affair.

  The doorbell rang. Rivanah sprang up on her feet and picked her bag up. She was ready to leave with Danny to the new flat.

  She opened the door to see Kamble beaming.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said.

  For a moment Rivanah thought the stranger had been caught.

  ‘Where is he?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh no. We haven’t been able to catch him yet. I’m congratulating you because the honourable court gave its verdict today regarding the gangrape victim; life
imprisonment for both the men. You will read about it in newspapers tomorrow.’

  Kamble had told her earlier in the week about the verdict date but she had forgotten about it completely since the incident at Starbucks.

  ‘That’s great,’ she said.

  ‘By the way, meet inspector Suresh Patil of crime branch,’ Kamble said.

  It was then she noticed the man standing beside Kamble. Patil shook Rivanah’s hand.

  ‘Did you get any promising leads?’ she said looking at Kamble.

  ‘The stranger lived on the flat above yours.’

  ‘What? How do you know?’

  ‘We located every owner of the flat in this building.’ Patil preferred to answer. ‘Some live here and some have put up their flats on rent like the one you stay in. Only the owner of the particular flat above yours lives in Australia. When my team contacted him, he clearly said he had not given it up on rent whereas the guard told me he had seen the flat unlocked many a times and yet he didn’t exactly know who lived there.’

  ‘Shit! Is the flat open now?’

  ‘Yes. Come with me. I need to show you something,’ Kamble said. Rivanah was about to lock the door to her flat when Patil stopped her. He said he’ll take a look around while she followed Kamble upstairs.

  Rivanah noticed the flat above hers was completely empty. Kamble called a constable who came to him with a plastic packet inside which she could see few pieces of cloth as Kamble dangled the packet in front of her. She didn’t take time to realize it was a set of undergarments; a bra and a panty cut into pieces.

  ‘Do you...’

  ‘They are mine,’ said an embarrassed Rivanah. She was wearing the pair on the night the stranger attacked her.

  ‘Hmm, I guessed so.’ Kamble gave the packet to the constable. He got a call on his phone. He went outside to talk. Rivanah went to the window in the drawing room and looking down at her flat below wondered: whenever she was there talking, he was here listening. But he never made himself visible. Anonymity is power, he had once told her. What did he want with such power? She was lost in thoughts for some time. A girl’s laughter echoed in the empty flat taking her by surprise. There was nobody. She was about to turn toward the window when she again heard the laughter. She rushed to the bedroom but found nobody. Then she went to the toilet, the bathroom, the kitchen; there was nobody anywhere. She ran to the main door calling out to Kamble. He was checking the doorbell along with a man who was unscrewing the doorbell’s socket on the wall beside the main door.

  ‘What happened?’ he said looking at a worried Rivanah.

  ‘That girl’s laughter...’ she said.

  ‘It’s the doorbell,’ Kamble said and pressed the doorbell again. The girl’s laughter echoed in the empty flat. The laughter reminded her of something. Rivanah had heard it somewhere before or so she thought.

  ‘We are wondering if it has anything to do with the stranger,’ she heard Kamble say. ‘Do you know this laughter by any chance?’ he asked.

  Rivanah thought hard. And then a name occurred to her. How could she forget it? The person used to be a good friend of hers in her engineering college.

  ‘I knew there would be something.’ Kamble exclaimed. He took out a small roll from inside the doorbell socket which unfolded to a small piece of white cloth similar to the ones, which he too knew, Rivanah had been receiving from the stranger. Kamble read what was stitched in it in black thread before handing it over to Rivanah.

  Fate is a smell Mini. Follow it hard without struggle and you shall reach me.

  ‘Never before in my service have I seen someone communicating with the means of embroidery,’ Kamble remarked.

  Holding the cloth in her hand, Rivanah quietly recollected every major thing that had happened to her since she came to Mumbai for the first time. Certain dots formed in her mind and to join them she called her mother purely on an instinct.

  ‘Hello mumma, are you at home?’

  ‘Yes, why?’ Mrs Bannerjee was taken aback by the urgency in her daughter’s voice.

  ‘Please go to my room.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Please don’t waste time mumma. It’s important. I need you to find something for me.’

  Her mother did as asked. Half a minute later she said, ‘I am in your room.’

  ‘Go to my study table and pull out the last drawer.’

  ‘Now in the end you will see a slam-book. Can you see it?’

  Her mother moved some of the college text books to get to the slam book.

  ‘Yes. It’s in my hands now.’

  ‘Open it and look for a girl named Hiya.’

  ‘Hiya?’

  ‘Hiya Chowdhury.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Mumma?’

  ‘I forgot my specs downstairs.’

  ‘Oh mumma, be quick.’ The impatience was killing Rivanah.

  Another minute went by before she heard her mother say, ‘I have found Hiya Chowdhury on your slam book. Now?’

  ‘Now read whatever is written on it.’

  ‘Name: Hiya Chowdhry. Friends call me...’ And her mother went on till she reached a particular section.

  ‘Favourite dish: Spanish omelette, Kadhai paneer, and Butter chicken.

  Hobby: embroidery.

  Ambition: To work in an NGO for rape and domestic violence victims.

  Favourite pass time: To teach kids.’

  Mrs Bannerjee finished reading Hiya Chowdhury’s profile in the slam book. The uncanny resemblance of the incidents that had happened since she was in Mumbai with the information in the slam book had turned Rivanah cold.

  ‘Anything more?’ Rivanah’s throat had gone bone dry.

  ‘There’s a note for you where she signed her name. Should I read that too?’ her mother asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Know your worth,’ her mother said.

  Rivanah swallowed a big stifling lump. She cut the line immediately and called her friend Pooja in Hyderabad. The latter picked up the call on the fourth ring.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’ she said.

  ‘What do you know about Hiya Chowdhury?’ Rivanah asked.

  ‘Who? The girl who hanged herself to death from a ceiling fan last year?’

  Death...hanging from a ceiling fan... As the nightmare that has been haunting her from sometime now flashed in front of her, Rivanah struggled to find her own voice.

  (To be continued...)

  Acknowledgements

  Gratitude to my family for negating my weaknesses with their strength all the time.

  Thanks to my friends who have been a constant source of inspiration and support.

  Heartfelt thanks to my readers who, time and again, have maintained unconditional thirst for my work.

  A sincere thank you to my publisher and editor for making the book look amazing.

  Special thanks to Pallavi Jha and Paullomy Chowdhury for...well, let it be.

  Next in the ‘Stranger’ trilogy…

  After learning about Hiya Chowdhury’s scrapbook details from her mother, Rivanah is left dumbfounded. The eerie similarities between her nightmares and Hiya’s death don’t let her rest in peace. She immediately books her ticket to Kolkata. She’ll have to go to Hiya’s house to find the truth behind it all. With such a blatant reference to Hiya Chowdhury, has the stranger finally given Rivanah the lead to find him? But why would he do that? And what does he want from her?

  Rivanah can’t wait to get the answers, but will her search really lead her on the right path or take her further down into some sinister labyrinth designed by the stranger? Along the way, Rivanah will discover dark secrets about her own self...those that may resurrect her or destroy her forever.

  All this and more in Book 2 of the Stranger trilogy...

  Out in the summer of 2015

  THE BEGINNING

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  EBURY PRESS

  Random House Publishers India Private Limited, 7th Floor, Infinity Tower C, DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon – 122 002, Haryana, India

  Random House Group Limited, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA, United Kingdom

  Published by Random House India in 2014

  www.randomhouse.co.in

  Copyright © Novoneel Chakraborty 2014

  Cover design/illustration: Stuart Daly

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN: 978-81-8400-596-7

  This digital edition published in 2014.

  e-ISBN: 978-81-8400-667-4