My thoughts were interrupted by one of the hotel staff, a short girl in a beige uniform, who had walked up to me. ‘Sir, there’s a message for you.’
I opened the folded piece of paper. It said, ‘We need to talk. Walk down the lane outside the hotel and wait near the second turn.’
I was surprised. No one except Neel and Sara knew I was at the Marriott that evening. Was I being followed? I wondered if the woman I just had sex with was connected to this in any way. Maybe it hadn’t been as casual a pickup as I had thought.
‘Who gave this to you?’
The girl turned towards the reception. ‘A gentleman came up to the front desk, handed me the note and pointed you out to me.’
‘What did he look like?’
She thought for a moment. ‘He was quite big, I noticed. I didn’t see his face clearly because he was wearing a hat. But he’s just walked out. Maybe you can still catch up with him.’
I dashed for the hotel entrance. A party of guests was getting off a luxury tour bus and sauntering into the hotel when I reached the porch. I pushed my way past them into the driveway, ignoring the exclamations and expletives. I sprinted towards the gate and into the dark, narrow lane outside.
I went past the few cars parked along the wall of the hotel property. Behind me, a pair of headlights pulled out of the gate. It was the tour bus returning. The bright beams lit up the entire length of the lane and I spotted a tall silhouette just before it disappeared around a corner fifty metres ahead.
I started running again. My chest was already heaving with the exertion, and I wished I hadn’t drunk so many beers. I put on a burst of speed and turned into the street he had gone into. It was dimly lit. I looked in all directions but there was no sign of him—it was as if he had vanished into thin air. Unaccountably, I felt a chill run down my spine.
I waited for a few more minutes. As my breathing returned to normal and the adrenaline stopped flowing, I thought about the man who had sent me the message and then not showed up. I began to feel pretty foolish. What had I been thinking? It was obviously a case of mistaken identity, ironically from both sides. I started to trudge back to the hotel.
It happened without warning.
There was a terrific blow on the back of my head, and I sank to my knees. Someone kicked me hard on the side, and I felt myself being thrown on the warm, rough asphalt. I covered my head with my hands as the beating began. There was no chance of fighting back. Through the mist of pain, I counted three pairs of feet in heavy shoes. As I wavered in and out of consciousness, I realised that I was being battered to death.
Suddenly they stopped. I heard an urgent voice and the sounds of a scuffle. There was a scream of pain from one of the men. Then a siren sounded in the distance and I sensed the approach of a vehicle. At that moment, I passed out for good.
My last thought was that the voice had sounded very familiar.
18
Sara
I was thinking that my phone couldn’t have rung at a worse time but when I heard what the caller had to say, all other thoughts vanished from my mind.
‘Is that…Miss Sara?’ The voice was hesitant.
‘Yes, it is…’
‘I’m with the Panjim police, ma’am. Do you know someone called Omar? He’s been hurt…We found him lying unconscious on the road and have taken him to the Manipal hospital. It’s in Dona Paula.’
My heart skipped a beat. ‘Is he…?’
He interrupted. ‘He’s been assaulted but he’ll live. In fact, he should be coming round any time now. We found your number on his mobile phone and called you.’
‘I’ll be there as soon as possible.’
When we reached, Omar was sitting up on the bed, sporting a blood-soaked bandage on his head. He was in the Emergency ward, with only the duty nurse for company.
I went and held his hand. ‘What happened, Omar? Are you all right?’
He managed a weak grin. ‘Yeah…Just about.’
‘Who did this?’
Omar glanced at the nurse. ‘I don’t know but there were three of them. I must have blacked out while they were beating me up.’ He grimaced with pain. ‘The next thing I knew was waking up here.’
Neel asked, ‘Any broken bones?’
‘Thankfully, no. Lots of bruising, though. My right side feels like it’s on fire.’ He pointed to his temple. ‘And the doctor says I’ll have a bad headache for a few days.’
I remembered the officer who had called me. ‘Where are the police, Omar?’
‘When I regained consciousness, they asked me a few questions and left. I didn’t have much to tell them. They said they’d be back tomorrow.’
‘Where did this happen?’
‘Just outside the Marriott.’ Omar paused. ‘The police said my attackers saw their patrol jeep coming and fled. Otherwise, I might have been dead.’
Neel rubbed the sides of his forehead. ‘What the fuck is going on with us?’
The nurse came up and checked Omar’s blood pressure. She then gave him some tablets, presumably painkillers, and left the ward.
In soft tones, Omar told us everything that had happened.
I asked, ‘That’s really weird. Who could have sent you that message?’
‘Well, I had first thought it was some mistake but now it’s pretty clear that I was being set up for the ambush.’
I couldn’t control my tears. ‘Oh Omar, suppose you had been killed! First Rachel, now you…Which of us will be next?’
19
Neel
I still remember the day we first met Roy.
It was a November evening. The four of us were sitting on the lawn in front of the academic block. The winter chill had started to set in. We hadn’t taken off our blazers to make seats on the grass. As we did when it was warmer. Suddenly Sara nudged me and pointed. A tall, fair boy, about our age, was walking up the steps of the building foyer.
Omar shouted, ‘Hey, where do you think you’re going?’
The boy turned. Gave Omar a long, cool stare. He had striking light eyes. I couldn’t make out the colour in the approaching twilight. He looked like a foreigner.
He walked up to where we were sitting. I noticed that he had an extra finger on his right hand. An unusual deformity. ‘I’m new here. I was told to report to the Administration building.’
I said, ‘This is the teaching block. Admin is…’
Sara interrupted me. ‘…Closed right now. You should have come in earlier.’
That wasn’t true. I realised she was up to something.
‘I know. I got delayed. My uncle was supposed to have dropped me here but I had to finally come on my own.’
‘Are you joining the school?’
‘Yes. I’ve kept my trunk and bedding back near the gate.’
‘Then there’s only one thing to do. You must go to the bursar’s house. Only he can allow you to stay in the dorm tonight, and you can then do the registration in the morning.’
He brightened. ‘Thanks…Where’s that?’
Sara pointed towards the staff quarters at the other end of the premises. ‘It’s over there. Find the big house with the nameplate that says John Marshall. The doorbell doesn’t work so you need to bang hard on the door otherwise no one will come to open it.’
I heard Rachel suck in her breath audibly. No one said anything. The boy walked off.
The problem was that John Marshall was the principal of the school. Not the bursar. He was an irascible old bachelor. With an impressive collection of canes in his armoury. It was absolutely forbidden for a student to go to his house. For any reason whatsoever. And he hated being disturbed in the evenings because that’s when he usually rested.
The unsuspecting Roy faced the full wrath of our principal that day. He never forgave us for it.
But it had the effect of
breaking the ice. Soon Roy began to hang out with us. Both the girls loved him. Even though he was initially pretty shy with them. Sara told me she found him really cute. Needless to say, that didn’t endear him to me.
However, it was difficult not to like Roy. There was something about him. He was serious yet funny. Quiet but warm. Studious and sporty in equal measure. Joining a new school mid-session isn’t easy. But he quickly came to be highly regarded both by students and teachers.
Even the principal would nod and give Roy a half-smile whenever they passed each other. It was a display of great affection by his standards. He generally just glared at students. Their first meeting was obviously a thing of the past.
Roy had laughed as heartily as the rest of us while describing Johnny Boy’s face after being roused from his siesta by the loud knocking. And how he had turned purple with rage when Roy asked innocently if he could find him a place to spend the night. We roared with delight at the thought of the old man assuming that he was being asked by a student for permission to stay in his house.
It was obvious that Roy had never had any real friends before. He told us about his broken family. The beatings by his stepmother. When his grandmother died soon after, something had switched off inside him. It was almost as if he had been waiting for that moment to finally renounce all familial ties and memories. The festering wound in his heart had stopped bleeding at last. Leaving behind a permanent and angry scar.
We all felt sympathetic towards Roy. Even though he didn’t really want our sympathy. I recognised that some cold, dark currents ran deep within him. Which he generally kept well hidden away.
Meanwhile, Sara developed an intense crush on Roy.
It became a fixation with her. And preyed on her mind all the time. She confided only in me. I had to listen bitterly as she went on and on about him.
Sara had always been popular with the boys. She rarely had difficulty in hooking up with anyone she took a fancy to. It was different with Roy. She did not want to reveal her feelings to him. Or make any overt advance for fear of being rejected. Though she never told me so, I suspected that she had somehow tested the waters already. And learnt that Roy did not feel the same way about her.
Roy was a strange one. Sara was by no means the only girl in school infatuated with him. Yet he showed no interest in any of them. Here I was, starving for female attention. Ready to jump any girl who beckoned. Except that none did. And there was Roy. Pushing away all the girls who fell over themselves in vying for his attention. It was frustrating. And I never tired of telling him so.
He would only laugh. ‘Neel, I don’t understand why you say no girl ever likes you. You’re a little weird but there’s no other problem, right? I’m sure there must be someone out there whom you could go out with.’
I would retort, ‘Screw you, Roy. Forget me, what about you? Word on campus is that since you don’t seem to like any of the girls, Biswas is getting very interested in you.’ Mr Biswas was our effeminate Physics teacher. He was very touchy-feely with the boys.
Rachel would keep telling Roy to be more like Omar. And Omar to be more like Roy. It was a good point. Omar was a menace to female innocence across four academic batches. In stark contrast to Roy’s indifference to the opposite sex.
Roy would protest, ‘Why the hell don’t you guys leave me alone? I can manage very well without a girlfriend, thank you very much!’ Omar would then make an obscene gesture behind his back. Much to our amusement.
But Roy did eventually find a girl to go around with. And all the trouble began soon after that.
20
Omar
I was discharged from the hospital in the morning, and it was an immense relief to get out of that awful Emergency ward.
The pain wasn’t too bad after all the painkillers but I hadn’t slept a wink. During the night, an accident victim had been brought in, screaming. His right leg was cut off at the knee and the severed limb was next to him on the stretcher, sticking out of a dirty plastic bag. The doctor on duty and the nurses attended to him while a microsurgery specialist was being traced but he had apparently lost too much blood and died right there next to me.
Neel had come to pick me up and we drove back to the villa in silence. Sara greeted me with a big hug and said brightly, ‘Welcome home, wounded warrior!’ I went straight to my room and fell asleep almost immediately.
That evening, I got a call from them.
It was not pleasant. I was informed that the final deadline had been advanced, and instead of a month, I now had only a week left. My protests went unheeded. The call ended with a graphic threat of one of my body parts being removed non-surgically and placed inside another, if I didn’t comply. I knew they meant every word.
Fact is, I’m over my head in debt.
It all started with this fantastic idea I had for an Internet venture. Unfortunately, the banks and venture capitalists didn’t share my view—the pompous suits told me that the dotcom era was over. My business plan was too risky, and I had no relevant experience to execute it. The financial projections had too many assumptions and dependencies.
As it turned out, they were right, but at that time, I was determined to let nothing stop me from going ahead. I managed to secure some seed capital from an angel investor whom I knew well. It wasn’t enough, though.
That’s when I heard about a man, a very rich and secretive man, who was interested in business ideas like mine and prepared to invest in them. I was only given a phone number. It sounded fishy but I was desperate and made the call.
The money came in quickly—all in cash. There was no paperwork, no hassle; and a friendly voice conveyed the terms and conditions to me over phone. By then, I had a fair notion of whom I was dealing with and it unnerved me but it was too late to back out.
Besides, I had got what I wanted. My new company was launched, and I was over the moon.
Just nine months later, everything came crashing down. The revenue streams I had anticipated were not even on the horizon, and the working capital was almost gone. Two more tranches had arrived in-between but I needed still more funds to pay rent, utilities, salaries, advertisers.
I didn’t bother asking for it. It was time to pull the plug. I was standing in a hole, and there was no point digging it deeper. I folded up the venture, and prepared to face the music.
That was a year ago.
I have kept up the façade of a normal life, even a happy and prosperous one, but the fear has never been far away. The calls would come with sickening regularity and I somehow managed to keep them at bay with small repayments but mostly with pleas and promises.
Time’s run out for me, I guess.
21
Neel
Nothing’s ever come easy for me in life.
I remember being the shortest boy in my class for the longest time. There had been no problem until I was nine years old. After that, my growth hormones decided to take a sabbatical. For the next few years, my height increased at the annual rate of a millimetre or so. Even as all my friends seemed to grow like the fabled beanstalk.
School can be a cruel and unforgiving place. Especially for anyone who is short or fat or dark or stupid. It was no different with me. I was subjected to a lot of physical harassment. Apart from the jokes and nicknames. There were these two older boys who would kick, push or trip me every time I passed within range. They were a known pair of bullies. I wasn’t their only target. Just the most frequent one. One day, I was standing in the quad during the break when they came up from behind. And boxed my ears hard. The searing pain subsided after a few moments. But I realised with a shock that my hearing was gone. Not knowing it was temporary, I felt an uncontrollable fury rise inside me.
I walked away until I judged that there was sufficient distance between us. They were staring at me. Still laughing. I bent my head low like a bull. And charged. The smiles slowly vanished from
their faces. But neither moved. They just stood there, mesmerised. I had already chosen my target. The smaller and more vicious of the two.
I butted him right in the balls. I guess I must have connected better than I had hoped for. My head was bullet-shaped and hard as a rock. A formidable weapon. The breath went out of him audibly. He fell on his back, whimpering. I looked down at him with the air of a gladiator who has just slain his lion for the day. He was clutching his privates. And sobbing loudly. Much to the merriment of the crowd of boys who had gathered around. Many of them had been at the receiving end of his persecution at some time or other.
Nobody touched me again after that. It turned out to be a pyrrhic victory, though. I gained the reputation of being violent and unpredictable. Thankfully, there was no complaint. I escaped official sanction. But the few friends I had began to avoid me. I became more lonely and frustrated than ever.
In the meantime, my height had become an obsession with me. I tried everything possible to start growing again. I ate a self-concocted protein shake of three raw eggs and soya flour every day. I did pull-ups until it felt like my arms would come out of their sockets. I even wanted to inject myself with growth hormones. But my mother would have none of it. She would keep telling me not to worry. Pointing to my father who was over six feet tall. It was cold comfort. I was old enough to understand that genetics couldn’t be taken for granted.
By the time I turned fourteen, I had resigned myself to living the life of a midget. Then unaccountably, I began to shoot up. My school uniform, unchanged for almost three years, became ridiculously short in the sleeves and trousers. The wall where I measured my height started to get new notches every couple of months. I grew by over six inches that year. I was so used to being the runt of the class that it took me some time to adjust to the new respect I gained with my mates. It was a bittersweet feeling.
Second Lives Page 6