One
It was at the breakfast table that Dr Arun first realised that it was not going to be a good day for him, but he had no idea how bad things were about to get.
The toast was cold, the coffee was bitter, and his wife, knowing full well his need for a pristine Times of India, had read the newspaper before him and refolded it all wrong.
“Nita,” he said, suppressing his irritation, “why don’t you get your own newspaper, darling? Why must we keep having this argument?”
“Oh no, did I fold it wrong again? I’m so sorry Annu! I thought I had got it right this time!” She smacked her head dramatically and continued, “okay, give me just one more chance. If I fold it wrong one more time, I promise you I will start getting a separate paper for poor little me. Maa-kasam!”
She tilted her head to one side, pouted childishly, and pulled her ears “Soweee,” she said, lengthening the word like a song. Arun knew that she would not stop until he accepted her apology, so he forced himself to smile. She smiled back, took her hands away from her ears and picked up her toast again. She had butter all over her fingers. Arun looked away. He had been experiencing a near-exact replica of this conversation about three times a week for twenty years now, with steadily increasing revulsion.
He found it strange to think that he had actually found her child-like behaviour attractive at some point. When they had met for the first time, in a room filled with curious relatives, he had found her innocence so charming. He remembered how she had taken one quick look at him, like a startled fawn, and then sat looking down at floor for the entire hour that they sat and talked together. She had seemed so refreshing after the over-confident girls at his college. He had said yes to the marriage right there and then, much to the family’s gratification.
But qualities that are attractive in an eighteen-year-old girl are simply grotesque in a woman nearly forty, thought Dr Arun as he looked at his wife critically, trying to understand just why he found her so unbearable. He supposed some people would say she was still a good-looking woman. She was tall and gangly, all arms and legs. Her eyes were large and soulful, and she had a trick of looking at you like she found you fascinating. People liked that.
She looked good in a sari. She was wearing her favourite blue silk sari. Which, given her usual habit of breakfasting in a torn nightie, meant she had a work meeting this morning. If you can call it work, selling clothes to spoilt rich women, Dr Arun scoffed to himself. He wondered if she put on the woman-child act with her customers. Maybe she did, and maybe they liked it too.
He was pulled out of his thoughts by her voice. “Annu, Annu, listen. Stop daydreaming. Tell me something, how much money do we have in Mummyji’s life insurance?”
“What?” He asked, surprised. She was usually not very interested in investments, happy to leave ‘all those confusing things’ to him.
“What I mean is, how much do we get when she, you know,” Nita lowered her voice, “umm, passes away?”
“About two crores. I bought the same life insurance policy for all three of us together, remember, about ten years back? I’m sure you’ve forgotten completely,” Arun replied.
“No, no I remember. And you have been paying all the premiums on time?” Nita asked, and she sounded uncharacteristically sharp.
“Joshiji pays them on the first of every month, along with all the other bills. He sends me a statement every month. What is going on, Nita, why are you interested in Mummy’s life insurance all of a sudden?”
“No, no, I was just wondering.” Then, lowering her voice again, she said, “well you know, business has hit a slump this year. We need to move the boutique to a better neighbourhood. In the right area, things can really take off. There’s a studio in Gomti Nagar that would be perfect. But the rent is five lakhs per month, and they want fifty lakhs as a deposit. Mummyji found the place actually. It belongs to one of her kitty party friends. I told her, hello, where will we find fifty lakh rupees, Mummyji?”
Arun shook his head, annoyed. “And you landed upon Mummy’s life insurance policy as a possible solution. Of all your half-brained ideas, Nita, this is not even the silliest. I have nothing to say to you. If this is how you think of raising money, God help that so called business of yours.”
“Annu, I have talked to you about a bank loan, but you absolutely refused to be my co-applicant, jaan,” Nita pouted.
Dr Arun got up from the table. He was done with breakfast, and he was done with the conversation. “Yes, well. I know you, and I know your mental capacity. So forgive me if I don’t want to sign any bank guarantees and throw money away. The only reason I said yes to you starting the business in the first place was that Mummy insisted on it. She was feeling bad for you sitting at home doing nothing, and she at least has a solid head on her shoulders. I thought it would be good for you to spend some time with her, learn some sense from her. Honestly, Nita, if it wasn’t for her, Kamath Kollective would not even the the mild success it somehow is.”
She was silent. He continued, “And anyway, when Mummy passes away, you will get a lot of money from the life insurance, but you will also lose the real brains in your business. Don’t forget that. Shall I tell Mummy you’re daydreaming about her death?”
She shrugged. “Mummyji is surprisingly very calm about death, you know. Remember even you were surprised at how quickly she bounced back after Papaji passed away. And then when her sister also went. Any other seventy-year-old would be so afraid of living alone, but Mummyji is something else. Everybody has to die at some point, she says, why make so much fuss.”
“All that is fine. I’m sure her calm acceptance of death doesn’t mean she’s okay with you bumping her off for her life insurance.”
“Funny you should say that,” Nita said, straightening his tie. “She was joking about that too, when she saw me reading a murder mystery the other day. Don’t bump me off, she said. The modus operandi was so easy in that book, you know. This guy murdered his rich uncle by simply putting a plastic bag around his head when he was sleeping. The uncle basically just very calmly went from being asleep to being dead. And he looked so peaceful that it looked like a natural death. Something about carbon dioxide poisoning? Or was it monoxide, I wonder? Do you think that’s possible, Annu? If someone’s heart is weak and you put a plastic bag around their head, they would die in their sleep and it would not look suspicious?”
“Uff Nita, I hate these stupid books you keep reading. Was it an Agatha Christie? Bet it was. Utter trash. And no, that method would not work. First because your victim would wake up while you were doing your thing. There would be signs of struggle.”
Arun was scrolling through his phone, and did not see the thoughtful expression on her face as she asked her next question. “But what if you gave them sleeping pills beforehand? Then they won’t wake up no?”
He continued to respond absently as he planned his day. Why had he accepted so many appointments? He would have to cut his lunch hour short. “Might still wake up, pills aren’t fool-proof. And then the PM would show sleeping pills in the stomach. Also, there would be other changes in the lungs and heart that would show that the death was due to suffocation.”
“Hmm. That’s true. But you yourself keep saying that no one does post-mortems properly here.” She said quietly, and something in her voice made him look at her. She laughed at his scrutiny.
“But you’re right, it’s all pretty far-fetched. These writers just write anything. It wasn’t Agatha Christie, by the way. It was someone else.”
They heard the watchman call, “Driver aa gaya saab!”
Arun picked up his bag and stepped out of the door. Nita waved at him. She was still at the table, licking the butter from her fingers. He waved back, smiled at her, and said, “Nita, I’m sure this is all hypothetical, and you’re too much of a chicken to plan a cold-blooded murder. But listen, if something happens to my mother, I will get a post-mortem done, okay? Chalo, you have a good day.”
Nita shrieked with laughter. “Don’t be silly, Arun. Murdering mummyji indeed! I will die without her. I want her to live forever.”
Two
Dr Arun felt vaguely troubled on the drive to the clinic, usually a very productive hour for him. He was unable to focus on the many messages on his phone that needed his response. This is not fair, he fumed. As if I don’t have enough things to worry about, now I need to worry about my mother’s safety too. He tried to tell himself that he was being morbid and Nita was too scatter-brained to plan anyone’s murder. And yet, it seemed like just the scatter-brained thing she would come up with as a solution to her financial problems. He had long suspected that underneath her affected silliness, there lay a calculating, ambitious woman who used a child-like manner like an armour. For the thousandth time, he wished he could turn time back to twenty years and say no when his father asked him, “so, should we say yes to Dr Dhillon? You like the girl?” No, no, a hundred times no, he shouted in his imagination. She will bore me to death, and make me hate her.
I hate her, I hate her so much, he thought. He noticed he was clenching his fists, and his heart was beating fast. He took a few deep breaths and tried to calm himself down. It wasn’t all bad, he chided himself gently. I got a great radiology practice as dowry. A readymade clinic, what a huge asset. How many of his classmates envied him for the years of struggle he did not have. He got married and joined his father-in-law’s practice while he was still a radiology student. And she had been very good to his parents. Papaji had called her his daughter.
No, all in all, it had not been a bad marriage. They had just drifted apart, like people do. There must be millions of men who found it hard to tolerate their wives. He was luckier than most of those men. He was away from home for more than ten hours each day, blissful hours when he did not think of Nita even once. On most nights, he would come home so late that she was already asleep. The morning meal was the only time he needed to spend with her. Even that would be over soon.
Very soon the face that he would see over breakfast would be Anjali’s. The thought of Anjali made him smile and filled his heart with lightness, like it always did. What a fool he had been to let her go twenty years ago. They had been classmates, and he had been too daunted by her to tell her he liked her. She was staggeringly beautiful, poised and confident. Arun believed she was out of his league, and she probably was then. He had been a shy and awkward boy, suitable only for Nita’s unthreatening ways. Anjali had married one of their college seniors and moved to the US.
When he met Anjali at a radiology conference, he was an aggressively confident forty-five-year-old. She was as beautiful as the day they had said goodbyes at the college farewell. Maybe even more beautiful. The dewy beauty had changed into a sophisticated middle-aged charm that took his breath away. She was a single parent, recently returned from Baltimore after a quick and messy divorce. She had settled in Lucknow and her practice was already taking off. The doctors in the city were falling over each other to refer radiology cases to her, she said. He wasn’t surprised — she deserved every bit of the homage she received. He also wasn’t surprised that she was attracted to him. The years had been kind to him too. What was surprising was the intensity of their feelings for each other. By the end of the week-long conference, they knew they could not live without each other.
It wasn’t his first affair. There had been a couple of assistants who he had tumbled into bed with, and who had tearfully resigned when the relationships did not turn into anything serious. There had been a student at the college where he lectured. She was the one to seduce him, there was no question of that, but it had turned sticky. After that he had been very careful. He knew that reputations could make or break careers in small towns. But with Anjali, nothing else mattered except their love. He wanted to leave his marriage and move in with Anjali right away, but she asked him to wait. She was waiting for her fifteen-year-old son to finish high school and come to India. “I don’t want him picking up random gossip about us, Arun,” she had said. “I will tell him as soon as he comes home. He will love you. Not that I need his approval, but he deserves to hear about us from me. I want him to have a good summer break here with me before he starts college. As soon as he flies back to the states, it’s you and me forever, baby.” Arun smiled again as he remembered her words. The boy had arrived yesterday.
To his irritation, Dr Arun found that he continued to think about the morning’s conversation as he went about his day. He was sure he was being paranoid but he couldn’t shake off a feeling of dread. He was not overly fond of his mother — at this point, nothing mattered to him except Anjali, he acknowledged ruefully — but if Mummy got murdered, there would be a lot of unnecessary drama. Nita would be sure to bungle it up, or go into full-on remorse and confession mode. He wanted a smooth transition into a life with Anjali, or as smooth as was possible in a drama-loving town. No, his mother’s murder was a completely unnecessary complication that he could do without.
Should he warn his mother of the direction that Nita’s thoughts were taking? She would probably laugh. He went back on forth on the question as he went through patients. At seven, he finished his last scan of the day, and was startled to see a missed call from his mother. She called him very rarely, preferring to send messages via Nita. On a regular day, he would have decided to call her back at some later point, perhaps after his tennis game at the club. But since it was a strange sort of day, he called her back immediately.
“Hi Mummy, you called?”
“Haan, beta. Are you on your way to the club?”
“No, not yet, just packing up and leaving. Kya hua?”
“Hua kuchh nahin beta, I was just wondering if you could like to have dinner with me. Chanchalji has made kaju koftas.”
“I’m watching my cholesterol mummy. You know the scare I had last month, need to be careful.”
“Arey don’t eat the koftas then. We also have karele ki subzi and dal and bhindi. Chanchalji will make sookha fulkas for you. Come na, beta.” She sounded a little anxious, or was he imagining it?
He tried to put a smile into his voice. “Why the feast though? Why the sudden dinner invite with all my favourite things?”
“Well, it has been a very long time since you came here. I miss you. And,” she paused for a moment and continued, “I’m a little worried about something. I’m probably just being silly. I’m sure I’ll feel better after I’ve told you and you’ve laughed at my worries.”
Dr Arun was silent for a few moments. His chest contracted in worry again. “Mummy, is Nita there?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, she’s been here all day. We’ve just closed the boutique. She’s looking forward to seeing you at dinner too.”
“Okay, Mummy I’ll come.”
“After your game?”
“No, I’ll come right away. Chuck the game. I’ll have a drink with you and we can talk as much as you like. See you in twenty minutes.”
Three
Dr Arun had not been able to resist the kaju koftas. It seemed like a pity to waste Chanchalji’s effort. His mother and Nita were both allergic to cashew-nut so the dish, which took hours to make, was always made especially for him. The entire meal seemed centered around him. All his favourite things, one after another, had been laid out on the table.
“Including ras malai!” he had exclaimed in delight mixed with mock censure. “What’s going on, mummy? This is the kind of stuff you do on my birthdays. Is this your attempt to make me come and see you more often?”
She had smiled her quiet smile and not replied. She was looking frail, he thought. Today for the first time, she looked her seventy-two years of age. He resolved he would spend more time with her, aware that he had made these resolutions before.
“I’m going to do justice to this dinner,” he had said, smiling fondly at his mother. And he had. He was in no hurry to go anywhere; he knew Anjali was busy with her son. He put his phone away and threw himself into the evening. He knew he could be very charming when he wanted to, and today he wanted to reassure his mother. It was impossible to get his mother alone — Nita was with them the entire time, she had never believed in helping the cooks in any way. But it didn’t matter, Arun would find an opportunity to speak to his mother alone this week, before he moved to Anjali’s. He would ask her to come to his clinic tomorrow, on the pretext of some tests for her heart.
To his surprise and guilt, he could not remember the last time the three of them had spent an evening together. The weekly family dinners had abruptly stopped after his father passed away. Arun’s growing practice had made it harder and harder for him to make time for his family. Tonight, they slipped into their old comforting chatter, trading gossip about people in their family and social circle. Dr Arun had found the evening very relaxing and enjoyable.
It was very quiet in the room. Dr Arun woke with a start. Had he fallen asleep? He tried to sit up, feeling confused and disoriented. He was still in his mother’s drawing room, but he was alone. He looked at his wristwatch. It was nearly midnight. He must have fallen asleep, not surprising given all that food. He groped around for his phone, but could not find it. It didn’t matter, he would look for it later. He was feeling so groggy. But why was he still at his mothers’ place?
The last thing he remembered was Nita saying she needed twenty minutes to pack some samples from the boutique, and then they could head home. Mummy had gone with her to the basement to help with the samples. He must have fallen asleep waiting for them. But surely it had been longer than twenty minutes? Should he go to the basement and check? He felt vaguely anxious, but the sense of somnolence lay on him like a heavy blanket, he was unable to move. He closed his eyes again. His bladder was uncomfortably full but to get up seemed like an impossible project.
He heard voices from the kitchen. It was his mother and Nita. But why were they whispering? He tried to strain his ears to listen but even that was hard work.
“He’s fast asleep. He won’t feel a thing! Go do it.”
“I’m terrified, Mummyji. Look, my hands are shaking.”
“Fine. Don’t do it. Don’t bother. I’m sure you’ll be fine living on your own, cut off from everything. I’m sure the alimony he will give you when he goes to that woman will be enough for you.”
“No! No, no, no. I cannot be a divorced woman. I will die of the shame.”
“So go do it. All you need to do is put the bag over his head, and pull this cord gently. He won’t wake up. We’ll get the life insurance. Plus everything else. And next month we can lease the bigger place. Be brave beta, see I’ve done my bit. I made sure he came here for dinner, I put my own pills in his food. Your part is the easiest. Go Nita.”
Dr Arun heard Nita’s shuffling footsteps come towards him but was unable to open his eyes or move. The sense of sleepiness seemed to be increasing. His ears seemed to be the only functioning part of him. He understood, too late, that he had got it all wrong. He had been worrying for the wrong person’s safety.
