The Darya Nandkarni Misadventures Omnibus: Books 1-3

by Smita Bhattacharya

  Well, ditto, bugger.

  She needed time and space to think over things. She was never, ever going to try and keep up appearances. She had realized in the past few weeks that her striving to do so and match up to everyone and specially her father's expectations of her had driven her to make the wrong decisions. And after she'd made them... stick to it. No matter what.

  No more.

  Her parents were worried when she said this but given everything else that was going on, let it go.

  ‘Next year, things will be different,’ her father had said. ‘We will forget the past and start fresh.’

  But was that even possible?

  The past stayed with you, precisely the parts you so desperately wanted to forget. It faded with time but clung like a scar, flaring up every now and then. To linger. To cause pain.

  ‘Hey.’

  Darya looked at him. Fondness crept into her heart.

  And sometimes, a salve comes along, making the pain more bearable. You only have to be able to see it.

  Aaron was not what she was looking for, but perhaps she had been looking for the wrong things.

  It was time to make a change.

  THE SECRET ANGELS

  Between you and me

  I know there’s a danger

  Whenever we touch

  It’s always the last time

  But it’s never enough

  Let me fly on your wings

  Rise above these Earthly things

  Make it all be alright

  Angel of the night

  – Album: Reckless by the SteelDrivers

  I tell you something, brother, the Goddess will return

  You are gonna burn

  You are gonna burn

  You are gonna burn

  – Album: Sandbox (The Music of Mark Sandman)

  Chapel Road

  Three women had disappeared from Chapel Road in the last five years. No dead bodies were ever found; there were no crime scenes either, only police reports followed by wild speculation that lasted for weeks at a time. The girls were in their late teens and had disappeared in the same month.

  When the last girl disappeared, the press concluded in unison: the girls had been murdered; no other explanation was plausible. There was a serial killer on the prowl, and everyone had better lock their girls in.

  The parents did for a while, putting a curfew on their children, forbidding them to loiter on the roads at night, especially around the Chapel, the edifice after which the road had been named. Two of the missing girls were headed there and the third one—purportedly off to meet her friends—was last seen making a turn at the café in front of it. All three were seen quite late at night, at a time of day, one would argue, that was still safe and early enough to be outside in the queen of Mumbai’s suburbs—Bandra.

  Darya was hearing the story from the neighbourhood grocer, who looked old enough to be senile but spoke with such solemnity that she was inclined to believe him. In any case, she had followed the newspaper coverage with some interest last year, until life’s businesses and other sordid breaking stories took over, and it was relegated to a corner of her memory.

  All three girls were of the same type, the grocer informed her, emphasising the word ‘type’ with a knowing nod. What type? Darya asked because she saw he was expecting her to. The girls were attractive, popular, and wanted to live larger than their ordinary life on Chapel Road. They didn’t belong there. And because they were of similar age and character, their disappearances had been automatically linked to each other even though the disappearances had taken place some duration apart.

  The grocer said he had known the older D’Mello girl, Eileen, quite well. She came from a strict Catholic family but had had a Hindu boyfriend, an artist. The families that lived on Chapel Road—twenty-five Catholic, ten Hindu and two Muslim—were sociable with each other, but even so, inter-religion liaisons were frowned upon. After Eileen disappeared last year, the boyfriend came to Chapel Road, mad with worry, banging on her mother’s door. But Nancy wouldn’t talk to him, as she herself had gone nuts, poor thing. Moreover, she suspected the boyfriend had had something to do with it and was only pretending. Because when her mother’s khich-khich got too much, Eileen had always threatened to run away with him.

  The newspapers worked on the serial-killer theory. A deranged lunatic… kidnapping beautiful young girls…imprisoning them, torturing them, killing them… and so on it went.

  Darya grimaced. Her face burned at the morbid glee of his words.

  But no bodies were ever found, he told her. The press continued to speculate, the police arrested some suspects, but nothing concrete ever came out of the police or press investigations, and the furore gradually died down.

  But the people of Chapel Road hadn’t forgotten.

  Now it was the same month again—June—the time of the monsoons, and the residents of Chapel Road were tense, fearing the worst.

  ‘A packet of pav, two ten-rupee Parle-Gs and Amul butter, please,’ Darya said, at long last managing to get her order in. The younger D’Mello girl had been in the store five minutes ago, which had prompted the grocer to launch into the history of her older sister. Darya had guessed him to be the street’s gossip; she’d often seen him with an enraptured audience around him, as he talked and gesticulated with enthusiasm.

  ‘Jasmine… that girl, just like her sister she is,’ he muttered, handing Darya a plastic bag with her purchases. ‘Now she is the same age as Eileen was when she vanished. Looks about the same too.’

  ‘Uh… huh,’ Darya said, taking the bag from him. She wanted to stay on, hear more, but didn’t know if that would appear too eager. Chapel Road was a funny place; the close-knit group of locals treated outsiders with politeness but kept them at arm’s length.

  The old man was leaning forward conspiratorially.

  ‘There was some video on the phone.’ He dipped his face to the right, to gesture to the D’Mello house. ‘Jasmine’s into things,’ he said and raised dry palms into the air. ‘I didn’t see anything. My boy… my helper told me. It was deleted later. She told the police or someone, maybe a local minister. Someone powerful. And it was gone.’ He made a whoosh sound with his lips. His eyes gleamed.

  Darya wanted to ask him if there was something for her to be worried about, but just then three old ladies walked into the shop and the old man scurried away to serve them.

  Darya stepped onto the road, straining her eyes to focus on Jasmine’s retreating back, now a speck at the end of the narrow street. Jasmine was wearing a pair of black leggings, a long pink top and golden gladiator sandals. A tan satchel bounced about at her side. She walked briskly towards Hill Road, probably to catch a bus to go to college somewhere.

  Darya had only caught a brief glimpse of the girl. She was lithe, fair-complexioned, fine-boned, with wispy brown hair. Overall, she gave the impression of a gazelle—comely, supple, watchful. She looked about seventeen but dressed neatly and precisely, like someone much older. Nurse-like, Darya thought. Their eyes had met when Jasmine had left the shop; they were grown-up eyes, all-knowing.

  As Darya approached the villa, she wondered if she had been the only one watching Jasmine. Max was outside smoking, his eyes on the road, lost in thought. He wasn’t in the villa’s garden, which was his usual spot, but a few feet away, by the makeshift Christ on a Cross someone had put up a few years ago. The cross had turned into a roadside altar, with flowers, dolls, candles and iridescent shrubs sprouting all around it. INRI was etched on the cross’s cement body. Jesus will deliver us, it promised on a plaque underneath.

  Darya saw Viktor standing by the villa’s door, leaning on the frame. Their eyes met and she signalled that she wanted to go inside.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said and stepped aside. Flashing him a faint smile, Darya walked in. She crossed the reception then took the stairs to the first floor and the room she and her childhood friend Veda were renting for two months on Chapel Road.

  Viktor’s Vi
lla, the eponymous abode of Viktor Mascarenhas, was a crumbling cottage at the centre of the serpentine lane that was Chapel Road. On one end of the road was the statuesque Mount Carmel Church—a 123-year-old edifice, painted in lemon yellow with watermelon pink edges—and on the other was Hill Road—a shopping street bustling with hawkers, pedestrians, honking cars and rickshaws, each vying for space and abusing each other for the lack of it. Wedged in between both the landmarks was Chapel Road—with houses and shops of different colours and sizes, stashed together, as if in a filing cabinet. And not one house looked like the other.

  For example, the house on one side of Viktor’s Villa was Cecelia Cottage: a single-floor house with sunny yellow walls and maroon-edged balconies; fluttering lace curtains and tiny bulbs on the windows; a bright orange robot was painted on a side wall, with the words, ‘Robots are us’ underneath.

  On the other side of the villa was the house that called itself Chapel’s Pride, with greying façades desperately in need of paint, balconies lined with dabs of the brightest blue; a profusion of flowering plants on every window ledge and fitted with grills in the shape of mermaids. The door of Chapel’s Pride was always open, and its ageing matron sat out in the front, on her plastic chair, watching the comings and goings on the street, her floral dress hitched up and tucked around her knees.

  And every few meters, in between the array of houses, were hole-in-the-wall grocers, tailors, beauty parlours and photocopy shops. There was even a tiny gym, with pictures of men and their abnormally developed muscles plastered on its walls.

  Chapel Road was ‘happening’ as Darya declared to anyone who cared to listen, or professed curiosity as to why she had chosen to stay there. Because to all outward appearances, it didn’t have much going for it. The street was old, crowded and decrepit. It was terribly narrow in width, easily crossed in two strides and when strangers walked side by side, almost brushing shoulders, it was definitely awkward. In rush hour, hordes of cyclists, rickshaws and cars found their way in, intending to take a short cut to Hill Road, causing mayhem and traffic jams as a result, a hair-tearing reality for the residents.

  But the locals would never consider leaving. They lived in their ancestral homes, inside a quaint village-like setting, at a prime location in the bustling cosmopolitan metropolis of Mumbai. And that was why Darya had chosen it too. ‘Feels like I’m inside a kaleidoscope,’ Veda had said the first day they had come to the lane. Veda was referring primarily to the graffiti on the street—a visual treat for all who passed by. They’d been blown over by the creativity and the colours: Messi, Tendulkar, Ganesha, Jesus, a three-eyed alien, elephants and horses, carriages and maharajas, random squiggles. They took scores of pictures and posted them on Facebook, announcing sunnily, ‘We are here’.

  So, they loved Chapel Road. Also, Viktor’s Villa, where they were staying. At least, they had at first.

  Viktor’s Villa had two floors. The bottom floor had a reception area, flanked by two rooms—101 and 102—that were available to be let out. The second floor had three contiguous rooms—201, 202 and 203—as in an American-style motel. A passage on both the floors overlooked the street: the bottom one was walled with large windows; the top had an open balcony shaded from outside by a leafy karanj tree.

  Inside, the walls of each room were painted a pale pistachio green, embellished with waist-high ‘peel and stick’ wood panelling and impressionist reprints in cheap frames. The furniture was old wood, distressed, probably bought from Chor Bazaar. The upholstery in the lower rooms was crimson and maroon, with gold circles, while the upper rooms sported fist-sized red roses printed on white cotton fabric.

  ‘Wow,’ Darya had said, taking it all in. ‘Tacky as hell.’

  ‘It’s only for two months,’ Veda had comforted. ‘Besides it’s so cheap.’

  So, they took it.

  Darya had moved temporarily from Goa to Mumbai, having enrolled herself in a barista course at Warm Beans, a five-year-old roastery located in the south of the city. Over the years, the roastery had built itself a reputation for providing the best quality single-estate, Indian-origin, organic coffee for its fans in the city; its beans frequently went out of stock. The roastery had recently begun barista certificate training and a friend of Darya’s had suggested she apply for it. Darya had managed to sneak herself in at the last moment, made possible by a referral from an acquaintance of her father’s.

  And Darya had been eager to get in. She and her boyfriend, Aaron, had bought a distressed hotel property at Palolem in Goa and while Aaron had dedicated himself to renovating it into a boutique hotel, Darya was keen to turn a part of it into a state-of-the-art coffee shop. Where having coffee is an immersive, life-changing experience. Despite the grandiosity of the statement and the mirth it invited from Aaron every time she said it, she believed in it. She was going to create a coffee parlour which would draw people to the hotel and not be considered as a ‘by-the-way’ for its occupants. Getting certified as a barista was the first step to making that happen. It would give her both credibility and insight, and she was determined to ace it.

  It worked out well for her, though not in the way she would’ve liked, that Veda had needed a place to stay in Mumbai at the exact same time.

  Darya and Veda had known each other since they were twelve. They’d studied in the same school and had been neighbours in Nagpur. After finishing school, they left to do different things; Darya got her engineering degree, and then an MBA, while Veda completed her degree in medicine. When they got back in touch six years later, in Mumbai, their childhood bonhomie was instantly reinstated.

  Though in the last year, when Darya was in Goa, they hadn’t been able to talk as much and Darya noted with some concern that Veda had changed.

  And not in a good way.

  ‘Stoic’, Darya’s mother used to call Veda. Like her mother, Darya used to admire how calm and in-control Veda always seemed, never reacting to any inconveniences in public, while Darya cribbed to anyone who’d listen. Darya believed in ‘expressing’ while Veda ‘tolerated’. She was diplomatic. Another of her admirable qualities was that Veda knew exactly what she wanted from her life and hardly deviated from her resolve.

  How often had Darya wished she could be more like Veda?

  Not anymore.

  She didn’t blame Veda for the change though. A lot had happened to her in the past year.

  Veda had discovered her father had been cheating on her mother. He had announced to them that he was leaving and getting remarried. He hadn’t bothered explaining anything to Veda; he’d just packed his bags, hugged her briefly and left home. Then the neighbours began to gossip. To Veda, their fake sorrow and constant prying were even worse, and it led her to near breakdown.

  Eight months later, Veda and her boyfriend Rishabh broke up. They’d been having difficulties and Veda said she’d known the end was coming anyway. They’d grown apart over the years. Darya wondered if Veda hadn’t in some way induced Rishabh to leave, in an attempt to inflict more upset in her life, to perpetuate the cycle of pain her father had initiated.

  Darya knew, or could at least in part fathom, what Veda was going through. And also understood why she did what she did next.

  She’d quit her practice at the hospital, moved out of the house she’d been sharing with Rishabh and applied for an internship with Mumbai Dost, a tabloid that published advertisement-riddled afternoon news to commuters, cafes, and airports.

  It was only the last that boggled Darya. Why? Why a newspaper, for God’s sake? This was a total diversion from her erstwhile career. A waste of years of training in medicine.

  ‘I see it as an opportunity to reinvent myself,’ Veda had countered.

  ‘What about medicine?’ Darya had asked.

  ‘I did what I was expected to do. Doesn’t mean I liked it.’

  ‘You were good at it.’

  ‘Like I said…’ Then, changing tack, ‘Okay, let’s assume I’m taking a break,’ she’d said.

  �
�Come on,’ Darya had replied, exasperated. ‘You know no one in India understands that concept! You’ll never be able to get back to medicine.’

  Veda had scoffed. ‘I thought at least you would understand.’

  Well, Veda had a point there. Darya had gone through a bad phase herself the year before and had taken some very impetuous risks to deal with it. She hadn’t been sure if any of them would've worked out, wouldn’t have cared if they hadn’t, but luckily for her, they had.

  But would it be the same for Veda?

  ‘We have to see, won’t we?’ Veda had murmured.

  Darya had been curious to know what Veda’s mother thought of it all.

  ‘She doesn’t know anything. I’m keeping the rosy picture of my life intact for her. She doesn’t need any more grief right now.’

  ‘You should go stay with her for a while,’ Darya had said. ‘Take care of her.’

  ‘Masi is staying with her for now. I’ll visit them next month. Anyway… I want to be away from that house, and all that drama for a while.’

  Veda had said she’d always wanted to work in media, but it was never considered a sensible career choice in her family. Her father hadn’t considered it sensible. But now that he and Rishabh were both out of her life, she felt free, felt like she could do anything. Coming to Chapel Road was fortuitous for her: it was cheap enough to accommodate the temporary dip in her finances, while simultaneously putting distance between her and Rishabh. In all, a win-win.

  The rent for their room was 8,000 rupees a month. They could come and go at any time they pleased; they had keys to the front door and to their own room. They could even access the terrace of the villa with prior permission.

  The villa was sparsely occupied; in the one week they’d been there, they’d met only Max and his girlfriend Kyra, Polish backpackers barely out of their teens. There were no other lodgers, but their broker had told them to expect some soon; the monsoon months were high season at the villa.