by UD Yasha
I made a list of the three people.
The current CID Chief Siddhanshu Shukla was the first name on it. Dad was Shukla’s boss. They knew each other well. But I had been told that they didn’t get along well. That’s why even today, Shukla spoke poorly of dad at every chance he got. Shukla always pinned the blame for maa’s disappearance on dad. Then, when it was eventually proven that Zakkal was behind the murders and maa’s disappearance, Shukla was disappointed.
It had also not helped that Shukla had tried to claim the responsibility of solving maa’s disappearance, but a leaked article by a reporter had proven it was my work that had nailed Zakkal. The report had shown him in a bad light and stalled a promotion he was going to get to the CBI.
I hoped Shukla would cooperate with me despite our strained relationship. Through a few experiences in the past, I knew Shukla valued the truth. So even though he genuinely didn’t like dad or me, I hoped he would not hold anything back if he thought it was going to aid in finding what happened to dad.
The second name on the list was of dad’s long-term partner. A guy named Shrinivas Kulkarni. He was now seventy years old. He had visited our home many times when I was a kid. I remembered him as dad’s friend who always got an Alpenliebe toffee for me. I hadn’t crossed paths with him professionally, but dad and Shrinivas used to get along well, so maybe dad had told him something off the cuff that could aid my investigation.
The third person on my list was Vikram Badami, the then Head of Maharashtra Police. He had retired soon after I started practicing law so we had not interacted much. He did not have any hostile feelings towards me either. I had spoken to him once about dad’s disappearance but it hadn’t led to anything fruitful.
I texted the list to Rathod to keep him in the loop. I sat back in my chair. A sense of trepidation rose. A thin layer of cold sweat cloaked my body. I was opening the case of my dad’s disappearance once again. Something told me I was going to get more answers this time.
Chapter Thirteen
23rd December 1999
Nights were my favourite.
Everyone would always be home then.
Usually, Karan, Radha and I would play through the evening with our friends who lived in our colony. We had just started playing hide and seek and I absolutely loved it. Radha and I would always team up and try to fool the person who was trying to find us. We were amongst the youngest. That’s why we had realized that we were stronger together.
Almost every evening when we got back home at around seven-thirty, Karan would throw a tantrum about how Radha and I would team-up. But he used to cool down after he took a bath.
Most days, dad would be back home by then. Maa would get back earlier at five.
We always had dinner together. The rule was no TV while eating. But we made an exception to it when India played a cricket match or Shahrukh Khan’s movie was playing on any channel. Both maa and dad loved him, and by default we loved him as well. After we finished dinner, we would usually return to our rooms, study for thirty minutes and then read storybooks.
That day was different. Dad was extra happy. I could sense it while we were still having dinner.
Halfway through, dad said, ‘Who wants to have some fun before sleeping?’
All of us siblings glanced at each other. We knew what that statement meant.
‘Unlimited ice-cream!’ yelled Radha.
‘Smart girl,’ dad said, stroking her head. ‘So, keep some extra space in your tummies.’
After dad said that, Radha and I only had a few bites and finished whatever was on our plates. I had observed that Karan had the appetite of a monster. He could have a full dinner and then still eat unlimited ice-cream.
Once we were done, maa said, ‘Okay, kids. Remember that it's cold outside. Put on your sweaters and caps.’
‘And get ready to enjoy ice-cream,’ dad said as we ran out to our car.
‘I forgot something,’ Karan said and bolted into the house. He returned with his Casiotone, his latest fad.
‘Even I want to play. Teach me, dadu,’ Radha said to Karan, not realizing that the Casiotone was much taller than her.
On that note, we got in the car. I used to love our drives together. We had once driven to Goa to enjoy the beaches there and I didn’t want that trip to end.
Out of nowhere, dad started singing an old Kishore Kumar song. Maa joined him for the female part while Karan played the Casiotone, which when I now think about it, was out of tune. But we still enjoyed it then. While Karan would play it, Radha and I pressed an odd button every now and then because it was fun and it also irked Karan. We knew only a few words from the chorus of the song that dad and maa sang. Getting excited, we would say those words a little louder.
‘Okay kids,’ dad said, pulling the car over to the side of the road. ‘Time to pick your ice-creams. Remember to only buy what you can finish eating. We’re going to be here till all of you tell me that your stomachs are full.
We stepped out. We saw dad rub his hands and blow air into them, so we did the same. Dad picked me up and showed me a trick that amazed me. Every time he opened his mouth and blew air out, I could actually see it!
‘How did you do that?’ I asked him.
‘Do you want to do it too?’ dad said.
I nodded vigorously.
‘It’s magic,’ he said and then twirled his hand over my head. ‘Now you try.’
When I blew air out of my mouth, to my surprise, even I could breathe steam!
‘Even I want to,’ Radha said and dad did the same thing for her.
‘We’re dragons!’ I said to Radha, discovering a cool trick that we later learnt was just the way our breaths condense in cold temperatures.
‘I want butterscotch,’ I said.
‘Me too,’ Radha cried.
We saw Kunal having chocolate so we decided our next one would be chocolate. Maa and dad were having some fruity flavours that we didn’t like much.
No one spoke much while eating ice-cream. Our mouths were enjoying something more than just talking.
Just as we were enjoying the last bites, a loud sound emanated from behind where we were sitting. All of us turned around.
Two men were hitting each other. They were punching each other in their faces. One of them was bleeding. The other had blood on his clothes. Scared, I dropped my ice-cream cone.
‘I’ll be back,’ dad said to mom and stepped to break the fight.
The ice-cream parlour owner and dad held the two men back. Dad pulled out a pair of handcuffs and locked the hands on the man who was throwing more punches. He started making some calls using the ice-cream parlour’s landline phone.
‘You should go back home and take the kids,’ dad said out loud across the sitting area.
Maa drove us back. All of us were silent, too afraid to say a word. Radha and I had five cones each. Two of chocolate, one each of butterscotch, mango and strawberry. But we weren’t feeling as excited as we usually were after an unlimited ice-cream night.
‘There are some bad people in this world,’ maa said. ‘They try to harm other people. Dad is a police officer and punishes the bad guys for what they do.’
‘Will he be okay?’ Radha said.
‘Of course, he will be.’
‘Didn’t he teach you a magic trick some time back?’
Radha blew air out of her mouth again, but no steam came out. ‘It’s not happening anymore.’
‘You can ask dad why once he’s back.’
‘When will he come home?’ I said.
‘Soon, my girl, soon,’ maa said.
Karan, Radha and I shared a room. Maa tucked us in our beds. She sang a lullaby for me and Radha. I heard Radha’s breaths even out, which I had learnt was a sign of a person falling asleep. My eyes were closed but I could not sleep. I was thinking about dad and those two men who were hitting each other. What if they hurt dad?
Once I was sure that maa was not in the room anymore, I opened my eyes. It took me a litt
le while to get used to the darkness. I got up and walked silently to the door of our room. It was open and I could see a light in the living room. I went to the edge of the staircase and saw maa sitting still on the couch. She was probably waiting for dad, just like I was.
I sat near the stairwell with my back against the wall. I didn’t realize when I fell asleep. I only opened my eyes when two hands, that I knew far too well, picked me up.
Dad said, ‘How did you get here, champion?’
‘I was waiting for you like maa.’
Dad held me close.
‘I was afraid those men would hit you,’ I said.
‘That’s the last thing you should be worried about.’
‘But I was. I know what blood means. I was watching a show on the National Geographic channel. A person bled too much and died. I know what blood means,’ I said, tearing up.
Dad stroked my hair. He pulled out of the hug and said, ‘Isn’t dad very powerful?’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘So, do you think anything will happen to me?’
‘No, you will be okay.’
‘That’s right, my lovely girl.’
It was my time to hug dad back. ‘Can I please sleep next to you today?’
‘Of course,’ dad said.
Once we got to the room, he said, ‘Can you please repeat what I say?’
‘I will.’
‘Now say this with me. Even when I cannot see daddy, I will remember him and I will be okay.’
I said it. ‘Even when I cannot see daddy, I will remember him and I will be okay.’
‘Even when I cannot see daddy, I will remember him and I will be okay.’
‘Even when I cannot see daddy, I will remember him and I will be okay.’
‘Even when I cannot see daddy, I will remember him and I will be okay.’
‘Even when I cannot see daddy, I will remember him and I will be okay.’
‘Even when I cannot see daddy, I will remember him and I will be okay.’
Chapter Fourteen
Present Day
The stroll down the memory lane left me smiling. It took me a few seconds to gather my thoughts and realize I was in 2020. I still pictured dad’s smiling face and remembered the way he planted a kiss on each of his kids’ heads before he dropped us at school.
I had just about gotten to the age where my dad dropping me to the school’s gate had started becoming embarrassing. I felt bad about it for a moment, only to realize that feeling was a part of every child’s life. I was amazed at how dad had recognized that and then used to drop us a few metres away from the school’s gate.
I was proud of my father, and not only in a ‘My-father-is-the-best’ kind of way. He was a kind man and never thought ill of anyone. He never raised his voice. He always supported his kids in the most unique way. I wondered how he knew stuff from the now-famous ‘parenting books’ all those years back about being kind while not spoiling kids too much by pampering them. He always offered a glass of water to anyone who ever rang the bell of our house.
I had seen him talk to our house help, whose presence was common in almost every middle-class Indian household. He always prepared food and tea for them if they were home while we were eating. I had perceived this behaviour as common until I had started going to my friends’ houses, where offering food to the help was not even considered.
The few times they were given food, it was in separate plates than the ones the family members used. I had asked dad about it once, and he had told me that the practice stemmed from an ancient Indian tradition where a class of people were deemed to be untouchables. They were considered the lowest class of people, and it was believed that even breathing the same air as them was bad. Such discrimination and the use of the untouchables phrase had been outlawed. Over the decades and centuries, its usage had waned down a lot, but still its remnants played out at times when the help was given food in different plates or was asked to enter the house from the back door of a house.
I knew dad was a good man. Thinking about how he used to be served as a useful reminder that if indeed he had taken a bribe or harmed anyone, there was more to the story than what met the eye.
I walked over to the large boxes placed on top of each other next to the Godrej cupboard. I absently flipped through the papers at the top. Most of them from the top box were from the cases I had researched for maa’s disappearance. I placed the topmost box away and started rummaging the lower boxes. They had dad’s files. All of his personal paperwork from the cases he was working on. I wanted to check out the lowermost box that Radha had labelled ‘Siya’s research’. It contained copies of dad’s notes, diaries and a compilation of the information that I thought was relevant from dad’s cases. I had not been able to spot anything useful in them.
Just as I opened the copies of dad’s notes and diary, Radha knocked on the garage shutter. Rahul was right behind her.
‘We were wondering how we can be useful until we get the papers from Rathod,’ Radha said.
‘The doctors…you can start looking them up,’ I said. ‘There’s still a chance that Niyati Jathar being a cosmetic surgeon, and Jane Doe’s plastic surgery, is a complete coincidence. But we cannot afford to waste time if it’s not. In that case, we need to know everything we can about them. You could check their credibility by speaking to their neighbours who called the police. Also call up their old friends and medical school batchmates to know as much as you can about both the Jathars.’
‘I’ll be on it,’ Radha said, and then exchanged looks with Rahul.
‘We also think you need to get those brain scans,’ Rahul said.
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
Radha took a step towards me. ‘And we need to be sure you stay that way.’
‘I wouldn’t have been feeling this well if it was anything serious.’
‘When a doctor tells you to go get a scan, you go and get it done. There’s no debate.’
‘It’ll be a waste of time.’
‘You will waste more time if it turns out to be something serious.’
I said nothing.
‘She’s right,’ Rahul said. ‘Radha can look into the doctors while we go to the hospital.’
I checked the time. It was a few minutes past ten. ‘You aren’t going to let me off the hook, are you?’ I said.
Radha shook her head and I realized it was probably the best to rule out anything serious.
‘Let’s go,’ I said to Rahul, getting up from my desk.
I paused for a fraction. ‘There’s one thing I have to do before,’ I said and opened the drawer under my desk.
I pulled out an old pocket-sized diary. It had all the contacts I had made from the days I used to practice law. As a criminal lawyer, the onus of putting the seed of doubt into the prosecution's mind was my job. No one could be punished if there was any sort of doubt. That’s why I had made friends with people of the most unique professions. I flipped to the letter ‘K’, and looked up Dr. Kedar Sathe’s number.
Kedar was an expert in facial reconstruction. ‘Give me facial bones and I can tell you how the person looked right away,’ he had told me the first time we had spoken four years back. I had only required his services once before, but it was important evidence in the case, one that swung it in my favour.
If Jane Doe had gone to great lengths to change the way she looked, I needed to know how she looked before. Finding out who she was would open up new lines of investigation. I called Kedar Sathe, and to my surprise, he remembered me as soon as I introduced myself. He sounded excited when I told him about Jane Doe. Like all great people, a challenge got the adrenaline in his body flowing.
‘Send me the X-Rays right away,’ he said. ‘I’ve meetings through the morning and afternoon. But I will look at them after that.’
I thanked him and hung up, knowing that if we got to know Jane Doe’s identity, we would get a step closer to knowing who had called me.
Chapter Fifteen
; At ten-thirty, Rathod pulled into the parking lot of the CID office in Pashan. He signed himself into the building with his access card, wary that his movements might be tracked. He headed straight to the basement that housed the morgue and Dr. Sonia Joshi’s office. He felt a strange disconnect every time he climbed down to the basement. It was perhaps just the thought that he would soon have dead bodies around him. The cold floor and a whiff of formalin in the air didn’t help drive the uneasiness away.
Rathod also realized that the jumpy feeling was magnified as he did not know which way the conversation with Dr. Sonia would go. He trusted her, but he had only known her for the past four years. Could you ever truly know someone well in that short a time? He also knew Sonia was a stickler for rules. Trying to circumvent the system, or not report tests conducted in the CID Lab might not be okay with Sonia.
He took a deep breath and stepped forward.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to come around,’ Sonia said, almost taking Rathod by surprise.
Rathod turned around and saw Sonia walk out of the ladies room.
‘I thought I would swing by to know if you found anything on the bodies from the morning’s crime scene,’ Rathod said.
Sonia looked surprised, like she should have as she usually told all investigating officers when to come by. Before she could say anything, Rathod stepped closer and said, ‘Can we talk in your office please?’
Sonia nodded, her forehead still creased. She led the way through the corridor and then hung the second right. Her office was pleasantly warmer and a window panel at the ceiling brought in fresh sunrays that fell on Sonia’s desk. Rathod felt much better just looking at natural light.
Sonia beckoned Rathod to sit across the table and then stepped out of her office. She returned a minute later with two steaming cups of coffee. She set them on the table and said, ‘It’s not even noon and yet it has been a long day. I thought this would help.’
