‘I mean, how did you find out about your… urges about girls?’
‘Oh!’ Deepika said, more in relief than anything else. ‘When I saw Sumi naked,’ she said simply. It was a response she had prepared in advance.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, I saw her bathing once. And after that, I would just try to observe her as often as possible,’ the girl added very matter-of-factly. ‘She had the most perfect breasts. Have you seen those small brinjals? No, not the round ones… the other kind? How sexy they look! Hers looked like small brinjals.’
Whatever clouds had existed over Jasmine’s mind cleared briskly at her young partner’s innocently frivolous explanation of her latent sexual urges.
‘Then, I couldn’t get the mental image of Ujjwal and Sumi doing… sex… out of my head,’ she continued happily. ‘I mean…can you imagine? She must have somehow cajoled my little brother into… chee, chee, chee! That bloody bitch!’
‘Even her anger is so childlike!’ Jasmine thought. ‘Sumi was one hell of a slimy character, I will grant you that!’ she said.
‘Oh, so had she always been like that?’
‘Why, did you and she never talk about your past with each other?’
‘No, not really. Though I always suspected there was something quite sinister in hers!’
‘She seduced her uncle when she was barely a teenager. Then she ran away from home. God knows how many more men she had on her way to my house, where she landed up pregnant!’
‘Like a prostitute!’ Deepika said, gasping.
‘I had to help her get an abortion. I did so much for that girl, helped her sort out her life, got her to stand on her feet again. But, once a whore always a whore!’
Deepika shook her head dramatically.
‘Everyone told me to be careful about that girl. They warned me not to keep her out of sight for very long. They told me that she would be up to no good if I stayed away from the orphanage for a long time,’ Jasmine continued.
‘Who does she mean by “everyone”?’ Deepika wondered. ‘Her mother? It has to be… her mother. The person that Jolly says she is always on the phone with! The only one she listens to!’
Suddenly, the real truth behind Jasmine’s ugliness was shining clearer than the sun. Jasmine may have been like the toy that the devil made with his own hands, but it was the battery inside it that made this toy function!
‘SHE must have told her to come back from Darjeeling to fix Sumi and Jolly! I think it’s the bloody mother who has controlled everything in this witch’s life!’
‘One poisoned fish…’ was all Deepika could muster.
‘Yes, and that’s why I returned from Darjeeling as soon as I could. To take back control of things here,’ Jasmine continued with her partial lies. ‘Little did I know that the sly bitch had already screwed things up while I was away!’
‘You mean…with Ujjwal?’
‘Ujjwal? Yes… yes, I mean with Ujjwal…’ the dishonest monster went on.
‘So, in a way, it was good that Sumi…’ Deepika paused suggestively.
‘Oh yes, good riddance. In fact, you know, in a way, I am quite relieved that Ujjwal got away from all this mess, too.’
Deepika gulped hard, suddenly finding it difficult to breath.
‘Yeah, you know, whatever happens, happens for the best,’ she continued. ‘Sumi was bad news for Ujjwal—who knows what miseries might have befallen him had she and the bastard baby survived or if Ujjwal had not run away? Oh, and imagine the complications Sumi would have caused between Ujjwal and you—both brother and sister lusting over the same whore!’
Every single pore of Deepika’s being was now enflamed with rage. Her face was flushed and her body convulsed involuntarily for a second.
Jasmine looked up at her blushing princess. ‘Now!’ she said to herself. It was time to put aside sobering thoughts of the past and address the matter at-hand for the night.
‘Anyway,’ Jasmine said, as she bent towards Deepika and took her soft, delicate, long hands in hers, ‘we don’t have to think about all that rubbish of the past few months. Today is the day when you and I play with…’ she paused as she stared directly into the young eyes, ‘… brinjals!’
It took every inch of Deepika’s strength to smile.
Deepika Ahluwalia lost her virginity that night. Growing up as she had under abnormal circumstances, she had never fancied that her first time would be with a handsome prince, or a young movie heartthrob, or even an acned schoolboy. Deepika had been too busy dealing with life these past few years to have had the audacity to cling to the bookish notions of ‘two bodies coalescing in unison, breathless and writhing, as they slowly crested wave upon wave in a sea of passion, eventually climaxing their carnal odyssey in an explosion brighter than the brightest stars in a clear night sky’. Bloody fantastical drivel that was, as far as she was concerned.
But then, neither had Deepika imagined that her hymen would eventually be broken by a rubber dildo plunged inside of her, by the fat and eager fingers of a sweaty woman with multiple rolls of fat. The physical act of losing her virginity when the tissue gave way had hurt, but not as badly as Deepika had thought. And, to be fair to Jasmine’s energetic performance in bed, she did bring Deepika to climax once. Deepika had felt neither happiness nor guilt when she experienced her first orgasm with another human being. All she had felt was—satisfaction.
The digital clock by the bedside table flickered. 2:56 AM. The exhausted heavy woman was now asleep. There was a peaceful snoring pervading the room, mixed with the slight odour of perfume, sweat and raw meat. There was a smile on the sleeping woman’s face. Deepika had been quietly observing it for the past fifteen minutes.
It was time to wipe the fucking smile off that face forever.
As Deepika picked up the kitchen knife from under the bed, the one that she had planted there hours ago when she had tiptoed from the kitchen to Jasmine’s bedroom while the two packs of Maggi boiled away on the cooking range, she felt a rush of adrenaline sweeping her body. The moment that she had primed herself for had finally arrived. Deepika adjusted herself quietly, extending her arms and tightening the hold around the knife handle. The sharp blade was now pointed directly at the centre of two large, heavy breasts, their weight making them rest on either side of Jasmine’s chest. The two black nipples looked away from each other as if they were not on talking terms. The valley between the parted bosoms was pale and wide open, almost waiting in anticipation to the bloody fate that the glistening knife had in mind for it.
Deepika closed her eyes as she prepared herself one last time for revenge. Her mind was awash with a riot of sounds and laughter. Undistinguished happy notes, fused together into indecipherable moments of joy. She tried to untangle the cheerful din. There were pleasant memories of her parents—the lovely round face of her mother, the soothing voice of her father narrating a story. She saw each of her brothers and sisters from the orphanage—they were laughing as they trudged to their schools through slush and drain water during a recent monsoon downpour. Deepika opened her eyes. There was Sumi. She was giggling. She looked happy. She felt so real that Deepika could almost smell her smell of small wildflowers. ‘Are you here, Sumi? Are you here to see me kill the person who killed you?’
As the knife came down on Jasmine’s open heart, Deepika closed her eyes again. Redemption. The last face she had seen in this surreal crazy dream was that of Ujjwal. For once, her brother was staring at her directly, and not at some imaginary object a million miles away.
“Wake up!” shouted Radha, the new maid, at around 9 AM. “Just because it’s a Sunday, do you think you can behave like Kareena Kapoor?”
Deepika had managed to sneak only about a few hours of sleep. Despite that, as she swung off her bed, she had never felt more rested.
She laboured through the day as if it was the most normal Sunday ever. She helped Radha in the kitchen, swept and mopped the floor, washed three bucketfuls of school clothes, cleaned the outs
ide courtyard, and changed the sheets on the beds in the boy’s dorm rooms.
‘How come Didi hasn’t called you today?’ Radha asked her at one point.
‘Maybe she just wants to relax at home today…’
Jasmine Bhatia’s body was discovered by one of her maids when the household staff returned to the Panchshila Park home at 6 PM that Sunday. The maid who found her was in such a state that she retched a few times before she was even able to explain what she had seen to the other staffers. Jolly was informed immediately. He took the call from his oldest servant in the middle of drinks that he was having with his clients at Olive Bar and Kitchen in Mumbai. He promptly excused himself from the group and called the police. Then, he proceeded to break the terrible news to his mother-in-law in Sion.
Leena Bindra was devastated by the death of her daughter. She kept yelling at Jolly, demanding the details, but Jolly didn’t have any. It was too sudden; after all, he had just found out himself, he told her. He was going to fly to Delhi right away, he said. The elderly woman wanted to go with him too. That was understandable. But even before Jolly could call his assistant to book two plane tickets for Delhi, Leena Bindra had a heart attack. Jolly rushed her to Lilavati Hospital. They just about made it to the ICCU in time. There was extensive damage to the woman’s heart but she survived.
It was only three days later, once he had ensured that his mother-in-law was stable and resting peacefully in the hospital—and after he had been provided with cautious reassurances by some of the best cardiac surgeons in the country—that Jolly left Mumbai to face the aftermath of his wife’s murder. He drove straight to the Hauz Khas Police Station from the airport.
‘We are glad you could make it, Sir,’ said the Inspector in-charge of Jasmine Bhatia’s case.
‘I had already explained the circumstances to you on the phone. My mother-in-law is stable now, thank God. I don’t think I would have been able to survive two shocks,’ the stoic Sardar said in a gravelly monotone.
‘Would you like to see the photos of the crime scene? I must warn you, they are a bit…’
‘Yes, please. I want to see what they did to my wife.’
The policeman gave a running commentary of the brutal end depicted in the photos. ‘It appears,’ he said, ‘that Mrs Bhatia may have woken up suddenly, perhaps by some sound made by the assailant. But before she could get on her feet, that unknown person picked up the bedside lamp and bashed her face from her left side. We think it cracked her skull, but the postmortem will have to confirm that. You see these wounds…?’
Jolly nodded.
‘We think she was shocked by that blow, but not completely unconscious. She must have started to bleed profusely on the bed. Then, for some reason, she was dragged to the bathroom—see these marks? There is a whole bloody trail from the bed, over the carpets and the hallway of the bedroom and into the bathroom.’
Jolly took his eyes away from the photos and looked outside the open window of the dingy office.
‘She was ultimately killed there. In the bathroom. There were five knife wounds to the heart. Two superficial ones, and then three that plunged straight through.’
The policeman paused, allowing Jolly a moment to recover. The visitor seemed calm, so the gory explanation resumed.
‘And finally, as she was dying, the killer took a pair of scissors and sheared off her hair. From the long hair that Mrs Bhatia had to this ugly… almost bald head. I think the assailant did that as a kind of act to shame her.’
The grisly narration finally stopped. There was a respectful silence in the room for several minutes.
Once the policeman thought they had taken enough time, he asked the one question that he was duty bound to.
‘Except for the servants and helpers, there are no finger- or foot-prints either. The assailant must have been very careful about that. You will have to assist us to see if anything was taken from the house.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Do you have any idea who may have done this, Sir?’
Jolly closed his eyes. He saw the smiling face of his beautiful Sumi. She looked completely serene.
‘No, Inspector. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do this to my lovely Jasmine.’
BOOK TWO
The Eager Bait
Present day
He got off the autorickshaw at the traffic signal. The famous Siri Fort auditorium loomed ahead. Like all buildings that smack of the creative indulgence of the Indian government, this one, too, was one big, white mess. You could tell that the auditorium was someone’s twisted re-imagination of futuristic architecture. Kind of what the bastard child of a giant Ambassador car and a UFO might look like if they had a one-night stand.
He had never seen the building before—or for that matter, any others in this city of great historic import. In fact, he had been to Delhi only one time before this trip and no sightseeing had been indulged in then. This time too, he was not visiting as a tourist.
The venue was a fortress. The black spiked-iron frame along the boundary wall was tall and solid. Each of the gates was manned by a regiment of sentries—the Delhi Police, as usual, covering VVIP ‘movement’ with far greater alacrity than they would ever show on the streets of the common man. The uniforms were crisp and the faculties sharp. There was a short line of posh people waiting to gain entry. Every human body—fat, small, unremarkable or sexy—was patted with practiced precision and discreet thoroughness. Every bag was sniffed and eyed and felt as if it was smuggling the Kohinoor itself. If ever something as teeny as a safety pin were to be made item non grata, it was certain to be discovered. Thankfully, the current law was only aimed at explosives and guns.
These were security protocols typical for an event where the Prime Minister was arriving as the Chief Guest.
Luckily for the two-time visitor to Delhi now standing in front of the looming Siri Fort, he was carrying an ‘On Official Duty’ Pass—the one piece of laminated paper, stamped and signed, that worked as the universal latchkey to all doors at official events such as this one. Just a flash of that magical badge was enough to part the sea of security, and transport him directly to the centre of the show. The pass had been easy to come by—after all, the visitor had friends with connections.
He walked confidently towards the separate gate meant for special attendees like him. He was waved in without fuss.
As he entered the main hall and observed its white, sparse walls, he wondered if he was doing the right thing.
‘It had better be,’ he thought, shrugging off his misgivings. ‘It’s too late to turn back now.’
He knew that there were two people who were never going to be the same again once the evening was over. One of them was himself.
He thought of Deepika Ahluwalia alias Jazmeen once again and smiled. But it was not one borne out of joy.
7
The Icy Policeman Cometh
Four years ago
The tiny plastic cups of Amul yoghurt had sat on the grill-like shelves, unprotected, for almost ten hours before the grocery shop owner realised that his fridge had stopped working. He cursed Godrej—the company that had manufactured the fridge; BEST—the power company; the government; and his young shop assistant, in that order, for this fresh crisis. All the items in the fridge would have to be thrown away, he yelled, amid expletives, at his helper. So much money about to go down the drain, literally! Luckily for the angry shopkeeper, one of his regular customers came along on his daily grocery run just then, and asked for six cups of yoghurt. The shopkeeper gladly handed him the Amul packs, along with the other items that the customer had requested—a half-dozen eggs, a small packet of bread and one Lux soap, pink colour.
Forty minutes later, the same customer, ignorant of the refrigeration mishap, was feeding the spoiled dairy product to his daughter. The child, about four years old, sensed the foul taste, but since she didn’t want to cause trouble, continued to nibble away at the spoonful that the father would bring up to her
mouth every half-minute. Mealtime was always a major chore for both father and daughter because it took a lot of time, one morsel at a time. As was the case most nights, dinner had started with a full cup of yoghurt first because the child loved it more than any other food. For dinner tonight, the father had also cooked chapatis and bhaaji. Nothing special. He had got late working at the office, and when he had returned home, his neighbour Padma Tai had mumbled complaints about his tardiness. The man apologised profusely, he couldn’t afford to annoy Padma Tai, where was he going to find someone else willing to check in on his child several times during the day? The usually-friendly neighbour would even sit with his daughter for an hour in the evening, narrating stories or singing Marathi ditties until the father got back from work. Thankfully for everyone, the child was easily entertained and satisfied.
But, right now, despite her father’s best efforts, the little girl was simply unable to plough through beyond half a cup of yoghurt.
‘Bas? No more?’ the father asked in bewilderment.
The man put the container away and brought the cooked dinner from the tiny kitchen. Theirs was a two-room flat with chalky walls and a floor that had long ago lost its original colour. The rooms were bare enough to suggest that the two inhabitants didn’t have the time or the inclination to make the house look like home. There was one small television that was playing some programme that neither was watching. Above the neglected television hung a photo of a newly-married couple. The woman in the picture wore shimmering red and was smiling coyly. The man wore an ill-fitting grey suit and stood rigid, as if caught by the photographer quite suddenly. He bore just a passing resemblance to the guy who had just brought back the dinner plate from the kitchen.
The man resumed the story he had been telling his child as he broke a morsel of the large chapati, smeared it with some bhaaji, and nudged it into the already open mouth.
‘So, you know what I did when the fellow said “I didn’t do it, Saahab”?’
Pretty Vile Girl Page 13
