Fatal Mistakes

by Vedashree Khambete-Sharma

  Nalini nodded, then added, ‘Get chai also, and biscuits.’

  As the woman left, Nalini sat down on the bed and nodded towards the space next to her. Avantika walked towards her, feeling like she was in a dream. The kind that begins with demons and stuff, and peaks with the demons teaching primary-school children how to waltz to Bollywood music. This situation was making about as much sense.

  ‘How …?’ she asked, sitting down next to Nalini. ‘Why … why have you locked me up?’

  ‘Locked?’ Nalini asked, puzzled. ‘Nobody locked anyone up. This door just jams in the rains. Wood, na. Puffs up. Just needs a good push to open, that’s all.’

  Avantika frowned. It was a believable explanation. But the rest of it …

  ‘OK, but why am I here? How did I even …? What is happening?’

  ‘So many questions,’ Nalini smiled. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have some chai before you get the answers?’

  She gestured towards the door, where the woman who had first opened the door stood, with a tray in her hands.

  ‘Heena here makes excellent tea,’ Nalini said, daintily picking up a cup from the tray. ‘Take some biscuits too, you must be hungry.’

  Avantika took the proffered cup and a single Parle-G biscuit. She dunked it into the tea and took a bite. The sweet warm mush sliding down her throat felt like the food of the gods. Her stomach rumbled. She gulped down her tea and eyed the rest of the biscuits lying in the saucer on the tea tray. Nalini gestured to Heena, who left the tray between them on the bed, before taking up position by the window.

  Nalini watched Avantika demolishing the biscuits one after the other, a curious smile on her face.

  ‘Do you want some breakfast?’ she asked, picking up a biscuit herself. ‘The girl who cooks isn’t up yet but I’m sure we can manage something …’

  Avantika shook her head furiously, making crumbs fly.

  ‘Aa wnt …’ She covered her mouth as she hurriedly finished the last biscuit. ‘I want … to know what is going on.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nalini said, taking a bite of her biscuit. ‘That’s the whole problem.’

  Avantika stared at her uncomprehendingly.

  ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What do you mean?’

  Nalini sighed and popped the remains of the biscuit into her mouth.

  ‘You remember Janaki?’ she asked.

  ‘Who?’ Avantika’s forehead furrowed.

  ‘Janaki. The woman whose husband … the red chilli powder?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Avantika said, still unsure where this was going. ‘Yes, I remember. What about her?’

  ‘When she first came here, she wanted to die. Except she couldn’t because she had kids. I told her, let’s get you a lawyer; I know a good lawyer, let’s get you divorced from that monster. You know what she said?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She said if she got a divorce, it could shame her family. Her parents, you understand. They would disown her. She said a woman is better off being a widow than a divorcee. Because nobody judges a widow. A widow’s husband doesn’t follow her home, or show up drunk at her workplace or threaten to kill her if she doesn’t come back to him—’

  ‘OK, but,’ Avantika interrupted, ‘what does this have to do with …?’

  ‘The only way Janaki would be free, really free, of her husband,’ Nalini went on, ‘was if her husband died—’

  ‘Yes, and she got her wish,’ Avantika cut in. ‘He died, right? Great. So why are you telling me this instead of explaining what I’m doing here?’

  ‘I’m telling you this because we’re not living in a fairy tale,’ Nalini said softly. ‘Wishes don’t just magically come true. Someone has to make them come true. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Eleven

  Avantika felt a sudden stillness in the air. If the room had felt silent before, it felt like a grave now. The only sound she could hear was the rapid beating of her own heart.

  ‘Are you,’ she paused, unable to form the words, ‘are you saying … Janaki’s husband … he didn’t die in a car accident?’

  ‘He did,’ Nalini said, ‘but it wasn’t an accident.’

  Holy shit, Avantika thought.

  ‘And you … made that happen?’ she asked, swallowing hard. ‘And Janaki was OK with it?’

  ‘Janaki?’ Nalini scoffed, ‘Ask a woman like Janaki to live in an abusive, dehumanizing relationship all her life and she’ll do it. She’ll curse her fate, but she’ll do it, because hey, you can’t argue with fate. She’ll fast for that bastard, pray that they stay together for all seven lives. But ask her to leave him and it’s all “what will people say?” And what do people say? People say, oh, he should not hit his wife like that. And oh, he should be stopped. And oh, he should be shown the error of his ways. They say “should” a lot, these people. Should. A word for weaklings.’ She laughed derisively. ‘Should is a word that admits defeat even before the sentence is over. Should doesn’t get anything done.’

  Avantika’s mind was racing. What the fuck was going on? Why was she discussing semantics with a woman who had just owned up to killing a man? She had to keep her talking. To stall for time while she figured out what the hell to do next. And to find out how and why she was here in the first place. She cleared her throat.

  ‘So … what word gets things done, then?’ she asked.

  ‘Will,’ Nalini replied, a hard look in her eyes. ‘He will not hit his wife like that. He will be stopped. And then, you go and make it happen.’

  ‘By killing him?’ Avantika whispered.

  ‘If that’s what it takes,’ Nalini shrugged. ‘But to answer your previous question, yes, I … made that happen. But I wasn’t the one driving the car, so it can’t be traced back to me.’

  ‘Who drove the car?’

  ‘Another woman. One of the most respected oncologists in the city, actually,’ Nalini said, with a small smile.

  Avantika found herself getting intrigued despite herself. True, hundreds of people were involved in hit and runs in the city every year. Helmetless bikers, drunk rich kids, executives with fast cars, movie stars high on coke and fame. The list was endless. But most of these were accidents; stupid, careless accidents caused by a fatal mix of irresponsibility spiked with a mistaken sense of immortality. What Nalini was suggesting was the calculated, planned murder of a man by a woman not related to him in any way. Why on earth would an oncologist be willing to mow down a perfect stranger? With no fear of God or of the newly installed CCTV cameras at traffic signals. Her confusion must’ve shown up on her face because Nalini answered the question anyway.

  ‘She had a niece. Almost like a daughter. Just nineteen and addicted to cocaine. She was hooked on to it by her boyfriend. Rich kid. He said it would make her loosen up a bit. Then he got bored of her, broke up with her and married someone else. You know, someone respectable.’ She spat out the last word. ‘The girl couldn’t get rid of the habit. Started snorting whatever she got her hands on. Died of an overdose a few months ago. Meanwhile, her ex was on every Top Thirty Under-30 list you can name.’

  ‘But …’ Avantika found her confusion mounting. ‘What does that …? Killing Janaki’s husband wouldn’t bring her niece back. Then why did she …?’

  ‘Because a few weeks later, the ex-boyfriend overdosed on coke as well.’

  Which would be a hell of a coincidence, Avantika thought, if this was a different kind of a story.

  ‘Let me guess,’ she said warily, ‘That wasn’t an accident, either?’

  ‘No,’ Nalini said. ‘Good to see you’re catching on.’

  ‘So,’ Avantika paused a moment, trying to get her thoughts straight, ‘you help women take revenge by … making them help other women who want revenge?’

  ‘It’s payback,’ Nalini said. ‘Someone sticks their neck out and helps you remove a problem in your life. You pay them back in kind. And it’s not revenge. I like to think of it as justice.’

  I bet you do, Avantika thought. But still, a crime b
y any other name … Although, it was an elegant system, when you thought about it. I kill your nemesis, you kill mine. No connection. No motive. No proof. No culpability. And total complicity. Nobody would say a word because they themselves would be an accessory to another crime. Rat out a sister and it’s your neck on the line as well. And on the off-chance that somebody said something … It would be hard to prove in a court that a total stranger, who was sane and an upstanding citizen, who had no connection to the victim, had killed him for no concrete profit. Who would believe it, even if there was proof?

  ‘Some of the women who work here,’ Nalini went on, ‘they come broken, disowned by their families, wanting to end their lives because their lives have no meaning anymore. Then, when they watch the men who broke them break in turn, something happens.’ Her eyes were ablaze. ‘They feel an obligation to those who helped them. They find a sisterhood that understands exactly what they’re going through. And they want to help others like them. It gives them a reason to live. So, they stay back and fight. Because every time they bring someone to justice, another broken woman starts becoming whole again.’

  Avantika shook her head in disbelief. She used to visit the gym a few years ago and a trainer there had told her how every time you exercise, the muscle tears a little. Then the body rebuilds the tear and that’s what makes the muscle stronger in time. Women were called the weaker sex. They were broken, again and again. And every time they built themselves up again, they grew stronger. By the definitions of men, strength was brute force. In women’s terms, it was resilience. She was in Dharini Farm right now, brought without her knowledge, against her will. And surrounding her weren’t some pitiable battered women with nowhere to go. Surrounding her was an army.

  ‘OK, so,’ she cleared her throat, trying to keep the rising panic out of her voice, ‘you give women a chance to take re … get justice. And in exchange, they help you get justice for other women. What does this have to do with me? Why am I here?’

  ‘Because you were asking questions about what happened to Tushar Prasad,’ Nalini said, looking down at her hands, ‘and if you had found the answers …’

  ‘I’d have realized … what? That he didn’t commit suicide? I already know that. But I still couldn’t have traced it back to you.’

  ‘No?’ Nalini asked, frowning. The expression made her mangled face look eerie. ‘Wouldn’t Sapna have told you eventually? Judging from her messages, I guessed it was only a matter of time.’

  ‘Sapna?’ It was Avantika’s turn to frown. Radha’s daughter? She was involved? ‘What does she have to do with all this?’

  ‘Who do you think was sending you the SMSes?’ Nalini asked, cocking her head to one side.

  ‘Someone called … Anu,’ Avantika’s voice trailed off.

  ‘Well, it was Sapna. I have her phone, if you want proof.’

  Avantika thought furiously, trying to come to terms with this new information. Anu was Sapna? Then why had she used a different name? Surely, she must’ve known that using her real name would make Avantika trust her that much more easily? Then an alarming thought struck her.

  ‘Where is Sapna?’ she asked. ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘No,’ Nalini replied, then added with a reassuring smile, ‘but she is safe. Don’t worry.’

  Avantika pursed her lips, wondering whether to believe her. A movement from the wall caught her eye. Heena had just crossed her arms. When she caught Avantika looking at her, she blinked and looked away, rubbing her cheek absently. OK, Avantika thought, this one’s hiding something. She turned back to Nalini.

  ‘So, you didn’t want me to know the truth about Tushar Prasad …’ she said, leaving the sentence hanging.

  ‘Oh, no, no,’ Nalini said shaking her head. ‘I wanted you to know the whole truth about Tushar Prasad.’

  ‘Does this have anything to do with a girl called Kanika?’

  Nalini’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  ‘I must say I’m impressed,’ she said slowly, scanning Avantika’s face. ‘How did you know about Kanika?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how,’ Avantika said, thinking of Prajakta and what Nathan had said. She couldn’t let Nalini know the girl had talked to her. ‘But I don’t know the whole story. What did Tushar do to Kanika?’

  ‘Raped her, with his friends,’ Nalini said, pushing back a strand of hair that had escaped onto her face. ‘He told her he had taken a video of it and threatened to send it to the whole class unless …’

  ‘Unless she kept quiet?’

  ‘Unless she kept quiet and let them go on doing it,’ Nalini spoke casually, but her eyes had narrowed. ‘She was raped regularly for three months before her mother found out.’

  Avantika’s fingers had clenched into fists, of their own accord.

  ‘That’s horrible,’ she whispered.

  ‘No, what’s horrible is that the police couldn’t do anything about it.’

  ‘But POCSO?’18 Avantika asked. ‘Wasn’t she a minor?’

  ‘Yes, and her parents reported the incident to the police, but there was no proof.’

  ‘Tushar deleted the video?’

  ‘There was no video. He’d never recorded the act. She was so terrified of what would happen if it got out that she didn’t even bother to check if he had the video in the first place. He turned the story on her, told the police she was in love with him and was acting out because he said he wasn’t interested in her. He lied; she fell for it. He took everything from her. And he got away.’

  ‘Till you did something about it.’

  ‘Her mother came to me,’ Nalini said. ‘Said Kanika had stopped going to school. Stopped going out of the house. She got nightmares so she stopped sleeping at night. Stopped talking to her own mother. She had become a recluse at fifteen.’

  ‘So you … helped her out by having Tushar killed?’

  Nalini looked her in the eye and pursed her lips.

  ‘You sound like you disapprove,’ she said mildly, ‘but sometimes, the only way to take away someone’s fear of monsters is to take away the monsters.’

  She unconsciously rubbed her neck as she spoke. Avantika watched her slender undamaged fingers move over the burned skin of her neck. She could feel her own heart thudding in her chest, her stomach muscles clenching with fear. She knew how this story went. When you’re trapped in the villain’s lair and they’re telling you their evil plans, you don’t make it out of the place alive unless you’re the hero. You’re not a hero, she told herself. You’re a reporter who’s ridiculously out of her depth and refusing to admit it. A silly little girl, full of bravado who’s not even brought a damned knife to what is increasingly looking like a gunfight. With Uzis. From deep within the recesses of her memory, Rishi stood on a cliff and scoffed. You’re all talk, Avanti. You think you’re a rock star, but what you really are is a big, fat nothing. No, she wasn’t a hero. Problem was, she wasn’t sure Nalini was the villain either. She took a deep breath to settle her nerves.

  ‘OK,’ she said, trying to gather her thoughts, ‘let’s say you wanted me to know that Tushar was a bastard. Why did you need to,’ she took a deep breath and said the word, ‘kidnap me? You could’ve picked up the phone and said you wanted to talk. You didn’t need to … what did you do, exactly? Drug me?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m sorry about that,’ Nalini reached out and touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘It’s a safe drug, though; hardly any side effects. The doctors prescribed it to me after the … attack. I used to get upset. Anxiety, lots of it. It helped them … make me … relax.’

  She winced a little as she said that, as if remembering something distasteful. Avantika frowned, thinking of the sharp jab in her side. She hadn’t even thought of the side effects. It would take a pretty skilled doctor or nurse to give someone an injection in a moving train. Nalini had clearly found someone who could. She tried to remember the face of the woman with the purse but came up blank. Whose death had Nalini promised her in exchange for doing this?

&
nbsp; ‘I just wanted to see how far you would go for a good story,’ Nalini was saying. ‘If you have what it takes.’

  Avantika looked at her uncomprehendingly. She was tired of these games. She wanted the truth and she was tired of jumping through hoops for it.

  ‘Have what it takes?’ she asked with a sigh. ‘For what?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Nalini said with a smile. ‘To help us, obviously.’

  Twelve

  Avantika stared. This was what Nalini had got her here for? Did she really believe Avantika could kill someone? And how was she supposed to respond to that? How do you turn down an offer to kill someone? This is precisely the kind of skill set for which her education had left her totally unprepared. Why were they wasting time teaching journalism students to proofread, when this is the kind of shit they should be learning? How to manage a hostage situation when the hostage is you. How to refuse an offer you can’t refuse. How to increase your chances of getting out of a situation like this, alive. She cleared her throat and, perhaps for the first time in her life, tried to be diplomatic.

  ‘Aah, I’m not … as in, thanks for asking, but … I don’t know if …’ No words were presenting themselves to be used. ‘Look, I can’t kill anyone, OK? And I don’t want anyone killed either!’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Nalini smiled lightly. One side of her mouth went up, the other stayed down. ‘Every woman plots murder, after all. You’re just getting a chance to go beyond plotting. Is there nobody you know without whom your life would be better?’

  Lady, what the hell kind of women have you been hanging out with, Avantika wondered. And then a small, shameful part of her mind reminded her of all the times she had wished that Rishi just … didn’t exist. All the times she’d felt like causing him pain. She coughed.

  ‘No, there isn’t,’ she said.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Nalini shrugged, ‘but I meant helping us in a different way. Heena?’

  Heena was staring at Nalini. Avantika could see whatever was happening had come as a surprise to the woman.