The Nidhi Kapoor Story

by Saurabh Garg

  Rujuta shuddered. All the open loops seemed to be closing one by one. There was nothing left in the case now. Apart from relatively minor charges like making a threat, impersonation, criminal wrongdoing and other, Nidhi would be charged with culpable homicide. She knew that Nidhi had at least killed Kunal, Preeti and Payal. That’s three. Four, if she included Prakash in the list. Four homicides. By someone who was twenty-seven, and who happened to be arguably the most recognized woman in the country. Media would have a field day when the story would break. She was now worried about Nishant. She still hadn’t seen any sign of him.

  Nidhi meanwhile, slowly walked off towards the table. She flicked off an invisible switch in the music dock and the room was suddenly engulfed in silence, as if all noise was sucked out of it. Rujuta could hear faint sounds of an air-conditioning unit humming in the background. Nidhi flicked her Zippo and lit yet another cigarette.

  Rujuta made her mind to let the law take its own course. She just wanted to wait for the police to come and arrest Nidhi. She had sent Tambe to the station after he had dropped her at Ronak.

  Nidhi took deep long drags on the cigarette. “Hope you understand me. I had to do this. There was no way I would be at peace if I did not punish Nishant like that. You know, I have never been sorry for anything that I have done. Except for this one mistake. I am really sorry, Rujuta. I did not want to hurt Prakash. It… it… just happened. I’d ask for Prakash’s forgiveness when I meet him up there. But before that, I hope you pardon me…”

  And then, without a warning, without waiting for Rujuta to react, Nidhi put the muzzle of the .500-caliber gun in her mouth, cupped it with her lips and pulled the trigger.

  The gun went off with a loud racket and Rujuta’s eyes closed involuntarily. When she opened her eyes again, Nidhi was lying on the ground. The recoil from the heavy gun had twisted her fist at an unnatural angle. Her neck was thrown back from the shock of the bullet that hit the back of her head. The sharp bullet had pierced her throat, entered her brain and smashed a large part of the skull before it got stuck in the wall behind Nidhi.

  Nidhi’s diary slipped out of Rujuta’s hands and the old picture of the Kapoors peeped out from it.

  When Nidhi shot herself, she was standing against a wall that had a framed poster of Nishant Kapoor’s Lahu Ka Rang. The bullet left a red and gray splatter of the brain matter on the poster, right below the title of the film. The heavy parts of brain matter were peeling off from the wall and were dragging themselves down towards where Nidhi was lying. Thick drops of blood had started to trickle down from the splatter, leaving behind a red trail on the poster and the wall.

  Nidhi was lying in a pool of blood, her eyes closed and hair disheveled. The pool of blood around her head was growing by the second. Nidhi’s mouth was now replaced by a large gaping hole. Her lips were burnt, after the pistol released the bullet, the muzzle heat up to 2000 degrees centigrade for a split second. Thankfully, Nidhi was dead long before her face contorted into a despicable shape.

  The gorgeous Nidhi Kapoor had killed herself. The greatest thing to have happened to Indian cinema was lying in front of Rujuta. Dead.

  ∗∗∗

  Rujuta could not believe the turn of events. In less than two hours after she had come into Nidhi’s room, she had answers to two most perplexing questions that ever confronted her.

  “Madam, are you OK?” Tambe rushed into the room. He was getting a team assembled to arrest Nidhi Kapoor. He had to get a lawyer, a lady constable and a judge to sign the documents to arrest the high profile celebrity. When he finally reached Ronak, he heard the gun shot and ran into Nidhi’s room. His first concern was to ensure Rujuta was safe. He made one sweeping glance in the room and he immediately knew what had transpired in there. He ran to where Nidhi was lying and checked for her pulse. It was no use but the policemen are trained to follow protocol.

  “It’s over,” Rujuta said. Devoid of any emotion. The way Prakash would have said after an investigation.

  Tambe nodded and started to talk in his walkie-talkie.

  Rujuta had held onto herself bravely all this while. With Nidhi’s death, it was over. She slumped on the ground. She was staring at Nidhi’s dead body.

  Tambe was shocked at this. He did not know how to react. He stood behind Rujuta protectively. She was his responsibility, now that Prakash was not around. He had to protect her come what may, through thick and thin.

  Rujuta had finally found who killed Prakash. She had brought the Nidhi Kapoor story to an end. There was nothing else left to do. She had no reason to continue to live. No reason. No meaning. She thought of something, got up and stuttered towards Nidhi’s dead body. She wrestled the gun free from Nidhi’s clenched fist. She soiled her dress with Nidhi’s blood while she was struggling with the gun. It took her some effort but she succeeded. She held the gun with both her hands.

  Rujuta thought about the frivolity of life. She thought that while everyone in the world is busy making plans for tomorrow and things that they would do in the future, no one knows for sure if they’d be alive the next moment. She could never imagine that the human life was that cheap. The stories attached to life, so frivolous. The dreams, the plans, the aspirations and to-do lists, so easily expendable. It all seemed meaningless to her. Maybe Nidhi was right. Or maybe Tarana was. She would never know. She looked at Nidhi, thought about Tarana and then she slowly raised the gun to her temple. The muzzle was still warm from the shot that the gun had fired minutes ago. It almost burnt Rujuta’s skin but she was oblivious to the pain. It was nothing compared to her heartburn and longing for Prakash. That scene from that wedding flashed in front of her eyes where she and Prakash were forced to dance with each other and it had made both of them conscious and awkward. She longed to be back with Prakash at that wedding. She wanted to kiss Prakash on his lips and tell him how much she loved him. She wanted to sit with Prakash on the terrace, get drenched in the rain and feel Prakash’s manly presence around her.

  She knew she couldn’t. Not now, not anytime in future. But she knew that she could do something else. Right now. She wasn’t sure about it, though. She didn’t know if Tarana would approve of it. But she had to. There was nothing else left.

  The warm muzzle digging in her temple was comforting against the chill of the room. She sunk her slender, long fingers gingerly in the trigger shaft. She took one deep breath, looked up, and closed her eyes.

  The End

  Afterward

  Rujuta had eventually dropped the gun. Tambe was quick to reach out and move the gun away. Rujuta had then looked quizzically at Tambe. “You thought I was going to kill myself?” she said.

  The police found Nishant in his study where the pets were found murdered. He was alive and was sobbing uncontrollably. A small handycam was trained on him. Next to the cam were a stack of tapes; each tape had neat labels with dates going back twenty years.

  The last episode with Nidhi had taken its toll on Nishant and had finally tipped him over to the side of madness. He was left incapable to decide his future. Or whatever was left of it. Naveen Verma had no sympathy for Nishant and he refused to participate in any discussion about Nishant’s remaining years.

  Rujuta filed a case against Nishant for tortures that he had inflicted upon Neelima and Nidhi. Commissioner Joshi dismissed the case and sent Nishant to an old age home run by the government of Maharashtra. Thanks to Tarana, Rujuta had finally excused Nishant for everything he had done. She accepted that Nishant was nothing more than a mere agent of Providence in the entire thing.

  Naveen was made the executioner of Nishant and Nidhi’s estates. With the help of the real-estate firm that helped them sell Ronak in the first place, he got back the ownership of Ronak. He had to pay a hefty price for it. He converted it into an art gallery and a milieu, where the rich and famous could break bread with each other. It has everything that a modern museum has. The majestic Iron Gate at Ronak that had served faithfully as the first checkpoint when Nishant and Nidhi li
ved there, was now dismantled and replaced with a metal plaque thanking patrons for their support. Inside, Ronak had life size paintings of Neelima and Nidhi at the reception. Various rooms were remodeled to make space for a café, a couple of exhibition galleries and an administrative office. It hosted meetings, expensive parties, corporate getaways and other such things. The only thing missing conspicuously from it was any reference or memories of the great Nishant Kapoor. The bungalow, the sign of power, the sign of belonging, the sign of greatness, was now called The Prakash Mohile Kuteer. Rujuta had protested against using Prakash’s name but Naveen said that that’s the least he could do to pay for Nidhi’s actions.

  Vicky Taluja shelved the project that featured Nidhi and Kabeer. Instead, he started working on a movie inspired by Prakash’s life. Rujuta agreed to help him with the script. Naveen Verma volunteered to co-produce the movie.

  Rujuta coerced Tarana, with much reason, to have her sketches and paintings framed and exhibited. The exhibition was hosted at Ronak, the first since it was converted into a gallery and a museum.

  Rujuta’s photo-essay on Mumbai Police won top honors at international exhibitions. While working on the Nidhi Kapoor case, she realized that she loved the gritty work of chasing impossible clues and piecing together mysteries that seemed impossible to crack. She has since started an investigative agency. Apart from working on Prakash’s biography and Vicky’s film script, she works closely with the police department on select cases. Commissioner Joshi recently asked her to work on the case of a missing literature professor and his fourteen-year-old stepdaughter. No one would have noticed that they were missing if the dead body of the Professor’s wife hadn’t remained unclaimed at the morgue for well over two months.

  Pravin Tambe resigned from the police force and now works with Rujuta at her detective agency.

  Sonu, Pravin Tambe’s son, made it to the Indian under-17 cricket team and not a single day has passed when Tambe hasn’t reminded Sonu of the generous donation by Prakash that helped Sonu start his career.

  Acknowledgements

  This is going to be a long list. A lot of people have helped me over the years and I have to thank all of them.

  Ma, Pa, Sonali. Thank you for everything. Thank you for not throwing me out of the house when I said that I’ve quit my job to work on a book.

  Kunal, PD, Shubhi, Vivek. Thank you for standing by me over the years. Through thick and thin.

  Anaggh, Anna, Hemant, RaJ, Suvi, Vanita, Vijesh. Thank you for being my gurus. My mentors. The book wouldn’t have been possible without you guys.

  Vanita. Thank you for being my agony aunt and being around everytime I’ve been in a soup.

  Hardeep Bawa. Thank you for helping me improve as a marketer, a professional and an individual.

  Team MML (Amit, Ankit, Bethune, Nishank, Pavan, Raj, Ranaditya, Satya, Sudhandhu, Vivek and others). Thank you for those crazy sessions of CS and the post-war discussions. You are the awesomest bunch of people I know of.

  Ashima & Parijat, Jeetu, Satya, Shilpa & Vivek. Thank you for tolerating me while I was working on this.

  Aakash, PD, Sandeep. Thank you for introducing me to writing.

  Divya, Nikita, Sonali, Shatrujeet, Sudhanshu. Thank you for being my writing gurus. The day I can write half as well as you people do, I’ll attain moksha.

  Nikita. Thank you for helping me when I was stuck with the plot.

  Amit, Charan, Divya, Huzefa, Mansi, Nikita, Parijat, PD, Radhika, Sonali, Sonam, Siddhi, Shatrujeet, Shubhi, Sudhanshu, Suvi, Vivek. Thank you for bearing the torture of various half-baked drafts. And recommending critical changes.

  Ashna, Harsh, Parul, Priya, Sachin and everyone else at Grapevine India. Thank you for believing in this book.

  Everyone else that I could not include here. Thank you for making me who I am. Someone once said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Thank you for helping me to see further.

  Finally, Rana Bawa Sir. Thank you for buying the first copy. At that time, I had written all of 35000 words. If not for your advance, I would have quit mid-way.

  Lastly and most importantly, #sgMS. Thank you. It all starts with you. And ends with you. I am taking the liberty of reproducing a conversation from Notting Hill∗ here (thanks to Richard Curtis for cooking up Notting Hill). It goes… “Oh, I was just wondering if… it turned out that this person… realized he’d been a daft prick… and got down on his knees… and begged you to reconsider, whether you would, in fact… then… reconsider?”

  ∗ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notting_Hill_(flm)

  Dear Readers,

  Thank you for taking out time to read The Nidhi Kapoor Story. Readers like you encourage people like me to go forth and chase frivolous dreams.

  To be honest, the process of writing the story was not easy at all. With every word that I put on paper, I was filled with questions, self-doubt and anxiety. I survived through any sleepless nights, struggling to find answers to one simple question - why would someone read what I am writing?

  And now that book is in your hands, I have nightmares about yet another question, How would you react after you read the story?

  Please let me know what you think of the book. How can I improve the craft? What all can I do to become a better writer and a better storyteller? I would love to know of your thoughts.

  I am…

  @saurabh on twitter

  friends.of.tnks@gmail.com on email

  http://fb.me/theNidhiKapoorStory on Facebook.

  Thank you once again for reading the story. Hope the time was well spent and it was worth it. Hope you had as much fun reading it as much I had writing it.

  Please do write in.

  Regards,

  Saurabh Garg

  Oct 2014, Mumbai

  P.S.: If you liked the book, may I request you to share it with your family and friends?