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Word Count : 4000

Target : 120 Votes

Audio Theme : Udi Tere Aankhon Se | Guzarish |

https://youtu.be/FPVPXk_SBOw

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53 | Happy Raksha Bandhan

17th May 2023

| 0915 Hours. |

Just as the two saree-clad men were about to step out of the back gate of the building, Hinduja called out, "Bakhtawar."

He immediately turned out. "Yes?"

"We will need six more trackers." She replied. "And you will have to dress up like this probably once more."

"Is it due to the two new forensic doctors who have joined the team?"

"Yes." She nodded.

"Alright." He replied. 

The man standing next to him, on the other hand, kept adjusting the oranges inside his blouse.

"Two more things."

"What?" Bakhtawar asked.

"First of all, delete all the CCTV surveillance footage of the whole SDM office from 8 a.m. this morning to 12 in the afternoon by evening."

Bakhtawar nodded without delving into it much.

"Secondly, any news on that orphanage?" She probed, taking a step forward.

Bakhtawar scratched his neck. "Not yet. I am trying though."

Hinduja took in a deep breath. "No need for that anymore."

"What do you mean?" Scrunching his brows together, he corrected the plaits of the saree.

"I said that you need not work on it anymore." She paused. "You can stop your search for that orphanage from here onwards."

"But why?" He quizzed further, irritation taking over his face.

"Because I said so." She ordered.

Bakhtawar sighed.

Five minutes down the line, Hinduja stared at the email in her inbox. Dragging the curser on it, she right clicked on it.

Immediately the contents of the email popped up on her laptop screen.

The Holy Children's Home

Established: 31st May 1883

140-year-old establishment

Name changed from 'St. Christina's Home For Orphans' to 'The Holy Children' Home' on 31st May 2000, on the 117th Foundation day of the orphanage.

Current Administrator: Sister Beatrice George

Email ID: [email protected]

Address of the Orphanage: Poovaranthode, Kerala, Pincode: XXX604

Telephone: XXXXX-23679

She dialed the telephone number of the orphanage on her phone and placed a call. No one picked it up.

A few minutes later, biting her lower lip, she sighed because, much to her displeasure, no one answered from the other side despite the seven calls that she had placed.

Eventually, her gaze shifted to the mail ID. Copying the email address, she composed another email and pasted it in front of the word 'to'.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Matter of Extreme Urgency

To,

The Administrator,

The Holy Children's Home,

Poovaranthode, 

Kerala, XXX604.

Respected Sister Beatrice,

With due respect and humble submission, I would like to state the following few lines for your kind consideration.

I have an extremely urgent matter that I need to discuss with you face-to-face. A phone call won't suffice. So, I am hereby requesting you kindly provide me with a suitable date, your WhatsApp number (if any), your phone number, and a suitable time on which I can place a video call to you. A Google meet would be great too.

Lastly, I am requesting you to not take this lightly, as it is a matter of extreme urgency for me and many others, along with the fact that it has connections with your orphanage as well.

Eagerly awaiting your reply.

Thanking You,

Yours' Sincerely,

Hinduja Rao.

Indian Administrative Service

Delhi.

Dated: 17th May 2023

The moment she clicked the cursor on the send icon, her hands started shivering. Her face remained blank, yet the drops of sweat dribbling down the bridge of her nose and her forehead said otherwise. She didn't know what she was heading towards—the end of an old story or the beginning of a new one.

Minimizing the mail application, she shut her laptop close. Then, putting it inside a black-colored shoulder bag instead of her satchel, she zipped it close and quietly strode towards the washroom with another bag in her hand that was previously kept on the table, next to her PC.

The door of the washroom was bolted close as the feminine figure disappeared inside. Some ten minutes down the line, the mediocre-heighted figure that emerged out of the washroom was dressed in a set of male garments—a loose pair of tailored black pants, a checkered men's shirt with a jacket over it. The facial features, on the other hand, were barely clear due to the fake white long beard, thick moustache, and thick pair of black-rimmed round glasses that graced the otherwise elegant arches of her face. The top of the head, on the other hand, was covered with an old tweed newsboy hat.

Hinduja tightly clutched the wooden walking cane in her right hand and slowly limped in the direction of the table. Picking up the black shoulder bag, she wended her way towards the window and surveyed the surroundings outside. From her office window, the main road in front of the SDM's office was clearly visible. And there, on the main road, next to a giant neem tree, stood the dent-laden and deformed Indica in which she had commuted to her office some time ago, and exactly opposite to it was a tea stall. On the left side bench of the tea stall sat a known masculine frame donning the same black Saint Laurent jacket that she had seen multiple times.

Her gaze traced the surrounding outside as Gurung sipped on some tea from the plastic cup he was holding while his eyes were fixated on the SDM office, specifically on her side of the office.

She chuckled, turned around, and limped towards the back gate from which Bakhtawar and Bhanu had left her office previously.

Quietly closing the door behind her back, she called the peon. He picked up within the first ring.

"Raajan." She said. "I am not feeling well, so I took some medicines. Also, I am resting here inside the office. Divert all the meetings that were supposed to be conducted today to some other date or ask Shekhar Sahab to handle them instead of me just for today. Don't let anyone inside my office for the next three hours. I don't require any help, so you too don't need to come inside."

A respectful 'yes, ma'am' echoed from the other side. Distancing the phone from her right ear, she cut the call. Then she limped her way from the back gate to the main road, some hundred meters away.

Immediately, an autorickshaw pulled up in front of her.

"Where do you need to go, Baba ji?" The driver asked.

Swallowing the saliva down her throat, she relaxed her body and altered her vocal pitch to sound like the opposite gender. "FLF Queen's Court Apartment Complex."

"The one that is ten minutes away from the Dogra Corporation?" He probed while setting the location the Map application on his phone.

"Yes."

"Okay. Sit down." He said, pointing at the back seat. "250 Rupees."

"I am old, not a fool." She said it in the same gruff tone. "Not a penny more than 160."

The driver did feel weird after hearing her voice and noticing her thin frame, but then he anyway cared less. "But Baba ji, it's the busy hour of the day now. I can't just—"

"180 max." She cut him off in between.

The automobile driver sighed. "Alright. Sit down, Baba ji."

Nodding her head, she stepped inside the auto with the help of the cane.

An hour later, she found herself standing in front of an Indian Rosewood door. Next to the door on the wall was a black glass nameplate with a name elegantly carved on it.

F-904

Ms. Manoramaa Pandit.

She gently traced her fingers across the name on the nameplate while the forefinger of her right hand pressed on the doorbell affixed next to the nameplate.

Initially, no one opened the door, but then her eardrums caught the faint sounds of the steady footfall that was inching closer in the direction of the door.

Immediately, the wooden barrier unlatched to expose the frame of a familiar woman.

Manoramaa Pandit stared at the senior citizen before her as her gaze trailed from the heels of his shoe-clad feet to the tip of his tweed newsboy hat. Something felt off about him. His body seemed too thin and petite for a male. On a closer look, there were no visible wrinkles on his face, leaving aside the moustache and beard, plus the look in his eyes and the length of the eyelashes themselves alerted her senses within a split second. Just as she was about to shut the door, a faint voice echoed in the long, empty corridor from the direction of the old man.

"It's me." Hinduja whispered, inching her head closer to the lady standing before her.

Manoramaa's eyes bulged out of their sockets. Her breaths turned uneven as she carefully assessed the 'old man' before her once again. Realization struck her in a trice. She gulped.

Promptly stepping out of the apartment, she scanned the whole corridor thoroughly, finally landing her sharp gaze on the matriarch of the Dogra clan.

Bowing her head at once, she greeted. "Good morning, ma'am."

"How about we enter inside your home first?" Hinduja replied instead.

Manoramaa nodded. "Please." She said, gesturing at the entryway.

Hinduja ingressed inside, with Manoramaa on her tail.

"Where is your brother?" Hinduja asked. "I am here to see him after all."

Manoramaa gulped again. "He is inside the bedroom. The second one."

"Alright." The civil servant smiled. "Let's meet him."

Manoramaa passed a feeble nod, escorting her further into the apartment. Hinduja's gaze surveyed the interiors of the Pandit household. White walls, a brown upholstered five-seater sofa set in the drawing room with a glass center table in the middle, an old LG flat LCD TV affixed to the wall in the front, and a wooden television unit kept just underneath it. The apartment felt cozy superficially, yet it lacked life at the same time. Nothing other than pin-drop silence along with a faint noise of beeps in between greeted her ears. As they ventured inside, her nostrils caught up on the faintly wafting smell of phenyl mixed with Dettol.

Old yet well maintained.

Filled with light, yet devoid of life.

Hinduja looked on as Manoramaa finally stopped in front of an ajar door. The smell of the phenyl mixed with Dettol grew intense along with the sound of the beeps turning a lot more clearer. Diagonally in front of the room they were standing before, there was another bedroom with someone sleeping on the bed inside. Hinduja's gaze fell on the thin and wrinkly toes emerging out of the blanket, with a trail of white cotton saree spread out on the bedsheet.

"Your mother?" she asked.

Manoramaa's eyes followed the line of her gaze. "Yes." She answered. "Alzheimer's—Stage 6."

"Does she remember you or your name?" Hinduja asked, her eyes still on the lady on the bed.

"Hardly." Came a feeble reply.

"And your brother?" She turned her head to meet Manoramaa's eyes.

Blank, just like her own—that's all she could discern.

"No." Manoramaa swallowed.

"Okay." Hinduja nodded. "Let's go inside. I want to see your brother."

"Don't mind me for this." Manoramaa's voice carried hints of hesitation and uncertainty. She rotated the doorknob, giving the door a little push. "But what do you need from my brother?"

"Nothing." The Dogra matriarch chuckled.

The door opened to reveal a completely whitewashed room, with a bed in the middle. On the bed was the bony and pale frame of twenty-seven-year-old Tejas Pandit, lying absolutely flat on a piece of bed pad that was placed on top of a pressure relief mattress. His sunken and lifeless eyes were open, staring straight at the ceiling, with his eyeballs showing no movement at all while his head was shaved, devoid of any hair at all, and sporting an old and deep scar starting from the occiput probably and ending at a spot just a centimeter away from his left eyebrow. Adult diapers were stacked on the floor in one corner of the bedroom next to a set of wooden chairs, while all sorts of medical equipment, ranging from a ventricular drain, an IV stand, an endotracheal tube, a monitor screen, a nasogastric tube that was placed through Tejas's nose, entering into his stomach, and a few other machines, were lined up on both sides of the headboard of the bed.

Unknown to Manoramaa, who was looking at her brother, Hinduja's eyes softened instantaneously as tears accumulated at the corners of her eyes. She quickly wiped them off as her chest tightened and fingers started quivering. Somehow she subdued her quick heartbeats and took in a deep breath.

Meanwhile, Manoramaa promptly strode towards the stack of adult diapers and picked up a wooden chair, stationing it a little further. She did the same with the other chair too.

Signaling at one of the chairs, she asked her boss's wife to sit down. "What would you like to have?"

"A conversation," Hinduja smiled, settling down in the chair. "with you."

Manoramaa glanced at her brother. Then heaving a sigh, she checked on her mother's frame sleeping in the other room diagonally from the room they were in, eventually settling down in the chair.

"How's life, Manoramaa?" Hinduja smiled ever so slightly.

"Fine, I guess." Manoramaa replied, clasping her hands on her lap.

"You didn't go to the office today?"

"Bhai had a routine checkup early in the morning. His doctor was supposed to visit today, so I took a leave."

Hinduja nodded. "I hope you won't complain to your boss about how I hijacked your home out of nowhere."

Manoramaa chuckled. "No, I won't."

"Anyway," Hinduja started. "What's your annual CTC Manoramaa?"

Manoramaa's brows got knitted together, hearing such an out of the box question. "Around Fifty lacs per annum, including the gross salary and all the direct and indirect benefits."

"Woah." Hinduja crossed her right limb over her left one. "Mine is around thirteen to fourteen lacs per annum. Government job, you see." She paused, glancing at Tejas. "And had it been me, I swear, I wouldn't have been able to afford the costs of a mother with stage 6 Alzheimer's disease and a brother lying in a vegetative state for the last ten years. Must be a big burden on your shoulders, right?"

Manoramaa's jaw ticked. She clenched her teeth. "No."

Hinduja smiled with a knowing glint in her eyes. "Such a good daughter and sister you are. I swear I wouldn't have been able to match your level. I would have taken off my brother from life support long ago. Who is going to carry so much burden on their shoulders anyway?"

With her sclera turning a deep shade of crimson, Manoramaa seethed. "What do you want?"

The curve of Hinduja's lips remained intact. "Including all his medical equipment, his regular checkups, his medicines, adult diapers, your mother's monthly medical bills, including all her hospital visits and medicines, the maintenance cost of your apartment, food and grocery bills, electricity bills, gas bills, and everything else that you spend on, how much are you even left with in your bank account at the end of the money?" She paused, intently observing the demeanor of the lady sitting before her. "Why don't you take your brother off his life support? A lot of money will be saved."

Slamming her hand violently on the armrest, Manoramaa immediately shot up from the chair. "He is my brother! And I am the one who will decide if he should be taken off from his life support or not! You are no one to poke your nose in our business, so keep your opinions to yourself. I will keep my brother alive until the day I want!" She hurled out.

Hinduja continued to smile. "Why?" She whispered. "Why are you so eager to keep him alive despite being aware of the amount of pain he is going through every day?"

"He. won't. die." Manoramaa's whole body shivered in rage. "My. brother. won't. die. Not until the day I find out the person behind his current state! Not until the day I kill that person!"

"There we go." Hinduja mouthed, clasping her hands on her knee. "Perfect. I like people who have their goals clear."

"What do you want, ma'am?" Manoramaa probed again, her frame still shivering.

"Not a want, rather it's a give-and-take situation." Hinduja calmly trailed. "You give me something that I want; I will give you something in return that you need." Hinduja paused. Opening the zip of her bag, she took out a bottle of water and handed it over to Manoramaa. "Have a sip." She inched a little closer, patting the armrest of Manoramaa's chair. "Sit down."

"What do you mean?" Manoramaa sighed, settling down in the chair while gulping down water from the bottle.

Hinduja took a look at Tejas's unmoving and sunken eyes. She then turned her gaze back to his sister. "Our choices mold our lives, Manoramaa. They either mend us or break us further."

She smiled. "And the choice that you will make today will either leave you helpless, like you are now, or it will provide you with something that you have been fighting for all along—something that only I can give you and no one else."

Taking a pause, she glanced at the glass dial of her watch.

"The choice is all yours, so place your pieces wisely."

Manoramaa exhaled, slowly understanding the course of the conversation. "Say it."

Hinduja chuckled, staring right into the eyes of the lady before her. "Good. Let's come straight to the point."

The combined smell of the phenyl and Dettol continued to waft in the air while the ECG monitor carried on with its faint systematic beeps.

Half an hour passed.

"Do you even know what you are asking me to do?" Manoramaa massaged her glabella. "My integrity—"

"Choose one, Manoramaa." Hinduja interrupted her. "Your brother." She glanced at Tejas. "Or your integrity." She shrugged.

Silence took over the room as Manoramaa rubbed her face with her palms.

"I repeat." Hinduja reiterated. "Your brother?" She extracted out a red-colored hard-bound file from her bag and kept it on her lap. "Or your integrity?"

Manoramaa clenched her jaw, staring at the file stationed on the lap of the Dogra matriarch. "Brother." She whispered, coming to a firm decision.

Hinduja's lips turned up automatically. Placing the file on Manoramaa's lap, she got up from her chair with the straps of her bag around her shoulder. "Happy Raksha Bandhan in advance, sweetheart."

Saying so, she looked at Tejas for one last time and then swiftly walked out of the room.

Manoramaa got up from her chair and walked towards Tejas. She crouched down, kept the file next to his head on the bed, and feathered a kiss on his forehead. Tears from the corners of her eyes dropped down her brother's bony and paper-white cheeks, eventually slithering down from the edges of his face.

It was a battle. Lifeless and unmoving eyes against watery, unforgiving eyes raging with an intense thirst for revenge. "The cause of all your pain will reach hell soon." She whispered into his left ear. "I will make sure of it."

Then, getting up from her initial locus, she marched straight out of the bedroom and progressed towards the hall.

As expected, the lady was standing in the hall, looking at an old family photograph.

"Karim Bhai and Gurung live in this apartment complex, by the way?" Manoramaa heard her asking.

"They do." She replied. "Karim Bhai lives on the thirteenth floor, while Gurung lives on the twelfth floor."

"Nice." Hinduja nodded. "Also, now that you have the key in your hand, don't open or blast the lock in the next chance you get." She held her hands behind her lower back. "You see, you are not the only one. Even I have to open the lock."

"I won't. Not until you ask me to." Manoramaa's lips curled up feebly. "You have my word."

"Good."

Hinduja swiftly turned around and placed her hand on the doorknob.

"Who are you?" Manoramaa whispered, taking a step forward. "Your marriage with Boss—it's not normal. It's not normal at all. What are your intentions?"

Hinduja didn't turn around this time. "My intentions?" She smiled with a shrug. "Who knows."

***

17th May 2023

| 1245 Hours. |

An hour ago, she had placed a call to the DCP, giving him an excuse of ill health, and quite generously, he had asked her to rest instead of coming to the SIT headquarters.

Gone were the beard and moustache, the male garments garbing her body, the thick rimmed glasses, and the newsboy hat on her head. Adjusting the pleats of her saree, she entered the Dogra Manor just as Gurung drove the Indica away from the pavement.

Venturing inside the great hall, her gaze fell on an anxious Poorna, who was erect on her toes next to another feminine figure.

Hinduja met Poorna's eyes and placed her forefinger on her lips, signaling her to keep quiet.

The unknown lady, on the other hand, with her back towards Hinduja, continued to survey the antique paintings affixed to the right wing wall of the Great Hall.

Perhaps she sensed someone else's presence in her vicinity, because the very next second, the lady turned around to directly peer at Hinduja.

With her hourglass body decked in a white bodycon dress, a white blazer, and a pair of ivory white stilettoes, she looked much younger than her actual age. Her salt and pepper hair were cropped to form an elegant bob, while her makeup was soft and subtle. Her eyes, on the other hand, had a different tale to narrate.

Standing some seventy to eighty meters away from Hinduja, in the gargantuan great hall of the Dogra manor, was Tamanna Bohra, her husband's dead ex-wife's mother.

To be specific, her husband's ex-mother-in-law.

Hinduja smiled, bowing her head. "Good morning, ma'am."

"Who are you?" She was bestowed with a question instead.

"I am Anirudh's new nanny." Hinduja replied demurely.

Tamanna Bohra slowly walked towards her, taking one graceful step at a time. "Till the last time I remember, all the housekeepers and attendants at the manor had a specific uniform? Didn't they?" She smiled, "Then, how come we have a nanny here who is clothed in such a neatly plaited linen saree? It looks like it must have cost a considerable amount too."

"It's a hand me down saree, ma'am," Hinduja answered. Poorna in the background was already sweating bullets.

"Really?" They were finally standing face to face, with just a gap of a meter in between.

"Yes ma'am." Hinduja insisted.

Tamanna Bohra slowly raised her right hand, placing it on the nuptial chain around Hinduja's neck. "Cut the crap, sweetheart." She stepped closer, the faint undertones of her perfume hitting Hinduja's nostrils. "I know you are his wife."

"Well, then," The smile on Hinduja's visage remained intact. "Congratulations."

***

The Queen is now positioning her last few chess pieces on the board. 

Caution : Gear up for the battle.

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