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Word Count : 5200

Caution : Some extremely sensitive topics are involved in the chapter ahead. Please read at your own discretion.

Audio Theme : Jiya Laage Na | Talaash |

Target : 120 Votes

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56 | Save Them All

18th May 2023

| 0030 Hours |

| Midnight |

"What are your names?" She asked the two men following behind her while progressing surreptitiously towards the grove behind the manor.

"Ramanappa," she heard from her left.

"Nikhil" came a reply from right.

"Ramanappa, Nikhil," she whisper-called, her eyes roaming around, surveying every corner of the place they were entering. "Does any one of you have an extra tactical knife?"

"I do," Nikhil replied in bare whispers.

"Pass it to me." Still aiming her gun at any potential danger that was to come later, she directed her left hand behind her back. Nikhil placed the tactical knife in her hand.

"What is the size of the grove?" Clutching it tightly from its hilt, she pushed it inside her vest. "And what kind of trees grow here?"

"The size is around 2 acres," Ramanappa murmured. "And it has mostly Maple and Banyan trees in it, but there is one Gulmohar tree too."

"That is huge." Hinduja sighed, squinting her eyes to examine the outlines of the trees they were slowly approaching closer to, under the dim beams of the emergency light Ramanappa was carrying. "Alright, no problem." She remarked. "Both of you move to the other end of the grove."

Both the security professionals worriedly glanced at each other.

"Madam, we can't leave you alone here." Ramanappa stepped forward.

Hinduja shook her head. "In case any of those intruders are here at the grove, the only way to counter them is to surround them from both sides." She explained. "The vegetation on the other end seems much denser than this end. So you both go there and search while I stay here and search. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Sure."

From her purview, she witnessed both the men furtively stepping forward.

"By the way, ma'am," Ramanappa turned around. "Before coming here, Niranjan sir had already called Manoramaa madam and Gurung sir to inform about this situation." He paused. "Manoramaa madam was back in Delhi at that time. So she and Gurung sir might reach here soon."

Hinduja scrunched her brows together in confusion. "Ms. Pandit came alone? Where is Mr. Dogra then?"

Nikhil gulped. "He didn't leave with Manoramaa madam, actually. He had some other work, so he didn't go with her. So, he too might reach the manor anytime now."

Despite the confusion that was weighing heavily on her mind, she nodded. "Okay." Licking her lower lip, she tipped her chin. "Go ahead with the plan now."

Both the men nodded and stealthily patrolled towards the other end of the grove.

She swallowed, extracting her phone from the bulletproof vest. Switching it on, she turned on the flashlight and tucked it half in half out of the vest, letting the light fall to the front.

With the pistol in her right hand, aiming forward at nothing in particular, she slowly charged forward.

The weather was humid. She lifted her left hand to tug up the neckline of her kurta to wipe off the sweat accumulating on her chin and forehead while dried leaves and twigs crackled under her footfall.

Her gaze fell on the multiple maple trees she was passing by. They were tall, with a dense crown of emerald foliage.

As she moved a few more meters ahead, she noticed something strange. In the midst of all the maple trees with green-colored leaves, there was one that stood apart from the others out and out. Not green, from what she could make out under the flashlight, but its leaves were a striking scarlet in appearance. And directly in front of it, around some ten meters away, was a Gulmohar tree. Perhaps this was that one Gulmohar tree that Ramanappa was telling about.

Ignoring the two from her purview, she inspected the whole area around her.

Out of nowhere, her ears caught a sudden blasting crack of a gun firing nearby. Her eyes widened as a flock of birds passed over the canopies of the trees, while her digits tightened around the grip of the pistol as she rushed in the direction of the noise.

Twigs, leaves, detached roots, dried pieces of bark, and knots of mud cracked under her feet as she dashed ahead, guided by the bright rays of the flashlight, without looking back.

Adrenaline gushed through her nerves as one after the other, she heard three more gunshots.

When her eyes took in her surroundings, she noticed that the sight of the dense maple leaf canopies was now replaced by even denser Banyan tree canopies, with their massive aerial roots hanging down to the ground.

But something else other than that caught her attention altogether—the cracking of dried twigs and leaves under her feet coming to an abrupt standstill.

Her eyes immediately dropped down to find nothing on the area she was standing on except mud, as if it were cleared of all the dried parts of the vegetation around. But directly in front of her were a lot of leaves scattered on the ground in the formation of a circle, almost forming a heap.

She swallowed and sighed.

It was a trap.

She stopped on her tracks then and there. Instead, smiling feebly, she raised her head to look up. And quite alike to what she had guessed, there on one of the larger branches of the Banyan tree she was standing close to was a dark figure sitting on the branch, his legs dangling down.

"Up for a fight, Mrs. Dogra?" She heard a gruff voice from above.

She chuckled, her eyes still on the dark figure of the unknown intruder. "Always."

A deafening thud resonated against the giant barks of the Banyan trees around as the man jumped right in front of her.

She aimed the pistol at his right limb and pulled on the trigger. The crack of the fourth gunshot of the night echoed against the outside region of the gargantuan Dogra manor walls as a loud yelp erupted from the mouth of the man before her.

But instead of dropping down on the ground, he charged forward and got hold of her leg, instantly pulling her down to the ground along with him, her back lining against the anterior side of his torso.

Hinduja landed on the previously rain-soaked but now dried-up porous soil. Her rugged breathing matched with his as she pulled out the tactical knife from her vest and plunged it straight into his abdomen.

"Bitch!" He barked, tearing away a piece of her Kurta from its sleeves after a failed attempt at snatching away her tactical knife. Instead, she stabbed him on his cheek, penetrating the sharp edge of the knife through its multiple layers.

Another ear-splitting howl fell on her eardrums, just as she snatched his pistol away from him and threw it far away, her face rubbing against the ground. "Seems like your father hasn't taught you well." She gnashed her teeth as soil entered her mouth, caking against her teeth and tongue.

She hissed as he twisted her left hand behind her back. "Wait, I will teach you what my father has taught me." He seethed. "Also, give me an answer! In what condition do you want your son? Half-dead like his father or completely dead like a few of his other relatives?"

Her body movements came to a standstill for a second as she stared at the distant nothingness wide-eyed, a flabbergasted expression marring her face, as if in a stupor, unable to wind her head around his words.

But then she sensed him inching her hand closer to her chest. Gritting the molars on her lower jaw against the ones on her upper jaw, she elbowed him in his stomach and turned her body around in one go.

"What do you mean?" She spit out, breathing fire.

"Oh so, you don't know?" He chuckled. "Alright then, no options anymore. Your son shall achieve the same fate as his father—Half-dead. But unlike his father, he will be in that condition for the entirety of his life. Sounds good?"

"What do you mean by that? Out with it!" In a trice, she pulled out her pistol from the vest, pressing it against his chest, all set to pull on the trigger, when out of nowhere she sensed a towering and robust masculine frame marching towards them from a little distance.

She tediously arched up her chest to let the rays of the flashlight on her phone, tucked tightly inside her vest, fall on the speedily approaching man.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips even though her head was all jumbled up.

Within a second, the heavily injured unknown intruder was heaved up from the ground by his neck while his legs dangled helplessly in the air.

The Dogra Patriarch hauled the man to his chest, positioned both of his sturdy arms around his neck, and twisted it around, breaking it in one go just as she heard a loud crack originating from the stranger's neck.

Releasing the man from his hold, Mahadevan let him fall lifelessly on the ground.

"Knife." He commanded, his enraged gaze falling on her.

She nodded, passing on the knife to him while getting up on her feet.

Taking hold of the knife, he crouched down and rammed it right into the left side of the man's chest. Gore splattered across Mahadevan's face, dripping down his cheeks, as he pulled out the serrated weapon and plunged it again, this time into each of the man's eyes, one by one. Cloudy white fluid mixed with blood flowed out from the edges of the unknown intruder's brows.

Hinduja took a step back, witnessing the scene in front of her with her eyes agape, while her mind subconsciously wandered around the words she had heard from the now-dead man's mouth a few minutes before.

She saw her husband quickly getting up from the scene. He tossed the knife away and zoomed towards her. Frantically grabbing her arms, he propelled her closer to his chest.

"WHY DID YOU COME HERE ALONE?!"

She shivered, still staring at him with wide eyes.

"Sir!" Ramanappa called out, his eyes landing on the body on the ground as he and Nikhil hurried towards the husband and wife.

Clenching her jaw, Mahadevan hurled out, "What?!"

"Five of them had intruded in." Nikhil gulped. "Four of them were shot dead." He then glanced at the body below. "And the fifth one is dead too."

Mahadevan breathed in deeply, his tensed muscles creating an outline against the fabric of the formal white yet bloodied shirt. "Where are the bodies?"

"A little away from here." Ramanappa replied.

Turning his face away from the two security personnel, he looked at her, his red eyes raging with a satanic fire. "This. is. not. over."

And then she saw him striding in the direction of the spot where the rest of the four bodies were, along with the other two men.

She glanced at the body lying next to her feet for one last time and followed behind the three men.

Less than a minute later, all four of them found themselves standing next to a total of three dead bodies. The fourth one was lying almost six meters from the rest three.

"What the fuck!" Ramanappa exclaimed while crouching down.

All four dead bodies had one commonality: their faces were brutally battered and bruised beyond deformity, with blood gushing on the ground, as if crushed by a heavy piece of rock or stone.

"Who the fuck did this?" Nikhil marched towards the dead body of the fourth intruder. "Their faces weren't crushed before we left to inform you!"

Mahadevan chuckled mirthlessly. "I bet the fifth one must be in a condition no better than these four—now that we are here."

The moment he finished with the sentence, both the security professionals rushed back to the second site where the body of the fifth intruder was lying.

Meanwhile Hinduja roamed her eyes around, in search of the potential weapon, which was most probably a large piece of rock or stone with blood smeared on it. But she found nothing.

"Go back to the manor." She heard him ordering from behind.

She shook her head. "No."

"Don't fucking test my patience, Hinduja!" He turned her around by her right upper arm with a jerk. "Go back to the manor, this instant! RIGHT NOW!"

"I guess you didn't hear what I said." She seethed, her ebony eyes clashing against his Earthy ones. "I am not going back."

Mahadevan shut his eyes close in infuriation. "Don't—"

"Sir! The face of the fifth one is now crushed too!"

He nodded, his eyes still in direct contact with hers. "Ask all the guards to spread around the whole area surrounding the manor." He paused, turning around. "There is no danger anymore."

"But sir, some one else must have been here too. Their faces---" Nikhil objected.

"What did I ask you to do?" Mahadevan roared.

Both the men bowed their heads at once. "Yes, sir!"

Hinduja felt him painfully gripping her wrist and dragging her to the manor along with him. He was walking way too fast for her to catch up with his speed.

"Sir, ma'am" She heard one of the two security men mumbling hesitantly. "There is something else that we need to tell you."

Mahadevan stopped dead in his tracks. "Don't force me to wring your necks apart." He growled.

"Sir, its really strange and important at the same time." Ramanappa muttered, taking a step back.

Just then, the lights in the manor turned on, along with the lamp posts in the gigantic grass filled compounds surrounding the manor.

Hinduja glanced at the manor, while Mahadevan stared at the two men. "What is it?"

Nikhil replied, "Sir, the fifth person was eliminated by you and ma'am, right?"

Mahadevan tilted his head in a faint nod.

Nikhil continued. "The thing is, out of these four here, I and Raman shot only three of them." He pointed his finger at the three dead bodies lying to close to each other nearby. "The fourth one on the other hand—we don't know who shot him." He signaled at the dead body of the fourth intruder.

Both Hinduja and Mahadevan scrunched the space between their brows at once. "You didn't shoot him?" Mahadevan probed.

"No." Came a quick reply.

"Could it be someone from the rest of the security team?" Hinduja suggested.

"No ma'am." Nikhil shook his head. "I don't think so."

"We will have this discussion later." Mahadevan cut them off and resumed with dragging her out of the grove, back to the manor.

Along the way, they came across Manoramaa, Gurung and Niranjan and the rest of the team that was now rushing towards the compound.

"Gurung." He called out.

"Ji Saab ji?" The man stepped forward, appearing absolutely serious for a change.

"The bodies are in the grove. Five of them."

"I'll do the needful Saab ji." He bowed.

"Manoramaa."

Manoramaa came forward. "Yes, sir?"

Before Mahadevan could say anything else, Hinduja voiced out. "Where are Anirudh, Geeta, Poorna and the rest of the attendants?"

"They are all safe ma'am." Niranjan replied.

Just then, a loud toddlerish wail resonated inside the great hall of the Dogra manor, as Geeta stepped out from one of the meeting chambers, with a weepy Anirudh in her arms.

The boy wailed and whimpered even louder the moment his watery and swollen eyes fell on his mother. Puffing up his red cheeks, he made grabby hands in her direction. "Mamma!"

Hinduja's heart dropped into the pit of her stomach, her eyes teared up, as she made an attempt to rush towards him. Instead she was met with resistance in the form an extremely tight and almost painful grip around her wrist. She tried to release herself from his hold, but to no avail.

The toddler's cries as a result pierced through the giants walls of the great hall, reaching the zenith of loudness.

"Geeta!" Mahadevan roared.

Geeta jumped in her place, shivering uncontrollably. "Ye—yes, sir?"

The atmosphere was chilly enough to cause every other person present in the hall to shudder, quake in their boots, while gulping a ball of fear down their respective throats.

"Pass him to Manoramaa." He commanded, while successfully subduing the movements of his wife.

"Leave me." She mumbled, her tear slithering down her cheek, her gaze fixated on the whimpering toddler a few meters away.

"You should have thought about the consequences before stepping out of the manor." He seethed into her ears.

Meanwhile, the tension brewing between the patriarch and the matriarch caused everyone around to drop down their gazes. Manoramaa on the other hand strode towards Geeta, heaved Anirudh out of her arms and marched straight towards his playroom in the East wing of the manor without looking back.

Mahadevan's fingers rigidified around Hinduja's wrist. She hissed as he dragged her along with him, while ascending the stairs.

Hauling her across the corridors, he eventually reached their bedroom. Shoving it open with one violent push, he dragged her inside, and closed the doors behind him.

The force he applied almost caused her to fall down until he himself stabilized her. "What were you thinking while going out, huh?" He growled, "You think it's that easy?!"

"What did you expect me to do then? Sit down and watch the matinee show?" She shot back.

In a second, he heaved her closer by her waist. "What seems so uncomplicated to you is not that uncomplicated in true sense! Every coin has two sides, Hinduja."

"What do you mean?"

He ducked his head with a mirthless chuckle. "I meant exactly what I said." He lifted his head, clashing brown against black. "Every coin has two sides and none of the sides are benign at all. Now its upon you how you interpret it."

She clenched her jaw, closing her eyes. "Leave my hand, I need to see Anirudh."

"You do realize that you had put your life in jeopardy some time back, don't you?" He tried to search something on her facial expression, something that was akin to a little semblance of the truth.

"I don't care!" She pushed him away, infuriated. "The attendants were in danger too! Yet the security personnel came to safeguard me first!"

"But I do care, damn it!" He growled, holding her jawline tightly, pressing her cheeks. "Because I need you alive and I need you by my side!"

She shuddered hearing the word 'alive' while ignoring the rest of his sentence. Remembering what that man had told her in the grove, she uttered it all word by word, "In what condition do you want your son? Half-dead like his father or completely dead like a few of his other relatives?" She paused and swallowed. "That's the question that that man asked me in the grove." Holding the collars of his shirt, she stepped forward. "I want my child safe. So, tell me, what did that man meant by that question?"

Mahadevan's eyes widened and his hands dropped down from her cheeks. He blinked thrice, entering a state of daze. "Nothing." He gulped, taking a step back. "It's just an empty threat, I assure you. Nothing will happen to Anirudh."

Her lips wobbled, while her stance turned fierce. "We are talking about the safety of our child here! I won't compromise with the truth here."

"At least, I am not hiding things like you, am I?" He trailed blankly, tugging on the lower end of her hair forcefully.

Immediately, a waist length mass of wavy black hair—a wig—tumbled down on the floor from her head, revealing a voluminous black wavy short-bob that reached a little below her ears in length.

She gasped, looking at him with shock.

"A woman who hides even what her real hair looks like? Huh?" He smiled. "Or the fact that she is an insomniac and takes sleeping pills to help her fall asleep?" He creeped closer, a maniacal look in his eyes. "I am not wrong, am I? You do take sleeping pills. That's the reason you sleep almost like a dead person at night and need multiple alarms to wake you up early in the morning and if not that, then you stay awake the whole night. Isn't it?" He chuckled. "The bottle that contains your sleeping pills, its with me for sometime now. That's what you were searching for, in the closet, a few days ago, back in our apartment, weren't you?"

Hinduja gulped shaking her head while stepping back. "You don't know anything."

She could feel it again, like that day in the apartment when he had dropped that glass pen stand on the office floor, by mistake. The atmosphere was shifting towards something chilly---something she found extremely hard to deduce. It was in the way, he was staring at the wall behind her, absolutely blankly or the way his whole body was shaking. She noticed that he was sweating profusely too.

"You—you will never understand how much you mean to me." He whispered. "Will you?"

"You will never understand how much I fear seeing your wounds or blood." His hands trembled vigorously as sweat droplets trickled down his forehead. "Will you?"

His lips quivered as he stepped forward.

"I thought you will. Then, why are you not understanding?" He begged, desperately.

Trepidation gnawed her at the base of her heart as she observed something weird. Despite the fact that he was standing on his two feet, he was rocking himself in a periodic to and fro motion as if comforting his own self.

No matter criminal or clinical, she was a psychologist and the behavioral symptoms that he was displaying, reminded her of something she didn't even wanted to think about.

Hinduja took a step back to check his reactions. And expected he didn't follow her movement, instead, he continued staring at the wall behind her, still rocking his upright frame in a to-and-fro motion. Lifting his arms up, he wound them around his upper body.

Then, in a flash, she saw him dropping down on the floor, supporting his back against the wall in a corner. Folding his limbs up, he placed his head on his knee, while looping his arms around his legs. He resumed rocking himself to comfort. "I fear—seeing your blood. I don't want to lose you. I can't lose you." He pleaded, his eyes still on wall. "I don't want to see you bleed like he . . . like he was bleeding that day." He whispered, shaking his head.

Hinduja's eyes shot out of their sockets as she started sweating bullets.

No no no no no no no—

She hoped against hope for it to be not what she thought it was.

Taking gentle steps forward, she crouched down in front of him. "Who?" She mouthed.

"Grandpa." Mahadevan mumbled fearfully. "I don't want you to bleed like he was bleeding." Suddenly, he started chuckling, his eyes blank. "Have you ever held a human head by the way? A head that has been chopped off from the body?" He asked, enthusiastically.

Her breathing ceased for a second.

No no no no no no—

It can't be. It definitely can't be.

"No." She replied as tears crawled down her cheeks wetting her eyelashes.

His lips quivered as he pouted. "I have." He started rocking himself even more vigorously. "I have held my grandfather's chopped head in my hands." He paused, as she placed her palm on the left side of his chest. His heart beat was extremely fast.

She fell on her back with a thud in disbelief, her mind absolutely numb.

"You know," He resumed with a smile. "He knew it. He knew what was going to happen to him so, in his will, he specifically mentioned only mine and Didaa's name to come and see him immediately after his death. No one else was allowed until we came to see him. No one." He gulped, and sobbed faintly. "I was holding his head while Didaa was holding his body and crying. I even asked the doctor to sew his head back to his neck and wrap his whole body with a cloth along with his neck so that we don't rouse any suspicion. Only his hand was peeking out a little and I held onto it until the last moment." Unlooping his arms from around his legs, he spread them apart. "Blood. So much blood." He paused, placing his hand her cheek. "I don't want to see you in that much blood. I don't ever want to see you bleed the way they were bleeding."

The space between her brows formed creases. "They?"

He chuckled, as his pupils dilated. "Like Didaa. Like Grandpa. Like---"

"What happened to Didaa?" A cloak of fright covered her whole as she stared at him while still sobbing softly, patiently awaiting his response. 

"The matter in side the skull, the brain—its so weird to touch." He made a disgusted face. "Cerebral cortex is one of the parts. Grey matter, that's what it is called, right?"

She nodded feebly with a gulp.

"Have you ever touched it?" He asked.

This time, along with her mind, even her body went numb. "No" She answered, benumbed.

"I have." He shot back. "I have held my Didaa's brain so that I could save her. She died in the end though." He looked on sadly. 

"When I found her dead, she was naked—from head to toe. Her body had bruises all over. She was bleeding from all over, even from there." He paused, rocking himself, his dilated pupils concentrating on the floor. "They had cut open her stomach, and a tiny little leg was jutting out of it." He smiled in remembrance. "It was my little cousin brother's leg." At the drop of a hat, his expressions molded into something else all over again. "He was dead too. And you know what? They had even cracked open Didaa's skull." He chuckled. "And that's how I got a confusion. Why do doctors call it grey matter if its white and red in color? Like blood red?" He looked on with confusion, a sense of perplexity shadowing his visage. "Because when I tried to stop all those fluids and other things from flowing out of her skull with my bare hands, I noticed that all of that matter was actually whitish in color mixed with the red hue of blood." He curled up his lips in distaste. "Everything was smelling foul there. Even my hands were. And exactly fourteen days later, when I was getting married to Shivalika, even on the wedding altar, I had two major fears." He gulped, shivering violently. "I feared seeing my soul burning in that holy fire and I feared smelling my didaa's brains and blood on my hands."

He then inched closer to her, and looked at her as if he was grieving, "But when I saw her that day in that state, I faced the worst dilemma of my life. I didn't know what to do first." He paused, rubbing his face vehemently as if trying to erase something from within. "I didn't know if I was supposed to cover my Didaa's naked form first? Save my brother first? Save my Didaa first? Or cry first?" He started chewing his nails. "So I did what I could. I tried to save her. I tried to put all that matter that had come of out of her skull back inside it. I tried to stop the bleeding."

"She died at end though." He mumbled glancing at her.

"Please don't bleed like they did." He pleaded, miserably, fresh tears gliding down his wet cheeks as he continued to rock himself to comfort like a child. "Please don't die like they did. With great difficulty, I have learnt to live because of you, emerging from my initial state of plain existence. Don't leave me to completely die this time. "

Everything around Hinduja came to a sudden halt. Her whole world was tumbling down a thread that was in the hands of the man before her. Her husband.

She wept and inched closer to him, engulfing him in a hug. She just didn't know what to do. She was a psychologist yet she didn't know what to do.

"Do you see it too?" She heard him whispering next to ear.

Retracting back, she tipped her chin fearfully. "What?"

He was staring at something. She traced his line of gaze to notice that he was staring at a blank spot behind her, on the floor of their bedroom. Pointing his finger at the same spot, he asked again, "Do you see it too?"

She examined that spot once more, only to find nothing at all, other than the Victorian era marble flooring. "What?"

"Grandpa's head." He muttered, still pointing at the same point. "I can see Grandpa's head there and so much of blood. His blood."

A loud and helpless shriek erupted out of her mouth, as she cried inconsolably.

She promptly placed her hands on his shoulders and started shaking him, trying to help him out of the episode.

Excessively fast heartbeat.

Rapid Breathing rate.

Sweating.

Hallucination.

Palpitations

How could she not understand it? How could she not understand it out of all people?!

Her husband of almost six months was going through a PTSD episode and instead of helping him, she had subconsciously, aggravated it further.

Not only that, she had triggered him into it as well.

"Inu." She heard him beg monotonously while she was herself crying despairingly. "I see her too." He continued, staring at another spot on the floor. "Cover her please, cover her. She has been violated. Her stomach is cut open. My brother's leg is jutting out of it. Her skull is cracked and she is lying in a her own blood. Save her. Save grandpa. Save my brother." He muttered lifelessly. "Save them all."

"You saved me. You can save them all too. And please don't leave me like they did. Please don't bleed like they did. Please don't die like they did."

"Dev!" Hinduja shouted, shaking his shoulders as her own chassis quivered with violent sobs.

"I am here! I am right here! You are safe! I am safe! Nothing has happened. I am not bleeding." She held his face, trying to distract him from that site on the floor. "Dev, look at me! Please look at me!"

"Please don't die. Please don't abandon me." He mumbled, staring at that same spot. He was respiring rapidly, sharp palpitations taking over his large frame while being soaked in his own perspiration from head to toe.

"Dev!" She tried to curb her own wails, kissing him on his cheek and forehead. "Calm down. Please calm down. Breath! Please breath. Look at me. I am safe. Nothing has happened to me. Please breathe!" 

***

I hope everyone is okay?

I guess all the readers understand now, that even Mahadevan's diary is not the complete source of truth. In his diary entries, he has mentioned nothing about what he had witnessed in person during Darshna's and Giriraj's deaths. This is known as manipulation of narration, the very reason why Mahadevan is the master manipulator out of all. Imagine a person who hides and manipulates things from even his own diary entries? That's Mahadevan Dogra for you.

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