The Nidhi Kapoor Story Read online

  Rujuta on the other hand, had never been to Panchgani. They had been hard at work on the Nidhi Kapoor case for the past few days and a drive to Panchgani sounded like a much-needed break. They also decided to visit Moksha, the ashram where Nishant Kapoor had lived before he moved back to Ronak. Rujuta had already received a letter signed by Nidhi Kapoor so that they could go through the personal effects of Nishant while they were there.

  Prakash helped Rujuta get out of the car. She immediately hugged him. When Prakash saw the passengers of other vehicles sneering at them, he tried to break the embrace. But Rujuta refused to let Prakash go. She wanted to double-check that Prakash was with her for real. She clung to Prakash like a haunted woman. When Prakash asked her, she merely whispered, “Just a bad dream. Nothing. Forget i t .”

  “OK. Dreams aren’t meant to come true. Don’t worry, OK? Let me light you a cigarette.”

  “Yes please. I can do with a Stikk right now.”

  They had just exited the third tunnel on the Mumbai-Pune expressway, still a few hours away from Panchgani. Prakash lit a Stikk, inhaled deeply at it and passed it to Rujuta. Like most other smokers in India, Stikk was their favorite brand. It had the right amount of tobacco, a dash of clove, sprinkles of saffron and other flavoring agents. Within just a couple of years of its launch, it had taken the smoking population by storm.

  Rujuta clung at the cigarette greedily and took deep puffs. Although she was distraught, she still cut an attractive figure. Prakash thought if it were legal to advertise cigarettes in India, Rujuta would make a picture perfect model. The stick of tobacco dangling in thin slender fingers, head titled backward, an independent, strong-willed woman on an open highway.

  After the brief break when Rujuta finally found her composure, she softly said, “Do not ever leave me Prakash. I will kill you if you do so.”

  “How do you know I was thinking of settling down with a simple Maharashtrian woman that Tambe wants to patch me up with?” he said playfully.

  “Go ahead, but be alert at all times. I’d hunt down and kill you.”

  “But Rujuta, I don’t want to die this soon. In fact, ever since I’ve met you, I’ve wanted to live. Live for long. With you. Plus, you know what I want to do when I am retired?”

  Rujuta had known Prakash for some time now. She realized that he was pampering her and was trying to cheer her up. She liked when Prakash did that because it took a considerable effort for him to do so. When he did that, he had the innocence of a five-year-old. “What?” she fussed.

  “I want to be a farmer on some hill. Maybe Panchgani. I’d get some land and we’d grow some strawberries. And when it’s not the strawberry season, we’d drive around.”

  Rujuta smiled. “Deal. Let’s fix a date. How about 1st of January, 2024? You have ten more years to make all the money you want to before we retire to Panchgani.”

  Prakash raised his hand and looked into Rujuta’s eyes. “Deal.”

  Rujuta grabbed Prakash’s hand and pulled herself close to him. She kissed him deeply on his lips and murmured, “Deal baby.”

  ∗∗∗

  Back on the road, Prakash was humming along with music. It was playing a collection of best songs by Pancham. The CD wafted tunes from the movie Aandhi. It was Tere Bina Zindagi Sey by Lata and Kishore. Rujuta complained that it was a sad song. Prakash started applying brakes to the car and said, “You are welcome to find your own ride if you don’t like RD.”

  Rujuta was surprised. She started playing with her eyebrows. “Really? You’d leave your girlfriend alone on a highway?”

  “If she does not like RD Burman, she is disqualified from being my girlfriend,” Prakash replied. Both of them broke into laughter.

  RD’s hits continued to play in the background. Prakash continued to sing along and his finger continued to drum the steering wheel. Every time he’d find the beat, he would smile triumphantly at Rujuta and every time he’d miss the beat, he would eye Rujuta from the corner of his eyes and try harder to catch the beat. Prakash was soon lost in the game. Rujuta continued to smile at Prakash and was back in deep thought over the Nidhi Kapoor mystery.

  As the car raced down the highway, they soon settled in companionable silence. The kind that every couple craves to get into and a handful manage to achieve.

  Once they turned right towards Panchgani from Surur, Rujuta could see the access roads to the mountains. They crossed the town of Wai and started the ascent to Panchgani. “We are almost there. It wouldn’t take us long now,” Prakash said.

  Rujuta interrupted Prakash. “Tell me something. We found a typed letter in Nidhi’s vanity van. The murderer claimed that he came in and he found Payal instead of Nidhi and that’s why he had to kill her.”

  Prakash nodded. He did not know where Rujuta was headed.

  “But Prakash, the fucking vanity van did not have a typewriter in it! The murderer would have typed that letter well in advance. Unless you are telling me that he had typed a letter for each possible scenario.”

  Prakash was dumbfounded. It was so obvious that he had failed to see it. “Yeah! How could I miss it? Not bad, Rujuta. Let me call Tambe and ask him to get Ashok and others look at all the evidence in more detail. Plus, you, you need to give a career in criminal investigation a serious thought. We could surely do with smart people like you in the force.”

  Prakash was glad that his subordinate, a junior, had discovered the vital clue that could help them solve the case. He was unlike other officers who would be insecure about a lower ranked staffer getting the better of them.

  ∗∗∗

  They were driving Rujuta’s Hyundai i20. It was amongst the best and most selling cars in the compact sedan category. Rujuta said that she found the blue interiors sexy. Prakash was indifferent to colors and hues; he wanted to take Tambe and the Police jeep along. Rujuta had flatly refused to travel the long distance in an uncomfortable jeep, accompanied by the bad humor of Tambe. Prakash stopped the car next to a cliff; they had been driving continuously for over three hours now.

  While Prakash flexed his joints, Rujuta lit a Stikk and stared into nothingness, overlooking the cliff. Birds were flying effortlessly in this nothingness. They looked like specks. Just below the horizon she could see tiny serpentine roads where vehicles were crawling like ants. Rujuta loved staring down from such heights. When she was at a height and everything was reduced to a smaller scale, she felt powerful like an Egyptian Queen. She felt that she could control the lives and shapes of her tiny, insignificant subjects. She felt she could reach out and re-draw the roads and play with toy cars and alter the course that they were taking.

  She remembered that she’d done quite a few wild things in life. She suddenly wanted to add one more to that list. Make love on a cliff. She turned around naughtily to Prakash. He was now seated in car, belted up and ready to go. He was fiddling with his phone and was waiting for Rujuta to come back.

  Rujuta yelled, “Prakash! Step out of the car man. It’s absolutely gorgeous here. You are missing out on God’s most beautiful…”

  Before Rujuta could finish what she was saying, she spotted a big black car take the bend in distance. The car was being driven too fast for these curvy roads. As the black blot grew larger, she realized that the car was hurling directly towards them. Even though they were parked on a comfortable bent that could house a truck if it had to, the car continued on its course, towards them. The car was now coming fast. She was appalled and dumbstruck at the audacity of the black SUV. She knew that she was staring at her impending death. Prakash, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to the danger and was still busy with his phone.

  Rujuta started to run towards her car, yelling and waving at the same time. Through the windscreen, she saw Prakash look up to her with a confused expression. He leaned out of the window and waved back at Rujuta. Just when his bald head peeked out, the speeding SUV crashed into Rujuta’s car.

  Rujuta’s ears were filled with the loud sound of metal grinding against metal. And
long screeches and whines of tyres burning against the gravel. The black SUV was now pushing the comparatively small i20 towards the cliff. Rujuta tried to run towards the car but the cars were too far for her to reach in time. She could see Prakash struggling with the seat belt in the twisted metal cage. The airbag, otherwise meant to save lives, had trapped Prakash in the seat.

  Leaving the i20 hanging precariously on the edge of the cliff, the SUV swung back and sped away around the bend. It went away as fast as it had come. The noise made by the collision was now replaced by a deafening silence.

  Rujuta was still running towards the car and just when she thought she was within an arms reach, with surprisingly very little noise, the car started to roll down the gorge.

  Rujuta howled in agony as she realized what was happening. The car was going to fall down the cliff and it was taking Prakash with it. There was no way she could stop it.

  Rujuta, the queen of the world, who could draw and redraw the roads and place the tiny toy cars at her whims, could not do a small simple task of stopping a car from tumbling down the hill. As it went down, the car was breaking trees, dislodging rocks and sending the birds scurrying away into nothingness. In an instant, the car was reduced to a small red patch, getting smaller as it heaved towards the banks of the Dhom Lake below.

  Unlike the movies, there was no explosion when the car finally hit the bottom. Just a loud thud, the noise ringing in her ears for what seemed like eternity. Along with it, she could hear the sounds of life all around her. Birds, stray animals, vehicles in the distance, wind and other things went on with their rigmarole. But one life that mattered to her, that life was surprisingly quiet. There was no trace left of it.

  ∗∗∗

  The only man who had made Rujuta feel alive was now dead. In less than a month, Nidhi Kapoor had brought them closer than most couples come close in a lifetime.

  Most women would have stared at the accident helplessly. Or they would have run on the road, trying to find help. Even Rujuta’s first instinct was to climb down the hill after the car. She wanted to reach the rubble in an instant and pull Prakash out of there.

  But Rujuta Singh was not going to fall prey to her natural instincts that easily. She knew that the car was gone. And most probably, Prakash was gone as well. And with him, the love of her life. She could have given her life to save Prakash. And yet she showed unnatural restraint. She stared at the smoke coming from the car in the gorge below. She took out her phone and dialed Pravin Tambe.

  “Pravin Ji, Listen to me carefully. And stay calm please. The car Prakash and I were traveling in, it has had an accident en route to Panchgani…” She was interrupted by frantic reaction of Tambe on the other side.

  Tambe wasn’t letting Rujuta talk and she couldn’t understand anything that he said. She shrieked, “Tambe listen to me. Let me talk. Shut the fuck up. The car slipped down the hill near Wai. I can see a lake from up here but I don’t know the name. How soon can you send a local ambulance?”

  She had successfully deflected Tambe’s incessant volley of questions that he had barraged her with. She then hung up and stared at the car at the bottom of the hill as if she could get the car to come back up.

  Rujuta was surprised at herself for the way she went about the entire thing. She questioned herself for her lack of remorse at the accident and her composed call to Tambe. She realized that she was not angry. She was not hurt. She was not pained. She was not crying. She was not grieving for Prakash. She was merely left with nothingness. Around her. And inside her. She just sat there, on the ledge, staring into the vacuum that had engulfed Prakash. Her Prakash. Sucked away by the vacuum. The nothingness. The same nothingness that she thought she would’ve ruled like a queen.

  And then, she started to cry. In loud howls. She was so loud that it scared all signs of life around her. The birds and the stray animals scuttled away. The noise of traffic moving in the distance was drowned in her sobs. The air grew still and heavy, as if it wanted to blanket Rujuta from any troubles.

  All the disturbance that Rujuta caused was too little, too late. The worst fears of Rujuta had come true. ACP Prakash Mohile, of the Mumbai Police, was dead.

  22. Day 30, Afternoon. Rujuta’s House.

  Rujuta woke up to the sounds of rains lashing against the French windows of her den, the smaller room. She was wearing an old shirt of Prakash. Several sizes too big, it was comfortable and made her feel closer to Prakash.

  After Prakash’s cremation, she had buried herself in her sorrows and memories of Prakash. In the absence of any male relatives, Pravin Tambe, the closest one whom Prakash had to a brother, had performed the final rites.

  Prakash’s absence had derailed her life like nothing else. She had stopped doing her daily routine of strenuous workout that she did even on days when she was bleeding. She was behind schedule for the first time ever on her assignment. She hadn’t picked her camera in days. Her phone stayed switched off and no one at the publication knew where she lived. She could choose to remain hidden for as long. “If I had died instead of Prakash, no one would even know. Worse, no one would even come to check on me. Except Tarana Aunty maybe,” she thought.

  The thought of Tarana broke her stream of thought. She realized that she hadn’t spoken to Tarana in almost two weeks, since the accident. She was surprised that through the misery, she did not think of her even once. She was now suddenly craving to meet Tarana.

  Tarana was Rujuta’s comfort person. Rujuta could not think of a better way to break her hibernation and get back to being who she was. With Tarana, she was not worried about making a fool of herself. Or about sharing her true feelings. Tarana had seen her grow from a cry-baby into an independent woman.

  She reluctantly removed Prakash’s shirt and got into the shower. She knew that she’d lost a large part of her reason to live. She tried talking to herself, “Come to think of it, if I ever solve the mystery of Nidhi Kapoor, what would I do after that? More than Nidhi’s attacker, I really want to find who was driving that car. And why did he attack us?” And she suddenly burst into tears. This bout was brought by a combination of her longing for Prakash, her helplessness at bringing Prakash back, her agony at the mystery and her anger directed towards no one in particular. She was still in the shower. She remained standing like that for some time.

  All this was new to Rujuta; yearning for a man after he was gone, the bouts of depression and the incessant crying, the gloominess, the longing, the realization that the man was not coming back. One side of her wanted to soak in this experience because she knew that she would never be able to love another man like that. The other part still wanted to wear one of Prakash’s used shirts, feel him wrapped around her and remain buried in a dark room.

  Rujuta eventually stepped out of her house. The moment she stepped out, a man rushed at her from the shadows and said, “Madam, I am Shinde. Tambe Sir has sent me. He is worried about you and wants to speak to you. Can you please call him? If you need anything, I am posted here. I am on duty here the entire day.”

  He pointed at a tea kiosk that she hadn’t noticed earlier. The man then handed Rujuta a chit that had Tambe’s number scrawled on it. “Bad handwriting,” Rujuta thought to herself.

  ∗∗∗

  Prakash’s untimely death invoked different reactions from different people.

  Rujuta had lost her zest for life. She locked herself and her miseries in her house. She tried sleeping, she tried drugs, she tried alcohol and nothing seemed to work. She tried crying as well because she had often heard Tarana say that everyone needs to shed some tears once in a while. She had said that there was scientific evidence that crying helps alleviate pain. When Rujuta cried, she would often get into the shower and cry her heart out. Her loud sobs were drowned by sound of cold hard water attacking her fragile body with all its might. She often thought that water is funny like that. As long as it’s still, it makes for a very pleasant sight. But when it starts moving, it can cut through the thickest layers of the o
ldest rocks.

  When she grew tired of the closed room, she would often go sit at the terrace, smoking one cigarette after another, till her throat would start hurting. Then she would simply sit staring at the sun or the moon. She eventually ran out of her stock of Stikks and since she had no desire to step out, she quit.

  She became a stone. A vegetable. She stopped doing things. They merely happened around her. The scenery was all around her; she became a part of it, rather than being the artist who painted it. She knew Prakash was not coming back. Her biggest grudge was that Prakash left without as much as a goodbye. She questioned the meaning of life and death but she could not find an answer.

  Apart from Rujuta, Pravin Tambe was probably the most affected by Prakash’s sudden demise. He had shaved his head for performing Prakash’s last rites and remained resigned throughout the ordeal. He was too raw to have deep emotions. His thoughts were primal, that of anger, confusion and loss. He just wanted one thing, and one thing only. Revenge. In his long years of service, he had not taken orders from any other man and now that that officer was gone, Tambe did not know what to do.

  Commissioner Shankar Rao Joshi of the Mumbai police came up with the most heart-wrenching eulogy. Everyone knew of Prakash and his unquestionable dedication to work. At a ceremony to honor Prakash, Joshi had spoken eloquently about Prakash leading the police force by example. Although he did not say anything new, the way he spoke made several of his colleagues emotional. Joshi had been at the helm for a long time and was very experienced at these things. He regretted the loss of a fine police officer, but a long career with the police meant that he knew how to cope up with loss.

  There was no word from Nidhi Kapoor. Or Naveen. They were tucked away in the safety and comfort of their respective homes. Prakash to them was a mere accessory, yet another police officer that had died in his line of duty. They did not care for him much when he was alive and they definitely did not spare a thought after he had died.