The Nidhi Kapoor Story Page 6
Neelima meekly nodded.
Nishant yelled at the top of his voice, “You fucking bitch! You go around sleeping with everything that has a thing hanging between his legs and here you are pretending to be cold in front of your own husband!”
Neelima begged, “Don’t talk like that in front of Nidhi. Can we at least send her back to her room?”
“No, we can’t. She needs to see your true colours. Your character. She needs to see the whore of a mother she’s got. She has to know who her real father is. Because I definitely am not. And she needs to learn to stay away from Payal.”
“Nishant!” Neelima was angry and helpless. She knew that anything she said will make Nishant more irate. “I promise I would send her away from Payal. We can send her to a boarding school. I promise Nishu. Just let her go,” she begged.
“You think I am a fool? Don’t I know that the moment I turn my back, you’d go running to your sissy brother and complain? And then he would come after me with everything he’s got. Tell him I am not scared of him. I am Nishant Kapoor and I am not scared of anyone. Especially if that thing is merely 5 feet 5 inches.” With that, Nishant started his raucous laughter.
He paused suddenly and said, “OK, I’d let Nidhi go. You are right. We can send her to boarding school.”
He left Nidhi slumped next to a chair and came close to Neelima. He held her arms tenderly, stared at her shapely breasts and then hugged her.
Neelima looked at Nidhi over Nishant’s shoulders. She could see her daughter bleeding from knees and ankles. Neelima merely closed her eyes and started to cry silently.
“Don’t cry now Neelima. I will not hurt Nidhi. I swear,” Nishant said. He was now caressing her back.
Neelima was still naked and despite her husband’s embrace, she was still scared. She tried to take a chance. “Thank you Nishant. Let’s… let’s please go in. It’s very cold out here,” she said.
Nishant nodded. He held Neelima’s hand and said, “Yeah, it’s cold. Let’s go in.”
Just when Neelima thought that the nightmare was coming to an end, Nishant did the unexpected. He pushed Neelima in the swimming pool. Neelima went down with a loud splash. Neelima knew how to swim but the shock of cold water on her bare skin and the enormity of what Nishant had just done was making it difficult for her to breathe and stay afloat.
Nidhi, at the sight of her mother disappearing in water, rushed to help. She flung herself towards the pool but Nishant caught her deftly. Nidhi stumbled and fell on the cement pavement lining the pool, headfirst.
“Look at your mother. She is such a good actress.” Nishant was still laughing.
Unlike her mother, Nidhi did not try to reason with him. She kept struggling and kicking against him. Most of her shots hit Nishant in the fleshy part of his thighs but one of her misdirected kicks hit Nishant in the groin. He screamed out in pain. He hurled Nidhi like he was shrugging a bug that had bitten him. She landed on her forearm against metal base of a pool lounger. A fountain of blood gushed out from her forearm. Despite the deep cut, she kept crawling towards Neelima. Neelima by now had struggled to the shallow end and had found her feet in the pool. She walked to the edge of the pool but a surprisingly agile Nishant ran the length of the pool and kicked her back in the pool.
“You shall remain in the pool till the time I please. Or I will kill the two of you.” He pulled out a pistol from somewhere.
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Nidhi Kapoor, twelve at that time, took a beating that would have left a fully-grown man begging for mercy. She was red with bruises; her yellow night suit was torn from the shoulders and had turned orange from the blood from the cut in her arm. Neelima was still naked and was half-dead from physical and mental agony. She struggled out of the water. Nidhi removed her night suit and covered Neelima up, as much as a twelve-year-old’s t-shirt could.
The mother and daughter then somehow dragged themselves away from the swimming pool and lied down in the comparative comfort of the grass bed. Going indoors was not an option. They knew Nishant would have locked the entrance and would’ve threatened everyone against helping them. The mother and the daughter embraced each other and waited for the sun to come up and end what had been probably the darkest night of their lives. Hoping that when the sun did come up on the other side of the night, it would bring freedom from the tyranny of Nishant Kapoor.
The two Kapoor women stared up at the moonless night.
Throughout the ordeal, while Neelima cried and mumbled, Nidhi Kapoor, twelve, did not shed a single tear.
7. Day 1, Evening. Vie Lounge.
Just when the jeep was passing through the busy Juhu Tara road, Rujuta spotted the Vie Lounge and she realized that she was supposed to meet some of her friends in the evening.
“I am so fucked!” she exclaimed out loud.
“Did you say something ma’am?” Tambe asked.
“No no, I was talking to myself. Just drop me here and I will come to the station in a bit.”
Rujuta maintained a very chaotic social life and she liked it like that. Though she did not have a steady man in her life, she was happy making use of whatever was available to her. She was discerning in her choice and yet she always had someone to be with. Her success, social life and connections helped her make such plans easily.
Tonight’s get-together was yet another opportunity where she could come back home with someone interesting. Someone like Prakash. Tonight her gang was welcoming one of her friends from college, Sonal, to Mumbai. Since this time the newcomer was Rujuta’s friend, she wanted to take lead and make all arrangements.
Rujuta had decided long in advance that Sonal’s party would happen at the Vie Lounge. It was located bang on the Juhu beach. The beaches in Mumbai were nothing like those in other cities. Beaches here meant harassment by touts and photographers, persuasive pitches by self-proclaimed expert masseurs, pestering salesmen peddling cheap trinkets and other such things. However, Vie lounge gave its patrons privacy from the peering eyes of Mumbaikars hanging out at the beach.
Apart from being an ace photographer, Rujuta was an amateur ethnographer and in her opinion, there was no city like Mumbai to learn the craft. She would observe people, click pictures and try to cast them into stereotypes. She had created many such stereotypes and her favorite was about behavior of Mumbaikars on the beaches on Sundays. She had noticed that for some reason, every Sunday, people would get together in large groups and throng one of the numerous beaches that lined the western boundary of Mumbai. Each flock consisted of friends, families, distant cousins, neighbors, school friends, college friends and all other categories that people in Mumbai classified their acquaintances in. They may not have a lot of money but they always found something to be happy about. Maybe it was the togetherness. Maybe it was junk food. May be it was an escape from the rough test that Mumbai was every other day of their lives. Or maybe it merely was the healing powers of the sea winds that brought the songs and stories from the lands that lay afar.
Rujuta was of the opinion that Mumbaikars have learned to make the most of whatever limited they had. On top of it, they had something that people in most other cities lacked. Empathy towards others, even if they were strangers. Mumbaikars also had this belief that anything is possible in Mumbai. Mumbai thus was a place where every dream, however large, however gregarious, could come true. People had seen these dreams come true. You could choose your dream and Mumbai gave you a platform to erect an empire for that dream. Mumbai was the proverbial city of dreams. There was always that someone, somewhere, who was an example to you that had lived your dream. And their lives added highly inflammable fuel to the fire of your dreams and make it burn brighter. And wilder.
You want to get rich working on a legitimate business? You had Dhirubhai Ambani as an example. You wanted to win the world by hook or crook? You had Dawood and other underworld dons as examples. You wanted to rule the hearts? Nishant Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan and more recently, Nidhi Kapoor were examples. You wanted to excel
at sports? There was Sachin Tendulkar. Politics? Sharad Pawar. Writing? Suketu Mehta. Journalism? Rajdeep Sardesai. Photography? Raghu Rai. You name it and there was a role model, however traditional or eccentric the profession you may choose. And if they’ve done it, there’s no reason why you couldn’t. It only took a strong will and maddening desire to get that dream off the ground. The one with the maddest desire and ravenous fire invariably got to see their tower soar the highest. And if there was one place where all this could happen, that place was Mumbai, home to about two crore lives. Or two crore dreams.
In Rujuta’s opinion, this chase for immortality, the wild chase for dreams and the ecosystem that Mumbai provided made for a brilliant mix. A mix further accentuated by desire, longing, confidence, despair and the never-say-die attitude. Someone had even coined a single term to capture this madness and the method. The spirit of Mumbai. And it was so true. Rujuta herself had had an option to live anywhere in the world but she chose to live in Mumbai primarily because of this spirit. And partially because of her aunt, Tarana.
Rujuta liked Vie because its deck opened to the Arabian Sea and gave her a generous view of the sky she loved so dearly. This was one of the few complaints that Rujuta had with Mumbai. The absence of a clear view of the sky. In fact, if Rujuta wanted, she could complain about a lot. Life hadn’t been easy on her. She could start by complaining about her parents who had deserted her when she was an infant. She could then complain about her upbringing in poverty. She could further complain about not having a steady man in her life. She could also complain about Tarana’s insistence on staying away from her. She had so many more things to complain about. But Rujuta took all of them in stride and tried to make the most of what she had. Her favorite movie of all time, The Shawshank Redemption, had a dialogue that read, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.” Rujuta chose the former.
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She went to the maîtred’ at Vie and before she could put in a request, the tall, impeccably dressed man said, “So sorry ma’am, we are closed to guests for the entire week.”
Rujuta could see frantic activity behind the reception desk. She was surprised at this because she’d been a regular at Vie and she had never seen it booked like that during late afternoon. The cheery, irreverent young woman in Rujuta was back. “What? For an entire week? Did the Ambanis book you or what?”
The man smiled apologetically and with a hint of pride in his voice, said, “Not the Ambanis ma’am. We have been booked by Mr. Taluja’s film company. In fact tonight, they are starting the shoot for their new film with Nidhi Kapoor and Kabeer Khan. Vie is central to the story!”
“What? Nidhi Kapoor! No way!” Rujuta exclaimed.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. And I see you are not being very discreet about your patrons. I’d keep that in mind next time I want to make a reservation. Vikas is still around here?”
Vikas was the head chef at Vie and Rujuta knew him well. The young steward realized his mistake and looked at Rujuta quizzically. “Ma’am, you should have said that you know Vikas Sir. If you want, I can speak to these film guys and can try to find a table for you.”
Rujuta smiled and said, “Nah, it’s OK. I will figure out something else. Oh, and say hello to Vikas.”
Rujuta gave her best smile to the young man and left. She then went to Aurus, walking distance from Vie, to make her reservation. Rujuta was old fashioned like that. Rather than booking over the phone or the Internet, she liked to visit these places and choose the tables that she would want her friends to sit on.
After she was done with the arrangements, she called Prakash.
“What?” He did not believe in greetings.
“Guess where Nidhi Kapoor’s going tonight,” Rujuta said, with a triumphant note in her voice.
“Where?” She could picture Prakash drowned in some files in his boring office.
“Prakash! Dude! You are so boring! Tonight, your Nidhi madam…” she stressed on the word ‘your’ and continued, “is starting the shoot for her new film with Kabeer Khan. And from what I have heard, she would be busy after dinner till early next morning. I am sure you would want to see her while she is shooting, no?”
“And why is this important for me to know?” Prakash asked, apparently indifferent to Rujuta’s excitement.
“Because she is back to work less than 24 hours after her favorite pets were butchered. She is either a strict professional where her work commitment comes above all. Or she is very very stupid. Also, if you want, you can you go ask her some more questions. And if not even that, I am partying close by. You definitely need to loosen up in life. You must meet my friends. They are a fun bunch,” Rujuta again spit everything out in one breath.
“I am not interested in any of those things. Thank you for the tip though.” And just like that, Prakash disconnected.
Rujuta threw up her arms in exasperation. She muttered under her breath, “Prakash Mohile, I am going to get you. Soon.”
She decided to stake out at the newly opened Starbucks at Juhu to mull over the Nidhi Kapoor incident. Although it was about a kilometre away, she decided to walk. Walking helped her clear her head. She missed her stint as a criminal photographer when she would’ve even slept with the ugliest editor to get to work on a scoop like that. Every scoop was like an endorphin rush and was followed by cheers and acknowledgment from the entire team. Every scoop could literally catapult you into the big league of journalists where you were paid to make appearances and invited to talk to gullible students. Now she worked on features and photo-essays and each essay required weeks, even months of investigation, interviews, photographs and editing. However, in the pecking order, the photojournalists were many notches above the regular beat reporters and Rujuta could not complain. Especially when at her age, twenty-six, most of her peers were still scampering around to find the next scoop that would cement their jobs in the hyper-competitive industry.
She ordered her favorite, a double espresso, plugged her earphones and started doodling on her Moleskin. She listed everyone she met at Ronak and soon she was lost in her journal. Music helped her escape to a different planet. A place where she could focus and think about problems at hand. It helped her go far from the chaotic life that she lived. Her choice of music was just like her. Combinations of two extremes. Old Hindi Bollywood music and the modern electronic dance mixes. Right now she was listening to Kishore Kumar. She liked working to soothing medleys of Kishore, Rafi and Mukesh. And when she was agitated, nervous, excited, she wanted the likes of Black Eyed Peas and Parov Stelar to help her cope.
When she really wanted to let some steam out of her system, she would play music loud, let her hair loose and groove to the beats. She would dance till she was exhausted, till her muscles ached, till she was drenched with her sweat. She would then lie down naked on the cold floor to let her body dry and let the sweat evaporate. She loved the tingling sensation of sweat separating from her body and seeping into the cold floor beneath. To her, philosophically, it was her escape from the mortal world into a metaphysical one. And when she got numb from the hard cold floor beneath her, she would step into the shower, alternating between very hot and very cold water to soothe her muscles. She’d been doing this for almost two years now. She discovered the shower bit accidentally when after a house party, after all guests had departed, she found herself horribly naked, horribly drunk and horribly out of her mind. She was dancing alone with Felix, her cat, till she collapsed on the floor out of exhaustion. She then somehow dragged herself to the shower. She did not know why she got in the shower but when she turned on the faucet, she could literally see all her fatigue, pain, anger, frustration, hangover, headache, and guilt running down with water. All of it.
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It was almost ten in the night and Prakash was just changing into his shorts when his phone rang. It was Rujuta. Prakash ignored it at first but when it rang the second time around, he picked it up. Rujuta was yelling into the phone, “Prakash! Where
ver you are, whatever you are doing, leave it and make your way to Juhu as fast as you can. Nidhi is shooting at the Vie and I can see fire and smoke coming out of the building. I am going there now.” As urgently as the phone had beeped, the line went dead.
Prakash, without wasting any time, re-dressed and raced outside to his Bullet. He had a 1999 Royal Enfield Classic that he had bought from another police officer a couple of years back. The bike was his escape; the way music was Rujuta’s.
By the time Prakash reached Juhu, the roads were already choked. He left his bike carelessly in one of the alleys and ran towards Vie. As he turned a corner, he could see the fire brigades and the ambulances blaring their horns, flashing their beacons, trying to inch closer to the restaurant. He continued to run, saw the traffic jam caused by curious onlookers, haphazardly parked OB vans and other vehicles of the media hounds who wanted to get some ‘exclusive’ shots, rather than help those trapped inside. The fact that Nidhi Kapoor was shooting at Vie would have made people gather around the lounge, everyone hoping to catch a glimpse of their heroine. “How do these media guys always get to a crime scene before us?” Prakash muttered to himself.
When he reached the site, the unit members were huddled outside in the small alley leading to the restaurant. Naveen Verma, Kabeer Khan, Vicky Taluja and other important looking men and women were talking animatedly to each other. He identified a few faces but his attention was diverted towards Vicky Taluja, who was shouting into his phone. Right next to him, Verma was waving his hands towards the entrance of the restaurant.
Thick billows of dark gray smoke were coming out of the door. The air was heavy with smell of charred wood and roasted meat. The area around the entrance had turned dark with soot. The fire had been raging for some time. Prakash could not spot either Nidhi or Rujuta in the commotion. He started to run towards the entrance but before he could move, he saw Rujuta dragging someone out from the entrance of the restaurant.