Meesha was no longer young.
Her midriff had long since stopped obeying her dictum , and knees did not bend to her orders.
Her eyesight was failing and her hip would start creaking when she perform these tasks that asked for youthful agility.
For instance , high -dusting. When was the last time she climbed onto her high stool, with a broom in hand to clear the cobwebs gathered on her pelmets. And boy!! The dust!! It is amazing , how everything horizontal gathers dust ,and everything vertical becomes a cobweb magnet.
Sundar used the term "Graveyard". It sounds more colourful in hindi. "Kabristan ", he used to taunt her . "Every picture you hang on the walls , becomes a veritable "Kabristan " for lizards, cockroaches and spiders."
Meesha was determined to clear her kabristaans today. And she had to solicit help. A help that was slippery and elusive . Sona would finish her contractual mopping , sweeping and scrubbing the pots with genie-like efficiency and speed and would be off, before Meesha could even contemplate beyond the apple pie recipes on her Facebook home page.
So , she had to go alone . On the dusting spree.
As Bryan Adams crooned soothingly in the back ground, Meesha attacked the dust with vigour.
The Ganesha painting in the sitting room had puffed up visibly , in the past , two months , and that meant , either something dead and rotting (ugh!) or that the cardboard back had puffed up with moisture and mold.
As Bryan Adams encouraging voice urged her on, Meesha swept her broom in an arc behind the pot-bellied picture, and a packet fell off onto the floor.
"What the heck?" Meesha thought. The first thought was , "Probably concealed love letters."
But the packet was covered in several layers of polythene, and felt hard, irregular. As , Meesha sat on her high stool, struggling for breath, holding back a sneeze, she fumbled and the packet fell to the ground with a metallic jangle and clank.
"I should have stopped then , and replaced the packet , then none of this would have happened ." Meesha was to repeat regrettably , several times , later. But as others would say, it was fate, and Meesha was too soft-hearted.
Well, as fate would have it, Meesha, whose father was trained by the KGB , and who was a master sleuth,in his heyday, had bequeathed some of his inquisitive nature to his favourite child , and Meesha, forgetting all about cleaning graveyards, sat on her dusty stool and opened the packet with her kitchen scissors. Four large gold kangans,(bangles) a nose ring and a well worn wedding ring with a"p" inscribed on it rolled out onto the floor, gathering dust-bunnies , as they went .
Mesha knew exactly whom they belonged to . She had seen them , adorning the living person of the wrinkled Mrs. Priya Bhuyan who lived three blocks away, in the same colony as Meesha.
The difficult part was establishing contact with her.Mrs. Bhuyan had locked her home and gone some where , no one knew where , for the past two weeks .And now , her jewels make an appearance in Meesha's drawing room.
That evening, Meesha gave the gym a miss. A strange mis happening, as it doesn't happen very often. Not that she was really into gymming , heavy weight lifting or running aimlessly on treadmills that went nowhere, its just that she attached great deal of value to the gossip that she gleaned from the gym. How she learnt of new releases and movie stars extramarital affairs from huffing Mrs. Pritam on the treadmill and from puffing Mrs Pinto on the cross-trainer, not to mention the valuable gems of her own , which she scattered so carelessly. But we digress.
Meesha did forgo her gym that day, to take a walk around the Bhuyan House. The driveway was unswept , with dead deodar leaves that sighed upto the doorway with every sad gust of wind. The lawn overgrown. She walked around the house , with a nonchalant air , but took in the house carefully. The lock on the main door was a strange one , not the glistening triple lock , chinese masterpiece which hung on Mrs Bhuyan's wall from a hooked tile.
The bed room windows were sealed . "Sealed , with clinical precision."
Whenever a new turn of phrase appeared in Meesha's mind , She would stop,in her tracks and search, with her mental browser, so to speak, as to its origin.
Hah! Got it! First time her new maid Sona had chopped cucumbers and carrots for the daily salad, her husband had murmured- "Chopped , with clinical precision"
Her midriff had long since stopped obeying her dictum , and knees did not bend to her orders.
Her eyesight was failing and her hip would start creaking when she perform these tasks that asked for youthful agility.
For instance , high -dusting. When was the last time she climbed onto her high stool, with a broom in hand to clear the cobwebs gathered on her pelmets. And boy!! The dust!! It is amazing , how everything horizontal gathers dust ,and everything vertical becomes a cobweb magnet.
Sundar used the term "Graveyard". It sounds more colourful in hindi. "Kabristan ", he used to taunt her . "Every picture you hang on the walls , becomes a veritable "Kabristan " for lizards, cockroaches and spiders."
Meesha was determined to clear her kabristaans today. And she had to solicit help. A help that was slippery and elusive . Sona would finish her contractual mopping , sweeping and scrubbing the pots with genie-like efficiency and speed and would be off, before Meesha could even contemplate beyond the apple pie recipes on her Facebook home page.
So , she had to go alone . On the dusting spree.
As Bryan Adams crooned soothingly in the back ground, Meesha attacked the dust with vigour.
The Ganesha painting in the sitting room had puffed up visibly , in the past , two months , and that meant , either something dead and rotting (ugh!) or that the cardboard back had puffed up with moisture and mold.
As Bryan Adams encouraging voice urged her on, Meesha swept her broom in an arc behind the pot-bellied picture, and a packet fell off onto the floor.
"What the heck?" Meesha thought. The first thought was , "Probably concealed love letters."
But the packet was covered in several layers of polythene, and felt hard, irregular. As , Meesha sat on her high stool, struggling for breath, holding back a sneeze, she fumbled and the packet fell to the ground with a metallic jangle and clank.
"I should have stopped then , and replaced the packet , then none of this would have happened ." Meesha was to repeat regrettably , several times , later. But as others would say, it was fate, and Meesha was too soft-hearted.
Well, as fate would have it, Meesha, whose father was trained by the KGB , and who was a master sleuth,in his heyday, had bequeathed some of his inquisitive nature to his favourite child , and Meesha, forgetting all about cleaning graveyards, sat on her dusty stool and opened the packet with her kitchen scissors. Four large gold kangans,(bangles) a nose ring and a well worn wedding ring with a"p" inscribed on it rolled out onto the floor, gathering dust-bunnies , as they went .
Mesha knew exactly whom they belonged to . She had seen them , adorning the living person of the wrinkled Mrs. Priya Bhuyan who lived three blocks away, in the same colony as Meesha.
The difficult part was establishing contact with her.Mrs. Bhuyan had locked her home and gone some where , no one knew where , for the past two weeks .And now , her jewels make an appearance in Meesha's drawing room.
That evening, Meesha gave the gym a miss. A strange mis happening, as it doesn't happen very often. Not that she was really into gymming , heavy weight lifting or running aimlessly on treadmills that went nowhere, its just that she attached great deal of value to the gossip that she gleaned from the gym. How she learnt of new releases and movie stars extramarital affairs from huffing Mrs. Pritam on the treadmill and from puffing Mrs Pinto on the cross-trainer, not to mention the valuable gems of her own , which she scattered so carelessly. But we digress.
Meesha did forgo her gym that day, to take a walk around the Bhuyan House. The driveway was unswept , with dead deodar leaves that sighed upto the doorway with every sad gust of wind. The lawn overgrown. She walked around the house , with a nonchalant air , but took in the house carefully. The lock on the main door was a strange one , not the glistening triple lock , chinese masterpiece which hung on Mrs Bhuyan's wall from a hooked tile.
The bed room windows were sealed . "Sealed , with clinical precision."
Whenever a new turn of phrase appeared in Meesha's mind , She would stop,in her tracks and search, with her mental browser, so to speak, as to its origin.
Hah! Got it! First time her new maid Sona had chopped cucumbers and carrots for the daily salad, her husband had murmured- "Chopped , with clinical precision"
Sealed!! Who seals their bedroom windows , when leaving for sudden inexplicable absences? Mrs. Bhuyan, in particular ,was more likely to trumpet her goings and comings with more vigour than any one of them.
Then , it was sealed with cotton padding , as one would seal one's AC vents , with a layer of brown sellotape. Broad brown transparent sellotape. Now , that rang a loud bell in Meesha's head , which wouldn't quieten , even with tandoori chicken for dinner.
After dinner , She went into a hush -hush whispering session with her husband Sundar, which made the kids roll their eyes.
The two were busy on the laptop and the phone for a long time into the night, and Meesha got up the next morning looking fresh and determined , not wilty and bleary eyed , after a night of little beauty sleep.
Sona came at her predetermined time of 9am, sashaying and salaaming, and finding her employer busy with the laptop, as ever.
Sona marched into the kitchen, kept the small bag she always carried on the counter, and hitching her salwar, busied herself with scrubbing the pots and pans .
Mesha spoke from the table -"Why did you take the brown sellotape and cotton from the kids' room , without telling me ? Lene ke pehle bata to dena tha, Sona !(you should have told me before taking)"
A pause in the clattering. Now , Meesha grabbed her open laptop, and marched into the kitchen . With her baffling habit of mixing the serious with the trivial, she asked "How did you dispose off Mrs. Bhuyan ? Alone , or with help."
Sona's back was turned till now. Now, she turned and faced her employer. She had a strange expression on her face . A fearsome calmness , almost contentment , which was never seen hitherto. She calmly wiped her hands on her kurta, and walked till her packet , from which she extricated a pair of surgical gloves.
Meesha smacked her head almost, why , the gloves , of course , how could she not have seen the gloves?
Sona had a half -smile on her face . "You should not have done the high-dusting yourself Mem-sab, now you will pay the price ." With this she lunged towards the Knife stand , which Meesha quickly slid out of her reach. The knives clattered to the floor.
"Tumhe pakde jane ka dar nahin tha?" (weren't you scared of being caught?)
Meesha continued calmly.
"You will be the one to be caught, Mem sab, I leave no fingerprints anywhere, Gloves see?"
Sona raised her glove hands , and with amazing athletic agility, flicked a knife off the floor with her toe , and caught it mid air.
"Is this a good time to intervene?'
A disembodied voice asked from the laptop, and Sona's hands froze.
"Yes , it is." Meesha answered breathlessly.
The door crashed open , and in a moment , the house was full of bristling gunmen. Police arrested Sona for charges of murdering Mrs. Bhuyan and looting her personal effects, plus attempt to murder Meesha.
Mrs. Bhuyan's home was forced open by police , and her decomposing body recovered from her bedroom.
On the third day, Mrs. Pinto, while skipping the rope, in gym , asked Meesha, "Tell me , how did you deduce that Sona was behind this from a mere sellotape."
A smiling Meesha ,running on the treadmill, huffed -"The secret lay in just one phrase," with clinical precision"
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