Murder

Murder

Love can also be deadly

My flight arrived at Delhi International Airport a bit later in the evening then planned,  unfortunately the flight was delayed by more than an hour due to weekend rush at the airport. As soon as I passed through the immigration I switched on my mobile phone, I saw two missed calls from my taxi driver Raghu. I had informed Raghu a day before, from New York that I will arrive around 10 PM, it was now mid-night. I thought Raghu must be waiting for me outside in the parking area. I rushed through baggage collection and headed straight to our usual spot, pillar no. 10 at the parking bay, where Raghu had picked me up several times before, but there was no sign of him. He has always been on time, I wondered what happened? I gave him a call, “Raghu where are you? I thought you are already at the airport”. Raghu replied, “Namaste Sir, Sorry Sir, I got delayed because there was a big traffic Jam near Ghaziabad and then I had a flat wheel, but I am very close should reach in another 10-15 minutes”. I replied back “Raghu, please hurry up we are very late and I have to reach home fast, I am waiting for you at the usual place”. I had tense 10-15 minutes of wait; I started thinking about my mother and the phone call I received from her just before I boarded my flight from New York. She sounded very angry and desperate. Initially I thought it’s perhaps the usual arguments between my parents. I have grown up seeing it and I did not pay much attention to it for a while until she said something, which I have never heard her say before. I got a bit worried. While I was waiting I thought of giving her a phone call, but then as I was about to do so a voice came from behind, “Namaste Sir, Raghu here”.  It was Raghu when he arrived I did not noticed, I was too busy in my thoughts. “Raghu, how are you?” without waiting to hear his answer I said “let’s hurry up I need to be home quick”. Raghu sensed a bit of urgency in my voice. He asked me “Sir is everything all right”. I was not sure what to say “I don’t know Raghu let’s hurry up”.  He quickly put my luggage in the boot of his car and then we were out of the airport in a jiffy.

Once the car was on the highway I tried calling my mother few times. The phone was ringing but no one was picking it up at the other end, it made me a bit more nervous. Several thoughts started to cross my mind, why she is not picking up? My mother’s last words during our last phone conversation repeated in my head again and again, I started to get seriously worried about her. While car speeded onto the Delhi-Dehradun highway Raghu asked me “Sir, would you like to have dinner at the usual place?” I told Raghu, “Not today, we really need to go home fast and it’s already too later for dinner now”. Raghu tried to ask me again what is bothering me but I was too busy in my thoughts that I ignored his question.  I knew that I am going to spend very long five hours in the car until I reach home. I was desperate to go home quickly. Usually in my previous trips from Delhi International Airport to Meerut city Raghu and I would stop over for dinner and tea at the road side restaurants, but this time we didn’t took any breaks. Finally, after five painful hours in the car we entered Meerut City. It was month of December so it was still dark and a bit of fog had settled over the city. There was an early morning buzz on the streets with milkman running with his big cans  of milk on his Rajdoot motorcycle, new paper guy on his bicycle, and several of the residents covered in shawls and head scarfs on the their early morning walk.   

Raghu knew the way to my house very well so he rushed straight to my house as by now he was completely aware that something was terribly wrong. I did not utter a single word to him in the entire journey and it’s usually not like that, on previous occasions when he has picked me up we usually talk about my trip and he tells me gossips about what’s happening in the city and what I have missed during the time I was away. As soon as the car took the final right turn to reach my house I knew something went terribly wrong in my house last night. There was a lot of commotion outside. I noticed a police jeep and a van, with bunch of khaki clad policemen, waiting outside my house, surrounded with a number of our neighbors as well. I asked Raghu to wait and I stepped outside the car. There was our neighbor Prof. Suresh Kumar, I asked “what’s wrong professor, what’s going on?” He did not say much just asked me to go inside the house.

As I stepped inside the house my heart sank, there was a body lying motionless in a fresh pool of blood on the marble floor with very deep injuries on head and neck, and blood was running down from where the body lying in the hall towards the kitchen. My mother was sitting in the corner of the room on a sofa with her head in her hands with no emotions and I could see blood stains on her hands too. I could see a sharp knife enclosed in a polythene bag in hands of one of the fat constable. Before I could grasp the seriousness of the crime scene, police inspector Mr. Jitendra Singh approached me and asked me in his heavy voice, “who are you and why are you inside the house ?” I replied “I am her son just returned from a conference in New York”. He took me aside into the courtyard of the house and asked me to wait their until he finishes all the formalities. I wanted to speak to my mother but I was asked to wait.

It was a long wait for another hour or so, first I saw an ambulance arrived and took the dead body away, then I saw some lady police officers came and took my mother away, before I could ask them where they are taking her, I was interrupted by Inspector Singh. He asked me to join him in his police jeep and accompany him to the police station, where he will tell me where my mother will be and what I should do next. By this time the crowd, which had gather outside our house earlier, had disappeared. Raghu was still waiting outside in the car. He felt asleep in the car while waiting for me to pay him for the taxi ride. I tapped on his window, he suddenly woke up from his deep sleep and opened the front door and before he could have said anything I said “Raghu lets meet in the evening I will pay you then”, I then rushed to join Inspector Singh in his police jeep.  We reached police station within few minutes. Inspector Singh asked his assistant to get two cups of tea, I hadn’t had anything since last night and was really thirsty it was a lot to take in, so I did not say no to the offer of tea. He took out a match stick from the match box kept on his dusty table, with a number of files placed on top of each other, and lit a  cigarette. He offered me one I politely declined. He took few puffs and then said in his heavy voice, “I think your mother has killed this man, your maid servant called us this morning around 6 am,  your mother did not say a single word since we were there, referring to my house, do you have any idea what might have happened there last night ?” I replied back to him, “I wish I’d been there earlier. It might have made all the difference. So all I can tell you is why he was murdered.”

I told inspector Singh, “The dead man was my Father”. He was shocked. I continued further “My mother called me when I was about to leave from New York, She told me that my Father is in the house and they are arguing. My parents have been separated for years. My father was a business man and my mother worked as a school teacher. They both married each other out of love in the early 1980s. All was well until my father had a huge loss in his business and he turned to alcohol for comfort and I don’t remember exactly but within no time his alcoholism turned him into an abusive alcoholic. For many years my mother dealt with the emotional pain he gave her during that time but their reaches a point in every person’s life, my mother was no different, at that point she took a decision to leave him. It was a pain-full one, I have seen her crying at night during the early phase of their separation, and she loved him dearly before he turned into an alcoholic. Since their separation we have been living independently in my grandparents’ house. ” I was interrupted by the assistant, who brought two cups of tea with a plate of biscuits. Inspector Singh said “See this line of work is crazy I am up since 2 am, let’s have some tea”. While sipping his hot tea he said to me “I hear what you are telling me but that still does not explain what happened in your house last night”. I had my sip of tea as well; somehow it tasted very good on an empty stomach. I continued “Day before last night, when my mother called she said something, which made me very nervous. First time, ever since my drunken dad has been visiting her, she said I am going to take him out of his misery. I was not sure what to make of it but later during my flight I thought about it deeply and it occurred to me that she might kill him.” Inspector Singh interrupted me and asked, “Why you think she said, what she said?”  I replied “my mother loved my father way too much before and even after he turned into an alcoholic. He would often come to our house drunk and she would still deal with and feed him. She had mentioned to me on several occasions that she could not see my dad like that and she thought that he was in a lot of pain. I never understood what she meant clearly and I also stopped paying attention to it as I was getting busy with my own life. But I guess here was a man whom she loved dearly and married him out of love against the will of her parents. She sacrificed a lot to be with him and to see him like that probably took a big toll on her and she decided to do the inevitable.” At this point Inspector Singh exclaimed, “That’s why I tell people be careful of falling in love, it can be deadly.”