Two Beans in a Pod
Bright lights flashed everywhere accompanied with a weird droning sound that rose and fell. I was completely delirious and wet. I had no idea where I was and what I was doing. All that I knew was that I was lying down in what looked like the inside of a room. Was it my imagination or was the room swaying from left to right? Everytime I tried to move, I was overcome by a sharp pain that hit my right side.
Subbu opened the front door into a room littered with beer cans and covered in dense smoke. He coughed and walked to the windows, opening them and letting some light in. The smoke gradually cleared to reveal a huddled form lying in the middle of the room.
“Hey, Karthik! Get up! Are you ok?” Subbu asked, running to him.
Karthik roused himself and threw off the blanket that covered him. A strong whiff of smoke and beer emanated from within the blanket that looked like it had been never been washed.
“Ah! You finally responded to my call. Where were you all these days?” Karthik asked groggily.
“Sorry man. I was held up at work. How are you doing?”
“Not good. Not good at all. What’s the time, now?”
“Err… It is 7:00 in the evening,” Subbu said, looking at the wall clock that was covered in cobwebs.
He then walked up to a rusted stove that lay in one corner of the living room, which doubled as a kitchen and lit it. As he bustled around searching for coffee powder, he noticed Meenakshi’s framed photo on the floor. She was Karthik’s wife.
Karthik had lost his wife a couple of months ago in a car accident. The police suspected foul play but they were, quite predictably, unable to prove anything. She had been a journalist and a dedicated one at that. Her professional peak was when she busted a reputed hospital in an illegal kidney racket that had been plaguing the city for years. Even Subbu was caught in the melee that followed as he was a doctor in the culprit hospital. Thankfully, the main perpetrator was identified as the Chief of Medicine, much before the hospital suffered from any major damage to its image. He was quickly acquitted and the hospital issued a public notice of apology offering ample compensation to all the afflicted families. Soon enough, life returned to normal at the hospital, but not for Subbu or Karthik.
While Karthik went into manic depression, Subbu struggled to maintain his flow of patients. It was their 20-year long friendship that helped them make it out of it all. Well, not all but mostly.
“This coffee powder seems pretty old. When did you use it last?”
“I have no idea. The cups are on the counter,” Karthik said as he got up unsteadily and walked to the sink and splashed water all over his face.
I was pushed feet-first somewhere outside the room. I could barely make out the letters: MER CY, shining some 8 ft above me. Lights started moving once again. Suddenly, they stopped and I was thrown up in the air. I landed on something soft. My clothes were being ripped and my belongings pulled out. I thought I was getting mugged. There were screams all around punctured by the shatter of machinery being pulled. Somebody said, “Paddles!” My eyes closed over in pain.
The kettle boiled over as Subbu almost scalded his hands. He asked, “What have you been doing since the last time I saw you?”
“Pretty much nothing. I quit my job and stayed at home. I was restless and troubled. I wanted to search out the son of a gun that killed my wife and dispatch him to hell,” he thumped the sink in anguish and disappointment.
As Subbu poured the coffee, he fished out a small sachet, unobtrusively, from the depths of his jeans and emptied the contents into one of the cups. Karthik continued talking.
“There were no clues whatsoever. The police had nothing to go on with except a broken Rolex watch that was found in the car crash remains. I suspected that Meenu was having an affair.”
Karthik got up and walked to where the framed photo of his dead wife adorned his kitchen. He picked it up and looked it at, expressionless.
“Your wife? Don’t think so. She is too conservative and you guys adored each other too much. Didn’t you?” Subbu asked. He picked up the cups and walked to the window where he sat down on one of the two couches.
“Yes, we did. We sure did. So, how’s work?”
Subbu sipped the coffee and looked into the distance at the Chennai skyline. It was raining. Karthik came and sat next to him, holding his wife’s photo.
“It is not good. My sessions at the hospital are back to normal, but patients are dwindling at the clinic. Don’t know how much longer I can hold on.”
Karthik leant over and patted him on his back. “Don’t worry. We are the best of friends! We can come out of it together!” He picked the poisoned coffee and held it to his lips.
There they sat, the two friends – close in happiness, closer in trouble. The clock struck 8:00 as one of them keeled over, clutching his throat.
As my vision cleared, I saw my best friend standing over me. His disgusted face left little for imagination. There were white-robed men and women all around me, checking my vitals and yelling instructions. I saw the tips of my feet. They were a jaded blue and wet.
“I couldn’t do it”, my best friend said. “I simply couldn’t do it. I don’t want to be you.”
Saying so, he walked out of the room.
As Subbu clutched his throat and fell over, Karthik got up and threw the contents of his untouched coffee outside the window.
“You sick rogue! You think you can get away with killing my wife? You think I am a moron? I know it was you who sabotaged my wife’s car. I gave you the keys some days back. It is not tough to make duplicates. We were the best of friends! You betrayed all that I believed and trusted in! How could you? Was your money bigger than our friendship? You even made me suspect my own, sweet Meenu!”
Karthik fell sobbing on the floor. His tears fell on broken glass; glass from the shattered photo of Meenu. He rubbed away his tears and looked at her face. She was very beautiful. He shook his head and walked to the telephone.
“Hospital? There is an emergency in 24, West Mada Street, T Nagar. My friend… no… a man has been poisoned.”
-Arul Sirpy
Murder Most Fowl
Arul Sirpy JP
03:30 AM
“Screech!”
“Squawk!”
Two abysmally out of sync sounds broke the silence of the night. A few minutes later, silence reigned once again.
11:03 AM
Krithika’s Dad opened the door solemnly. His smiling face betrayed a hint of trouble. I stepped into the house, smelling a rat.
It was worse.
The scene was something straight out of an Agatha Christie novel – an Indian version perhaps. All eyes were fixated on the floor. Most of them, I guess. Krithika was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the hall on the floor. Her hands cradled a lump of what looked like white elephant droppings. She was staring at it. Shreya, the ever good-looking Shreya, stood clutching a pillar clad in a full-sleeved churidhar. Who wears a full sleeved churidhar in this heat, I wondered as I flicked off a drop of sweat that threatened to invade my vision.
My best friend and roommate, Venky was standing at the kitchen door. He was looking guilty as hell. He had had a queer past with Krithika (let’s call her Krits). After graduation, just before he left for the States, he proposed to Krits. It was a cliché, so to speak. All that he got were emotional slaps in the form of “Sorry, I have never thought of you that way” and “Let’s be friends, ok?” and so forth. It was hilarious to the rest of us.
Krits Mom was the only one who seemed to moving anything close enough to be called a muscle. She yelled at the servants to take my luggage and clean up the mess immediately. Weirdly, enough her hollering was punctuated by almost isochronal snores. I traced the source to an easy chair, where an old man in a shawl, presumably Krits’ Grandpa, was sprawled like a dismantled tepee. He was blissfully oblivious to all. A small mound of broken walnut shells inside a betel pestle sat on his paunch, which swung up and down with each breath.
Krits’ Dad finally spoke, “Anand, (Krits’ fiancée) had sent a parakeet from Singapore, the day before. Today morning, it was found strangled to death. That’s why…” His voice trailed off, with good dramatic effect.
AHA! A case for the brilliant, swashbuckling, awesome (insert other good adjectives here) detective – Krish!
Oh, I am Krish, by the way. And yeah, I did not strangle the parakeet if you readers think I am going to give so big a twist to this rather sober tale.
16:08 PM
All of us sat sipping hot coffee around the dining table. There was a marked level of suspense hanging in the air. Everyone was thinking of the same thing. One of them had to be the killer. Who was it? Who did the fowl deed?
Actually, nobody was the least bit chafed over who did it. They were just pondering how to pacify Krits who was down in the dumps. I meant – down in the lumps. Contrastingly enough, Shreya was glowing. Or was it just me?
My first suspicion was Venky. He was the one who had the biggest motive. His main purpose in coming here for this get-together was to ask Krits once again, to marry him. Her marriage to Anand had been arranged by her parents. Given the level of idealist theories that she used to spew around, we were completely convinced that she did not want to have any say on whom she got married to. Since Venky is my best friend, I decided to properly screw him over.
“Venky strangled the parakeet”, I stated matter-of-factly.
“No he did not. I’m sure”, Krits interjected even more matter-of-factly.
“WHA…??!! If there’s anyone whom you should be sure, it must be ME! Venky obviously still loves you! He has all the reason to kill the poor lump of elephant droppings!” I blurted out, quite deliberately.
“I know and I don’t care. But he did not.” It was said in a quiet, almost coy voice.
It took time for the sleuth to register and process that expression. And when it did, I went berserk. No wonder she knew it was not him, because she was with him last night!
Quelling my jubilance, I decided to look at the other possibilities. Shreya could not have done it. She is too beautiful. I sincerely do think, that is a good enough excuse since the only motive could have been jealousy. But Shreya had everything that Krits has and more. All counterpoints to this argument are tripe. I shifted my thoughts to the others in the house.
Krits’ Mom came inside. “You guys, ok?” she asked. “Yes, Aunty”, I chorused singly. Dolt.
When she left, I started thinking along her lines.
“Hey, could it be your Mom? She could have seen you guys last night *TALKING*. She must have tried to pin the deed on Venky so that you would leave him forever. Possible?”
“Impossible. They would have noticed.” I was brushed aside by Shreya.
End of discussion.
I dipped the crackers into the coffee and bit into them. They tasted delicious. They were like Vicodin. Wait a minute: Crackers – walnuts – parakeet, something clicked.
“Hey Krits, does your Grandpa use a nut-cracker to break the walnuts?
“No. He does it himself.”
I ran out, Archimedes style albeit with my clothes on. I went straight to Grandpa and lifted his shawl. There were bloodied parakeet feathers all over him.
“VỐILA!!” I said in my best French accent. Everybody clapped. I proceeded to give my pithy explanation.
“The time when the murder was discovered was around 11:00 AM. If Grandpa is sleeping until now, the only possible reason is that he could not sleep well last night. It is most probably because the blasted parakeet was screeching away. He decided to feed it some walnuts to shut it up. One thing led to another and he had no other go but to do away with the poor bird. He is strong enough too, since he does not use a nutcracker to break his walnuts. It was child’s play for an old man”, I finished with a mini-joke.
And that was that. Nobody wanted to mess with an 80-year old man with the small talk of birds, gifts and long distance relationships.
18:45 PM
Soon it was time to leave. We went to the pet store and Venky bought another parakeet for Krithika. She loved it. Then we discussed at length on how to tell her parents about Krits eloping with Venky. I liked to think that Shreya was proud of me. I was driving her back to Chennai.
We waved our goodbyes, wishing luck to the couple. I started the car and we were off. As we turned into the highway, I turned to Shreya and smiled at her. She smiled back.
“I know you were the one”, I said quietly.
Her face turned pale. “How..? When..? Did you see it..?”
“No. It was the churidhar. You were wearing a full sleeved churidhar because you were scratched when you were trying to strangle the poor bird. You also had a head bath after that to clean all the blood from yourself. That was why you were glowing early morning. Later, I had a chat with the servant. Grandpa’s shawl was used to clean the place today morning. That is how the feathers and blood came into the picture.”
“But why would I do it?”
“It was not Krits’ Mom who saw them together last night. It was you. You wanted to force them to tell about themselves to her parents. You succeeded partially; but you could have done better.”
“Why did you not say all this there?”
“And let your plan go to the dogs? I believed in you. More so since, I love you. I’ve always loved you.” I stopped the car and looked at her.
She demurely smiled and said, “I know”.
