Chapter 1

‘And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

…Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.’

                            -T. S.Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

It all started with his decision to invite Tarika over for lunch.

It isn’t that they don’t meet outside work hours—they do—but it’s usually at the cinema or in a restaurant. He looks forward to them and he knows she does, too—he loves his work, they both do, but God knows it doesn’t leave them with much free time on their hands. They have to make the most of what they can get.

Today’s different, however. He’s invited her home—which he usually doesn’t do—and he cooked all her favourite dishes. It’s his way of saying thank you. He hopes she’ll understand.

‘Abhijeet!’ he comes to himself with a start, realizing he’d been lost in thought. That seemed to be happening a lot lately. He finds Tarika snapping her fingers in front of his face.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ she says. The words are spoken lightly, but there’s a stern, hard look in Tarika’s eyes which suddenly makes Abhijeet wish he could be somewhere—anywhere—else.

‘Nothing’, he replies, ‘it’s…well, it’s this case…’

Tarika sighs and puts her fork down. ‘Abhijeet’, she says—she sounds like she’s trying really, really hard to be patient with him—‘please, please stop lying. And at least try to come up with a new excuse. This one stopped being convincing years ago’.

Abhijeet sighs and looks down at his plate, suddenly losing his appetite (not that he’s had much of it lately). Tarika’s looking at him intently, and he knows she won’t give up. ‘Look, Tarika’, he begins, ‘I can’t go back to acting like nothing’s happened. The last couple of weeks…’

‘Why?’ Tarika asks, interrupting him. There’s a sharp, brittle edge to her voice that tells Abhijeet she’s been waiting to have this conversation for quite some time now. ‘I should’ve thought you’d be used to this by now—your colleagues accusing you of things you didn’t do and then pretending like it never happened’.

Abhijeet winces. Tarika’s always been frank and very practical—it’s one of the things he finds very attractive about her—but it’s unlike even her to be this brutal.

‘Look,’ he says, ‘it was difficult for everybody. Daya was missing and things looked like—’

Tarika stands up so suddenly that it shakes the table. Abhijeet instinctively steadies his glass of water and looks at her. She’s towering over him, eyes blazing, a look of fury on her face.

‘Stop defending people who’ve never stood up for you, Abhijeet’, she says. She sounds like she’s holding back more than she’s saying. ‘I’ve been here for some time now, and I’ve never seen ACP Sir stand up for you the way he stands up for Daya. Don’t you see it? I’m not saying he can’t have personal favourites, I don’t care if he’s fonder or more protective or whatever else it may be of Daya, but I do care when it spills over and starts to affect you professionally’.

‘Enough, Tarika’. Abhijeet stands up, too, and the anger in his voice is laced with frustration because he cannot quite refute what she just said. ‘I owe my life to ACP Sir. He took me back, a broken man with no memories--’

‘Yes, and he’s been holding that over your head ever since’, she retorts, unafraid of and unruffled by his anger, ‘He was so upset when Dr. Anjalika accused Daya of murder. Remember he had to get Dr. Salunkhe to prove himself innocent? Dr. Salunkhe told me,’ she raises a hand, anticipating his question and forestalling it. ‘He was horrified when Daya offered DCP Sir his resignation. Remember that case, when Daya was under fire for having supposedly kidnapped a baby and killed the father? ACP Sir had no problem then believing Daya was innocent. Now imagine yourself in Daya’s place. Do you think you’d have been treated as kindly?’

Abhijeet puts his hand on the table because they’re shaking (he doesn’t want Tarika to see it but no doubt she’s noticed) and because he’s shaking, too: Tarika isn’t wrong—in fact he’s had the same thoughts many, many times, only to push them away and to chastise himself for being a selfish friend—but to hear them uttered openly and flung into his face like this is almost more than he can bear. He wants to say something, to tell her she’s wrong, but he can’t because she isn’t, so he settles for a different approach: ‘You know we’re all very protective of Daya, Tarika’, he says. ‘Of course ACP Sir would be more lenient to him. Poor thing, he doesn’t have a family, he’s grown up alone in an orphanage, I admit he’s sometimes rather rash and impulsive but he has a heart of gold. Please don’t hold ACP Sir’s affection against him. I’m not surprised he’s rather partial towards him, we all are.’

The little speech sounds hollow and fragmented to Abhijeet’s own ears, though he doesn’t understand why. It’s all true, they all love Daya, who’s really a gem of a human being. Tarika doesn’t appear particularly impressed, either: her face loses it’s look of fury, morphing into a blank mask (never a good sign), and before he can say anything else she sits down and scoops the remainder of her food into her mouth, fork scraping against the plate. As soon as she’s done, she reaches for the bag slung behind her on the chair.

‘Tarika, wait’, Abhijeet says, rising from the table, his own food forgotten, ‘where are you going?’

Tarika stands up and slings the bag over her shoulder.‘It isn’t any use talking to you, Abhijeet’, she says. ‘No blind like the willfully blind, they say. I’m done with you on this. I’m not Daya, I don’t want his place in your life if that’s what you’re thinking, but if you have ever had any regard at all for me, will you do something I say?’

Abhijeet, unable to say anything, simply nods.

‘You’re allowed to have your own life outside CID, outside ACP Sir and Daya and everyone else, you know’, she says, moving towards the door. ‘Try to build that life. Find people to do things with other than those ten or fifteen people in the bureau. It’s possible, Abhijeet, though I suppose it must seem impossible to you. You want an example, look at me.’

Before Abhijeet can say anything else, she’s gone.

Abhijeet spends the rest of the afternoon thinking about Tarika’s words. He doesn’t exactly ponder over them, it’s more like they keep playing over and over in his head like a record stuck at a particular note.

You opened a Pandora’s Box today, Tarika, he thinks. You had no business dragging out my demons like that, though admittedly it is something of a solace that I am not alone in these thoughts.

At a point it becomes too much, the thoughts threatening to overwhelm him, engulf him. He knows he needs to snap out of them or he wouldn’t be able to behave normally at the bureau tomorrow. He takes his keys and gets in his car. Nothing like a drive to clear your head.

He drives around aimlessly for a while. It’s rather hot, so the roads are less crowded than usual. He lets himself relax, finally feeling his mind emptying itself of dangerous thoughts and settling into mundane concerns over dinner and books he’s yet to read and Daya’s joke that morning. But it turns out to be rather premature celebration: Tarika’s words aren’t as far away from his mind as he thought they’d been, for he finds himself taking a turn and driving down a road he hasn’t been to in years.

To be continued…