Avanthika & Lucia
Havelock Road was deserted at that time of the night. Lucia knew that it would have no single soul in sight. Ooty was a sleepy town where people retired to their beds at 9.30 PM. She was the only one walking on the street. Wrapping herself with a jerkin and a shawl, she adjusted the scarf around her entire face, with the exception of her eyes. Those honey-colored eyeballs which her eyes bore were enough to entice any one. Her jet-black curly springs of tendrils were tied into a pony tail. She had no accessories on her as she wasn’t a sucker for ornaments or jewelry. Her saffron tank top paired with a blue jean complemented her bronze skin tone. She just had a black leather purse with her. Nothing else. She did not even have her stylish smartphone which she had used to flaunt to her friends.
As she walked, her eyes wandered hither and thither. She didn’t want to bump into any one, knowingly or accidentally. She wanted to liberate herself from the suffocation she was subjected to, since a year. She craved for her independency. She wanted to embrace serenity with open arms. She wanted her own positive self back, which she had painfully lost. And her timeless cravings & unattainable wishes were the only reason for her sojourn to Ooty. She wished to escape from the bustling polluted city and a ruthless relationship which had led her to do things that she’d have never done. She had suffered in the hands of her so called boyfriend, who gave her nothing but sorrow. His toxicity had spread through her nerves and made her to commit blunders.
She needed peace. Her heart throbbed to wash away her sins. Slowly she made her way to Snowdon Road. Her eyes captured a few hotels and eateries. Entering a 3 star hotel, she booked a room to spend the night. She needed time to think about her next move. A good night’s sleep would do wonders, she thought to herself and plopped down on the cottony soft bed and drifted away to sleep.
*****
Avanthika stayed in a simple yet elegant cottage house in Sheddon Road. Though Ooty was her home town, she had moved to Chennai along with her family to pursue a course in archaeology. She loved her native place and paid frequent visits. Her father had built the cottage as a homestay for tourists. That was years ago. It had been functioning as a tourist’s haven until Avanthika expressed her desire to convert it into a retreat for her. Being a loving dad, Mr.Vaidhyanathan had the cottage renovated according to his daughter’s desires. Since then, she had paid three visits and stayed in the lovely wooden cottage house. But never once she had ventured into her family house which was situated in Lovedale. The house had been locked since their departure to Chennai. Vaidhyanathan was waiting for a good deal to sell the magnificent house. Though Avanthika had visited Lovedale for a reunion with her school friends, she did not even take a look around her family’s precious property. Not even the endearing garden around the house could take the 20 year old to it.
“Akka! Please sweep the steps also. They have been dirtied by the mud from the postman’s shoes,” she requested the cottage maid Kalyani.
“Okay Ma, I will sweep,” came Kalyani’s polite reply.
Seating herself on a swing chair, Avanthika opened the envelope which the postman had given her. It was a letter from her father.
Aiyoooo, I wonder why Appa still writes letters to me. Can’t he send me a message through Facebook or WhatsApp? she thought sulkily.
She rocked the swing back and forth as she read the letter. The stanza after the initial pleasantries startled her. Her father had written about their house in Lovedale.
“Our house in Lovedale has been my pride. Though I haven’t received a good deal to sell it, I earnestly wish that the house would be maintained properly. It has been abandoned for many years. You have paid three earlier visits and you didn’t even think about the house. Please do visit it. Ask Kalyani and Ramayya to clean the entire house. There aren’t many things in it. Just a few furniture in the hall and the living room. I hope you’d be stuck with teenage nostalgia if you visit it. God knows, you might find something that would be useful to you.”
Though Avanthika deeply detested the idea of visiting the old worn-out house, something struck her as a thunderbolt. Immediately she made plans to visit the house in the evening.
“Kalyani Akka, we’re visiting our house in Lovedale today. Appa has requested Ramayya and you to clean the entire house thoroughly. Also, I have to retrieve something from there.” She spoke hastily.
“Ok Ma, we will go. But what is it that you want to retrieve from there?”
“It’s a time capsule which I’d buried when I was a 14 year old.”
“What is a time capsule?” asked Kalyani nonchalantly.
“Never mind. It needs a lot of explanation. Just be there at 4.30 PM.”
“Ok Ma.”
*****
Avanthika never expected to find an Iphone 5S in the place where she’d buried her time capsule. She was awestruck by the sight of it.
“Is this the time capsule which you spoke about Ma?” asked Kalyani innocently.
Avanthika was too dumbfounded to even answer her. She found that the phone had 50% charge and the SIM was intact. She also found a few missed calls and SMSes. Curiosity peeped from her mind and she pressed the Messages icon.
Where are u Lucia? Why aren’t u attending my call?
The work is done Lucia.
Will u pls attend my call?
There were no more messages. It was from a contact named Douglas. The same person had also made the calls. The messages were received the evening before. Avanthika couldn’t believe herself that someone had buried an expensive Iphone in the same place where she’d buried her love letters to her childhood sweetheart Roshan, clippings from newspapers, few photos and a personal diary as a time capsule.
“I don’t know what to do Kalyani Akka. This phone does not belong to me. How did someone bury this in our garden?” Avanthika began ranting.
“Perhaps someone thought it to be no more useful to them,” replied Kalyani.
“No! No one would be so insane to bury an Iphone. I don’t know who is this Douglas and Lucia.”
Avanthika vowed herself to solve the the mystery of the buried Iphone soon. But all hell broke loose when the phone began to ring around 6.30 PM. The display flashed ‘Douglas’. With shivering hands, she attended the call.
“Hello,” she said carefully.
“Where the hell are you Lucia? Why the f**k aren’t you attending my calls since yesterday?”
“I..I..” Avanthika began stammering. Though her mind screamed at her to reveal the truth about the phone, her abundant inquisitiveness prodded her to lead the conversation and know more about the caller.
“Okay listen. I don’t need any of your explanations. There’s lot to be said. I have murdered Robert with a kitchen knife. A series of stabs. That’s it. He was gone. He struggled for a few moments and then breathed his last….”
As Avanthika listened to the horrifying murder confession, she moved towards a table in the hall and brought out a notepad from one of its drawers.
“….I have buried the body in the backyard of my house in Velachery. You know the house, right? I need you here right now, so that we can plan our next moves. The chapter of Robert is closed. The next in the queue is Vishnu.”
The caller ended his speech there. Silence prevailed at the other end. Avanthika’s hands were busy noting down the name of the caller and the place which he’d mentioned.
“Hello? Lucia, are you there? Did you listen to me?”
“Ye..yes Douglas..” Avanthika spoke in a whispery tone.
“Douglas? You’ve never called me like that.”
Avanthika’s heart thudded against her rib cage. “There are police around me,” she continued whispering.
“Police? Did something happen to you? Did you get caught?”
“No. Please end the call now.”
“Okay, I can understand. Meet you at my house then. Bye.”
Avanthika pressed the ‘End Call’ button. Her limbs were shivering and her forehead was covered with sweat beads. She plopped down on a chair beside her and contemplated the event.
Oh my God! This Douglas has murdered someone. Can I believe this? I have just listened to a murder confession from the murderer!!! She thought to herself. But there were many unanswered questions swarming through her mind.
Who is this Douglas? Who is Lucia? Why did she bury her phone in my garden? What is she doing in Ooty when the caller is expecting her in Chennai? Who is Robert? Why was he murdered? Who is Vishnu? Why is he going to be murdered? And why the hell did I find the phone in the place of my memorabilia???
Setting aside the riddle, she decided upon something which would provide her the required answers. “Police!” she exclaimed and dialed the Police Control Room.
*****
The next day, every newspaper in India flashed the headlines “Most wanted assassin Douglas held”. The news article explained how Douglas has been an assassin to a popular gangster named Purushothaman in Chennai. When the latter wanted to kill someone for a particular reason, Douglas was appointed to kill him or her. Lucia was Douglas’ girlfriend. Though she wasn’t involved in any of the murders, she had dated him, despite knowing him to be an assassin. The news further carried that Lucia is absconding presently. Police are on a lookout for her.
Avanthika was elated to the core. There were two reasons for her happiness. The first one was she had helped the police in busting a decade long mystery and the second one was her identity wasn’t revealed to the media and not a word about the buried phone was written. The phone was not anymore useful to the police in finding Lucia. She had abandoned it purposely. But her choice of the burial place gave way to the fact that she was somewhere in Ooty. Avanthika wished that she’d be nabbed soon. And she also felt sorrowful that she couldn’t find her original time capsule which had contained a huge portion of her sweet memories. She had visited the garden once again and digged the place around the button roses. But her time capsule had vanished!
*****
Wherever Lucia went, she could see her posters stuck on the walls with a caption ‘Wanted’. She covered herself completely in a burqa whenever she ventured out. She was staying in the same old inn where she’d booked a room for a single night. Circumstances forced her to stay in the hotel under the identity of ‘Manisha’. She thought she could regain her peace of mind by running away from Douglas. But her world came tumbling down by his arrest and a nationwide search for her. She assumed that a large tip-off might have led to his arrest, but she never suspected her buried phone. And that was the reason which made her to visit Avanthika’s family house in Lovedale once again. To her surprise, the house had undergone renovation and it was painted freshly.
Fear pounded in her heart as she thought about the prospect of her phone being discovered and being the prime reason for Douglas’ arrest and her own dejected state. She looked around to make sure that she wasn’t being spied or followed. Though she had chosen 6.30 AM as the time to visit the house, she still feared that she might be caught red-handed. As she neared the garden, another fear gripped her. She couldn’t remember the exact place where she’d buried the phone.
Oh my god! Where did I bury it? I should retrieve it fast. I am running out of time. Someone might discover me.
And then she found the pink hue of button roses. She began digging the mud slowly. But the phone wasn’t there! She felt petrified. Yet her inner voice told her to move farther and dig. She listened to her heart, moved to the other side of the roses and began digging. Halfway down, her hand hit something hard. She pulled it out with all her strength. Well, it wasn’t her phone. It was a rectangular metal box with a latch. She opened it and rambled through the contents. It contained a leather-bound diary, some letters & photos and a few newspaper clippings.
What the hell are these! Where is my phone?!
Finally, after half-an-hour, she gave up her search. Realization dawned upon her. Her phone had been discovered by someone.
He or she must have attended Douglas’ call and pretended to be me.
She felt betrayed beyond words. She had deceived herself.
Maybe this memorabilia would tell me who the person was.
Picking up the metal box, she stood up and dusted herself. She came to the junction of Lovedale Road and boarded a bus to Coimbatore, intelligently hiding herself behind the burqa.
*****
So it is Avanthika, thought Lucia, as she read the letters that were written by Avanthika to her crush Roshan. Resentment washed over her as images of Avanthika discovering the phone and complaining to the police flashed before her. She was filled with deep vengeance. She read the rest of the letters with gritted teeth. Her displeasure increased in having discovered Avanthika as the one who had ruined her life.
After the hullabaloo concerning my search dies down, I will find this Avanthika and kill her. Lucia’s ‘Douglas-induced’ murderous streak came to the fore. Let me read her personal diary to know more about her.
As she opened the first page of the diary, a photo of the then Avanthika was pasted on it. Walnut skin tone, fish-shaped eyes lined with thick kohl, silky hair tied into two plaits and perfectly aligned jawline were her heavily distinguishable features.
She looks good, but that wouldn’t deviate me from my mission of murdering her. Lucia thought wickedly and continued to read the diary.
As she kept reading through the pages of Avanthika’s life, a mesmerizing emotion ensconced her. She was enchanted by the way in which Avanthika had expressed her views about life. Joys, sorrows, problems, deaths, heartbreaks, successes and failures were wonderfully portrayed by her. Lucia’s anger began to reduce gradually. She lost herself in the maze of words which Avanthika had woven intricately. Her negative thoughts were being torn away by Avanthika’s quotes and advices. She could feel something dying within her. And that something was resentment. The poison which had flowed through her body was eradicated completely within the last line in the diary.
After she closed the diary, droplets of tears fell from her eyes. She couldn’t control her emotions, even though she was seated in a crowded bus.
It has been a long time since I’ve cried. And it feels good now. Thank you Avanthika, for everything. Her thoughts began to fill with goodness for Avanthika who had completely changed her life within the pages of an old diary.
*****
Months later, Lucia joined as an English teacher in a school in the dainty and picturesque hill station of Valparai. Detached from every material thing, she began to live a peaceful life. She carried Avanthika’s diary everywhere she went. She meditated upon it whenever she felt remorseful.
Lucia’s buried Iphone led Avanthika to discover Douglas and end a series of assassinations, while Avanthika’s diary eliminated the toxicity from Lucia’s life and changed her completely. They had helped each other unknown to each other with their mutually beneficial buried time capsules.
**********
P.S: This story is a submission to IndiSpire’s prompt: You dig up a time capsule you buried years ago. Instead of memorabilia, you find a modern phone. It rings…. Complete the story!
Love,
Kavya Janani.U
