Diya Rai – Sleuthing Around
Two months elapsed since that fateful day. Diya resumed her normal life of curating and editing articles in TOI, writing articles for ScoopWhoop, and penning poems for The Trope. Sans Brian, it was rather difficult, but it was quite manageable. She had blocked his number, blocked him on Facebook, and almost blocked him from her life, yet a few memories lingered. Brian too felt bad without Diya in his life. He felt so repented, that at times he thought to land at Diya’s doorstep and apologize for his mistakes. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He had Monali to take care of, his college duties to attend to, and his new travel blog to update regularly. Hence, the pair never felt that they should meet and sort their problems out.
Diya was arranging the books on her shelf, when Ronnie called her.
“Hey, Diya, care for coffee in the evening?” His sonorous voice boomed over the phone.
“Where?” She asked rather blandly.
“Coffee Exotica?”
The very word ‘Coffee Exotica’ brought a thousand painful memories and hence she immediately blurted out ‘no’.
“Why not? It’s a beautiful and calm place.”
“I know that, but I don’t want to have coffee at a place where I have some bitter memories.”
“Bitter memories? Care to explain?”
Diya hadn’t breathed a word about Brian to Ronnie, especially after his irritated actions at the hospital, but she thought that she should vent out her pent up frustrated feelings. Hence, she began…
Half an hour later, she stood sobbing into her phone and Ronnie kept consoling her.
“It’s okay, Diya. It’s perfectly okay to feel this. Don’t feel bad that you have to undergo this pain. Brian is an asshole. Let go of him. Let go of his memories. He doesn’t deserve you. He actually used you for one night. And I am sure that his statement ‘I was on the verge of falling in love with you’ was just an excuse to make up to you. But, no, it sounds absurd, Diya. Just let go of him! I know you have returned to your normal life, but that isn’t enough. Go out, enjoy with your friends, take your family out to dinner, and take up dancing. These can completely erase his thoughts out of your mind. Or just take a trip to somewhere else, somewhere you have never been.”
“Oh my God! Thank you so much, Ronnie. This is what I needed. And when did you come back from Delhi? Is the cardiologist that free to take me out for coffee?” She chuckled to herself.
“Of course, sweetie. Come na?”
“Yeah, I will.”
*****
“Where the hell would she have gone, Brian?” asked Monali, probably for the 100th time since Diya’s mysterious disappearance from the hotel room.
“If you ask that again, I’ll make sure you end up dead!” Brian fumed.
“What’s wrong in pondering upon that? She was your best friend, right? How can she disappear suddenly without even informing you? And she has blocked you from everything. What did you do to her?”
“That’s none of your business!”
“I have the right to know, Brian. Don’t be such a misogynist, thinking that I don’t have the right to ask you anything and you can boss me around.”
“Oh, shut up! Do you even know the meaning of ‘misogynist’? Don’t use words just because you’re expanding your vocabulary.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
“This is what I despise in you. Can’t you just leave me alone in this issue? I seriously don’t like to share this with you. When someone begs you to not ask them about something that bothers them, you should keep quiet and let them be. Don’t nag like this!”
“I – I am sorry.”
“Hmmm.”
“Do you love me, Brian?”
“There you go again!”
“I am not nagging you this time. I am genuinely asking you. Of late, I have a mild fear that you might leave me because of my irritable behavior.”
Brian’s mood softened on listening to those words. He turned around and looked at her with love-filled eyes.
“I’ll never ever leave you, darling. Don’t worry!”
He kissed her on her forehead.
*****
“Then why should he make love to me? And why is he so helpless to leave her? If she irritates him that much, he can break up with her, right? Why is he hanging on to her?” Diya was ranting on and on, while sipping Irish cappuccino in Coffee Exotica along with Ronnie.
“I will you buy you a dozen cupcakes, if you stop bitching about him.” Ronnie hissed.
“Oops! I am sorry. And, yeah, a dozen cupcakes can surely enliven me.” She flashed a toothy grin at him. He heaved a sigh and smiled at her.
“Thank God! I thought you’re going to sulk about him the entire time, but I can easily zap you out with offers for coffee and food. I think you should hang out with me more.”
“Arey, you’re in Delhi and I am caught up here. How can we meet frequently?”
“I promise you, whenever I visit Bangalore, I will make it a point to spend everyday with you.”
“Since when did you start caring for me so much, Ronnie?”
“Since my birth…”
The friends broke into peals of laughter. Diya was finally relieved that someone could make her feel happy.
“You know, though I feel happy now, I am kind of filled with regret,” she said.
“Regretting what?”
“Throughout my life, I have always spurned boys. I have turned down N number of proposals. Now I know how it feels to be in love and how it hurts to get rejected. I should have politely turned all the proposals down instead of being downright rude. Maybe I should apologize to all of them – Akshay, Himanshu, Karthik, Dhruv and Preyosh.”
“What the hell! Are you going to launch a search, track them down, land at their doorsteps, and apologize to them?”
“Ha ha ha! I don’t need to do that. Maybe I can find them on Facebook and apologize to them via simple messages.”
“Why do you regret all those? They are your past. And they wouldn’t even remember you. Just think about that Akshay. He was 9 when he fell in love with you. And he would be 24 now. That’s fifteen fucking years. He wouldn’t even recognize you. The same goes with others. They all would have forgotten you and moved on with their life, Diya. Instead of brooding over all those, try to do something new that would make you less regretful. As I said, take up a new hobby. It will be really refreshing.”
“I’ll try, Ronnie. But I must really do something else. Merely writing articles and poems doesn’t uplift me anymore. I should do something really thrilling. Maybe I would ask Mahima to join me on an adventurous trek.”
“That sounds marvellous!”
Diya flashed a happy smile, that told that she was finally up to something.
*****
“Hello, Mr.Sundarnathan. Do you remember me?” Diya held her hand out and beamed at Sundarnathan. She was in Rocky Tours & Travels, a travel agency which specialized in adventurous treks. Her jaw almost dropped when she saw that it was Sundarnathan’s agency.
“Oh, you’re Diya Rai. How can I forget you, child? You were that kind soul who helped me out in Ooty.”
“How are you, Sir?”
“I am doing good. You?”
“I am good, too. I never knew you had a travel agency.”
“Hey, this is not mine. I just work here. If I had a travel agency, I would not have required your help in Ooty.”
“Yeah, right!”
“So, what makes you come here? Planning for something adventurous?”
“Ummm..yes, I need to have a look at the best destinations for trekking. I am planning to go on one with my best friend Mahima.”
“We have got lots of good destinations. Here, take a look at this brochure.” He handed her a brochure which contained the best destinations for trekking and the packages offered by the agency.
“Sounds interesting, sir. By the way, what happened to your wallet? Did you get it back? Did you lodge a missing complaint with the police?”
“That would have been a foolish thing to do, Diya. The world is filled with pickpocketers. If I had filed a complaint, the police would have trashed my complaint in the dustbin. Even if I had described the thief, they wouldn’t have made any progress. There wasn’t much in the wallet, but I lost a rare photograph of me and my deceased wife. It was such a beautiful photo which I admired a lot. It was precious to me. I still feel sad that I lost it.”
Diya looked at him with a pity face and said, “I am sorry to hear about that. But, if the police can’t find the thief, I can find her for you. Just tell me how she looked like.”
Mr. Sundarnathan’s heart did a double take.
“Are you joking? It’s been two months. She would have thrown my wallet away. How can you expect her to have it? And how can you even find her?”
“I can. Trust me, sir. I want to do something. Maybe I can cancel this trek and get down to finding the thief.”
“Di..Diya, this is really surprising. You cannot find her.”
“I can, sir. Describe her.”
“Hmmm, she was wearing navy blue jeans and a chartreuse body-hugging sleeveless top. She had a backpack. Black color it was. She had left her hair loose. Wait, I have a sketch of her. I just made it, so that it can come handy, if I ever need it.”
“That’s so brilliant of you! Show me that sketch.”
Sundarnathan pulled a drawer out and took a dirty-looking A4 sheet from it. He dusted it and handed it to Diya. Since he had seen only the back view of the thief, he had sketched it the exact way in which she had fled.
“Wow! That’s a perfect sketch. You have rendered all the colours perfectly. This can really help me in finding her. The hair looks wavy and there’s a ring in her right hand which she had flailed while running. Hmmm…The thing is, the girl looks familiar to me.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir. I think I have seen someone wearing this top.”
“Where did you see?”
“I have to think. Let me take this to Mahi and discuss with her.”
“Okay, Diya. Thank you for this tremendous help.”
“I am not doing this for my thirst for adventure, sir. I want you to have that precious photo back. I want to see you smile.”
Mr. Sundarnathan was at a loss of words. He just smiled at her.
“By the way, what happened to that friend of yours? Brian, right?”
“He is dead, sir.”
She flashed a wicked smiled and moved out, leaving a bewildered Sundarnathan behind.
*****
“This is really, really interesting. When did you plunge into this?” asked Mahima excitedly.
“When I decided that I must really do something adventurous to get over Brian’s thoughts,” replied Diya happily.
“That douchebag! He doesn’t even deserve your friendship, Diya.”
“I think he doesn’t even deserve to love anyone. He actually cheated on Monali and he justified his actions by telling that he was on the brink of falling in love with me and that’s what made him have sex with me.”
“That’s disgusting!”
“I know, right? Can we get down to business?”
“Sure. Where have you seen this chartreuse body-hugging top?”
“I have seen all around Bangalore. It’s not the top, Mahi. It’s the entire figure. I have seen her somewhere.”
“How can you be so sure? The sketch is not a frontal view.”
“I am sure. I have observed this person’s back view also. That’s why it is familiar. But when did I keenly observe someone’s back?”
“Think, think, think.”
“What is bizarre is the fact that some random thief is familiar to me. TO ME! I wasn’t even connected to Mr. Sundarnathan at that time. How can this thief be familiar to me?”
“Intrigues me, too. Hey, where was this wallet stolen?”
“Chennai Central Station.”
“Oh! How can a girl from Chennai be familiar to you? Have you been to Chennai?”
“No. What about this? The girl might have known me. She followed me for some unknown reason. She might be a friend of mine, who was a petty thief, too. Brian and I waited for Nilgiris Express in Chennai Central. Before she could reach me, she would have thought to stealthily pickpocket someone. Maybe she would have been in dire need of money. So she pickpocketed Mr. Sundarnathan, but ended up being seen by him. Hence, she fled. So, she never got to meet me. Now I have to find out who in the world would have been so desperate to follow me.”
“Hey, Brian was with you, right? What if the girl was following him?”
“Him? Oh……….” Diya’s eyes bulged as realization struck her like a thunderbolt.
“Oh my God! Mahi, YOU HAVE SOLVED THE MYSTERY!” She screamed at the top of her lungs.
“What? I can’t understand.”
“That thief is none other than Monali. I – I saw her in Ooty the second day. She was wearing that same chartreuse body-hugging sleeveless top with navy blue jeans. And she was wearing a backpack!”
“Diya, you are insane. You are so obsessed with Brian, that you are linking this totally unrelated mystery to him.”
“No way! It was her. I observed her back view, when she held hands with Brian and walked out of Rose Garden. Holy fuck! How can this be possible? And why should this so-called adventure end up with Brian? It’s always him. Again and again.” Diya spoke, frustrated.
“Okay, what should we do now?”
“I have a plan for that. You should execute it. Monali knows me well. So I can’t.”
“Okay, I will. Tell me what to do.”
**********
