This is a sequel to another story and cannot be read independently. You can read the prequel story here.
It was almost midnight of 5th Feb when Ravi approached the store on the deserted street. All the shops on that street were closed, and it was a quiet February night. Ravi had seen a tea-seller down the road but was far away. He would finish his job before that tea-seller came close by. He knocked on the shutter’s tin door, knowing how mad Sooraj would get if his sleep was disturbed.
A second knock and a grumbling sound came from inside. Sooraj was probably sleeping drunk. A third knock, louder and more assertive enough to penetrate anyone’s sleep, and Ravi heard a glass bottle break. Sooraj woke up annoyed and opened the door. Looking at Ravi standing at the door, he got confused and angry. He pulled Ravi into the store and slapped him hard. The rage for breaking sleep was pouring out of Sooraj. But all of a sudden, Ravi punched Sooraj hard in his stomach, and Sooraj howled in pain. Ravi had a slight height advantage and was stronger than the forty-year-old Sooraj.
Sooraj could not comprehend this unprecedented attack. All these months, he had beaten Ravi like an animal but never did think about getting a payback. Ravi was inside the store now and punched Sooraj once more. Sooraj tumbled down on his back. Ravi carried a small backpack from which he took out a large stone – the size of a dinosaur egg and smashed it on Sooraj’s head. Sooraj now lay lifeless – probably dead.
The things that happened afterwards took less than 30 minutes, and Ravi managed all of them as fast and swift as he could.
He kept the stone smeared with blood back in his backpack and grabbed a heavy round wooden showpiece kept nearby and rubbed that wooden piece on the wound as hard as he could. Blood oozed out, and the flow increased. Ravi kept that wooden piece in the Sooraj’s blood, now collecting on the floor. He then fished his backpack for some hair which he had collected the same day from the parlour bin down the street. He stuffed those in Sooraj’s nails. Then he took out a bloody shirt wrapped in a plastic bag from his backpack. He had soaked that shirt the same morning in a hospital’s trash where blood from surgery is collectively discarded. He went to the back of the store and kept it hidden, knowing it would be discovered later.
Sooraj had a lot of spare clothes in his laundry store, along with a few pairs of shoes. Ravi took one pair and kept it in now formed small puddle of blood. Finally, he changed his clothes to a grey shirt and blue jeans and wore a hairpiece which he had gotten from the parlour.
He peered out and saw the tea seller coming toward him. He picked up the wooden piece now soaked in blood and ran at the very moment when he knew the tea seller would look in his direction. As planned, the wooden piece dripped drops of blood while Ravi ran towards Vashi creek. Once he reached there, he flung the stone by which he killed Sooraj, far off in the middle of the creek, deep. Then he rubbed the wooden showpiece with soil to take care of fingerprints and threw it close to the bank – visible enough to be found.
He then changed back into his clothes, kept the hair piece in his backpack and swiftly ran. It took him 30mins of slight running and walking to reach the nightclub from where he had left. He ensured no one saw him as he sneaked from the back into a toilet window. He flushed loudly so that someone outside would hear and then opened the door with a thud. The inside of the club was dark with neon lights and cigarette smoke.
Shetty, the manager of the club on duty, knew Ravi and also knew Ravi took at least 30mins to take a dump, but today was a little too long, so he asked him the reason. Ravi said he was masturbating to the hot dancer on the stage. Shetty laughed and said that Ravi could do whatever he wanted for one year. But for now, he should stick to playing cards only.
Ravi spent the rest of the night at the club, lost about 5000 Rs in cards, and picked a fight with one of the bouncers – everything to ensure that everyone knew he was in the bar till 3 am, till the closing time of the club.
At about 4 am, Ravi returned to his room, burned the fake hairpiece in the toilet bowl, cleaned his bag of blood and hair, kept it for drying, and went off to sleep.
Ravi had taken too much shit from Sooraj for the ten months he worked there. He didn’t know Mumbai enough to go on his own; he was already a runaway from his home. He was one of those who had been wronged enough times to take a drastic step finally. Every other night, Sooraj found a way to insult Ravi, then slowly, those insults proceeded to be slaps and punches, and now it was a full-fledged beating.
Ravi’s Biology teacher in junior college once talked about answering Biology questions in exams. The long answers are the worst ones, he said. “…but if you cannot convince them with your answers, then confuse them. For example, if the question is to describe the life-cycle of the Fern plant ‘Pteridium Aquilinum’ and if you don’t know it, write about the plant. As long as you write anything related to the Fern and it is correct, they’ll give you some points.”
Some people speak, some incidences happen in our lives, and they unknowingly get rooted deep in our minds. That line by his biology professor took a deep root in Ravi’s mind in a wrong way. He thought for a long time before finally deciding to ‘add’ evidence instead of trying to remove it.
“… confuse them.”
He had good access to the beauty parlour and knew all about their trashing system from Yukta. All of this, coupled with some movies, boiled in 17-year-old Ravi’s mind, and he decided to have his revenge on the evil laundry man. They say people have beginner’s luck in everything they do. Some know this, and others don’t know. To this day, Ravi cannot tell where and how he got the courage to perform such a heinous act. All he remembers today is he was full of anger and humiliation.
Ravi was never related to the crime. He returned to his little town a few months after the incident after ensuring he was out of the police’s suspect list. He met Inspector Sam once or twice regarding it, and never was he questioned for more than 10 minutes. The case eventually fizzled down and was never solved. Inspector Sameer (Sam) retired from the crime branch, but he never got over this particular unsolved case. The last conclusion Sam incurred was either the crime was committed by someone who got very lucky or by someone brilliant.