A woman weighing heavily on a chair on a balcony was playing with her frizzled hair at the end of a tip. Looking over the railing covering the entire small balcony, she was singing an old Bollywood song. Her sullen eyes were asking for someone to talk to, to spend time with her, to coax her when she makes her face distend. An alone woman after her only daughter’s death in a car accident didn’t let her sleep an unabridged night. Every midnight, she woke up and sit on her bed and listened to an illusion of her daughter calling her for help. Insomnia hurdling her day by day. She was losing the way to live.

Sarojini never had thought about such a phase that will ever come in her life. Every day, she glanced at one common place on a street where her daughter usually sat with friends and played their unique self-made game. She smiled sometimes when girls of her daughter’s age sat there but finding no face similar to her daughter, she evoked crying.

Sara, her neighbour and only friend knew about the eyesore and she wanted it to vanish quickly. It was not so simple to pull out someone quickly but she had seen her father lose his life in the death of his son. She visited every day for an hour to check if Sarojini didn’t take any wrong steps. A Bollywood-loving country wasn’t unaware of the facts cropping up after the depression. She kept on distracting her mind from her daughter but didn’t succeed.

It was Friday night when she was discussing Sarojini’s ballgame with her husband. The man with great experience was evoked with an idea to take her out of the ghostly silent house to an entertaining place. Mumbai had just one entertainment within it for so long that no mind walk through it without thinking at least for once,

“Cinema”

A plan for a movie commenced with a secret mission of Sara and her husband. It wasn’t easy to appease her but Sara was no less a drama queen. She convinced Sarojini for “Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein”. Sarojini would be indulged in an argument definitely if it wouldn’t a love story.

It was Saturday. Sara’s husband took a half-day and planned an itinerary of the day to juts Sarojini from her grief. Sarojini trudged out of the house after 20 days. Sara thought her stabs would help their plan but Sarojini’s sanity was sceptically stranded on the day when her daughter asked her for a movie and she refused her.

It was 5’ o clock when Sara’s husband arrived in a rickshaw at the gate of their society and bawl her wife to come. Sara cleaved to the excitement for the movie. She kept telling her while riding about the character and storyline every minute to let her indulge only in it but Sarojini was no different from Sara. She pretended solemnly to indulge in the movie, smiling in between but was feeling bleak inside.

At the end of the show, Sara’s husband rants about his young age and the importunate of dinner. Sarojini resisted a lot giving excuses for laundry and tired neck but Sara convinced her finally with an intentional melodrama.

They visited the best restaurant, Sara’s husband knew, near the cinema. Sara ordered Sarojini’s daughter’s favourite dish. Sarojini clambered to remain serene after when pawing her grief once again.  Sara when saw her sagging said,

“This is what she likes? Am I right?”

Sarojini looked at Sara anonymously and then at her husband who had peeped his head at the menu. She felt her marooned with words. Sara hold her hand and knocked off her purgatory,

“She is happy wherever she is”

After looking deep into her eyes and refusing her hands,

“But you are not happy anymore. Look, We also love Charu but we love you more than anyone. I request you, beg you not to make her sad by letting her know that you refuse to live”

Tears welled in thin eyes. Sarojini didn’t feel embarrassed when crying or sitting in the crowd. She felt guilty for neglecting Sara and her husband’s efforts to pull her out of sorrow. Sara when trying to calm Sarojini, her husband interrupted,

“You two ladies are always like this. There is no need to open gates for misery all the time and for god sake, let’s not talk about it further. I am beast hungry. Aren’t you?”

Although it couldn’t be any sort of deviation from the sad conversation it was Sara’s gesturing of no misery talking any further helped her husband’s effort. He asked for water before food was served and galloped the full glass of it.

Muzammil came near their table, serving the food. He was helping Asgar serve food inside the restaurant. Deliveries drop sometime when visiting people in the restaurant especially on Saturday after the last cinema ended rushed in a large number. Muzammil went into the kitchen to refill the jug. Sara forestalled Sarojini’s solemn thinking when menacingly silence cleaved at her face. The silence never being Sara’s companion. She forgot all her husband’s gestures and said,

“I am sorry”

Lowering her voice, watching the waiter coming towards them, Sara importunate Sarojini’s rueful sanity. Muzammil heard before leaving a far distance from the table after laying down the jug,

“Sarojini, you need to understand”

“Sarojini?”

Muzammil’s step hung fire listening to the name. He heard it somewhere else.

“Sarojini”

Pressuring his memory deeper, he was trying to focus on the name putting him in jagged terror.

“What had shocked him so much?”

He heard the name again from Sara’s husband damnation Sara,

“Sarojini Venkatesh led such a clambering life that she is mature enough to handle all the situations. You don’t worry”

Muzammil opened his eyes unforeseen. Heartbeat wrigglingly commotion and hands shuddered menacingly. Sarojini Venkatesh was one of the names on the list.

He turned around and watched her again. She wasn’t crying but looked beleaguered. An upset face with a hidden calm beauty in it. He kept assuring him that she could not be the one whom the killer had written about but didn’t even stop him from ogling at her carefully. It was his fortune that Sara’s husband and Sara were facing opposite Muzammil. Asgar came near,

“Beauty”

Muzammil lost observation unexpectedly. Looking at Asgar, he almost freaked out. He continued,

“She is a beauty. Isn’t she? But don’t become a stalker”

Pointing towards Jamal, he make face sardonically,

“Villain is not so far. He is no less than a punk when saw a fissure in his demesne”

Muzammil ignored Asgar’s slipshod chattering, handed him the plate hastily and went to the backyard hotfoot. He closed the door and draw out the paper hiding below the quilt. Keen eyes brim to the highest pace. Their rolling and flipping stopped when saw a name.

“Sarojini Venkatesh”

The 13^th name on the list.

Muzammil reposed him as her not the one on the list but a slight chance could have regretted him if he won’t followed her. He went out and looked at her attentively. Asgar didn’t interrupt him again smugging that finally, something took Muzammil out of his loneliness.

Muzammil served the food near the table where Sarojini was sitting, to listen, to what they were talking about. A couple of minutes and Sara’s intolerance towards silence were okay for him to know that Sarojini had lost her daughter and was in grief. Muzammil when heard her grief began reckoning that she was not the one from the list. An internal detective inside pushed him observing her.

Finally, when they paid the bill and went out of the restaurant, Muzammil followed them with the bowl of fennel. He was waiting for them calling an auto-rickshaw. It was Muzammil’s luck that before Jamal could see him out of the restaurant, an auto-rickshaw appeared. Sarojini, Sara and her husband sat in one by one. When Muzammil felt the correct time, he ran towards them, served them the bowl of fennel and smiled for a tip. Sara’s husband picked a 10 rupee note amongst a few 100 rupees and put it in the bowl. Muzammil thanked them and stepped back. The only thing he wanted to hear and finally heard was the address,

“Take Vasant Vihar, D block”

Muzammil courageously completed his task but remained in a dilemma if she was the real one from the list. Mumbai was filled with many Sarojini and he couldn’t know the exact person, the killer asked believing that Venkatesh won’t be every Sarojini’s surname. He obscurely was rambling inside the room but then swooped down fearing the killer’s damnation. A week’s destruction with self-discussions smugged him deferring the wait.

Finally, he trudged towards the killer completing his last delivery of the day. The path didn’t feel longer the day. The less he wanted to be at the place steeply it knocked off the distance. Moon was reflecting all the light but stars wore the cast of an invisible cloth. Muzammil expected the killer nowhere except the haunted house. He was practising the words, he had to deliver stoutly. A few more minutes he gagged himself off bravely but when the jagged light from the house juts out of a broken window, the pace began clambering, hands shuddering and face breaking.

The chivalry knocking, abrupted Muzammil, illogically watching the character of the killer. He stepped inside the house without permission. The killer didn’t amuse. He kept himself busy cleaning his moustache. No turnaround but looked at Muzammil from the mirror,

“You got the address?”

Allowing Muzammil to shock and then pointing towards a broken table,

“Put it on the table with the name”

Muzammil stammered,

“You knew I will come again?”

Killer didn’t look back. Muzammil waited for his response, hearing silence, he asked,

“How did you know I get the address?”

The killer was busy shaving. Muzammil this time leapt no response against ego. He wanted to kill the killer but courage ended up with a changed yet important question,

“Are you sure, the person I found will be the exact one you are asking?”

It paused the killer’s hand. All his acts terrorized Muzammil from the beginning they met. He advised him to put words in front of the killer attentively. The killer didn’t answer except what he wanted to. He laid down the razor, came near Muzammil and said,

“No”

The distance between both went so close that Muzammil felt an upcoming punch and so he lowered his voice and asked curiously,

“How would you know the Sarojini I found was the one you wrote on the list? I mean there could be 1000 Sarojini in Mumbai”

The killer came veritable closer and said,

“Then you have to search for all of them”

Grabbing Muzammil by his collar, looking into his eyes straight, the killer warned,

“Listen, you freak, You don’t have to know who the correct person is? That is my job. You will only tell me the address. If you heard the same name even a thousand times, I want all those thousand addresses on my table.

Releasing Muzammil from the dead end,

“Don’t worry! When I find the correct person, you will know by yourself”

Muzammil freaked out and the killer wade his anger down. The killer distanced him from Muzammil and didn’t say a single word from then till the whole time Muzammil remained there.

He pointed towards the table and gestured for him to lay down the information he had on a folding paper. Muzammil was familiar with the fear as he had seen it most of the time but didn’t learn a single thing from them. The killer was not someone to treat like normal, he never understood. A ground-crushing burden of guilt invaded him hard to figure out either to repent or to walk out and if repent then for which mistake? The night couldn’t be more horrible alone after facing the deadly beast grunting. Wearing the coat of humiliation, he came back to the restaurant. Jamal was waiting for his arrival.

Muzammil, walking snugly from the street, beefed up Jamal more. Appearing near, Jamal asked him about his reposeful nature for a few days.

The man bathed with the nasty words of the killer and didn’t want another troop of scolding. Anger loaded inside him burst out for the first time on any human being. He scolded Jamal as if Jamal is an employee, and didn’t stop until Asgar came in and took him away from the place. He wasn’t feeling the slightest guilt of scolding an old person who gave him shelter and food in his bad times. Muzammil had just killer’s words ringing all over his brain. He kept on thinking about the address he gave to the killer. He was making a set of all the possibilities of the killer’s harsh and negative act. He was praying for the killer not to step on any hard decision for someone and at least that someone won’t be Sarojini Venkatesh.

Jamal, on the other hand, didn’t sleep comfortably all night. The words he got hit by the person whom he thought was a better human and sometimes his son, were striking all night in his head.

It was shit bricking for him to summon the courage and throw Muzammil out of his life. All he thought that night, remained inside of him. He cried tearing hard with a shrinking heart when every single word of Muzammil swirled in his head. Jamal had never brought such an attachment with Asgar after a long time. He didn’t know if it was Muzammil’s behaviour or innocence, he liked the most. He was upset but didn’t blame Muzammil completely for such behaviour. He observed him as a changed person since he returned after staying 6 days somewhere, he didn’t know.

The day arrived and Mumbai had its habitual pace. All in a need to earn had left their homes behind. Money can buy them everything, they thought but in the middle of a fast-running Mumbai, Muzammil was planning for a different life.

A life out of the city’s imagination. A life where he could write what he wants and not anyone else. A life which he was living inside for the past 10 years. A life which restricted his way to live. He was involved in deliveries stepping aside from the killer’s work. Telling himself last night not to become mad at a person who didn’t care for him a little bit. For two days, Muzammil worked for Jamal only and tried to avoid the imagination of the killer’s face inside his head who arrived in his search with a knife to stab him. The third day altered his life completely when he found himself near the address of Sarojini. He heard someone telling a stranger an address nearby which he heard when headed for Sarojini’s information. An internal fear of something wrong might happened or was about to get happened intrigued him to visit the place.

He entered society with a cold heart and desperate eyes. A deep and 360 degrees look over society he made to find an unknown house framing the whole society as a victim. When the sight of Sarojini sitting on the balcony of the second floor of D – Block, appeared, he was relieved. The killer didn’t harm her. Maybe she was not the one, the killer was in search of. He looked at her keenly to check again and saw a screaming more upset face than she had the last time. He glanced at her from a distance for another few minutes as if knew her or can relate her grief to his. Sarojini indulged in watching children playing cricket. A kid ran towards Muzammil for a ball passed right from him. All his focus on a poor face turned towards the kid. He looked at the kid throwing the ball at a skinny-wearing side cap wicketkeeper. He was stuck when again looked at Sarojini’s balcony and found that she was watching him instead of the children. He found it absurd and without thinking further lowered his eyes and avoid any further contact with Sarojini. It was an awkward moment for him to stand in a single place without doing anything but just watching.

Meanwhile, Sarojini left watching him and intrude on cricket again. Muzammil after passing on such a moment didn’t feel the courage to remain in society for long. He looked at society with a single eye and went out of it.

The next day, the same person ordered the same food which took Muzammil back to the place and an innocent paddled him towards Vasant Vihar.

He stopped many times on the way but something mysterious pulled him towards that woman. She was sitting at the same place he left her last time but unlike watching any particular thing was playing with her hair. Muzammil looked at her innocence and after enough thoughts of mountains, he decided to help her. He had seen and felt the grief she was going through. Grief needed conversations to relieve and who more than Muzammil at that time knew.

He stepped to the second floor without thinking of any embarrassment. It was not hard to figure out her flat on the floor with only a single door containing a nameplate,

“Venkatesh’s house”

Something drove him easily to the gate but reaching there he found him more trembling than visiting the killer’s house. He motivated himself whenever the hand for knocking pulled itself away when just touched the roughness of wood. It walks the same for a time but finally hearing a voice from the stairs coming up he knocked on the door, twice. It was not a gentle or appropriate knocking. She didn’t open the gate for a few minutes but when a knock with a raise alarmed the floor, a pretty yet sad woman came out with an immense beauty underneath a sad face. Muzammil looked into her eyes but didn’t gather the courage to ask her anything about her daughter. Her eyes were reflecting the dying image of her daughter.

Muzammil could only ask for a wrong address instead of a meaningful thing and walk out of society without looking back for another time.

He was not running but walking hotfoot as something he had confronted scratched out his life. He didn’t wait for the place any more to see the real terror waiting for him to get inside society once again.

“The killer”

He arrived at the house as soon as Muzammil left. Likewise, Muzammil, The killer was coming to the place for the past two consecutive days for the probe. He got all the information he needed to act. The last of his desire to start his work was completed when Muzammil entered society.

Unlike Muzammil, he needed no knocking at all. He entered the house vigorously and sat on a sofa without looking at Sarojini.

Sarojini when alarmed threat asked him to leave at first but the man had come with all the preparations and was out of thinking from upcoming possible threats. She was just about to scream but the killer wrapped her mouth with the tape as if knew her way of retrieval. She moved to run but he didn’t let her and quickly took out a small rope from the pocket, and tied her hands for less than a minute. The killer’s grip was the best thing he had. Sarojini understood his intentions. They were not good at least but she was unaware of an upcoming possibility that the killer had planned last night.

Fear drowned her heavily when he closed the door from inside. She felt her breath heavily pounding her chest. All her daughter’s memories filming in her mind frame after frame. The killer only gave her a small time to think about her. Sarojini fearing death made another attempt to run but until then the killer had grabbed her body and grasped it tightly for a few minutes not to let her reach the door. She was struggling with the grip which the killer didn’t like. His eyes went to a near-hanging guitar. Without thinking a mere second, he dragged the guitar from the sidewall and stroke the hell out of her skull. The guitar which was unused after her daughter’s death finally made a sound. A sound of death. A sound of silence. A sound of a closing and ending grief. Now no more Sarojini would have to cry for her daughter, no more waking at night with anxiety and fear, and no more trouble getting out of imagination.

Blood started dripping from the thick edge of the guitar towards its string. Sarojini felt no standing at her own feet but she was strong and didn’t faint early. She was able to look at her blood dropping from the guitar as well as from her head. Tears came out hastily and she began crying madly. Packed emotion burst out and she was losing the weight of her daughter’s death on her.

The killer had no emotions with her loss. He didn’t look at her again and kept busy watching the interior of the house with great interest until she dragged her near his legs and touched her shoulder at his right leg. He was waiting for the tears to come to an end. When drops after getting hot fade up and she started fainting a little, he asked her,

“You remember me?”

Sarojini was tired of thinking about her husband and then the daughter looked at him with innocent eyes but didn’t say anything. The killer asked one more time,

“You remember me?”

She nodded in negation. Her head was at his feet. The sound of sobbing increased little after little and hiccups started along with them no later. Hairs stitched at her forehead with blood, sweat and time. She was looking at the man with a smile who had never wanted such things from anyone with an innocent eye. The killer sat on tips,

“Your daughter is waiting”

She stopped crying and looked into his eyes with a need to end everything. A daughter’s memory started filming in a mother’s eye. Every single second concluded a year of Charu’s life. It was all good between them. They were happy after even Sarojini’s husband’s death. Charu’s never talking loud in front of her mother. Charu’s asking for a movie. Charu’s asking about her father. Everything was filmed for 16 seconds and then the killer did what he came. It was shit for him to take more of his time wasted on someone else’s emotions. He stood up, grasped the guitar, gripped it tightly and basted heavily at her skull.

One time, Two times, Three times, four times and so on. Blood sprayed out at every single strike from the guitar to the wall. Sarojini stopped feeling any more pain.

She was dead just after the first stroke but the man wasn’t relieved. A smile was all over her face remembering her daughter. It was the best death for her. The session of beating her skull on the guitar didn’t stop until all the strings of the guitar left their place. Sarojini was dead long before. The killer was putting all his efforts to vanish her daughter’s memory out of her head.

The soul of a mother left the body and walk towards the balcony watching another soul of her daughter sitting alone, smiling, looking at her mother.

The body was lying on the floor with blood as a mate. He threw the guitar into the kitchen and left the place, leaving a note near her dead body.

No one watched him from Sarojini’s flat to the end of the society and the killer vanished like a ghost.