Ritika Malhar stood a good five-feet-five with a slender, willowy built, sharp facial features, doe-like dark topaz eyes and short inky black spiky hair tamed (barely) by a red headband.
Clad in a regular faded jeans and a t-shirt with a messenger bag across her shoulder, the sixteen-year old skipped from one foot to another as checked her watch.
He's late, she mused as she swept her head up and down the street.
It was almost seven in the evening, and though New York was no village, this particular neighborhood gave her the jeebies. The sun's downward tangent hid its light behind the taller buildings, making this place a murky, dank place.
I swear I'm not taking up any more stupid assignments like this again, she vowed fiercely to herself, finally flipping the phone out of her pocket. Normally, she refrained from calling her older brother Shivam whenever he was driving over to pick her up from one of the many drug-busting drives she went as part of her social-awareness project undertaken by a local NGO.
It was almost an hour past the time he was scheduled to pick her up.
He earned this. Is Vanya so important that he forgets to pick me up? Ritika fumed, calling his girlfriend some choicest expletives as she punched in the speed dial code.
The phone rang.
And simultaneously, a light, almost faint strain of the The Chronicles of Narnia soundtrack began playing. Somewhere around the dumpsters across the narrow street.
She frowned.
Now what? Trying peek-a-boo routine?
She clutched her bag close to her torso as she crossed the road, her senses on high alert. She knew how much of a trickster her brother was--and she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of scaring her proper.
Especially when goosebumps rose up her arms.
Don't freak out...it's just Shiv being his usual juvenile self...nothing more...probably eager to gather more arsenal for his "torture my baby sister" kit...
The ringing stopped.
She dialed again.
The strains were louder now. She hurried quickly, intending to ferret out the matter before the line got disconnected again.
A T-junction faced her. And the ring came from her right.
Let's see what you are up to now, brother dearest!
She turned the corner, ready to launch a flying tackle-type assault on her brother...
Only to find herself face-to-face with a bloodied, beaten, broken version of a supposedly good-looking man wearing the clothes she had seen her brother put on mere hours ago.
*/*/
"Okay....three hours, right? I'll come and pick you up at around six, sounds cool? So stop hanging from my apron strings let me go now..."
The medic said he had died most probably an hour ago, due to extensive internal hemorrhage and blood loss.
Someone had beaten him up real bad.
But why? she asked herself, her eyes unexpectedly dry her hands clutched the coffee mug in a death grip. The coffee itself had turned cold but she needed something to hold on to. Otherwise she would fall apart at the seams, literally.
The police officer called up Vanya Tripathi, his girlfriend and perhaps the only other human close enough to be a part of her life as family. She stood next to her, leaning sideways on the ambulance as silent tears tracked a salty path down her dusky cheeks. She hadn't even removed her makeup yet.
"Why him? Why?" she kept on repeating as she hugged herself tightly.
It was a warm June evening. But Ritika too felt that cold.
Vanya was a beautiful twenty-four year old woman, a year younger than her brother. She was tall, curvaceous and athletic, her hair long and lustrous that tumbled down her back in natural waves and dark chocolate brown eyes that shone with intelligence and wit.
And were currently dulled with pain and grief.
"The perpetrators were most likely the drug-handlers that roam this area. Apparently, your brother must have seen something delicate and potentially dangerous and was thus silenced. We'll track them down, don't worry," said the police officer, barking orders to take the body...Shivam...to the medical center for autopsy.
The body.
It was no longer Shivam. It had become an anonymous body.
*/*/
"The last rites?" Vanya asked quietly.
"Yeah," Ritika replied.
The two girls sat in Vanya's studio flat in Manhattan. The clock ticked away mutely, as if it knew to keep silence. The dancing lights from the surrounding buildings, cafes and restaurants created kaleidoscopic patterns on the white ceiling, but nothing could lend color into their lives when the entire palette had been yanked away so unceremoniously.
"A friend of mine knows a pandit. We could call him. A few of his friends...I can't do this! How on earth am I supposed to call them up and say that Shivam is...Shivam is dead!" Vanya cried out, covering her face with her hands as she sobbed inconsolably.
Ritika was just blank, as if her tear ducts had dried up.
"After that, I want to go back," she said softly.
Vanya lifted her tear-stained face to look at her.
"Go back where?" she asked.
"To India."