Help Me!

By Prantik Mandal

Let me just set this up as a Preface:

Anyone reading this, consider yourself as my confederate in my conundrum in which I am currently floundering. I would be much obliged if my anonymous comrade would give me some piece of advise to get me out of…well whatever mess THIS is. If you are someone too priggish or is in some kind of too changing the world point of view person then please refrain yourself from further reading and save yourself some precious energy.

On the other hand if you are living off of some kind of precarious and capricious temperament viz., an engineering student, gambler, extremist , serial killer, a pregnant woman, a suicidal person, a newly divorcee,

Or correspondent, PLEASE PLEASE help me out. This problem cannot be solved with logic or lets say ratiocinative approach but, from what I believe, through pure passion.

Also I will be putting down my thoughts as unmeasured as possible, if not following my stream of consciousness. Please bear with me.

Now lets start off by common courtesies and methods. My name is–

Nah! Lets leave these unnecessary facts aside for once and focus on the core. Lets start again and now from purely objective point.

I am a private detective. Not some graduated underling working for a parasitic firm but absolute freelance, total liberated and flowing. Though not fully free cause if I was, full independent, then I wouldn’t have been imploring in the first place.

I don’t show my face to my clients nor give out my name nor my address. I don’t have any surveillance on me, I mean no aadhaar card , pan card, ration card, driving license, no education certificate, no birth certificate, passport, social media handle or even a smartphone. Of course I have them but as you all have probably already guessed not registered in my original name. Well to be honest I don’t know what my original name is. I guess the appellation I hold to my wife and my child— where the latter is already dead— can be said to be my real identity. Now you might suppose how my neighbors address me or what about my other family members. Well its pretty simple I guess. All you need to do is convince your wife and child that you work for some kind of high level secret GOVERNMENT organization, RAW or something like that ( only learned from them movies ), and they’ll play along. People always supposes working for the country especially in a furtive manner is some kind of a spiritual work, almost serving god. So they endorse me in keeping my identity so inconspicuous. For the other indispensable persons in my life I work as a developer of some corporate, the name I know not, but that’s not the point.

You see acting as being a normal man, working under a notable firm, sometimes going on long work related trips and leading a pretty boring life, I cannot leave any trace behind for my trail. Not one breadcrumb. You see that is one of the greatest favoring situations if you have witnesses backing you up.

As for my parents, well my father died long before there existed a world, for me of course, and my mother when I was 16, if I remember correctly. After my father’s death my some relative encroached upon all the properties, wealth left behind leaving my mother homeless with a bloated stomach ( I was in there, you see ). Then she went off to her father’s/ my grandfather’s house where we were allowed to stay for three years.

Fearing the wrath of my drunkard uncle ( mother’s brother ) who always use to curse her, calling her black sheep and whatnot, she one day or rather night, stole some money from my uncle and fled off with me to Mumbai.

Huh! Let me tell you something about Mumbai. It is the modern day gladiator where not the most powerful, skillful person wins but the most persistent and defiant. One can’t just stand in the street in the middle of the day and not move, but the city itself will push you somewhere. And there are infinite opportunities. From being a politician or prostitute, to being a film star or LALA. All one has to do is surrender its soul to her vast bosom. She will hold you, squeeze you, stifle you even tear you apart but if you survive through it by traits mentioned above, you get to drink its sweet milk.

Mumbai gave my mother ample resources to start off rearing myself. And although I went to school I did not learn much from it. My skills varied from eavesdropping, deception, acute observation, to, gambling, drinking and promiscuity.

These background knowledge is only provided with solely for the purpose of evoking some kind of pity in the readers for the next discourse might make you think of leaving me in my dire straits.

Now cut to almost 16 years later; meanwhile I have married my wife. Now she is a real good person. There couldn’t have been a better substitute for my mother. I was in this business for 8 years and only used to take up cases such as smuggling, extortion, protection, money laundering, tracing calls, tapping calls, tracing people, tapping people. I employed an assistant, a guy of 16, who used to receive the request applications and forward them to me thus concealing my identity from clients. I have travelled all over the country, except for the north-east and northernmost parts, owing to my profession. I also, like detectives in movies, carry a gun though not legal.

Now in these last 16 years of my almost regular job I have worked laboriously and with but one notion in my head: not to let the guy who funds the investigation, die. I honestly find it hard to believe people in my profession actually cares about guilty and not guilty. Because in a broader picture, I suppose, every evil event, one way or another, is an emotional outburst, something to relieve some pain, to get some catharsis. And then only the person venting his evil is deemed wrong, and the millions of other persons who each drops millions of other evil in that person are deemed as normal, as civilized, like you, like me.

But now just diving straight into the point. Due to the lockdown of almost about a year, there was a huge shortage of clients. Hell! There was not one. Potential clients were either dead or either too scared. Potential perpetrators, too risky for them now to do something in those conditions. God might forgive them but some microscopic unbiased being, NEVER.

As a result I was getting a little anxious day by day. I know not what part of my brain was itching but I just wanted to break open my skull and scratch it. You see, it had nothing to do with money cause I am fairly provided with, if not rich.

I believe I had got myself into some kind of addiction, a fixation with the thrill, the flight and fight, the intermittent terror in my blood. And to allay my fretting I drank a lot, turned an alcoholic and occasionally grew aggressive with my wife and kid. But as I already pointed out my wife was very tolerant with me. She did her very best to hide the baby from my radar and herself suffer most of my atrocities. And believe me I am not such kind of a woman abuser person. It’s just that those bleak and silent atmos of confinement topped off with rash drinking and smoking almost poisoned my soul. The silence was so silent that it hurt my ears. The emptiness was so empty it’s weight broke my heart. Not having anything to do, any real work, made my mind an abyss of mindless chaos. It’s only when you don’t have any real anxiety, real over worrying, that you realize how much you are actually addicted to that state of mind. Then the mind in itself tries to create its own conflicts. I suppose human mind feeds off sufferance, and the absence of it makes one go crazy. No wonder there were so many cases of suicides in those times. It was like snatching an art from an artist. The only thing then left would be despair.

And this unknown, to me, phenomenon took its toll in my life too. One such day after getting highly drunk at about 4 in the afternoon I felt really asphyxiated and just wanted to break out. So I decided to go meet with my girlfriend whom I had not seen, at that time, for five months. We had known each other for 2.5 years now and she was really attractive.

Now before you jump into conclusions about my infidelity and lack of character, just hear me out. I have specially noticed this common bias against people who “CHEAT” on their partners, especially from young public who haven’t had any experience. Let me put an instance before you and then maybe those people who have, unfortunately, already started ganging up against me might melt. Suppose you are in your teens 14-15 years old and you had had your first beer, as… well cause you thought you would look cool. And you really liked when you got drunk, the world so slow and light, you don’t feel any burden on yourself. Now you go home drunk and your mother sniffs you out. She slaps you, pulls your hair, tweaks your ears, then cries, then the great guilt torcher— “what have I not provided you with? Where did I go wrong? I work day and night tirelessly just so you could go to school with other rich kids and make a man out of yourself. You don’t care about me. You don’t love me.”— and finally makes you swear upon her not to ever touch drinks again and no to mingle with those loafer friends; and you acquiesce to her, you finally swear. But what do you do next? Maybe not the next day, even a month, but eventually you go back to them drinks because you realize you cannot face this vile world in a sober state. Now does that prove that you don’t care about your mother or you don’t love her. ABSOLUETLY NOT! You would die for her, go on a war against GOD if need be. But still sometimes you need something other than MAMTA in your life. So you resort back to drinks. It is the same equation with me having an extra-marital girlfriend.

Now that we have got that issue out of the way, let’s get back. I decided to go meet my girlfriend at about 4 in the afternoon and so I texted her to meet me in OUR graveyard which was invariably our love making spot. You see, the dead never interferes. Its always so silent and peaceful. Also I read in the news that OUR graveyard was already full house owing to those unfortunate victims of covid. So it was perfectly safe at night, complete solitude. Also I used an unregistered SIM card and also texted her not from my home but from somewhere far from home. You see leaving no trail behind.

After meeting up and meddling together, when we lay in the open field with only the moonlight guiding our perception of sight, smoking and talking together, she proposed an idea to elope. She said her uncle could manage to put us in a cargo ship to Sri Lanka. We would be hiding in one of them long iron containers and sail off to a foreign land. So romantic it sounded, right? What about my family back home? No way I could lie to them as, if my wife whiffs some “DAAL MEIN KALA” then she would disclose to the world about my not being a developer and tell everybody about my being RAW agent. Now you see what the conundrum is. Not only the curtains would be down, it would open up another curtain. How was I supposed to solve that? The first option was telling my wife that I have to go on work related trip for a month and later would think of some excuse after a month. Maybe even after a month I would be satiated with my girlfriend and actually return home.

Secondly, I could just go away by not informing, and in the process would let them peel the onions over and over. But that to me seems like a cowardice, an emasculating act. One should not lie to anyone unless extremely necessary. There’s also the third option of not getting into all that fuss but kill my wife and kid, dissolve their remains with lye and water reaction catalyzed with aluminum cans, and get rid of them once and for all.

I thought I needed a change of scene, almost change the entire plot of my life. I am 39 years old now and I don’t have much male friends with whom I can share my problem. Much of the adults these days, and also young people for some reason, are tainted with morality and ethics. For them only the legal way is the right way, only majority decision is the right decision. Our whole structure is based on some kind of rule of majority which to me feels like the first discrimination, first production of minorities. Not that I know much of other systems of how to have a COMPLETELY equal society but still I believe one should not avert from the fact that we are not part of some kind of progressive civilization where everyone is equal, everyone has equal opportunities, when the authority ruling us has also a system of hierarchy within itself. I don’t like people lying to themselves. I don’t like lies.

Uff! So you see I needed some advice from someone who still has some fire burning within him or her or it or anything human. But due to lack of retinues, I again had to get drunk and peruse over the situation myself, alone. Lonely thinking is very radical, I suppose.

That same night I went back home around half past 12, my wife was still alive…uh I mean awake, and she was sitting on the couch watching T.V. The room— not really room but the drawing room attached to the dining table which in turn was attached to the kitchen— was lowly lit with only the light of the T.V. and a very dull, but exciting, purple light was on just above the couch where my wife was sitting. I went in with the spare key I had and sat at the dining table, behind the couch, and started drinking. Drinking and looking; not at the T.V. but at the back of my wife’s head. Oh! How beautiful it looked with its long, thick, glossy curls drooping over her back. I just kept looking at it mechanically. Looking and empty thinking. It had a kind of hypnotizing effect on me. I wanted to go up to her and finger them soft curls. But I was too weak from all the drinking. Drinking and thinking. Then she slowly and elegantly grasped the back of her hair with her one hand and moved those silks aside, and with the other sponged the sweat off her nape. I caught a glimpse of the flushed nape, like raw meat. Then I couldn’t hold myself back. I just wanted to place my teeth, all the way from incisors to molars, on it and just bite it all out!. Oh! …I couldn’t think of anything but the aesthetically appealing scene of her flesh in my mouth and blood drooling all over the place.

So I started walking up to. Staggering and heavy steps. She heard my steps ( though not sure as I was drunk ) but didn’t pay any heed. I walked up to her, stood right behind her and placed my fingers on her nape and started caressing it, making it all mushy before my meal. But to my shock, she got aroused, I suppose. She probably thought I wanted to make love to her. But believe me when she turned her head towards me, I was HORRIFIED! Yes I was horrified with the love in her eyes. I was expecting her to avert me and in the process getting a little rough. But purity in her eyes made me want to throw up. In fact I did throw up. When I was washing my face in the bathroom and looking in the mirror, I realized what I had become. I was growing to be anything but human. Or maybe I was becoming my truest self. As they say alcohol brings out our real face. Maybe I am evil. Maybe all persons are evil. I did not knew what to do but one thing. I resolved to run away with my girlfriend. This confinement with same people for so long was dangerous. If not to me then to them.

But here lay another act of that thing which we all call to help only when we are devoid of it. FATE. Hoh! Think about how many lives she had changed. How much trouble she had incited from time immemorial. It was only fate which gave birth to Ramayana. It was fate which killed Achilles. It was fate of Hitler not dying as a child, and of Bhagat Singh of not tasting the independent soil. Say what you might but I believe she is the ruler of this world. No, our thoughts are not ours; our deeds are not ours. Its all her doing.

The next morning I wake up to my child being kidnapped. Yes! Can you believe that? Who kidnaps a child in this day and age? Especially when I am not much known for having much wealth, which I do although no one but myself knows about that.

My wife and he was in the common ground of the locality for their morning walk. While she was chatting with some other woman and he was playing with some other kid, somehow he was lost. I woke up to the cries of my wife. I HAD TO call the police. I really didn’t wanted to. And then came the interrogation. Where was I during the kidnapping? Where was I the day before? What do I do?

I had to lie for the most part. God! I hate lying. But then again I had no other option. The police, if did not find any trail in a few hours, would have definitely ran a background check on me.

I am not going into the psychological aspect as to how hard it was to manage my wife after the kidnapping. Women are the only creatures that know what love is. Especially if it’s a male child. God! They could go to any extent to grieve for their child. How can one lament so much just after only a missing child. Not that he was dead ...well not just then, at least.

Hours were rolling by. No signs, no reports. The longer the search protracts, the higher chances of my unmasking. I had to think of something fast and quick. Oh… both those words mean the same but anyway that’s not the point. I had to think. So turned again to drink so I could think. And I thought and thought and came up with a plan.

I decided then to send a encrypted text message to my own phone through a computer from an internet café far away from my address. I went there wearing mask and cap, full clothes newly bought only for this purpose. Of course registered under fake name. I send a message to myself that they ( the kidnapper or pers, I don’t know ) had set at 5 crores ransom, the trade would be the next day, some place set by them and also not to inform police. Purely original idea, isn’t it? Now what is the benefit of this situation. If we don’t get the real ransom call, I would have another day to think and also could set off the police on a false track. That way the attention is shifted from me to some internet café owner.

I showed the message to my wife and, as expected, love and care thwarted reason and she exhorted me to accept the proposal and not to inform the police and just trade for her child.

Now now now… was I lucky to get the real kidnapper’s text that same day. Guess who it was? You guessed right! At about 2 in the afternoon, I received a audio-text from my girlfriend. She told me that my child had been kidnaped by my girlfriend’s husband. Yes! Could it be more dramatic? You see, they didn’t had a child of their own, probably because of some infertility complications with the husband.

So here’s how it happened. The night before the kidnapping of my child when I met my girlfriend in the graveyard, his husband followed my girlfriend/his wife, to the graveyard, watched us all the way through, followed me home, waited all night outside, till in the early morning when my wife went out with my kid for the morning walk. Uff! So persistent guy. To be honest if we were not on the opposite sides, I would have made an accomplice out of him. Such hunger for revenge, such burning passion always allures me. Maybe in some parallel world we indeed are partners because the plan with which he waited still and the actual execution was completely varying. You see, he came with the notion of ravishing my wife by force. So he waited till day so that he could catch a glimpse of her and at night make his move. But seeing an more opportune opportunity of doing something more damaging, he decided to kidnap my kid. So masculine, isn’t he?

Now here’s how the trade was offered. I was asked to visit the graveyard that night, at the same time of the previous night. The problem being I couldn’t remember the exact time of the previous night as I was mad drunk. So I had go from 4 in the afternoon and wait there idle for 6 hours till they came. 6 hours! My god! I still can’t remember what have I been doing for 6 hours the previous night before I met my girlfriend.

If only he would have mentioned me the exact time maybe I could have rested a while before the long imminent night.

What I told my wife for going out again in the evening, you ask?

That I was going to collect the 5 crores cash for tomorrow. What other story would I have to make up when I walked home with my kid that night, I thought not. But, I think, I am pretty good at evading complex difficulties with simplest solutions. I am a detective, you see; in case you forgot.

Anyhow they arrived in the graveyard at about 10 in the night with my happy, playing child. He ran up to me gaily and hugged me telling how he missed me and my wife all day. My girlfriend and her husband walked up next. The husband was tall, lean with sharp, penetrating eyes. From just looking at his features, especially the eyes one feels unsettled around him.

It was pretty simple deal that I was not to meet her again. Of course I accepted. It was pretty simple for me but not so for her, evident from the bruises and scars on her face and neck. It felt a little queer. A man so thirsty for revenge as to spend an entire night outside waiting just so he could get a good glimpse at my wife, how is he leaving all his grudges so easily. Well, he wasn’t.

On the way home my son told me that my girlfriend’s husband has asked him to tell my wife/his mother to call on a number that he made my son memorize.

THAT kid who couldn’t even remember 7’s table, had memorized an entire unknown number. I kind of felt weak as a father. Also he had extracted the personal number of my wife so that in case I prevent my son from reaching to my wife, he could contact her himself.

That smart guy! I knew it. He checked me this time.

Now here was the situation. After I reached home with my kid, I have to explain to her where I got him. However bold and bogus story do I make up, there is always the threat of my quisling kid. If I somehow restrain him from betraying just about then, maybe I would have had more time to think about. But anyway that smart husband is going to call my wife even if I control my child. Even if I destroy my wife’s phone, the husband already knows my address. Even if I take my wife and son out of town to some far away place and settle down, there’s always the risk of my son betraying me in near future. Not to mention, the police in the back.

Now in this situation only one outcome remained possible. Yes, that’s right. Its exactly what you guessed. On the way home I killed my son and dumped him in the graveyard, some different graveyard. Before you knit your brows again let me tell you how peacefully he died. I just gave him a sleeping pill, Oh! Enough for a child to sleep like a baby. Then I shot him in the head, wiped my fingerprints and dumped my son by digging a grave. Now I reached home empty handed but full minded of the next step.

I told my wife about the change of plans on the part of kidnapper. I said they would trade our son in a nearby town, a suburban area, where we need to go and take the hotel and room allotted to us by the kidnapper. It was the only way I could’ve procured one more day to work through my next step. Also I took care to secretly hide my wife’s phone in my own bag, which I later threw from the running train in which we were travelling to get to the town.

Now when we got there it was almost 4 in the morning. Two hours later…oh! the T.V. was on guys. The police found my dead child, my wife saw the news on T.V.

Apparently a street dog sniffed out the corpse and dug out the grave. You see I did not had any shovel or such digging equipment to dig a deep grave. But I did all I could manage with my bare hands.

Them damned street dogs! How vile they are. With the closing of the day and maturing of the night they metamorphose completely. In the day they move about so warily as it should. But at night they are the bosses of the town. All their gang members as if waits for the world to go dark so they could go berserk. How many night walks, even of romantic couples, had they devastated. You don’t have a night life if you live in an area swarming with street dogs. Not to mention their INDIAN IDOL every night which keeps the whole locality awake. I’m telling you, mark my words. If ever humans are stripped of their knowledge, their civilization and organized society, it won’t be the tigers or elephants who would rule, but them army of NIGHT STREET DOGS!

So now here’s the final problem. My girlfriend betrayed me to the police and they released the statement that I was having an affair with her. But she still hadn’t disclosed her and her husband’s part in my child’s death. So that’s all my wife knows that I was having an affair and that I had lied to her about the kidnapper.

Again three possible scenarios now. One, I tell my wife I had nothing to do with the murder and that all had been staged by my girlfriend out of jealousy. But she was getting to frantic to control now. So I knew I cannot make up any more lies.

Two, I can kill my wife now, here, and run away. But then I won’t have any woman to live with me. Not my girlfriend not my wife. Believe it or not but a life without a woman is as bland as a life without any troubles, any stimulus to stimulate anxiety. So I am not just jumping into that option right about now.

Three, I could just kill my wife and myself too. In this way I don’t have to lead a boring, pale life. But I am seriously concerned about taking this step. That famous lines of Stephen Hawking is resonating in my mind:

“ However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up”

And now I don’t know which course to pursue. Please reader if you can find any loophole in this situation by which I can save myself and my wife without having to run the risk of her betraying me, I would love to do that and would forever be grateful to you. Frankly my mind is just completely clogged right now, and I can’t see any other possible outcome. Them game theorists or strategists or mathematical probability experts please HELP ME! I know you can work something out of this situation. Remember I don’t necessarily need her love. She could hate me for all I care. But I definitely need her undisputed loyalty.

Presently I have tied up my wife in the g

hotel bathroom and is in bondage, with her mouth gagged with some clothes, to restrain her screams. But I haven’t heard any struggling or whimpering sounds for the last 10 minutes or so. Has she somehow fled? Has she suffocated?

Let me just check.

By Prantik Mandal