You and I

CHAPTER 1

D on’t you think that there can be a moment in life when murder is thoroughly justified? Neeta sipped her lemon tea holding the cup gingerly, her face revealing no emotion whatsoever. The cup was a silver one. Neeta had always had expensive taste. A stunning creature, her small exquisitely beautiful eyes narrowed even further and the ruthlessness of thought emerged. God, if indeed he or she existed, had been enormously kind to Neeta in the looks department. No less than five eight in height, she was extremely thin and her hair which was stylishly cut was short, not even up to her shoulders but a little above that. If it was glamour one was looking for, it was there in the way she held her head, in her poise, in her elegance. Beauty was something Neeta had never been short of. If a man happened to be looking for a perfect woman at least in looks, it was she. He would feel without doubt that his search had ended.

Rani managed to control the stab of jealousy she invariably felt every time she looked at her friend and focussed on Neeta’s words. Neeta was looking at her as if waiting for an answer. The direction the conversation was taking unsettled Rani a little.

I’m not quite sure what you mean. Then again, maybe I do. If you mean murder done in self defence, then I would have to agree. Other than that I can’t really think of anything, Rani looked at the green trees in the garden through the window. With both her parents gone and no siblings to speak of, she valued Neeta’s friendship. With the domestic help Neeta had, she didn’t really need to lift a finger but she did supervise the cooking and cleaning occasionally making a dish herself. Her cooking was a delight to Rani who enjoyed it with relish.

Let’s not be holier than thou here. Forget the moral angle for a moment. If your life has been made a total misery by the existence of a person, a person whose life doesn’t really matter one way or another, isn’t it almost right to put both yourself and the person out of misery. That is the question I am asking. I’ll put it very simply, I murdered my mother in law, that’s what I’m saying. I was feeding her with a spoon and I deliberately shoved so much food down her throat that I made sure she choked. She lost her life in my arms. And somehow, I don’t feel an iota of guilt, I really don’t. You’ve known me a long time, ever since our childhood, in fact. Did I ever strike you as the sort of person who would push someone to their death? Yet, I confess I did do it. There were no witnesses to the crime, if indeed it can be called that and it is almost impossible to prove that the choking was induced, not an accident. So you can say I got away with murder, although I think of it as a kind act. She had become incontinent. What sort of a life was she leading? Wasn’t she better off deprived of a life that had become a day to day struggle? Neeta blinked repeatedly, in the bewitching manner she had. Men found that irresistible but apart from noting mentally not for the first time that Neeta had really long eye lashes, Rani was unmoved by the blinking eyes. She refused to be shocked by Neeta’s words for the simple reason that she couldn’t believe them, Neeta was not just a friend, she was almost like a sister. To think of someone who was almost a sister in such a negative light was impossible.

Do you know, our brain is a funny thing. I mean funny as in strange. It makes us imagine things. It plays tricks on us. I can readily believe that you fed your mother in law the last meal, but beyond that you did nothing. You think you made her choke because you had become violent in your thoughts. But it is quite one thing to have murder in your heart and quite another to actually go ahead with it. The enormous guilt you felt at wishing her dead made you tell yourself you did kill her when you actually did nothing of the sort. Here’s another thing. Real murderers are secretive people, they don’t go around advertising the fact. Rani looked at Neeta. Neeta’s perfectly filed nails had been painted dark red by the beautician she regularly went to. Her eyebrows were arched, had been splendidly threaded. She was wearing the red shirt and blue jeans that Rani had bought for her and Rani couldn’t help wondering if there was a single colour that didn’t suit Neeta. Every shade seemed eager to add to Neeta’s more than ample loveliness. Although that was a silly thought anyway, who was to decide what was ample in looks?

Be that as it may, I can’t deny that she brought out in me a cruelty that no-one else had. I wasn’t even aware that I had so much venom in me. Even when she could walk, I did not allow her to sit in the veranda although I knew she was fond of looking at trees, loved nature, flowers, birds. Nature my foot, I thought. What would people think of me if an old woman was sitting daily in the veranda. I wanted people to think we were stylish, not pathetic. Slowly as she lost the use of her legs, I denied her the right to watch TV or listen to the radio for it occurred to me that if nothing else, the sheer boredom of her existence would kill her. No one spoke a word to her anyway, so she was starved of conversation and emotions and sometimes of food, but she continued to hang on to life. I was lumbered with her and I resented that. True, I had help. I didn’t need to do anything myself. Yet, her presence made my world sad. I was young, still am. I wanted to enjoy myself thoroughly. I found myself often thinking what I would do with the room she continued to plague once she was dead and buried, well not buried, cremated. Does all this make me a bad person? I don’t know, perhaps it does. You would have to be in my shoes to understand what I was going through. Although not dead, I felt I was in hell, the hell that would depart only when she did. I might not have murdered her but I prayed for her death a thousand times, and can you blame me? Neeta’s eyes which she always adorned with kohl looked directly at Rani, then looked away at a painting on the wall. Rani suddenly felt that the shadow of a dead woman had stripped her trip to India of all the fun that she had associated with it. She couldn’t wait to get back to England.

CHAPTER 2

W ould you like a cup of tea? Rani asked Om. In blue jeans, a white shirt and a dark blue jacket, he was wearing black shoes. He had been extremely busy, still was for he had not just been directing the dress rehearsals the day before but he was also compering the whole show besides acting in it. He was trying to supervise the food, taking care that when the time arrived it was served in the right fashion. He looked exhausted and she thought it was only fair that someone should look after him when he had been more than zealous in organising the show down to its last detail. Asking for a cup of tea could scarcely be described as looking after someone but perhaps he could do with a drink, tired as he must be.

No, thanks, was all he said and she went into the kitchen where loads of people were busy working. She put on an apron and gloves and began putting samosas in a silver baking tray. They didn’t look like Sheila’s home made ones, so they were perhaps ready made, which was a shame as Sheila’s were heaps better. Amit couldn’t help feeling angry. Rani had been kind enough to offer Om tea but the same kindness had not been extended to him, even though he was her husband. He was baffled and confused, what did Om possess that he didn’t? Granted he was the director, granted he was the main actor, granted that he supervised the catering or the one dish affair, whichever it might be but that was no reason to give him so much importance. After all, it wasn’t as if he could organise a play single handed. He did need the joint effort of several people, and not just their effort and enthusiasm but also their commitment to appear at every rehearsal despite their busy life styles. So why should Om always be the centre of attention, hogging the lime light, young and old women hovering all around him like moths to a flame. What a flirt Rani was. Dressed in a red chiffon sari, she looked ordinary but perhaps was not aware of the fact. Maybe she thought she looked good.

Amit watched Rani as she went around the hall, waving to this person and that, chatting to both men and women. She was so open in her behaviour it was disgusting. It was as if she felt no shyness at all. If one was looking for a demure creature, one would have to look elsewhere. She seemed to have masses of confidence, almost overflowing with it, although she had hardly any reason to. She did not work, she was a house wife. Most of the other women were doctors. Two were beauticians, one was in the Computer Science field and there were five dentists. She was a nobody, a nothing. But to hear her speak one would have thought she was David Cameron himself, Obama, Bill Clinton, a Pope or a Priest. She was so full of herself, just talking endlessly. It was as if she had no knowledge of subjects and sometimes when people were talking about one particular topic, she would jump to another starting with ‘talking about something totally unrelated.’ It was so annoying. Other people must find it irritating as well but she continued to butt in with her own dubious theories about something although he had often told her not to. But would she listen? She knew he was usually home by half five but more often than not, food would not be ready by then. He would snap at her and she would sulk wondering why he was in such a temper. A hungry man was always angry, didn’t she know that?

Rani looked at her four year old child, Chieni, dressed in jeans, a high neck dark blue sweater and little black boots, Chieni was playing with the teddy bear that belonged to her friend. She felt herself almost choke with emotion as she always did when she looked at Chieni, Chieni who was neither female nor male. Chieni who was her creation, who was her flesh and blood, her seed, who had entered the world with what the earth would perceive as a deformity. She had always dressed Chieni as a daughter for deep down, it was a female child she had desired. The shock of