Mitra had been continuing her survival through hell more painfully now. Sashi had answered her question regarding his involvement in Lekha's death, and that answer had crumbled her world to pieces. She had always felt guilty for leaving Lekha on that road at the most crucial moment.
To her, it had been a nod to her poor choice and decision making in a dangerous situation without proper analysis of it. But, to get to know that the whole killing episode had happened because of her was a whole lot of other lethality.
It implicated Mitra as someone who abetted and aided Sashi to kill Lekha, no matter how unintentional it was.
Mitra was too much of a pushover to understand that the responsibility of a crime lies more with the criminals and their lack of morality. To her, a witness was far more responsible to have been unable to stop the crime. In her situation, she had been both the cause of the crime and a witness who had failed to stop it.
It was killing her.
I am a murderer. I killed her. I let her be killed.
The same thoughts kept running in her head for a long time. She felt suffocated, claustrophobic and the darkness of the room made her thoughts even darker.
For a moment, the glass shard lying on her chair seemed tempting enough for her to try and slit her wrist or throat to escape it all; to escape the cold and darkness of the room as well as of her mind.
No, not now. Sashi kidnapped another woman too. I need to find her.
It was a thought that finally gave her some strength to survive.
Up till then, she had held on with perseverance, with a zeal to save herself somehow. But, this time around, she could notice a break in her strength. It was becoming obvious to her own self. She was contemplating on what more she could do to hold herself up when Sashi came in, his camera in hand.
Mitra felt dread this time, like never before.
It was a trend she noticed with Sashi's video interview slash discussion sessions: they were delving deeper and deeper into something. It was no longer just about Sashi's purpose of abducting Mitra. There were too many layers of intricate happenings and he hadn't informed her of everything.
What would today bring? Another misery?
Mitra shivered. She couldn't look at Sashi; he scared her now, unlike before when she had only seething anger towards him.
Fear was more damaging than anger.
"You look calm today," Sashi remarked, setting up his camera.
"And you still cannot read people's faces properly, let alone their emotions," Mitra retorted, her voice lacking the spite she usually had.
Sashi gazed at her, noticing as much. He smiled and shrugged, saying, "I think I know enough."
"Do you?" she sounded weak, but pragmatic.
Sashi settled into his chair, his shoulders a little stooped.
"Your boyfriend seems to be digging into me," he clued her in.
"Occupational habit. He's a journalist." Mitra did her best to maintain a poker face and calm tone. Vishal wasn't supposed to look for her anymore, not after the public announcement Sashi gave of wanting to hurt him.
It irked Sashi. He had expected her to be curious, even hopeful at the news of her boyfriend. Yet, her answer seemed so cold to him that he couldn't help asking, "You don't care if he's looking for you?"
Mitra thought for a moment before answering, "I do."
"Why don't you sound sincere?" he asked warily.
"Is my sincerity going to influence your actions?" Mitra asked frankly.
Sashi studied her and replied, "I don't know; maybe?"
Mitra shrugged. "Let me know when you decide on it."
It wasn't sitting well with Sashi, not adding up to his calculation of the situation.
"What is your relationship with him?" he asked her wryly. "You have been together for what, twelve, thirteen years now? It's not like you guys are married. He doesn't live in Bangalore and visits you only once a while. Why would you be with him, barely hanging on? What is he to you? What is your relationship about?"
"A good person loved by a much better person. That's what we both are," Mitra replied with a straight face.
"Who's the better one?" Sashi asked.
"We keep shuffling." Mitra answered as a matter of fact.
Sashi could feel something dark cloud his thoughts. Mitra looked so confident talking about a man who did nothing compared to what he had done for her.
"I could have been the same for you," the words came out of his mouth before he could realize it.
Mitra looked offended. "Please don't degrade my relationship. You can never even imagine what Vishal did for me, what I would do for him."
It was Sashi's turn to take offence. "You think he did more than me for you?"
Mitra raised her tone by a notch in anger, "Definitely. He never hurt a creature, ever. But, you? You are a murderer."
Sashi jerked forward in his chair, his eyes blazing. He grunted, "Murderer, huh? Not a saviour?"
Mitra shook her head, "No. You killed an innocent girl, all for wrong reasons."
"I may have led her to her death Mitra, but you are as much a cause for it as I." Sashi was still in denial.
"I thought the same at first Sashi, but you see, I never ever gave you even a hint to fantasize a non-existent "bond" between us, nor did I ask you in any way to hurt her. Those were all your actions, ones that were entirely out of my control. So, yeah, I may have been your trigger, but it was you who fired the shot on your own accord. The sin is with the one who shoots, not with the gun." It was a conclusion that Mitra had arrived at after mentally torturing herself for two days. It was the only thought that was keeping her sane.
Sashi was baffled. Mitra was denying responsibility for something that happened because of her. He wasn't sure how to handle it. It infuriated him.
Sneering, he slowly leaned back and asked, "Really? You think every time I say that I saved your life, I am talking about only that dead girl?"
"Aren't you?" Mitra asked blandly.
"The woman you saw me kidnapping almost a month back, why do you think I did that?" he asked with a snort.
Mitra could feel her pulse quickening. "Right, I am curious about that. Why did you kidnap her?"
"To save you," Sashi replied with his mouth curled into a small smile.
"What nonsense?" Mitra couldn't believe it.
Sashi eyed her in amusement, as if he was playing with her, and asked, "Do you remember that poor, working class middle-aged woman who sometimes appeared begging on the main road of your neighbourhood? You once bought her a packaged meal late in the night, while returning home from office, because she pitifully wailed that she was hungry."
Mitra scanned her hazy memories. Yes, she had once bought a poor woman dinner on her way home.
One night Mitra had been walking home from the bus stop when the woman, who had been standing in front of a canteen, had called out to Mitra as soon as Mitra neared the place. The woman looked frail and she begged Mitra to at least buy her something to eat if she didn't feel comfortable giving her money.
Mitra took pity on her and went into the canteen, bought a take-out meal packed and gave it to the woman. A couple of times after that, she had noticed that woman walking around in her neighbourhood, probably begging or going to work somewhere. She didn't remember her face clearly, just her overall bearing which she had noticed in passing.
As the recognition came to her, Mitra's eyes widened. "What about her?"
"You really thought she was a beggar?" Sashi asked, his lips curved into a mysterious smile.
"No. I could tell she was working somewhere as a maid or daily wage labourer."
"Then why did you buy her food?"
"Because she was hungry."
Sashi started laughing, more in mockery than humour, much to Mitra's confusion. "You are really serious about playing the good person, aren't you?" he said between his laughter. He controlled himself after a few seconds and cued in, "Maybe that's why they targeted you; because you would be too busy acting the goddess of kindness to see through their staged play."
"What do you mean?" Mitra was getting a really bad feeling about it.
Sashi leaned forward as he answered, "That woman was no day labourer or maid or beggar. She was a pimp. She had connections everywhere to traffic girls. And you... you were her target."
Something was crashing terribly in Mitra's mind.
No, that's not possible. He is lying. Her thoughts started bustling in disbelief and ran wild.
"What? Can't believe someone looking so plain and frail can harm a good girl?" Sashi sneered at her. "Come on Mitra. You were a good girl when your classmates bullied you. People like that women target the weak ones; and guess what, good people are weak. Good people like you and me let our emotions cloud our actions and that weakens us so much."
"I don't believe you. You are lying to absolve yourself of the crime you committed,' Mitra tried to reason more for her own sanity.
"Nonsense, like I have to absolve myself of something absolutely good I did." Sashi was getting into a better mood.
"How do you know about her?" Mitra voiced her doubt.
Sashi responded readily, "Because stalking you is my job. I saw you buy dinner for her that night. Well, that didn't bother me; I was actually contemplating if I could pull off the same plan with you to make you buy dinner for me. Anyways, a couple of days after that I noticed her stalking you. At first I couldn't understand why she was doing that and paid a little bit of attention towards her. She followed you on your way to office, to home, almost everywhere for about a week, and I realized she was making a note of all the routes you took daily. She was marking all the little stops you make, all the blind spots on the way and vulnerable places in the route you took. It was really amusing."
The woman had done a recce of Mitra's surroundings to meticulously plan something.
Mitra could only stare at Sashi in incredulity, trying to understand where this was going. Sashi could see the tension in her eyes and felt boosted.
He explained, "You can understand why I was a little pissed at her. She was going after you. So, I took a step ahead and went after her. I did a little digging into her, and it was easy, mind you. There was this other pimp she met with every day to share her progress. I played a little "met-by-chance" card and got to know him. It was much easier to dig into him than her. I just had to tell his name to a couple of my acquaintances in Mumbai and they knew him. That woman was actually targeting not just you but a few other girls too, all with the same characteristics as you: a young woman, student or working, living alone or in a hostel, in not so populous neighbourhoods, not having many friends, comes home late at night, and ones who wouldn't have been noted as missing for at least a few hours aftergetting abducted. Now, I didn't care about others. I was only bothered by their plan to traffic you away to a place you can't even imagine."