The Nidhi Kapoor Story (27 page)

Rujuta remembered that Prakash often said that each crime was about two things and two things only. Motive and ability. She had no doubt about the criminal’s ability but she could not pinpoint the motive. Someone was systematically trying to sabotage Nidhi’s reputation. Rujuta knew that the next hit was bound to happen soon. It had to be a hit on Nidhi, Nishant or Naveen, the only three remaining members of the Kapoor clan. Everything else that they had, had been taken from them. Nidhi could not step out and her work was suffering. Her home had been sold. Her sister was brutally murdered. There were video recordings of her father abusing her and her mother. Nidhi was cornered from all sides. So was Nishant Kapoor.

Rujuta knew of Nidhi’s miseries but she had her
own demons to fight. She did not care about Nidhi’s case anymore. More important to her was that black SUV. But the two incidents had to be related. After all, those days, Prakash had not been working on anything else of any importance that could make others attack Prakash. Rujuta figured that if she caught Nidhi’s nemesis, there would be high chances that she would close Prakash’s case as well.

Since Nidhi was holed in the comforts of a mini-fortress, there was no way that the assailant could reach her there. The next move was thus probably delayed. The assailant must be getting desperate by now. He must be craving for action. Rujuta wanted him to make a hasty move. Rujuta wanted him to get restless. She wanted him to step out, take risk and fall into the trap. He better did. He had quite a few questions to answer.

Book 5. Hankaar

Hankaar
^∗
is “…ego or excessive pride due to one’s possessions, material wealth, intelligence or powers. It gives an individual the feeling that he is superior to others and therefore they are at a lower level than he is.”

^∗
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hankaar

25. Day 32, Evening. Ronak.

Nishant found the entire thing amusing. It looked like some sort of divine intervention. Someone, something, had somehow managed to get him back at Ronak after all these years. Back to a life of abundance and luxury and fame and opportunity, only to take it away from him and remind him of how he had acquired Ronak in the first place. He had got to live with Payal again. Live with the one life, one person that was dearer to him than his own, only to kill her and make him suffer the agony of separation and remind him of all those lives that he had played with when he was younger. To him, it was life coming a full circle.

He did not know if he wanted to stay alive anymore. But he could not kill himself either. How could he? He was too strong for that. Or maybe he was too weak for that. Maybe he was neither strong, nor weak. Maybe he was merely selfish and his vanity did not let him die. He could not decide. His indecision was adding to his misery. Maybe that someone, something, somehow knew that Nishant would get stuck in this conundrum about life and death and suffer more than death. Death was easy. It was an escape. One tick and gone. There is no remorse, no longing, no pain, no suffering after that. Maybe that’s why that someone left Nishant alive.

Nishant had cheated, sinned, lied and tricked people all his life. He was thinking, “They say that God keeps a track of everything we do. They say that we need to answer for our
deeds in this very life before
Yama
comes to take us away. Funny that all my life, I’ve hardly been on the right side and after all these years, life is yet to catch up with me. Life’s been actually rather good to me. What if I lost Payal? What if I lost Ronak? When I came to Mumbai, nobody knew me. I had nothing and yet I knew that I was going to make it big. I knew I would rule the world some day. And I did. Today, there’s nobody who doesn’t know me. Everyone owes me a favor or two. I can talk anyone into doing things for me. Let the damn
Yama
come and I’d negotiate with him as well.” He smiled at his vanity. And then he broke into laughter.

When Nishant had come to Mumbai, he had told no one that he had got along most of his mother’s jewelry and a considerable sum of money that he stole from his father’s safe. He had to steal; his father wasn’t exactly supportive of his decision and there was no way he’d come to Mumbai without money. He always had a plan. He had to have a plan. Nishant Kapoor could never do things without a plan. He never left anything to chance. It was in his genes, actually. More than plan, he never trusted anyone else but himself. He wished often that Payal could inherit these things from him, the way he had inherited from his father. And his father from his grand-father. Too bad Payal wasn’t his own blood.

“I want these notes to intrigue the world long after I am gone. What if I can’t live forever? These diaries would outlive me. Someday these would give inspiration and hope to others. It will help those who lack the courage. My life would be an inspiration to those. More than inspiration, my life would serve as a manual for them to follow. I could teach them how to use people for advantage.” Nishant scribbled in his diary furiously. His diary was the only thing that he
trusted. And while writing, he used a cipher that he was sure no one could break.

He was thinking about his two daughters. He had adopted Payal to break the stalemate that he was locked in with his wife Neelima and her brother Naveen. Neelima did not stop wishing for a child after the failed attempts at bearing kids. She was getting depressed and desperate with each passing day. As a result, Naveen was getting harsher and had started to threaten Nishant openly. Nishant, on the other hand, was resolute that he did not want to bear a child with Neelima. Adopting Payal back then seemed like such a wonderful idea.

With Payal, the peace was back at Ronak. She was growing into a delightful child and Nishant was glad to be back in the bed with Neelima. For all Neelima was worth, she knew how to perform and play in bed. Nishant couldn’t resist the temptation. They were often not careful and against all odds, Nidhi was soon on the way.

By the time Nidhi was born, Nishant had already started to think of Payal as the bearer of his beacon, his name. Even though Nidhi was his blood, she was like a threat to Payal. Nishant had invested lot of time, energy and emotions in Payal and he couldn’t let her play second fiddle to anyone. When Neelima started showing more than necessary affection for Nidhi, he had lost it. To him, Nidhi was a direct competitor to Payal. Not just to Payal, but to him as well. To his very existence. How could anyone stand up to him, especially a child that he did not want in the first place? He had to crush Nidhi. Nip her in the buds. And he tried. Tried hard. But he had underestimated Neelima. And
motherhood.

“Maybe it’s all part of the plan,” he thought. “Maybe all this is happening to me because of Nidhi. She came and everything fell apart. Maybe she is the root of all evil. Actually, she is. She’s the one. I should’ve killed her back then. Damn. I must do something about her. Maybe that would help.”

He decided that he would kill Nidhi and start his life afresh. Second innings were not uncommon and most of his contemporaries were making a comeback. He could be a producer or something, if not an actor. Plus, it wouldn’t be the first time that he would fatally hurt someone. And it definitely wouldn’t be the last. Anything that comes in his way, he would eliminate.

However, killing Nidhi would be a challenge. One, he was crippled. Two, he did not know how to get away from murder. Earlier, he could get Basheer or someone else to execute his plans. He had often used his contacts in the underworld but those handlers were now long gone. He had to create a plan where Nidhi died swiftly and the blame fell on someone else. Maybe on Naveen. He could then kill two birds with one stone. Life looked so much better without Nidhi and Naveen in it.

While Nishant was thinking of his life in the past and devising his plans to punish Nidhi and Naveen, he felt that someone was looking at him from that dreaded window.

Since the night he returned to Ronak, he was sure that he saw someone at the window; he had been wary of it. For some reason, apart from him, no one could see that there was someone behind that window. He, on the other hand,
was so sure that he had heard voices and seen shadows flicker past the window.

The window and the man behind it had become his nemesis. Since he couldn’t do anything about it, he had decided that he would ignore the window and the person behind it. Even if someone knocked on the window, made a noise, called out to Nishant, he would not pay any attention. He would not give into the temptation. He would ignore it. As if the window did not exist.

However, today for some reason, the urge to look at the window was stronger than the other days. All these days, he had succeeded in ignoring it. Today when he was finally planning his comeback and his revenge starting with the death of Nidhi, he wanted to look at the window and look at his enemy in his eyes and tell him about his plan. He spoke to himself, “That damned man on the window has to know about my plan because once I kill Nidhi and send Naveen away, there would be no going back. And if I can prove that someone is indeed stalking me, I can be back to the world of glamour, glitz, parties, women and other such fine things. What if I am on a wheelchair? And don’t women prefer older men? What about these crazy stories that I have lived through? Isn’t it the secret sauce to attract women? Crazy stories? Of a life lived well? Amongst fame and other famous people?”

He turned towards the window. He knew it would be empty. He just wanted to scratch the itch.

To his surprise, someone was indeed standing there. He could not believe his eyes. He blinked rapidly as if the flutter of his eyelids would change what he was seeing. His
heart started beating louder. Someone was at the window. And that someone was not making any attempts to flee. That person was there to confront Nishant.

He’d been right all along. He was not insane. He wasn’t hallucinating. He wasn’t imagining. There was someone at the window. He was elated that he had been vindicated. Yet again. Nishant was not wrong. Nishant Kapoor was never wrong. He had to talk to that someone on the window. Before he moved away.

Nishant was on the bed and he jumped from it, forgetting that his legs were mere useless stumps. He landed with a loud thump. He did not notice that his legs twisted unnaturally at the impact. He forgot that he could use his wheelchair that was at an arm’s distance. He struggled towards the window. He was not lithe anymore. Years of inactivity and good food had taken its toll on him and for the first time since the accident, he cursed that he was paralyzed waist down. He had to drag the lifeless stubs with him. The legs, as if retaliating against the cuss words, were slowing him down. He felt the dead weight and he fought with it.

The last time he had put in this much effort in a physical activity was when he had realized that he had been poisoned. That time, he had dragged himself out of his room, crawled to the mouth of the giant winding staircase and hurled himself down it, hoping to make a loud commotion and wake up everyone in the house.

He continued to grapple, pull, yank, heave, push and shove at anything that could propel him forward. He grabbed the footrest of the bed. He clawed at the carpet on the floor.
He pulled at a table and broke the fine china resting on it, some of it landing on him. He lunged at the base of another table near the window. He was making a loud racket, but he hardly cared.

He finally reached at the window but since he was still on the floor, he couldn’t see clearly. He struggled against the table to lift his torso up to the window. The lifeless legs did not support his effort. He almost reached the sill and could peep up before he fell back on the floor, hurting himself in the process. He grappled again. And he fell down again with a thump. He did not give up. He flung himself yet again and this time he wedged the table against the wall and finally came up to the level of the sill.

Suddenly, he was now face-to-face with the window. And face-to-face with that someone on the window. The two of them were separated by the latticework on the window and five feet of air.

It was not cold but a shiver ran down his spine. His armpits started burning and his throat went dry. His chest started to thump loud and his face started to go numb. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow. A tiny trickle ran down the side of his face, leaving a faint wet trail and giving him goose bumps in the process. Time slowed down. It took forever for that drop of sweat to reach his chin and then finally drop silently on the carpet below.

He could not believe his eyes. It was impossible. Maybe he was hallucinating indeed. Maybe he was actually mad. He’d rather go mad and return to Moksha. It couldn’t be true. Destiny could be rude and punishing. But it couldn’t play this sick and convoluted game with him.

He had underestimated her, dismissed her, persecuted her and ignored her. Ever since she was born. There was no way she could be behind all this. She was not even capable enough to look after herself. There had to be an explanation.

Why her? Why now? Why didn’t he kill her when he had an opportunity all these years ago? What did he do to face her wrath? How did she manage all of this? When and how did the switch happen?

Thoughts were swirling around in his head and making him sick to his gut. He tried to speak but the words didn’t come out, his mouth was dry. He merely blurted, “You?”

26. Day 32, Evening. Panchgani.

Rujuta was staring down the cliff that her car had tumbled down from. The car had taken with it the only man that Rujuta had ever truly loved. Rujuta and Tambe had come to Panchgani to investigate the accident.

On a regular day, anyone looking at Rujuta would have exclaimed at the beautiful picture that she cut while she was standing at the edge of the cliff. She was wearing a comfortable, long, linen skirt and a thin, loose top. She had tied her long hair in a bun. A cigarette, Stikk, was dangling from her slender fingers. It was windy and she was leaning precariously over the gorge where her car had fallen.

She was brought out of her reverie by the continual ringing of her phone. It was Tarana. It surprised Rujuta; Tarana rarely called Rujuta. And when she did call once in a blue moon, the conversations were brief, to the point and for a reason. The last time she had called, she wanted to know how to setup a Wi-Fi connection on her laptop that Rujuta has insisted she get for her research for her paintings.