Missing
Part 1
Sumedha got down from the bus and looked around. The board at the bus stop read ‘Kamalooru’. It was a small town with signs of urbanization. The town got its name from the nearby lake with hundreds of lotuses blooming all the time.
It was almost dusk and the trees glowed orange, creating a beautiful hue on the road. Sumedha shifted her handbag from her right hand to the left. Someone was supposed to pick her up but she didn’t see anybody, so she called the number given to her and saw a man hurrying towards her, flashing his ringing phone. He came to her, nearly panting, and said, “The bus came ten minutes early today. Hello, you’re Sumedha from Aashraya Trust, I believe?” She nodded as he took her bags and started walking towards his car and Sumedha followed him.
He hoisted her bags into the trunk and beckoned her to sit. He became relaxed once he started driving. “Sorry, couldn’t introduce myself properly. My name is Ramesh Rao. I’ve been assigned to escort you and make sure that your stay is comfortable. Everything has been so hectic around here after the incident. Are you also a volunteer for the search?”
Sumedha felt at ease once Mr. Rao started talking. “Yes, I’m one of the teachers at the Aashraya School at Mysore and Srishti was one of my students. Now she’s in college but she stayed with us. I’m supposed to stay here and help in the search, and once she’s found, I’m supposed to counsel and convince her to come back to the Trust house if this turns out to be an absconding case.”
“But I feel that’s not it,” she added as an afterthought. “I know her well and she isn’t someone who just disappears like that. She loved Aashraya and had friends there. I know there are some judgments about orphaned kids but… I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right.”
Mr. Rao sighed and nodded. They were silent for the rest of the ride.
They reached a huge house with an equally huge lawn. “Please, come in,” Mr. Rao told a dumbfounded Sumedha.
Mr. Rao’s wife was a warm person that reminded you of home. She fussed over Sumedha’s breakfast, adding multiple helpings. With a pang in her heart, Sumedha felt that her mother would have been the same if there was ever a chance.
“You’ll be staying at my outhouse, it’s beside my home. There is a connection from within the house and a separate gate, you can use whichever. Hope that’s fine.”
After some hesitation, he said, “There are two rooms in there and one of them was used by,” he swallowed. “Srishti. It’s locked with all her belongings by the Police, but the rest of the house is open for use. Will that be okay? I’m sorry that I’m putting you through this, but that’s the only spare room that we have right now. The house help, the cook, and other maids stay with us here, so…”
“You have a kitchen in the guest house if you want to cook or else you can eat here,” added Mrs. Rao. “We would love it.”
Sumedha didn’t know how to feel about this. Should she be happy that she would stay in the same place that Srishti stayed or should she be sad about the fact that she would constantly feel that she was somehow encroaching her space? Sumedha nodded anyway.
The next morning, Sumedha went to buy milk. Even though she decided to have food at the Rao’s, she liked to make tea herself. There was a small milk booth a kilometer away and the whole town got their milk from the same place. While coming back, she felt someone follow her and turned back to see two middle-aged ladies walking behind her suddenly stop whispering to each other. They caught up to her, smiling.
“You are the new girl sent to search that missing girl, right?”
Sumedha had already formed names for them — Seeta and Geeta, the super duo. The one with the spectacles was Seeta and the other one was Geeta. Geeta was the one who had asked the question.
She nodded and smiled. “Yes, that’s me. My name is Sumedha.”
“Sorry, we don’t mean to be nosy, but are there any developments? We’re all really worried here, you know. I mean, we also have kids and we are scared that something bad will happen to them.”
“I understand,” said Sumedha but could get that these ladies didn’t care much about Srishti, the missing girl, and just wanted to gossip. Although she stayed far from such kind, she thought they would be helpful in this case, considering they belonged to this town and knew pretty much everything about everyone.
“I just came in yesterday and was planning to talk to all the neighbors about Srishti. So if you both don’t mind, can we go someplace where we can talk after one or two hours from now?”
Both of them were visibly delighted. Seeta said, “We can go to my house, I live with my son and he’ll be out for work soon and will be back in the evening. My house is nearby, I’ll show it to you and you can come by later.”
Sumedha reached Seeta’s house after a fine breakfast at the Rao’s and was not surprised to see Geeta already seated inside, ready to talk. It was a modest home, big enough for two people to live comfortably but it was decorated tastelessly. Seeta seemed to have no sense of matching the colors and when a visitor first entered the living room, they had to adjust their eyes after a blast of ill-suited bright colors fell upon them.
Sumedha sat down and opened her small notepad. She knew that she was no detective and her actual job was to wait for the news that Srishti had been found and then counsel her, but she couldn’t sit still and wait. She loved Srishti, one of her best students and a very sweet person. Sumedha had become very close to her and now it felt like her sister was missing.
“Srishti came here on a two-month internship in the sister branch of our Aashraya NGO, and went missing before one week before she was supposed to get back, this much you already know.” There were vigorous nods.
Sumedha looked through the window to see that it had started pouring outside and suddenly 10 am looked like 7 pm. It looked like someone was pouring buckets full of water from above. The rainy season had started and Sumedha was worried that the search would be more difficult. All the volunteers for the search were from this branch of Aashraya NGO and they were looking for her in different search parties along with the Police for the past three days. Srishti left the NGO late that day and wasn’t seen again. Sumedha was confident that Srishti wasn’t someone who would ghost everyone suddenly just like that. She hoped against hope that she was safe.
She sighed, shook her head to focus on the present, and looked back at the ladies. “Do you have any information about her? Anything at all?”
They looked at each other and Geeta nodded to Seeta to go ahead. Seeta swallowed and said, “This Mr. Rao is not a very nice man. He — He likes women. He has had a lot of extramarital affairs and we thought maybe something was going on between Rao and Srishti and maybe something went wrong and he… He killed her and now is acting like she’s missing.”
Sumedha inhaled sharply. “What? What are you saying? Do you think she’s — dead?”
“Well, we’re not sure. We’re just guessing. Rao never had an affair with such a young girl, so we could be wrong.”
“But I was told that the Police extensively questioned Mr. Rao and couldn’t find any evidence against him, so they dismissed him as a suspect.” Sumedha couldn’t believe that Mr. Rao was such a kind of person. And poor Mrs. Rao! Did she even know about Mr. Rao's adventures outside their home?
Then they spiraled into an endless loop of all the women that Mr. Rao had dated which was of no use to Sumedha. Her mind reeled with the thought of Mr. Rao doing something terrible to Srishti. She decided not to dine with them anymore.
She said goodbye and thanked the Seeta-Geeta duo and once she was back to the guest house, she bent down and tried to peer inside the locked room but couldn’t see much. There was no seal on the lock on the door which made her wonder if the Police had really locked it or this was the work of Mr. Rao to hide evidence.
Too anxious to stay there, she roamed around the neighborhood, knocking on people’s doors and talking to them, learning nothing new. Exhausted, she knocked on the door of the house at the end of the street, resolving to go straight to the guest house after this.
A man in his mid-thirties opened the door, looking a little confused. It looked like he had just come home from work. When Sumedha told about herself, his face cleared and invited her inside.
It was a neat little house, very well kept. He gestured her to sit on the sofa, excused himself for a while, and returned with changed clothes and two cups of coffee. He didn’t listen to Sumedha’s mild protests that nothing was needed and pushed the cup and a plate of biscuits towards her.
“My name is Arjun. I live here with my wife Megha,” he said and after taking a sip of the coffee, started talking again. “So, Srishti,” he said. “I didn’t know her well. I work in the city, my wife and I stay here as this house is my ancestral property and we like it here. I leave at 8 and come back around 7, so I don’t know much about any of this, I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” said Sumedha, trying to hide her disappointment. “If you don’t mind, can I talk to your wife? Maybe she knows something.”
“She’s not here right now, I think she went to buy groceries. I’ll let her know that you want to talk to her. Will you be able to come here tomorrow at the same time? We can talk to you together.”
Sumedha nodded as there was nothing much she could do. She thanked him for the coffee and left.
The next morning, Sumedha ran into the Seeta-Geeta gang again and they wanted all the details about her interviews yesterday. “Well, I couldn’t get anything of use from anyone. But today I’m meeting Arjun’s wife, hopefully, she’ll have something informative.”
Both of them smirked at the same time. “He doesn’t have a wife,” said Geeta.
“I mean, not anymore. She left him. Left the home one day and didn’t come back,” Seeta added.
Sumedha was completely taken aback. “Then why did he say that his wife had gone out to bring groceries?”
“Poor guy sometimes forgets,” sighed Geeta. “He thinks his wife is still with him and has just gone out on an errand and will come home soon. Sometimes he remembers everything and cries. He’s a mess.”
“One day,” Seeta piped in. “I think it was a few weeks after Megha left, and Arjun had come to buy something in the grocery store down the corner. When we asked if he got any whereabouts of Meghana, he asked why. Then I said, ‘Because she’s missing,’ and he flew into such a rage that I avoid him completely after that. He made a big scene screaming that everything was alright and she was still at home! It was scary.”
“The next morning,” continued Geeta, “he came to the milk booth at the same time as us and greeted us normally as if nothing had happened. It’s like he forgot.”
“We still don’t talk much to him. I think he went mad after his wife left him. Maybe she left him because he was mad, who knows?”
They arrived at their house and Sumedha took their leave. Her head was spinning and she wanted to lie down. It had started raining again and she slowly walked back to the guest house. “What was going on, Srishti?” she thought. “What did you get yourself into?”
Two days later, she ran into Arjun in the milk booth. “Hey, how are you? You didn’t come to our house the next day, were you busy?”
Sumedha couldn’t get any words out. “Uh… I was, I um…”
Taking no heed of her discomfort, he continued talking. “Anyway, today’s Sunday, so Megha and I both will be at home. You can have lunch with us! We never have guests over. Megha will be very happy.”
Sumedha couldn’t think of any excuses and also didn’t want to create any commotion out there. She simply followed him, constantly thinking of means of getting out.
After they entered his house, Arjun started closing the door and Suemdha instinctively said, “No!”
He turned to her, and asked, “Are you afraid of me or something?” and laughed.
Yes. Very much. But she couldn’t say this out loud, so instead, she said, “Haha, no. There’s a nice breeze outside and I like it. Hope you don’t mind.”
Arjun nodded and started calling out to his wife who was no longer there. “Megha? Megha! Sumedha is here, from Aashraya Trust. Megha?”
“Where is she? She was inside when I left and said that she would go to buy some groceries, but,” he took a few steps towards the kitchen and stopped in his tracks. With a shocked expression on his face, he stood there, and then ran into the kitchen and then the bedroom. He walked back slowly to see that Sumedha already had one foot outside the door.
“I’m so sorry,” he said as he sat down on the sofa with his head in his hands. “Please, come in, if you’re comfortable. I forgot. I’m sorry if I scared you.”
One part of Sumedha wanted to run the hell away from this person but she couldn’t. She came in and sat down. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Arjun. I got to know about your wife and for the same reason, I didn’t come back to your house.”
Arjun nodded, his head still in his hands. “We were very happy, Megha and I. Just some normal squabbles, that’s all. One day, she just leaves. No note, no phone, nothing. Her family accused me of not treating her well. I did everything I could, from a police complaint to searching for her in every possible place she could be.”
He took a deep breath and continued, “After a year, she sends a letter to her family and me, saying that she’s safe and happy and doesn’t wish to come back. That’s it. That’s all she had to say.”
“Did you — ”
“Try tracing the letter? Yes, I did. But that also came to a dead end. After that, I stopped looking for her. There was no point in continuing it.”
After an excruciatingly long silence, he said, “I’m very sorry. I made you my emotional dump bag and I’m really sorry.”
“It’s — it’s fine. Um, it’s getting late, I think I need to start heading back to the guest house.”
“Of course, of course,” he said, not really registering what she was saying. “Well, I’m sorry again. Goodbye.”
“Take care,” was the first thing that came out of Sumedha’s mouth as she was leaving and for the rest of her walk to the guest house, she kept thinking if it sounded like she was pitying him.
That night, she kept tossing and turning in her sleep. Arjun was in her dreams, chasing a woman through a thick forest and Sumedha was running behind him, begging him to stop. They kept running for what seemed like a long time, and they reached a clearing. The woman stopped abruptly and so did Arjun and Sumedha. Arjun called out, “Megha! Megha, please come back.” The woman turned slowly and Sumedha screamed at the sight. The woman’s face was blank, as though someone took an eraser and rubbed off all her facial features. Sumedha kept screaming and woke herself up.
She was panting, and her throat was dry. She realized that she had been crying in her sleep. She hadn’t recovered from the dream when she heard a thud outside. She jumped at the sound and felt like she would faint. She breathed deeply a few times and slowly looked out the window. To her horror, a man was standing outside. She opened her mouth but that one dream had sucked all the life out of her. She kept standing with her mouth in a silent O as the man cautiously approached her. Sumedha felt like she had lost control of her motor system and couldn’t move.
“Srishti?” Whispered the man through the glass. Sumedha looked at the man in his early twenties, with his unkempt beard and wide eyes. He looked at her, and realizing that she wasn’t Srishti, took a few steps backward and quickly ran away.
Part 2 coming soon!
