STIFLED
CHAPTER SIX
"Can your cop friend help?" Shruti asked after a few nail-biting moments.
"Yeah, I guess I can ask him when I get back... Hey wait, he gave me his card yesterday and I saved his number."
"Then call him."
"Now?"
"Guys, maybe we should just wait? It could be nothing." Mira said doubtfully.
"We can't brush this incident as a coincidence, can we? It must be the same person. At least the cop will tell us what to do." Shruti insisted.
Sanika tapped her phone before Shruti finished talking. "Uh, Samar, hi. This is Sanika. Your neighbour."
"Don't tell me you kicked someone again!" The background score accompanying his voice indicated that he had the company of several honking cars and bikes. Probably stuck in traffic, as was the Pune norm during weekends.
"No. Because I'm on the phone with the person I really want to kick," came her sweet reply, making him laugh out loud.
"So what's this about?"
"We, my friends and I, have gotten a few crank calls since this morning. Some guy saying that we won't get the man but we will die."
Every trace of humour got wiped out of his tone. "Where are you right now?" he asked quietly.
She named the restaurant. "I know we're probably panicking for no reason, but they were from different numbers. Landline."
"Give me the numbers from which you got the call," he ordered in what she could only term as his cop voice. All three of them checked their phones. Sanika messaged them to his phone. "OK. Got it," he said. "Keep your cellphones with you. I mean with you. Not in your handbags or on the table. With you. Stay together and don't leave the restaurant until I get there or call you back. Understood?"
"Yes," she replied, somewhat irritated at being ordered around but knowing this was not the time to argue.
"One more thing. When you leave the restaurant, you leave together. Not one by one. Together. I'll try to arrange for a patrol vehicle in all three areas. Give me some time."
"Thank you, Samar."
His voice changed. Softened, just barely. "Keep yourself safe for me until I reach you, Sanika Joshi."
The call ended. Sanika sat very still for a moment, processing the last sentence, before looking up to find both friends staring at her with raised eyebrows and identical expressions of I told you so.
"Oh, shut up," she said, and took a very large sip of her Virgin Mary.
They stayed together that night. All three of them went to Sanika's house, reasoning that it was the largest and had the best locks. Sanika activated every security measure the house possessed -- the alarm system her eldest brother had installed, the motion-sensor lights her father had added after a string of break-ins on a nearby street, and the old brass padlock on the back gate that had been there since her grandmother's time and was too stubborn to yield to anything short of a blowtorch.
They changed into pyjamas, made hot chocolate, and settled in the living room with every light in the house blazing like a Diwali celebration. Sanika's living room was the most lived-in room in the house -- her mother's taste evident in the embroidered cushion covers and the brass lamp in the corner, her father's in the bookshelf that took up an entire wall and was stuffed with everything from engineering textbooks to Agatha Christie. The sofa was old but deeply comfortable, the kind you sank into and didn't want to leave, and the coffee table bore the rings of a thousand cups of chai.
Shruti tucked her feet under her and wrapped her hands around the warm mug. The chocolate was Sanika's recipe -- dark cocoa, a pinch of cardamom, and a spoonful of honey instead of sugar. It tasted like safety. "Do you remember the first time we did this?" she asked. "Stayed over at your place?"
"Mira's birthday," Sanika said immediately. "We watched three horror movies and then none of us could sleep, so we ended up reorganising my kitchen at 3 AM."
"And your mother came downstairs in the morning to find all her spice jars rearranged alphabetically," Mira added with a laugh that was only slightly wobbly at the edges. "She didn't speak to you for two days."
"She still brings it up every Diwali. 'Remember the time your friends destroyed my kitchen.' She makes it sound like a natural disaster."
They talked about everything except the phone calls -- Shruti's marriage, Mira's breakup with Karan, Sanika's neighbour (which was the only topic that generated any laughter). Mira did her impression of Samar's stern cop face, which involved pulling her chin down and squinting until she looked like a constipated owl, and even Shruti laughed hard enough to spill her hot chocolate on the cushion.
"He doesn't look like that!" Sanika protested.
"Oh? And how exactly does he look?" Mira wiggled her eyebrows.
"Like a pain in my ass. Can we change the subject?"
"Defensive," Shruti observed to Mira in a stage whisper. "Classic sign of--"
"I will smother you both with these cushions."
Around midnight, they heard the unmistakable growl of a Royal Enfield pulling into the driveway next door. All three froze, then relaxed when they heard his gate clang shut. The familiar sound -- the engine cutting off, the creak of the gate, the heavy footsteps on gravel -- was oddly reassuring, like a guard dog settling into its kennel for the night.
"Your knight in shining armour has returned," Mira whispered.
"He's not my anything. Go to sleep."
They didn't sleep much. Every creak of the house, every rustle of wind against the windows, every distant dog bark made them stiffen and exchange glances. At some point Sanika heard the faint rumble of a vehicle on the street and peeked through the curtain to see a police patrol van cruising slowly past. She exhaled. Samar had kept his word.
Saturday morning, Samar updated Sanika during their run.
"PCOs," he said, keeping his breathing even despite the pace. "Public call offices. The calls came from two different PCOs -- small grocery shops where people sometimes come in to make calls. Two different areas, two different shops, neither of which had any kind of security cameras."
"PCOs?" Sanika stopped her run to stare at him. "I didn't know there were any of those anymore. I mean, even my maid has a cellphone. Hell, even the guy who comes in to buy old newspapers has a cellphone."
With a firm hand on her back, he got her running again. "Yeah. This one is not a traditional one. More like a small grocery shop. Apparently people sometimes come in to make calls. And no, no cameras."
Hearing her sigh in frustration, he asked, "Did you get any more calls?"
She shook her head. "My landline rang a few times but got disconnected when I picked up. Do you think someone was playing a prank? Straight answer, please."
"It's a strong possibility."
"Why do I hear a but in there somewhere?"
"I've learned not to ignore my gut feelings," he said with a shrug.
"And your gut says this one is not a crank call."
He gave a brief nod. "One, why the PCOs? Why not just a prepaid cellphone? Two, you said you guys don't display any of your contact info on social media, so how did this guy get your number? He could be a hacker, of course, but again, as you said, you're extra careful. You didn't enter your phone number anywhere. How did he get it? Three, disguising the voice implies you would recognise it if spoken normally. So it's someone you might know." He waited a heartbeat before asking, "The calls to your landline. Did the other two get them too?"
"I'll ask."
"How are they?"
"Fine. Mira spent the last two nights with her cousin who lives close by. Shruti has some issues going on in her personal life, so pretty much stayed at home."
They stopped once they reached his gate. "Thanks for the patrol vans and uh, well, thanks for everything."
Head tilted a little to the side, he studied her intently. "You don't have to thank me for anything. I didn't do it for you. I did it for myself. I never want to see Sanika Joshi scared. Of anything. Or anyone."
Sanika swallowed and forced herself to look away. "You said you were in the middle of something nasty. All wrapped up now?"
"Things don't get wrapped up so fast, especially when the suspect list is a mile long."
"Don't you get frustrated by this whole system? The loopholes in the law, the delay in justice... I mean, witnesses die or get sold out, evidence disappears, lawyers push for trials and retrials..."
"I can't afford to get frustrated. My focus is on the criminal. In catching him and making sure he or she doesn't do it again. I don't look at the loopholes. I look at the cases that are solved despite the loopholes. Cases that slide through them are remembered, but people read the solved ones, say good riddance, and forget. You know how many terrorist attacks have happened in this country, but you don't know how many we've managed to stop, because those things never come out." He gestured towards the road and changed the topic. "Want to have breakfast? We can go to that new place a couple of streets away."
Not wanting to come across as an admiring, besotted fool, she forced her gaze away from him. It was just breakfast, she told herself. "Let me dunk myself in the shower and we'll meet in fifteen minutes?" He nodded. "Oh, after that dinner, it's your turn to pay and I want masala dosa."
She ran into the house with his laughter following her.
Over the weekend, a cold frustration settled over the neighbourhood like fog.
Sanika's phones had been creep-free since Saturday morning. Mira reported the same. Shruti too. The patrol vans continued their rounds, the WhatsApp group had a strict mark-your-attendance policy, and the three of them had started carrying pepper sprays in their bags -- Sanika's idea, enforced with the authority of a woman who had once punched a drunk on her own street.
But the silence was not comforting. It was the silence of a predator waiting.
Samar had breakfast with her at the new place around the corner -- the one with the spectacular masala dosas and the chai that almost matched his mother's. Almost. He watched her demolish her second dosa with the focused intensity of a woman who hadn't eaten in a week, though he knew she'd had dinner barely twelve hours ago. It fascinated him. Everything about her fascinated him. The way she ate with her fingers, tearing the dosa into precise pieces and scooping up the chutney with efficient movements. The way she talked with her mouth half full, not caring about manners, not performing femininity the way most women he knew seemed to. The way she frowned when she concentrated, creating two vertical lines between her eyebrows that he wanted to smooth away with his thumb.
"Stop staring at me while I eat," she said without looking up.
"I wasn't staring."
"Yes, you were. You have this way of looking at people like you're memorising them for a line-up. It's disconcerting." She looked up and caught his eye. "Also, you haven't touched your coffee."
He picked up the tumbler, keeping his eyes on hers. "Better?"
"Marginally." She wiped her fingers on the napkin and pushed her plate away. "So. Any update on those calls?"
"My team is still looking into it. The PCO angle is a dead end for now -- too many people use those shops. But I've asked for the call records from the last month. If there's a pattern, we'll find it."
"And if there isn't?"
"There's always a pattern. People think they're being clever, but they always leave traces. It's just a matter of knowing where to look." He sipped his coffee. "In the meantime, the patrol vans will continue. And you three need to keep doing what you're doing -- staying alert, staying together, marking attendance."
"I feel like I'm in a hostel again," she grumbled.
"Better a hostel than a hospital," he said, and the lightness in his tone didn't quite mask the steel beneath it.
Sanika studied him for a moment -- the set of his jaw, the way his hand rested on the table, still and controlled but ready to move at a moment's notice. This was a man who lived with danger the way other people lived with traffic noise -- constantly, in the background, never quite tuning it out.
"You really think this is serious, don't you?" she asked softly.
"I think we can't afford to assume it isn't."
She nodded slowly. "OK. But Samar? If you're trying to scare me into being careful, you should know that fear and I have a very complicated relationship. It usually ends with me doing something stupid out of spite."
He almost smiled. Almost. "I've noticed."
Shruti spent Saturday morning cleaning the guest bedroom that was now hers. She moved her things methodically -- clothes into the smaller cupboard, toiletries into the attached bathroom, her laptop and books onto the writing desk by the window. She made the bed with fresh sheets, arranged her pillows, and placed her reading lamp on the nightstand. When she was done, she stood in the doorway and surveyed the room.
It looked like a hotel room. Functional, neat, impersonal. Nothing in it said Shruti lives here. Nothing said this is where a married woman sleeps alone because her marriage is slowly bleeding out.
She sat on the bed and called her mother.
"Everything OK, beta?" her mother asked, the way mothers do when they can hear in their daughter's voice that everything is most definitely not OK.
"Yeah, Maa. Just... calling."
A pause. "You know I'm here, right? Whatever it is."
"I know, Maa." She swallowed the lump in her throat. "How's Papa?"
"Your father is your father. Currently arguing with the newspaper boy about why the paper was late by three minutes." Shruti smiled, and her mother heard the smile, and both of them took comfort from it.
After hanging up, she sent a message to the group: All clear here. No calls. Going to spend the day reading and not thinking about men, posts, or murder threats. You're welcome to join the not-thinking.
Sanika replied: I'm in. Currently not-thinking about a specific man who bought me breakfast and looked at me like I was the menu.
Mira: TMI, Su. TMI.
Sanika: Says the woman who put "knows how to use his hands" on a public list.
Mira: I meant for cooking!
Shruti: Sure you did.
For a few minutes, in the rapid-fire exchange of messages, everything felt normal. Like the old days, before the video, before the calls, before the fear. But then the messages stopped, and the silence crept back in, and Shruti sat alone in her hotel-room bedroom and stared at the wall.
Frustration added a new dimension to hatred and fury. It made the eyes redder and the tick on the jaw was almost a permanent fixture. As was the pacing. Everything had been planned so meticulously. Sanika lived alone because her parents were visiting her brother, and Mira too lived alone. Oh yeah, she had had a thing going with a guy, but apparently she had broken off with him. Prisma gossip was pretty reliable if one paid attention to it. Poor guy was tried and discarded. Her apartment security was laughable. They hadn't even installed the CCTV cameras which were compulsory these days.
Shruti. Now that had been difficult to think and plan, because Shruti's apartment complex was huge and guests had to sign in and all that nonsense. But where was it written that she had to be killed in her home? Bottom line was she had to die. They all had to die. Unlike the previous girls, mere threatening or hurting would not do. These three were different. What they did hurt. The bitches would learn their lesson. Would know how much it hurt to read that trash of theirs. And they would pay with their lives.
Yet nothing worked out as per plan. Two nights wasted. Friday night and Saturday night. Sanika had some guests over. Lights had been on all over the house and music was heard. Not the loud blaring kind but more in tune with family gatherings. And the patrol vans had been an added hurdle. Mira's apartment lights had been off and her bike was missing from its spot. Where did she go? Was she trying out someone else for size? That must be it.
Knocking on Shruti's door was anyway ruled out, and that bitch didn't come out of her apartment on Saturday. Dedicating the days and nights to teach them a lesson was regrettably not possible. There were responsibilities. Obligations. Family. Family of course came first. But this couldn't go on. Something had to be done.
Sunday night.
Mira was home. She had been at her cousin's for two days, helping her with the wedding planning, and was exhausted. She had marked her attendance in the WhatsApp group, updated her friends on her plans, and was about to settle in for the night when her phone buzzed with a message.
It was from Karan.
I thought about what you said the other day. You are right. I've been an ass and I'm sorry. But if you give me another chance I promise, I'll make it up to you. I want to talk to you Mira. Really talk. Please.
She blinked and sat up in shock. Karan was apologising? He wanted to talk?
Her doorbell rang before she could process the information. She stared at the door in disbelief. He wasn't even giving her time to think before he came knocking! Wiping her suddenly damp palms, she inhaled deeply and quickly ran her hand through her hair, wishing she had taken time to wash it. Just as quickly she pushed away that thought. He should like her for who and what she was. Not just because she looked beautiful or dressed in a certain way.
Inhaling deeply, she opened the door.
End of Chapter Six.
© 2025 Atharva Inamdar. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Free to read and share with attribution.