A couple of customers visited the store in the morning hours and as noon ascended, Sashi closed the store and walked back to his house, which was thirty minutes of walk away from the store. He had been watching news videos and reading the articles online to get a grasp of the situation outside.
There was no lingering doubt anywhere in his mind that he would be caught; no one knew anything about him or Mitra.
Mitra was still in no mood to talk to him in a moderate tone or eat her meals. As he brought her meal to her room, she stared daggers at him, poised to throw the plate away again.
"Really, Mitra? After all this you are still choosing starvation and hot headedness? It. Is. Not. Gonna. Help. You." He stared back angrily at her, driving his point clearly home.
Mitra didn't want to back down with his honest taunt either. In reality, though she felt a little bit overwhelmed and knew that she had no other option than to calm down for the time being, she didn't show it.
Sashi had started to identify a pattern in Mitra's outward portrayal of her emotions. He could see through her façade of extreme defence against her vulnerable thoughts of being lost and being in danger. He guessed her anger was only a means of her masking the insecurities and concerns she had. Even as she fiercely held her ground against him and refused to back down as he suggested, he could see the cracks of fear and defeat sparkle in her eyes.
It made him happy.
He placed her meal on the table and without speaking another word, left for his own lunch and work. Upstairs in his room, he plated his own meal of rice and potatoes, and sat in front of the computer displaying the CCTV streaming of Mitra.
She was pacing around the room in the chains that limited her movement. A few minutes later, she stopped, glancing at the food. One step at a time, she went slowly towards it and finally accepted her meal.
As she sat down in her chair, eating cautiously, Sashi smiled to himself and started on his lunch. He ate watching her eat, like he did every day, making himself feel like they were having their meals together.
The rest of the day at the store was uneventful, except for the disappearance of his helper.
Normally, Sashi left the store at around eight PM and his helper would stay till ten, managing the store and customers and close it for the day on his own. Having no one else to watch the store for him, Sashi closed it at eight and walked home.
It was a bright night as the moon, in its incomplete oval shape, shimmered through the dark sky. Sashi hummed to himself his favourite song.
It was a song he had heard Mitra sing almost twelve years ago. He never tried to know if the song was from a movie or an album or if Mitra had composed it herself. All he knew was it sounded wonderful coming through in Mitra's voice and it made him smile every night. He loved it as much as he felt for her.
Maybe it was time he told her why he was so obsessed with her. She had to know what she did.
He hummed the tune to himself, increasing his pace to home where Mitra waited for him. Just the thought that she was waiting for him at home made him feel happier than ever. There was a time in their past when he had waited for her to come home.
How the tables had turned.
###
"Hey, where have you been?" Sashi asked his helper the next morning.
Shashidhar looked shaken up and sleep deprived yet managed to hold himself up pretty well. He had opened the shop on time and was waiting for his boss to show up.
"I... I was taken away by the police," he owned up hesitantly.
Sashi was surprised. "Why? Did you get into a fight? Or did you cause an accident?"
"No. It was because of that Mitra girl who got killed," Shashidhar replied in frustration.
Sashi was taken aback. Cautiously, he asked, "What did they take you in for? Do they suspect you? Or anyone you know?"
"It was because of my name!" Shashidhar cried. "That girl called the killer 'Sashi' in the video. So, the police are investigating everyone with the same or similar name who seems suspicious. My family is pretty notorious in this locality for having a rowdy man as the head of the household and his only son, me, has the name "Sashi". The police thought it would be good to look me up, if I was managing to run my family despite my father's bad habits by kidnapping and selling women, to check if either of us had had any hand in the whole incident." He seemed infuriated, helpless and wronged.
Sashi breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn't in the picture yet. He gave a smile of understanding and patted Shashidhar's shoulder in consolation. "It's okay, they will see that you are not the culprit," he tried to assure him.
Shashidhar disagreed, "I don't think so. I mean, the girl is already dead, and people are blaming the police for it left, right and centre. The police will try to close the case as soon as possible, and if they don't find the real culprit, they will use a scapegoat like me to appease the public and close it off. The hell they would care about catching the real killer. All they would want to do is escape from this situation with the least responsibility and publicity damage as possible."
His face contorted with the anger he felt towards the system that was persecuting an innocent person likehim. True, he had the worst personal background possible, had no power himself or a powerful person backing him up to vouch for his innocence. He could make the perfect scapegoat if the police wanted.
But that wasn't what stood out for Sashi.
Would the police really cover the whole incident by indicting someone else?
Mitra's boyfriend wouldn't. No matter how strongly and blatantly the pressure from higher-ups would try to divert the case, Mitra's boyfriend would go around trying to find her and Sashi on his own. It wasn't his first time going after a person who barely existed.
"Still, they released you after the investigation, right? They might not implicate you in the case. If they try to do something, I will make sure everyone knows your innocence," Sashi sounded warm and assuring to his helper.
"I don't know. Something happened which made them release me and the others arrested for questioning like me, for the time being. The police seemed hell bent on beating the crap out of us till one of us did a wrong, coerced confession, but then, they stopped and set us free."
Shashidhar trailed off in his thoughts on the change in the attitude of the cops.
He shrugged it off and continued, "The Sub-Inspector here told me and other suspects to sign in a register in the police station every morning till the case gets resolved."
Sashi wondered what was happening in the SIT that could change the way they operated.
Maybe Mitra's boyfriend had threatened them into investigate properly.