“You are back,” Nina Bhupati’s voice said. “You were gone for two days, and I had no one to talk to.”

Gaurav grunted in response. He had given Khan strict instructions not to engage in any conversation with the captive.

“I’m not complaining,” she said. “It’s just that I’m not much of a talker, but I realized, talking to you has been quite cathartic. And you are a very good listener.” There was a playful undertone in the last sentence.

What about that bastard husband of yours? Isn’t he a good listener, too?  Gaurav didn’t allow those words to escape from him. Instead, he closed his eyes and let her soft voice wash over him.

Only a few days of listening to her, he was getting addicted. He was away for two days to follow up on the bank transactions. And while he was digging into the information, he also made a detour.

He met with Nina Bhupati’s mother. She was exactly as how she was described. She was an aging beauty who was greedy and selfish to the core.

 

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

“I’m a reporter. I’m looking for any information you can give about your daughter.” He showed an ID that was associated with a popular newspaper.

“Still not found, is she?” the woman asked.

“No.”

The woman watched him with a shrewd look. “I’m not supposed to talk about her. My darling daughter sent her lawyers warning me that she would get me arrested if I did.”

Gaurav knew that the woman was paid a good amount of money not to give out any defamatory interviews or information about her daughter.

“I will not mention your name or anything,” he said. “I’m trying to find out what sort of person Nina Bhupati was before she married Suraj Bhupati.”

She gave him a sweeping look, talking in his casual dressing. “What is in it for me?” she asked.

He pulled out a wad of cash and handed it to her. Immediately, she began counting.

“Not a lot, but it’ll do. I’m sick of keeping quiet. Especially for that selfish brat who has no gratitude for her own mother.”

“Is she your only child?” he asked.

An uncomfortable look passed on her face. “No. I had two other children.”

“Where are they?”

“They… uh… died in an accident. They were both such good daughters. Had they been alive, I’m sure they would have taken care of me. They loved me so much.”

Gaurav’s jaw clenched at the lie.

“Unlike those two, my middle one was a back-talking brat. Never happy with what I did for her or her sisters.” There was a snort. “Just because she got married to a rich man and lives in a fancy house, she thinks she’s above me. You should have listened to her language when she spoke to me the last time. Still a street urchin despite her clothes or status.”

Gaurav listened to the older woman’s ranting for some more time and then he cut her off, unable to tolerate her presence anymore.

She leeched out some more money before he left.

 

He had gone to check whether the tales he heard each night were real or not. He didn’t know why he cared either way. So what if Nina Bhupati was speaking the truth about her troubled childhood and life? It shouldn’t make any difference to him.

But it did.

“So anyway, where was I?” he heard his captive ask. “Oh yes, our dressing.

“Devi and I always ensured that a layer of grime always coated our faces outside the school hours. And we cut our hair very short like that of most boys, not to attract any attention. For the longest time, people thought we were two dirty boys. Not that it helped in any way when it came to the child traffickers.”

She told him about how she and her sister had escaped kidnap several times. He also discovered why she had the presence of mind when he had placed a drugged cloth on her face. She had experienced it personally when she was a child.

“Unfortunately, a lot of children we knew couldn’t escape like us,” she said with a grim voice. Gaurav knew what the fate of the children must have been. Either they were mutilated and made to beg on streets, or they were killed for their body parts. The sad part was most of the children wouldn’t have been reported as missing and neither was anyone looking for them.

“As I grew older, I started to get shallower,” she said. “Do you know how it is like to be a teenage girl?” There was a couple of seconds pause. “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t really know. It’s different for teenage boys.” Her tone was dry.

A reluctant smile covered Gaurav’s face at her silly joke, even though his heart ached a little bit at her story. He had a sister, so he had an idea how it was for teenage girls.

“Well, when I turned thirteen, I was sick of how I looked,” she said. “I liked a boy in my class. Unfortunately, he thought I was a boy too. He gave me an odd look each time I smiled at him.”

He imagined her as a teenager, wanting the same things as what other teenagers had.

“…but as time went by, despite the grime and layers of dirt, Devi’s beauty still shined through. Sometimes, that turned into a problem.”