by Parth Pandya
[box]Mrs. Sarla Sharma is a die-hard fan of mystery novels. A lifetime of reading such books instills in her the spirit of a ‘detective’. And one fine day, she does get a chance to unleash her detective side. Parth Pandya writes a short story.[/box]The chime of the doorbell had all the portents of a satisfying morning coming home. Mrs. Sarla Sharma reached for her reading glasses that always sat delicately on the bridge of her nose, threatening to fall off, but never showing the temerity to do so, in absolute fear of the owner. She moved her enormous mass with extreme nimbleness towards the door. The degradation of her body had done nothing to the youthfulness of her mind. She imagined a debonair man waiting on the other side of the door, hair slickly set and parted just at the right spot, a sharp face to complement the tautness of his muscles and a complete sense of control emanating from his being. She opened the door and let her aspirations die before the door was ajar enough for the person to come through. In walked the rapidly fading body of a bald, bespectacled man, climbing into the house with the level of excitement befitting a funeral. Mrs. Sharma did not even acknowledge her husband of 27 years as he ambled into the house with vegetables from the market. Her only interest in his arrival was in a brown paper bag he had nestled among the vegetables. She knew that the latest issue of the ‘True Detective’ was hiding in there.
Mrs. Sharma had an appetite for mystery more voracious than her stomach’s want for spicy food. She had spent the better part of her life reading crime and spy novels. Her world was filled with books from Agatha Christie to Ian Fleming, Frederick Forsyth to Robert Ludlum, Arthur Conan Doyle to John Le Carre’. She fell in love with the concept of the detective, the spy. The idea of a person who didn’t really need to leap through tall buildings, but be a superhero on account of his wits and energy, appealed to her. She imagined them to be people with a sixth sense that could see what others could not, dissect a situation in ways that others could not and solve problems that the rest would be baffled with. Mrs. Sharma never had a doubt in her mind. If there was one thing that she would have liked to be in her life, it would be a detective.
The residents of ‘Flower Bloom’ apartments would never have suspected that an amateur detective had been busy honing her skills with them over the years. Mrs. Sharma’s eye was transfixed on everyone. Sauron would have been proud. She did everything a good detective would: hide in plain sight, notice the minutest of details, have a nose for trouble even as it is in the initial stages of brewing. She could always tell that Mr. and Mrs. Doshi had had a rough night by the time and style with which Mr. Doshi stomped into the building compound in the morning. She could predict that Mr. Kamdar would not be likely to win the general secretary elections for the building by the hush that would fall into the group of the B wing members, every time he walked into them in the evenings. She could tell by the hushed closing of the door on her floor late in the night that the young girl Vani, who lived by herself, had another visitor who had stayed on to do a business she was embarrassed to let her fellow residents know about. Yes, Mrs. Sharma was a good detective alright. All her years of being inspired by the detectives who leapt out of the pages of books and novels she read had trained her competently.
It was a Tuesday morning like any other. In the city, the dogs took over the role of the morning bird to wake up people. Mrs. Sharma ambled her way to the window to take in this noise and begin her morning observations. The regular Joes walked into the parlour. There was the newspaper-wallah, the milkman, the morning help in all quarters walking into the apartment complex. It would have been a regular Tuesday, but for the odd changes that Mrs. Sharma was noticing this morning. The truck that came about for picking up the trash from the building seemed oddly different. Why had he come with three helpers? They seemed like new faces. Mrs. Sharma tried to call out to the watchman, but he had abandoned his post and gone away. Was it deliberate or was it a diversion? Mrs. Sharma stomped about in her flat wondering what she could do next. Whom could she alert? She saw the trash-men walking towards the other wing. What would I do if I were in their place, she thought. Who’d be most vulnerable? Her thoughts went to the ground floor inhabitants, the Mehras.
Mrs. Sharma knew by habit that Mr and Mrs. Mehra would be heading out of the door for their morning walk. The walk, as commanded by their location in Mumbai, involved a twenty-minute drive to the jogger’s park. She knew though that their house was never left unattended. Their maid servant Kamala was always present this hour of the morning, getting their breakfast ready early, as her rich masters returned from their daily attempts to reduce their corpulent selves. That frail lady wouldn’t survive against three well-built men.
Mrs. Sharma took a deep breath and tried to compute her next move. Ringing the police would be moot. Should she shout and alert the residents? Not sure if that’d work so early in the morning with most people still in bed. She decided that confronting them would be the thing to do. She shook her husband up and asked him to come down with her to the compound. On the way down, she took a quick peek – it was already happening. A big television set was being hauled out and out followed a huge sofa. Could the jewelry be any far behind? She raced down to the compound and decided to create a ruckus. This may be a city where no one cares about the other but surely a crisis would wake everyone up. “Thieves,” she shouted. “Stop these thieves.” The men with the television froze. People slowly started peeking out of the window with perplexed expressions. By now, Mrs. Sharma had wound up into a fury. Hercule Poirot wouldn’t have had a patch on her. She had gone one step ahead – she had solved a crime even before it had completed.
A smugness that came from a lifetime of detective experience come true spread over her face. But that victory smile was broken in an instant by a face that peeped out from behind the men. Vijay Prakash clarified softly, “Aunty, they are not thieves. They are moving my furniture. We are shifting out of here.” Embarrassed, Mrs. Sharma looked around for the truck. Surely, it was the trash truck, wasn’t it? Was her mind playing tricks with her? Her knight in shining armour, her husband, walked in with the explanation. He placed her spectacles in her hand. Maybe the detective in her wasn’t ready for primetime yet. The faces in the window retreated back to their morning routines, a day enriched by a story to tell. Mr and Mrs. Mehra returned a few grams lighter, taking care to avoid the moving van on their way in. Mrs. Sharma returned to her flat and picked up her copy of ‘True Detective’. Fiction, she thought, was less confusing.
arth Pandya is a passionate Tendulkar fan, diligent minion of the ‘evil empire’, persistent writer at http://parthp.blogspot.com, self-confessed Hindi movie geek, avid quizzer, awesome husband (for lack of a humbler adjective) and a thrilled father of two. He grew up in Mumbai and spent the last eleven years really growing up in the U.S. and is always looking to brighten up his day through good coffee and great puns.
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