The Circle

He walked with a brisk pace, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. He wore a brown overcoat, which covered every inch of his hands – hiding the .39 that lied inside. He was on a mission, his last, after which he would be retired by the company that hired him. He had never felt so nervous.

Exactly 3 hours ago, he had received an envelope. It was of the same make as all the envelopes he had got earlier – 9 by 4, with a red border and the company initials embossed in gold on the bottom left corner, “R S F”. The first few times, he had tried to find out what the initials stood for. He gave up eventually. It was now a fortnightly event, as ordinary as paying the rent. He had emptied the contents of the envelope on his coffee table, bringing out a note, a cheque and a photograph. The note had all the details of his next mission, the cheque had a six-digit figure printed on it and this time, the photograph was of a middle-aged man.

All his targets were ordinary people, or at least they seemed to be. This man did not. He had a look about him, a certain restraint in his eyes as if they held back a reservoir of secrets. He had an athletic build and a lean face, and a long but faded scratch on his left forearm. His eyes were trained to spot such nuances in the human body, as more often than not these nuances actually helped in distinguishing an innocent man from a purposeful target.

He had quickly memorized the details of his target and threw the note into the fireplace, where he had already started a fire. It was always the instruction. The cheque went into a drawer inside his cabinet. He slid the photograph into his pocket. He had opened the refrigerator and drank a bottle of orange juice, as he always did before every mission of his. He had locked his apartment behind him and hailed a cab to two and a half blocks from the memorized location.

He walked with a brisk pace, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. He wore a brown overcoat, which covered every inch of his hands – hiding the .39 that lied inside. On the left side of the road ran a line of bushes and on the right stood a row of beaten down houses. He walked on the left side, where the light from the houses did not reach. A couple of hooligans passed by but he did not pay heed to them. He was on a mission, his last, after which he would be retired by the company that hired him. He had never felt so nervous.

It was a warm night, so most windows were open to let the breeze in. He saw a couple of kids watching a cartoon on the television in the living room of a house, with their mother watching on. He stopped walking for a second, but quickly turned his eyes toward the road and resumed at his previous pace. The breeze suddenly blew his coat about, revealing the shiny object he was carrying. Luckily, for him, there was not a soul around to notice it. He walked on.

After some time he came to a fork in the road. He paused there for a moment, remembering the directions he had seen in the map of the southern part of the city. Leaving the right, he walked into the left side of the fork. It was darker and narrower. It looked like a place where he, himself, could reside – given his job profile. However, he decided he was comfortable with the neighbourhood he already lived in, as he was used to this lifestyle much before he began this work. He was a civil engineer by education and for four years, by profession. Now he was jobless, but a certain group of people had decided to pay him handsomely for small services every now and then.

He found the house he was looking for. A single room was dimly lit in a shade of yellow and he could see a faint shadow on the wall to his right. On peeking through the window, he saw him. His victim was watching a cartoon – it was not the same one as the one that the kids were watching. A mouse was about to blow a hole through a cat’s head in this one.

He stood there, watching, for a while. He examined the room for other openings. There was an open door on the opposite corner from where he was standing. There was another door, closed, to his right. He went around the house from the right to find the whereabouts of the room the closed door led to. On looking in through another window, he realized it was the victim’s bedroom. He was careless enough to leave the window unlatched. He gave the window a gentle push and jumped over the sill with a soft thud on the floor of his bedroom. His job had just gotten much easier.

There weren’t too many personal things in the room. One might think that it was a hotel room, instead of a bedroom. However, he did find a couple of photo frames. In them were his pictures with a woman and a new-born. They looked like they had been taken not too many years ago; at least his facial features said so. He faced them downward and slid under the bed, deciding it was the best place to wait for his target. Before he did so, he gently pushed back the window to where it had been.

He waited for what seemed like an hour, maybe more. Impatience had started creeping in and he was getting distracted by thoughts of his wife and child and what had happened to them. He had never thought about marriage himself, believing it would be impossible to hold one together with his main profession being killing random people for sustenance. No woman deserved such a life, he thought. That very moment, he reinforced his decision. This would be his last assignment. He would quit the company the moment his final job was over, his final cheque encashed. A normal life is what he wanted and a normal life is what he would choose from then on. He crossed his chest, taking the name of his God.

Suddenly, the sound of the television stopped and a soft ‘clank’ came from the living room. He became alert. There was a noise of slippers shuffling across the carpet and a refrigerator door being slammed shut. The door to the bedroom opened a moment later and he walked in. The next, he was on the floor, with a bullet embedded in the middle of his skull and blood oozing out onto the bedroom floor. Even the most trained ear couldn’t have heard more than a soft ‘pop’. He emerged out from under the bed. He broke into tears – something he had not done since the time he had started on this job.

He managed to compose himself and realized that he had to clean up any signs of his presence. He grabbed a cloth lying on the floor, beside his desk, and wiped clean every surface he thought he might have touched. There were two surfaces he forgot. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. He thought he had thoroughly taken care of his target and decided he would let himself out of the front door. On the way out, a gleam of red and gold caught his eye. He bent down and realized that it was the remains of an envelope from the company, with its initials embossed on the bottom left corner, “R S F”.

He could picture the headlines in all the daily’s the next morning – ‘Crime Running Rampant – Another Murder Questions the Authorities’, with the dead man’s body, or his bungalow at least, occupying a major portion of the front pages. The article would read:

Kolkata, Monday, 21^st: Last night, yet another murder took place in the dark back alleys of Jodhpur Park. The victim was Anant Desai, a civil engineer working in a reputed construction company. He had been divorced for two years and had been living alone, after the death of his one year old daughter...

He started laughing wildly.

"Do You Think It'll Happen ?"

Life is a mystery, and it pays to keep it that way. How would you feel if you knew what was going to happen next. You might jump to a conclusion and say that it'd be splendid to know your future, so you could keep yourself away from all the dangers that lie ahead and steer yourself toward all the treasures that are spotted throughout the road to the end. But lo ! Is a treasure really a treasure if there has not been any anticipation in the quest to find it? It's just a chanced upon piece of fortune then, a relic that would only remind you how lucky you were in that moment and fool you into believing that that is the way you experience joy. I say different. I say we wait and find out what awaits us. I say we anticipate, we salivate, we starve, we ponder, we worry, we think and not know. I say we let the future decide on the course it wants to take, and see whether the course of our present meets with it or not. I say we enjoy every moment spent in this wait believing that the next will bring us a surprise - if it doesn't, there are many more to come. I say we wait till the last moment of our lives, so that even death takes us by bewilderment, so much so that it takes our breath away...

The Moment of Happiness

"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mr. Mehra was the stereotypical father, something straight out of a novel. He had the rags to riches story behind him, he had lost his wife in an accident ten years ago and since, had never been too happy with life. He had become something of a recluse, living on the outskirts of Kolkata and occasionally wandering into the metropolitan area, as and when he wished.

He had a wonderful young daughter, Anita, who after finishing her graduation from a prestigious law school in England, was coming back home after two long years. Most importantly, she was ready to marry and this obviously caused Mr. Mehra some amount of worrying. Being her only parent, he was more than protective of his daughter and didn't want her to end up marrying just any guy. He had been on the prowl, looking for the perfect candidate for Anita, for almost six months. Saying he had a lot of parameters was quite an understatement. His image of perfection was just that, perfection. Anything less and a rejection was imperative. He had gone through scores of men, finding some missing trait in each and every one of them, miraculously in some cases one could say. His mind was like a puddle, where one could create ripples with even the slightest disturbance.

She arrived on Sunday morning and Mr. Mehra went to receive her to the airport. There were tears in his eyes when he saw her come through the customs area lugging her baggage clumsily behind her. She gleamed like a kid and finally crossing the gates, hugged her father like she had never done before. "I missed you so much, Anita" he murmured, amidst tears of excessive joy.

The next few days were spent at home mostly, with the inquisitive Mr. Mehra wanting to know every single detail of the last two years she had spent away from him. He wanted to know whether she had made lots of Indian friends, whether she had lived comfortably, whether she had fallen in love. The answer to all the questions was a merry 'yes' and this greatly satisfied Mr. Mehra. However, after waiting for the right moment, she also told him that she had also left her love after the end of her last semester. He consoled her, saying she would find someone else in due time. For now, it was up to her to enjoy herself and let go of all worries. They would take care of themselves, he said.

They had been invited to a relative's party the next evening. The occasion was anything but small. A very close friend, Mr. Kapoor, had just been promoted to the post of Vice President in the firm he was working in. Since it was the highest he would rise to, there was no holding back in terms of magnanimity and he had promised to himself more than anything else that he would throw a party which would not be forgotten anytime soon. Mr. Mehra had gladly and rather excitedly accepted, thinking it would be a welcome change for both him, and Anita.

They reached the Kapoors’ home the next evening a little after the party had begun and were warmly greeted by Mrs. Kapoor. Anita had spent days on end on Mrs. Kapoor’s lap as a kid, and would always be giggling when with her. She lit up like a firecracker on seeing her, and instead of reaching for her legs to take her blessings which was the Indian norm, she went straight for a hug and a tight one at that! Mrs. Kapoor was glimmering herself, and in a moment walked in Mr. Kapoor. The two friends exchanged a warm hug and he showed them the way into the living room where he introduced him to the generation of his family that had never seen him.

Mr. Kapoor had two sons, Akash and Varun – the former being the elder of the two, and a daughter who had been married for three years. They respectfully took the blessings of Mr. Mehra and exchanged hellos with Anita. After some formal chatter, everyone was at comfort and this gave the two friends the opportunity to steal away from the crowd into an ante-room. There, Mr. Kapoor kept his fine collection of scotch, something he was a little proud of. He went to the rack and picked out a bottle of Chivas Regal 25 and poured himself a glass neat and another for Mr. Mehra with ice, just the way he liked it.

As every conversation in the world starts, this one too, started with the weather. They spoke of many things, hopping from topics like politics to sports to reality television to old music and back to politics again! After an hour or so, Mr. Kapoor finally mentioned to his friend if his daughter had come to a marital age. Mr. Mehra only nodded, with streaks of worry across his forehead. “I’ve given a lot of thought to it, and honestly, it’s the only thing that’s been on my mind since she came back.” Mr. Kapoor was listening intently, sipping his drink. “Do you have anybody in mind?” he asked. Mr. Kapoor kept down his drink and smiled at him, a long smile of satisfaction. Mr. Mehra was struck with a little confusion and said, “I don’t understand...” They then went on to talk about his elder son and his daughter for the next hour.

As the clock struck one, it was time to leave for the Mehras and they said their goodbyes to the Kapoors and whoever was left at the party. Mr. Mehra took his friend aside and whispered to him, “I’ll talk to her, let us see what happens hence.” He gave a slight smile, shook his hand and left with his daughter.

Moments after they left their home, Anita innocently mentioned, “Papa, what do you think of Akash as a guy?” Mr. Mehra finally felt at liberty to smile freely. At that exact moment, even the last of his worries seemed to be fading away. If the world saw him then, the world would say Mr. Mehra was a happy man.