12.1 Vir
I looked at the woman holding the knife to my chest and despite my fear and shock, I sensed that she was telling the truth. Her voice and manner left no room for doubt, they were direct and honest, without hesitation or insincerity.
"Anusuya?" I said.
"Are you deaf, Southerner? You heard me the first time."
She spoke a curious dialect, like Bambaiya Hindi. The kind of bhasha we call 'tapori' bhasha in aamchi Mumbai, the pidgin mixture of Hindi-Angrezi-Urdu-Marathi that you hear actors like Sunjay Dutt mouth onscreen in Bollywood movies.
I didn't know why she was calling me a Southerner. But one thing was obvious. She wasn't my daughter Viveka anymore.
I could see from the animalistic shine in her eyes and the snarling mouth and poison-tipped dagger poised to cut my throat that she could kill me or maim me as easily as she had the other men, strangers that had made the mistake of thinking her to be just another 21st century young woman. This person before me in the darkened nursery school classroom was not a child of our time. She was a fighter, a person accustomed to killing for survival or for need.
The police were right about her and I was wrong. Viveka had lost her mind. She had turned into someone else altogether, not my daughter Viveka. Somehow, she had fallen under some kind of hallucinogenic delusion that made her into this warrior-princess from another time, a barbaric person from a savage era. I don't know whether it was drugs that had altered her consciousness, or something else. But the change was total, brutally shocking, unmistakable. This was not my Viveka.
And even as I realized it, I also realized what a fool I had been. Coming in here, thinking I could talk sense into her.
And now my foolish mistake was going to cost me my life. And Sarla's life too. Because if I couldn't return to the hospital with any news about the poison that was slowly killing my wife, who would save her?
These thoughts flashed through my head in the space of maybe three seconds.
Then the mad beast holding me down on the floor of the kindergarten class lowered her head to my face, her breath stinking. And stunned me with the last question on earth I expected her to ask.
"Now, tell me why you are disguised as my father," she said. "By what evil magic did you copy his face and his voice so perfectly?"
"Anusuya?" I said.
"Are you deaf, Southerner? You heard me the first time."
She spoke a curious dialect, like Bambaiya Hindi. The kind of bhasha we call 'tapori' bhasha in aamchi Mumbai, the pidgin mixture of Hindi-Angrezi-Urdu-Marathi that you hear actors like Sunjay Dutt mouth onscreen in Bollywood movies.
I didn't know why she was calling me a Southerner. But one thing was obvious. She wasn't my daughter Viveka anymore.
I could see from the animalistic shine in her eyes and the snarling mouth and poison-tipped dagger poised to cut my throat that she could kill me or maim me as easily as she had the other men, strangers that had made the mistake of thinking her to be just another 21st century young woman. This person before me in the darkened nursery school classroom was not a child of our time. She was a fighter, a person accustomed to killing for survival or for need.
The police were right about her and I was wrong. Viveka had lost her mind. She had turned into someone else altogether, not my daughter Viveka. Somehow, she had fallen under some kind of hallucinogenic delusion that made her into this warrior-princess from another time, a barbaric person from a savage era. I don't know whether it was drugs that had altered her consciousness, or something else. But the change was total, brutally shocking, unmistakable. This was not my Viveka.
And even as I realized it, I also realized what a fool I had been. Coming in here, thinking I could talk sense into her.
And now my foolish mistake was going to cost me my life. And Sarla's life too. Because if I couldn't return to the hospital with any news about the poison that was slowly killing my wife, who would save her?
These thoughts flashed through my head in the space of maybe three seconds.
Then the mad beast holding me down on the floor of the kindergarten class lowered her head to my face, her breath stinking. And stunned me with the last question on earth I expected her to ask.
"Now, tell me why you are disguised as my father," she said. "By what evil magic did you copy his face and his voice so perfectly?"
posted by Ashok K. Banker at 12.10.05
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