Chap 9 - Pink Dress

The pink colour symbolizes femininity and playfulness.

“My buzz is killed,” Shalini said in a feeble voice. “And now I have got a headache.”

“A small peg will help,” Deepak suggested.

Vipin cussed him out and ordered him to arrange for three lemonades and lots of water. Deepak made a wry face but followed Vipin's orders. Shalini just sat there holding her head while Vipin arranged the letters in chronological order.

“He has been writing these for the past two years,” Vipin told Shalini. “I must say that I am very impressed by his writing skills. He sure knows how to string a hard-hitting sentence.”

“Why didn't he approach me?” Shalini massaged her temples. “Why write these letters and then hide them?”

“Perhaps his courage failed him,” Vipin said. “That's why he put in all those clues and hid the key.”

“If you think that I would have done what you did to unearth these letters,” Shalini finally opened her eyes, “then you are wrong.”

“You would have stumbled upon those letters sooner than later,” Vipin told her. “Maybe in another year or so, you might have decided to clean the bed box. Then you would have noticed the travelling bag. You might not have found the key but you could have broken the lock to access the folder inside the bag.”

“Or I would have never known about them,” Shalini replied. “Would that have been better? He knew that I hated him. He has mentioned that again and again but he did nothing to alleviate the situation. What he did was fall in love with Jia first and then with Kalpana. And now I know about it and I resent it. I didn't want to know about it. I was happier not knowing about it. Now that I have read about the depths of his love for those girls, I feel inadequate as if my love was never good enough for him. But why am I still concerned about that assh**e? He is dead. He is gone. And he has left behind these letters. This is just one more of his deviant ways to torture me.”

Deepak made his re-appearance and handed the lemonades to them. Shalini gulped it all down in one go and then drank some water. She then went back to holding her head.

“These letters indicate that Pawan was planning to commit suicide, right?” Deepak asked Vipin who shook his head.

“I didn't notice any such indication,” Vipin put his glass of lemonade down. “Pawan has poured out his heart but I never felt as if these were precursors of his planned farewell.”

“Who cares if the bast**d wanted to die or not?” Shalini snarled.

“Let us not talk anymore of this morbid stuff,” Vipin tried to appease her. “Deepak, tell me about how you two met. Did you fall in love first or did Shalini make a move on you?”

“Ha!” Shalini chuckled. “As if I could fall in love at first sight with him! Ha!”

Deepak had the grace to blush. “Of course, I fell in love with her,” he looked at Shalini with lovey-dovey eyes. It made Vipin feel like the third wheel. Deepak spoke in detail about how he used to admire Shalini from afar.

“I was on the fringes of her social circle,” Deepak confessed. “I always thought she was beyond my league but then I would see that she didn't circulate, didn't go around having casual flings, and that made me feel good about my chances.”

“So you never told her about your feelings?” Vipin asked him.

“Actually,” Deepak looked at Shalini with a special look that only a love-sick fool could direct towards his love interest, “I once made up my mind to do so. It was her birthday party. I had been invited.”

“No, you weren't,” Shalini refuted his claim.

“I was plus one for Mani,” Deepak admitted.

“Mani is a boy,” Shalini informed Vipin. “Plus one with Mani! I thought he was gay.” She chuckled. “Nothing wrong about being gay, you know, but when the person you think is gay comes and tells you that he is in love with you, it leads to confusion. Poor Mani!”

“Why do you pity that oaf?” Deepak was offended.

“Mani was an out-of-closet gay,” Shalini shook her head. “When you sweet-talked your way to my party, you led Mani up the garden path. Poor Mani believed that you needed time to come out of the closet. He was devastated when he realized that he had been manipulated.”

“All right, I confess,” Deepak shrugged his shoulders. “I wanted to attend your party desperately. In any case, you looked so beautiful in your pink dress.”

Shalini rolled her eyes.

“No, seriously,” Deepak reiterated. “You looked an ethereal beauty.” He looked at Vipin. “The pink dress simply made her outshine all the girls in the room. On top of that, she was pretty mischievous then. Giggling here, poking someone over there, she was the life of the party. I was already in love with her by then and for me, she was an angel who had descended to the world for me.” He hummed an old tune.

Vipin checked Shalini's reaction to Deepak's mushy dialogue. She seemed to not care for him.

“So then what happened?” Vipin interrupted Deepak's humming.

“She married Pawan,” Deepak inhaled sharply. “That's what happened. And it happened one week after I proposed to her. It was heart-breaking for me.”

“How did you get in touch with her again?” Vipin asked Deepak. When he saw Deepak look at him strangely, he smiled impishly. “I haven't had the chance to know more about the love stories of other people. They come to me to solve a crime. Actually, you came to me with that intention too but now that we are talking about your unrequited feelings for Shalini, I just want to talk about it.” He noticed that his sweet talk didn't assuage Deepak who stayed grim.

“He reached out to me some weeks back,” Shalini took a sip of water. “We chatted for a bit and then shared phone numbers. Then we began to talk regularly. Deepak dropped by to meet me one day. I resented his sudden arrival but after we had talked freely for about an hour, I felt grateful. I hadn't talked that much for a long time and it felt great. Ever since then, he kept in regular touch.”

“She hadn't changed much,” Deepak remarked. “Her face was still so innocent. Her eyes though had lost their shine. But when we got talking, I saw her eyes regain the hypnotic powers they had. She would blush sometimes and it made my heart skip a beat. I was still hopelessly in love with her.”

“What about Pawan?” Vipin asked him suddenly.

“Well, he was a brute,” Deepak grimaced. “When he met me, he told me to never come alone to his house. 'Either bring your wife with you and if you are not married, get a girlfriend, he told me. He was a pervert.”

“He was not comfortable with an unmarried man dropping by to meet his wife when he was away from the house,” Shalini said. “I don't think he was in the wrong.”

“Come on now,” Deepak bristled. “Didn't you tell me yourself that your husband was a lecher, a skirt-chaser?”

“I was wrong,” Shalini sighed. “I was so wrong. He never touched them. He thought about them, fantasized about them but he never harmed them.”

“Now you are making him a hero,” Deepak got angry. He turned to face Vipin. “It is all your fault,” he snarled.

Vipin shrugged. “You invited me here,” he was not intimidated by Deepak's anger. “I am just trying to make sense of a crazy scene here.”

“What's crazy about it?” Shalini asked him.

“Who was Pawan trying to find when he stepped out of the house without telling you about it?”