The Agent

Dinesh Nair died from an overdose of sleeping pills two weeks ago. No one had an answer.

Akanksha took off her glasses and placed them on her desk. She massaged her eyes and relished the transient darkness, a momentary escape from turbulent reality, into peace. She stretched out her hands and yawned. Her eyes led themselves to the bottom right corner of her laptop screen. It was eleven, just an hour into work. She was already drained.

"How about some coffee?" she pinged Seema on the instant messenger. She locked her fingers together and cracked her knuckles, awaiting a response.

"Just finishing a review," said Seema. "I'll need a minute. Come over."

Seema's desk was at the northwest corner of the office block, a two-minute walk from Akanksha's cube. Akanksha stepped out. Dressed in a light-blue formal shirt and dark trousers, she was the personification of elegance. With her large, dark eyes and oval face, she looked much younger than most thirty-six-year-olds. Her feigned composure and stoic demeanour veiled the labyrinth of disconcerting thoughts that eroded her from within.

She walked straight down the aisle, her eyes lowered. She felt some of her colleagues give her those furtive glances with an amalgamation of curiosity and sympathy. Embarrassed, she sincerely hoped that this was a figment of her imagination.

Seema had completed her work by the time Akanksha reached her desk.

"Let's go," said Seema. She stood up and moved towards the cafeteria. Akanksha followed her.

"How are things, Akanksha?"

They sat across a coffee table in a corner of the cafeteria.

"Well, I'm trying to get on with life." Akanksha took a shallow breath. "You, pretty much, know what's been happening."

Seema nodded. She placed her hand on Akanksha's and looked into her gleaming eyes.

"It's good that you've joined back," she said. "There's no point in staying at home. You'll continue to be entangled by negativity."

Akanksha removed her palm from Seema's gentle clasp. She snorted while creasing her forehead. She cringed at the matter-of-fact piece of advice from her closest colleague at Bluecap Infosystems. Could staying at home ever be an option? What was the need for Seema to reiterate the obvious?

Akanksha realised two seconds later that her rage lacked substance. She knew that Seema wanted to start a conversation and help her confront a touchy and awkward situation. She regained her composure and forced a wry smile.

The cafeteria filled up with groups of Bluecap employees taking their mini-breaks. Akanksha's discomfiture increased with each passing minute and with each person entering the cafeteria. Seema sensed this. Before long, she emptied her cup with a quick gulp and got up. This signalled the end of their unusually quiet coffee session. Akanksha did not lose a moment to scurry through the somewhat noisy bays and back into the safety of her cube.

She tried, in vain, to focus on the piece of code she was working on. She was devastated to think about how her life had changed in a fortnight. Her mind evoked a train of thoughts.

Dinesh's death was an anticlimax. Akanksha was clogged with a blend of emotions—anger, desperation, sorrow and cynicism. Was she being naive all along, oversimplifying her life, blind to some vital facets of it? Why did she not pre-empt this eventuality?

But then, how could she? She did not have any inkling—not even in her weirdest dreams. She had felt that they were there for each other through thick and thin, sharing their highs and lows. She was wide off the mark and struggling for answers.

"Let's have lunch." Seema's voice cut through Akanksha's clutter of ruminations.

It was half-past one. Akanksha was exhausted. She looked at Seema for a moment, and then back at her laptop screen. She had barely written two lines of code. Her long eyelashes covered her striking but fatigued eyes. They were moist. A tear threatened to roll over her dimpled cheek. The subtle mascara that she wore was unevenly smudged below her eyes. That added a whiff of inadvertent earthiness to her beauty.

"I'm done for the day, Seema." Akanksha packed up. "I need some rest."

"What about lunch?"

"I'll manage. I'm not hungry."

Seema nodded. She was in two minds but decided to leave Akanksha alone. She felt that this was the best she could do.

"Take care," said Seema. Her voice was cracked and her eyes, moist. "Call me if you need anything."

Akanksha nodded. She was pale. She popped an aspirin and gulped some water. Her eyes closed. She took a long, exasperated breath before slinging her bag over her shoulder and rushing out of the office building.

She drove towards her home in the Vellayambalam area of the city. After a day of respite, it drizzled again. Akanksha navigated the potholes, puddles and traffic, typical of the Trivandrum monsoons. Her mind was blank. She wanted to get home quickly, shower, and go to bed.

The drizzle changed gears, first into moderate rain and then into a full-fledged downpour. The wipers of her car were in full swing and its headlights were turned on. However, she could not see even a few metres ahead of her. The traffic crawled and snarled. An aberrant gloom descended on the city. All the forces seemed to be working against her. She clutched the steering wheel, stiff and tight, and went through the motions.

She turned on the radio for some positive distraction. However, the triad of music, advertising jingles and the didactic blabbering of the RJs felt like noise. Within minutes, she turned it off. She yearned to move on from her state of agony, but time had come to a standstill. Her vulnerability got the better of her. At a traffic signal, she banged on the steering. She wailed, desperate for some support, some answers and some next steps.

She took more than an hour to reach home—a beautiful row house provided by Perfectum Systems, where Dinesh was the Chief Operating Officer. They had been there for more than eight years, ever since they moved from Mumbai to Trivandrum. The movement was a consequence of their quest for a full life—one that was filled with space, time and happiness.

In a few months, they were convinced. This was, indeed, the life they had wanted. Akanksha joined Bluecap. Sana was born. Life was bliss.

Akanksha parked the car. The rain had stopped. She opened the gate and scampered along the pebbled walkway towards the house. Her thick, waterproof soles created a splash with each step. The garden on either side was lush and full. Soaked in rain, the orange hibiscus and pink balsams drooped. Drops fell off the green leaves and wooden branches of the lavender and golden shower trees.

Akanksha and Dinesh were enthralled when they realised that the house came with a little plot of land in front. This was an out-of-bounds luxury when they were in Mumbai. This euphoria gave rise to a common passion. They spent a lot of time together, landscaping and nurturing the plot into a beautiful garden.

Akanksha scrambled through the garden—now, alone.

She reached the door and pulled out a bunch of keys from her bag. Her eyes fell on the stylized nameplate that read:

A-3, The Nairs

Dinesh, Akanksha, Sana

With Dinesh gone, the nameplate had lost its relevance. Akanksha entered the living room and glanced at the large family photograph on the wall opposite the entrance door. It was taken four months ago. There was Dinesh, with his intense eyes behind a pair of dark-rimmed glasses that she had gifted him on his last birthday. He was smiling—the impeccable lover, the ideal husband and the doting father. She was so blind in her love for him.

Six-year-old Sana looked beatific. Her little angel; how would she be coping with this loss? She had gone to stay with Akanksha's parents. She would be with them until things trudged towards a semblance of normalcy. Akanksha wondered, when.

She continued to look at the photograph and closed the door. Her eyes froze at it. She took off her shoes, plunged into the sofa and cried. She was hysterical. Unable to control her tears, she lifted herself, pulled towards the bedroom and threw herself onto the bed. She was too tired to change and wash. It was 3 p.m. when she embarked on a shallow, disturbed sleep.

She woke up at dusk. The lights were dim. She stared out of the window into the garden, and further into the distant hills fading into the dark, cloudy sky. In the distance, she noticed a majestic flash of lightning, followed by a subdued sound of thunder. This was followed by a few more. The flashes were beautiful—sharp, careless, strokes of white over a black canvas. But she felt hollow and sucked into oblivion, haunted by fleeting thoughts of the futility of life. She dreaded thinking about how difficult it would be for her to continue to live.

With Dinesh's death, Akanksha was the loser in more ways than one. She had lost him. She had lost her peace. The unnatural nature of death made her lose her social standing and her relationship with Dinesh's family. Soon, she would need to move out of the house and into a listless apartment. Along with it, she would lose the memories of her beautiful times with Dinesh. And the garden, which they had nurtured as their own, would no longer be hers. She was the loser— most certainly so.

But then, was she, not the loser even before Dinesh's death? Was she not the one who was naïve, possessive and proud of an inveterate cheat?

It was very late. Akanksha grabbed some dry fruits from the fridge and sipped some water from her bottle. This satiated her fledgling hunger and soothed her nausea. She felt much better after a warm shower and returned to her bed.

It was on the same bed where, two weeks ago, Dinesh was found motionless and still. There were dollops of froth emanating from his mouth, from an overdose of her sleeping pills that Akanksha had mixed with his food that night.

She had had enough.

How could she reconcile the fact that she had seen him together with this woman for the third time in a month? And this time around, she could smell the passion even from a distance. Their murky images walked hand in hand in the mall, chatting and laughing. Akanksha's impeccable lover, her ideal husband and the doting father of her daughter, was making the most of those gratifying moments. The tryst was intimate, bordering on the obscene. It was punctuated by Dinesh's intermittent tapping on the woman's full hips amid their hearty conversations. He caressed her straight, smooth hair, perhaps slipping unconsciously into its sensuous, addictive fragrance.

Oh, the ardour! Their chemistry! They did not want to be disturbed by anyone, least of all by Akanksha. Akanksha closed her eyes in disbelief. Dumbstruck and devastated, she left immediately.

Dinesh got exactly what he deserved. Akanksha was only the agent. It was unfortunate that he deserved this, and it was regrettable that it took Akanksha so long to find out what he deserved. Akanksha did not regret what she did.

Did she really not? What about Sana? What about herself? And then, did Dinesh actually deserve this end?

For the present, she wished that life had a reset button that would erase that moment of indiscretion. But it was too late. Life was complex—far too complex to get reset by the click of a button.

All of a sudden, she sat up and opened the drawer of the bedside table. She took a tablet out of the strip of an antidepressant that she had dexterously protected from the reach of the police. Her psychiatrist had prescribed this for her last month as part of her treatment for the extremely delusional Othello Syndrome.

She waited for the inevitable. She wondered what it was and why it was taking so long.