An untellable secret
(Some secrets may better remain secrets for ever)
Kotra Siva Rama Krishna
Menaka immediately embraced her and dragged her back.
Sukanya immediately burst out into weeping. It was the second time to happen like that to her.
Menaka shocked. She did not expect this at all in this way.
“What is this? Please control yourself.” Slowly leading her to the bed there Menaka said.
“No. I cannot. You just don’t know what was used to be between us. How much intimated we both to each other.”
“I can understand. You told me before. Stop it now. There is no use in becoming like this.” Menaka’s heart also was filled with heaviness.
“Alright.” Sukanya wiped her tears with her hand. “We talked hours and hours together in this room. She liked it a lot and used to spend most of her time in it while she was home. What an irony that she committed suicide in this very room itself!”
Menaka hissed out heavily. She felt happy that Sukanya controlled herself. Now she wanted to know what she intend to tell her and hesitating to ask about that.
“You want to know that thing I have mentioned I came to know?” Sukanya said as if she read the mind of Menaka.
“Yes.” Menaka said uncomfortably.
“You have to come all the way to my home to know about that.” Sukanya said.
“What?” Menaka yelled with a small voice. “I cannot understand what you are saying.”
“You heard me right. You have to come to my home to know about that.” Sukanya’s voice was weak but firm.
“Alright I come.” Menaka hissed out heavily. “When we do go? Now itself?” Menaka angrily asked.
“I have come here just now after a long time. Please wait some more time. We both shall go there.”
Menaka slumped herself beside Sukanya and put her hand around her shoulders. “How you are feeling now? Alright?”
“I never can feel alright after this heavy loss.” Sukanya said. “You may be feeling that I am exaggerating. But I am telling you the truth.”
“I can understand. But you too have to understand. You must accept this loss and we all have to go on with our lives.”
“I cannot. It is something that I never can come to terms with.” She mumbled.
“Her father himself has come to terms with the truth.”
Sukanya laughed weakly. “You are thinking that he has come to terms with it? He is dead. He is dead inside. He is suffering hell.”
Menaka did not say anything. She did not know what to say at all. She never thought that Sukanya has become this much wrought because of her friend’s death.
Sukanya deeply breathed. She was about to say something then Ranganath came into there.
“How do you do Sukanya? After a very long time you have come here.”
Sukanya stood up and looked into his face. “Why do I come here? Why do I bother about you people? I am living somewhere comfortably and happily. There is no necessity to me to worry about you both old people.”
“What you are talking my child? What happened to you?”
Sukanya nodded her head and said “Nothing.”
“She became too much disturbed by Nirupama’s death.” Menaka said.
“I can understand.” Ranganath said.
“I come again uncle.” It seemed to Sukanya that she could not manage herself there for long. “We go to my home now.” She said to Menaka.
***
Sukanya took Menaka straight into her bedroom and then led her to the coroner of it. It was head place of the bed. The whole room illuminated with the light of the tube light.
“Just look at there.” She pointed to a place on the wall with her index finger.
“What?” looking at that place Menaka said. She could not see anything there.
“You have to go even more near, near. You need to put your head there.”
Menaka did like that.
“There is some writing on the wall, is it is not?”
Menaka looked closely and said “Yes there is.”
“Read that out.”
“I…..I……can’t…….can’t………….” Menaka struggled to read that. “….bear ………. this………” then she said with a loud voice “Yes……….. I got it……..it is ‘I can’t bear this.’ whose writing is this?”
“Can’t you guess whose writing is this?’
“Nirupama’s? You are thinking that this is Nirupama’s writing?”
“Absolutely. It has been written by Nirupama.” Sukanya said. “On that day, when she came at twelve thirty or so, I left her in my house and went out. She straight went into the bedroom and I saw her laid herself on the bed. Surely she had written this.”
Menaka came on to the edge of bed and sat on it dangling her feet down. Sukanya also came and slumped beside her.
“I think it was the very first day that the suffering started in her …. So she expressed herself some extent on that wall so…..Some uncontrollable feeling in her made her write like that on the wall.” Sukanya said.
“Very first day…. uncontrollable feeling….quizzical words.” Menaka mumbled. “You are sure that it is her handwriting?”
“I am damn sure. I know her writing very well. Moreover there is no chance that anyone else wrote on that wall so.”
“Alright. I took a photo of it. It must be discussed with my uncle without any delay.” Menaka went near to the wall again and took a shot of it with her cell phone.
“No one is at home now?” getting off from the bed she asked Sukanya.
“No, my mother went out.”
Then they both talked sometime more there before Menaka left that place.
***
“Very important information. It may lead us to somewhere.” Looking at in her cell phone what Menaka got in Sukanya’s home, Smaran said.
“Now we are even more sure that Nirupama was troubling with something by the time of her death.”
“You are right.” Smaran nodded his head.
“What that bloody thing she was suffering with.” Menaka murmured “Surely that was what led her to commit suicide?”
“Ninety percent to be so.”
Smaran said again. “If we take Sukanya’s words, it had happened fifteen days or so before her committing suicide.”
“Very first time…..uncontrollable feeling…..these are the words Sukanya used when she saw this writing.” Menaka said. “She is positively sure that Nirupama’s trouble started from that day.
“That was the day she came early to the home. There was no college to her….some boycott or what ……….”
“Some boycott ………Sukanya inquired and she told me.”
Smaran got off from the chair and went middle of the room. “I am hundred percent feeling it like that Menaka….If there was no boycott ….or if she had not come home early like that …..she might not have committed suicide at all.”
“I am also feeling in the same way, uncle.” Menaka thumped on the table with her hand. “Something ….something ….happened in her home on that day which …. alright.” Menaka nodded her head.
“Talk with that boy again. I am thinking it was the same day tht he found Nirupama like that. Something…something …he might have forgotten to tell you. He may know something worth remember to tell you.”
“Alright I will do that” Menaka said.
&&&
“You said that you would hypnotize me. But you have forgotten about it completely.” Nirmala said to Menaka.
“Oh! I am sorry. I forgot it, of course.” Menaka suddenly remembered her promise to the old woman. “When do you want to be hypnotized then?”
“Now itself. We both are free and there is no one to disturb us.” She said.
“Alright then. Which is the best place to hypnotize you?”
“My bedroom itself. Nirupama used to hypnotize me in the chair in my bedroom.”
“Then I also hypnotize you in that very place. Come, we go into your bedroom then.”
Menaka and Nirmala went into the bedroom and Nirmala placed herself in the only chair there. It was such type of a chair in which one can happily sleep also.
“I think you know the procedure to be got hypnotized as your daughter hypnotized you many a time before.”
“Yes. I know the procedure”. Nirmala nodded her head.
“Then I do straight go into hypnotizing you.” Menaka said.
“Please do that. I am ready in all respects.” Nirmala said.
“Now close your eyes.” Menaka said. “It starts.”
“You are listening only to my voice……There are no thoughts in you…..Your body and mind completely listen what I am going to say…..”
Nirmala obediently closed her eyes and started listening what Menaka was saying in a smooth voice.
“You are taking a deep breath… yes a deep breath.”
Menaka felt happy when Nirmala took a deep breath.
“Now another deep breath… more deeper than the first one.”
Nirmala just did as she has been said.
“You are feeling so happy and relaxed now…. There is no anxiety in you…. There are no troubling thoughts in you….”
There was more and more calmness in the face of Nirmala.
“Now you are falling asleep…completely asleep…”
Nirmala’s face has become even more relaxed.
“I do count three. When I finish three, you would be in sound sleep………one………..” Menaka said observing the face of Nirmala minutely.
There was not much change in her
“two……”
There was some muscle tightening in the face of Nirmala.
“Three….”
Now Menaka could hear the snoring of Nirmala.
***
“Yes. That is my daughter’s handwriting. She had written it with a pencil. What I cannot understand is why she had written it like that.” Ranganath said. Ranganath has been shown the writing on the bedroom wall of Sukanya.
‘I cannot bear this’. What she cannot bear?’ Closing his eyes Smaran questioned himself. “I am positive whatever it might be that she could not bear, that led her to commit suicide.”
“I am also thinking like that.” Ranganath nodded his head.
“I think we already discussed about your daughter’s going to Sukanya’s house at 12.30 in the morning just fifteen days or so before her death.”
“We discussed about that.”
“You said you don’t know about it at all.”
“Yes. My daughter did not come home early like that fifteen days or so before her death. She came home early sometimes but it was not at all just fifteen days or so before her death. She used to reach home by five thirty or so in the evening.” Ranganath has fallen in thinking as he did not know what to say.
“Just try to remember. You would have gone somewhere and not at at home at that time. Just shake your memory and think whether you went out out of station or something like that.”
That put Ranganath into deep thinking and he closed his eyes. He suddenly opened his eyes after few seconds. “Yes, I went to my sister Srividya’s house just fifteen days or so before my daughter committing suiside as her husband suffered heart attack. But everything was alright there and I came home happily. I have forgotten about it completely until you ask me now.”
“May be it was on one of those days, that you were not at home, Nirupama came home early.”
“It might have happened like that.”
Smaran paused for a moment and looked at Menaka there.
“As we have discussed before, the day that the boy looked at Nirupama leaving the house in such an unusual way and the day that she went to Sukanya’s home, both are one, the same day.”
“Yes. Then we have to assume that Sukanya first came to her house and then go to her friend’s house.” Menaka said.
“Why did she go like that?” Ranganath questioned.
“Need to be known.” Smaran said.
“Did we gain anything at all?”
“Not yet. We are still at confusion.” Smaran said and added again. “But I am sure that we can solve this puzzle before the time I promised.”
“I am also confident about that.” Ranganath said. “seeing the confidence in you.”
“What should be our next step? When we are going to solve all this? I still cannot see a way out” Menaka said.
The three were in the room of Smaran.
“So far we are right in assuming that Nirupama was suffering with something and that was what led her to commit suicide”. Smaran said.
“But it still remains a big question what that is.” Menaka said.
“Of course.” Smaran nodded his head. “If we can find that out, our detection shall be over.”
They were all remained silent for sometime. None of them did know what to do next.
(I hope that you enjoyed upto here. I shall publish the next chapter as soon as possible. Please don’t forget to rate and review.)
