Madhu looked out of the kitchen window. The new neighbors were unloading their stuff from the truck. It was a small family like hers. Only she didn’t have a kid while the new family had one. She could see a tall, lean, fair man with a beard, his beautiful wife, and a small boy. The boy looked young …probably eleven or twelve. The man looked irritated as he carried the pieces of furniture but the wife looked calm and composed. She smiled quite often. The boy was reading a book in the corner.
The whistle of the cooker distracted Madhu and she came back to the kitchen platform. She got busy with her cooking and didn’t look out of the window again. Raman called her from the room,” Is the food ready? I am getting late.” Madhu replied in a loud voice,” Yes, come to the dining hall. It’s ready. I am just packing the tiffin.”
Raman left for work. He ran a cyber cafe in the city. He would leave the house at 10 am and come back at 8 pm every day. He was a simple man with few expectations. He would usually carry tiffin for lunch except for Saturdays when he would close early. Madhu was a housewife but she also ran a tiffin service and provided meals for workers in the cement plant in a nearby area. She was assisted by her old neighbor and his younger brother earlier but now that they were gone she was facing trouble carrying out the work on her own. She called her own brother for a few days but he won’t stay long. His summer holidays would be over soon and she was looking for a new partner. She was making decent money from her tiffin service.
One afternoon when she was taking a nap, the doorbell woke her up. She woke up and went to open the door. She was expecting that Tarun might have returned. He had left early for distributing the tiffins. But she was surprised to see her new neighbor at the door.
The neighbor spoke,” Hello! My name is Sharda. I live next door.”
Madhu responded,” Ohh! Hello. Nice to meet you.”
Sharda spoke back,” Can I come in?”
Madhu responded again,” Yeah sure. Come in.”
Both hit a conversation and Madhu felt relieved that her new neighbor was very friendly. Madhu was impatiently waiting to bring the tiffin service into the conversation. Finally, she spoke,” You know I run a tiffin service.”
Sharda smiled and showed excitement,” Wow! How do you manage? How many people do you feed?”
Madhu said,” I send tiffin to 25 people right now. The thing is that I used to run the business with my previous neighbor…and you know she is gone.. and now you have come…which is great..mmm…but I need someone to assist me in my work…mmm”
Madhu was hesitating to speak,” Do you cook?..or even if you don’t..would you like to be part of my work. I will pay you..only if you are willing to work..”
Madhu finally took a breath. Sharda laughed hard. “Why are you so nervous? I would love to work. I don’t know anything about cooking. But I will help you. But…”
The long pause was making Madhu anxious. “ Is there any problem?”
Sharda spoke again,” My husband…”
Suddenly there was a knocking on the door. Someone was knocking hard. “ Sharda…Sharda..are you there?”
Madhu ran to open the door. It was Sharda’s husband. Before Madhu could say anything he barged into the room and held Madhu by her arm. “I asked you not to leave the house”, he was angry.
Madhu wanted to speak but she was also terrified by the man’s behavior. Her own husband never even talked to her in a high voice and this man was clearly very aggressive. As they both left the house she sat down. She kept thinking about the incident all day.
The next morning Madhu woke up by some noise. She could hear a siren from her room. She came to the main hall where her husband and her brother were peeking through the window.
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“What happened?”, Madhu asked.
Tarun said,” Di! Something has happened to our neighbors. There is an ambulance and a police jeep. The crowd is surrounding the house.
Madhu felt cold under her feet. She told herself,” It must be the husband. He would have killed Sharda. She should have filed a complaint against the monster when he barged in the day before. Poor Sharda.” She looked through the kitchen window while cursing herself. She could see a body wrapped in white cloth being transferred into the ambulance but nothing else was visible. The kid and the husband, no one was there.
The whole week after the incident she kept blaming herself. She didn’t even tell her husband about the pain. One morning when she served the tea to her husband, he asked Madhu to sit near him. As Madhu sat down she looked at the news her husband was reading. There was a picture of Sharda and her husband.
She asked Raman about the news. Raman looked at the paper and spoke, “Unbelievable right? I couldn’t have thought that something of this scale would happen in our neighborhood. Poor man.”
Madhu was shocked and spoke at once, “Poor man???? What are you saying?”
Raman sighed heavily,” Yes! our neighbor. His name was Aman. Poor guy. He was trying to keep his mentally unstable wife away from the police. She was the culprit in a murder case. Apparently, she poisoned an entire family in her previous neighborhood. The police were investigating the case and found evidence of her crime. Her mental history came up during the investigation. The police were going to file the chargesheet when the husband ran away with his wife and little kid. They shifted here to avoid the police. But last night she poisoned her husband as well.”
Madhu was shocked. She held the newspaper in her shivering hand as she read the headlines:
A woman charged with the murder of a family poisoned her own husband and ran away with her twelve-year-old kid
By Khushboo Singh
Thanks for reading!
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