My coin pouch again.
Sometimes, an oversight or omission has the amygdala on overdrive. Inconsequential items I own keep popping up in my head until the mystery unravels. It was a tray cloth two weeks ago when I had left home with both sets of house keys.
‘Have you filed the piece?’ Andrew came straight to the point.
He had picked up newsroom etiquette quickly.
‘Hello, Andrew, Dinesh,’ I said, buying time.
‘Hello, Myraah.’ Andrew returned my smile. It wasn’t of the same cheesy genre that had popped on Pooja Patil’s page.
No one looked at me like Andrew Brown was doing now, like I was the only one even in an overcrowded, super-interesting radius. His eyes were light on my skin, like night cream.
I blinked and busted the duet. What was this about?
Andrew’s eyes were scanning my desk now. They fixed briefly on my open notebook, maybe because he wasn’t in a position to see what was on my computer screen.
This lip-smacking construction of a man was looking for something, and it wasn’t me.
‘Are you writing it?’ he asked, pointing at my desktop.
‘I’m writing it,’ I said.
He was in a round-neck FC Barcelona tee. It was a forever enthusiasm.
My coin purse flitted across my mind space. Something had flown over my head.
‘You’ve forgotten,’ Andrew decided.
There was an edge of desperation to Andrew this morning. It reflected in his manner. His hands were in the pockets of his jeans.
Andrew turned to Dinesh, who was inching forward in my direction. He was almost in line with my computer.
I liked Dinesh. For some reason, even though we’ve been working inMorning Heraldfor the same length of time, we haven’t gone beyond polite greetings and story briefs. He was a poor writer, a great reporter and the sharpest dresser on our floor. And he was chivalrous. Maybe that’s why I liked him. I have my faults.
‘Okay! She’s finishing it,’ Dinesh announced. The animation in his voice was marked.
Dinesh motioned to Andrew that they should leave me to it.
‘Finishing what?’ My piece was for my pages, which had nothing to do with Dinesh, much less with Andrew even in this to-be-editor mode.
The coin pouch. Again. That’s when the light bulb flickered to life.
An 86-year-old woman’s body was discovered in her home in a posh Bengaluru suburb last week. The death had been dismissed as a home-alone report in all the newspapers, which claimed the lady had no kith or kin.
A couple of days after the municipal authorities had performed the last rites, a neighbour called Dinesh to apprise him of the deceased Venkamma Achar’s story.
The octogenarian lived alone in a rundown home that stood at the centre of a massive 100x180 square-foot property. Her sister had passed away a year ago.
Her brother, a hoodlum in his youth, was fighting for the property, which was estimated in excess of ?20 crore. The house had been willed to the spinster sisters by their parents with a clause that if it survived the duo, it would go to their only other sibling. The brother, who had squandered his own considerable inheritance, was eyeballing his sisters’ property. His family had prevented the sale of the house even when his ageing sisters had approached him with an agreement that would benefit all of them equally.
Venkamma had never worked; she had no friends or cash reserves. Her sister had been a teacher, and for as long as she’d been around, they’d got by on her pension. After her demise, Venkamma subsisted on her neighbours’ generosity. She hadn’t disclosed her dire situation to anyone. The condition of the house, the state of total disrepair it was in, hadn’t gone unnoticed, especially after the older, more social sibling passed away. People, however, attributed it to her age rather than her finances or the lack of it. Things had gotten so bad that even the water supply and electricity had been cut. She had been dead for a week when her body was discovered.
Dinesh had told me that it would be a good story for ‘Crime 3.0’ at a later date. He had even given me the telephone number of his contact. This was two days ago.
Andrew, who was privy to the conversation, had cut into the exchange. He had said, ‘In interesting or unresolvedcases, after sufficient time, say a week or 10 days, has elapsed, the story should be laid out with as many details as possible.’
Stories that our reporters miss could be fleshed out and retold. Not reported but articulated comprehensively.
