'The doctor? Jayantada, how are you feeling?'
Jayantada's answer sent a shiver up Arnab's spine.
'It's not me Arnab. It's Mishti.'
When Arnab asked what had happened, Jayantada suggested that he just come by the hospital after work. Arnab certainly couldn't wait that long, and thought that since he could hardly concentrate on his work anyways without knowing what was going on, he somehow pottered around in the library till lunch, and then made a bee line for the hospital, stopping at a flower shop on the way.
When Arnab reached the hospital and tracked down the room Mishti was in, he found Jayantada pacing the corridor outside. He looked up when he saw Arnab approach.
'Good you're here; otherwise I thought I'd go crazy talking to myself. The doctor's in there checking her, so we can't go in for a few minutes. Let's go out for a minute-I need some fresh air.'
As they walked out to the garden outside the ward, Arnab asked Jayantada what had happened. By way of reply, Jayantada asked,
'Mind if I smoke?'
As Jayantada lit up and puffed away, he saw the expression on Arnab's face and took a deep breath,
'Am telling you in a minute. I just need to cool myself down a bit.'
As the two of them walked along the garden, Jayantada started telling Arnab what had happened.
'Mishti had gone to Gurgaon to meet some friends for dinner last night.'
'I know, I was with them', replied Arnab.
'Oh, I didn't know that. Well, after she left, she was still on the highway when a gang of guys in a black SUV started tailing her.'
Arnab felt his stomach tighten involuntarily as he imagined Mishti alone, driving in the dark, being chased by the gang.
'The smartest thing Mishti did was not to stop. She kept driving and it seems the chase went on for several minutes. But when the gang started closing on her, she panicked and lost control of the car.'
Arnab was listening in complete silence as Jayantada continued.
'Luckily, a couple of nearby cars stopped and came to see what had happened, and brought her to hospital. The gang disappeared when they saw others coming to her assistance.'
'How is she, Jayantada?' Arnab asked in a low voice.
Jayantada put an arm around Arnab's shoulder, and Arnab began to appreciate that there was much more to the man than being a cantankerous old librarian.
'Thank God that she is not more seriously hurt than she is. She's fractured an arm and has a few cuts and bruises, but the doctor says she's lucky to be alive.'
Arnab breathed an audible sigh of relief and was about to ask about the gang when the doctor appeared at the door and called for them to come in. When he entered the room, he realized he'd have to wait even longer before he got a chance to talk to Mishti, since she seemed to be giving a statement to a police officer. Mishti was lying on the bed, with her left hand in a sling. Her face had several bandages on it, and her lip was swollen so that when she spoke, the words came out slowly and slightly garbled. She saw Arnab out of the corner of her eye and turned and smiled at him, but even the act of smiling seemed to have hurt as she flinched in pain. The police officer was sitting on a chair by her bed, taking notes in a small pad.
'So Miss Ghosh, how many men were there in the Tata Sumo that was following you?'
Mishti seemed to be searching in her mind for a few seconds before she replied.
'It was dark, and I certainly didn't stop and count, but there were at least three of them.'
The cop wrote that down and asked if she had got a look at any of their faces, but Mishti said that she had not got a close enough look at all their faces.
'But I did notice that the one who was driving was wearing a red bandana around his head.'
The cop took a few more notes and then thanked her. As he left the room, he spotted Jayantada and Arnab and told them that the police were on the case.
'This is the third attack in the last two weeks, and with each attack we are getting more information on them.'
Arnab asked the policeman what the previous attacks had been.
'Same modus operandi. They attack women driving alone at night on the National Highway. Miss Ghosh was very lucky compared to the previous two victims.'
He lowered his voice as if he didn't want Mishti to hear him, 'Both of them were raped and robbed.'
As the policeman left, Arnab and Jayantada approached the bed.
'Mishti, I hope it doesn't hurt too much.'
Arnab realized it was a meaningless thing to say, but he had no idea what he could ask or do. Mishti smiled again at him as he handed her the bunch of Orchids he had bought for her. She motioned for both of them to sit down but Jayantada was visibly agitated and kept walking around the room.
'Bloody animals! It's just not safe for women nowadays in this jungle. I shouldn't have let you go out all alone at night. What will I tell your parents?'
Mishti laid a reassuring hand on the old man's arm.
'Jayantada, I'm not a little girl any more, and who could ever have planned for something like this? Remember you used to always scold me for driving too fast? See that's what saved me yesterday!'
Seeing her smile and be able to still retain her sense of humour made Arnab smile but he realized that seeing her like this was making him angry in a way that he had never been before.
'Mishti, I just wish I had gone with you last night. You wouldn't have been all alone.'
Mishti smiled again at him, and held onto his hands.
'Don't be silly, Arnab, what could you have done?'
Jayantada backed her up by saying, 'Arnab, what can people like us do against such hoodlums? There seems to be no law and order any more-it's just the law of the jungle where might is right.'
As Arnab left the hospital, Mishti and Jayantada's last words kept ringing in his ears. He thought back to what had happened on the bus and to what he had discovered himself capable of at home. As he boarded the bus on the way back to college, he kept thinking of what he could do.
He may not have been there for Mishti the previous night and the old Arnab Bannerjee would certainly have been of no use even if he had been there. Perhaps there was indeed no real law and order to count on but if these goons thought that might was indeed right and that they could always get away with it, he was going to prove them wrong.
FOUR
That night Arnab made his way back to Gurgaon. Throughout the journey, he kept thinking in his mind what he'd do to the gang if he caught them, and he relished the thought of their reign of terror being brought to an end. And yes, he thought about taking revenge for what they had done to Mishti. By the time he reached MG Road, he was beginning to have doubts about his plan. It was a huge area to cover, and he had no idea how he was going to find the gang, let alone confront them. It suddenly occurred to him that it was so much easier in the movies or books, when the bad guys conveniently showed up on time and made it all so easy for the good guys. Not really knowing what else to do, he remembered that Mishti had said that they had followed her out from the mall itself, so he settled down in front of the Metropolitan Mall at a vantage point where he could also see DT Mall on the other side of the road. Two hours passed, and finally hungry, he took a break to grab some dinner. At about midnight, with his anger now tempered by the onset of sleep and boredom, Arnab returned home a sleepy and defeated man.
The next morning, he struggled to keep himself awake in the library, twice earning sarcastic comments from Jayantada on how the young nowadays had terrible sleeping habits. Arnab ignored it all, choosing to spend his time thinking about what he could do differently that night. Just after lunch, Jayantada told Arnab that he was going to meet Mishti at the hospital. Arnab's first instinct was to join him, but he held back, feeling that meeting Mishti without having avenged her somehow wouldn't be right.