The Trail to Spring

Chapter 11

We found ourselves in what was partly a living room with a make shift kitchen on one side and a door in the corner most probably leading to the bathroom. There was a round dining table in the middle with three chairs around it and the detective sat on one of them. I realised that there were no other adjoined rooms and the apartment consisted of just these two rooms.

The detective himself seemed to be barely in his twenties, was about his father's height, was clean shaved, had a shock of hair on his head that drooped over his eyes and wore a pair of dark glasses that looked odd indoors. He didn't seem to have any of the sophisticated tastes of his foster father and was dressed in a plain yellow t-shirt and black trousers, even though the temperature inside his apartment was pretty low.

"Why the shades?," Atifa asked me in a whisper.

"Maybe he's blind?," I guessed.

I knew that blind people often wore black glasses to either hide or protect their eyes for various reasons. I knew this because I had read about it in The Last Mountain Standing. And I also figured in the fact that Mr. Barui was describing how we looked to him.

"Hi, my name is Maya Ganguly," I started by introducing ourselves, "And this is my friend, Atifa Hussain, as you must have already heard from Mr. Barui."

The detective nodded his head silently. Atifa was about to sit down on one of the chairs when the detective spoke out.

"I wouldn't sit there, if I were you," he warned, putting down the glasses from his eyes and looking at her, "One of it's legs is broken."

"You aren't blind?," she asked, backing away.

"Of course, I am not," he said, getting up, "You can sit here."

He looked at me and smiled. I went and sat in his chair. Atifa checked out the third chair first by leaning on it with her hands and then sat down on it.

"Why do you wear sunglasses inside the house then?," I asked, unable to hold down my curiosity.

"It helps me to think," he said, pouring out tea from a flask into three cups, "It dims out the needless things that are actually in front of my eyes and helps me to open up my mind's eyes."

I wondered why he didn't just close his eyes for that matter but I figured that suggestion would not be welcomed by him. He handed us the two cups and sipped from his own one.

"The tea may be a bit cold. I had made it for Pops," he said.

"We read about you from the newspaper," I said, handing him the paper Chintu had given me, "You were recommended to us by your erstwhile orphanage owner's nephew."

The detective skimmed through the article in the paper and slowly shook his head.

"As usual, no name," he said, sighing deeply, "I wonder why they think that's unimportant."

"We hoped you could help us a bit," I continued.

"It's funny how people don't really care about you until they already know you and how the deuce can people know you if they didn't really care for you," the detective continued complaining and ignored me.

"Mr. Rakesh, you don't get it. I am...," I was about to tell him my problem when he stopped me by holding up his index finger.

"I'll start first," he said, "And then we can compare which one of us is in a tighter situation."

We stared at him with confused expressions and this seemed to please the detective.

"Very well, then," he said. He took another sip from his cup.