Her Helpmate

44. Secrets

Saira stood in front of Manav Das's house. Naveed poked the bell buzzer and waited for the receiver. "We will do it, Bibi." Naveed encouraged her. "but, if you find any danger you will escape without caring about me."

"I can't do that!"

"I can protect myself so you shouldn't worry about me!"

Before they resume their conversation a female in her mid-sixties opened the door without any excited countenance, unlike others.

Instead, "What do you want girl?" She snapped at Saira.   

Saira gave her most soothing and charming smile to her, "Hello mam, we are from the government office. I am Samantha Shah and this is my assistant, Anirudh Verma." That female's eyes landed on the fake ids, hanging around their necks.

"So what should I do?" She snapped again.

"Actually, mam, we came to do a survey of your family member. We will check your weight, and height and calculate your nutrition values. We also supply you with free multivitamin tablets." 

"I don't need any type of your service you can leave." She cut Saira off.

"But mam. This is compulsory." Saira pressed.

"But I am fine and I don't need it."

Saira keened her obstinate attitude and pleaded, "Please mam, it's important for our job. If I don't collect the data, I will lose my job."

"I don't care."

She is quite stubborn, isn't she?

"Mam, please. I request you. I will not take more than ten minutes."

That old woman with big double-lens glasses intermittently glanced at Saira and Naveed Sahab.

"Is this survey only for me?" She probed them.

"No mam we already..." Saira fixed her glasses and went through her books and showed the data, she collected to that old woman. "We went to Mr. and Mrs. Jaswindh then we went to Mr. Krupa's house. They were not taking proper nutrition, so I went through her kitchen and suggested nutritional food for them."

That old woman started to get convinced and after thinking for a couple of seconds. "Only ten minutes."

"Thank you, mam. Thank you so much."

Even though she got the opportunity to step inside the house. Saira has no idea: What to find and where to find it, whatever she was thinking to find.

But she was crystal clear that she wanted to step inside Manav Das's room. Maybe she could find a clue or lead to Mama's murder in his room.

She gave once over to the house. It was not too big. A living room, three rooms, and one kitchen. Manav's picture with a garland was hanging on the wall. One of the rooms surely should be of Manav's.

"Who is he?" She asked, even though she knew who he was.

"My son."

"How did he die?"

"Is this part of your survey, girl?" She snapped again at Saira.

Saira wet her lips. "No. But. Yes. Nutrition is interlinked with the state of the human mind. We deflect our eating habits based on our mood. If you are happy, you feel like cooking some special dishes and eating more. When you are sad you don't eat enough or skip the meals."

"He died because of a head injury!" she replied with tears accumulating in her eyes. "he was my lovely son!"

"He was the only one or..."