Onirique

Gluttony

"This is a huge decision, Annette. Are you sure?", asked Uncle for the 4th time that day.

I had a week's time before I had to depart for Wadala and now I had only a day. Within this time, Uncle had sent for more files on Kankasher from both the other eastern as well as southern gangs. Hence there was a huge stack of information that I had to learn. I had highlighted the important points that I thought could be useful, like his habits and dislikes, to be noted carefully.

"I'm sure, Uncle. But you have to keep your promises."

"Don't worry, it's already in motion." Uncle had actually agreed to fire the people on the list and also start the policy from the following week. Furthermore, he agreed to take on assassination orders from the political figures.

"And keep me posted on the other thing too." Uncle nodded.

A week ago, when I had put the idea of our gang serving as government commissioned assassins, Uncle had objected. But when I was the only one to agree for the assassination, he had caved. Yet he hadn't any idea where to start. So, I assorted a list of men that were more prone to be impulsive and were particularly good at fighting. These men would undergo tremendous training to sharpen their skill from the same master that taught me self-defense techniques this past week. Obviously, I was nowhere near being good at it but at least it was good precaution.

The following day, I boarded the train from Mahul to Wadala. It was a 21 minutes ride on train. Uncle and Keshav had come to see me off. After buying me a packet of biscuits, they left. The train departed at 8:47 pm and reached Wadala at 9:09 pm. Then I had to take a bus to reach the care centre which was to send me as one of its maids for the interview at the Rawat Bhalla mansion, our final destination.

I sat in the bus with the other maids for the interview. After a short 15 minutes, we reached the mansion gate. The gate was built of iron, it took four bodyguards to open it for us. Then the bus took a left turn, revealing the mansion, enveloped in a thicket of dense bush climbers. Huge banyan and mango tress lined at regular intervals along all the five pathways leading to the mansion. At the western corner, there was a shallow fish pond. The mansion itself was three storied with two huge hanging staircases, making it difficult to hide behind them even at night. There were 75 existing rooms and 15 were being constructed at the back. We were not allowed inside the mansion for very long and were led into the outhouse, where the maids slept, for the interview. I was confident for the interview since I knew people seem to deem it to be safer to hire children workers since they were more easily manipulated and no one could ever suspect a child to have any ulterior motives. Finally, four other girls and I got the job of cleaning the mansion and we were told to start working from the next day.

We got started early the next morning. I would take a wiper and duster and a bucket full of water from the maid's room and roam about the mansion to memorize the layout. The ground floor housed the main office, the kitchen and a common room. The second floor had everyone's personal bedroom, the largest one belonging to the man himself. He could call any of his wives to accompany him at night, leaving their own rooms to stay in his. The garden was filled with cameras although none of the rooms had cameras including the office. Instead, two armed bodyguards were stationed in front of the door and two under the office window for security. Each tree had a camera installed on one of their low hanging branches and every person entering or leaving was monitored by 18 highly efficient computers. The number of guards I counted came to be 104 but the numbers varied greatly at festivals and reunions. Each of the room was also equipped with nocturnal laser indicators which stopped anyone from entering the rooms at night. The most interesting feature of the house was the Gun Room which housed different kinds of guns and ranging from handguns compact Glock19 to shotgun Remington-870, though no one was allowed to use them unless under explicit orders from Kankasher himself. Despite the guns, ammunition was not in sight. There were no elevators but there was an emergency exit in every room including kitchens and bathrooms that opened to the east of the mansion. It took me two weeks to finally learn the layout yet I felt like lot was missing.