Nirupama

Nirupama-5

Nirupama

(Some Secrets May Better Remain Secrets Forever)

'I cannot bear this', 'I want to pluck my eyes out' only these two sentences were the clues which the late girl Nirupama left in writing one on a wall and one in a book quite unintentionally and involuntarily to know about the reason for her committing suicide. Her father Ranganath, detective Smaran and his niece Menaka along with Nirupama's friend Sukanya pretty well understood that Nirupama did not want the said secret to be known to anyone else. But since her father Ranganath hell bent upon knowing about the said secret, detective Smaran and his niece Menaka ruthlessly investigated the matter only to unearth the said ghastly, shocking and astounding secret which the dead girl terribly wished to keep only with her in her grave forever.

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"I cannot understand. Why my wife is behaving like this? Every time she is inventing a lie to keep her daughter alive in other people's thinking. Is she is really believing that her daughter is alive?" Ranganath asked Smaran with surprise.

"Yes and no both." Smaran laughed.

"Uncle you are as much confusing to us as that aunty. Tell us straight." Menaka asked him.

"Yes, she is right. Please tell me why cannot I understand my wife as you understand her?" there was distress in the voice of Ranganath.

"Deep inside her your wife knows your daughter is late. She is no more. But her conscious mind cannot accept the truth. So she is willfully imagining her daughter as alive. She invents situations in such a way that keep her daughter alive in her imagination and in others' thinking all the time."

"My god! I just cannot understand! How long it will be like this?" Ranganath nodded his head helplessly.

"Still pathetic. I am feeling enormous pity towards her." Menaka's voice filled with sorrow again.

"We are still at the doorsill. Shall we go into the room and see it?" Smaran asked as if he had no feeling whatsoever.

Ranganath led those two deep into the room.

"This is the room of my daughter. That is the photo of her." Ranganath said showing an enlarged and life-sized photo on the wall there.

Smaran and Menaka remained staring at the life size photo of Nirupama. This was infact a replica of the photograph Raganath gave to Smaran which was enlarged and framed. She was appearing more beautiful, more intelligent than in the small photo they had seen before.

"This is the ceiling fan to which she hanged herself."

Menaka felt a shiver through her spine. For few seconds she had seen that girl hanging from the ceiling fan. How that old woman would have felt finding her daughter hanging like that from the ceiling fan? What is the surprise that she turned mad like that? Menaka thought.

"Can you stay in this room or do you want a change?" observing carefully the expression on Menaka's face, Smaran asked her.

Menaka breathed deeply and hissed out. "I am going to stay in this room itself."

"Are you sure?" Smaran knitted his brows and asked her while looking into her face.

"Damn sure, of course."

"I am happy that you are not feeling fear here." Ranganath said with a small voice.

"Why feeling fear? Until few months back she was a young, energetic and intelligent girl. For the reasons only known to her she ended her life. That does not make her something that we need to feel fear. As long as I stay here, I do stay only in this room." With the same firmness Menaka said.