Nirupama

Nirupama-23

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.

x x x x x

"Are you thinking about it really like that?" Menaka asked her.

"What I have to think then?" Sukanya irritatingly asked her.

"No. In fact I am not taking it so." Menaka got off from the chair and went to the middle of the room. "There are reasons for my not taking it like that."

"Pour your reasons out." Sukanya encouraged her.

"Nirupama came out of the house with tearful eyes. After half an hour or so Niranjan came out of it."

"Then? What's the problem? Niranjan should not stay in that house at all once Nirupama came out of it so?" Sukanya knitted her brows.

"Look at it like this. Nirupama was so dear a girl to Niranjan also. If he found Nirupama worrying for something like that how he could leave her go so? He should have tried to stop Nirupama and make her get rid of the worry from what she was struggling herself." Menaka said.

"You are hundred percent right." Suddenly there was a brightening expression in the face of Sukanya as she understood what Menaka meant.

"That too he came out of the house after half an hour or so of Nirupama's leaving."

"Did he see Nirupama at all in that house then?"

"Nirupama went into the house and stayed in it nearly half an hour or so. Bittoo was in front of his house all the time and he had seen her going into the house and coming out of it. It appears impossible that Niranjan did not see her then inside of that house."

"Another question. Were Nirmala aunty and Ranga uncle also in the house at that time?"

"Might be. Difficult to say. Atleast one of them at home. Otherwise Niranjan would not have preferred to come there at all."

They did not talk anything for few seconds. Both of their minds were working so furiously to arrive at something.

"Could it be the same day that she came to my home also?" Sukanya asked.

"I think so" Menaka said. "Tell me again. Try to remember using all your strength. How Nirupama appeared to you when you looked at her on that day?"

"I already told you. Just except for those few seconds, she was absolutely her usual self."

"Then it cannot be any other day I think. She somehow composed herself and behaved in her usual way afterwards."

"You are absolutely right." Sukanya nodded her head.

"What would have happened in that house?" Menaka thoughtfully said.

"Just a moment. I want to change my way of thinking for that Niranjan. It is very difficult to me to do so but I have to." Suddenly Sukanya said.