Just like a mystery novel

It was just like a mystery novel. The streets were absolutely silent, with an occasional street dog’s late night complaints echoing in the midnight mist. One of the self-made perks of having a job in print media is that one gets to observe the beauty of a city that has gone to sleep and sometimes, usually on your way back, waking up. Contrary to popular knowledge, Mumbai does actually sleep, even if it is for two hours late in the morning. It does look beautiful, at least to the eyes of Draksh. In fact, anything remotely close to silence and the cold and calm breeze from the sea would feel like the most beautiful phenomenon to someone who had just pulled an all-nighter on the whims of a paranoid editor. As Draksh got down from the auto and started counting the notes for the fare, he looked forward to the day-long sleep that waited for him in his apartment. He turned and started walking towards his apartment, some 50-odd steps off the connecting road, when he noticed the strange-looking man standing near the entrance of his building. Something about him ticked Draksh off. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the man’s appearance. It was very normal, neatly pressed grey check shirt under a double-breasted jacket paired with beige trousers with formal shoes . Perhaps a bit too normal for 4am in the morning. As if he had sensed eyes on him, the man turned towards Draksh and caught his eye. With a sudden look of alarm, he started walking in the opposite direction. Sensing something amiss, Draksh quickened his pace towards the man. He couldn’t stop thinking about the recent rise in small-scale burglaries in the city. In front of him, the man broke into a light jog. “He definitely is running away from me, nobody jogs in formals”, thought Draksh as he broke into a jog himself, the tiredness of his all-nighter somehow vanishing in the electricity the dawn air carried. Trying to close the gap between them, Draksh had just started running faster when he noticed that the man had one hand to his ear, as if he was pressing an earphone to hear something. All of a sudden, the man dashed into a small alley between two stores and by the time Draksh got there, the man was nowhere to be seen. Perplexed, Draksh stood there panting and wondering what this early morning chase could have been for, when it dawned upon him that the man could have been a lookout and this was most likely an attempt to get him away from his apartment. He made his way back to the building as fast as he could, and before he knew it he was running up the stairs to his 4th floor apartment, not waiting for the age-old motorized elevator to show up. As he got to the third floor, he stopped dead in his tracks. The door to 303 was wide open and one could not miss the body of Mr.Parikshit, and the blood that had formed a pool underneath him. Draksh could taste bile. He ran up to his apartment to call the police. Just as he opened the door, he saw a grey envelope right behind it, as if it had been shoved underneath it in a hurry. He picked it up, noticing the air mail tag on the envelope. The normal address on it was Mr.Parikshit’s, but someone had hastily scribbled ‘Drx’ on it. He couldn’t help but think that this was from Mr.Parikshit and whatever had happened in his apartment, was because of this. This irked his curiosity and he looked for a knife to open it, with his inner journalistic instincts overpowering his panic about the situation. Slicing open the envelope, he took out a piece of paper and opened it. There was the National Government’s seal on it with confidential written as a big red watermark. He started reading the paper, and as he read further, shining droplets of sweat appeared on his forehead, as if heralding a torrential downpour that was just beyond the horizon. The words seemed to put him in a daze, and with a sudden thump, he fell backwards onto the sofa, dropping the letter onto his own muddy footprint made moments ago. As the mud slowly dampened the subtext stating, “Part of the Netaji files archive”, only one thought crossed his mind. “This is going to change everything”. It was just like a mystery novel.