Dark Horse Arts and Sciences

On a rainy Sunday evening on the streets of a damp monsoonal Bhubaneswar, I am seated inside my car, being half ruined by the mud on the road, sipping a hot cup of coffee, with steam still emanating from it, making my specs and my vision completely blurry. I clean them and put them back, placing my coffee in the front seat near me. After I clean them, I start sipping it again, calculating inside my mind, trying to deduce exactly how long it will take for Aditya to come out of his shell of that Khadim Shoe Shop. I have been monitoring him for the last few days as I have found some hardcore evidence of him supplying some mystic spirit made straight out of some biochemistry research labs that gives people some other level of kick, more than what they can achieve through psychedelics. I have been extremely patient, watching his every move and noting down everything that he does, starting from combing his hair in the public to what color shoes he wears everyday. It’s not that easy as a private detective in this city. It’s not like those Hollywood Noirs where the detective clashes with some bad guy and dates some nice chick and gets away with all the bullets being shot at him and at the end, gets the bad guy. No, it can be completely opposite, yet it would never be the same. I was always fascinated by the sense of being a sleuth, but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined to become one one-day. Sometimes fate leads you to places you would never have even dreamt of. Yet, I am still here, investigating some out-of-the-world impossible fantasy type case where the suspect composes some potion that gives you the pleasure of having a near death experience and still be alive and sober at the same time. I don’t believe this nonsensical of  a story. From what I have learned in my last three years of experience as a private investigator is that everytime there is something as terrible a subject as this one may sound, there lies some serious foul play and some deep root that goes way beyond the imagination of a normal human being, something that even movies wouldn’t have shown.

My cup of coffee has dried up and so has my patience. Yet I have to wait, until he shows up. I have to follow the same old routine of spying him through my lenses and yet do nothing about it, as instructed by my client. The rain begins to pour again. Me being there inside that car and rain clattering heavily over the streets, reflecting red neon lights of those vehicles, smoke rising from tea shops, cigarettes lit up by bystanders, feeling the warmth of it inside their already halfdead lungs, makes the scene more cinematic and gives me the sense of being in old Hollywood Noir movie. Yet it is not. And I am not some Sherlock who will lock his suspects with his cerebral powers. I don’t even have a Watson by side.

Aditya gets out of the shop takes an auto. I take a U-turn and follows him behind, some half-a-kilometer away. Suddenly the auto takes a left turn and as soon as I try to reach that lane, it’s gone, vanished into thin smoke, alike that of the cigarretes of those bystanders, as fluid as the streams of a river. I try to check all lanes but in vain. Like that  I roam around for an hour and at the end go to a coffee shop to have a cup of hot Bruh coffee. I love Bruh. I don’t like that yellow packet of Sunrise coffee. I just feel it to be the lightest of it all, whereas Bruh will be the thickest and have a completely different flavor that actually freshens you up the moment you sip the first drop. Well, it’s not the time to talk about flavors of coffee. I have to somehow find him. I have some idea where he migh at this hour of the evening, but I will wait, I will wait till he reaches that place. I cannot afford to take any kind of action without the consent of my client.

I drive past the café after finishing the most freshening cup of coffee of the day. That night I wasn’t able to find him and I return home. I reach my apartment, made myself some dinner, had a glass of milk with it. Then I watched the Tottenham v Manchester City game. It was awful for Tottenham to lose this gem of a game at the very last moment. What can I do? It’s very hard to be a Tottenham and RCB fan at the same time. Maybe that’s why this Aditya guy seems to be always slipping away from me at the last moment. Anyway, after the game, I did some research on more pending cases, gathering all the relevant development. One of those cases is still open, that of some underground cult being practised in the dark underground corriders of RD Women’s college. That is one hell of a fascinating case I would like to follow upon, yet I have to have this Aditya guy first in my claws, only then I would be able to break free and clear all these pending cases. Anyway, it’s time to hit the bed. Hope to achieve what I need tomorrow, or else it would be one hell of a beating and probably be the end of my career as a practicing sleuth and who knows, the information I am bearing within me, circumstances may arise such that even I have to be the scapegoat of it all at the end.

01-09-2024

Detective D

Dark Horse Private Detectives, Bhubaneswar  

To be continued……..