Chapter 6: Meghna / Poochhtaachh (Interrogation)

# Chapter 6: Meghna / Poochhtaachh (Interrogation)

Shekhar was next.

He entered the dining room with the kinetic energy of a man whose body could not agree on a single state. His hands in his pockets, then out, then running through his bleached hair, then back in his pockets. His leg, freed from the bar stool, transferred its bouncing to his entire frame; he walked like a person vibrating at a frequency slightly higher than the room could accommodate.

Meghna pressed her ear to the wall. The thin plaster, three hundred years old, araish finished, beautiful but acoustically permissive, transmitted the conversation with the fidelity of a cheap microphone.

"Shekhar Shekhawat. Twenty-eight. From Jodhpur. Currently working.?"

"Content. I do content. Social media, reels, brand collaborations. I have forty-seven thousand followers on Instagram."

"Congratulations. Where were you after the reception ended?"

"The bar. Here. With. everyone. We were all at the bar."

"Until when?"

"One. Maybe one-fifteen. I don't know exactly. My phone was dead."

"Your phone was dead."

"Dead. I'd been filming reels all day. The battery. look, I have a charger in my room. I plugged it in when I got back. You can check the screen time data if you want."

"We may do that. What did you do between one-fifteen and this morning?"

"Went to my room. Room fifteen. Brushed teeth. Slept."

"Room fifteen. That's two doors from room thirteen."

"I know where it is. Hotel put me there. I didn't choose it."

"Did you see Bhoomi at the bar?"

The pause. Meghna felt it through the wall, not the pause of a man remembering but the pause of a man deciding. The difference was in the quality: a remembering pause was loose, the brain rummaging through files; a deciding pause was tight, the brain selecting which file to present.

"Yeah. She was there."

"Did you speak to her?"

"Briefly. She was — I mean, we're cousins. Distant cousins. The Shekhawat family is large. Everyone at the wedding was a cousin of some kind. We said hello. We — I don't know, normal stuff. A wedding was nice. The food was good."

"Latika mentioned that Bhoomi was in close conversation with someone at the bar. Someone male. Was that you?"

"No." Fast. Too fast. Word came before the question had fully landed, which meant the answer had been prepared before the question was asked, which meant, Meghna filed this, Shekhar had been expecting the question. Which meant Shekhar knew the question was coming. Which meant Shekhar knew what Latika had seen.

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure. I talked to her for two minutes. Max. Then I was on my phone. Well, until it died. And then I went to bed."

"Your phone was dead but you were on it?"

"It died while I was at the bar. That's why I went upstairs. No phone, no point being at the bar."

"At one-fifteen."

"Approximately."

"The staircase camera shows someone ascending at twelve forty-seven AM. Dark kurta. Male build."

"I wasn't wearing a kurta last night. I was wearing a jacket. A nehru jacket. Blue. It's in my room."

"We'll check."

"Check. Please. Check whatever you want. I have nothing to hide."

Hemant was quiet. Silence extended — three seconds, five, seven — the interrogator's silence, the silence that was more effective than any question because it created a vacuum that guilty people filled with words and innocent people endured with discomfort.

Shekhar filled it. "Look — Bhoomi was fine when I left the bar. She was alive. She was drinking. She was talking to — to whoever she was talking to. I went to my room and I slept. That's it. That's everything."

"Thank you, Shekhar. You can return to the bar."

---

Farhan Qureshi entered the dining room the way a submarine enters a port. Silently, deliberately, every movement calculated. He sat. Folded his hands on the table. Waited.

"Farhan Qureshi. Thirty-nine. Indian Navy, communications division. Currently posted at —?"

"INS Kadamba. Karwar."

"You served with Gautam."

"Twelve years. He was my commanding officer on three deployments. Arabian Sea, Western Fleet."

"Tell me about last night after the reception."

"Reception ended at approximately zero hours. I went to the bar with Girish, Shekhar, and Manoj. Had one whiskey. Soda water after that. I don't drink heavily. Left the bar at approximately zero-zero-thirty. Went to room sixteen. Slept."

"Twelve-thirty. That's early."

"I'm military. Early to bed is not unusual."

"Room sixteen. Next to room fifteen; Shekhar's room. Two doors from room thirteen."

"Correct."

"Did you see Bhoomi at the bar?"

"Yes. She was seated at the counter. Third stool from the left. She was drinking what appeared to be vodka; clear liquid, no ice. She was alone when I arrived. When I left, she was speaking with someone."

Meghna straightened against the wall. Speaking with someone.

"Who?"

"I didn't see clearly. The bar lighting is. Atmospheric. Which is a polite way of saying inadequate for identification purposes. Male, I believe. Seated to her right. Leaning in."

"Could it have been Shekhar?"

"It could have been anyone of similar build. In that lighting, with those mirrors fragmenting the available light, reliable identification is not possible."

"You're trained in observation."

"I'm trained in communication systems and electronic surveillance. Visual observation in low-light conditions is a different skill set. I can tell you the frequency of every radio signal in this building. I cannot tell you who was sitting next to Bhoomi Shekhawat in a bar lit by brass lanterns and hope."

"Did you hear anything from the corridor during the night?"

"Negative. I'm a light sleeper, occupational hazard. But these walls are substantial. Stone and lime plaster, approximately forty centimetres thick. Sound transmission is minimal."

"Did you leave your room between twelve-thirty and this morning?"

"Once. At approximately zero-three-hundred hours. I went to the bathroom at the end of the corridor. My room's bathroom had a plumbing issue, the tap was dripping and I couldn't sleep with the sound."

Meghna's hand tightened on the arm of her chair. Three AM. The third trip on the CCTV, the one at 2:08 AM, showed someone going up who didn't come back down via the main staircase. Farhan said he was already upstairs by 12:30. If he was already on the third floor, a trip to the corridor bathroom wouldn't show on any camera. But if he'd gone downstairs first and then back up...

"The corridor bathroom," Hemant said. "Did you pass room thirteen on your way?"

"The bathroom is between rooms fourteen and fifteen. Room thirteen is at the end of the corridor, past the bathroom. I would not have passed it."

"Did you see anything in the corridor? Hear anything?"

"The corridor was dark. The single lantern on the wall, the one near the window, was out. I assume the oil had burned down. I heard nothing."

"The lantern was out."

"Affirmative."

"At three AM, the corridor was completely dark?"

"Except for the small window at the end, which admitted minimal moonlight. Yes. Effectively dark."

Hemant paused again. The interrogator's pause. But Farhan didn't fill it. He sat in the silence the way a submarine sat in deep water. Comfortably, naturally, without the need for anything to happen on the surface.

"Thank you, Farhan."

"Inspector."

Farhan left. Meghna watched him return to the bar, sit in his original seat, and resume watching the room with the same unreadable expression he'd worn since he'd arrived.

---

Manoj was next. The childhood friend from Jaipur. Heavy, sweating, the kind of man who occupied space with apology, who sat in chairs as though the chairs might object to his weight, who spoke with the slightly breathless quality of a person for whom even conversation was a form of physical exertion.

"Manoj Khandelwal. Forty-three. Jaipur. I run a. Well, it's a family business. Hardware. Khandelwal Hardware, Station Road."

"You grew up with Gautam."

"Same gali. Bani Park. Our families — Shekhawats and Khandelwals, we've been neighbours for three generations. My grandfather sold nails to his grandfather."

"And Bhoomi?"

Manoj's face changed. The sweating increased. Meghna could see it from across the bar, the sheen on his forehead intensifying under the mirror-scattered light. His hands, which had been resting on his thighs, moved to the table, then back to his thighs, then to the table again, the repetitive motion of a man whose body was trying to discharge an anxiety that his mouth was not yet ready to articulate.

"Bhoomi was, we all grew up together. Gautam, Bhoomi, me. The three of us. In Bani Park. We played cricket in the gali. We ate kachori at Rawat's after school. We went to the same mela, the same dussehra, the same everything."

"Were you close?"

"We were children together. That's — yes. We were close. But it was a long time ago. She went to Bengaluru. I stayed in Jaipur. People — grow apart."

"When did you last see her before the wedding?"

"Four years ago. Maybe five. She came to Jaipur for a family function. A puja at the Bani Park house. We talked for ten minutes. It was. Awkward. The way old friends are awkward when they haven't seen each other in too long."

"And last night?"

"I was at the bar. After the reception. With the others. Girish, Shekhar, Farhan. I had — a few drinks. More than a few. I'm not, I don't drink well. I get — " He gestured vaguely at his own head. "Fuzzy."

"Did you see Bhoomi?"

"She was there. At the bar. She was, "

The pause. Not Shekhar's deciding pause. Not Farhan's submarine silence. Manoj's pause was different: it was the pause of a man who was fighting something. An emotion, a memory, a piece of information that wanted to come out and was being held back by something stronger than the desire to tell it.

"She was what?"

"She was beautiful." He said it quietly. To the table. "She was wearing the blue lehenga. The bridesmaid one. And she was — I hadn't seen her in four years, and she was, she looked the way she looked when we were eighteen. When we were all eighteen and the world was — "

He stopped. Wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. The sweat was real. Not the sweat of guilt necessarily, but the sweat of a man whose body was processing an emotion that his brain hadn't authorized.

"Manoj. Did you speak to Bhoomi at the bar?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"I don't know. Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty."

"What did you talk about?"

"Old times. Bani Park. The cricket. Rawat's kachori. Her parents. My parents. The, the things you talk about when you haven't seen someone in four years and you're both drunk and the wedding has made everyone, sentimental."

"Were you the person Latika saw? The one in close conversation with Bhoomi?"

This sweat. The hands. The forehead. The eyes that were looking at the table and not at Hemant and not at the wall behind which Meghna was pressed with her back against the cool stone and her heart doing things that hearts did when they were close to something important.

"Maybe. Probably. Yes."

"You were in close conversation with Bhoomi."

"We were talking. We were — leaning in because the bar was loud and the lighting was terrible and I couldn't hear her properly." He looked up. His eyes were wet. Not crying, not yet — but wet, the moisture of a man who was on the edge of something and didn't know which side he was going to fall on. "I was talking to her. That's all. Just talking. And then I went to bed. And now she's dead. And I was the last person who talked to her. And I know how that looks. I know exactly how that looks."

"What time did you go to your room?"

"I don't, late. One. One-thirty. I don't know. I was drunk."

"Your room is on the second floor?"

"Room nine. Second floor."

Not the third floor. Manoj was on the second floor. Not on Bhoomi's floor. relief of this was visible. His shoulders dropped, his hands stilled, the sweat on his forehead seemed to thin, as though the geography of his room was an alibi that his mouth couldn't provide.

"Did you go to the third floor at any point?"

"No. I went to my room. Second floor. I went to sleep."

"Thank you, Manoj."

Manoj returned to the bar. He sat in his chair and put his head in his hands and stayed there, the posture of a man who had said too much or not enough and couldn't tell the difference.

Meghna sat in her corner. The catalogue growing. The entries multiplying. The picture forming — not complete, not clear, but present, the way a photograph forms in developing fluid, the image emerging from the white, the shapes preceding the details, the truth preceding the facts.

Bhoomi was at the bar. Talking to Manoj. Close. Intimate. Old friends. Old feelings. The blue lehenga and the memories of Bani Park and the kachori at Rawat's and whatever else lived in the space between eighteen and thirty-four, the space where childhood closeness became adult distance and the distance became, at a wedding, at a bar, in the dim light of brass lanterns and a thousand fragmented mirrors, something that looked like intimacy.

But Manoj's room was on the second floor. Not the third.

And the figure on the staircase at 12:47 was going up.

And the figure at 2:08 was going up.

And Bhoomi was dead on the third floor.

Meghna watched the room. The mirrors. The fragments. The light.

Courtyard at night was a different space from courtyard at day. During the day, the courtyard was public, communal, the shared space where the family's collective life happened. At night, after the last chai was drunk and the last diya extinguished and the last conversation trailed into silence, the courtyard became private. Not because anyone claimed it but because darkness changed the rules of space, transformed the open, visible, social area into something intimate, enclosed, the walls rising into blackness, the sky above a rectangle of stars, the courtyard a room without a ceiling, a room whose roof was the universe.

Meghna sat on the stone bench at 11 PM, after the house had settled, after the seventeen people had distributed themselves among the seventeen rooms and the sounds of settling, of doors closing and beds creaking and the murmured goodnights that travelled through stone walls like whispered secrets, had faded into the collective silence of a household asleep.

Air was cool. Desert cool, the dramatic temperature drop that the Thar produced every night, the daytime forty dropping to a nighttime twenty-two, the swing so extreme that the body experienced two seasons in twelve hours, the skin going from sweat to goosebumps in the time it took the sun to cross the horizon.

She pulled her shawl tighter. The wool was Jaipur wool, bought from a vendor outside Hawa Mahal, the shawl thin but warm, the kind of warm that wool produces, not the aggressive heat of a heater but the gentle, held warmth of fibre that trapped air in its weave and used the body's own heat as its fuel source. She could smell the wool: lanolin, faintly animal, the smell of sheep and high pastures and the Rajasthani winters that had bred this specific quality of fleece.

Stars above were not Mumbai stars. Mumbai had three visible stars on a good night, the light pollution drowning everything else, the sky a muddy orange glow that was neither night nor day but the permanent twilight of a city that never darkened. Rajasthani sky had ten thousand stars. Milky Way was visible, a band of light stretching from horizon to horizon, the galaxy's arm, our galaxy, the structure we inhabited, visible to the naked eye from a courtyard in Shekhawati because there was nothing between this courtyard and the cosmos except eighty years of sandstone and the thin air of the desert.

Answer was here. Somewhere in this shattered light, the answer was waiting.