The Recruiters

Retired Bank officer Ramasubramaniam sat at his table near the window overlooking the courtyard of his building complex, rolling the shells in his hand thoughtfully. He looked outside with unseeing eyes, his brows furrowed. The unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon caused sweat to bead on his forehead, but he seemed oblivious to it. His lips moved silently in a chant.

The air hung heavily around him, oppressive. He thought that he could feel a menace in it. He was worried. Not in the familiar, prosaic, petty way that a middle class man with a bank job and two kids worried, but in an inexplicably bigger, deeper way.

He looked back at the shells in his hand and reluctantly arranged them driven by an inner force, for another reading. He came from a family of astrologers, experts who mixed the science with an ancient knowledge. As an educated man and rationalist, Ramasubramaniam had tried to deny his lineage, his unfortunate gift of natural intuition, but its force had been too strong. He usually did his readings for friends and those few who somehow heard of him and came to him. He hated it, but he was very good at it.

However today, he was not doing the reading for anybody. He had merely succumbed to an anxiety that had been eating him up for the past week, keeping him awake at nights. He looked down at the reading and felt a punch of anxiety in his solar plexus. Bad. Very bad portent.

A sudden breeze ruffled the papers on his table. He looked out to see the woman walking by the swimming pool that had its pride of place in the quadrangle. She was of an indefinite age, anywhere between 35 - 50. Her wild hair, her flowing clothes and her jewelry made her look like some exotic bird of paradise. Ramamsubramaniam had encountered her several times around the complex, always feeling a slight unease at her presence, enhanced by the derisive smile she always gave him.

Today, she looked up and met his eyes. Even though Ramasubramaniam’s apartment was on the sixth floor, he thought he could see her eyes flashing. He definitely felt the energy of her glance. And unbelievably, he could sense her smiling at him. She then walked on, her skirt fluttering in the bright sun, her hair ruffled by the breeze that rose from the hot surface of the swimming pool.

Ramasubramaniam wished he knew why he felt that she was behind all the anxiety he felt. The swimming pool glittered blindingly below him.

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Navin switched off the television, overcome with a terrible ennui. Gosh it was so warm! He was sweating despite the overhead fan going full speed. Maybe he should switch on the a/c, but then he would have to engage in a pointless conversation about why he did with his wife. He had rather not, so he slumped back on the sofa, picking up a newspaper and fanning himself.

Maybe he should go for a shower, but that also would engender a conversation with Harini. He had decided long ago that discretion was the better part of valor. He could hear her talking on the phone. He was happy as long as it kept her in the other room and not where he was, asking a hundred questions and dispensing half a dozen unsolicited advices.

He sat there, undecided about what to do. Inertia was his besetting sin, along with a mild, gentle personality that thrived on avoiding confrontations. Which is why he had had let his parents make most of his life decisions--what to study, what to wear, who to befriend, who to marry...

Left to his own, he would’ve never married Harini. He knew they were incompatible going into the marriage. They were like chalk and cheese: she of the narrow perspective and dogmatic views; he of the sensitive nature and intellectual bend. She had had laughed at all his choices, coined him useless, and set out to reform him. He had given in and sunk into a deep, secret hatred for her.

Perhaps he could walk out of this farcical marriage. Perhaps build a new life for himself. Perhaps he can start the process now, if only he could force himself to get up from the sofa.

The conversation ended and Harini walked into the living room. “Why are you fanning yourself? You could’ve switched the a/c on. You are so lazy!” she commented and proceeded to close the windows and doors to switch the a/c on.

Navin sat unmoving. She plopped next to him and picked up the TV remote. “What, nothing interesting on TV? When are you going to finish those stupid books you bought last month? I never see you reading them. I don’t know why you buy them!” she commented and switched the TV on.

Navin tried to movie away from her. “I wonder why it is so hot! Summer hasn’t even started!” Harini continued, as she watched the weather report on the news channel. “Mona was telling me that a boy in C Wing had a heat stroke. Can you believe it? Heat stroke in March! Global warming, what can one say?” she said.

Navin felt an irrational prick of anger. ‘You know nothing about global warming! Nothing! So don’t pretend and add it to your repertoire of shallow, little-understood conversational refrains that you pick up to make you look oh-so-with-it!’ he screamed in his head.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Harini asked and turned back to the TV without waiting for an answer. He felt the heat of her body as she leaned back and cozied up to him. He was repulsed. He got up with a start.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Out. For a walk,” he replied, a little wildly.

“Walk? In this heat? It’s close to 40 degrees outside! You are so impractical at times!” she commented, keeping up with the litany of character judgments that she started on the third day of their marriage, three years ago.

“I... I need to pick up a razor,” he said.

“We just bought a pack last week!” she frowned.

“I... I am planning to change the brand. This...this one seems to give me a rash,” he stuttered.

She looked at him but refrained to comment. He quickly made his escape. He pulled a T-shirt on top of his sweat pants, picked up his wallet and got out of the house.

She was right, that hateful woman. It was terribly warm outside. The brightness was blinding and the heat hit him like a physical blow. He pressed on, making his way around the swimming pool, across the quadrangle to the exit of the complex.

He went to the store just outside the gate and bought a razor. Otherwise Ms. Hawk would notice and start another diatribe. He stood there, undecided about what to do next. He saw autos lined up in the shade, their drivers playing cards on the roadside. Maybe he can take an auto and go--where? Visit a friend? Go to the airport? Leave the country?

He noticed the tender coconut stand near the store and bought one. It was such a hot day that even the coconut water was lukewarm. He drank it, paid and turned around and started walking towards his complex. He was trapped. In his own cowardice.

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Navin saw the woman just as the lift doors were closing. He held it open and she walked in, all billowing clothes, flowing hair and jangling jewelry. She met his gaze and smiled. “Thank you,” she murmured.

Navin was struck by her eyes. They were large, light brown eyes with yellow flecks in them, and rimmed heavily with kajal. They also had a curious energy to them.

They rode up in silence for a bit. Then the woman turned to him and said, “I sense a strong unhappy aura around you. I would like to help you.”

Navin stared at her.

“Would you like some help?” she asked, a faint amusement crinkling the corners of her eyes.

Navin continued to stare at her. Unexpectedly, she reached out and took his left hand and held his palm between hers. Navin struggled to take back his hand, but soon gave up as he felt some kind of energy spreading up his arm and entire body. He felt light for the first time in many years. He met her gaze in wonder and couldn’t look away.

He was faintly aware that the lift had come to a halt. “This is my floor. Would you like to come to my house?” she asked. Navin nodded mutely. She lightly held his arm and took him down the corridor, in front of a door that held strange insignia. She took out a key that jangled in an elaborate key chain and opened the door.

The first thing Navin noticed was the smell--incense overladen with a chemical flavor, not too strong, but unmistakable. He then noticed that the house looked something like the inside of a buduouir, exotic and filled with strange knick-knack. On one wall, there was a strange map, plotting something that he hardly recognized. And for a woman, she seemed to possess a preponderance of electronic gadgets.

She motioned him to a sofa. He sat down and looked at her. He had seen her about the complex many times, but other than her exotic appearance, hadn’t thought too much about her. Harini had and had carried bits and pieces of gossip that she gathered from her equally jobless friends: how the woman kept to herself, had no visitors, but came and went at all strange hours. About how she frightened the kids once. About how someone had noticed her walking around talking to herself.

“All of it is true, you know,” the woman said and sat near him.

“Sorry?” Navin looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“All the gossip your wife carried about me--all of them are true,” she said.

Navin noticed that she had a deeply seductive way of talking and moving--a little languorous, a little knowing.

She laughed suddenly and put out a hand to touch his cheek. No touch had affected Navin so profoundly as this one ever.

“I... I don’t even know your name,” he stammered.

She fixed him with a look. “Does it matter?” she smiled slowly. “Let us work on that unhappiness first,” she said.

Navin nodded wordlessly. She held out a hand. He diffidently moved his own out and took it. She drew his hand to her chest, closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

“What do you want to do most? Run away or kill your wife?” she asked. She opened her eyes and smiled at him. “You can choose either or both.”

Navin almost choked. “What...what are you saying?” he blurted out.

She leaned over. “They leave in two days. You can kill her and leave with them,” she said.

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Rajiv removed the headphones and rubbed the back of his neck wearily. His eyes were smarting from staring at the computer screen for a long time. Gosh, it was hot like hell. And that cheapskate husband of his mom wouldn’t fix an a/c in his room.

The house was silent. He thought of opening his door and taking a look. He then decided against it--it was possible that he would see his mother crying her eyes out. Again. He was tired of holding her after she fucked up her life for the nth time.

It was not as if he didn’t love his mother. He did. Despite all her other flaws, she was a terrific mother. But he had suffered her stupidity for far too long.

How many times would she make the same mistake? How did she hone into jerks like this all the time? He was 19 and he could see how bad she was at judging people. She never learnt. She repeated her mistakes and got hurt every time.

Well, the same nature that made his mom sensitive and creative also made her needy and vulnerable. She needed someone to support her. Rajiv grimaced--he was more than capable of supporting her, but she thought he was still a baby. How could she look at his 6 foot and 80 kgs frame and think that was beyond him.

He contemplated going to bed. His digital alarm clock showed close to 11:00 p.m. Maybe he should take a shower and go to bed.

There was a knock on the door. “Raju?” his mom called from the other side.

Rajiv groaned. “Come in,” he called out. It was too hot to have this session!

His mom opened the door and walked in. She wasn’t too tall to begin with--but today she looked small. She walked around his room, her long artistic fingers flitting over surfaces, like dusky butterflies.

“For God’s sake, sit down mom!” Rajiv gritted his teeth.

She looked at him in surprise and sat down on his bed. She played with the edge of her kamiz.

“What did he yell at you today for?” Rajiv asked.

His mom tried to smile, but her mouth quivered. “He had asked me to get something at the bank. I...I messed up,” she said.

Rajiv felt like punching something. She tried very hard at messing up. Really. His friend Savitha told him that this behavior was called passive-aggressive.

“Now what?” he asked her.

“He...he’s in his office,” she said.

An awkward silence prevailed. He knew his mom wanted him to say something, make her feel better, but he had no patience to do that. Fuck, he had so much college work to do with his exams coming up.

“How...how is college?” she asked.

Like she cared! Gosh, she’d stopped caring about anything ages ago! Her easel and paint brushes were gathering dust somewhere in the attic. Now she was an indifferent cook, a terrible housekeeper, and generally totally useless. Trying hard to please that asshole but failing at it miserably.

“Ok,” he answered shortly. He suddenly felt sad and lost like a little boy. Where did his bright, funny, and spontaneous mom of his boyhood go? Who was this dull lifeless woman?

“You want something to eat?” she asked.

Rajiv felt a vein throb in his forehead. “Oh please, stop talking crap to me! Like you cared if I ate or slept or washed!” he hissed.

His mom looked at him with hurt eyes. Strangely that made him see red.

“For fuck’s sake mom, stand up to him! Ask him to take a freaking leap! Do something! Don’t just sit there and whine and look hurt!” he realized that his voice had risen.

His mom looked apprehensively at the door and shushed him. He felt like hitting her. He swore and got up. His mom watched him as he found his shoes and wore them.

“W...where are you going?” she asked.

“For a walk,” he growled and went out.

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Rajiv had intended to go for a long walk. Far away from all of it. But the heat knocked him off. At fucking 11:00 p.m. at night! Unbelievable!

The courtyard was lit like a Christmas tree but deserted. He walked around the pool and found a cement bench near a flowering bush. Its night blooms scented the air with their fine fragrance. He sat looking at the rippling water.

Again a deep sadness enveloped him. Tears started coursing down his cheeks. He had nobody other than his mom in this world, and now even she was lost. Irretrievably. That asshole husband had robbed him of his mother--the flighty, great fun mother who painted and made things with her hands. Beautiful, colorful paintings and curious fun things. And had turned her into a dithering, good-for-nothing secretary.

He vaguely noticed another person walking in his direction. He bent his head, ashamed of his tears and hoped that whoever it was would pass him by. But the person stopped and stood in front of him. He could see two legs, clad in white pajama and Kolhapuri chappal. He had no choice but to look up.

There was a man of about 30 in front of him, dressed entirely in white. He was of medium height, had already thinning hair and wore glasses, through which two warm, friendly and sympathetic eyes looked at him. Rajiv vaguely remembered seeing him in the complex before.

“Hi, can I sit here?” the young man asked. Rajiv wiped his tears with the heels of his palms and nodded.

The young man sat next to him. “Extraordinarily hot, isn’t it?” he asked pleasantly.

Rajiv didn’t answer. The young man threw him a glance and then held out his hand. “I am Navin,” he said. Rajiv shook his hand after hesitating briefly. The young man’s grasp was firm and curiously energetic. Rajiv muttered his name.

“Good to meet you Rajiv,” Navin said.

Rajiv remained silent.

“I can sense your pain. Can I help?” Navin asked.

Rajiv looked at him in surprise.

Navin touched Rajiv’s arm lightly, near the wrist. Rajiv tried to move but was stunned by a curious energy flowing into him, spreading and soaking up the hurt. He looked at Navin in wonder.

“That asshole husband of your mother is easy to get rid of. Would you like to do it and go away with your mother?” Navin asked in a soft voice.

Rajiv swallowed and stared at Navin, inexorably drawn.

Navin smiled at him pleasantly. “We are leaving in two days. You can come with us,” he said.

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Ramasubramaniam was having a curious dream. It was filled with blinding light. It was like standing next to the sun, scorching and burning. There were curious sounds, heavy footsteps, and the inexorable pull of something very powerful and strange. Several people, known and unknown, flitted through like a maniacal montage. He knew at least some of them were dead. They were coming. No escape. He had no powers to resist them. He screamed.

“Wake up! Wake up!” he was being shaken awake.

Ramasubramaniam opened his eyes with an effort. It was his wife. “You are having a night mare! Wake up!” she said, her voice half fearful. “Have some water,” she said, picking up the bottle from the night stand and holding it out to him.

Ramasubramaniam took the water from her like a child and drank thirstily from it. His heart returned to its normal rate. “Ennachunna? You never have bad dreams! What happened?” his wife asked.

Ramasubramaniam looked at her familiar face--the diamonds on her ears and nose flashed sporadically as they caught the lights coursing in from outside. He was relieved to be there, in their bedroom, in the familiar, soothing presence of his wife of 37 years.

“I am scared, Veni,” he said.

“About what?” she said, wiping the sweat off his brow with her saree pallu.

“About all of us. Our safety,” he said.

Veni looked at him thoughtfully. “What is going to happen?” she asked, familiar with her husband’s flashes of intuition.

“Some strange force. Something very powerful...” he muttered. “I don’t know what it is, but it scares me,” he said.

Veni sighed. “Must be the heat. It has been so unseasonably warm! Let me reduce the a/c temperature. Pray to God and go back to sleep,” she said.

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Bhargavi stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror for a long time. She had three of the five signs of aging that the puerile ad on TV enumerated--black spots, sagging, and faint crinkles around the eyes. Thank God for her brown, Asian skin that didn’t age as much! She looked down at her naked form. She was in no great shape either. Everything that shouldn’t sag or bulge, did.

Bye bye, youth!

She buried her face in the palms of her hands and swore. At this rate, she was never going to get out of the bathroom, leave alone the house. She tasted the salt of her tears. Damn it! She thought she had done crying! Fucking hell!

She took in a deep breath, looked away from the mirror determinedly, and pulled the towel from the ring. She wrapped herself in it and stepped out into the bedroom.

She picked up her mobile phone to see if there were any missed calls. There were none. And that made her want to weep all over again. She was tempted to fling herself on to the bed and do just that.

The rational side of her brain knew that unraveling like this over a worthless man was fucking insane. But try convincing her hormone ridden, biological clock driven, emotional side!

Had she really thought Gautam was her safe harbor, the home she had been looking for all her life? Had she not known that he was a philandering, two-faced son-of-a-bitch going in? She had known. Oh she had. That was part of his charm. The Casanova complex.

How damning to be defeated by a cliche!

How many lies she had accepted, how many humiliating little escapades in the last two years. Theirs was an open, modern relationship, wasn’t it? Hadn’t she “understood” all the scars in his psyche, the impact of a troubled childhood, and some of the things that he couldn’t help? The lost little boy who needed to be held when he came back, crying crocodile tears after every transgression, begging for her to forgive him and just love him. Tiger fucking Woods of the East!

Bhargavi took a deep breath. She hated this familiar direction her thoughts took nowadays all the time. She needed to get out of it. Break away from it. She had been married to a womanizing dick head. Now no more. End of story. Beginning of a new life. She was a woman. Women were supposed to be strong, weren’t they?

She selected her attire for the day with some care. She had read somewhere that grooming was an important indicator of being integrated with the mainstream of society, a sign that one understood and lived by the common rules and etiquette. The days of going to work in mismatched footwear were over.

She bit her lips as she caught herself contemplating before the mirror again. This is what she hated most of the fiasco. That he had been able to rob her off her self confidence.

When she had had met Gautam, she had been a confident young woman--confident about her worth, her attractiveness, and her place in the world. When he was done with her, she was turned into this quivering mass of self doubts, this pathetic creature who spent too much time in front of the mirror.

She felt a searing, white anger rise in her. How dared he? How dared he take away from her the most important of virtues? How come her entire edifice of self worth had been so fragile that it had come crashing down with a single “fat cow” description?

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She will conquer this. She will regain her glory. Fuck him!

The basement was like a furnace when Bhargavi went down to get her car. She was prespiring by the time she reached her Honda. She slid in to the driver’s seat, wiped the sweat from her brow and switched the a/c on. Even the powerful a/c of the car was not going to be enough for such a hot day. Strange it was so hot in March.

She started the car and came out of the basement. She drove around the building and exited. That’s when she saw him. A teenage boy waving at her for a ride. She normally didn’t offer anybody rides, but there was something about this fresh-faced boy that made her slow down. She stopped in front of him and opened the door lock.

He smiled at her and got in to the passenger seat.

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The beach was deserted. High tide was in. Although there were no lights on the beach, the sky was bright enough to give the feel of an extraordinary full moon. It was still sweltering hot.

There were about a hundred of them. They all stood in a huddle, but they didn’t speak to each other. They were strangely calm, as if in a trance.

The woman was there. Tonight, she was dressed in all white. He hair was piled high on her head. She looked like a high priestess. She stood in front of them, bathed in the mysterious light, eyes closed, focusing on something.

She opened her eyes at length and looked around the group. “Its time,” she said. As if on cue, the sky lit up with a very bright light. The people on the beach squinted when they looked up.

“Step forward, it’s time to go,” the woman said and held her hand out.

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It rained the next morning, cooling things down. Its gloom hung specially over the apartment complex as the chilling discoveries were made one after another. A young woman found dead and her husband missing. A middle aged man dead and his wife and step son were absconding.

Based on several leads, police forced open the woman’s apartment. They encountered an empty flat. Nobody had seen when she had moved her things out.

If the police found a trend of dead people and missing family or friends across the city, they didn’t seem to do anything about it.

The incident found traction in the local and regional news channels for a day. As leads petered down to nothing and no arrests were made, everybody moved on to the next sensation.

Four years later, a bright young MBA student did a project on the real estate bubble bursting in the city. He hypothesized that the inversion point occured when a cluster of unsolved murder cases happened curiously on the same day in residential buildings across the city. When he submitted his report to his guide, that worthy professor laughed until there were tears in his eyes on the student’s implication of an alien abduction theory. He advised the student to do some “real” data analysis if he wanted an A.

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