In Love with Simran

By Kulpreet Yadav

Sanjana's best friend at college is murdered. She was in love
with a business tycoon named Nik Sethi, and Sanjana is certain
that he killed her. In an effort to find proof, she decides to get
close to him.
Good looking and rich, Nik falls in love with Sanjana instantly, but
a month later, when he accidently discovers her real agenda, he
throws her out of his life. Determined to nail him, Sanjana's
desperation exceeds all limits when she realizes that she too, like
her friend, has fallen in love with a killer.
After she escapes an attack one night, Sanjana quits college and
goes into hiding. Now her only ambition is to punish the killer and
her only weapon is her body. In a last, desperate attempt, she
uses herself as bait and pursues her best plan. There are only
two options: she becomes a victim or she becomes a victor.
Through the story of Sanjana and Nik, In Love With Simran
explores the boundaries of the basic instincts of the young: love,
sex, trust, and survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Srishti Publishers
• Release date: Jan 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9789387022539

Book preview

India

1

H ow long does it take for a person to travel to the moon and back?

Only one hand went up in a class of forty students.

The physics professor frowned, adjusted his spectacles to take a good look at the girl in the last row who had raised her hand, and asked, Yes?

Thirty seconds.

The class burst into laughter. The professor’s face turned more serious. He didn’t join the class in celebrating a joke that was clearly intended to annoy him. He wasn’t even angry at the moment, just inquisitive.

Can you explain how?

The girl, Simran, smiled and closed her eyes as she spoke. Seated next to her, I, and added, A good kiss can take you to the moon and back in thirty seconds.

The class laughed again. It was a delayed response, quieter this time, and as I looked around, I could see that everyone was still trying to digest what Simran had said.

Wrong answer, announced the professor.

After class, when we were seated in the college canteen, just the two of us, I asked Simran to elaborate on what she meant. We had just finished a cup of tea and eaten a greasy samosa.

She smiled at my question as I prodded her further. Come on, what was that in class? You’ve fallen in love with that guy, Nik, haven’t you? There was a tinge of jealousy in my voice. Why, I wondered? Why should I feel insecure that my best friend had fallen in love with a stranger within a month of meeting him?

Sanjana, what I said is the truth. I meant every word. I waited for more. She had not answered my second question. I raised an eyebrow. Yes, I’m in love. Nik… Simran lost her train of thought and looked suddenly embarrassed.

She was feeling shy, I thought. Is that what love did to you? Made you say things that were impossible? Made you feel insecure, uncertain, and shy of everything?

Well, Nik loves me. Her face had turned serious. She now looked confident as she met my eye. "Do you love him too? How many trips have you made to the moon

so far? Any trips to Mars? How much time does it take to go there? She was clearly surprised at my flare-up. I ended my rant with, You’re fucking him, aren’t you? I couldn’t read her expression as she pleaded, Don’t be jealous,

Sanjana. I’m happy."

That nailed it. My best friend was happy. Nothing else mattered. I felt a sense of relief. With that, a wave of cheerfulness swept over me. I got up and hugged her tight, so tight that I could feel her heartbeat. I’m happy for you, Simran.

2

After I bade Simran goodbye, I returned to my Paying Guest (PG) accommodation in Green Park in New Delhi, where I lived alone. It was a fifteen-minute ride in an auto rickshaw. At six in the evening, the heat of May had cooled down a little, and I didn’t mind the fresh air.

Once I was in my small, ten-by-ten-foot room, I hung my backpack on the hook behind the door, sat on the only bed, and looked at the picture of my mother on the study table. In the picture, she was around thirty, holding a chubby baby in her arms. That baby was me, and the picture was taken on the lawn of our house in Defence Colony eighteen years ago.

My mother didn’t live there anymore. She now lived in a small village near Dharamshala. Her health was failing, and her memory was weak. The doctor said her chances of getting back to normal were very remote. No, she hadn’t met with an accident or been afflicted by a brain disease, in case you were wondering; she was the victim of emotional abuse by my father. Let’s keep my father out of the story for the moment, but before moving on, let me just say that he was a bastard and I’m happy he’s dead.

My thoughts turned to Simran as I took my eyes off the picture.

I was really happy for her. People did fall in love, they did live their lives together, make babies, celebrate family, and celebrate life. It was real. It might not have happened to my mother, but it happened to a lot of people. Even though I didn’t believe in love for me, I believed in the possibility of it happening to other people.

An hour later, when I was making tea on the single gas stove in the corner of my room, my cellphone began to ring. The male voice on the other end of the line was heavy.

Sanjana?

Yes.

Are you a friend of Simran, a student of first-year commerce at Jesus and Mary College, resident of Hauz Khas?

Yes. Why are you asking me this? Who are you?

I have some bad news. Can you please come to Safdarjung Hospital?

Safdarjung Hospital? What happened to Simran? Has she met with an accident? I was almost shouting. This couldn’t be happening. The tea had boiled over, but I barely noticed.

The man with the heavy voice hung up. I redialled the number, but it was busy now.

I pocketed my cellphone, strapped on my backpack, turned the gas off, and left my room. I passed four rooms on either side of the corridor, ran down the stairs into the small living room, and out of the house, all in under a minute. Twenty minutes later, I reached Safdarjung Hospital.

Her room is on the fifth floor. Room 507. The woman at the help desk pointed a manicured finger towards the lift.

I thanked her and dashed for the lift doors. I could see them closing and made it in the nick of time, putting my hand into the remaining space between the closing doors, which were six inches apart. I got out on the fifth floor and ran down the long corridor, my eyes scanning the numbers painted on the white doors. And then I was there. Simran’s door was open, and I entered, now slowly, my feet heavier, my mind numb.

It was a fairly large room, and right in the middle was a bed, neat, with white sheets. The bed’s metal railings were up on both sides, an ECG monitor sat on a table next to it, and a tall stand holding several IV drips was on the other side. But there was no one on the bed. There was no one in the room at all. Was this some kind of joke? I reached for my cellphone and called Simran’s number. How silly of me! Instead of coming straight here, I should have just called her to check if this was a prank.

There was no answer. I dashed to the help desk again, and the same woman pointed a manicured finger towards another lift this time. But what she said devastated me – it was something I would never forget.

Madam… my apologies, I came to know just now that they’ve moved the patient to the mortuary. You please take that lift…

I was no longer listening. My eyes shifted from her fingers to her face as I started to feel dizzy. Before I hit the ground, strong hands came out of nowhere and grabbed me. A glass of cold water was placed to my lips seconds later. I took a sip and opened my eyes to see a stranger wearing a white coat.

When I finally made it to the mortuary fifteen minutes later, supported by a nurse, the first thing I saw was Simran’s wailing father and mother. I knew them well. They recognized me and extended their arms towards me. I ran and melted against them, before gently pushing them away and asking, What happened?

"Simran has left us, beta. Our Simran has left us."

3

The only other dead human being I had seen was my father. I was in tenth grade when my mother told me, Sanjana, your father is dead.

She hadn’t explained further, and I wasn’t interested. That very evening, we were on a plane to London, where my father, Charles Smith, had lived. I remembered very little of him, as my mother and father had divorced when I was just five. He had never once visited me or even called. When I was a little girl, I used to miss him so much that I started writing letters to him, letters that I never posted or told my mother about. It was a kind of private daughter-father communication, and even though it was one-sided, it taught me a great deal about people. Particularly men, who were incapable of loving women or the children they fathered with them. After writing a hundred letters or so, I stopped one day as suddenly as I had started. I think I was in eighth grade at the time.

A doctor’s arrival in the small room adjacent to the mortuary where we were seated brought me back to the present. He asked for Simran’s dad, and the two of them left the room. Besides Simran’s mother and I, there were six other people and I didn’t know them. They were Simran’s relatives, I guessed, all in tears, all looking at each other with empty eyes. Rocky, Simran’s brother, who was studying in Bangalore, was on his way, one of them had told me.

A nurse offered to escort us one by one into the mortuary where my best friend lay dead. I was the third.

I entered the cold, almost dark room, holding the nurse’s hand. Simran was on a gurney. Her eyes were closed, her hair neatly arranged, and her hands at her sides.

I broke down. I couldn’t look at her peaceful face. I couldn’t imagine that Simran was dead and would soon be cremated, taken away from me and out of my life forever. We’d had so many plans for the future. I felt a grief I’d never experienced before, it was as if something within me had died, a part of my body had ceased to exist. I touched her cheek and half expected her to turn and smile at me. But she didn’t.

It was past midnight when I returned to my room. Before I left, Rocky had joined us. The cremation was scheduled for the next day after the post-mortem, we were informed. Until then, Simran had to stay in the mortuary, that cold room with dark walls, the concentrated smell of disinfectant hanging in the air.

Simran was murdered. Someone had stabbed her multiple times in the stomach and left her to bleed to death. That was what the policeman said. It was the same one who’d called me; I recognized his voice. Who would kill an honest and simple girl like Simran, who had just fallen in love for the first time?

The only name that came to mind was Nik Sethi. Where was he? Did Simran’s parents know about her relationship with the man? At the hospital, I had wondered if I should tell them. I finally told the policeman, but in private, and thought nothing further about it.

Now, in my room, I sat on the edge of my bed but allowed myself to slip to the cold floor. I stared at the light bulb for a long time, my father’s dead face floating in front of me. It had meant nothing to me. After leaving my mother, my father had married again in the UK, and when I arrived in London with my mother, his new family didn’t pay any attention to us. I had looked at my mother’s face when my father’s body was lowered into the ground. She stood motionless, her face like a stone. There were no tears. An hour later, when we returned to the hotel room we had rented for the only night we were staying in London, she’d announced, There’s a place nearby where they serve very good pasta. Let’s go there for dinner.

I didn’t know what to say about her behaviour and nodded. The place was a five-minute walk, and I think the old man who took our order recognized my mother. But neither said anything. When the pasta arrived, my mother didn’t touch it. There were tears in her eyes then. Perhaps she had frequented this place with my now-dead father when she lived here for a year. That was before I was born, during the initial years of their short marriage. I couldn’t bring myself to eat either. The old man refused to accept the payment for the pasta we had not eaten and the coke we’d only half drunk. My mother nodded, and we left for our hotel. We did eat pasta eventually, but from room service later that night. My mother had stayed quiet the entire time. When we finally slept, she held me close as I looked at her face, which was still devoid of expression.

I opened my eyes to the present, and they flew to the clock on the wall. It was two in the morning. I had not eaten, but I wasn’t hungry. I was suddenly reminded of what Simran had said that morning. It took thirty seconds for a person kissed by her lover to fly to the moon and back. How profound. I broke down completely and began to wail.

4

The next day, I arrived at the hospital at nine in the morning and headed straight to the mortuary. Simran’s father, mother, and brother were already there. From the look of their faces, I could tell they hadn’t slept a wink. A policeman I had never seen before was seated in one corner, a file on his lap.

When the door opened abruptly an hour later, we all raised our eyes to see the policeman with the heavy voice. He waved a piece of paper at us and said, We have the post-mortem report. You are now free to take her once the hospital completes its formalities.

Taking Simran away from the hospital meant bringing her one step closer to cremation. None of us moved, and the policeman sighed, walked across to Simran’s father, placed his hand on his shoulder, and said, I’m sorry, sir. But rest assured that we will soon catch the man who killed her. He turned towards me and whispered, Has anyone told Mr Nik Sethi yet?

The intensity in the eyes of everyone in the room multiplied, and the silence got heavier. Simran’s mother was the first to speak. Who is Nik Sethi, and what has he got to do with this?

The policeman’s eyes were fixed on me. I need to talk to you, Sanjana ji. In private.

All eyes now turned towards me, and I didn’t know how to react. I got up slowly and followed him out of the room.

He led me to the reception area and pointed towards two vacant plastic chairs. After we sat down, he leaned forward until we were just a foot apart. I could feel his breath on my face as he spoke. My name is Inspector Khan, Imran Khan. I’m in charge of this case. I want you to cooperate with me and never lie to me. Understand?

I nodded, feeling uncomfortable because of how close we were. Also, I had already told him everything I knew last night.

Hmm. He leaned back and said, My first suspect is Mr Nik.

I waited for more.

I met him at his home this morning at six. He looked shaken up when I arrived. At first, the person who opened the door said he wasn’t available, but when I said it had to do with Simran, Mr Nik arrived straight from the bedroom, his eyes red, hair mussed. I don’t think he slept last night.

It was my turn to bend towards him now. Have you arrested him? Has he confessed to killing her?

We are policemen, not magicians. Look, he hasn’t admitted that he killed her. From what I’ve seen in my twenty-year career, criminals never admit their crimes. You have to prove it in a court of law so they can be punished.

So?

We are interrogating him at this very moment. I just came here for the post-mortem report, so I know the exact cause of death and other important details. The toxicology report will, of course, take much longer, but we now know for certain that she died of shock and blood loss.

My blood had started to boil. Men, they always use women and leave them to die. My mother was an example of that. This bastard needed to be hanged.

Maybe, but what was his motive? That’s what we need to investigate, he went on.And?

I’ve got an idea what the motive might be, but it’s only half the answer. In any case, we now have a direction to take.

I remained quiet, my eyes on this strange policeman, the man who would find out why Nik Sethi killed Simran. I felt helpless and as much a victim as she was. What sort of a world was this? Someone was dead, and her killer was at large.

He cleared his throat and spoke slowly, one word at a time, Simran. Was. Pregnant.

The news devastated me. I got up, sat down, and opened my mouth to speak, but no words formed in my throat. Then I screamed. I screamed with all the pent-up energy in my body. Heads turned towards me, and