Roses Are Blood Red by Novoneel Chakraborty

Author:Novoneel Chakraborty
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353057275
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

8

Vanav was having breakfast. Pratap was reading the Hindi newspaper at the breakfast table and absently having his breakfast. There was a small news article on the fifth page that caught Vanav’s eye. Three men were recovered from an abandoned house with third-degree burns. Vanav read the news item with a blank expression although his mind recollected every detail of the incident.

After he told the men that he knew where the girl was, the men wanted to know more details; he told them that he had seen someone resembling the girl meet a boy at 10 p.m. a few times, at an abandoned godown three lanes away from his house. Vanav was familiar with it because it happened to be one of his and Binny’s favourite haunts. The godown went to rack and ruin after the family that owned both it and the house adjacent to it died in a tragic accident. Vanav asked the men to wait inside the godown around 10 p.m. and told them that they should be able to nab the girl, and the boy as well. The men looked pleased and excited.

As soon as Vanav got home, he went into his room which, considering that it was also their storeroom, housed the backup gas cylinder. Vanav waited until the coast was clear, when his mother was busy with her evening puja and his father had gone for a shower after his day at work, before hauling out the heavy cylinder. He secured it to the back of his cycle using an incredible amount of dexterity and intelligence to do so. Before setting off, he dipped a long strip of cloth into the fuel tank of his father’s scooter and put it into his pocket.

Vanav was huffing and puffing by the time he managed to place the cylinder in an unobtrusive corner in the dilapidated building. Vanav unscrewed the top of the cylinder, looped the strip of cloth to the nozzle and hung the other end out through a small broken pane in a window overlooking the overgrown yard.

He was a little late getting back home from his tuition and told his folks that he had gone to a friend’s house to collect some notes. He had his dinner quietly and then disappeared into his room. At around 9.30 p.m., he sneaked out of the house, with a little petrol in a used plastic bottle from his father’s scooter and went straight to the godown and hid by the window where the petrol-soaked cloth was hanging. He dipped the cloth in fresh petrol again. Fifteen minutes later, when he heard the men come in, he lit the cloth with a matchstick and noiselessly moved away. By the time he heard the blast, he was far away. Before sleeping that night, he went over to Aarisha.

‘This is for you,’ he said taking out a bottle of Coke. For a moment, she was confused; and then she understood.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Old Monk mixed with Coke,’ Vanav announced. When she

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