Second Coming

Despite being in the pink of health, Joseph Saldana had long lost the lust for life.
Aged 56, he had no dependants and wasn’t dependent on anyone. All efforts by his colleagues (at the soap company that he worked for) for making him more sociable were in vain. He had become a recluse beyond repair. When he was still in his ‘marriageable’ age (yes, in India the concept of being ‘appropriate’, age-wise, for marriage is well-rooted in the mindsets of people), his friends-although few in number-had often tried to persuade him to get married. But he was firm and always had the same reply-no.
Joseph had taken very badly to Janaki’s death. The only memories that he cherished were those of the times he had spent with Janaki, some thirty years back. What he looked back with horror, was the way in which Janaki’s life had been terminated. He never really came to terms with the fact that someone could be so macabre, so beastly as to thrash someone so miserably that even the paramedics had found it extremely difficult to handle Janaki’s dead body. The most painful thing was that Joseph perfectly knew who had murdered Janaki......
For anyone who knew Shambhu, it would have been next to impossible to believe that he could be violent enough to kill an ant, let alone a human being. And this had nothing to do with the fact that he was thin. It was just that he was very calm by nature and was in the good books of everyone he knew. But Joseph knew fully well what kind of a psychotic freak Shambhu really was. Janaki and Shambhu’s families lived in the same building in a suburb of Chennai (then Madras) and they were good friends-childhood chums. But only three people in the world knew that he fancied Janaki- Janaki, Joseph and Shambhu himself. When Shambhu had made his feelings clear to Janaki, she refused Shambhu’s proposal because she was already committed to Joseph, but had the courtesy to turn him down in the politest of words. On hearing the refusal, a certain obscene, devilish expression had appeared on his otherwise friendly face which had made Janaki very uneasy. It was pretty clear to Janaki that he was obsessed with her. When she narrated the whole episode to Joseph, he had asked her to stay away from him while he will think of some way to handle the situation. But Janaki hadn’t lived long enough for Joseph to ‘handle the situation’. Within 48 hours of the ‘proposal’, the police had found Janaki’s body behind the water tank at the far-end of the housing society where Janaki lived-and where Joseph often came to meet her. Joseph could never pardon himself for not turning up at their meeting point that night. He had been stuck with some work and had failed to meet her on that fateful night.
When the investigation started, Joseph found it absolutely impossible to convince anyone that Shambhu could be capable of murdering her. All the while, Shambhu wore the mask of innocence so well that sometimes even Joseph thought that Shambhu was innocent after all. But when the investigations were officially closed, Shambhu had given Joseph a look of triumph that left Joseph completely helpless. Joseph never laughed again in his life. He had been totally shattered and decided to leave it all and settle in a new place, in a new environment so that his private demons could be thwarted.
Joseph had been living alone in the city of Pune for the past 30 years now; but even after all these years, he was being tormented by his past. He often had ‘visions’ of Janaki wherein she apologized for deserting him but also urged him to punish Shambhu, her murderer. Joseph had stopped visiting psychiatrists (who preferred to give him ‘pills’ than empathy) and had resigned to a life of constant inner turmoil. He never mentioned his ‘visions’ to his friends, lest they would declare him as insane. Worse still, they would tell him that these were just hallucinations; while Joseph firmly believed that these weren’t hallucinations, but were an appeal from a dead person to a broken, failed human being. What troubled Joseph even more was that these ‘visions’ had greatly increased in number in the last 5 years and he couldn’t fathom why….
Joseph believed that nothing could shock him; nothing could make him react with excitement now, until he saw Gauri. Her face had shocked the beejesus out of him-she was en exact replica of Janaki! The only thing which kept him from believing she was Janaki was her youthfulness. Had Janaki been alive, she would have been 55, while this young lady would be no more than 25. Apparently Gauri was a model who had been hired by the company Joseph worked for. Being a senior employee of the company, he had no trouble in establishing contact with her. For some eerie reason, he felt she could sympathize with him and he ended up pouring out his whole story to her, adding that she looked exactly like his only love, Janaki.
For the first time in three decades, Joseph started feeling that he could deliver justice to Janaki. Joseph began to hatch a plan slowly, but surely. But for the plan to succeed, he needed Gauri’s help. When he explained to Gauri what he planned to do, Gauri was convinced that this was a great opportunity for Joseph to get even. Joseph now had a new lease of life and a purpose to live for. The first step in the plan was to track Shambhu down-in case he was alive.
Tracking Shambhu down had been more difficult than Joseph had imagined. He had applied for a 10-day leave from his company (which they happily approved-after all, he had hardly taken a day-off in his career) and decided to start his mission. His first destination was obviously Chennai, where he checked with acquaintances (many of whom had forgotten him) about Shambhu Sambasivan’s whereabouts. After a lot of questioning , he found out that Shambhu had left Chennai some twenty years back and had settled as a convenience-store owner in Hyderabad. On reaching Hyderabad and questioning the right people (whose contacts he had acquired in Chennai), he found out that Mr. Sambasivan was highly respected in trade circles and often traveled all over India on business trips. He also learned that Mr. Sambasivan had settled in Pune since the past 5 years!!
For the last five years, this devil of a human being had been lurking in his own backyard and Joseph didn’t even know about it! But now that Shambhu was in Pune, Joseph experienced a hitherto unknown spurge of confidence. He knew the locality around him like the back of his hand and he now knew for sure how to extract revenge.
He learnt about the All India traders’ conference that was supposed to be held in the Town Hall in a couple of days. It was precisely this opportunity that Joseph had been looking for. However, for the plan to succeed, Gauri had to play her part perfectly well. It had all been arranged for: Joseph had explained the whole story to the cops and convinced them to attend the meeting in plainclothes so that they could nab Shambhu red handed. The prima facie evidence would be overwhelming. He himself had prepared to be present at the Town Hall to orchestrate the whole drama….
Finally the day arrived. Joseph couldn’t believe that this person was someone other than his own Janaki. The same angelic face, the same blemishless beauty…
When she approached Shambhu, he let out a loud shriek which at once filled the Hall with absolute silence. With a contorted face, he exploded,”How the hell can you be alive? I had smashed you to death with these very hands…..” The next thing he knew was persons in plainclothes arresting him with handcuffs. But his brain was far too disturbed to comprehend what was happening. He offered no resistance to the cops and they quickly rounded him up into their police van. The people in the hall were still shocked on seeing this whole episode. One can’t say Joseph was particularly delighted, but he now had a sense of immense satisfaction, something which he had never experienced for a long, long time now. All this had happened faster than he had imagined.
Just as he was leaving the Hall, Gauri came running inside and exclaimed, “I’m extremely sorry for being late. Hope he’s still in there.” “What are you talking about? You just did a perfect job of trapping that monster” said Joseph. “That’s impossible. I just came in now” replied Gauri…….