It was the most mind-boggling day, for it was the day I got my first mystery case, The Golden Ring.
I was to attend a wedding in the afternoon, specifically to get there by 3:00pm and leave by 5:00pm, to improve the detective's timings in me. At around 1:00pm there was a young man perhaps 21 years of age ringing the doorbell, on further inquiry he said "I am here for the job as an assistant for detective K.T.F of the elite corps of RAW, "well I really couldn't put my real name in the add could I? . "Yes you ought to proceed to the best site, what is your name ?, You must have struggled through the busy streets of Mumbai haven't you?", "uh-huh I," I interrupted him before he could say another word and later on briefed him about my office, also inviting him with me to the wedding I had to attend.
We took my car to the wedding, a grey Omni. We reached the wedding by 3:30, slowed down by Mumbai's horrible traffic. My assistant had by then told me that his name was JASVIR, born in Bengaluru, who graduated from Oxford University, and that is why he was so fluent in English. I wasn't as blessed as he was and had to work my way up after graduation from a government college and train In RAW. The Big fat Indian wedding had started hours before we arrived. It was the wedding of a fellow classmate Vaibhav who I met in high school. During the wedding, I saw a lady sitting by herself at the balcony's edge on the second floor. I rushed to her, assuming that she was on the verge of suicide, so I confronted her. She kept muttering softly, "the golden ring, where will I find the silver ring, my silver ring, life's at stake, the silver ring, the silver ring.....".
A sip of water and an entire plate of the various Indian food can only make an Indian girl familiar, so did the woman at the edge of the balcony who ended with a burp became calm and stopped muttering. I said, " the dal is horrible, isn't it? ""very true, very true, it's all watery," she said. I was wondering where jasvir had run off to , he acted strange when we spotted the woman at first and hadn't followed me up to the balcony and just then my phone received a text message saying " Some important work came up, meet you after 2 hours -Jasvir ", so I stopped worrying and brought the woman and myself two cone icecreams. There we sat licking the icecream starring at the stars, each of us lost in our thoughts, "I'm Karan, "I said, breaking the silence, "Savitha is what they call me. Why have you bothered to talk to a broken soul such as me?", "you seemed like you needed help, and I'm a man who's always ready to help," I said, "help? You want to help ? Oh really?? Why don't you find me my golden ring then, genius!! " she said raising her voice to which the crowd below was attracted.
She calmed down again after eating a part of the cone with the icecream that spilled all over. She talked about how upset her family would be when they would discover that the silver ring she got from her husband as the wedding ring was lost in a big fat Indian wedding, which was no lesser than a needle in a haystack.
She explained further as she got comfortable talking to me. Savitha, who came from Bangalore to attend the wedding of her friend and has been here in Mumbai for 4 days living in the residence of the bride
Something must have startled her that she left me sitting on the balcony without even finishing her story. I went down to the wedding finally, to wish my friend Vaibhav on his wedding day and found Jasvir right as I stepped down the circular stairs. I checked my watch strapped to my right hand and realized that it was 5:36 pm, 36 minutes past my time to leave the wedding. It didn't matter to me as I was lost in the story of Savitha while standing in the line of well-wishers to reach the bride and groom. After going through the dilemma, I finally decided to search for the silver ring and left the line that filled the gap in seconds. I told Jasvir of the entire conversation, and we started searching for the silver ring throughout the mantappa and moved on outside the building. It was stupid enough I was searching for a ring. Still, once I've fixed a job in my head, I won't stop until it's completed. Hoping to fall across a case, because I knew the woman Savitha was hiding some information much more than what she told, I could make out from the body movement and facial expressions. A good detective always knows when he has got a cracking case right in his hand and will make not the mistake of letting it go. "Where are you, you little bastard " was the thought stuck in the head while I searched for the ring.