The Matchmaker

25. Mahi

Wednesday, 29th, November

I was panicking. I didn't know what to do. It seemed a lot like a suicide message. I thought about contacting his parents or the police for help, but I feared it to be not enough. This was a very critical condition, in which his mentality and emotions were too fragile.

Wasting no time, I got up from the bed.

"Hey, everything okay? Where are you going?" Kavya asked, who was sitting across all this time.

"I... I need to go. Please cover for me," I said, and left.

Without caring about my mother, I just dashed out of the apartment. Hastily, I counted the cash I had as I hailed an autorickshaw. I tried to appear less frantic, and it seemed to be working seeing the driver's casual talkative behaviour.

"Ah, this traffic..." he groaned, as we came across a heavily crowded road.

"Take the other road, it's a short cut, quick!" I pointed.

"What? No, it's actually longer. We'll reach the destination at probably the same time. Instead, driving longer would simply burn more fuel and cost you m..."

"Please, just take the other route," I insisted.

The driver sighed, "Okay, as you wish. Customer is the God."

He turned the rickshaw around and sped into the freer road. I constantly checked at the time and repeatedly tried to contact Varun to no avail.

"You know, there is no such thing such as short cuts in life. There are only two kinds of routes. Ones that lead us to our goal, and the others, the dead ends," he blabbered to which I absentmindedly nodded.

As the rickshaw came to a halt, he turned to check the meter.

"See, it took us around 10 minutes, just as same. But your fare is 10₹ costl..."

I didn't listen to anymore of his gibberish, and stuffed the fare into his hands. I swiftly hurried to the gate of Varun's society, which I had seen only once from a distance when he had taken me out for pasta nearby.

At the gate, the watchman stopped me for the register entry.

"Varun Banerjee, I'm his friend, Mahi Chandra..."

"Oh, okay miss. You can go, I'll fill in the other details," the watchman interrupted.

I didn't know since when watchmen had become this generous, and whether even this was appropriate, but I had greater things to worry about. I remembered our call, and searched for the under-construction building.

There it lay, behind a few wings, tall and shabby. I supposed it was planned to be even better than the other ones, but whatever that caused its hiatus had made it look crooked. Some kind of makeshift fencing around it seemed to keep off people.

I went over it, and crept inside. It was a lot darker and quiet. Only my footsteps and some sounds that I assumed to be of the wind echoed. I leaned near the stairwell, and was shocked to see the roof almost 10 storeys high. And of course there wasn't any elevator.

But keeping in mind the incoming threat, I took a deep breath and started sprinting upwards. I usually would've tired out at the 5th floor, but for some reason, I wasn't tired as much even as I neared the roof. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush.

As soon as I entered the terrace, the light returned all of a sudden more than it ever was inside. I looked around for Varun, fearing that he had already done something, before spotting him near the parapet at one side.

"Varun!!" I cried, running towards him.

He turned around, but didn't seem as suprised as I had expected him to be. He was rather totally filled with sorrow and desperation. He took some steps towards me, leading us into an embrace.