Excess baggage
29. Getting worse.. before it gets better!
Kirtana ran to the door… she was ready with a rehearsed angry speech for Mali. She opened the door to find no one there… and stepped out to see what had made the knock on her door. When she shut the door and turned around she found herself face to face with a stranger. This stranger with piercing green eyes moved very quickly. Covered from head to toe, with just a small slit open to reveal her eyes, she knocked down Kirtana in one swift movement, and looked the door behind her.
Mali got off stage. She had finished her “routine” and gotten off and was now feeling quite miserable. Clearly she had taken it too far, making Kirtana the subject of her jokes, and there she went, storming out of the restaurant leaving her to find her way back home and take care of a rather large bill. Well that was the price she had to pay, how would she make amends? She reached for her purse, and pulled out the wad of notes she so often kept crumpled in it… She always had money, and though she had never actually had a job and her “needs” were few it always intrigued everyone how she made ends meet. She always had money, and no one ever saw her go anywhere near a bank. She always offered to pay for everything, the first to reach for her wallet. Everyone knew Mali to be many different things, kind, resilient, always making her own rules… the works. No one really knew much more about her past than she had offered since her fall... But there was obviously a lot more below that surface. And off late her wanting to settle down and stop the vagabond life… meant something. She either had nothing to run from, or nothing to run to any more.
The real story of where Mali had been a year ago, and why she has since been doing a fairly good job of running from place to place, was because she had had a very interesting encounter. And interesting was a delicate and positive way of presenting it. It had begun when she had gone to a rather unstable part of the country. And stayed with a group at a hostel. She had done many things in this place…and for the most part her experience had been enriching. Many of the people in the town she lived had once been land owners, and wealthy. But the town had fallen into the wrong hands and with that came a slight harshness to the people in the territory. She had come there with a friend she had known, she was visiting on some habilitation project she had been sent on from her organization and Mali was just along for some company and fun times.
Things changed swiftly when Mali had walked in on a small group from that same hostel, up to something. The “something” had involved breaking in to a wealthy “business” man’s home and stealing every last note and valuable he had in his heavy duty safe. This had been achieved with some collateral damage, and his sleeping wife had been clobbered to death with a hockey stick. This particular group had gotten away with the loot, and were quite shaken from their experience that day, and bad timing had brought Mali to their door… to overhear and be witness to the entire thing… Many scenarios could have panned out, for one they might have killed her too, or maybe even paid for her silence. But, Mali had been held against her will, and threatened with her life. And if she breathed a word of it…she would pay dearly. Silly if you came to think of it…she did not really care much for what had happened. She would have gone to the police with it, but something told her in this town, that would not amount to much.What she wanted was her own life back, and to forget she had ever seen or heard anything. She often cursed her bad luck and timing and this time she would have reason to both curse and thank it. One evening a particularly fearful and young captor of her’s, he would have bearly been sixteen years of age, came in and freed her. He said that the others had gone to attend to some work, and would return in a few hours giving her enough time to escape. He said that he had never wanted to be a part of this in the first place, but his sister, was harsh and would not stand such betrayal by her brother. In the two days that had gone by since Mali’s “kidnapping” her friend had made fantic attempts to find her. But the town was uncooperative, more interested in maintaining their own individual interests than going after what was the correct thing to do.
Mali was freed, and in a flash gathered every belonging she had, noting her bag being much heavier that she remembered, but not stopping to check why. She wrote a note to her fried, knowing that she would be safe under the care of the organization that had sent her here, and bid this strange and beautiful place goodbye. She jumped in the first train she could get a ticket to, and was soon on her way… far far away from this little piece of hell. She had thanked the boy dearly. And wondered how he would explain this to his sister..
Mali made her way to her home city, at the time her apartment had been between tenants, to unwind, collect her thoughts and get the best idea of what she would do. She had, all the while she travelled not once opened her bag, and something at the back of her mind nagged her. She had a feeling she knew what she would find.
Once at her home, he suspicions were made clarified. Because in her bag lay a bulk of the loot that gang had stolen. How this had gotten there she would not know… but the boy who had saved her, would pay dearly. The group were the violent kind, and vengeance would be sought…
So the leader with fire in her green eyes… would hunt her down! How ever long it took, to get back what was her’s..silly and wasteful though it was, it for her was her only hope. All for for some money, which Mali had decided she would use… it had come to her, and she would not be able to do much with, what better than to use it…and that’s what she had been doing.
Some distance away Raghav stirred in his sleep.. he would set off in the morning back to the city, to see Mali, until then he would need his rest..
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