The Dark Road – A Nail Biting Thriller by Mayuresh Didolkar
- In Book Reviews
- 09:31 AM, May 28, 2017
- Myind Staff
MyIndmakers is pleased to announce the release of our contributor Mayuresh Didolkar’s novel “The Dark Road”.
While talking about the book, Mayuresh told MyInd “it is a whodunit set against the backdrop of post 2014 politics. A young woman is found murdered outside her tent at a campsite and a retired police officer is called out of retirement to spearhead the murder investigation. Even though the book was not meant as a political story, the backdrop of urban leftist terrorism dominates the landscape. I consider myself as a child of the political age and so it was impossible to write a story rooted in urban India without writing about the politics”
Mayuresh self-published his first novel ‘Kumbhpur Rising’, a supernatural thriller set in rural coastal Maharashtra, India, in 2014. Even though the novel met with modest success, Mayuresh was keen on publishing through a leading publisher to get experience of working with professional editors.
“I was truly fortunate to have the professional team at Juggernaut led by the amazing Sivapriya. The book went through three rounds of exhaustive edits and I am extremely pleased with the lean and tight final draft we have created together” Mayuresh added.
To read the book, readers will have to download the Juggernaut app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.juggernaut) on their mobile phones or tablets.
We are delighted to publish following excerpt from ‘The Dark Road’ here.
Siddharth
Memories are the progeny of impressions.
Very often, our earliest memory of a person is that of our first memorable interaction with them. Siddharth Pandit’s first real memory of Sanju was from the night her sister disappeared. He had seen Sanjyot as a baby in her mother’s arms but he noticed her as a person for the first time on the night Amruta went missing.
It was four in the morning and Siddharth had been asleep for less than ninety minutes when his mobile rang. He was a light sleeper and answered almost immediately.
‘Siddhu dada?’ The voice on the other side belonged to a girl but Siddharth had trouble placing it for a moment. After his unsuccessful bid for the Assembly last summer, almost everyone called him ‘dada’.
‘Yes? Who is it?’ he asked.
‘Dada, Sanju here, Sanjyot Pathak. I woke up to go to the toilet and my whole house is empty.’
Siddharth sat up in bed and fumbled for his glasses. ‘What do you mean empty?’ he said. He was already walking to the closet to pull out last night’s jeans and T-shirt.
‘Baba, mumma, Amruta tai…all are gone. I’m the only one in the house.’
‘Did you call Rajeev on his cell?’ Siddharth knew the answer but still he asked.
‘It’s on the living room coffee table. I’m looking at it right now.’ Her voice shook.
‘Okay, Sanju. I want you to listen to me. Are you listening?’
‘Yes…’ She was sobbing now.
‘I want you to go to the kitchen and try and make two cups of coffee for us. Once that’s done, I want you to go to the living room and switch the TV on.’
‘TV?’ she asked.
‘Will you do this? I want you to focus. It’s important. Are you focused, Sanju?’ His voice was calm, soothing. He was out of his fourth-floor apartment, car keys in hand. He held one phone in the crook of his neck to speak to Sanju while using his second to call his driver-cum-bodyguard who lived close by.
‘Yes dada, I’m waiting for you,’ she said, between sniffles.
He rang her doorbell approximately fifteen minutes later. Sanju opened the door. And that was the image Siddharth would remember for the rest of his life.
She was already tall by then, nearly 5’5” – a slim girl with just a hint of developing breasts, even at age fifteen. She was dressed in a white T-shirt and Mickey Mouse pyjama bottoms. When she saw him she threw herself in his arms, nearly climbing onto him like a monkey. She was sobbing. Siddharth stroked her head and walked in, awkwardly supporting her weight against his.
He made her sit on the sofa and drink half a cup of the coffee she had made. He heard her story again, though he knew some of it already. Then he asked her to get dressed. She was going to spend the night at his house. Sanju went to her room and emerged a few minutes later, having changed into a pair of jeans. She had put her hair up in a ponytail and washed her face. Her sorrowful face looked lovely.
Siddharth sent her home with his driver, then sat on the curb awaiting his return. He made no effort to track down Sanju’s parents or sister in that time.
Later, as he coached her for her first marathon, as they spent numerous hours running, cycling or trekking together, Siddharth grew closer to Sanju, perhaps more than any of her other friends. He saw her girlish side, he saw her manipulative side. To him, Sanju was full of contradictions – a vixen working her charms one moment; Alice lost in the woods the next.
But when he finished his often frustrating, mostly useless analysis of her personality, this was his last memory of her – Sanju as a scared, defenceless teenager throwing herself in his arms. She was in danger and she had called him.
A man is placed under obligation by faith like that.
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