And a black and white image was pasted on the email. Ipshita downloaded it and increased the size. Despite the graininess, there was no doubt! It WAS Steve D’Costa! The same Steve who had seduced her and stalked her!
No! No! No! Must be a mistake! It can’t be! There has to be a mistake!
Ipshita sat back, closing her eyes. She saw: Steve cutting the water his arms stretched; walking barefoot on the sand beside; laughing over the rim of a glass, his eyes crinkly; kissing her…
He…he couldn’t be dead!
Once again, she peered at the newspaper report under the photograph, looking for the date. It was 9th September, ten days before she had met him in Batam.
How is that possible? Was it a dead man she met? What…? A preposterous thought came…Was it a ghost she had met? No, no, no, NO!
Ipshita pushed back the chair and went to the open window. Her eyes did not see the mellow autumn sunshine. Her mind was revolting, slamming back the information it had received. Cognitively, it made no sense …there was simply no logic in it.
Okay, she told her logical brain, let’s start at the beginning.
Ipshita’s mind rolled back over the last few months. Since April, there had been a great deal of travel. Considering her work, she had met a lot of people. It was true that some people had impressed her more than others. And out of them, there were three whom she just could not forget. Curiously, all three were men!
Subjectively, Ipshita asked, So? Can I deny that despite being very different, each man had touched a pulse deep inside me?
But her rationality refuted, No, I am not denying that something tugged me to them…like a magnet! But why? What was the connection with them?
She considered the data, no past connections, agreed. Yet each man gave me a strong feeling that I had known him for a long time. Strangely, this feeling was overwhelming in their presence but later…I retained some echoes, but no other link…as though, after they passed through my life, they ceased to exist…no, no, I am wrong… not Amar…he has called, hasn’t he? But Akash…?
