Free Death in Mumbai by Meenal Baghel Page B

impulses. By this time she had also started her longdistance relationship with Emile.
    The handsome naval officer had been a friend of her sister’s at school, and it was Veronica who found him on Orkut and decided that he would be a perfect match for Maria. After her suicide attempt the Susairaj family had backed off from trying to arrange a match and asked Maria to find herself a husband instead. She enrolled on shaadi.com, but eventually found Emile on the social networking site through Roni. ‘I just saw his photograph and liked what I saw,’ said Maria.
    At the end of 2007, when Maria flew from Mumbai to London to visit her sister Veronica, Emile came to see heroff and even took her to Lonavla where he had studied. After that they returned to Mumbai and spent a night together at the house of Maria’s former neighbour at Dheeraj Solitaire, Mayuri Prajapati.
    A few months on, in March 2008, Maria came back to Mumbai for another short visit. It was on this trip that she told Deepak Singh she was engaged, and went shopping with him for shirts for Emile. But on this trip she had also met up with Neeraj Grover again. He casually let her know of his proximity to the television doyenne Ekta Kapoor, and with that merest hint of promise, all the old pulls came alive. At twenty-eight, this would be Maria’s last chance at stardom: a time to redeem the possibilities that had once seemed her prerogative.

3
    E MILE
    â€˜If there is one word to capture Emile’s personality, I’d use the word stud.’
    â€”One of Emile’s course mates in the navy
    N OTHING ACCENTUATES THE difference between small town and big city more than the fading twilight. It is the hour when the city starts to shimmer for the night ahead. At dusk, small towns start winding down—the familiar shops shut, and twilight hangs heavy as the sound of television soaps resounds oppressively, echoing a collective boredom.
    On one such evening, Vinay Kumar S ., who now works at a medical transcription business in Mysore, met Emile Jerome. They had studied together in the same school as Maria Susairaj. ‘Emile was my best friend through school, and we have remained friends since. Every time he came to Mysore on leave, he’d spend a couple of days with me.’ Thelast time they saw each other, three months before Neeraj’s death, Vinay took a photograph of Emile on his cellphone. The naval officer looked handsome in his purple shirt, his posture erect. But it is his expression that arrested attention—at once slightly quizzical and ironically amused, as if he were biting back a chuckle.
    â€˜We were in a coffee shop talking, as men often do, about girls, specifically the ones we knew. I don’t know what prompted me, but I said to him, “Can you imagine that Monica who was our senior, has become an actress. How she managed that I don’t know.” I was aiming the camera at him while I was talking, and something in his face altered, alerting me.’
    â€˜So I asked, “Are you in touch with her?” and he said, “Sort of. I meet her sometimes when I am in Bangalore.” Three months later I was reading about the killing in Mumbai.’
    Aside from the shock at St Mathias that two of their star students were embroiled in such a scandal, another question—unasked by some; articulated by others—hums through the corridors: What drew the earnest, orderly, go-getter naval officer to the restless, worldly, ambitious actress?
    â€˜Everyone at school knew Monica, because she was such a good dancer,’ said Vinay, who was three years her junior. ‘Even us kids in the primary section.’ Emile, who joined the navy after class twelve in 2000, is remembered as the boy marked for a future. ‘He was an extraordinary student always stood first in class—excelled at debate, essay writing, general knowledge—and he was so polite and well behaved.’ Mary Anthony, who