Fee

Sreekumar K

            Sathyanesan looked at his visitor who introduced himself as Thulasidas from the same group as Paul had represented a week back. How different he looked from Paul who looked scary! This man looked more like a doctor, a junior doctor. He wore a full sleeve off-white shirt and striped pants, both of which looked old and slighly worn out, though neatly ironed.

            Sathyanesan was sure he had come for some further negotiatiation. He leaned back on his easy chair, expressing an arrogance and defiance so as to ward off any more request for money.

            “Though we are known for killing, I mean, people have always come to us with requests to wipe out malicious people from their lives, we take up anything that people want us to do, and we always choose the best modus operandi.”

            He looked sternly at Sathyanesan as if to show that he saw through his assumed body language and then continued.

            “When Paul came and told us the details of your need, we all had a discussion and we have come up with a new solution. Of course, I am aware Paul had suggested a violent solution and that you had no problem with it. That is how he handles things and that too works in certain cases. But this is different.”

            Sathyanesan had contacted this group through a hiring agency which also supplied domestic help, paid bills and did other odd jobs. They had advertised they could be trusted with anything and Sathyanesan had a problem in life.

            His wife had left him long ago and his son alienated himself soon after that.  Now he had no one in his life. He had betted everything on this boy and considered him his support in his old age. But somehow the boy turned hostile and even came home only now and then. There was no way of knowing where he was spending his days. He didn’t look like he had taken to drugs or anything. Bad company, probably.

            Sathyanesan sought the help of his friends and his son’s professors. They could not help. He consulted a counselor but his son was too unwilling to cooperate. Sathyanesan  went on several pilgrimages but the gods seemed to be siding with his son. It is in this frustration that he decided to try this agency.

            He visited their shabby little office and it looked like they were not interested in this business. They showed his a brochure and then several documents which they said he would have to sign when he paid the money. They collected his phone number and address and said they would hand them over to those people. Who those people were or where they were operating from were not revealed. All he was told was that they were very prompt in everything and would contact him soon.

            The next day, Paul, a member of the group visited him, told him the money needed to fix things. He was not to ask how they were going to do it but he was told to consider it done. The fee was rather heavy but Sathyanesan agreed because Paul sounded very genuine and showed him documents of a good track record in similar cases.

            There had been wives who wandered off from their husbands’ lives, children who stopped attending schools and business partners who grew cold when the turnover came down. In all cases, they were brought back to track and the prices they had to pay were also somewhat similar. They all had given a ten star feed back about their satisfaction.

            Things having been fixed like that, this visit was surprising. As the ID card showed, Thulasidas might be higher up in the official hierarchy, pretty close to the boss. It was clear from what the man said. Also, unlike Paul, this man had am air of comassion about him.
            “It is your personal choice and we actually don’t get further into such things. But let me tell you from my limited experience that what you are trying to do is all pointless. When it is time for us to be born and when it is time for us to die or get murdered, we undergo that. Why this fear of your old age and your son’s insensitivity and all that? This is our business and I should not be talking like this but since we are all human beings, I would rather advise you to leave it and let life take its course. Everything comes at a price.”

            “Money is not an issue. What else am I going to do with all these crores I have amassed in life? I want someone to straighten up my son. Can you?”

            “No, I am not talking about money. That is not a concern for me either, though I have not made much after having killed dozens of people who certainly deserved to be killed.”

            Sathyanesan’s heart skipped a beat. He was face to face with a murderer. A man who had killed  so many people. He regained his poise and thought of the holy wars in the epics.

            “Anyway, I have come with a new plan. I know that you love your son more than yourself, right?”

            “Yes, very true. I will do anything for him. I will donate any part of my body if he comes to need it, God forbid.”

            “Now that you think so about your son,  we too feel the same for him. He is young and he should not suffer in any way. Paul had a very violent plan which would  have worked, but it is based on torturing him and scaring the daylight out of him. True, we had done that to people who won’t listen to anything. You know, there are all kinds of people in this world.”

            “So, what is your plan for him?”

            “Sorry I can’t tell you that. All I can say is, we will go easy on the boy since you like him so much. You want him to be more sensitive and show that sensisitivity in attending to your needs. Man, I have to say you are very selfish in that. Though you say you love your son, you love only yourself. But it is your life and your son, not mine.”

            “I may be selfish but I am not so fearless as to leave it all to fate. I would rather like to have some say in my life simply because it is my life.”

            “No, you are wrong there. I have handled life  more than you can imagine. I have not just wiped off people but have helped people keep their life and in two cases I took two pregnant ladies to hospitals so that they could deliver safely. One of them delivered triplets. See. So, let  me tell you, we don’t have ownership of anything, especially our life. Think of all those people whose life I took just like that. Which court can they appeal to for getting it back? Where does it actually say it is your life?”

            “I am not going to argue about it. In fact, I would rather go with my beliefs than change them now.”

            “Fine with me.”

            He insisted that the money should be paid in advance and he assured  that the fee would barely  cover his expenses. Though unwillingly Sathyanesan paid the whole amount. Thulasidas left after ceremoniously thanking him.

            Nothing much happened after that or at least what Sathyanesan was looking for or anything close to that didn’t happen. He lost his patience and tried contcting Thulasidas though he had been warned not to. There was no response. Then he tried Paul’s number and he found that such a number didn’t even exist.

            He waited for a week worring about his son and his money. He was furious about how  he was cheated by a couple of nitwits.
            One day he took his scooter and ventured out. He visited the agency. Only an lady clerk was there at that time. The warmth in her greetings became heat in her words as Sathyanesan presented his case.

            “Sir, for your information, we had already made it very explicit when you visited us last time that we are in no way responsible for this special clientele. When we saw they were of much help to the public, we just put it at the bottom of our advertisement because our policy is to help the maximum number of people within our limited and humble capacity. Now,l you seem to have musunderstood that we represent them. But we don’t. However, understanding your concern we would like to help you by letting you know whatever information we come across about them.”

“You know, it is a lot of money.”

            “Yes sir, we understand that. You should also have been careful as to make them sign some kind of a document at least for name’s sake.”

            “Sign up a document with a quotation gang? Good idea!”

            Sathyanesam left that office and he was still furious when he reached home. That afternoon, he decided to go out again and look out for his son. His son didn’t have a vehicle. So, he would be hanging out somewhere nearby or might be taking a bus to the next city everyday. That was quite unlikely.

            Sathyanesan was right. He saw his son in he public park  and his group was not with him. But there was a girl with him and obviously they were in a relationship. She looked too pretty for his son and Sathyanesan congratulated his son in his mind. She looks like a Hindu girl and      Sathyanesan was just progressive enough not to think of castes.

            He returned home and he was very happy. His son was not old enough to get married but times had changed and he could run a relationship for years before he got married. So, in a few years he was going to have another presence at home. She looked compassionate enough to keep an eye on an ailing old man. Sathyanesan for the first time in his life wished the years went by faster.

So, after all that decoit was right. There was no need for him to hurry into things. He wondered how he never thought of this possibility all these years.

            For days he toyed with the idea whether he should confront his son with his newly gained information. His son came home only once that month and so he decided not to bring that up. Instead, he bought some mutton which he knew his son liked a lot.

            “Did you buy this or slaughter the lamb?”

            He knew what his son was hinting at. In fact they had no lamb at home/

            “I don’t think you are prodigal enough to deserve such a treatment?”

            His son only laughed at him, happy about the fact that the old man understood his subtle joke.

            When Sathyanesan woke up the next morning, his son was not there at all. He had gone to be with his friends.

            Sathyaseelan didn’t try to contact Paul or Thulasidas after that but blamed himself many times for his folly. God had helped him eventually and all his prayers were not in vain after all. He began tgo be more regulr at the church maninly to pray for his son. His initial happiness at having found his son being in love waned off. He was back to square one, always worried about his son’s insensitivity towards him and his long periods of absence.

            One Sunday, early in the morning he was on his way to church. He was on his old Chetak and was taking a turn near the market place one morning as he used to do for ages. He had given the signal to turn and there was no  vehicle in sight. Before he knew what was happening, he had lost his consciosness and was  bleeding to death. Some truck ran over him, almost killing him. There was no trace of the vehicle but some  passerby took him to hospital in time to save his life. Three broken ribs and multiple fractures in his right arm left him incapacitated.

            At the hospital, he hardly saw his son who was running around to find money for his father’s treatment. Many people visited him in hospital. His son’s friends and the girl he was in love with were regular visitors. The old man was at home hardly a month later. He had to be in bed for three more months and the doctor advised him complete rest.

            As he lay in bed, all blank, he again wondered what had happened to his money. The news of the accident was in the local newspapers. Many had come to know about it from the local channel. But there was no news from Paul or Thulasidas. He wanted to contact them to cancel his assignment and claim back his money. He thought it would cover part of the hospital expenses. But none of them responded. Frauds never die.

            He continued to worry about his son. The boy had almost no life now as he tended to his father day and night. Some times his freinds would come, stay to chat for some time and leave. He knew his son wanted to go with them and on several occasions asked him to do so.

            But, dutifully, his son declined it and stayed with his father as much as he could. Sathyanesan cursed the day he took that careless turn in the morning. It affected not only his life but his son’s life as well. Knowing how well disciplined his sone was, he gave him the power of attorney of his entire estate and asked him to sell whatever he wanted to.

            One day Sathyanesan called his son near him and told him not to hurry into anything in life. There was nothing to fear or be anxious about. Give it some time and things change all by themselves.

            That night Sathyanesan recalled his meeting with Thulasidas and suddenly he realized that what he had told his son that day was actually a repeat of what Thulasidas had told him two months back.

            The money was not a total waste, he heaved a sigh.

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