'I just want to know about Neenkaraja, I mean, what happened to him, that's all,' Senan said.
'Really speaking, I don't know what happened to him. Not only me, none else knows it,' Pakirappa replied.
The tea was placed in front of them in little glass tumblers. Senan ordered a glass of milk tea, and Pakirappa three glasses of strong black tea.
When the supplier left, Senan expressed his doubt, saying, 'Perhaps someone knows who did it!'
'What?' Pakirappa turned furious at Senan.
'That who killed him,' Senan clarified it.
Pakirappa warned him, 'I told you never to seek after it. If it ends in that Toddy shop, you'll also go missing. Nothing will turn out.'
Both were sitting opposite at a wooden dusk. Pakirappa was not at all looking at Senan. After having two glasses of tea and smoking two beedis, Pakirappa said, 'He went missed on a peculiar day. Dhani had brought with him some of his friends and family. They'd been here for two days. Neenkaraja went missing on the day Dhani arranged a party here at night. Everyone had joined the party in the dark forest premises of the farmhouse. During the party, Dhani had scolded him for taking too much country liquor. He left the party drunk and went missing till then.'
'Dhani did not do anything to find him out?' Senan inquired anxiously.
'The complaint was filed at the police station. First, they thought he would have returned to his village or to some other estate as a laborer. But he hadn't reached anywhere.' Pakirappa replied gloomily.
'Do you think he would be dead?'
'Never,' Pakirappa affirmed confidently, and added, 'But something suspicious hangs about it. That could be the Toddy shop.'
'I don't know why, but I'm sure he is buried somewhere in the forest,' Senan said.
Pakirappa was startled at it. He looked around and said, 'Someone may overhear you. It'd risk your life.'
'But I'm damn sure he's buried there,' Senan said vehemently.
Pakirappa got up angrily, held Senan's collar tight, and cried at him, 'Do you want us also to be buried there?'
'No, no, leave me, leave me,' Senan yelled at Pakirappa and pushed him back. Pakirappa left his collars. In the meantime, two men approached and intervened. The tea shop proprietor warned them, 'It's not the place for people like you. Leave here right now. Go to that Toddy Shop to attack each other.'
Pakirappa went frantic about it and gasped like a mad dog.
(to be continued)
YOU ARE READING
Invincible Naga
Mystery / ThrillerSenan had strange encounters with snakes, both in dreams and real life, when he was employed as a laborer in a vast farmland in the deep woods in a remote village in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, South India. Later, he finds that the snake had bee...
