Two girls and their love for detective stories
Bangalore in the late 1980s smelt of rain on red laterite soil, of filter coffee brewing in steel tumblers, and of the particular dusty sweetness that rose from the pages of second-hand books. It was a gentler city then, not the tech-fuelled metropolis it would become, but a garden city of wide avenues, of old Kannada families, of civil servants and doctors and schoolteachers cycling to work.
It was in this city, in the residential, tree-lined neighbourhood of Jayanagar, that two girls found each other, and, in finding each other, found themselves.
Shyla Krishnamurthy was nine years old when the Vermas moved into the house three streets away. She was a serious child with large, watchful eyes behind thick-framed spectacles, the kind of girl who read the newspaper and then asked her father what ‘legislature’ meant. Her father, Dr. Suresh Krishnamurthy, was a cardiologist at Victoria Hospital, a man who wore his stethoscope like a second soul and believed medicine was the highest calling. Her mother, Dr. Meena Krishnamurthy, was a psychiatrist who had studied at NIMHANS, the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, had a quiet practice in Jayanagar, a woman of careful words and penetrating silences who had a gift for making people feel understood.
They were, by the standards of Jayanagar in 1988, a upper middle-class family. They had a two-bedroom flat on the second floor of a building called Kaveri Apartments, a black-and-white television that received Doordarshan, and a creaking bookshelf that sagged under the weight of medical journals and, on the lower shelves, Shyla’s growing collection of books.
She had started with Enid Blyton’s the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, their clean English countryside adventures of hidden passages and smugglers and plucky children solving what Scotland Yard couldn’t. Then she had moved to Agatha Christie, working through a dog-eared copy of And Then There Were None that her mother had left on the dining table. She was ten when she first read it, and she remembered sitting cross-legged on the mosaic floor of their living room, the ceiling fan turning slowly above her, completely unable to put it down even when her mother called her twice for dinner.
“Shyla! The food is getting cold!”
“Coming, Amma, just one more page …”, said Shyla.
“You said that twenty minutes ago!”
But her mother had not been angry. She had come and sat beside her daughter on the floor and read the last chapter over her shoulder, and when they reached the ending, they had both sat in a charged silence for a long moment.
“How did Agatha Christie think of it?” Shyla had asked.
“That,” her mother had said softly, “is the question. The mind, Shyla.., the human mind is the most interesting mystery there is.”
It was a remark that would stay with Shyla for the rest of her life.
~ ~ ~
Radha Verma arrived in Shyla’s class at Vijaya High School, Jayanagar, in the middle of the academic year, which was considered deeply unusual. Vijaya High School was one of the most coveted state board schools in Bangalore, well known across Karnataka for producing toppers in the SSLC, the Secondary School Leaving Certificate examinations, the state-wide 10th standard board exams that Indian families treated with the gravity of a religious rite. Getting a seat at Vijaya mid-year required some doing.
Radha’s father, Vikram Verma, was an IPS officer, Indian Police Service, the premier cadre of the country’s police administration. Transfers came with the job, and the Vermas had moved from Mysuru when Vikram was posted as the Deputy Commissioner of Police for the South Bangalore division. His wife, Sunanda Verma, was a psychologist, and visited Dr. Meena Krishnamurthy’s clinic for consultancy. It was through a conference that the two first met, and later started working together. It was through the mothers that the two daughters were introduced, formally, over a Sunday lunch at Kaveri Apartments that smelt of Meena’s famous bisibele bath and the sabbkki payasa.
Shyla noticed that Radha was very active, moved quickly, and had two long plaits. Where Shyla was measured, Radha was impulsive. Where Shyla read slowly and thoroughly, Radha skimmed and intuited. They should, by all logic, have annoyed each other and as a first impression, Radha did annoy Shyla. However, within twenty minutes of meeting, they were sitting on Shyla’s floor examining her bookshelf with the intensity of customs officers.
“You have And Then There Were None!” Radha said, pulling it from the shelf. “I finished this in one sitting. Appa had to physically take it away so I would eat dinner.”
“Me too!” Shyla said, pushing her glasses up. “My Amma says I have a problem with books.”
“That is not a problem,” Radha said firmly. “That is a superpower.”
And just like that, it was decided. They were friends.