The dream pact
It was during summer holidays when they were both fourteen, preparing to enter the ninth standard and they were both sitting together and reading. when the Dream Pact was made.
They were in Shyla’s room, the ceiling fan at full speed, the afternoon sun passing through the curtains, when they had just finished reading The ABC Murders by Christie. There was that particular post-book feeling hanging in the air, the ache of a story ending, the desire to stay inside its world a little longer.
“I know what I want to do,” Radha said suddenly. She was lying on her stomach on the floor, chin propped on her hands.
“What?” Shyla asked from the bed, not looking up from the book’s back cover.
“I want to investigate real cases. Properly. Not just read about fictional ones.” She sat up. “I want to join the CBI.”
Shyla stared at Radha and for a long moment she said nothing. Then she put the book down.
“So do I,” she said.
It was not a surprising admission. It was more like a recognition, something that had been building for years, now given words for the first time.
“Then we should write it down,” Radha said. “So we don’t forget. Then it becomes real.”
Without understanding the gravity of the statement, without understanding how their futures will pan out, without having the slightest idea about what they need to study to achieve their dreams, they decided to write it down. They took two sheets of paper from Shyla’s notebook, the good old Lekhak brand notebook, and they wrote. Slowly, carefully, in their best handwriting.
The note read:
Dream Pact:
We, Shyla Krishnamurthy and Radha Verma, promise that one day we will work on a real case and investigate it together. We will be honest, we will be brave, and we will find the truth no matter where it leads. This is our Dream Pact.
They both signed it by writing their names below the note. Then they exchanged papers, so each held the other’s original.
Shyla folded hers into her copy of And Then There Were None, where it would live for the next decades, moving from shelf to shelf, city to city, like a small paper compass always pointing in the same direction.
Radha tucked hers into her diary, which she kept under her pillow, the way all fourteen-year-olds kept their most important things.
~ ~ ~
The world, however, had opinions of its own.
When Shyla mentioned, at dinner one evening, that she wanted to join the CBI, the silence at the table had a specific quality, the silence of people rearranging their expressions before speaking.
“CBI?” her father said carefully. “Like investigations? Fieldwork?”
“Yes, Appa.”
Her parents exchanged a look. Her mother spoke first, and her mother being a psychiatrist, her words were chosen with clinical precision.
“Shyla, you are a girl with extraordinary ability in the sciences. We always imagined you in medicine. In a field where you can —”
“Help people?” Shyla offered.
“Yes. In a safe way. A respectable way.”
“CBI officers help people too, Amma.”
“That is not the same thing,” her father said, more firmly now. “Investigation work, field postings in dangerous situations, dealing with criminals, it is not a suitable profession for a young woman. It is not what we have worked for, not what we are educating you for —”
“You are educating me to think independently too,” Shyla said quietly. “and .. I am thinking.”
“We’ll cross the bridge when we get there. For now, focus on your studies Next year is an important milestone of SSLC. Prepare well for your 10th exam and do well.”, said her father, ending the conversation.
The dinner had ended in a stiff silence. But she had not stopped thinking.
At the Verma house, the conversation went differently but arrived at the same destination. Vikram, an IPS officer himself, understood the pull, he lived it. But understanding the pull did not mean he wanted it for his daughter.
“Radha,” he said, sitting across from Radha at the kitchen table, his large hands wrapped around his cup of post-dinner coffee. “I know this world. I know its demands. Irregular hours. Personal cost. I have seen it break good people. I want better for you.”
“You do this work,” Radha said.
“I am a man, Radha. It is different.”
“Is it, Appa? Really?”
He had no answer for that. He simply asked her to focus on her studies and reminded her that she should aim to do well in UPSC, the Union Public Service Commission examinations, the gateway to India’s civil services, and choose to join IAS, which was a better and more stable path. Become an IAS officer, he said. Administer. Govern. Serve people. Change things from positions of real authority.
Radha said nothing. But she kept her diary with the Dream Pact close.