At that, Kavya wondered whether he would have selected her, even if she had called on him at the right time, he said that, if only she were inclined, time still beckoned her. While she kept quiet, as a prorogue to his narrative, he asked her if she could recall the serial killings of wealthy middle-aged women in the Langar Hauz area that shook the Hyderabadis five years back. Nodding her head, she said that she followed the intriguing killings in the press thinking then that some psychopathic misogamist, jilted by a wealthy woman, might have been behind them, and added that she always wondered what came out the case, as it never came to be reported.
He said that Mithya preferred to view those mysterious murders from the kaleidoscope of illicit affairs and so moved into that are Maya, the estranged wife of a wealthy man. When she befriended the gossiping housewives of the locality and as the response from them was on expected lines, soon she had drawn a list of cheating spouses, males and females alike, in that area. Since the resumes of the illicit couples that she presented hadn’t revealed the nerves of a killer as he was not inclined to pursue that investigative course, she shifted gears to get acquainted with the abused women of the area, and came to know about Haritha a middle-aged widow and Ramya her young step-daughter, both of whom in some way were constrained by an unusual will and testament that was still talked about then.
Shortly before his death, the deceased had bequeathed his considerable wealth, lo, to the would-be-born children of Ramya, his five-year old daughter from his first wife and made Haritha, his childless second wife, her guardian with an entitlement to enjoy the property. Venting his apathy towards his young wife, he willed that she would be entitled for a meager maintenance once Ramya bore a child, but were she to die childless then an orphanage he named would benefit out of his wealth. Adding insult to his wife’s injury, he conditioned his will, rather cruelly, that upon being widowed, were she to enter into a fresh nuptial, she would cease to be the Ramya’s guardian and all that goes with it. Well, as that will underscored mistrust and spelled malice, Mithya befriended Ramya, who in a moment of weakness made her privy to her intriguing life.
Widowed, at barely thirty, Haritha though seethed with a hapless rage at seeing the death-knell of a will, in time, to get even with the situation, she applied her mind to browbeat the imposition, and came up with an ingenious solution to bypass the will’s proposition. She brainwashed Ramya, six then, about the need to have a male in the house for their protection, and got her married to Rahul, a sixteen-year old, whom she readily seduced to cater to her own sexual needs. But coming of age, when Ramya realized that her man was her stepmother’s lover, she was at a loss to comprehend her position in her own house. Haritha, however, addressed the issue, so she thought, by letting Ramya consummate her marriage, when she was barely fourteen, but soon turning eager to have Rahul all for herself Ramya tried to wean him away from her stepmother’s grip, but to no avail. But once Ramya’s youth blossomed into womanhood that coincided with Haritha’s weaning charms, as Rahul started leaning towards his wife, the peeved woman took to throwing tantrums at them to rob their newfound marital bliss. While that prompted Rahul to lean towards his wife even more, pushing the embittered woman out of the unethical love triangle altogether, Haritha, left out thus, turned even more cynical towards Ramya, which made her wonder how to get out of the ordeal.