Finding Salim nonchalant, Suresh tried to probe his mind to understand how one could turn a professional killer in the first place. While Salim cursed his ill luck for landing at the Tihar, he had no thought for those whom he had bumped off. It was as though they were no more for him than targets to be hit to the jackpot. What was so unfair in snuffing out someone’s life, as life itself had no sense of fairness about it? Those whom he had killed had died as they were destined to die. Why, had he missed his mark, wouldn’t have a speeding truck mowed them down in time?
And what was all the fuss about the fate of the deceased’s kith and kin? How can one be sure that they wouldn’t have welcomed the development? If a drunkard was bumped off, wouldn’t that have stopped his draining the family money any-more? Ha, what if an impotent was the assignment? Wouldn’t that have helped his wife’s sex life with her paramour sans qualms? What would even a well married woman have got to lose if the supariwidowed her? If young, some man would be too eager to enter into her life and were she old enough, she wouldn’t be missing her man anyway.
If the assignment was to bump off a woman, wouldn’t the widower be free to have a younger mate? The death of a parent should not make much of a difference to the children either, as anyway; they had to fend for themselves sooner than later. And that being the reality of the relationships, what was the hitch if some lost their lives at his hands? Besides, had it not been said that the dead have no problems? What mattered was to lead a carefree life as long as it took to live. But, the goddamn Tihar had robbed the charms of life from him.
‘Oh, isn’t crassness a part of life?’ thought Suresh. ‘Though lacking in morality, it seems, Salim’s crimes had a logic attached to them! Maybe, that is what crime is all about. Looks like it has a rationale of its own to evolve the dynamics of man’s undoing. But is it so with the so-called honor-killings of the unfortunate females whom the Cupid tends into the arms of lesser males across the caste barriers? What an irony is that men invest their honor in their women all the while treating them as vassals! What idiocy the honor-killing is - would it ever restore to the family the lost honor? Why, with the infamy of murder tagged to it, it only ensures a double jeopardy for the family, won't it?’