Satish made the call to Varanasi the next morning. The surviving member of the Pandey family was Kamla Devi — Virendra's niece, the daughter of his elder sister, now seventy-one years old and living in a narrow house in the Godauliya lane near Kashi Vishwanath. She was, Satish's contact said, "willing to talk but not willing to be filmed." Nidhi agreed.
They took Satish's motorcycle to the nearest town with a bus stand — eighteen kilometres of potholes and prayer — and caught a rattling UP Roadways bus to Varanasi. Three hours of diesel fumes and Hindi film songs played at the volume of an approaching apocalypse. By noon, they were in the galis of the old city, navigating the particular geometry of Varanasi's lanes — which followed no logic known to urban planning and seemed to have been designed by a drunk mathematician with a grudge against straight lines.
Kamla Devi's house was on the second floor, accessed through a staircase so narrow you had to turn sideways to climb it. The house itself was small and meticulously maintained — brass pots gleaming on shelves, tulsi plant on the balcony, photographs of deceased family members arranged on a wall with the careful hierarchy of a corporate org chart.
Kamla Devi was a small woman with white hair and a face that had once been beautiful and was now distinguished — the beauty hadn't left, it had matured into something harder and more permanent. She served them chai in steel glasses and sat on a low stool with the composed stillness of a woman who'd been waiting for this conversation for a long time.
"Aap Dohariya gayi hain," she said. Not a question.
"Ji."
"Aur Pandey house dekha."
"Bahar se. Andar nahi gayi."
Kamla Devi nodded slowly. "Andar mat jaiyega. Kabhi nahi."
"Taayi ji, mujhe samajhna hai — kya hua tha us raat. Aap Virendra ji ki bhateeji hain. Aapko pata hoga."
Kamla Devi was quiet for a long time. The sounds of Varanasi filtered in — temple bells, boat horns from the Ganga, a vendor selling bananas with the enthusiasm of a man who'd found enlightenment in potassium.
"Main tab gyaarah saal ki thi," she said. I was eleven then. "Bade papa ki shaadi thi. Pura khandaan aaya tha. Bahut khushi thi. Virendra chacha sab se chote the — mujhse sirf barah saal bade. Woh mere liye chacha nahi, bhaiya jaise the."
Virendra was like an elder brother to her. The wedding was a celebration.
"Chacha shaant rehte the. Padhte bahut the. Angrezi kitaabein, Sanskrit shlok, tantra ke granth. Haan —" She caught Nidhi's expression. "Tantra. Woh tantra mein interest rakhte the. Bachpan se. Us kamre mein — upar wala kamra — wahan unki kitaabein thin. Bahut saari. Mujhe ek baar dikhaya tha. Ek kitaab thi — haath se likhi hui, purani, pinjarein ki tarah peeli. Usme tasveerein thin. Mandalas. Yantras. Aur ek vidhi."
Virendra was interested in tantra. Since childhood. The room upstairs had his books. Old, handwritten. One book in particular — yellow with age, like a skeleton. With illustrations. Mandalas. Yantras. And a ritual.
