The Plunge Read Online Free PDF Page A

perfect housemate.
    When they had first seen the colony months back, both of them were instantly charmed by its unique design.
    The Village was designed by the town planners as a housing colony for artists from various fields: painters, sculptors, actors, musicians, and the like. It consisted of numerous clusters of small houses facing common courtyards. Each cluster had eight homes, more like cottages, humble two-room structures. All the houses looked similar and had tiled roofs. Some of them had garden areas.
    The open space in the middle of each cluster was a challenge to self-restraint. It was meant as a courtyard for the occupants, a sort of anteroom for every house, where people could meet in the mornings or evenings to chat, socialise, and live as a community.
    A few years after the colony was opened to the residents, the idea of community living was abandoned for good. Those who did not have a garden area invaded the commons. When their neighbours objected, it brought on hostility.
    Despite this, the place had a singular appeal. The tastefully conceived original design remained the basic structure of the colony. Most of the owners had rented out their houses. Now hardly twenty percent of the residents were artists. The rest were mostly bachelors, students, or working women like them.
    The colony was a quiet place. It reminded her of the place where Sue and Johnsy lived in the short story ‘The Last Leaf’, the O. Henry masterpiece. She imagined it was probably a similar place. The walls of some of the houses in the village had moss on them, just like the ones in the story.
    The story had a tragic climax. She felt sorry for the selfless artist, who died helping a sick colleague come out of a hunch. He was out in the storm a whole night painting a leaf on their neighbour’s wall to keep his friend alive. Johnsy? Or was it Sue? Whoever it was, her irrational belief, that the fall of the last leaf would mean her death, had instead killed him. Did he fall from the ladder? She could not remember.
    Why did people pick up stubborn delusions?
    A strange obsession kept a homeless woman busy in the lane outside their office. The beggar constantly drove away an imaginary something that she thought was hovering over her head. She had unkempt, short, grey hair, most of it covered with a scarf. Was it a swarm of bees or just one bee that bothered her? Or was it some disturbing thought from her past, maybe a horrid event in her life?
    “Don’t look if it troubles you so much,” Priya would tell her each time. “Why worry about something you can’t change?”
    When Anjali was about to leave for work, Parvati arrived. The housemaid prepared upma and tea for her. The fried grams, curry leaves and dried red chillies sizzled on being tossed in the hot mustard oil, releasing their assorted aroma. It made her hungry. The maid had started mopping the floor when she left the house for her office in Mumbai.
    The station was somewhat crowded when she returned to it. Commuters at that hour were mostly students. The scarcely occupied compartment would have more passengers by the time the 1:20 p.m. local reached midway, from Vashi station.
    There were only two other passengers in the first-class ladies’ compartment. An elderly woman was reading Mid Day , the popular Mumbai tabloid, at the far end. A young woman was occupied in texting on her mobile from the seat across hers.
    Did Siddharth reply? And, did he really love her? She willed her mind to unfailingly answer to her liking. It made her happy when she believed that they were lovers.
    Both the women got down at Vashi. A bunch of schoolchildren entered. She knew they did not carry first-class tickets, but did not mind them being there. It was safer with them around. The entire compartment would be empty without them.
    It was barely two months since a shocking incident on a local train had created a fear psychosis in women commuters. A drunken man had raped a young girl in an