What did Tashi do?

 The man scrolled through the photographs he had saved in his protected folder. It disappointed him slightly; he had seen them all and used them to his heart’s content.He needed more, and he needed them soon.He remembered the woman’s name well. All he had to do was check her Instagram profile. He typed her name in the search bar and pressed enter. When he saw the first thumbnail among the search results, a primal excitement spread in his loins.It was her. And her profile was public.Greed and anticipation making his heart beat faster, he went through the selfies, sunsets, and quotes till he came across a photograph she had uploaded seven weeks back. It was a no-make-up selfie of the woman with her mother. “Chilling at home with mom,” the caption read.What interested the man the most was the location along with the caption. He clicked on the map link and opened a photographic view of her street: he noted she lived in a twelve-story apartment.“Sweet,” he thought, as he

  One click and you’re done A ray of sunlight broke through the mullioned window and cast a checkerboard of brilliant morning light across Tashi’s bed. She raised a hand to cover her face, eyelids fluttering for a while, then opening. She sat up and stretched her arms, taking in the familiar sounds of the cooing pigeons nesting above her window. For a moment, she couldn’t quite place the strange heaviness in her heart. She blinked several times to clear the veil of slumber from her eyes. Slowly, bits and pieces of the happenings of the previous night came back. She had gone to bed late last night, and in her sleep-deprived state, she allowed herself a small hope that maybe all of last night was a bad dream, the product of her paranoia. She held her breath and checked her phone. The last email on it was “If you don’t listen to what I tell you, I’ll mail your naked pictures to everyone who is even remotely connected to you professionally. I’ll destroy your ca

  The gods must have been laughing It was raining outside. Frail arms closed about her drawn-up knees, head lowered, sheathed in limp hair that hadn’t been washed in days, Tashi wept. Her sobbing helped her withdraw into herself, to seek solace in a place deep within that was unrelenting and unforgiving. Her phone lay forgotten by her side, the screen flashing with four unread emails from the blackmailer. Over the past three weeks, her tormentor had kept her constantly on the edge, but today – with a single text message showing her just how close by he was, he had shaken her entire world. The thin line that blurred her reality from the horror online was shattered, and she had no hope of turning back. This thought felt heavy as a sack full of rocks on her frail heart. Unbidden, her mind conjured up a memory of Akash’s trembling voice on the phone. He had been bold in suggesting they go to the police, but he hadn’t contacted her during the next few days. She

  The only way out of this mess Sleep is an enemy these days, it hardly stops by where I lay - staring at the ceiling, heart beating in rhythm to the relentless ticking of time- as the hands of the clock gouge my face like fingernails made of steel. My thoughts flow out in black rivers:some get lost in the darkness beneath my eyes,and some come back to haunt me -words stripped of meaning clogging my veins,making my heart stop,choking me up as I try to take one desperate lungful of airbefore I go down,before I lose myself. The sun has lost significance- it comes up and goes down at will,but my world remains dark all the same.The bed, these sheets, my heart, this painare all I have,and these words - that shatter the silence into a billion shards,with jagged edges I could slash my wrists with. But escape is not an optionand release is not going to be easy.I am going to go somedaybut the world i

  It is a dead end Tashi was seated in the Delhi Police Cyber Crime Cell, wearing a simple green shirt with blue jeans, her hands folded neatly on her lap. Her mother, who had accompanied her to the police station, was waiting outside. Tashi sat across from Inspector Indrajit Bhowmick, with his scarred, yet polished desk separating them.  The inspector had a spacious office lined with shelves full of old folders and creased paperbacks in different colours. A golden framed logo was hung on the wall behind the inspector’s chair with shiny letters proclaiming: ‘Satyameva Jayate’ – ‘Truth alone triumphs.’ His window looked onto the street outside, with a tiny fraction of the iron sky visible from where she sat. Tashi glanced at an odd series of clouds. They looked like misshapen chimaeras breathing ashen fire onto the world.Presently, he was leafing through a file of her case, with several lines he had jotted down during their past hour of interrog