Sunday, January 19, 2014

The Pursuit

There he was, stealthily following her like a distant shadow. The subject to be followed was Sujatha, a 40 year old widow, having a successful business of selling show piece items along with interior designing. He had a two page summery of her life, which was quite inspiring. Sujatha was a straight forward Indian upper middle class entrepreneur, who made it big inspite of loosing her partner at a very young age. Wearing a simple Salwar and Jeans, she was instructing her subordinates, in her neat little factory. The place is in itself a well maintained one. She had her retail outlet in the residential area of the city. From his observation, it was clear that her entrepreneurial success depended on close interaction with the clients and their family. Her clientele mostly depended on good word of mouth.

Standing at an above average height, and gifted with average looks, it was a cake walk for him to camouflage in the crowd. His athletic physic helped him to be nimble and glide across without much muss. Though only 19, he had an ability to observe the minutest of details. Like his father, he was fascinated by people.  Everyone out there had a story to tell. This attracted him to a psychology major and a possible career following his father into private investigation or in the best case scenario, getting into international espionage. For about three years he had been sporadically assisting his father during his breaks in non-critical stake outs, making specific investigations for clients. This was the first time his father had entrusted him with a case all on his own. He could hardly contain his happiness and was determined to show his worth  to his father. The task at hand was fairly routine. Get a detailed report on the subject on her day today activities. He had no idea about the client and it is good not to know. Though sometimes its very hard not to be prejudiced, it was not his place to make judgments. Inspite of not being a necessity, he could not help himself from doing a mental personality profile on his subjects. He knew that for every story told there a few thousands untold.

For surveillance he always preferred 4 days. Thursday to Sunday from 8 AM to 9 PM. He had been following her 3 full days and this is the last day. There has been nothing spectacular happening the last three days. She had a stable life with nothing fishy happening, like most of the cases he was part of.  What interested him more was her personality. She was confident in her steps, self assured at the same time addressing people with a pleasant smile. One particular feature that impressed him  the most was that she had the same demeanor and mannerisms with everyone, irrespective of who they were, right from her watchman to her valued customers. Doing background checks was not part of his work, but he was pretty sure about how that would pan out for her - clean.

Sunday passed along with very little fuss. After her visit to the factory, she did some grocery shopping and it was just like a routine day. In fact he had to spend most of the day near her home. As the dawn broke, she was all dressed up and  took out her car. Some activity finally shook him off his slumber and got going in his two wheeler behind her. There was the first surprise for him. She parked outside his favorite restaurant. He followed her into the the restaurant and sat sat a few chairs behind her facing her. Then came in the biggest shock of all. A man in his mid 40s walked into the restaurant and joined her at the table. The man took out his phone and texted some one. The young detective's phone buzzed. " How do you like your new mother? Come and join us at the table!!"