Stuti Manda
Gitanjali Vedika, Hyderabad

“Sheetal! Did you check the list?” said Jwala; they were at the usual stationery store.

“Pencils, chart paper, paints.  Paints! You sure we need it as we are using chart paper. And, I thought we were going to make a 3D model of the Taj Mahal” said Sheetal.

“I thought we were going to make a giant volcano,” countered Jwala.  

Chandu uncle, who was observing them from the billing counter, wondered, “Always locking horns… how can they be friends? They are like apples and oranges. Sheetal likes dancing, and Jwala is a karate champion!”  His musings were interrupted by a customer wanting to checkout. The girl’s argument got heated quickly. “Fine, you can do your project with your ideas,”  said Sheetal and went out of the stationery store. 

Jwala stayed there for a while browsing through the shelves, randomly picked up one of the books with a familiar yet peculiar symbol and started mindlessly flipping through its pages. She was shaken out of absentmindedness when Chandu uncle suddenly snatched away that book. It seemed odd; in any case, it was time to head back so she, blurted an apology and left the store.

Meanwhile, Sheetal reached home, angrily she shut the door of her room. She sat down with one of her favourite books to get her mind off the fight and, in some time, dozed off. When she awoke, she felt terrible and decided to go to Jwala’s house to sort it out. Jwala opened the door, and in unison, both said, “We should go with your project.” They laughed and decided to go to Chandu uncle’s store to complete the shopping.

 They saw the police, barricades, and reporters when they reached, just like in the movies. They saw Jwala’s dad, DSP Vijay and went up to him. They were shocked when they heard that Chandu uncle was brutally murdered. 

During dinner, Jwala enquired, “Papa, why was Chandu uncle killed?” “We are not entirely sure, yet my team is looking into it, but you don’t worry,” said Vijay reassuringly.

“Such crimes,” he continued, “are generally related to illegal activities”. We have a suspicion that it relates to his illegal business. The gaming-gambling company.” “You and Sheetal hang out there a lot; you wouldn’t happen to know about the gaming operation that Chandu ran?” “No, No Papa, we never do such things.” said Jwala gingerly.

After dinner, she called Sheetal and told her the dinner conversation. “I think we should spill the beans to your dad,” said Sheetal immediately. “Ok fine,” said Jwala. A little while later, she saw that the lights were on in her parents’ bedroom and summoned the courage to knock. She confessed to her father that though they have occasionally played Chandu uncles’ games, they didn’t know anything about the gambling.

Jwala was determined to find out who killed Chandu uncle. So later in the week, on the night of their sleepover, she convinced  Sheetal to sneak into Chandu uncle’s store at night. When the constables stepped away to take a break, they entered the store through a window and started searching all the books on the shelves looking for that rare symbol. “Jwala, they might be hidden, right?” said Sheetal.

 “Yes, let’s check for any false walls or hidden compartments,” said Jwala. Knocking on the shelves, they found one of the hollows and when they pressed on it, the back of the shelf came undone to reveal a hidden compartment in the back with more books with the same markings and only random numbers in it.  They also found a bunch of ₹5 QR codes that they would need to log into the game for one session.

They took pictures quickly with their phone, put everything back and got out of the store just as the constables returned. They spent the rest of the night trying to decode the numbers. “Hey, Sheetal, did you get it?” “No, it doesn’t make sense. Who writes such stuff only numbers? It is so weird. It must be code.” said Sheetal.

“What if the numbers turned into letters?” blurted Jwala.

It was indeed possible; they tried the first entry in the book, which was ‘261626819 – 9261722223 1 lakh ^. When they first decoded it, it looked like many letters – ‘bfafbfhai’ they thought it was a jumbled word, but there was no luck.

They tried several combinations and possibilities, which seemed promising but didn’t fit all the lines in the book. Just as they were but to give up and call it a night, an idea struck Jwala, “What if 26 was A and 1 was Z? Chandu uncle could have switched the number of all the letters.” They decoded the numbers one more time, grouping two letters; they got ‘Akash’.  Excited and energized proceeded to the second set of numbers. ‘Rajeev’ is what they uncovered. So, the statement was ‘Akash – Rajeev – 1 lakh^ ’ the up arrow could possible mean winning, they hypothesized, based on what they had learnt from Jwala’s dad about the case.

The following day, they retold their last night’s adventure to Jwala’s dad, who was furious with girls to have left home late at night and that to without informing anyone, but equally proud of the fear duo. However, seeing how the girls wouldn’t drop the interest in the case, he decided to include them in the investigation under his watch this time. So they came up with a plan to find out if anyone else was supplying or selling the QR codes.

They casually asked around at school how to get the QR token now that Chandu uncle was gone, and soon they found out that a boy named Prakash from eighth grade was still playing the game. He had just played the game last night. Sheetal went up to him and asked, “Where did you find the codes?” he replied, “there is a guy near Banjara Park, he owns a cell phone repair shop, he supplied the codes to me. He says that he used to make the codes for Chandu uncle in the first place. Don’t tell anyone this; it is a secret.” Sheetal nodded and left. The next day they bunk school after the first break and headed to the Banjara Park

The store was not too hard to locate; they informed the shopowner Babu Bhaiya that Prakash had sent them and asked for the QR codes to play the game. Babu Bhaiya told them the game business was now taken over by Master Saab and offered to take them to him the next day. Jwala and Sheetal bunked school again and met Babu Bhaiya at his store at 11 am. He then proceeded to take them to Master Saab, who used a rundown wheat grinding store as his office. It was situated in a dingy bylane of the main road, almost impossible to locate unless you knew what to look for. He had guards posted all-around.

When Babu Bhaiya introduced the girls as customers who wanted to buy the token for the game, Master Saab took one look at them and felt they were a waste of his time. He didn’t believe that the girls would play video games, let alone place bets on it, which was the only thing he was interested in. So he scolded Babu for bringing him nonsense and told them to get lost.

Sensing that they reached a dead-end, Jwala got into action; she took the first guard’s hand and twisted it, making him groan in pain. Next, she punched the second guard in the stomach knocking him to the floor. Master Saab stood there stunned; before he could react, he was at the receiving end of Jwala’s flying feet and fists and knocked to the ground rolling in agony.

Just in time, Sheetal spotted some of the codes and grabbed them and together, they ran without looking back till they were back in the familiar, crowded surrounding of the primary street market.

It was 4:30 pm when they reached home out of breath but safe. After changing and a quick snack, the girls agreed to report to Jwala’s father what had happened through the day.

At first, he was furious; the girls had gone beyond what they had agreed and put themselves in direct danger. But Jwala argued with her father that if it weren’t for them, they would never have been able to find Babu Bhai and Master Saab, the new owner of the gaming business.

Hearing this, he cooled down a bit; he knew this was true; the way the girls got the information and got it undetected would not be possible for his team. So they handed him the QR codes they picked up from Master Saab’s place.

DSP Vijay arranged for the codes to be sent to the forensics to check the fingerprints.

And as suspected, they found the prints to be matching the ones on the crime scene.

Soon Master Saab was arrested for the murder of Chandu uncle. He later told the police that the gaming gambling business was getting impacted, and he had gone to confront Chandu about it.

Things got heated when Chandu made fun of him for being illiterate and told him that the gambling business is changed forever, and Master Saab couldn’t do anything about it.

That’s when in a fit of rage, Master Saab took out his dagger and stabbed Chandu multiple times.

 Thus, was revealed the courage and steadfastness of Jwala and Sheetal oblivious to one and all around them.