Drishan Nnaskar
1
The dawn broke over Kolkata with a muted hush, as though the city itself was reluctant to wake. From the eastern bank of the Hooghly, the mist still clung to the river like an old, grey shawl, and the metallic silhouette of Howrah Bridge loomed above, carrying the rumble of early trams and the shuffle of weary commuters. Fishermen pushed out their boats, calling softly to one another, while stray dogs barked at the rising sun. It was one of these fishermen who first saw the shape drifting in the water, just below the shadow of the bridge. At first glance, it might have been a bundle of jute sacks loosened from a dock, but as the current turned the body, its pale face surfaced, eyes half open, lips swollen from the river’s embrace. A small crowd gathered quickly at the ghat, murmurs growing into a wave of speculation. Some muttered prayers, some whispered curses, and most simply shook their heads and declared what they all assumed to be true: another poor soul who had chosen the river as his grave.
When Detective Arindam Sen arrived, his steps were slow, almost reluctant. His reputation as a diligent officer had been overshadowed in recent years by exhaustion, both professional and personal. Yet something in the tone of the constable’s report had compelled him to come himself. Standing on the slippery steps of the ghat, he studied the corpse as it was pulled from the water. The man was middle-aged, dressed in the rough cotton of a laborer, his hands calloused, his nails rimmed with grime that even the river had not erased. To the untrained eye, it was the simple end of a simple life — a man pushed too far by hunger or debt. But Arindam’s gaze lingered on the faint bruising around the neck, a livid mark that contrasted sharply with the bloated skin. He crouched closer, ignoring the murmurs behind him, and noticed the unnatural angle of the jaw, the rigid stiffness of fingers clenched as though the man had fought back. It was enough to stir a flicker of the old instincts in him, the kind that refused to be lulled by appearances.
The constables were already filling out their reports, ready to close the case as suicide. Arindam remained silent for a long time, his eyes drifting from the body to the river beyond, where boats cut across the water with lazy precision. The Hooghly was deceptive — it held everything, from offerings of flowers and lamps to corpses surrendered by desperate hands. It carried secrets as easily as it carried silt, swallowing truth until it resurfaced in unexpected places. As the morning light grew brighter, Arindam straightened, his weary face shadowed by the bridge above. “Not suicide,” he murmured to himself, too quietly for the crowd to hear. “Someone wanted it to look like one.” The words hung heavy in his chest, carrying both certainty and foreboding. Around him, the crowd began to disperse, satisfied with their conclusion, but Arindam knew he was standing at the edge of something far larger. What had begun as another routine dawn on the riverbank was already darkening into a mystery that would pull him deeper into the Hooghly’s shadow than he had ever intended to go.
2
The morgue at the city hospital smelled of disinfectant, damp stone, and something metallic that clung stubbornly to the air no matter how many times the attendants scrubbed the tiles. Detective Arindam Sen stood at the foot of the steel table, arms folded, as the pathologist, Dr. Basu, worked with his usual detached precision. The harsh white light illuminated every angle of the dockworker’s corpse, stripping away the dignity of the man who had once lived and replacing it with the cold, clinical fact of death. “Typical case,” muttered one of the young assistants, jotting notes without looking up. But Arindam kept his eyes fixed on the doctor’s gloved hands, his mind heavy with the unease that had followed him from the riverbank. The body was battered by the river’s current, yes, but there were marks that water alone could not explain. He leaned forward slightly, his jaw tightening, as Dr. Basu paused over the bruises that ringed the throat in a cruel half-circle.
“Ligature marks,” Basu confirmed quietly, running a finger along the discolored skin. “Not rope. Something thinner. A wire, perhaps. Strangled before being dropped into the water.” He gestured to the lungs next, their texture revealing a truth hidden from casual eyes. “He drowned, yes, but not in the Hooghly. There’s a chemical residue in the airways. Likely stagnant water, mixed with something else… possibly from a storage tank.” He removed his gloves and sighed, his professionalism slipping for a moment. “This was no suicide, Arindam. Someone wanted him dead, and they went to lengths to stage it.” The words were both a confirmation and a burden. Arindam felt the weight settle deeper in his chest, as though the river had reached out from the morgue walls to claim him too. The dockworker had not chosen the Hooghly as his grave; he had been offered to it. And that meant the killer, whoever he was, knew the river well enough to use its reputation as a mask.
Later, outside the sterile chill of the morgue, Arindam lit a cigarette despite the hospital’s protests and leaned against the faded green wall of the courtyard. The smoke curled upward into the sultry September sky, but it did little to steady his thoughts. He thought of the crowd at the ghat, how quickly they had turned away from the body, dismissing it as yet another casualty of despair. Kolkata was a city too used to death, and the Hooghly had always been its accomplice. Yet this death was different. The bruises on the man’s throat, the chemical traces in his lungs — they pointed to hands that killed with precision, not passion. It wasn’t random violence. It was deliberate, practiced. As Arindam exhaled slowly, the question gnawed at him: why kill a dockworker in such a careful manner? He knew he would need to return to the riverfront, to the warehouses and ghats where men like Jiten Das labored and drank and whispered. Somewhere along those damp alleys and crumbling walls lay the shadow of the killer, and Arindam would have to step into that darkness, weary though he was, because the river had already carried him into its current.
3
The lanes around the Kidderpore docks were alive with their usual morning chaos — the creak of wooden carts, the clang of iron chains, the salty tang of the river carried on a humid breeze. Men shouted over each other as they hauled crates and sacks, their sweat mixing with the dust of coal and jute that seemed to hang permanently in the air. Detective Arindam Sen moved through it with deliberate calm, his tired eyes scanning faces that flickered between curiosity and caution at the sight of a police officer in their midst. He was used to this silence, the kind that spread like oil on water whenever law and authority intruded into the working-class corners of the city. But he also knew that silence had a way of cracking if you pressed long enough. He asked questions about Jiten Das, the dead man, but most workers shook their heads quickly, muttering that he was a good fellow, quiet, never caused trouble. The more they insisted he was ordinary, the more certain Arindam became that Jiten’s last days had been anything but.
It was in a small tea stall, tucked between a warehouse wall and the edge of the jetty, that he finally found someone willing to speak. The stall owner, an older man with a milky eye and hands stained from years of brewing, remembered Jiten clearly. “He stopped coming here the last week,” the man said, pouring steaming chai into cracked glasses. “Before that, he was restless. Kept looking over his shoulder, as if someone followed him. I asked him once — he only smiled and said, ‘Some things you shouldn’t see.’” His words made the air feel heavier, the din of the docks dimming around Arindam. He pressed gently, and another dockworker, a wiry man named Haru, finally admitted what others were too afraid to. Jiten had confided, in drunken whispers after a long shift, that he had stumbled upon something near the ghats late one night. Men unloading crates under cover of darkness, crates that never made it into the official records. When Haru urged him to keep quiet, Jiten had nodded — but the fear in his eyes had told another story.
Arindam left the docks with the river breeze clinging to his coat, his mind buzzing with fragments of truth and rumor. A dockworker with no enemies, no debts, no vices — except that he had seen something he should not have. The city’s underbelly often revealed itself through the cracks of ordinary lives, and it seemed Jiten Das had tripped into such a crack, never to return. As Arindam lit a cigarette on the edge of the pier, he gazed out at the Hooghly’s broad surface, deceptively calm beneath the morning sun. Boats slid across it as if nothing had changed, but he knew the river was only the stage; the real play unfolded in shadows, in warehouses and hidden corners where men moved goods meant never to be noticed. If Jiten had been silenced to protect those shadows, then the detective’s own search for the truth had already painted a target on his back. The Hooghly’s waters whispered against the stone steps, and Arindam felt the uneasy certainty that the river had more secrets to deliver, each one darker than the last.
4
The Hooghly was different at night. The day’s noise drained from its banks, replaced by the rhythmic slap of oars and the distant hum of the city muffled beneath the fog. Detective Arindam Sen stood on the jetty, the glow of a kerosene lamp throwing long shadows across the water. He had been told that a boatman named Subal often ferried dockworkers late into the night and knew more about the river than any man alive. Subal appeared at last, stepping lightly from his worn wooden dinghy, his frame lean but hardened by years on the water. His eyes, dark and restless, searched Arindam’s face before settling on the policeman’s badge. “You’re asking about Jiten Das,” he said flatly, as though the words themselves had been waiting on his tongue. When Arindam nodded, Subal exhaled sharply, his shoulders sinking with the weight of memory. “I ferried him three nights before he died. He was trembling. Kept saying he’d seen things he shouldn’t.”
They sat on overturned crates by the river’s edge, the lamp flickering between them, and Subal spoke in low tones as if the river might overhear. On that night, after dropping Jiten at the southern ghats, Subal had lingered with his boat tied to a post. From the darkness, he heard men speaking in harsh whispers. He could not see their faces, but he saw shadows shifting as heavy crates were moved from a larger vessel onto smaller boats. The words he caught froze him in place — mentions of “cargo” and “routes,” names of ships he recognized, but none that were listed for docking that week. When he shifted on his oar, the wood creaked, and the voices fell silent. One man cursed, another barked orders, and Subal felt an instinctive terror he hadn’t known since boyhood. He rowed away quickly, his heart thundering, but he knew Jiten must have seen the same thing. The next morning, Jiten had begged him not to speak of it. Subal had agreed — and days later, Jiten was dead.
Arindam studied the boatman, weighing his fear against his honesty. Subal’s hands trembled as he ran them across the rough wood of his oar, but his voice, though unsteady, held conviction. “I’ve lived on this river all my life, babu,” he said, eyes glinting in the dim light. “It gives, it takes, but it never lies. Jiten didn’t die by accident. They killed him because he knew too much. And now I’ve told you, I can’t take it back.” His words lingered in the night air, merging with the sound of water lapping against the stone steps. Arindam felt the burden of responsibility press heavier on his shoulders — not just for justice, but for the man beside him, who had just risked his own life by speaking aloud what others dared only whisper. “Stay cautious,” Arindam told him, though he knew the advice was hollow. The river had already marked them both. As Subal pushed his dinghy back into the current, Arindam stood watching, the bridge lights glittering above like watchful eyes. For the first time in years, he felt the pull of a case that was more than duty — it was a reckoning. The Hooghly had offered him a confidant in the most unlikely of men, and together they were stepping into the shadows it guarded so jealously.
5
The Hooghly by dusk carried a different rhythm — a heavy quiet beneath the hum of ferries, as if the river itself anticipated nightfall’s secrets. Detective Arindam Sen and Subal rowed silently along the eastern bank, the boatman’s steady oars slicing through the darkening water. They had chosen to move without official sanction; Arindam knew the bureaucracy would suffocate the case before it even drew breath, and Subal, bound by his oath to Jiten’s memory, needed no persuasion. They passed stretches of ghats littered with flower garlands and broken idols, drifting closer to the warehouses that loomed like silent sentinels. A faint light glowed behind the shutters of one, and as they drew nearer, muffled sounds reached them — the thud of crates being shifted, the scrape of metal against stone. Subal nodded grimly; it was the same warehouse where he had once overheard voices in the dark.
They pulled the boat into a recess beneath the jetty, hidden by stacks of abandoned planks. From there, Arindam watched as men moved with practiced efficiency, transferring cargo from a covered lorry to the warehouse interior. The crates bore no markings, yet their careful handling betrayed value — not jute, not coal, but something far less ordinary. He noted the presence of armed guards, their movements casual but their eyes sharp, scanning the river as though expecting intruders. Subal’s breath grew shallow beside him, but Arindam laid a hand on his arm, signaling patience. As they watched, a larger truck arrived, its headlights briefly illuminating the yard. A figure stepped out — tall, well-dressed, a cigarette glowing between his fingers. He barked orders in clipped Bengali, his tone commanding obedience. This was no common smuggler; this was a man accustomed to power, cloaked in respectability by day and in shadow by night. The scene played out like a hidden play, rehearsed and precise, designed to leave no trace for the law.
But even shadows cast ripples. One of the guards spotted movement near the waterline, perhaps just a stray dog, but the suspicion was enough. A shout went up, flashlights swept the bank, and Arindam motioned urgently to Subal. They pushed the boat back into the current, rowing with practiced silence as beams of light danced across the ripples where they had just been. Shouts followed, and for a tense moment, it seemed discovery was inevitable. Yet the river, wide and merciful, carried them into deeper darkness, swallowing the evidence of their presence. They did not speak until the lights had faded behind them, the warehouses shrinking into indistinct silhouettes. Arindam exhaled at last, his face set in grim resolve. “This is no small gang,” he muttered, half to himself. “This is an operation.” Subal’s knuckles were white against the oar, his voice low but firm. “Then you and I have seen too much already.” As they drifted beneath the looming bridge, its iron girders rising against the night sky, Arindam felt the full weight of the task ahead. They had glimpsed only the edges of a vast web, one that reached far beyond the docks and deep into the city’s marrow. The Hooghly, silent and endless, seemed to whisper its warning: those who followed shadows on its waters often did not return.
6
Kolkata wore its respectability like a starched white kurta, crisp on the outside, fraying at the seams within. Detective Arindam Sen knew this better than most as he pored over shipping manifests in the dimly lit police records room. Ink-stained registers lay stacked like forgotten relics, pages filled with neat lines of arrivals and departures — vessels accounted for, cargoes declared, duties paid. Yet when cross-checked against what he had glimpsed at the warehouse, the neatness began to crack. Ships that had supposedly never docked bore the same names whispered by Subal, while containers listed as “machinery parts” reappeared in inconsistent tallies. It was a labyrinth of paper designed not to reveal truth but to conceal it, the handiwork of men with influence high enough to bend bureaucracy into camouflage. As he traced the names, a pattern emerged — companies with spotless reputations in the day, their owners known for charity, politics, or business acumen, yet here their vessels floated in the margins of legality. Arindam leaned back, rubbing his weary eyes, and realized with a grim twist of the stomach that he was staring at the architecture of an international smuggling ring.
Meanwhile, Subal lived his days on the river with a growing unease. Every creak of his dinghy, every shadow on the ghats seemed like an omen. He ferried passengers with the same steady strokes, but his ears caught fragments of conversation — dock thugs bragging of “cargo runs,” clerks whispering about sudden wealth, foreign names spoken with hurried reverence. He carried these whispers back to Arindam, who listened in silence, piecing them into the larger puzzle. Together, they began to understand the machinery of the ring: cargoes smuggled upriver under the cover of night, distributed through hidden warehouses, laundered into the city’s veins by men who lived in sprawling houses far from the stench of the docks. It was not only contraband — cigarettes, liquor, jewels — but weapons, too, their origins masked, their destinations unknown. The scope unsettled Arindam; this was no ordinary criminal network but a syndicate stretching beyond borders, feeding on Kolkata’s position as a gateway city.
Their investigation, however, did not go unnoticed. One evening, as Arindam walked home along a rain-slicked lane, two men stepped from the shadows, their bodies blocking the narrow path. Their words were casual, their smiles thin, but the threat was unmistakable: “Leave the river alone, babu. It swallows more than it gives.” Subal too found a warning tied crudely to the oar of his boat — a piece of rope knotted into a noose. The message was clear: they were trespassing into waters guarded by ruthless hands. Yet fear, instead of driving them apart, bound the two men closer. In the damp corners of a riverside tea stall, Arindam unrolled maps of the city’s docks, marking the warehouses and lanes that stitched the operation together. Subal leaned over, tracing routes he knew by heart, pointing out places where crates were hidden and boats moored without notice. The river flowed endlessly outside, as though listening to their plotting. And in that moment, both men understood that they were no longer simply chasing a murder — they were unraveling a web spun so wide that stepping further meant entangling themselves in it forever.
7
The riverfront awoke to whispers before it awoke to labor. Men gathered in tight knots at the tea stalls, their voices low, eyes darting nervously toward the water as if the Hooghly itself might overhear them. Another dockworker had gone missing — a man named Mohan, who had shared drinks with Jiten Das just days before his death. His cot at the workers’ quarter lay untouched, his belongings still folded neatly, as if he had simply evaporated into the fog. When Detective Arindam Sen arrived, the men fell silent, their lips pressed into thin lines of fear. He questioned them one by one, but all he received were shrugs and hollow denials. The silence was more telling than their words; it was not loyalty but terror that kept them quiet. Someone had made an example of Mohan, just as they had of Jiten, and the others understood the message. On the Hooghly, to speak was to invite the river to claim you.
That same evening, the city’s dread deepened when the lifeless body of a warehouse clerk was discovered behind a crumbling godown, his throat cut clean, his pockets emptied. Officially, it was dismissed as a robbery, but Arindam recognized the signature — swift, efficient, staged. These were not random killings but calculated silences, carefully imposed on those who strayed too close to forbidden truths. Subal, who had accompanied Arindam to the scene, stared at the blood-soaked ground with hollow eyes. “They’re tightening their grip,” he muttered, his voice shaking. “First Jiten, then Mohan, now this… they’re warning everyone.” Arindam nodded grimly, though his mind churned with frustration. He could sense the web tightening not just around the dockworkers but around himself and Subal as well. The city’s police bureaucracy, bound by invisible chains of corruption, seemed unwilling to act; superiors shrugged at his reports, hinting with veiled words that the matter was “sensitive” and better left alone. Each refusal added weight to Arindam’s conviction that the rot reached higher than he had dared to imagine.
Back in his flat, Arindam sat at his desk long after midnight, files and scribbled notes spread across the table, the faint hum of ceiling fans mixing with the distant honk of trams. His cigarette smoke curled toward the cracked ceiling as he reread names, dates, cargo entries, cross-referencing them with the whispered accounts Subal had carried from the ghats. A pattern emerged — each missing man had either seen, heard, or handled shipments that were not meant to exist. They were pawns sacrificed to protect a king still cloaked in anonymity. Arindam felt the familiar fatigue press against his chest, but beneath it burned a stubborn fire. He thought of Jiten’s bruised throat, of Subal’s trembling voice by the river, of Mohan’s empty cot. He knew the cost of pushing forward, yet he also knew that turning away would condemn more men to vanish into silence. Beyond the cracked windowpane, the Hooghly gleamed faintly under the moonlight, carrying both menace and promise in its tide. And though the city slept, Arindam understood that he had crossed the threshold of no return. The price of silence was death — and he could no longer afford to be silent.
8
The storm came without warning, rolling across the city in waves of thunder that rattled the tin rooftops and drowned the streets in sheets of rain. Detective Arindam Sen pulled his coat tighter as he hurried through the alleys near the Strand, his footsteps splashing in muddy water that licked at his ankles. Subal walked beside him, oar in hand as if it were a weapon, the boatman’s eyes sharp with unease. They had been summoned by a trusted informant, a dock clerk who claimed he had proof — documents linking one of the warehouses to shipments routed through Singapore and Dubai. The man had begged Arindam to meet him by the riverside godown at midnight, insisting he could not risk daylight. Despite the storm, Arindam had agreed. Truth seldom arrived in comfort, and this lead felt too vital to ignore. The rain plastered their clothes to their skin, the Hooghly churned with restless waves, and the city seemed to hold its breath as the two men pressed on into the night.
The godown loomed at the edge of the river, its corrugated roof gleaming slick under the downpour. A single lantern flickered in the doorway, casting a fragile circle of light in the darkness. Inside, the shadows seemed to shift with the storm’s rhythm, but the clerk was nowhere to be seen. Arindam called softly, his voice swallowed by the rain. Then came the sound — the click of metal against metal — followed by the sudden flare of torchlight blinding them. Figures emerged from the gloom, six, maybe seven men, their silhouettes hard and certain. The informant stepped forward at last, his face pale and tight, his eyes avoiding Arindam’s. “I had no choice,” he whispered hoarsely. “They would have killed me.” Before Arindam could respond, the thugs closed in, their blades glinting in the lamplight, their voices thick with menace. Subal shoved himself in front of the detective, gripping his oar like a staff, the rainwater dripping down his face like streaks of steel.
What followed was chaos — the crack of wood against bone, the flash of knives in the stormlight, the sickening thud of fists. Arindam fought with the desperation of a man who knew defeat meant disappearance, grappling one attacker to the ground while another swung wildly at his head. Subal moved with the fury of the river itself, his oar striking clean and true, sending men stumbling into the mud. But numbers overwhelmed them, and for a breathless moment it seemed the night would end with both their bodies offered to the Hooghly. Then, as lightning split the sky, Subal seized Arindam’s arm and dragged him toward the riverbank. Together they plunged into the black water, the rain pelting their faces as they clung to the current. Behind them, shouts echoed from the godown, but the storm drowned pursuit, carrying the two men downstream like broken branches. They surfaced at last near the ghats, gasping, battered, but alive. Subal coughed violently, his knuckles bloodied, his voice hoarse but steady. “We can’t trust anyone now,” he said, his eyes blazing through the rain. Arindam, shivering in his soaked coat, nodded grimly. The betrayal had stripped away the last of their illusions. They were no longer chasing shadows; they were hunted by them.
9
The air along the burning ghats was thick with smoke and incense, the mingled scent of sandalwood pyres and damp earth rising into the night. Flames danced in uneven rows, their orange glow flickering across the dark river, where the Hooghly swallowed ash and bone with indifferent calm. Detective Arindam Sen and Subal moved quietly among the shadows, their clothes still damp from the storm, their bodies aching from the ambush. They had tracked whispers to this place — a rumor that the next smuggler’s shipment would be passed off under cover of the funeral fires, the perfect disguise for crates moved in the night. From the shelter of a crumbling wall, they watched men in oilskin coats unloading boxes from a low, broad boat, the firelight flickering across their strained faces. Around them, mourners carried bodies to the flames, priests chanted prayers, and yet within that solemnity, crime pulsed unabated. Arindam felt a chill not from the night air but from the audacity of it — the blending of sacred ritual with ruthless commerce.
The operation unfolded with terrifying precision. The crates, stacked hastily but carefully, bore no markings, their anonymity their strength. Trucks idled on the road above the ghats, engines muted, waiting to swallow the cargo once it was ferried up the steps. Among the workers, Arindam spotted the tall figure he had glimpsed once before — the man with the commanding voice, now cloaked in the authority of a conductor orchestrating his orchestra. He barked orders, and men obeyed without question, their movements rehearsed like dancers on a stage. Subal clenched his fists, his breath ragged as he whispered, “This is where Jiten saw them… this is what he died for.” The fires roared higher as if echoing his fury, sparks flying skyward, mingling with the black smoke that smeared the stars. Arindam pulled him back, forcing calm into his voice. “Not yet. If we strike now, we’re finished. We need to see who else is pulling the strings.” His words were steady, but his pulse throbbed in his ears, every instinct urging him to act.
Their restraint lasted only minutes. A mourner carrying a torch stumbled close to their hiding place, his light falling across Arindam’s face. A shout followed, sharp and cutting through the chants of the priests. In an instant, the scene exploded — men turned with knives and rifles, the trucks roared to life, and the pyres seemed to burn brighter as chaos spread. Arindam drew his revolver, firing into the air, the crack startling both smugglers and mourners alike. Subal charged with his oar, swinging fiercely, scattering men like driftwood before a flood. The clash unfolded amid fire and smoke, the sacred and the profane colliding in a frenzy of violence. Crates toppled, spilling weapons that gleamed in the firelight, confirmation of everything Arindam had feared. The ringleader vanished into the confusion, slipping away with the practiced ease of a man who had eluded justice before. By the time the police reinforcements arrived — too late, as always — the ghats lay in ruin, flames still consuming their dead as bodies, both innocent and guilty, littered the stones. Arindam stood with Subal at the water’s edge, their chests heaving, their faces streaked with ash and sweat. Above them, the pyres roared, as though the city itself was offering judgment. The Hooghly swallowed the blood and ashes alike, silent witness to a night where crime and ritual burned together.
10
Dawn broke pale and weary over the Hooghly, its waters swollen from the night’s rain, its current moving with a restless urgency. Detective Arindam Sen stood on the deck of a borrowed launch, the cold air biting through his damp coat, his revolver heavy at his side. Beside him, Subal rowed with grim determination, guiding them toward the midstream where a cargo vessel waited. This was no ordinary boat; it was sleek, foreign-built, its deck bristling with armed men. The final shipment was being loaded — crates hauled with mechanical precision, shadows of power moving behind the scenes. Arindam’s informants had been right: this was the heart of the syndicate, the place where the threads converged. And tonight, or rather this morning, would be their reckoning. As they drew closer, he saw him again — the ringleader, his sharp profile unmistakable in the grey light. Not just a smuggler but a respected businessman, a man who shook hands with ministers by day and trafficked weapons by night. The sight confirmed what Arindam had feared all along: the rot was not at the bottom, it was rooted high above.
The confrontation erupted quickly. Shouts rang out as the smugglers spotted the launch, rifles raised, shots cracking across the water. Arindam fired back, ducking low as splinters flew, the smell of gunpowder mixing with the damp river air. Subal steered hard, the little launch weaving through the current, closing the gap even as bullets punched holes in the wooden sides. They climbed aboard the vessel amid the chaos, fists and steel clashing against oar and revolver. Arindam fought with a fury sharpened by exhaustion, his body driven more by resolve than strength. Subal swung his oar like a soldier’s staff, felling men who underestimated the boatman’s ferocity. In the confusion, Arindam cornered the ringleader near the prow. For a moment, the two men locked eyes — one weary with the burden of justice, the other cold with arrogance. “You can’t stop the river,” the smuggler sneered, his voice steady even as his empire trembled. Arindam’s reply was a single shot, the bullet grazing the man’s shoulder, sending him staggering backward. He clutched the railing for balance, but the river had already claimed its due. With a final slip, he toppled into the churning water, his cry swallowed whole by the Hooghly.
The battle ended as swiftly as it began. Some of the smugglers fled into the mist, others were taken down when police boats, summoned by Arindam’s last desperate call, finally arrived. But the mastermind was gone, consumed by the same river he had exploited. Standing at the edge of the vessel, Arindam watched the ripples spread outward, the waters closing over the man’s fate as though nothing had happened. Subal joined him, his face streaked with blood and sweat, his breath heavy but steady. Together, they stood in silence, the dawn sun struggling through the haze, painting the river in muted gold. Justice, Arindam knew, was imperfect — the papers would write half-truths, the politicians would cover their tracks, and the syndicate’s roots would survive in corners he could not reach. Yet for Jiten Das, for Mohan, for the nameless clerk, and for all who had been silenced, this was something. The Hooghly had judged in its own way, delivering retribution beyond courts and signatures. As the city stirred awake behind them, Arindam lit a cigarette, his hands trembling slightly, while Subal dipped his oar into the water, guiding them back toward the ghats. The river flowed on, eternal and unbothered, carrying away secrets and blood alike — its shadows a reminder that in Kolkata, nothing ever truly disappeared, only waited to resurface.
End
