Sarala Dasi’s corpse had lain undiscovered for more than twelve hours. And had it not been for some boys chancing upon it while playing truant from the village school, it would have probably remained unseen for much longer. Her body lay on its stomach, the smashed head twisted to one side. On the deserted path that connected the local zamindar’s estate, the Rajbari, with the rest of the village. Sarala, a cook and household help at the Rajbari, took that path once a week to walk back to the village. By the time her lifeless form was spotted, flies had already begun swarming all over it, playing a grotesque tune to accompany the stench of death.

All else forgotten, the boys gaped with horror-filled fascination at the dead woman’s splayed limbs, the open wound at the back of her head, where blood and brain matter had coagulated, and the sightlessly staring milky eyes. Then one of them saw a fly crawl out of her eye, recoiled and threw up his last meal. A spell seemed to be broken, and all the boys screamed in unison and ran towards the village, clutching their dhotis, to raise an alarm.

When Daroga Bansidhar Gupta arrived on the scene, he fought hard to control his nausea as the acrid smell of blood, urine and rotting flesh assailed his nostrils. Every time something like this happened, he would chide himself and try to bolster his courage, but invariably, his knees would tremble and bile would tickle the back of his throat. Finally, when he could no longer go on pretending to assess the surroundings, without running the risk of being thought a coward by his junior officer, he dropped to his haunches with a sigh to get a better view of the dead woman’s face. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed as he flapped his hands to move the flies. ‘Isn’t this Sarala Dasi? Isn’t she a cook at the Rajbari? Why, who could have done this to the poor girl?’ Then the corpulent daroga stood with some effort, pulled at his robust moustache and thought plaintively, Lord, help me! How am I ever going to get to the bottom of this?

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The evening just before having her head bashed, Sarala Dasi, in yet another instance of life’s cruel ironies, had felt her entire being swell with a rare sense of happiness. This despite the fact that the morning’s flurry of activities had left her feeling exhausted and tetchy. For kitchen hands like Sarala Dasi, the approaching Durga Puja celebrations meant monstrous amounts of work in the Rajbari kitchen. There was the incessant pounding, grinding, mashing, chopping and slicing of various kinds of spices, vegetables and fish. Then the scouring and scrubbing of heavy brass and copper utensils till every muscle hurt. Eyes and throat would burn with the thick smoke coming out of the large stoves.

And all this accompanied by the head cook Kamini’s angry glare and oft-repeated warnings about the reprisals that would follow any mistakes in the kitchen. Sarala had to bite her lips to prevent a fitting rejoinder from flying out of her mouth. She often fantasised about killing the battleaxe! If there was a boti big enough to do the task, Sarala would have happily sliced the woman into pieces like the aubergine she was about to chop.

By late afternoon, Sarala had felt a headache chafing the back of her eyes and announced that she would return the next day after visiting her house in the village. Ignoring Kamini’s huff of annoyance, she had stalked out of the kitchen and then walked slowly to her favourite place on the estate, the little pond, the pukur. That was where she would often go to rest her aching limbs and calm her agitated mind. It also happened to be the beginning of her favourite time of the day. The time when the sun, just before fading gradually, proclaimed its presence in a dazzling display of colours. Ma had once told her that it had a special name – godhuli or the hour when the cows returned home, stirring up dust with their restless hooves – and little Sarala had smiled dreamily.

Sitting on the banks of the pukur, she stretched out her legs and felt the water lapping against her feet. All around her, cicadas had begun their choric chirping. Frogs croaked at regular intervals, and tiny insects could be seen hovering right over the still surface of the pond water. Even the harsh cawing of the crows seemed to meld perfectly with the sweeter sounds of birds returning to their nests. It made her believe that life was full of possibilities. With a rapturous smile on her lips, Sarala leaned back on her hands, shut her eyes and inhaled the fragrance of the shiuli flowers that magically appeared at this time of the year to herald the arrival of the goddess. After a while, she placed her chin on her knee and thought about her precious secret, hugging it to herself.

Excerpted with permission from Stroke of Death, Shampa Roy, Hachette India.