Fiction: When a Delhi tabloid editor is poisoned, everyone is puzzled. Who would want to kill him?

Anika Kapoor was an attractive woman in her early forties. She was very slim and always wore clothes that looked simple but were actually unfathomably expensive. They hung just so, and she moved in them with a rather arrogant grace. She had long hair that fell almost down to her waist, the one jarring note in her otherwise modern silhouette. She thought the hair made her distinctive. And, somehow, in a country full of women with long, straight hair, it did.

She had taken her time today coming into the office. She had pushed this upcoming meeting out of her mind – it was a skill she had subconsciously acquired over the years, the ability to distract herself with various sundries while something unpleasant lay ahead. Sometimes in her procrastination, she found that by the time she got around to it, the unpleasant thing had just gone away. And so, she picked her clothes with care, and ate her breakfast, such as it was, slowly. She stopped for more coffee.

But then she was finally on her way. She could put it off no longer. She sank back in the passenger seat of her car and stared out the window, caught a faint glimpse of her own face reflected in the glass, and instantly felt a stab of disquiet. Dark thoughts rose quickly to the surface, as though they had been waiting for just such an opportunity, right below the surface of her mind, to manifest themselves.

She stared at her reflection. Who was she? Anika Kapoor, columnist, bestselling writer and all-around successful Delhi Socialite. She looked as immaculate as ever, not a wrinkle on her skin or a crinkle in her clothes. But – she gripped her armrest – these days, she felt more and more unravelled.

From a young age, Anika had been taught to believe in positive aphorisms – where there’s a will, there’s a way, she learned. With faith, one can move mountains. Believe in yourself and never give up. As she grew older, she continued to parrot these sayings as doors opened up before her (as they tend to do for the unusually wealthy). If she’d been asked, she would have said with a good deal of indignation that her success came through determination and hard work. She had never had to question this.

Any obstacle she’d had to deal with was swept away. There were, in fact, only one or two – one was the editorial leadership of the Delhi Daily, which she had no sooner realised she would not get than convinced herself that she never really wanted; and there was one romantic entanglement that, even now, she could not make sense of. But that was it.

The rest of her life had been, essentially, strewn with roses. She had written a number of moderately successful books. She was touted as a social media ‘influencer’ by people for whom this was a thing. She had a long-running column in the city’s favourite afternoon paper. The fact that her family owned the paper seemed beside the point.

A lifetime of privilege had sheltered her from life’s uncertainties – until now.

This meeting with DB, she considered, may well be the final straw. DB did not often call her into his office, and she knew that this meeting meant an end. An end of something. Her grip on her armrest became tighter. She thought back to a conversation she had had with her father not more than a week before.

“Beta,” he had said. As though she were a child of eight. “When are you going to take this seriously? When are you going to take your life seriously?”

She had looked at him scornfully. He represented a bygone era, an era where power lay in tangible assets, things (or people) that you could point to and say that you owned. He didn’t understand that power today meant something completely different – the power of social media, the power of influence, of intangibles. These were out of his grasp.

She had said as much to him, and his face had changed colour. In the ensuing argument, she felt she had given as much as she got. They had both left in a furious rage, hers a futile one, but his, she thought, may have been more fruitful.

When the car finally turned into her office, a burst of sunshine caused her already faint reflection to disappear completely, and she felt a moment’s panic. Where was she? She remained impassive, but her knuckles whitened as she further tightened her grip on the armrest.

She shook herself. Pull yourself together. You’ll survive this – like everything else.

As she marched into the office and had her usual effect of making people jump and scurry out of her way, she felt a little better. And as she came upon a pretty young woman who was trying desperately to avoid her eye, she stopped.

“Ah, Devika. Have you reworked that story yet?”

“Anika,” said Devika, trying to sound determined. “I…I’ve only just got in.”

“I sent you an email about this last night, Devika,” said Anika. “Do try and remember that we’re a newspaper – so we should try and get things out quickly, no? Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” said Devika, looking down.

“We can’t go on like this. We really can’t, Devika. I don’t want to make an example out of you, but I’m afraid we may have to. If the story’s not on my desk by this afternoon, I’m reassigning it. And if I have to reassign it, I’m not sure what the point is of keeping you on staff. The last draft you submitted was just hopeless, I’m afraid. Hopeless! Now, take this as a learning experience and maybe next time you’ll have a story that we can actually print? It involves going out, Devika. Talking to sources. Corroborating sources. Working for your living. I know your generation likes their comforts, but this isn’t the way…”

As Anika went on, Devika’s lower lip started to tremble.

Excerpted with permission from A Fatal Distraction, Samyukta Bhowmick, Juggernaut.