It was 1958 , I was a 10 year old girl growing up in a village in West Bengal, my name is Lalita roy I later got into a college in Kolkata, my father wanted me to live there , to fulfill my dreams , to do something no one in the family could , I got a job , it was hard for a woman to make her career alone in the 70s , but I overcame the obstacles, ignoring all their snares and remarks , I kept going. I shifted to Bangalore last year , after my husband Sanjeev passed away .My son Manoj brought me here , he got a job . He lived with his wife Ankita in the next block. I was old , there was not much to do most days , I did not prefer idle chatting . I love plants and books and of course the delicious desserts cooked by my maid Saraswati , who did make a lot of mistakes but I had to ignore them because of the bengali payasan she cooked for me every week.. I spent most of my days admiring my plants. I used to wear my reading glasses. My spectacles had gotten quite old , I needed a new pair
soon. I was reading my fourth book of that week, when I saw them in my opposite apartment. "Seems like a new family has just moved into the opposite apartment ", I said to Saraswati ,"Yes amma , I will be working at their home from tomorrow , the wife's name is Anjali, she's a working lady , extremely generous and down-to-earth". I saw her everyday,  from what I heard her husband, Avinash worked at an IT firm and she worked as an event manager. I saw them everyday at the coffee table in the opposite window , he seemed to be a loving husband. They were quite content. Anjali would water her plants everyday and wave at me from her balcony.
At the end if the month I got new spectacles. One morning , I saw a crowed gathered near the opposite block , I was confused as I had no idea what was going on. I called up Manoj , I was scared as he too lived in the next block. "What's wrong , why is there so much chaos ", I asked him "Ma, there has been a murder , people are saying it's apartment 3 on 4th floor " "Anjali",I cried out loud , "was it her", "Yes they are saying it's the wife ", I was taken aback , I was filled with utter shock and disbelief, who would dare to commit such a heinous crime.

The police came soon , apparently it was Avinash who found her , she had been poisoned according to the police although the cause of death was not clear yet. Avinash had become the prime suspect at first , but , there were no evidences against him . The post mortem report was out and the cause of death came out as food poisoning. Two days later, there was a knock at the door in the afternoon, I opened it, to find Dev standing outside,  he was my daughter in law's brother . Dev worked in the police force and he was the one handling the investigation for the murder. He said he wanted to talk to me about the case which surprised me as I hardly ever talked to Anjali , but they asked me about Saraswati instead which puzzled me, Saraswati was a suspect too because she was the one who prepared the dishes that had to lead to her death although it was not clear which one was it . I knew she would never do something like this, "You're mistaken, she would never do something so horrible", I said to him, "So who do you think did it , Avinash?, you would know, you lived opposite to their apartment,  tell us what you saw then", he told me, "not Avinash, he loved Anjali , they would sit at their coffee table every afternoon , talking to each other the whole day",I told him. "What , that cannot be Avinash, he spent his afternoons at his office, you might have mistaken him with Rohit , he is one of the suspects too",he said showing me a picture of him, which looked familiar.
That was when I realized that it was me who was making a mistake, I had been using my old spectacles for a month , I had problems in my retina , that could have been the reason behind my faulty vision. "Rohit was her coworker , he would come over every afternoon,  Avinash knew about it , they were infact just really good friends", he told me ,"her and Rohit wanted to start a business of their own , and they needed money,Rohit had invested all his savings and Anjali had promised him to sell some of her gold and get the required money", there were  not many evidences against him and all of this lead the police to believe that poor Saraswati was the murderer. I called her up that evening, she was crying, "Amma , I haven't done anything please believe me", "come to my place tomorrow", I told her.
She came over the next day , "tell me the truth , what happened that day" , I asked her "Didi, asked me to help her make my special bengali payasam that day, I went to the market to get the items , but I had forgotten to bring cashews , I had no other option, so I stole a fewcashew nuts from sir's room and pasted it into the payasam, thats all I did". After listening to her I called up Dev, "Did you check the cashew nuts in Avinash's room" I
asked him "I did not, but I will as soon as possible", he said . After a few hours I got another call from him , "You were right, it was the cashewnuts", he told me ,

Now the main issue was that the cashew nuts were eaten by Avinash only, so the only possibility there was that it was infact his wife who tried to poison him , she had a motive too, she needed money,she would've never sold her gold , the only way she could get the money was by getting rid of her husband, it was infact the greed she was overcome with that caused her own death , Saraswati unknowingly poisoned her food ,the police could not understand the presence of cashew nuts in the dish because it crushed into it which made it hard to recognize, that was what made Saraswati's payasam so special, she was released and all the evidences were now against Anjali. She was not murdered,  her death was a tragic accident, she did not deserve this , but , she was also not what she looked like , she was almost a different woman , another woman . The case was closed. A week later Saraswati came back to work, "Amma , you look tired , should I make a payasam", she told me while cleaning my bookshelf , I started laughing because of the situation, she looked at me and realized, and started to laugh too.

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