That Trip to Topchanchi Ch. 05

"And I know whom I should thank for him."

"But what was there in the safe?" Rudra had a quizzical smile on his face.

"I have no idea"

"Let's take a look."

The three of them trooped into the inner room and Savita got the shock of her life when her lover, Rudra, took out a key from his pocket and casually opened the safe!

"Where did you get the key?"

"Why do you think we came here last year?" Ritu smiled and then between the two of them they told Savita the whole story.

"My God. What an adventure? You could have told me straight away and I would have helped you."

"How would we know how devoted you would be to your husband? We could not take a chance!"

"But then what if he had not called me to his orgy that night? How would you have opened the safe?"

"I did have a little bottle of chloroform that I would have pressed on your face and you would have just woken up next morning without a clue about what had happened after that fantastic fuck."

"Wow, but what did you take from the safe?"

"Ah here it is." Ritu opened her bag and pulled out the leather pouch and poured its contents on the bench in front of the safe ... a king's ransom of huge red rubies, green emeralds, blue sapphires and dazzling white diamonds!

Savita was spellbound! But her reverie was broken when Ritu picked up big red ruby and pressed it into the palm of the little boy sleeping on his mother's shoulder. "That is for SasThicharan". That was the name that Ritu had recommended for the boy who was conceived on SasThi, the sixth day of Durga Puja."

"Fantastic, unbelievable."

"But is there anything else in that safe?"

"I did pull out all that I could, but perhaps there is something more."

"Let's take a look ... " Ritu plunged her hand inside and pulled out a wad of papers.

Based on the papers that was found in the safe at Topchanchi, it was established that Rudra's father Raghunandan was the illegitimate son of the erstwhile Raja of Shyamgarh, one of the last feudal estates of post-Independence India. What was even more interesting was that Raghunandan's mother, the Thakur's first wife had visited the Devi Sthaan before she could bear a child.

"So both Rudra's father and his son were conceived in that sacred grotto. We must go back there again and pay our respects to the Devi there."

But strangely enough, despite all their efforts, Savita, Rudra and even Ritu, with all her intelligence connections, could never find the route through the hills that led to the secret grotto.

The Devi reveals herself only to those who need and deserve her help.

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That ends the Durga Puja story for the year 1425 Bengali Era