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Will title it sometime

The following is the text obtained from the last page of the Diary of Satish Rao. The entry was dated the eighth of October 2004. Satish Rao was hanged for the murder of eleven people on the ninth of October 2004. People may recall the famous January train massacre of 2004, where bodies were found along the tracks and within the 21:41 fast local from CST to Kalyan. Names have been changed to protect the identities of the people concerned.
-Mangesh Mittal, Attorney, Mittal and Sons.

I thought I was a little on the nutty till I met Nitin. He was this stout fellow with a jovial expression on his face, and he convinced me that I was normal. Sure I thought of doing unusual things, behaved in a slightly unconventional manner, but I was never your run of the mill, in your face, penguins are born to be fed with self-written haiku kind of lunatic.
Nitin was, and is, but no one knows. No one except me. Whatever he did, his wild actions, his sudden mood swings, his overexcited uncontrolled behavior that suddenly surfaced, and even his fascination with inventing newfound ways to torture birds were all taken as a joke. This was what everybody saw. I unfortunately, became a close friend of his, and knew more about him.
He had, for example, once frightened a pigeon off with an air gun, half-boiled the egg she was sitting on, and then replaced it. The pigeon wouldn’t leave till the egg hatched. The egg would never hatch.
He had an abnormal paranoia about the entire cosmos. Sometimes he could not distinguish the real world from his dreams, and often mixed the two, and referred to non-existent things and never-occurred events while he spoke. Even I passed these things off as normal idiosyncrasies that people possess, and I was no exception.
I had mood swings too – those that lasted much longer though. I spoke English with a strange vocabulary that few could comprehend – and I sometimes encouraged it to give people an illusion of my own cleverness. I thought I was clever… that was till I met Nitin.
We formed an entire circle of friends. Johanon became a third friend of ours. It took too much trouble explaining the correct pronunciation of his name, so people called him John. John, Nitin and I were sort of a group within the group because we met up more often than the rest. Life was pretty much normal, as normal as the life of three friends, two of them slightly insane, can be.
We were returning from a rock show when the whole thing happened. It was late at night, but we were quite a gang. Six guys, four girls, returning home in a fast train from VT. Nitin and John were there. I was hanging out with a bottle of Pepsi. Apart from our group, which was concentrated around the doorway, and one row of seats, there were just two businessmen in the entire compartment – they were sleeping. Byculla came, and six hooligans climbed on. A bunch of young men, none of them over twenty four, and one might not even be nineteen. They were all dressed in old clothes that had not been washed for at least a week, and were all armed with choppers. Two also had guns. Their purpose was clear. They stripped us of all valuables, and put it in a bag.
They got six gold chains, four pairs of earrings, three bangles, nine wrist watches, two mp3 players, one walkman and nine mobile phones, and more than four thousand rupees in hard cash. Then they moved to the sleeping businessmen, who had stirred and had ideas about defending themselves because both of them were bigger than any two of the hooligans combined.
The robbers, were however either extremely seasoned or extremely motivated. It happened very quickly, and even now I don’t clearly remember actually seeing any blood. There was a gunshot, and the businessman simply collapsed. The other fellow didn’t hesitate before handing over his bag.
We were all herded into one part of the compartment when we noticed that Nitin was not around us. The hooligans searched the far end of the compartment, and Nitin showed up, calmly, with a packet of popcorn in his hand.
The rest of the incident happened with all of us herded together in one corner, with the light falling on Nitin and the hooligans. The city rushed by outside, with the rhythmic beating of the train rushing over the tracks.
One of the older robber, the one with one of the guns, pointed his weapon straight at Nitin’s forehead. The other surrounded him. Nitin offered him some popcorn. This unnerved the gangster. His gun slipped a fraction of an inch. Nitin had him by the collar, and thrust him upwards. Things happened swiftly, but I can never forget what happened next. The gun went off, and the gangster immediately behind Nitin collapsed to the ground. Nitin pushed the man he was holding upwards, and with one mighty thrust, the cover of the fan fell off, and the robber’s head was introduced to the blades.
It was an unpleasant meeting. Blood splattered all around, stunning the remaining four gangsters. Nitin quickly left the man he had just killed using the fan to fall to the ground with his other fallen comrade, and began to openly fight with the remaining four. Emboldened, John and I joined in. I did not see what the rest were doing. I went for the smallest looking guy and punched him in the face. His chopper flew out of the train. He was near the door, and I was on the inside. He punched me back in my stomach but I was holding onto the railing on top, so I swung backwards instead of being hurt. Like a pendulum, I began to swing back towards him, realized what was going to happen. I mustered all the energy I had and gave the robber one huge kick on his chest, and he fell out of the train.
I turned back to see John with a cut hand and a bleeding lip slumped over a body that was profusely bleeding from the stomach. He had been stabbed. Another robber was nowhere to be seen, and I learnt later that Nitin had managed to throw him out of the train. All the others had beaten up the remaining man, and he was whimpering on the floor.
To everyone’s shock, Nitin shot him point blank. Everyone just stared at Nitin, more in shock of everything that had happened than what Nitin had just done. I was partly in my senses, and was staring at the back of Nitin’s head. Nitin sensed it, turned around, and stared right back at me.
I somehow knew what was going to happen. “it’s all over” he said. He flashed me a smile. If anything, it was jovial. Innocent. Even lovable. His eyes were sparkling, they were smiling too… but they gave him away. I saw bloodlust, but no one ever believed me.
Nitin turned to Nukul. Nukul probably didn’t even know the bullet was headed his way before he crumpled to the floor because of it. He didn’t offer an explanation to the rest. They died because of Nitin’s bullets too. Soon, it was only me and the crippled John. He had killed the four girls, the two remaining boys and the businessman, all in cold blood.
Nitin pointed this out. “So now, its just the three of us.” How funny, he said, “there are three bullets left”
He shot one each into John’s kneecaps. John screamed and fainted ten seconds later. Nitin began kicking some bodies out of the train. One of them was John’s – he was still alive. I momentarily thought of pushing Nitin out, but knew I couldn’t do it. Nitin stopped for some reason, and caught a chair and sat down. He asked me to come and sit, and I sat down.
“Are you still a friend?” he asked me. “How can you expect me to be?” He began to cry. He told me that he was insane. I told him to tell me something I didn’t know. He punched me so hard that I was winded and started to bleed from the mouth. He told me to forgive him. I was in no state to refuse. He begged me not to tell anyone. I promised. He gave me the gun and begged me to kill him. I couldn’t do it.
The sudden light showed that Dadar was coming up. A pretty crowded station. Good, I was saved I thought. Nitin suddenly topped crying. He looked up. The train began to slow down.
There was no hint of a tear. There was instead, that ambiguous smile again. He stared right into me and his smile broadened. “Thank you” he said. People started climbing into the train with loud thuds, realized the massacre that had happened and a cry went down. Nitin got up. He said “now they will think it’s you” and he bolted.
I realized a fraction of a second later that I had the gun. I ran after him, in a crazed frenzy, seeking revenge for everything that happened. I shot after him, missed, and my bullet found some kid. People ran away from me. Nitin had disappeared. I made the mistake of trying to fire the gun again, despite knowing that it was now empty.
People understood I was unarmed. They came and began beating me, and I lost consciousness before too many people got to me, but when I woke up later, I know it had been painful.
There were too many witnesses of my actions. I even failed the lie detector test. I wasn’t to be sent to an asylum, instead to the gallows.
My hanging is tomorrow. Half an hour ago, Nitin came to visit me. He got me a few sweets, smiled at me, and offered me consolation in the form of “don’t worry, you are not my first.”
Let this be a warning to people who will survive me, and I hope he real nature of the incident will be revealed to the world.
-Satish Rao

Again, it is important to note, that it was established through various psychological tests conducted during the confinement of Mr. Satish Rao, that he was mentally disturbed. There is no way to establish if this was solely due to the incident in the train. One must take into consideration the possibility that Satish was perverted to the core, and even in his dying moments, managed to give his former friend, the person here known as Nitin, a sore blow. Nitin has been taken in for questioning, and has cleared the lie detector test, and no charges have been filed against him.
-Mangesh Mittal, Attorney, Mittal and Sons.

-Aditya MJ