In a morbid calamity that has sent Bangalore's high-profile partying community reeling, two youthful(local?) women were found asleep in the car they were driving in somewhere on the highway between Chikmagalur and Bangalore. The possibility of accident or attack has been ruled out as neither the car nor the persons within bore any signs of damage. Informed sources and witnesses in the area where the bodies were found told reporters that they had initially suspected nothing that afternoon when a modest maruti pulled up to their makeshift yelaneer/nariyal pani stall on the otherwise deserted tree-fringed highway. The owner of the yelaneer stall stated that the 2 genial female occupants of the car had initially asked for 2 tender coconuts. The witness says they seem to have relished the yelaneer leaving only the shells, one of which was gnawed(!). He adds that the girls were well-mannered but that the one at the wheel seemed to have issues, when at one point she protested to the stall's assistant who was handing over the coconuts, instructing not to spill the neer on them when handing the nuts, as the neer left stains which were hard to hand-wash. More significantly, they repeated their orders for tender cocunuts. The stall owner adds, "We were slightly worried when they placed their sixth double order for yelaneer. But in less than 20 minutes, our stall was left with only 3 dried-out cocunuts. After a while they steered the car a few feet to cool off under the shade of a tree where they began reading books and magazines. I remember some music was also playing in the car; the same music again and again. they must have been oofi". The area around the car was littered with the empty tender coconuts.
While the lady at the wheel spoke distunguished maybe even classical Kannada, witnesses say the other seemed aloof and disinclined to say anything at all to the stall owner likely on account of her poor grasp on any language. When pressed to speak at one point while negotiating the nut's price, the latter spoke some appalling muffled Kannada adding wrong tamil words with mismatching hand gestures. Both occupants, though female, were clothed in pant-shirt, a fact which may witnesses from the area aver, was a certain indication of their dubious moral standards. However they pleaded in favour of the higher moral standards of the girl who spoke classical Kannada as opposed to the wilfully ignorant other.
Police reports state that the youths' last words before passing out in their sleep were "KK Krishnamurthy" and "KK Menon?". (Of all things). The postmortem report states cause of death to be 'overdose of yelaneer'. In recent months, yelaneer has emerged as toxin-elixir of choice among a disaffected section of bangalore's socialist middle class youth who have shunned traditionally fashionable opioid-analgesics that are niche, over-priced and imitatory. The social specimens in the car that afternoon, however, had tried to straddle both the world of socialism and the world of moderate free-marketing. Such social specimens have been proved even in the past, to fall awkwardly in the gaps between more established segments, with limbs sticking out or underwear snagging on a branch.
Closer inspection of the pair by a leading investigative agency has shown that their youth was merely a veneer as they were largely greying at the roots, regularly touching up their tint with L'oreal and Schwarzkopf respectively. Chitra A, a leading social commentator, has bemoaned this promising but in-between social strata's abandon to a life of clumsy debauchery and desperate hedonism. It is worth noting that before hitting the road to Chikmagalur on a whim, the pair were last seen in the elite 'blooh baah', where one grimaced through a blue margarita, while the other was reported to have drained an unspecified, close to countless, number of large Smirnoffs. When interviewed, some high-profile patrons of the blooh baah admitted to having noticed the pair, noting they were dressed in what can only be described as 'rags'. A waiter also admitted that it was clear that the 2 were living beyond their means when they openly fumbled with coins to scrabble together that night's 750-a-head cover charge. The waiter said he had tried to persuade them to use the money to meet their daily needs instead. He added that they refused his advise, at one stage even threatening violence with chappals, at which point he relented.
Friends report they never knew there was anything wrong and that the one behind the wheel was notoriously outgoing and level-headed, though dreamy-eyed. The other occupant, however, seemed to draw conflicting responses from those who knew her, with reactions ranging from 'the fuckhead deserves it!' to 'she was the greatest!'. Some unconfirmed reports are also giving this matter a political spin, suggesting that they were deliberately liquidated (poisoined) at the behest of the head of a leading political party on account of their possible pro-Naxal leanings, in context of the growing influence of Naxalism in the region. They are reported to have spoken to some of the workers on a coffee estate in Chikamagalur. The longer of the 2 was alleged to have been offered a roll of paan by one of the workers, an action that raised the heckles of the agitated workers' manager, who took it to be a subversive Naxal code. The manager informs that the 2 left immediately after this.
However if facial expressions at sleep are anything to go by, these 2 were likely most certainly destined for a kind of coffee-estate paradise. Their expressions were cherubic and cheery with a hint of having fought the good fight. Could it be that these 2 young bloods were the potential che and castro of an increasingly capitalistic Karnataka, nipped in the bud of their bloom?
The truth, may never be known.
