Crime fiction writer's guide to Sheena Bora murder case
She might have created a ripple when The Wall Street Journal named her among "50 Women to Watch", but Indrani Mukerjea almost broke the internet when she was charged and arrested for the alleged homicide of her daughter: the hashtags, the comparisons to the fictional femme fatale, the newspapers and magazines, et al. Everyone has a version. Everyone has an opinion. But is it the first homicide in the world? Or is it the first one of a blood relative? Is it even the first time someone has been accused of killing their daughter, son, father or mother?
The question I can't stop asking myself is what could be so compelling that could make you conceal your legitimate children from a previous marital alliance. Fame? Fortune? Regrettably, after millions of years of human history, we recognise only a single measure to evaluate each other: what do we own? We condemn those who indulge themselves in extravagance and the vagaries that money brings while covertly wishing the same for us.
The truth is, we're all hypocrites, one way or another. Given the same levels of enticement of fame and fortune, many of us would have suppressed our conscience and made decisions that could, to some degree, be classified as morally reprehensible. I am not saying most would resort to murder, but haven't all of us seen people bulldozing, scheming, robbing, fleecing others?
However, everyone seems to have decided Indrani is guilty even before the court decrees she is. That judgement is not based on the crime she's charged for; the decision is primarily grounded in the choices she exercised in her past life. A woman, in India, who has had two spouses previously. She must be a murderess. Case closed.
We can all go home now. I am not condoning Indrani, neither am I trifling a homicide. But this story hasn't made headlines because of the murder, it's made headlines for all the embellishments it comes with.
Nevertheless, the overzealous interest also confirms another human trait. We love misery as long as we are mere spectators, and not sufferers. We enjoy muckraking without empathy. We channel our creative geniuses into writing jokes about the tragedy. There are far more important and urgent issues the world is facing, but the media chooses a random murder for the front pages. And as if it wasn't enough that the media kept the fire going, we took it upon ourselves to fuel it on social platforms: how could anyone of our friends miss this masala?
That aside, why did it take years to uncover the heinous crime? The brother - who has now come forward to say that there had been an attempt to poison him too - could have gone to the police three years back. How difficult would it have been investigate if Sheena Bora hadn't actually gone to Los Angeles? The immigration authorities must keep some record; the US embassy should have been able to confirm if they had stamped a student visa for Sheena Bora.
When Indrani told friends of Sheena that she had gone to study abroad, at least one of those individuals could have asked for the name of the university or her telephone number? No one asked because no one cared enough. And now we hear statement after statement from those very individuals who have now, suddenly, come to the party claiming they always thought something was amiss. Proclamation of clairvoyance in retrospect… oh, where have I heard that before?
Now, the driver, the madam and one of her exes have been apprehended. The truth, which has commenced trickling, will be out soon.
As a crime fiction author, I can tell you that if I had come up with a plot as treacherous and gruesome, the readers would have labelled it as being too contrived: that fiction writers have a penchant to suspend reality, they live in their own make-believe land fantasising about unrealistic plots.
Something like this can never happen, not a mother killing her own daughter, no way, not in India. The media would have doubted my credibility as an author. I might have had to provide effusive explanations to validate and edify the whys and the hows.
I don't see anyone disbelieving or exclaiming it as impossible. But as they say, and as people have come to accept, fact is stranger than fiction, isn't it?