Mohini Bhattacharya's murder

Mohini Bhattacharya's murder is the hidden catastrophe beneath Shivam Goyal's bereavement and one of the novel's decisive reversals. For two years, Shivam believes that Mohini died in a freak accident, mourning the woman he loved while treating her death as an undeserved tragedy. The later disclosure that Alex D Costa arranged her death changes the meaning of Shivam's memories, Sherlie D Costa's obsession, and the danger surrounding Aparna Mahadevan.

The Loss Shivam Believes He Understands

Shivam's first account of Mohini's death is shaped by shock and incomplete knowledge. He remembers her as the person who made him feel complete and special, recalling their evening walks, her laughter, and the jhumkas that dangled from her ears. When Aparna wears similar earrings, the ordinary office detail becomes a trigger for a private collapse: Shivam compares the intern with Mohini, cannot explain why Aparna alone evokes such an association, and is overwhelmed by tears.

He has lost Mohini two years earlier in what he calls a freak accident, and the loss remains emotionally active rather than settled. He wipes away his tears and tries to face another day without her, but gratitude for their shared happiness exists beside pain and regret. The accident is therefore not merely background information. It is the wound around which Shivam has organized his life, and its apparent randomness helps him preserve a coherent, if devastating, explanation of the past.

Circumstances and Concealed Motive

The later history of the relationship reveals the pressure that preceded the murder. Sherlie had become obsessively attached to Shivam and attempted to separate him from Mohini. After Shivam confronted Sherlie and told her to stay away from Mohini, Sherlie slit her wrists. Alex, who regarded Sherlie as family, sent her to his sister's home in France. For a time, her apologies and emails to Shivam and Mohini suggested recovery, creating the appearance that the crisis had passed.

The apparent peace ended after Mohini went to Pune to find a cheaper office space for Ascent Brandz. Shivam describes her death as a gas leak in her serviced apartment in the middle of the night, another freak accident arriving amid the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The later confession removes the accident's innocence. Alex explains that Sherlie had tried to kill herself after Shivam introduced Mohini to his family as his sweetheart. Rather than accept Sherlie's need for help or allow Shivam and Mohini's relationship to continue, he took matters into his own hands and had Mohini removed from Shivam's life permanently.

Revelation at the Police Station

The truth surfaces through a recorded confession presented during a midnight call to the police station. Shivam arrives expecting no such development and asks Alex, the inspector, and Satyam Goyal what he is hearing. The inspector states that Shivam's business partner, Alex D Costa, is guilty of murder. The accusation is initially incomprehensible because Alex has been known to Shivam since childhood and has been close to his family.

The recording makes the conspiracy unmistakable. Alex tells Sherlie that the previous operation involving Mohini had been dangerous and that he will not take risks again; he also assures her that Aparna will soon be out of her way. Sherlie then accuses Alex of having sent Mohini away from Shivam's life before. When Shivam asks whether Alex killed Mohini, Alex answers that he did. He says that Sherlie tried to end her life because Shivam had presented Mohini to the family as his beloved, and he claims that he acted to prevent his daughter from dying because of Shivam and Mohini. His language turns murder into a grotesque form of parental protection: Mohini's life is treated as an obstacle to Sherlie's survival.

Consequences for Shivam and Aparna

The confession does more than identify a criminal. It forces Shivam to reinterpret the grief that has governed him for years. The death he mourned as fate was the result of a decision made by someone he trusted, and Sherlie's earlier suicide attempt is revealed not as an isolated crisis but as part of the chain of events that led to Mohini's killing. The disclosure also exposes the danger still directed at Aparna, whose removal Alex and Sherlie are contemplating in the recorded conversation.

After hearing the confession, Shivam is overcome by sorrow and regret. He recognizes that he had been harsh toward Aparna and had ignored her pleas even though she acted quickly enough to save his life. He wants to repair the relationship, but believes he may be too late because he mistakenly thinks her wedding is the following day. The mistake is corrected when Satyam shows him an invitation card bearing Aparna's photograph in a maroon Bharatanatyam costume and the words identifying the event as the Arangetram of Kum Aparna Mahadevan. The revelation sends Shivam toward her performance rather than a wedding ceremony, turning the aftermath of Mohini's murder into the immediate setting for a possible reconciliation.

At the arangetram, the emotional movement away from murder and toward renewal is staged through ritual and performance. The auditorium contains a decorated sculpture of Lord Nataraja; music and anklets announce Aparna's entrance, and she performs Bharatanatyam with measured grace after paying obeisance to Mother Earth. Shivam watches her expressive eyes and realizes that he can fall for her again and again. The scene does not erase Mohini's death, but it places the old loss beside a living relationship that has survived danger, misunderstanding, and the revelation of criminal violence.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

Mohini's murder is structured as a delayed revelation. Its first narrative function is to establish Shivam's trauma through memories, bodily grief, and recurring visual association; its second is to expose that the explanation sustaining his mourning was false. The reversal changes the value of the event from tragic accident to calculated violence, while also making the past an active threat in the present. The murder is not finished when Mohini dies: it continues through Shivam's grief, Sherlie's suicidal crisis, Alex's concealment, and the threat against Aparna.

The event also defines the destructive boundary between care and possession. Alex presents himself as saving his daughter, yet his intervention denies Mohini any agency and converts Sherlie's obsession into a justification for killing. Shivam's response shows the cost of that logic: he has built a sanctuary in work after losing Mohini and his mother, while failing to emotionally open up to his father, Girish Goyal. The revelation therefore breaks not only his false account of Mohini's death but the broader pattern of silence, avoidance, and misinterpretation through which the characters have tried to survive catastrophe.

Its final significance lies in the contrast between the murder's concealed violence and Aparna's public arangetram. Mohini's death occurs away from communal understanding, disguised as an accident; Aparna's performance is witnessed, named, and affirmed. Rati Goyal praises Aparna as Shanti Rao's finest student, while the later stage scene surrounds her with music, ritual, and the image of Nataraja. Against the permanent loss that shaped Shivam, the performance offers a visible form of continuity: grief remains part of the story, but it no longer has to dictate its ending.