Double check

"Why do you kill?" She pushed the dictaphone a little closer to him.

He looked at the dictaphone and then at her. He smiled.

"I've been programmed to...". He drifted a bit, groping for the right words.

"But..don't you think..don't you feel anything at all?"

"Not always."

"That means, sometimes you do."

He nodded.

"Then, why do you accept these contracts?"

"Ms.."

"Nisha."

"Ms. Nisha, when you take up the gun, you take an oath. With yourself. That you'll do the job, and not waver. Else, the gun takes over."

"But, don't you think killing is an act of cowardice? I mean, do problems go away by killing people?"

"They don't."

"Then?"

He sighed. Like when you do trying to explain about sex to a kid.

"It's...it's not the act itself. And it's not about problems. It is in fact, about people."

"Innocent people too."

"Innocence is a relative term, Ms. Nisha."

Their eyes met for a brief second. Did she sense a feeling of guilt? She couldn't tell.

He leaned back and pondered before speaking.

"In my trade, you'll find people taking up killing for a lot of reasons. Sometimes it's plain old rivalry, settling scores, to even as trivial as a few thousand rupees. You see, at that point of time, you don't stop to think - am I doing the right thing?"

"Yeah, but ultimately it's about killing a fellow human being. He or she might be having a world of people behind them, right?"

He nodded again.

"I mean, just imagine. You go out there one fine day and put a bullet in a guy's head. He might have a wife, parents. Children. What about them?"

"They pay for him. It's part of the entire deal."

She sighed now. Maybe they were digressing.

"You say you do your homework well before killing. What homework?"

"Like routine, habits. What time the person is alone in the day. When the person ventures out alone to do things."

"Do you ever fear being marked on somebody else's bullet yourself?"

He chuckled. "Sure I'm aware of it. Not scared, though."

She smiled. "Do you do your homework well enough not to get killed, Mr. Kailash?"

He straightened. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, am sure you know before hand if someone's taken out a 'supari' in your name, don't you?"

He chuckled again. "Yeah, I do. At times".

"Not today, hmm?"

*******

The wall behind him resembled a red mural of a horse. Nisha buried two more bullets in his chest, for good measure.

She got up. His eyes didn't show surprise. Instead, just a knowing glance. She smiled.

"You were right, Kailash. Innocence is relative. Too bad, in your enthusiasm to make it to the papers, you overlooked that aspect. Homework not enough."

*******