The giddiness started as I stepped outside. 

I think it was the food after a day of starving. But who cares? I’d just had the feast of a lifetime. I turned back to look at the palace. The king stood at the window, waving at me. 

Was he calling me back? I could not make out from here. 

I had assumed he was a king, because his place was humongous and he had just treated me to a royal meal! 

He was now wearing a large crown that made him look taller. From a distance, you’d think he had two heads, one on top of the other. If I squinted my eyes, it almost seemed like a bull’s head. Like the Greek monster that Deepti Didi had told us about. 

Nah! The food was messing with my head. There was no Minotaur. The king seemed fine to me. So generous… 

I suddenly remembered I had something with me that I had to keep safe. But what was it? It was very, very vital, Deepti Didi had said. Damn! My mind was playing games with me. Maybe I’d remember if I just reached home and rested. 

But… but… I seemed to be going round in circles, because the road would not end! Left, right, then left… it all looked the same. It was nearing dusk and the roads were oddly deserted. I scratched my head in frustration. It was as if I was fumbling through a maze… wait! The Minotaur’s labyrinth? I had to get out of here! I staggered on… 

One eternity later, I seemed to spot a familiar pipal tree. I dragged my body towards it, which was curiously growing heavier by the minute. And then I spotted him! The Minotaur! The man with the bull-head that devoured kids… Bholu, Chhotu, Babloo from our shack…. No, it was the king! The generous king! He couldn’t be the Minotaur! He was… too kind… too loving… except… he was the Minotaur! He was coming towards me with an impatient smile on his face… but I had no strength to run… I fell… and I felt his hands scoop me up… 

***

The newspaper read two days later:

One more teenage boy goes missing from the slums near EE Block Salt Lake. Vijay Kumar, 16, was reported missing yesterday at the Salt Lake police station. The mother claim that on Wednesday, her boy had left home to look for food after a fall-out with her as she had been unable to get to work for a while due to her illness. He never returned. This is the seventh incident in six months. The matter was brought to light by an NGO ‘Nirmal Hriday’ that has undertaken the task of teaching the kids and the teenagers of the slum. “For the last two years, we’ve been running classes every weekend under a pipal tree nearby. Their parents have little to no income. Some sell snacks on trains. Some are rickshaw pullers. Those who are unable to work beg at the traffic signals. The kids were very keen to come to our school. In the beginning, we thought it was mostly because we gave out food to them. But for the last one year, our funds have been low and the food was stopped. The kids kept coming anyway. However, since the past few months the numbers kept dropping. The other kids are unable to say anything definite, because these kids have a tendency to drop out in search of easy money. Our first alarm was when the kids told us about an eight-year-old, Chhotu, missing from the slum. The parents are uneducated homeless people who are too scared to go to the police. So when we went to ask around in the slum, several parents came to us with stories of how their kids went missing. We filed a report at the Salt Lake police station two months back. When the police could not help, we went to the local club, and talked with the councilor. Apparently no one is bothered because these poor people do not add to the vote count. We are thinking about escalating the matter to the Honorable chief minister of the state”, Ms. Deepti, the secretary of the organization, was quoted as saying.

***

Hungry Bites. Every morning, Sopan Biswal would stand in front of the majestic signboard of his restaurant and give a satisfied smile. From rags to riches. From the footpaths to a magnificent mansion….the journey of his life had been that interesting! Starting off with a roadside food cart, he was now the owner of one of the most popular food joints of the town. Cooking came to him as easy as breathing. But he knew that the secret to his success was more in the ingredients than his culinary skills. Every morning without fail, he would handpick his ingredients. He would spend nights researching, cleaning and pruning. He did these all with such brute passion and bullish energy, that his workers referred to him as ‘the bull’. And he got the sweet fruits of his labor as well. In just a year, his newly opened restaurant in a quiet corner of the town had gained massive followers. Every weekend people waited in long queues to get a table at ‘Hungry Bites’. His signature thali was a hit among the crowds. Many others had tried to replicate this dish of his, but none could ever come close. Sopan Biswal would chuckle to himself, because he knew the secret was in the ingredients and they would never get to it! 

But this morning, his smile was replaced by a frown as he read the newspapers. Damn these NGOs! Why would they have to get involved with everything?! No one would give an effing thought about the homeless when he used to be one of them! Who cared if a vagrant teen went to sleep on the footpath with seven days’ worth of hunger? Who cared if they got run over by a politician’s kid driving a car? Who cared if they got kidnapped and sold off? And now suddenly they were on the news! At least he was feeding them well. At least he was putting them to good use! 

Would he be in trouble? The last kid was quite difficult… Nah! No one would be able to trace things to him. He was a reputed chef here. There were no cameras nearby except his, and he made sure to clean the data every night. Everyone loved his food. And he had already paid the right people. 

***

Sopan Biswal had just put on his chef’s hat on a late Sunday morning when a drove of officials forced entry into ‘Hungry Bites’ and shut the gates closed behind them. He spotted the food inspector and the police-in-charge, who had on previous occasions, licked food off their fingers at his restaurant and showered him with compliments. But today they seemed like strangers. Thankfully, the customers were yet to arrive. But the media followed the officials in no time. And horror unfurled!

By evening, the news flashed on every channel. Hordes of human skeletons, presumably of kids and teens, were recovered from the fridges in the basement of ‘Hungry Bites’. Staffs claimed to know nothing as the basement was always locked by the owner and head chef Sopan Biswal, who personally took care to select and bring out the supplies for the day into the kitchen. Staffs also said that their boss had a knack for feeding the homeless kids who would often wander around the streets. He would bring them in through the backdoor, make them sit in the kitchen and serve them leftovers with care. Sopan Biswal had admitted to drugging the kids, chopping the bodies to pieces and cooking them off for his special thali. Police were quick to connect the dots about the missing homeless children from the slum three blocks away and the findings at the restaurant today, but an official statement was yet to be issued. There was also a video of a delirious Sopan Biswal being carried out of his restaurant in handcuffs. His eyes seemed unfocused as he smiled dismally into the camera, “The kids loved me because I gave them food. Hahaha! Why make a fuss now? You…. You all enjoyed tasting their meat right? Hahaha! As if you care for them!”

***

People were out on the streets, demanding death penalty for Sopan Biswal. Some thronged the hospitals, claiming they were sick from his food. Some bashed the administration for failing to check this depravity. Inside a small chamber of the police station, however, Ms. Deepti sat still, feeling a turmoil of emotions inside. The Minotaur was caught at last! When the police failed to act, she had taken things into her own hands. She had given Vijay her GPS pen and asked him to keep it with himself at all times. And the pen, like Ariadne’s thread, had led her, and the police, to Sopan Biswal. But Vijay…. Vijay was gone! Tears streamed down her face as she clutched on to the pen the police had retrieved from the restaurant. She had taught the kids about the heroic Theseus, but she had failed to save her hero from the monster! And she had to live with this Aegean grief! 

***

Epilogue : Minotaur is a monster from Greek Mythology, with a human body and a bull’s head. The monster was held imprisoned by King Minos of Crete in a labyrinth that was impossible to navigate. Every year seven men and seven maidens had to be sent from Athens for the Minotaur to devour. At one point of time, Theseus, the Athenian hero and son of Aegeus, volunteered to go. With the help from Ariadne, daughter of Minos, who provided him with a thread that helped him navigate the labyrinth without losing his way (later famous as Ariadne’s thread), he was able to slay the Minotaur. He returned home with Ariadne. While on the way back, he forgot to change the black sail of his ship (that signified mourning) to white, which made his father Aegeus think that Theseus was dead. In grief, he jumped to his death in the sea, which later came to be known as the Aegean Sea.