The plot gets murkier around Deepa Bar

The latest cloak-and-dagger movie isn't playing at a theatre near you; it's in the air, like dew and smoke, in the form of tainted gossip.

The Tarannum tangle, with its ever-fresh twists and turns, is on everyone's tongue, and why not. At any given time, there may be a sharp upswing in the public need to harbour conspiracy/disaster theories but just one predominant question was needling us: what happened to the management of Deepa Bar?

Did they, like their nautch colleagues, seek employment in other cities, or even abroad? Did they hang themselves?

How much was their silence or absence worth to the overlords now attempting, perhaps, to snap any connection between the bar, Muralitharan and the bookies? And if we could ferret out even one of these ex-employees would he spill his guts and furnish us with incontrovertible evidence (including a happy photo, with his arm around apna Murali)?

Several paces to the left of Deepa Bar lurks another popular watering-hole, Harish. Perhaps Deepa, in its dying throes, left some residues here, scattering its seed, as it were. But… ''No, sir, we have no idea where the waiters went. And yes, Deepa Bar is shut for good," states a maître d' at Harish, even as a devious-looking character guzzles beer in one corner, juggling a brainboggling slew of mobile phones and casting sideways glances at the India-Zimbabwe match showing on a 14-inch.

Unfortunately, this seems to be an anthem around these parts. Two paanwalas iterate this claim and the head-clerk of another flanking restaurant echoes the same.

Onwards to Pride Bar, just around the corner. Shutters down. "It opens at six in the evening," says yet another paanwala. How many cigarettes can we afford, is the query of the moment. "And if you're looking for the waiters of Deepa Bar, you won't find them here. Because all these restaurants fear the cops, and wouldn't take on anyone associated with a dancing bar. But you could ask at Pride. Everyone knows it's owned by the same guy, Humayun."

The mystery surrounding Deepa and Tarannum gets murkier.