She begins her chanting again, rolling her head in circles, causing the hair to whip across her face in a wild manner. The image is terrifying. I begin to feel fear in my heart.
“Jagatey, jatayey! Jagatey, jatayey!” I have no idea what the chants mean but I find them all repeating after her. She begins to move her head faster, her wild hair falling in front matching her rhythm and pace.
Tears begin to form in my eyes but I’m too stubborn to cry. I have no idea what she wants from me but I think she knows.
A cold chill begins spreading from the lower half of my body, making its slow course to cover my entire body. I begin to convulse helplessly, my body turning blue with cold. My head falls back and the eunuch grips me once again in her giant palm. If she’s surprised by the iciness creeping through, she doesn’t show it.
Instead, she again mercilessly shakes me by my head. “Who are you, you vile creature?”
She rises to the forefront, her evil grin striking fear in their hearts. “Do not meddle in matters that are not yours.” She blows frigid air on the troupe making the leader lose her grip on my head.
The eunuch stares at the apparition surrounding me with open terror. A purple haze rises with a slow languor encircling her like a tightening noose. She gasps not in terror but with a sound that I can’t understand or name. The others stare at her terrified as she collapses and writhes on the dung floor till she screams out in a most alarming manner.
The cold recedes. I watch the leader with open fascination. She looks doesn’t look hurt but her face is oddly flushed. She looks ashamed and avoids looking at me. She barks a command and I find myself once again bundled up in the blanket.
This time I faint. I’ve had too much excitement for the day.
Hours later, I wake up in the safe arms of my grandmother.
Mum is livid with me. I was gone two hours. They were almost ready to file a missing child’s report. Do I realise how inconvenient it would’ve been for everyone?
I stare at her feeling insolent. She doesn’t really care about me. No comforting hugs, no words of kindness. Only accusations. At that moment, I begin calling her Sudha in my head. It almost makes me feel triumphant.
~ ~ ~
It turns out the terrorists did attack Dad, at the site of the dam, on the same night I had dreamt about him. An icy drift put him in a dead faint and saved his life. With the blood from a colleague’s body falling on top of him, the attackers didn’t realise he was still alive.
At nine years old, I didn’t put much thought to my dream of the ominous spirit or the promise she had weaselled out of me. It had all been my imagination for all I know.
For others, it was their fervent prayers at the Sai temple that had protected him. I could agree with them if I want to. After all, I was there too.
* * *
Three
First love.
Do we forget our childhood nightmares or do they follow us into our adulthood? That’s a rhetorical question by the way. Luckily, by the time I was seventeen, I had completely forgotten my nightmares. I had forgotten her, my freaky subconscious twin with the power to hurt and heal.
With Dad still stationed in far flung places and Mum and Leena now with him, I was a very lucky seventeen living on my own with Saumya and my maternal grandmother. Junior college was fun and not as restrictive as school. My new found freedom urged me to explore paths I had never considered before. Boys were now more interesting to me but their lack of maturity was somewhat discouraging.
Yes, I’m aware, at seventeen I couldn’t have been very mature myself but I’m inclined to reveal I was a very smart seventeen.
~ ~ ~
Memories – Prisha – 1989.
At twenty, Saumya, is pretty and is a natural at attracting attention. It can be the confidence she exudes being the all-time favourite in the family and yes, I’m a tad envious of her. I’m still gawky. Physically, I’m developing at a slow pace, my strongest asset is the twinkle in my eyes and the easy smile on my face.
I love being with my friends, cracking silly jokes and laughing at the drop of a hat. Saumya frowns upon my ‘roadside’ behaviour as she calls it but she can’t change me.
Saumya’s friend circle is expanding with her maturity level. She meets up with her school friends who add on their friends. To this group, she adds a few seniors. They are pursuing post graduate studies and are a prestigious badge for her group of under-graduates.
To this mundane group she adds my future.
I still remember seeing him for the first time. Let me correct that; drinking him in with my eyes. Yes, that’s what I did. I drank in the sight of him and promptly fell in love.
Tall, much older than me, he is the kind of handsome that makes my jaw drop. His eyes are the colour of undiluted whiskey, his hair a rich chestnut brown with golden streaks. He wears it stylishly long in a tumble of casual waves and curls over his dreamy eyes. His face is perfect with a straight, strong nose and a square, determined chin. His lopsided smile is full of sinful promises. It sends goose bumps through my soul not just my outer shell. When he grins, there’s a slight hint of a cleft in his left cheek. It’s actually a cute dimple but I call it cleft because it sounds so much more mature. He’s more handsome than a Greek God if they were real. He’s a gift to womankind and I wish he was mine.
Sigh. I wish.
The only hiccup here is that I can drool over him and fill a swimming pool but he doesn’t seem to notice me. He is Saumya’s friend. Saumya’s friend’s friend. Four years older to me, he never gives me a second look apart from an indulgent smile once in a while. No, Saumya is not dating him. There is some mercy in the world!
To my knowledge he doesn’t have a girlfriend and I can only thank my lucky stars, if they were a thing. I guess I stand a chance if only he would look at me. Or get a chance to look at me. Or make him look at me. Saumya and her gang are always off to parties, movies and what not and I’m never invited.
One day, the Goddess of All Good Things decides to shine upon me. The New Year is around the corner and Saumya is invited to a party in town. We live in the suburbs so Mum and Dad refuse to give her the permission to go there alone unless she lets me tag along. Of course there is no logic to it. It isn’t like I can save her or anything. But experience tells me parents have idiotic safety parameters and this is one of them. I’m not complaining.
I know he will be there. Ajaz. That’s his name. I need to look my best for him. He’s always addressed me as kiddo but this time he has to call me by my name.
I choose my clothes with care. I go for a figure hugging black, low waist jeans, a matching black tank top and an embellished, sheer black poncho that leave my arms bare. Saumya thinks I look slutty but I can say the same about her. She’s wearing a bottle green one piece dress that ends right above her knees. It’s a halter neck and screams ‘look at me’ from all directions. She accompanies it with gold stilettos while I wear black ones. Every woman’s fashion magazine I’ve read, confirms black is what men find seductive. And red, but I hate red.
Growing up, I had short hair. Mum didn’t like to plait my hair, she called it the Devil’s Nest. One day after breaking three combs in a week, she took me to a hairdresser and had it cut short to my ears. It made me look like a boy but she didn’t care. To be honest, neither did I. That is till I hit junior college and wondered what it would look like longer.
Well, now I have a funky cut with the hair on top of my head puffed several inches higher than the rest. The hair length is still only kissing my shoulders but I have some blonde streaks running through my otherwise very carbon coloured hair. It looks hip.
I pass large, silver hoops through my ears, put on dark kohl to enhance my eyes and a subtle shade of lipstick that I know I will manage to eat through before we reach the party.
Ignoring each other’s snarky remarks, Saumya and I wait for our pickup outside our apartment complex. It never gets very cold in Bombay in December but tonight there is a strong nip in
the air. I try not to shiver, wishing I had chosen something warmer to wear. And look like a stuffed chicken on New Year’s Eve? In front of Ajaz? No, thank you!
They are late. Traffic is maddening as is expected on New Year’s Eve. Twenty minutes past our pick up time, an imported hatchback rolls in. My breath hitches. Ajaz is at the wheel. He has a sexy, knit t-shirt on. I can’t make out the colour. It’s black or a deep blue. It suits him well, moulding against his rippling muscles. He makes my mouth go dry tonight. No drool. Just a strange, weird awareness of him. The street light falls across his eyes as they meet mine. He doesn’t even look at Saumya. He’s looking at me with a gaze that is intense with heat. Or it could be my imagination because I want it to be so.
Then we get busy trying to get into the damned car. We are three girls and three guys trying to bundle into a car meant for four. Being New Year’s Eve it is acceptable for the extra persons to open the hatch and sit in the back. I suppose it’s dangerous but the speed is less than ten kilometres per hour so I doubt it they will bounce off at any point.
Kartik who was in the front seat, decides to sit in the back. Saumya wants to try sitting in back too. I know she has a soft spot for Kartik, a fellow she knows from college. In the middle, Diya and her boyfriend, Ron, are already seated. That leaves the front seat next to Ajaz for me. I almost do a victory gig before sliding in as gracefully as possible.
My smile has sugar in it for Ajaz. He notices. His smile is polite. It’s indulgent, I can tell, but I don’t care. It’s still a drool worthy one. Yes, the drool is back.
“Seat belt,” he murmurs, his attention on the road as we pull off. “All comfortable back there?” He receives a collective ‘yes’ and we’re off only to get stuck in traffic right outside my lane.
Half an hour later of moving at a snail’s pace, I can hear Ajaz cursing under his breath. Ron joins in loud and clear. They had forgotten the road from our house led to the beach and is declared a one-way on New Year’s Eve. Instead of asking us to meet them at some other point, they came to pick us up and now we are well and truly stuck.
At midnight, people from all around us begin a united, thunderous countdown.
10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1..HAPPY NEW YEAR!
After two hours of being stuck in traffic, we bring in the New Year in the car. It’s a bit disappointing for the others not to be at a real party but I am over the moon. It’s a New Year and I’m sitting next to Ajaz. The year couldn’t have started on a luckier note.
Everyone is hollering ‘Happy New Year’, in the car, on the streets. There are so many people that we are at a standstill. I can make out Ron and Diya are kissing but I have no idea what Saumya is up to. She’s too stuck-up to make a move at Kartik. I’m not but I don’t have the guts to do anything with Ajaz.
So I send him a soft whisper, “Happy New Year.”
He turns to face me, a smile on his lips. It wavers as if surprised. The lights from the streets are bathing us both in a myriad of colours. I can almost sense a shift in his perception of me. He’s looking at me in a different light. The whiskey of his eyes grow darker. His lips part, hanging onto the surprise his muddled brains are going through. “Wish you the same,” he finally manages with a breathless whisper. “You,” he starts and stops.
I’m over the moon! I’ve rendered him speechless! I can hardly hide my smile. “What?”
My question seems to snap him out of his shock, for that’s what he looks like, shocked.
His eyes seem to drink me in sending a wave of slow molten lava into my veins. “Nothing,” he manages a whisper. “You.”
Now I’m uncomfortable and conscious. Has my kohl smudged? My earring fallen off? My hair standing stupidly on my head? My lipstick is off I know with the burger I had eaten earlier. I touch my face with hesitant fingers. “Is something wrong with me?”
“No,” he whispers, his hand leaving the gear stick. He reaches out to flick an errant strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re perfect.”
My breath catches. I do not even bother to turn and see if Saumya or any of the others have heard this exchange. My heart sings, I see stars and I’m sure the tip of my nose is red as it usually is when I am flustered. “Thanks,” I manage a mumble.
He sits back to pin me with an intense look. I can see his thoughts are running havoc on his previous notion of me as a friend’s kid sister. He gives me a lopsided grin indicating he has caught onto my embarrassment. The car ahead of us begins moving then and he returns his attention to the road.
Then, in a matter of fact manner, he comments, “A moment ago your eyes looked almost violet.”
The hot flush that had almost crept up to my head drops in the reverse with a bone numbing chill. An involuntary shiver passes through me as my mind battles with suppressed memories struggling to surface. Shards of ice grip my frantic heart and an even icier plume of fog covers my entire head. I can’t breathe, I can’t see!
My body is going through a slow freeze. One by one, my digits are frosting over. My legs, my arms are numb with the chill that is enveloping me in its entirety. Almost as if it wants to consume me right to the inner depths of my body. I can feel my organs freezing. It’s like an icy finger is turning them into popsicles.
“Did you forget about me, pet?”
I hear the whisper, I begin gasping. I can’t breathe. It’s too cold. It’s too cold!
“Remember me, pet, remember. I will not let you forget!”
It’s a macabre warning and it’s in my head. It’s all around me. That evil, grating voice.
“Look at me!” It commands. “Look!”
My eyeballs roll up as if forced by the same icy fingers that are gripping me all over. The rear view mirror shows me the true horror I am feeling. I’m looking at me but it’s not me! My features are sharper, whiter, colder, malevolent. My hair is white, my eyes are a deep purple.
“Prisha!” It’s Ajaz’s panicked voice that breaks the spell.
The icy assault stops. My reflection smirks and dissipates, leaving me heaving as though I have run a marathon.
I turn to look at Ajaz with big, round eyes that are full of the horror I have seen. He clamps his large hand over mine in concern. It’s like a furnace over my icy one and it spreads a slow warmth through my frigid body. “Sorry,” I whisper trying to control my trembling lips.
The traffic is moving so he can’t pay full attention to me. There is no space to pull over a curb as the mass of cars and people merge into one. It gives me time to recover. “What the hell was that?” he almost barks sounding annoyed and worried at the same time, “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to…”
“No,” I cut in, “It wasn’t you. I’m sorry. I..I’m claustrophobic..I just couldn’t breathe.”
I send him a worried glance and watch the tightness in his jaw relax a little. Did he see her too? No, I don’t think so but he did see my reaction to her. So that means she was real? Who the hell was she?
Ajaz gives me a once over as if to decide if I was saying the truth and seems to buy my little, too white lie. He manages to run the back of his hand down my cold cheek. “You’re cold. Are you sure you’re okay?”
No, I’m not if you touch me like that! I want to grab his hand and lay my cheek against it. He’s like a hot water bag. Instead, I nod.
He rubs an absent hand over his forehead as if ridding himself of his guilt. His sexy mouth slopes into a grin. “You scared me kiddo. For a moment I thought it was what I said.” His next glance is anxious. “Prish, you will tell me if I’m ever being too forward, won’t you?”
I am still shaky but I manage another nod. “It wasn’t you. It’s just how I am. Can’t stand being in dark, cramped places for too long.” It’s isn’t a complete lie.
He’s still worried. His whiskey eyes too dense. “You’re too young. I forgot that.” He looks at me again. The hesitation is brief before it’s replaced with a slow smile. “But tonight you’re the hottest girl I’ve ever seen and I want you to know tha
t.”
Oh, my heart! Beat slow or keel over! I drop a secret smile for myself. Mission accomplished! Ajaz thinks I’m hot!
With an absent shake of his head, Ajaz let’s go the topic. I manage to glance around and come to the thankful conclusion that none of the others have seen my panic attack. Yes, that’s what it was. A panic attack. A boy who I have a crush on, flirted with me and I panicked. Simple. Happens all the time. Or does it?
We reach the venue of the New Year’s Eve party by two a.m. It is in a penthouse apartment in an upmarket part of town. Although the New Year is already here, scores of people are still loitering on the streets of the city. Ajaz and the other boys think it would be a good idea to get off the streets for a bit and dig into some free food. The apartment complex appears deserted and we aren’t sure the party is on anymore. Since Ajaz’s cousin had extended the invitation, he decides to go and take a look.
True Rising: Mark of the Defenders Page 3