by Sanchit Garg
Back when you married me, I never expected someone like you to go ahead and marry me, especially someone like me. You were perfect! You still are. But I was just a flawed person. Hell! It was not even love when we married. Is this what love is?
What I want you to do is let me understand you more closely, let me help you get back to how you were. The cute little girl who took my heart away in a flash and made me the luckiest person in the world. I think even this is asking too much. I never wanted you to hate me 100%. Why would I want that? So, that you can never love me again. No! This is not the case. And, it’s not that I don't want to improve myself. I want to do it. But, I just don't know what to do.
I never said I liked everything about you, I never did. Just a few good things and I hate you sometimes for your bad qualities. But, I expect you to do the same for me. Just that.”
Without saying anything else, she came closer to me and embraced me. She hugged me so tightly, and that was all. It was all that was needed to make me forget all that happened, my mind went blank, all those thoughts of bad things happening, the dreams just went away in a flash, like they never existed. I never knew a single hug from someone you love so profoundly could mean so much. We hugged for as long as we could. But then I broke the silence, as a thought popped in my head.
Please take it slowly. You want to hurt her again.
“Hey! I want to tell you everything that’s been going on, but could you give me some more time to find the best way to tell it to you. Could you please promise me that you would smile from today onwards, not a fake smile, but a real one? Could you do this to let me know you are okay and I would try to get back to the me who never hid a single thing that happened in my life from you?”
“I can’t promise you that right now! But I would like to try it. I have already understood what happened, happened, and even though no matter what I try to do now, I just can't change the past. I just can’t keep on hurting you too, knowing that you are not at fault. I think it’s just the most miserable phase of our life where living is just like dying. And I can’t blame you completely for that.”
Without speaking much, knowing that at this crucial moment, I just can’t say something that would mean differently to her.
I replied, "We should sleep now. Let the coming days be happy ones. You are going to turn into a Mami soon, so, that is going to be splendid.”
She nodded with a gloomy face, “Yes! Let’s go to sleep.”
To me, it felt like she wanted to talk more, listen more. But, I needed to be selfish now. Selfish enough as not to make her hate me to that level again. And so, I went to sleep, and she did too.
In my sleep, it was the same dream again, and even though I was already familiar enough with it, it somehow felt disgusting and hurtful. I thought the only reason for that was because Nandana started appearing in them too. This time, it was a little different. Instead of my wife, the baby was the one who was there on the chair, and as usual, even after trying hard, I just couldn’t reach the baby. Moving forward, I reached the same place where Purnima used to stand daily with the baby in her arms, but there was someone else this time. A lady with her back towards me, draped in a saree.
I screamed, “Hey! Who are you?”
No reply.
“Have you seen a pregnant lady anywhere?”
Still, no reply.
I tried to reach closer to her and called again.
“Hi! Can you listen to me? Can you please answer back? This is not good.”
There was still no reply at all.
I touched the lady on her shoulders, and she didn’t even budge. All it was, is that she felt horribly cold. I decided to slowly move towards her front side and check what was wrong with this person.
I reached to the front of her, and just one look at her gave my soul a shiver unlike anything I had ever experienced, and I woke up, shouting, “Please! No more! Don’t do this to her! Don’t do this to her!”
I had shouted loud enough to wake Nandana.
“Hey! What happened? Why are you shouting? Did you have a bad dream?”
I tried to bring my hands towards her face, to feel it. But just as they were about it, I stopped them in between.
I can’t. She just spoke. She must be totally fine. It was just a dream! A dream! You are in reality now!
“Just a bad dream! Nothing to be scared of. Let’s go back to sleep.”
She replied in a dull voice, “Okay.”
I closed my eyes, and the scene came back into my head, in an instant. It was her, Nandana. But that was not the whole thing.
Her eyes and mouth were sewn shut. There was blood coming out of her eyes and mouth through the little gaps. My gaze reached out to her feet. They were attached to the floor with 3 nails going from her feet and into the floor. It looked as if someone didn’t want her to move, talk or see and that was when I woke up. But why do this? The pain I felt at that moment was inexorable. It was even more painful than what she must have gone through. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I wanted to kill the one who did this to her, but I didn't even know who was creating these dreams. How could anyone do this to someone? To the one whom I loved more than anything, even if it was just a dream.
I kept on staring at her, and the thoughts kept swirling in my head. After some time, I just slept. Don’t know how it happened, but it did.
he next few days went by on a fly. When I was home, at times, she used to just stare at me, hoping that maybe I would talk to her, tell her everything. But I didn’t because I was afraid and bewildered. Would it still be the right thing to say this to her now and hope her to turn better or worse or don’t tell it to her at all and let it be as it is? I finally went ahead with not talking to her for now. According to me, it was the right thing to do at that precise moment.
By this time, my mother was already done with the trick that the Pandit had told her to do, and she was glad that nothing wrong would happen now. I was a bit positive, too, but the dreams made my mind restless. There was hope in me that it would turn out okay, but there was an insecurity, too, that what if it doesn’t, what if something adverse happened again?
Our business was growing well due to which we had turned a lot busier, closing shop an hour or two later than the usual time. Well, we never compromised on quality, and sooner people understood that too, that even if we were selling it a bit more expensive than the others, we were giving them the best out there. We would get so tired that reaching home after work would mean that you just take a bath, have dinner and go straight to slumber and on some days, just do nothing and go straight away to sleep.
But, unlike my father and Mohan, it was different for me. No matter how tired I was, the dreams never stopped. Sometimes, it feels like someone is trying to tell me something, to help me not make the same mistake again, but why doesn’t it straight away tell me what to do? Why am I shown something so hurtful?
Nah! It’s just something wrong with my brain. I have always felt that I was born different. That I am not of this world. Just leave it, man! There’s no solution to your thoughts. It’s just that when I am with people, I feel so different. They look like machines to me. Machines covered with skin, walking here and there. Lost in their thoughts. They don’t know what love is but hope to get love. Sometimes, I feel like a machine too. Rusty and ugly, with my engines spent, thinking 24*7 but someone who dreamt of doing something different one day. But this world is so fucked up, I don’t know how to proceed further. In the end, I am just the same. No matter how much I make up my mind to think otherwise. Maybe there are people like me who are doing the same things I do, thinking the same things I think, dreaming the same dreams I dream and perhaps even loving someone in the same way as I do. Life is complicated, and it has become more complex for me, in the least.
But in the case of Nandana, if I tell her the truth, it would feel like a lie, and if I told her a lie, it would still feel like a lie to her. I just don’t understand. Can I tell her all the things that happened,
how it happened, hundred per cent truthfully and expect everything to be better? No! I don’t think so. I don’t want her to feel so much more than she already would be thinking. Let this burden be just for me. Why would I bring her into this swamp of thoughts that are in my mind and hope to lose her forever in them? I never can, not until it’s a life or death situation. I want her to get the best out there, not the worst if it doesn’t help her improve but rather degrade further down the pit.
I want everything terrible that is about to happen to her to get through me first.
In the evening, I received a parcel with a letter attached to it from my friend, Vinod, who was my best friend in school and was currently working in the city. I had very few friends, because for me, trust was an essential factor, always. For me, it took a lot of time to understand someone. Before Nandana, he was the one I would share everything with. But after she came in, it was always her.
I hadn’t contacted him in the last 4-5 years and wasn’t foreseeing a reply of my mail to him of 2 weeks back. But he still did, and I loved him more now. Why does he love an idiot like me, always treating me like a child and him being my mother? I think Nandana is like that too. She always treats me like a child, telling me to do this, do that, do this thing like this, do this like that, don’t do this, don’t talk to a specific person. With her, it’s like I always have someone who cares for me deeply.
How can I not love a person like her more than myself, more than anything? To like an idiot like me, it must have meant that she was not perfect. There must be something wrong in her brain, to marry an idiot like me, because her heart is so pure, there’s nothing wrong with it. Well, she didn’t have a choice, because we never saw each other, our parents just married us without any of us knowing what the other person looked like. Well, that’s just how marriages happen. But this is wrong.
When a girl has to leave her home and live somewhere else, she should be given the full authority to decide what she wants to do, whom she wants to marry and when she wants to marry. Parents should just give their suggestions, that’s all. Hopefully, someday that would be the case. I would have done this if Amira was still aliv…
A tear rolled down from my eyes, and they turned numb. My thoughts just stopped for a minute there. What the devil had I done to my children. No-one can spare me. It should have been me and no one else. No-one! But as if my thoughts matter to anyone. They don't. Sometimes they don’t even matter to me, because I doubt myself so much. I don’t have enough confidence to do things, and I just leave them midway or don’t give them my full attention if there isn’t someone to tell me to continue moving ahead. So, I don’t know how I am going on these days, but I am going somehow.
So, keeping the package to one side, I opened the letter and read the contents inside-
Dear Rameshwar
I am sorry for not sending you any letters.
Even, I am sorry for that.
City life is hectic. I miss those days in the village where every minute felt like an hour. I hope everyone is good at your home, especially your wife and the kids.
I didn’t tell him about all that happened with me and Nandana and our kids, I lied to him by saying that something otherworldly is happening in my sister’s family and I needed some help to tackle the situation because I knew if I told him everything and all that happened with me, it would hurt him unlike anything and I just didn’t want to give him any pain.
So, I went to the city library, and whatever books I could find on the matter, I got them and sent them to you in the parcel. I hope your sister’s family will be alright soon. And if you need any more help, just send me a letter again, and I will come on the instant I receive it. I miss you a lot. Please take care, you idiot and keep sending me letters if you don’t want me to kill you.
Yours
Vinod
I chuckled, “As if I would, you idiot.”
I opened the package and found three books inside. The covers felt a bit scary, and the titles were too– ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, ‘The Curse of Doone’ and ‘Descent into Hell.’
I scorned, “Why did he send me all these books? He should have just read them and conveyed the key messages to me. He knows I loathed studying, which includes reading too. He’s teasing me, even now. But no problem, man, I would do anything to get everything back to as normal as possible.
At this moment, I need to hide them somewhere, so that no-one finds what I have and secondly, I need to read these at a time when no-one is watching me. But how can I do that? I hardly have any free time with me when I am not watched upon. I thought for a little while and finally found the answer, "When everyone sleeps!"
So, I just wait for the night to come and voila, I can finally unlock the mystery or maybe not.
I faked sleep at night and stood up from my bed at around midnight. I think I may be a master of my art. Everyone was asleep except me, and I had somewhat of a grand challenge ahead of me. I was hoping that the first book that I read would help me solve the situation that I was going through and that there would be no further need to read the other two books. I just hoped. It’s not a bad thing. Also, because there was no help anywhere else, I had all my faith in these books. It was time I took the reins in my own hands. But, I was never a reader or someone who loved reading. So, this was in itself a big challenge for me; placing my hope in a single book.
I grabbed the lamp, which I had hidden before going to sleep and grabbed a bedsheet too. At this moment, I was feeling formidable as if I was about to go on a journey which involved countless challenging but rewarding experiences, just like a HERO. I slowly moved out of the room, taking baby steps. The books were already at the crime location. I laughed internally. All I had to do was walk to the otherwise unoccupied room and get to my task at hand. Still, all of this was easy, the most challenging task was to read the book. I hadn’t read a book in a long time.
I started reading the first book somehow, taking too long just on the writer’s acknowledgement page, hoping that even that could help me. I kept on reading, little by little, making sense of the things as much as I could. Suddenly, I heard a thud. I had already hidden the lamp in the bedsheet that was covering me completely. But a little light could leak here and there. I moved aside the bedsheet a little and pushed my head out, checking my surroundings in a 120-degree fashion. There was nothing there. Confused! I moved my head back in and started on the page where I last was.
A few minutes passed, and there was this thud again. It felt a bit strange this time. It was definitely not a product of my mind. Without disturbing the bedsheet much, I moved myself out of it. With whatever light coming out from the lamp inside the bedsheet, that was lighting the room; I looked here and there in the room for an irregularity. I even put my ears next to the wall to hear any strange noise. There was nothing. What is going on? I walked back towards the bedsheet and was about to get in when I heard the sound again. I panicked. What the hell is going on here? I am not hallucinating. Am I?
I quickly went to the room’s door. It was dead dark outside in the hall. Who could be awake at this hour?
As I was about to move my head a bit out to take a peek, someone’s face came next to me. I quickly moved my head back, with my body jerking a little and gasped in deep breaths. For a moment there, I was just unable to make sense of what just happened. My eyes got blurry, and a strange sound popped in my ears.
Why wouldn’t I? A glowing face had just popped out in front of me from nowhere. Just a face with no foundation at all. It was definitely not a person. Hell! Was it even a ghost? No-one was about to be awake at this hour except me, and I was doing an outstanding job with the lamp that I didn’t expect.
I fainted after this and don’t know how much time had passed, but by the time I woke up, I was resting my head on something comfy. I tried to turn a little and found out that I was on someone’s lap.
I got frightened.
Am I still dreaming?
I closed my eyes, and after pinchin
g them hard, I was just about to open them to check for whether it was a dream or not, a hand stroked the top of my head.
Now, What! What is going on? Where am I?
I opened my eyes again without turning my head to get a sense of my surroundings. I was still afraid to move my head. It looked like it was still night as the light from the lamp was little lighting, whatever it could.
If I am in the same place, then this is not a dream. So, who is the person and just what is she doing here? It was a she, as it was wearing a silk saree sort of a thing. Definitely, not a man. The hand was still slowly moving on my head as to ease me out. It felt so scary, yet it was something familiar. As if, I had known this person from eternity. But, this is a dream. Please tell me it is a dream and not some ghost from my past life.
But why is the hand not stopping? Is the person trying to prepare me for hewing me down? Like warming up before administering the final blow. Please stop! Why don’t you people or ghosts or whatever you are, just leave me alone? What did I do to deserve this? I was just reading a book; it was nothing too serious. It was not like I was about to unlock a secret or was I about to?
I don’t know, but some 10-15 minutes would have already passed with me just keeping my eyes closed, totally scared and thinking of what was going on and who the person was. It was time that I got over my dread, at least partially, and found out who was about to kill me.
As I was about to open my eyes again and check what was going on, I heard a voice.
“Hey! You okay!”