Time Guard: The Awakening (21st Century)

by Anmol Batra

  “You have that Sketch in bag. You can check if you want.”

  Without Saying a word, Swati digs into her handbag and pulls out the second envelope.

  “What makes you trust that sketch so much?” asks Arjun

  Swati remains silent and gazes at the sketch again. An Asian girl wearing a red sweatshirt and blue jeans; shades of pencil now appear coloured to her as she recalls the same girl picking her up along with the Spaniard.

  Arjun points his finger to a bruise mark on Swati’s bag and says “Her thumb ring rubbed against your handbag.”

  “What rubbish! Look, I don’t believe your comic book story and I am filing a complaint against you in the office. You have been stalking me for a while and I’ll make sure you are suspended,” she threatens.

  She puts back the envelopes, zips her handbag up and briskly walks towards the mall exit. The crowd is heavy on the road now. Swati looks for a moment to cross when her phone alarm rings with a reminder message on the screen: “4th Envelope”.

  How could this be? The envelope said 12:30. With a little surprise, she takes it out. Surprisingly, it had a message on both sides of it in the same bottom right position; something that she had earlier ignored.

  She gently takes out the same kind of drawing sheet from it with a message. Move three steps right from the street light and flip the page. Irritated, Swati ignores the message and flips the page right away.

  One second later. On the busy MG Road, an SUV knocks a sedan sideways. The sedan further rams the street light standing beside Swati, its left corner fracturing its foundation. The crash tears apart the sedan’s bumper, shreds the glass of its headlights and twists the bonnet like crushed foil.

  With a loud banging sound, the light falls right in the middle of the street and iron bars of the fractured foundation kiss her elbow.

  Blood rushes down her arm but somehow Swati forgets her pain; looking at the Sketch, she can see a street light fallen on three cars, a traffic cop trying to lift the fallen pillar along with four men, and a traffic jam right behind the accident.

  “I have Dettol in my bag, let’s sit inside and let me clean your wounds.” says Arjun in calm voice.

  Swati now believed him, but still needed a reason to trust him. She is less worried about the wounds now and more curious to know how he was doing it. Why was he doing it? Worries of a prank faded away and Swati nods her head. Both start walking back to the mall.

  She throws a sharp, sideways glance at Arjun, hoping he would say more, but he doesn’t, so she curiously probes. “Where did you get that Dettol from?”

  “Got it from home. I knew you wouldn’t step away from the pillar,” Arjun replies as they both walk inside the mall again.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 5

  How, When and Why?

  22nd December 2012 12:55 PM | M.G.F Metropolitan Mall, Gurgaon

  People rush outside in large numbers. A few gather near the first floor glass to have a look.

  “SECURITY!!” Shouts a man wearing a suite. “Call an ambulance!”

  Swati and Arjun return to the same seat. The coffee shop waiter quickly grabs a glass of water and offers it to the injured Swati. “Are you alright?” asks the waiter courteously.

  Swati nods her head “I’m Ok.” She smiles. She gulps down the water while gazing at Arjun, hoping to hear a further explanation.

  Arjun points to the menu and asks the waiter “Two regular cappuccinos please.”

  Next, He opens his bag and pulls out some cotton, Dettol and band aid strips. Relieved yet bewildered, Swati asks him, “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I can see the future,” comes the confident reply. Arjun’s eyes light up.

  Swati is not convinced by his answer. With questions flooding her brain she asks further, “But how? How did you gain this ability?”

  “Honestly, I don’t remember clearly. I was dead for 17 days. If I go into the past I do see myself dead during that time, but I am somehow not able to trace how I attained this gift. I believe someone took my soul from my body and trained it to return.”

  Swati gazes at him, wondering if the mole near his right ear has got anything to do with it but eventually she shakes off the daydream and fires another question. “And... what else can you do?”

  Arjun soaks Dettol on a cotton bud and starts cleaning her wounded arm. He continues without looking at her. “Like other self-proclaimed gods or avatars, I can leave my body and travel as a soul travelling across the universe, across time.”

  “I had already seen that you would open the first envelope right at the moment when you had received it; ignoring the time of opening. I had already seen that you would be helped by the foreigner and the teenage girl on the metro. I knew you would throw away the Envelopes when you reached home but would try and recover them. I knew you would disobey the writing on the fourth envelope, and wouldn’t step away from the street light.” explains Arjun in a single breath.

  Swati is stunned to hear Arjun. She now trusts every word of his, but curiosity pokes at her ever harder. “Why me?”

  “My sister has been missing for the past six days. I am not able to trace her,” replies Arjun with a worried look.

  “But you can travel in the past and you can travel the world?” asks Swati

  “I can but I have a few limitations. While I am travelling as a soul, my body remains in a coma. I feel no pain, my body deteriorates quickly. Unlike sleep, I don’t move, my body starts to lose blood pressure and I might end up waking paralyzed,” admits Arjun.

  He puts the blood-soaked cotton on a tray and caps the Dettol bottle.

  Then he continues. “As a soul, the problems are different. If I fly too fast I end up ignoring details, if I fly too slow I can’t explore much of the place. The moment I leave Delhi, things get tough. It gets hard to find my way back to the city. I can’t talk to people for directions. To avoid getting lost, I stick to highways or roads with sign posts. Matter can’t travel through time and a soul can’t differentiate between the past present or future. So, when travelling in time I can’t really trace what the present is until I enter my body again and regain consciousness.”

  From the table Swati, can hear the sound of Coffee Machine, but ignores it. She puts her arm down and leans back against the chair. “Since when?”

  “I discovered my ability to travel as a soul way back in 1996,” narrates Arjun. “Along with it came a few problems. I would leave my body subconsciously. I once walked to a water cooler in school leaving my body in the classroom. I put my right hand under a tap when I realised I had forgotten something important in class. Yet it was fun then, my grades improved because I could cheat in exams without anyone knowing about it. I was good with cards for the same reason and made good money from it. Life was simply perfect until I lost my mother in the Gujarat Earthquake in 2000.”.

  Arjun tears off the Band-Aid packing and straps it over Swati’s arm.

  He continues. “While my mother was trying to save my body, I flew as a soul chasing a plane to Goa at Night. I was enjoying the nightlife on a beach in Goa and she was just not sure why I was a in such deep sleep, even during an earthquake. She pushed my lifeless body out of the way, seconds before she got crushed under the linter. She didn’t know if I was alive, but she believed it before she died. My father decided to relocate us back to Delhi. I didn’t leave my soul for 12 years after that. Until Ankita disappeared six days back.”

  Lost in Arjun’s words, Swati could empathise with him. In a low voice she asks, “What happened to Ankita?”

  “I always believed Ankita had a far more comfortable life as a doctor. Until it was the twelfth of this month when she came back worried from hospital. She had come across an accident case where a young guy had been hit by a car and also had overdosed. Ankita received a call that night. She was offered money in return for the dead body, which she refused. The next day, the dead body disappeared. And Ankita went missing from the hospital,” replies Arjun.r />
  The waiter brings the coffee to Swati’s table and takes away the empty glasses and used cotton.

  “Friday night, I finally decided to leave the physical me and fly as a soul again,” continues Arjun “I flew across the entire of Delhi and the neighbouring cities as well. Across every road, every house, and every corner but I couldn’t find her.”

  Swati strips a sugar sachet and pours it in her coffee while she listens. She imagines Arjun flying in air.

  “I spent 2 days on the street walking, sometimes in my body and sometimes as a Soul. Three nights of flying as a soul with no clues. Though less hopeful, I decided to look for Ankita in railway containers crossing Delhi. I waited at Chandni Chowk Railway Station and subconsciously stared at the train station tower clock when something surprising happened. As the second hand steadily moved, it stopped and slipped in reverse. It went back forty seconds back in an anti-clock wise direction. I thought it was a technical defect and ignored it.”

  Swati sips the warm coffee and listens to every word with curiosity. Her phone rings with a message on-screen: “Abhijeet Calling...” she dismisses the call.

  “I flew into the railway station and stopped at the platform trying to look around for train carriages where kidnappers could have possibly hidden Ankita. There were people sleeping on overhead flyovers wrapped in blankets when suddenly one of the men sleeping on the bridge lost his muffler in the wind. The muffler blew off the side of the bridge like a broken leaf from a dying tree. As a soul, I don’t feel hot or cold but seeing other people shiver did give me a sense of the cold winter. Sadly, I couldn’t help them, not as a soul.”

  “It was 6:20 AM and time continued to bother me. I looked around from the foot over bridge and LED screen grabbed my attention. I observed the LED Marque with the train arrival time scrolling on it: ‘12312 KALKA-HOWRAH-KALKA MAIL 6:25 AM’. Red capital letters in English scrolling from left to right. I continued to stare at it and I could also see the train coming from far off, heading towards the platform. It was not yet dawn, and I could see pigeons flying from the metal shed above the pedestrian bridge, towards the approaching train. Time continued to bother me. A moment later, things changed.”

  “The red letters of the LED Marquee started to scroll backwards, moving from right to left. The train moved away from the platform and the pigeons above the train started to fly back to the footbridge with their tails in front of them. I looked sideways, over the bridge with the sleeping men. And the muffler lost in the wind flew back to the bridge’s side grills and arranged itself across the top edge.”

  “Everything rewound itself like a video. The train disappeared and the clock at the entrance was behind by an hour. I didn’t know what had happened, I didn’t knew how it had happened but subconsciously I knew I had triggered it.” Arjun pauses.

  A man in blue shirt approaches Swati and Arjun at their table. He adjusts his tie and asks, “Excuse me Ma’am! Would you like to apply for a credit card?”

  Swati shakes her head, refusing him politely. She continues to look into Arjun’s eyes and questions once more, “What happened after that?”

  “I came back home, the clock in my bedroom said 5.10 AM. I believed I had spent 9 hours as a wandering soul ...but the moment I woke up and reclaimed my body, I realised that it was not so.. I could see the same clock from the place where I was lying on bed, but sadly now it said 6:45 AM. My limbs were lifeless. I could feel my legs and lower back; warm and wet. My lifeless body had urinated at night,” continues Arjun.

  “I left my body again and started to look around the house as a soul. It was an untidy place with things scattered around everywhere, and as a ghost I couldn’t move anything. It was hard to find my phone. After twenty minutes of useless effort, I returned to my body in an attempt to move it again but my effort was once more to no avail. Luckily, my phone alarm started to pulse after 5 minutes. The phone was just outside the quilt and I could feel it near my hand.”

  “With great effort I could finally use the index finger of my left hand to touch the 3 buttons on the lower edge of the phone. The left button is dial and right is call disconnect; I could recall. I simply called the last dial number and the call went to the Bank 24x7 Customer Care. – ‘Press 1 for English, Hindi ke liye do dabayein.’ Sadly, I couldn’t reach the other end of the touch screen.”

  “The voice response system waited for 3 minutes and the call disconnected, dashing all my hopes along with it. After half an hour, the maid rang the door-bell. With great effort I screamed for help but again to no great effect. The maid rang three times and then left, dashing my hopes for the second time.”

  “Then something surprising happened. A minute later, the maid gave me a missed call. The call logged into the dial log and now I could dial her back with the same dial button. The next moment I pressed the call button again, it went through.”

  “‘The key is under the doormat. Please help!’- In a lost, defeated voice that’s all I could say with my leftover strength. Within a minute she came in and saved me. It took me eight hours until I could finally move my limbs. I had learnt two lessons from the past night. First, my soul can walk through time, but I need to learn how to control it. Second, my body can’t stay without its soul for nine straight hours.”

  “Time was running away. And with every minute I was losing hope for Ankita. I went to Aditya Hospital where Ankita worked, hoping to find a clue. Also, I needed to understand how a human body would respond if it didn’t move for 9 hours.”

  “I met Ankita’s colleague, Nidhi. The two have been close to each other for years. Nidhi requested that I went through some cardiology tests. She suspected I had suffered trauma or depression but the symptoms were of a coma or cardiac arrest. She wasn’t sure what had triggered it or how I was alive after it. She tried to enquire more but I preferred not to disclose anything. After ducking around questions for a while I finally got what I needed to know.”

  “I shouldn’t leave my body lifeless for more than 6 hours.”

  “Nidhi never knew much about the patient and directed me to another doctor who attended the case but was clueless about the location that the patient had been moved to. Somehow the file was missing from the hospital, along with the details of the patient. The patient never had a visitor and every detail, every record was missing from where it should be - and so was Ankita. The hospital administration had now started to suspect Ankita as well, which is why they were too scared to divulge information to the police about the missing dead body of the patient, foreseeing that they might suffer a hit to their reputation,” said Arjun, with pain in his eyes.

  Arjun went on for twenty minutes and Swati silently listened to everything, feeling his pain while being completely taken aback at the same time.

  “Tell me how I can help you in this case?” she asks.

  “I need you to take care of my lifeless body in the absence of my soul. You have a Mobile Service tower installed on the rooftop of your residence. In order to trace my body from a distant place, I would install a blinking purple beacon on it.” says Arjun

  “Why purple?” asks Swati, with curiosity.

  Arjun replies, “Because there are no blinking purple beacons anywhere in the world. I can swiftly trace where my body is. If I am in the past or the future, I can swiftly come back to my body. This will help me quickly trace what is happening in the present.”

  “Also, I would need a digital wall-clock with the date in the room.”

  “Why so?” asks Swati.

  “So that I can differentiate between 6 AM and 6 PM. A date will help me estimate how far I have gone in time. Also, you may need to check my lifeless body for losing blood pressure or accidental urination,” replies Arjun.

  “Why did you choose me?” asks Swati.

  “I can’t disclose this right now, but I’ll be happy to help you with something that you want to know. Promise me you won’t try and change the future!” Arjun says in his most serious voice.

  Swati thinks
silently for a minute. She has faith in Arjun, but at that same time she is scared of his abilities. She had been alone for almost 8 years now. She had been too scared to get into a relationship ever since she separated from her boyfriend in college, but was curious to know who she would spend her life with. If there is going to be someone someday. If yes, when?

  But this wasn’t everything she wanted to know. There was another question which bothered her persistently. Swati had lost her parents a decade back. Though the cops in Uttarakhand had told her it was a landslide, she was never convinced with their answer. She knew that knowing the reason for her parent’s death wouldn’t bring her any peace, but deep inside she remained curious.

  And now a junior in the office who used to avoid eye contact with her, was the only superman, or super-ghost on the planet that she knew about.. With a shivering voice she pleads “I want to know who my life partner will be? Where and when will I find him.”

  “Which is why you still have the fifth envelope,” replies Arjun, tapping on the envelope in her bag.

  Swati pulls out the sealed envelope, not surprised for the first time. “And I also need to know how my parents died?” she says swiftly, hoping to receive another drawing.

  “Yes, I knew about this as well but for that I need to know the day, time and place of their death. I promise I will find them once Ankita is back home,” Arjun assures her.

  “I have seen Ankita at our home in the future which means she will return home someday. I don’t know how but I won’t stop trying. If you open this envelope sixteen days from now, you will discover what you want to know. The exact time and date is mentioned on it and you will have your answer – partially,” hesitates Arjun.

  “Partially?” Asks Swati anxiously.