by Faraaz Kazi
“Argh, power cut,” Rajiv said loudly, “But the moon is at its shining best and the wind seems friendly, so it does not matter.” He had a brand new torch with fresh batteries and there was enough light anyway, so he sat there for a long time, enjoying the night's atmosphere and the music.
“This is life, far from the maddening crowd. The only thing missing is the company of a beautiful woman,” Rajiv sighed.
“I really love Jagjeet Singh's ghazals!” a feminine voice crooned from behind, making Rajiv tumble off his chair. He looked up and was startled to see a young woman standing behind. Dressed in a light colored churidar kameez, she appeared to be in her early twenties. Her face and clothes shone under the luminary and Rajiv observed she had a city accent, something he would not have expected in a girl from these parts. She was quite slim and beautiful with the right curves at the right places.
“Who are you?” Rajiv asked, trying to sound harsh.
Her laugh ran out loud and clear, “I am Poonam, the Village school master's daughter and I work at ICICI Bank in Ghaziabad. I was home for a couple of days. I was feeling very bored and sneaked out after dinner. My mother keeps telling me that it is not safe for a girl to be out after dark but I grew up in this village before I left for studies and nothing here scares me. By the way, who are you and why are you sitting all alone?”
Rajiv relaxed visibly, “Hi Poonam, I am Dr. Rajiv Gupta and I joined this PHC today. I intend to live here and work.”
“Ah, so you are a Gupta too. You know the boy I love and want to marry is a Gupta… Prem Gupta. We both are colleagues at work. In fact I came home to talk to my parents about Prem. But my parents are very conservative and they are not going to agree,” Poonam said, paling visibly.
“Aha, a love story! Perhaps you need to be more firm with your parents.” Rajiv advised.
“I have told them a thousand times that I love only him and will not be happy with anyone else but they just don't seem to understand,” Poonam said in a low voice.
“Are your parents very conservative?” Rajiv asked, throwing away the cigarette.
“Yes. I told them that I am carrying Prem's child and they created a scene. My mother is even willing to take me to Muzaffarnagar for an abortion but they will not let me marry him,” Poonam said, almost on the verge of breaking down.
“Are you sure that he loves you and was not just having a good time with you?” Rajiv asked softly.
Her eyes flashed fire, “Now you sound just like my parents. But let me tell you ours is true love. And my parents just don't understand that!"
“That is tough. Is there anything I can do to help?” Rajiv offered, wondering why a stranger was sharing her personal life with him.
“No, it is too late. I have decided that if I cannot live with him then I'll not live at all,” Poonam turned and ran outside.
Rajiv was flummoxed for a second and then started running after her. “Poonam, stop. Listen to me. I'll help you. I'll talk to your parents. Stop, please stop!” he shouted.
From a distance, he saw Poonam reach the well. She whirled around to face him and said, “Too late, I told you it is too late!” And then she jumped in.
Rajiv ran towards the well, leaned against its crumbling walls and shone his torch inside. He expected to see the girl thrashing around in the well but there was nothing. He directed the beam at the black moss infected water and moved it around. Nothing. The reflected beam of the torch shone back at him as if mocking his thought process.
“Poonam,” he shouted and his voice echoed back from the well.
Somebody touched him on the back, making him leap out of his skin. He whirred around to see the pharmacist and Ramu standing there. The pharmacist was reeking of cheap alcohol and Ramu blinked in the light of his torch.
“Sir, what are you doing here? This is not a good place to be at night. Please come back to the duty room,” Ramu said.
“A girl just jumped into this well. Get some ropes. We have to help her,” Rajiv shouted.
“There is no girl. Come back, please!” And the duo literally hauled him back to the duty room.
Next morning, he heard the story from the nurse. “Poonam was the schoolmaster's daughter, beautiful and sharp. She committed suicide by jumping into the PHC well last year. Her body was fished out the next day. The shocking thing was that no birds ever visit the campus after that incident, nor do any flowers bloom on trees here. This is not a good place to stay after dark. That is why I told you not to stay here but you would not listen.”
Rajiv was stunned when he heard the story. He had not come across such an extraordinary tale all his life. It is a bit difficult to believe in ghosts when you have spent the better part of your life among the dead and the dying. The first part of medical training is spent in the dissection hall where the students dissect dead bodies to learn about anatomy. The middle half is spent in pathology where one encounters all kind of diseased parts and portions of human remains preserved in formaldehyde. The last part is spent in hospital wards where death is a frequent visitor and by the time one becomes a doctor, he or she loses all fear of encountering death and disease.
“Now if humans become ghosts after dying, I would have encountered many of them in and around my medical College,” he reasoned. “There has to be a rational explanation for yesterday's events. Either I went to sleep in the lawn and had a vivid dream or I must have imagined the entire episode. The environment and the solitude got to me. There are no ghosts.” The PHC appeared to be perfectly normal in broad daylight and events of the previous night appeared to be far away.
“I am not going to listen to any rubbish,” Rajiv announced to his staff. “I am going to stay here and work. I will talk to the CMO and get the quarters repaired. From today we start regular OPD and from next month onwards, I'll start the indoor. Now I want all staff members to work diligently. No excuses will be entertained.”
Rajiv immersed himself in work and the day flew away. The PHC became deserted as night descended. Rajiv felt a bit uneasy but admonished himself on his weakness. He again pulled out his chair and placed it in the lawn after dinner. He put on some ghazals and waited for something to happen. The CD ran out but nothing happened. No one came. He looked around but saw no one. He even walked to the well a few times and shone his torch inside. At last he got tired of his vigil and went to the duty room to sleep.
A week passed and after waiting fruitlessly for Poonam to appear, Rajiv convinced himself that he had imagined the entire episode. He stopped waiting in the lawn. He got the quarter repaired and settled down. The attendance of patients in the PHC increased as word got around about the new doctor. The staff grudgingly accepted his authority and their performance improved. But they refused to stay in the PHC at night. Rajiv was not entirely happy but thought that he would be able to bring them around eventually.
A month passed and by then Rajiv had pushed Poonam to the back of his mind. He had to go to Muzaffarnagar the next day for the monthly meeting with the CMO and was busy collating his data. He was happy to note that the PHC had started achieving the vaccination and other targets since his joining. He was hoping to convince the CMO to post additional staff in his PHC so that the
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performance could improve further and also enable him to start indoor admissions. He was so busy working on his report that he did not notice the clock strike midnight. His concentration was broken when the lights flickered and went out suddenly. He sighed in resignation and looked out of the window. The full moon shone brightly and lit up the lawn. The lawn was now neatly trimmed and seemed very different from how it had a month back…but he could see someone there. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief. There was a woman standing in the shadows below the tamarind tree. He rushed out of the room and looked around. There she was. She was dressed in the same clothes as last time. Her face was shrouded in the shadow of the tree.
“Poonam!” He said, “What is happening?”
“I told you everything last time,” she replied, her voice sounded unearthly.
“I have been looking for you. But you were nowhere to be found,” Rajiv said.
“Don't you know that I am Poonam? And Poonam, the full moon comes only once in a month,” she laughed, the sound echoing across the lawn.
“This is not possible. I am dreaming,” Rajiv said, rubbing his eyes again.
“There are many things that science cannot explain, Dr. Rajiv. Things beyond human understanding.” she said, abruptly stopping the laughter.
“But why, how?” Rajiv shouted.
“Unfulfilled desires! Unkept promises! You know something. My father even refused to perform my last rites,” she laughed again. Rajiv could hear the anguish even in that laughter.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked softly, brushing away his skepticism in the wake of his experience.
“There are no answers. Only questions, questions and questions!” And in a blink of an eye she was gone.
The wind whistled in the trees and the moon hid behind a stray cloud. The air suddenly seemed chillier than it had been before and Rajiv shivered as he made his way towards the quarter. He pinched himself and realised that he was wide-awake. He tried to sleep but sleep eluded him as his thoughts kept moving to Poonam.
“There are no answers. Only questions, questions and questions!” the voice echoed.
Rajiv decided to investigate the matter thoroughly, if only to preserve his own mental peace and sanity. The next morning, he went out and made a thorough search of the area around the tamarind tree. There was no clue to be found. He looked around the well and even inside it. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just as he was about to exit the campus, he saw a little sparrow fleeting about wildly in the air. Just when it had seemed that its flights would carry the sparrow inside the periphery of the campus, the sparrow had turned around and flown away. Rajiv shook his head in disbelief and walked towards the village, seeking the school master's house. It was situated next to the village school, a humble abode with peeling green paint and an unpretentious exterior. He knocked on the door and waited impatiently for someone to appear. After sometime a middle-aged lady dressed in a sari opened the door. Rajiv noticed that she did have a startling resemblance to the girl he had seen twice now in the PHC. The lady looked at him questioningly.
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“Sorry to disturb you early in the morning. I am Dr. Rajiv Gupta, the Medical Officer in the PHC. I want to talk to Masterji,” Rajiv said with a smile.
“He is not at home. Please come after two days,” the woman answered.
“May I talk to you just for two minutes, please?” Rajiv requested.
The lady was hesitant to let a stranger enter her house. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked.
“Your daughter, Poonam. I want to talk about her,” Rajiv said and watched the woman's expression change. The wary look gave place to a look of intense sorrow. She said. “I don't have a daughter anymore. Poonam is gone forever. We should not have sent her to the city.”
Rajiv was persistent, “I need to talk about her. It is important.”
She relented and let him in. Rajiv was offered a cane chair.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked.
“Please tell me about Poonam,” he coaxed.
“Poonam, my only daughter, was a beautiful girl. We had started receiving many proposals for her the moment she cleared her matriculation. But she did not want to marry a villager. She wanted to study further. She was the apple of her father's eyes and he sent her to the city to pursue her further studies. I did not want her to go to the city but my decision was overruled.” The lady paused to wipe off her tears with the corner of her sari. “She completed her graduation and got a job in this bank. No girl from our family had ever done that and foolishly we allowed her to work. I think her father was beginning to have dreams of marrying her off to a doctor or an officer.”
“I see. What happened after that?” Rajiv asked.
“One day Poonam came home and told us that she wanted to marry some Prem Gupta who worked at the bank with her. Her father was livid and refused outright on learning that the boy was from another caste. She was carrying that boy's child in her womb. There was a huge confrontation between father and daughter and in the end Poonam ran out of the house. I told her father to go after her and bring her back but he was adamant on his stand. Poonam did not come home the whole night. I could not sleep a wink and cried that night but I needed to save my tears for... for her body was found floating in the PHC well. She had chosen to end her life rather than listen to us. Poonam's father refused to get her body or perform her funeral rites. He even refused to look at his dead daughter. In the end, a distant relative had to do the job. Masterji has declared that nobody should even take her name in his presence. Even I have talked about her after months. But tell me Doctor Sahib, why do you want to know about all this?” the woman looked at him with puffy eyes.
Rajiv did not want to tell her about his strange encounters. He said, “I have just taken charge of the PHC. The staff was talking about a girl committing suicide in the PHC. I thought that I'd meet you people and verify the facts.”
The CMO was pleased with the progress PHC Jhinjhana had made ever since Rajiv had joined and surprised him by accepting his request for additional staff as well as an ambulance. That pleased Rajiv no end and he walked out of CMO's office with the feeling of a job well done. He glanced at his watch and realised that there was enough time to catch the bus back to the PHC. He hailed a rickshaw and set off towards the Bus stand. The rickshaw trundled through the traffic as Rajiv took in the sights and sounds of Muzaffarnagar. Suddenly, he saw the signboard of ICICI bank towards his left behind some vegetable vendors. Acting on an impulse, he got off from his perch and walked in. The airconditioned comfort of the bank offered a huge contrast to the heat and grime of the street. He walked up to the girl sitting on the 'May I help you' counter and said, “Will it be possible for me to talk to Prem?”
“Prem? As far as I know there is no one named Prem in this branch. Could you tell me his full name please, sir?”
“Prem Gupta! He used to work in this branch with a girl named Poonam.”
The girl gave him a blank look, “Sir, I have been in this branch for just three months. You'd better talk to the manager. He has been here for a long time.”
Rajiv approached the manager, who was a dapper young man in his early thirties, introduced himself and said that he wanted some information about Poonam and Prem. The manager heard the names and sighed, “Poonam was the life of this branch, a bright and vivacious girl. She was in love with Prem Gupta, a boy from Meerut who worked in this branch. But there was some problem with her family. Poonam went home and never came back. She is said to have committed suicide. Some say her kin murdered her. We don't know what actually happened. As for Prem, he went into severe depression, resigned from the job and went back home. I don't know what happened to him after that.”
“Could you give me his address and contact number please?” Rajiv requested.
The manager searched around in his desktop and copied out the information on a sheet of paper.
“I am not supposed to be doing this. But as you are a doctor and from Poonam's village, I am helping you with this information,” he said, handing over the sheet.
Rajiv checked the address and the contact number on his way back. The address was of Shastri Nagar, Meerut. He dialed the number but the irritating voice of the operator told him that the number was no longer in use. He tried the number a few more times but gave up when the same message repeated again and again.
There seemed to be no other lead to follow except trying the Meerut address. “I will contact Prem Gupta and talk to him the next time I am in Meerut,” he promised himself.
The nightmares started that night. He had weird dreams, which he could recollect only vaguely. In his dreams, there w
as a shadowy form of a young woman who kept asking him for help. There were other dreams that were extremely disturbing but he could never recall them on waking up. At night, he could sense someone circling his bed but when he would suddenly wake up and switch on the lights, there would be no one in the room. He worked hard the whole day and kept himself busy with patients and administrative work but his nights became increasingly morose. He kept looking over his shoulder all the time as if he expected Poonam to materialize any moment but he never saw or heard anything abnormal. He lost his appetite and started looking haggard much to the consternation of his subordinate staff. “Doctor sahib par churail ka saaya hai!” They whispered to each
other indicating that the ghost had trapped the doctor.
In the end, he could stand it no longer. “I don't want to be looking over my shoulder every minute. A week of ma's cooking and fussing is what I need,” Rajiv told himself and applied for a week's leave.
Rajiv found himself under the tamarind tree. The wind rustled the leaves, creating a death-like rattle. Rajiv wondered what he was doing there at this time of the night. He did not remember walking to the tree but there he was under the full moon. The entire PHC glistened silver in the moonlight but it did not seem romantic or soothing anymore. He felt afraid. His parched throat indicated him to turn and make a dash for the quarters but his feet were lead. He could feel the presence around him. He did not want to meet her again. He tried to run away but realised that he was rooted to the ground.
He heard the familiar laugh ring out. It was coming from the well. And suddenly he could see her form floating out of the well, arms flailing and a deathly-white shade covered her face. Her hair flew wild in the wind and he could hear her voice clearly despite the distance. “You may run but you cannot escape. Nobody can escape. We all want to be free but are tied to this place. Can you find a way out of this maze, Dr. Rajiv Gupta?”