आफत

उनसे नज़रें मिल जाएं बस 

मुड़ मुड़ कर देखा किये उन्हें राह भर

मगर दिल की उलझन भी अजीब है

वो नज़रें मिलाएं तो आफत न मिलाएं तो आफत 

उनसे मिलने के आरज़ू में 

जगा किये हम रात भर

मगर दिल की उलझन भी अजीब है

वो आएं तो आफत न आएं तो आफत 

तीर-ए-इश्क़ ने ऐसा ज़ख्म दिया हमें

के सांसें थम जाए उनकी हर बात पर

मगर दिल की उलझन भी अजीब है 

वो मुस्कुराएं तो आफत और दिल जलाये तो आफत

Knock on the Door

It was a dark and stormy night. Jenny was home alone, sitting in her living room, trying to read a book. But she couldn't concentrate with the howling wind and the rain tapping against the windows.

Suddenly, she heard a loud knock at the door. She froze, wondering who it could be. She cautiously approached the door and looked through the peephole, but she saw nothing but darkness. The knocking continued, growing louder and more insistent.

She was not expecting anyone at this hour of the night. Hesitantly Jenny reached out and opened the door. No one was there. She stepped out onto the porch, looking around, but the street was empty. The wind and rain were now stronger, and she shivered in her thin pajamas.

As she turned to go back inside, she heard a strange noise coming from the bushes. She walked over and peered into the darkness. There was nothing there. She shrugged it off and headed back to her warm house.

But as soon as she closed the door, the knocking started again. This time, it was coming from inside the house. Jenny's heart raced as she searched for the source of the noise. But it was as if the knocking was coming from every wall and every corner.

Suddenly, the lights went out. Jenny screamed, but no one could hear her over the sound of the wind and rain. In the darkness, she could feel something breathing on the back of her neck.

She turned around, and in the dim light of a distant streetlamp, she saw a figure standing in front of her. It was a ghostly woman, with long hair and a pale face. The woman reached out with her icy hand, and Jenny screamed again as she felt the cold grip her throat.

And that was the last anyone ever saw of Jenny. Her house was always empty, and the neighbors whispered about the ghostly figure that haunted it. But no one ever dared to go inside, not after what had happened to poor Jenny.

The Violinist

It was the beginning of winter in the November of 1973 when Joshua first appeared in the life of Myra. He was a boy in the second year of college studying music. She was a girl just out of college after completing her Bachelor in Arts and then employed as a librarian in the Old Library in Mussoorie. He came to her when she was sitting behind her desk in the library and asked for books on violins. She pointed in the direction of the music section.

He came everyday around afternoon and walked up to her desk asking for this book or that. She would duly point him in the right direction. He would come again before leaving to say goodbye. She would smile politely and return his goodbye. One day instead of asking for any book he asked if she would come with him for a cup of tea after the library closed at five in the evening. She agreed. That was exactly ten days before her twenty second birthday.

Joshua came every afternoon and spent time in the library pouring over books on violins. One day before her birthday Myra asked him why was he always reading about violins? Could he play a violin as well? He just smiled in reply. 

The next day Joshua did not come in the afternoon. He turned up in the evening instead just as Myra was picking her handbag and the library keys and was preparing to leave. She turned around and there he was standing in the dim light of the dusk coming in from the glass windows. She stood there looking at him as he put the violin under his chin and started playing with his eyes closed. Myra sat back in her chair as Joshua continued to play. She felt as if she was flying with notes of the violin. 

 

They lost count of the time. When he stopped playing it was dark outside. The library was lit only by the light of a single street lamp coming in from one of the windows. Myra asked what was the music that he was playing? Joshua replied that it was Nocturne No. 20 originally composed by Frédéric Chopin.  She said she loved it. Happy birthday he replied.

In a few months despite all her protests Myra was blackmailed by her parents into marrying Zishan, the son of a wealthy industrialist from Delhi. Joshua met her on the eve of her marriage and said that on her birthday every year, no matter where she was, he would come and play the violin under her window.

When Zishan and Myra were getting married at the Union Church, Joshua stood outside on the street and played the Nocturne No. 20 on his violin. Tears didn’t stop falling from Myra’s eyes.

Within a few months of their marriage the sweetness of the relationship faded and the fights became more frequent. On her twenty third birthday as Zishan and his family gathered half-heartedly around a pound cake to celebrate a violin started to play somewhere out on the street. Myra ran to her room upstairs and locked herself. She stayed in her room for the rest of the evening, listening to violin play in the darkness of the night.

Another year of marriage somehow went by and when November came she told Zishan that she wanted to go to Mussoorie to be with her ailing father during her birthday. On her birthday when her family gathered in the living room to cut the cake she excused herself to go to her room. When her father asked why was she going, she said that she wanted to listen to music. What music asked her mother. She didn’t reply. The violin played as she sat near the window and stared in to the darkness.

Myra never went back to Delhi. Zishan sought lack of a child as an excuse and got married a second time. Myra applied for the job of the librarian again. She decided to look for Joshua. She went to the college where Joshua was studying and got an address and a phone number. When she called the phone number Joshua’s mother picked up the call and informed Myra that he died in a bus accident two years ago.

Myra died at the age of 62 years in 2013, she never went back to Delhi or to Zishan and on the evening of each of her birthday Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne No. 20 played on a violin outside her window.

In November when winter is arriving, if you happen to visit the Old Library in Mussoorie on a lonely evening and you listen closely, you will hear someone playing the violin.

Author’s note: The inspiration for this story came to me while I was reading Sarah Winman’s Tin Man.

Stories

Sometimes I find
a story in the
tiny star tattooed
on the wrist of a
burkha clad girl
Sometimes I see
blank pages in the
excited faces
around me

What happened to Raxit?

What I am about to tell you is not a story but my personal experience from my early days in Mumbai. This was in 2008. I remember the year correctly because this incident or story (well that is what I will call it just for the heck of it) is based on some entries in a diary which have dates mentioned in them. Before I move on to the dairy entries, I will tell you what happened.

I was living in Matunga, as a paying guest, just a couple of blocks from Hinduja Hospital. We were three people sharing a 2 BHK flat. The landlord also lived in the same building on the ground floor while we occupied the first. There was another house bang opposite to ours a three BHK bungalow with a garden in front and a backyard. Both the garden and the backyard was overgrown with weeds. The inside of the house was however fully furnished and decently maintained. I mention this house because it is at the center of this story.

There were few interesting things about this house which you must know before I move on. Firstly, the house as I just mentioned was huge and well furnished, well that’s really not unique. The backyard opens directly in to the sea beach. So it was like your own private beach right in the heart of Mumbai.

Another very interesting thing was that it belonged to my landlord, a good hearted Parsee widower but a stingy miser. So while we paid Rs. 18000 for the two rooms that the three of us shared amongst us, the rent for that palatial house was (in 2008) just Rs. 8000. His two sons were living in the US, and his daughter who was the youngest had died few years ago.

The third and the most interesting thing which I noticed in the two years that I spent in my PG was that despite the rent being so low none of the families which rented it could spend more than a month before vacating it. Some families vacated the house in less than fifteen days while others could manage for just about a month. I remember two occasions when two separate families complained that their sons had gone missing suddenly and then they left the house.

I could never understand the reasons for this until I came across the diary. It so happened that a friend named Raxit, who I knew through Twitter since a couple of years was planning to move to Mumbai to try his luck in Bollywood as a script writer and director. He was looking for a place and I told him about this house which had just been vacated. He came to Mumbai. I took the key from my landlord and took him to show the house. That was the first time I entered the house, it had an odd feel to it and there was a faint putrid smell which I thought must have been the sea. Even now when I think about the house my brain reminds me of that smell.

There were three rooms, a living cum dining area a huge kitchen, two bathrooms. All the bedrooms had bed, a wooden almirah and wide windows with curtains. The room at the end of the house was the best one as its window offered the view of the sea. The room also had a study table right by the window and a rocking chair. Raxit instantly liked the place and agreed to move in the very next day. He said that he was working on a script currently and the room by the sea would make it an ideal place to write. I noticed that when I was inside that room I could not hear any noise from outside but just the sea.

Next day when I came back from office I called up Raxit to check. He told me that had moved in. I asked him if he would like to have dinner with me to which he said that he was already working on the script and didn’t want to go out so he had order some Chinese food from the café in the corner of the road. The date was 2^nd June and that was the last time I heard Raxit’s voice. We did have conversations after that but those were mostly a few lines text messages. He got busy with his script writing and stopped taking my calls and instead reverted through text messages.

On 12^th June I came home late, it was raining heavily and my phone had conked off due to low battery. When I switched the phone back on, there was a single line message from Raxit, “I think I am losing it. Please meet me asap.” I called his phone but he did not pick up. It was raining heavily so I messaged him that I would meet him in the morning before I left for office.

The next morning, I went to the house and rang the doorbell. There was no response. I rang the doorbell again a few times and yet there was no response. I went around the house to the overgrown backyard. I was hit by that putrid smell again. It was much stronger this time. The bedroom window was open. The only noise that I could hear was the sea. I called Raxit’s phone again. I could hear it ringing inside the house. I stood below the window, jumped up and gripped the window sill and then pulled myself up to peep inside the room. It was empty. The pages of a hardbound notebook kept on the table near the window were fluttering in the wind, the fan was on, the table lamp was on, the mobile phone was on the table, but there was no Raxit.

Remembering his last text message and fearing the he might be in some kind of trouble I decided to get the duplicate keys from the landlord and check things out. I went back to my PG and found the landlord sitting in the pantry having his morning breakfast. I told him about Raxit’s message and my findings of the morning. A cloud seemed to pass over his face. He stared outside the door with his mouth open. I had to shout, “Uncle!”, a couple of times before he was himself again. I told him to give me the duplicate keys so that I could go and have a look. He went to his bedroom and after a few minutes came back.

I asked for the keys but he clutched on to them. Then he shook his head as if making up his mind and said that he would come with me. Together we went to the house. He unlocked the door latch. I rushed in. At that time, I did not notice that the landlord didn’t follow me in to the house, he just stood by the door and looked inside. I went in to Raxit’s room immediately, it was still empty. I checked both the bathrooms, the other two bedrooms and the kitchen they were all empty. I came out of the house.

“He might have stepped out for breakfast.”, Uncle said, but his voice broke as he spoke as if his throat was dry. I thought that to be a possibility, Raxit might have forgotten his phone behind. I decided to wait till evening and went to office. All through day I called Raxit but he never answered the phone. In the evening I went to the house rang the doorbell a couple of times but there was no response. So I went back to my landlord to ask for the duplicate keys again, may be Raxit was back and maybe he was asleep, I just wanted to make sure.

“Why do you want to go there at this time? May be he went off to visit a friend, boys do such things at this age.” Uncle said.

“But why would he leave his phone behind?”, I replied.

“May be he would have forgotten it, when he left in a hurry. Or maybe he was running away from someone from whom he had borrowed money?”, Uncle said.

“Then what about the text message that I got last night?”

“May be he was getting threatening calls from his money lenders and that’s why he sent you the text to ask for some money?”

“Then why didn’t he ask for money straightaway?”

“I don’t know dhikra, relax don’t worry, he will be back in a couple of days. Besides I don’t want you to go poking your nose in to someone else’s belongings, what if something valuable goes missing who will be responsible for that?” Uncle said and went inside his bedroom. His eyes however said that he was hiding something. He never looked directly at me for more than a few seconds. I had no choice but to wait. For the next two days I went to the house rang the doorbell, called his mobile phone several times, left tweets & DMs on his Twitter profile but there was no response from anywhere. I knew no one else who knew Raxit apart from the mutual Twitter followers but even they didn’t know anything about him. I had no contact details of his parents, uncle never bothered to take any contact details of anyone especially those who rented the other house.

On the third day I got impatient and went to Uncle and told him that I was going to the police station to lodge a missing person’s complaint. Uncle got agitated immediately and agreed to take one more look inside the house. He got the keys and we went to look inside the house. The house was as we had left it three days ago. The phone was still on the desk, the pages of the hardbound notebook were still fluttering in the sea breeze, the window was open and there was no sign of Raxit.

I went to Matunga police station to lodge a complaint. A hawaldar recorded my complaint.  I gave him a copy of Raxit’s Twitter profile picture. The hawaldar gave me a carbon copy of the complaint, after which I went back to my PG.

Even after several days there was no sign of Raxit. Then one day my landlord brought me two large duffle bags and a phone to me and said that they were Raxit’s belongings. He said that he had decided to rent the house again to someone else. I was sad to see those things. I went to the police station to check if they had found anything, but there was nothing.

I was sitting on my bed that night when I thought of going through Raxit’s belongings and see if I could find a clue. The phone’s battery was dead so I connected it to a charger. I rummaged through one of the duffel bags, it was full of clothes, t-shirts, jeans, some bedsheets. The other bag was full of old books mostly novels and some hardbound notebooks.

I took out the notebooks. I opened them one by one, all of them were full of what looked like movie scripts, stories and poems. Nothing personal, not even a phone number. The last one was named The Mumbai diary 2008. I recognized it as the same diary which I had seen lying on the study table in that room by the sea. I opened the first page it had dated entries. A chill ran down my spine. Most of the entries were random stuff from his daily life whom he met, what he thought, the opportunities he was after, the times he visited Mumbai before finally moving to the city in June 2008. I started reading his entries from June 1^st onward. The first entry was about the house and how excited he was to move to Mumbai finally. The next few entries were about his meetings with a few people and the progress on his script writing.

The entries that I talked about in the beginning of this story start from 7^th June 2008. These entries gave me some idea about what happened to Raxit. Even though this sounds totally unbelievable but I couldn’t figure out anything else apart from what seems obvious from these entries.

From the diary of Raxit:

Saturday, June 7, 2008

I have been having nightmares. A few days ago I dreamt that it was night and I was sitting on the bed, in this room that I have recently shifted to. I was sitting with my legs dangling and my feet just touching the ground. The window was open, I could hear the sea, I was drenched in sweat and I could feel my t-shirt clinging to my back. I was not looking at the window or at anything else but I was staring at the rocking chair, because there was someone sitting on the chair. A woman with shoulder length curly hair. She was wearing a frock which covered her legs just below her knees, it had frills around the neck and sleeves that almost reached the elbow. She was looking out of the window and then she turned her head to look at me. The moment our eyes met I woke up. My heart was beating fast and that rancid smell from the sea was stronger than ever. I looked at the rocking chair, it was empty. I look at my phone it was 2:13 am.

The next night I had the same dream. When I woke up I checked the time, it was 2:13 am. Last night I had the same dream again and when I woke up it was 2:13 am again.

Each time I woke up from this dream my throat was dry and burning like hell but I was too scared to get up, go to the kitchen to get some water. This has never happened before. And that smell is now always there and I think it’s getting stronger by the day.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Last night I was woken up by the noise of the windows banging in the wind. As I got up from the bed and sat with my feet just touching the ground, the rocking chair shook a bit. I turned and saw the same lady from my nightmare sitting and staring out of the window. I was petrified. My throat went dry instantly and however much I tried I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. The lady slowly turned her head to look at me. I continued to stare at her. Our eyes met. But this time I didn’t wake up because I was already awake, it wasn’t a nightmare. It was happening right here in my bedroom.

With much effort a whisper escaped my mouth, “who… are you?”

The lady tilted her head towards the left, gave a toothy grin and said, “who are you?”

The windows banged again, shocked at the noise I turned my head to look at the window, then I turned back to look at the rocking chair, it was empty. I was shaking, my body was covered with sweat and goosebumps. I reached out switched the light on. The room was empty. I went out into the hall and switched on all the lights, I checked every room but the house was empty. I checked the main door, it was locked shut from the inside. None of the other windows were open. That smell was there in the whole house. I checked my watch it was 2:18 am.

There’s something weird in this house. I don’t believe in God or Satan or spirits or ghosts. I can’t explain what happened last night only that it was a dream come true.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Last night the lady appeared again. I was wide awake on my bed. I sat up at around 2:12 and she was there sitting on the rocking chair looking outside the window. It was as if I was waiting her to come. She tilted her head again and asked me the same question and disappeared. In the morning I moved the rocking chair to another room. I don’t think she will come now.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

 
 I went out for dinner. I must have been gone for not more than half an hour and I remember locking the doors and the windows securely. When I came back the rocking chair was back in its place, in my room by the window. I can’t explain this. I am losing my mind. I need help.

I decided to stay awake and work on the script. As I was writing it must have been past 2, I noticed some movement from the corner of my eyes. As I turned around the lady was sitting in the rocking chair.

"Who are you?”, I asked in my boldest voice. She did not look at me or grinned her toothy grin, didn’t even tilt her head. She continued to look outside the window and in a sleepy voice said, “Will you come with me?”

“To where?”, I asked in reply.

She turned her head and looked straight in to me. There was such sadness in her eyes. Her eyes seemed to be looking deep inside me, reading all my thoughts, feelings, my desires and secrets. I felt slightly sexually aroused. I felt like she was drawing me in to her. My head started to spin. I don’t remember anything after that.

I woke up on the floor in the morning with the sun shining on my face.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I can’t write much. I am shivering, I think I have a fever. I can’t sit up for long. The lady appeared again as I was sitting on my chair by my writing table. She asked me if I would come with her. Then she got up from the rocking chair and as she looked in to my eyes, she took my face in her hands. I don’t remember anything after that. I woke up on the floor in the morning. I think I will spend the rest of the day in bed.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

I had fever all day. The lady appeared again in the night, came and sat with me on my bed and asked me to come with her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her even for a moment. I can’t take this anymore. If she comes tonight I will go with her to wherever she takes me to.

This was the last entry in Raxit’s diary. It was on 12^th that I got his last text message and on 13^th morning I went to look for him. I was confused and didn’t know what to think of all this. I didn’t know to whom should I tell all this. The police might take it to be a bull and cock story and might hold me responsible for his disappearance. I put Raxit’s journal back into his bag, and pushed both the bags under my bed and went to sleep.

After a couple of months, I saw a missing person’s ad in the classified section of TOI. I called up the number, took the address, and went to Ahmedabad to handover Raxit’s belongings to his parents. I also showed them his last journal entries. They agreed that it was his handwriting. Both the parents were shocked and broken with grief.

I came back to Mumbai the next day. As I was leaving for office in the morning, I saw some people loading furniture on to a truck in front of the house. Another tenant was moving out.