06 – September – 2009
2: 04: 00 a.m.
6, Willie Street, Hornsby, New south Wales; this concrete piece of elegance and darkness is going to be the talk of the city in a few hours. The entire lane is filled with profuse darkness and solitude. Counting the last days for the spring to bid bye, the trees stand erect and tall on either sides like a regiment of soldiers displaying their respect to a Military General walking through. The sight through the path sets off to a journey witnessing the various classes of cars parked in bays decorating the way like the auto expo show. The larger shadows that fall from either sides of the lane reflected from the street lamps display the intensity of sodium vapor, leaving a cramped space to walk through right in the middle of the road, where the thin line of light leads the path towards the house. The footsteps making the mildest of the sounds and displacing the sparsely found water that reflects the heel texture of the boot.
The sight of the door resembles the gateway to the mysterious grave filled with quintessence of the wholeness that blew off some myths just a few hours ago. The creaky sound that follows when the door is opening gives a head shot to expect something unusual. The wooden floor inside creates the percussion noises for every footstep as the whole house is dead calm. The narrow pathway leading from the door with plain white painted walls on either sides, holding no enough room to let two normal adults walk beside each other. The shoe rack, placed just a few inches away from the door, says “Either you or the footwear - beyond this point”, precisely allowing none to enter past the point with their shoes or stilettos. The single stair right after the shoe rack leads to a rise in the level of the basement of the house. The dim light glowing hesitantly right at the top of the ceiling near the entrance to the lounge, has its focus on the leather bag with tiny koala key chains hooked on to the zipper of the bag.
Sid tries to take that bag from the floor, when he pulls it, he senses a resistance from the other side and on pulling with some more force he gets the nightmare of his life. The name, ‘Sid’ has been scratched out by reddish random crossing lines. As Sid looks at the bag little more closely, an adrenaline rush of thoughts runs in his mind like the galloping race horses. The way the bag used to swing in the arms of Shreya, the way she used to hug that bag close to her chest like a koala bear hugging its offspring reminds him the cute things despite of the brutality that lies right in front of his sight. The name ‘Sid’ was tattooed on Shreya’s hand as she wanted Sid to know how much he meant to her. The name has been brutally punctured and crossed leaving just patches of blood with spaces in between resembling dotted arcs. Sid tries to believe that Shreya is still all alive in his hands, but his belief doesn’t last long for even a minute as he senses that the pulse rate of Shreya is no longer present. Not even a week, since Shreya accepted Sid’s proposal, she is no more and her head is laid down on his lap with just her pretty face that glows the brightest even in the dim light.
06-September-09
2: 10: 00 A.M
Meadow Park, Normanhurst, NSW
Bharath is sitting on the broken bench in the corner of the beautiful park, which dazzles in the moonlight like the fairy tales dreamland, with his heel, resting on the bench, bent until his chin rests on his knee and his other foot firmly stamping the lush grasses. He slowly lifts his right palm to face him and he could see nothing but the blood stains in his hand. He slowly brings his palm near his nostrils and smells the aroma of the blood, and as he sniffs it, he stands up and screams aloud in the open space with both his hands up in the air with fists closed. As he was screaming so loud, a big fist lands on his face real hard. Bharath is not able to handle the blow on his face and falls on the ground with his right cheek kissing the grasses. As the fist moves backwards, it reveals the face of Vinay, who stands tall and enraged with eye brows squeezed and nostrils exhaling the hot breath like an angry bull. Vinay vents out his anger even more through his words at Bharath, “What the hell have you done? I haven’t seen such a betrayal ever! Is this how much you value friendship?” Bharath is just smiling with blood oozing out of
the right side of his lips and gives no verbal response to Vinay. Vinay puts his hand on his forehead and runs it through his sweaty hair and looks around to check for the presence of anyone else other than the two of them.
Bharath stumbles and gets up somehow to stand in front of Vinay and slowly says, “Vinay, the only lesson that I have learnt in life is that love is never true. When a girl says that she loves you, it indirectly means she has opened the gates of grave for you and awaits your arrival.” Vinay gets even more furious on hearing this and he yells back at Bharath, “Come on Bharath, give it a break. Just because you had a sad and pitiable love experience, it’s your myth that all the girls are bitches and every love is an illusion. Your dumb myth today has taken the life of the one who lost her life for the one whom she loved.” As Vinay keeps talking, Bharath slowly walks to the nearby fountain that is splashing water and washes his blood stained hands and gathers some water in his hands to gargle and wash his mouth as well. After washing, he looks at Vinay and says, “The life that has been taken is not going to come back. If you believe in Karma then believe in what I say. Your life is counting its last hours.” Hearing this Vinay puts a foot back with a suspicious look at Bharath, and he says, “Bharath, you have gone mad. I am saying, you
have literally gone insane you bloody impostor.” Bharath laughs and winks at Vinay and runs towards him till his head hits Vinay’s tummy so hard to pin him down.
06-September-09
2:16:00 A.M.
N80, Night Ride Bus, City Central – to – Hornsby
Anjali, one among the 5 passengers in the early morning, sitting in the last row of the Night Ride bus, looks at all the other passengers with an intimidated look. As she confirms that no passenger is in the least of their interests to bother about her, she quickly opens her bag and tries to look for her mobile phone. As she shuffles her hands around inside her hand bag, she accidentally happens to pop her lip stick out of her handbag and it rolls down towards the front. She manages to take her i-phone out, and she puts her index finger on the screen and slides to unlock the phone in the hurry and gets pissed at the mobile screen. Finally she unlocks it, and presses the number 6 to speed dial Pooja’s number. As she puts her phone near her ear, she listens to a voice that says, “The Optus customer you have called is currently busy. Please try again or call sometime later. Thank you.” Anjali has no patience to call after sometime and she keeps redialing Pooja’s number and on the sixth attempt, Pooja answers the call. As soon as Pooja lifts the call she screams, “Anjaliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, everything is fucked up. I still pray god that nothing that I have heard should be true.” Anjali senses the anxiety and the distress in Pooja’s voice but manages to say in a weepy voice, “Yes Anjali, it is true. Shreya is no more. I too got the text from Vinay and called him back to confirm it.” Pooja screams loud, “Life is so fucking bad. It is so betraying to hear. How could he ever do this?” While Pooja is screaming and yelling in anger on the other side, Anjali, who could not stop crying, tries to pause Pooja for a minute saying, “Pooja, hold on for a sec, Bharath’s on the other line.” When Anjali says that, Pooja gets infuriated and says, “Don’t ever answer the call from that son of a bitch. That crook does not deserve to talk to any of us anymore.” Anjali on the other side tries to cool down Pooja by saying, “Pooja, I said hold on, just hold on for a minute.”As Anjali voices it out a bit louder, the bus driver stares into the mirror to look at Anjali with a suspicious pair of eyes.
Anjali, answers the call from Bharath and slowly says, “Hello Bharath”. Silence prevails from the side of Bharath for a couple of seconds and then is followed by a loud laughter blended with a crying voice from deep underneath. Bharath slowly says, “Pooja, I never thought things would happen so soon. Is death so spontaneous?” Anjali could sense the murder in the voice of Bharath, who still is stuck to his myths and estranged nature. Bharath again says, “Anjali, if you are still the same old girl who believes in truth, just go home within an hour. Death is chasing you faster than your heart beats. Good night if you are able to see the sun this morning.” The words of Bharath intimidate Anjali to the core, and her forehead is soaked in sweat, with sweat droplets rolling down to her eye brows. As she tries to get off the bus, she hears a drunk voice, “Hey girl, Is this your lip stick?” and she turns back to see the owner of the voice. The mysterious person shows a small card on which something’s written that Anjali could only manage to read with great difficulty. She gets the shock of her life and she grabs the lipstick and gets off at the Strathfield Albert Rd bus stand, and starts running towards the plaza. She suddenly realizes that Pooja is still on the call and she screams, “Pooja, he is here, right here. I saw him. Flee out of your house at the soonest. See you at Epping Train Station in 30 minutes.” Saying this to Pooja, she realizes the call has been disconnected and she knows nothing about when it got disconnected. She tries calling back Pooja, and she can hear the IVR system saying, “Sorry. You have insufficient balance to make a call. Please rechar………” Anjali, hangs up the call in frustration and bangs her mobile on to her forehead and runs to the Telstra phone booth outside the plaza entrance and inserts a 50 cent and dials Pooja’s number which is switched off by now. Anjali stands deserted not knowing whether she will ever meet Pooja again.
