Who was she?

It was a creepy friend I had. A very unnatural boy with unique habits and unique hobbies. Maybe it was this uniqueness in my friend that made me like him. He was my roommate. Maybe if I knew him before we became roommates we would not have become roommates but as destiny would have it, a small thread of my life got tied to his. 

I anticipated that it would also be a devil I will meet that day. But the person I saw was not obviously a devil. He was no angel also. In his looks he was quite normal. Tall, underweight, chocolate coloured and wearing goggle-like-glasses. He sported a long nose, which fell a bit short from that of Pinocchio’s. Only a small bunch of hair was left on the top of his head. He came out on my the third ring of the bell an apologized saying that his mind was wandering. He was courteous but not friendly.

It was the room, or to say the location of the building that convinced me on putting up my quarters there. It was 10 mins from Dumdum airport and metro on both sides and 20 mins away from my place of work. There were three markets, a smaller one near and the others at 5 mins distance by bus. Light but not the sound from the main road reached the apartment. Fresh air entered from each window. Mosquitoes were a problem but not a great one. The rent was not cheap but affordable. 

On weekdays I was engaged at work from nine o’ clock in the morning till eight o’ clock in the evening. I had neither patience or energy to interact with my roommate after this hours. He did not seem to mind an I did not seem to care. So our interactions always took place during Saturdays and Sundays. He never volunteered to talk so I always began the conversation. His voice was low and weak. It took me a few weeks to know that he was an assistant professor at a god-knows-which institute.

He used to make tea. I don’t know what unique ingredients did he add to his tea but it tasted really good. So I insisted on him making more.Once I had a desire to find out the special ingredients of the tea and went to the kitchen. He was talking to himself. I spoke aloud,”Hi!”He literally jumped up an saw a ghost in front of him. It was several seconds before he realized the ghost was me. Go knows what was he doing. I also came to know ,except his talking-to-himself habit, his tea’s special ingredient. Guess what? His skill.

Except for his tea and his talking-to-himself habit, there were many things eccentric about him. For once he never switched off the light of the room at night. I don’t know how he managed to sleep will all lights on. Maybe he was afraid of dark. He hated power cuts. He actually made a bulb which runs on a battery and always carried with him. Some professors are boring. But I have not any professor who has not seen a cinema even once in life. He never wore anything but his grey pants, off-white shirt and his BATA canvas shoes.

One day I had returned early from office to join a friend, Sihika’s birthday party after dressing up. When I entered the flat I heard Akhil screaming at someone. I entered his room hurriedly without knocking to find out what was wrong. Something was terribly wrong indeed. He was screaming on no one. His phone was on the desk. The moment I entered he saw me. He was panting. He colored, and then grew pale. He looked at something with beseeching eyes. Then he looked at me again and grew pale.

“What is it Akhil?”,I asked.

“Nothing, really nothing. I am too tired. Its just that.”

“Whatever it is Akhil, you can tell me. Trust me.”

 “It’s nothing. I need some rest.”

“OK, have some rest.”

 Yes, he needed rest.But it was not work that tired him. I knew that he was among those few men who loved their work. It was something else or maybe someone else that was bothering him.

I was most surprised when I found a letter from a well known psychiatrist addressed to Akhil in our common letter box. So I was most probably living with a psycho. Very well. I had to fight the desire to open it. But I knew I had to know what was happening with this man I shared the flat with. So when he was sitting in the dining room, reading the morning news, I handed over the envelop to him looking at him with a quizzical eye. He opened his mouth to say something but could not utter the exact words. I raised my eyebrows in disgust.

“I see her. She was a research scientist. We were on a project together. A very important one. But it went wrong. She blew herself up. No I blew her up. I mixed the wrong ratios of the chemical. A slight change makes a great difference. So when I left the lab I heard the explosion.”, he could speak no more. He sat there for some time and continued,”She is coercing me to continue the project. But I can’t risk it. I can’t risk another life.” Tears went down his cheek,”She is my best friend.Was my…..”

I didn’t keep any time to find out who this ‘she’ was, a ghost, a delusion or whatever. Living with either a psycho or a ghost didn’t suite me. So I deserted this friend of mine, and in a week from this incident, shifted my position to the present quarters. I pray to God to help him where I had deserted him. I wish that life erases this memory from my mind.

Orgia- The Mystery Unsolved

Guys! I am in terror. They are talking of taking me to a psychiatrist. An actual doctor who is mad enough to treat the mad. But I am not mad and when would they understand that. I need to tell the world my version of the episode. I wish someone could make them understand. So here it goes-
I got this news last week on Monday. A news which has turned out to be really nauseating. My aunt had called my father telling him that my cousin Orgia was missing. She is still missing and whats more is that with accordance to her name, she is left me in utter mystery.
Orgia is a great cousin, not for being a homework helper, very intelligent or very witty, but for being a zero in all those things. With her wandering, unfocused eyes and a huge belly, she always makes a good object to laugh at. Looks like she is punishing me today for ever teasing the good, unprovoked girl. Now, you must know that why I stated those words which I stated above. So here it goes.again.
Two days after the phone call, two police officers landed up at our house with cigarette smelling mouths and a hefty diary which I recognized to be Orgia’s. I could never fathom how could she fill those diaries of her without having any sense of language or fun. Another mystery! Unfortunately that day it was cleared.
The taller of the two police men summoned. As I had never heard that a police inquiry is typically enjoyable, I responded to the summon with considerable fear and sat down in the opposite chairs to the officers in green. They asked a few common questions about Orgia- her behaviour, friends and fear. Then they came to the point. The shorter of the two handed me the open diary with the instruction to read it and explain any thing I could. With difficulty I read the most bizarre handwriting possible. After reading two pages marked by two consecutive dates, I first time imagined that I had be better off reading biology and about Dead man’s finger. The pages contended the following ( I am editing the thing a bit to make the writing legible)-
Friday, 19 October, 2012                  7:30PM
I am in big trouble. Today the results came out and I have failed in everything except Hindi. Oh God! Papa would want to know my results when he returns home anytime now. I am gonna get a fair beating today.
When I had completed my exams I felt so light hearted. The exams had gone fairly well for me but it seems that I had written nothing but rubbish. Oh no! Here the bell goes. Dad has arrived. Wish me luck!

(t2 says: If that exams were fairly well for her, what happens if they go bad? I once had recommended khanacademy website for her to use. Looks like she didn’t listen)

Saturday, 20 October, 2012              10AM
Tell me why? Why these things only happen to me? Why do I always have to fail? My cousins all have scholarships and they are gonna go off to all the big colleges. And I am gonna sit here and get thrashing. U know, I have eaten nothing since breakfast at 7AM. My stomach hungers for something.  Mamma says I only eat and do no work to use up the energy. Tell me- What does eating have to do with work and energy? There is a chapter in our book-‘Work, Power and Energy’ but no ‘Food, Power Energy’ And which person can stay without food from 7AM to 10AM? 2 long hours. ( t2 says: Poor girl. Can not even subtract.)
U know, I even cried for 2hrs last night. Around 10 o’clock when I was still crying t2 called (t2’s reaction: What?) on my new mobile which I had got from the 2nd hand market. I picked up the call. She heard me crying and asked me what happened. I told her everything. She was so compassionate, so unusual for her. ( t2’s reaction: And I thought she couldn’t crack a joke!) She told me she had help me to get on. She did give me the reference to a good student helper website once. I had lost the adress link unfortunately at that time. She told me to meet her at Alina Park today at five. I hope I can put her help to good use.

The police men said that she did leave for the park but never retued. How could I help them? Forget that day, I probably have never called Orgia my whole life. It might have been a figment of her imagination. I told them to check my call register ,which had an unusually long memory, positive that they won’t find anything. They did. At the precise time at which is mentioned in the ghostly diary, a call had been made from my mobile to Orgia’s. Whoever had done that, it was not me. Everyone coaxed me to tell the truth but what for? I was telling the truth.
The next question came,” Where were you on Sunday?”
” Rituparna’s” A call was made to her house and they found out I was not there which I knew that they would found out sooner or later. Where I had gone I told them reluctantly but which was the truth and was confirmed. Where I had gone is a secret I can not mention here but it was nowhere near where lay the suspicion.
They asked me a hundred question a hundred times to which I answered a hundred times with the truth. But the torture is not yet over. My parents coax me, scold me and now even have almost boycotted me. As I told you they are actually making me mad by saying that I am mad.
I am being punished for stating the truth.But I maintain the truth(except which I can see no other way out) My mother once retorted to my answers,”Yes, as if a ghost had crouched into ur room while u were sleeping and called ur cousin.” What if……