Dark Is The Devil

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 53; the fifty-third edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. In association with ​Soulmates: Love without ownership by Vinit K Bansal. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

Pic from http://www.lulas.com

“I love chocolates”, she sounded a little garbled with her mouth filled with generous bites of the dark brown slab. Her pearly white teeth were now smudged with the colour of the slightly softened bar. But she seemed not to mind. I scanned her face for that morsel of remorse which I thought she must be trying very hard to disguise. But to my disappointment she acted so normal, a little child-like perhaps, yet definitely ecstatic biting ravenously and almost vengefully into the thick, long piece of chocolate, now almost halved in size.

I wondered for the nth time whether it would not be heartless to remind her that she was out on bail. Charged of a gruesome murder, she did not seem one bit perturbed – just enjoying every moment of life which was in hand and absolutely not bothering what would happen if the verdict of the Court was not in her favour. But she did not seem to care a damn for the morrow. She was now licking her fingers one after the other as the chocolatey glue trickled down the length of her middle and ring fingers – she seemed to be savouring  along with her chocolate, a Zen moment, merely being aware of the fact that she was having a piece of her favourite desert, which was coursing down her fingers in tactile pleasure.

Had it been somebody else, the scene to him/her might have been puzzling, disturbing or at its extreme, disgusting. But not for me because I knew Sandhya for more than a decade now – the quiet, simple home bird whose upbringing centered around the notion that girls were parented to be married off to strangers and manage their homesteads as if they were their own. Girls like Sandhya institutionalized marriage by giving in their hundred percent and getting nothing in return except bruises and abuses.

Chandar was not a born looser. He was well educated in so far as degrees were concerned. But when he lost his cushy job as the Head Accountant in a private firm due to certain inadvertent mistakes his confidence crumbled. Thereafter, it was one short lived job to another which broke him gradually. There are some men in this world who cave in to disaster very rapidly. Chandar was one of them. He attributed his repeated failures at first to circumstances and then to his wife. Every night he would return home mentally and physically tired. The simplest of word from Sandhya’s lips or the most mundane event of the day would then prove to be catastrophic. In the beginning, it would be a few heated exchanges sprinkled with one or two abusive slangs which graduated into a habit of speech. And as the calamitous days of joblessness increased verbal abuses gave way to violent outbursts.

I would often be woken up in the middle of the night by angry shouts followed by muffled sobs. My flat was adjacent to theirs and the wall in between was not soundproof as many flat owners of the Capital would vouch.

I knew Sandhya as a Good Samaritan always extending a helping hand to my mother when I was in office or out on an errand. “What a nice girl!” My mother always remarked after a friendly tete-a-tete with the next door neighbour. Her marital rifts saddened her. But being a private person herself she did not think it was right to probe in Sandhya’s personal affairs unless and until she herself thought it prudent to confide in us.


Of late, Sandhya would appear pale and thin. A scar here and a bruise there would be the telltale marks which disclosed much that she frantically tried to camouflage behind wan smiles, vacant eyes and colourless contours. But she fought valiantly not against her husband but against fate.

She was good at sewing and crafting and took up a part time job in a nearby school as Arts & Crafts Teacher. It was a temporary job but every penny that could be scraped in was welcome. Chandar had inherited the flat from his parents. So one worry was less – nobody could snatch away the roof on their heads. Yet, it was getting increasingly difficult to maintain the flat and pay the bills and taxes.

It was one rainy dusk that the inevitable happened. I had just walked in from office and about to sit down with the customary cup of evening tea that Sandhya rushed in. She looked terribly upset. Chandar had been home that day. And as they say, idle brain is devil’s workshop, he had been fighting with her incessantly, accusing her of being a show-off, since at present, her earnings happened to be more than his, on which the house was now more or less being run. A flustered Sandhya could not take it anymore and had walked out in protest.

That evening she unburdened herself before me and Maa. By the time she finished recounting her pathetic story we three were bleary eyed and choked. After sometime I got up, opened the fridge and took out a cube of dark chocolate. Handing her the piece, I said, “Chocolates are a woman’s best friend. They up your mood in no time.” She ate it gratefully. From then onwards, it became quite a ritual and a regular affair as well. A manhandled, browbeaten Sandhya chomping on pieces of Silk, Fruits & Nuts or a Plain Dairy Milk in my drawing room after a showdown with her husband.

***

I empathized with Sandhya. She was a soft spoken, kind hearted soul. A little shaken by the turn of events in her life but immensely house proud. She maintained her home well even with the meager resources that she managed to get by with diligence and industry along with a husband who was day by day getting out of hand and becoming intolerable. Yet Sandhya pulled on. At first I had taken her quietness as timidity. Gradually, I realized that she was a girl of remarkable aptitude, inner strength and courage. I came to respect her.

However, strong Sandhya might have been, I had never imagined her to be capable of murder in my weirdest of dreams. Yet, she did bloody her hands.

***

If you ask me how it all happened I would not be able to say. We were woken up at about 03.00 am in the night by a huge commotion. When I came out in the balcony the police had already come in. Who had called them? Sandhya refused to clarify. There were two dead bodies lying in the drawing room – one was of Chandar and the other one was of one of his friends who had suddenly paid a visit to settle some past scores with him. Most probably an argument had erupted which transpired into a scuffle. How did Sandhya get embroiled in the brawl I would not know as she decided to seal her lips tight. When the police walked in Sandhya was standing over the spread-eagled bodies with a bloody kitchen knife in hand. For the police the case was as lucid as broad daylight. For Sandhya, her fate was sealed as much as her lips were.

***

The next sequence of events was a blur. Things happened so fast that it was hard to chronicle. Sandhya’s parents rushed in. Poor things had always thought Sandhya was happily ensconced in Chandar’s heart!! A lawyer was arranged who was competent yet helpless. All evidences pointed against Sandhya. A case of self-defense could have been filed but Sandhya’s silence made the situation so immensely hopeless.

Thankfully, a bail could be arranged. And here she was sitting on the sofa digging her teeth into a bar of nutty chocolate! I did not have the heart to remind her of the uncertainties ahead. I thought she knew that she stood no chance. Yet, she wouldn’t let her choco-chip moment go undevoured.

I mustered all my heartlessness and whispered, “Sandhya! What about the future?” Her lips stretched in a gleeful smile, a smile that I had missed for as long as she was with Chandar. Her mouth was full. Wordlessly she rolled her eyes upwards. And then she invested all her attention to the chocolate in hand. I watched her, watched the deep lines running down on either side of her chin, watched the grey strands lining her forehead, watched the dark patch around her eyes…..eyes which were no more vacant but shining with an odd light….a light which provided the perfect complement to the brown stains melting down the corners of her lips….the colour of rich, brown chocolate… a woman’s greatest friend…indeed!!!

I wondered if God forbid Sandhya had to cross over the invisible threshold of death would she still be clutching a brick of molten chocolate in her hand…

I shook my head immediately.

It was hard to image the scene as it was getting unusually blurred.

I tasted salt on my tongue….not the right taste to go with a chocolatey noir!!!

(Domestic violence and abuse is a curse upon the institution of marriage. Fight it!!!!)

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THE RETIRING ROOM

I stretched my legs lazily, took out the notes and started reading. The train snaked swiftly through the city. I loved these Express Trains connecting one end of the city to the other and the outskirts. Commuting was so much more comfortable now. The plush ambience (given the comparatively low-cost tickets!), the high-backed soft leather seats, the quality of beverages and snacks served from time to time, a group of efficient and courteous staff and not to mention the sparkling toilets attached to each bogey, made life much more easy and enjoyable, within the steel and chrome interiors of the tube. Yes, these were the latest additions of the Delhi Metro Corporation Ltd. (DMRC), a part of their network expansion scheme, connecting farthest points of the city and also the nearer towns with the NCR through these non-stop bullet trains. A boon for thousands of white and blue collar workers who could now commute on a day to day basis from their residences outside the NCR limit to their work stations in the capital and back!

I had my maiden lecture session in one of the units of the Corporation in Karimabad, which though located in the State of Uttar Pradesh, fell within the ambit of the NCR. The bustling district on the periphery represented the industrial segment of the National Capital Region. But for these smooth machines rolling on the shiny metallic strips, accessing my destination would have been difficult which was otherwise considered “remote” by urban standards. My comfort level increased further when I realized that I was not a lone traveler to the location. I met Deepa, my colleague from another Department, in the train quite accidentally. An engineer by qualification, she had a more lengthy technical assignment on hand. Exchanging notes, she concluded that one day at the unit would be sufficient for the job. We both decided to take the late afternoon train back home that very day.

Exactly two hours later, the train chugged into Karimabad station. De-boarding, I suffered the first jolt. There was no proper platform. The train appeared to have stopped in the middle of nowhere somewhat resembling an untended field. In the distance, groves of ancient trees could be seen huddled together giving the hint of denser vegetation not afar. The rail tracks seemed to vanish into this wood. The forlorn station building, cropping like an outgrowth a little away from the grass beds lining the tracks, looked dilapidated and not much in use. I remembered reading in the papers that DMRC, in a bid to economize on the budget, had agreed to use the discarded stations (en-route) of the Northern Railways in the initial phase of expansion, which they later promised to renovate in line with international parameters. Deepa, a happy-go-lucky sort of a person, was impervious to the deserted surround. She had visited the place earlier. “What matters most is that the trains come dot on time here”, she said cheerfully. I could not help but agree.

In spite of our carefully chalked out plans, we were late. It was early evening when exhausted we reached the station. Needless to say, the afternoon train which we were supposed to take had departed by then. The sky looked a bit gloomy with dark clouds hovering in the horizon. A prelude to a rainy night! We could still reach home might be a little later than expected. But contrary to Deepa’s earlier forecast, the evening train was running late.” It will be wiser to spend the night at the station as the crowd in the evening train is not always genteel”, she quoted a few incidents of boisterous factory workers trying forced entry into the ladies’ compartment after a drink or two. There was no point in going back to the unit as it would be closed by the time we reached. The unit workers were all daily commuters and did not have much knowledge of the locality. There were no respectable hotels too in the vicinity for overnight stay especially those fit for ladies. In short, there was no other option but to follow my colleague’s experienced advice.

But one look at the retiring room, I took a u-turn. It was dank, smelly and ill-lit. A dim 10 watt bulb threw depressing shadows onto a red and black tiled floor. The walls, a typical yellow coloured, looked damp with fluffy plasters peeling off at places. But the double bed in the middle of the huge space looked unusually comfy with clean sheets and matching pillows. Otherwise, it was just a room straight out of some yester year novel wherein the victims met shady strangers before getting murdered.

I was about to tell Deepa so but she had already unpacked and did not seem to mind the unhygienic environ at all. A veteran in touring God forsaken areas, where our Company boasted of outlets sans transit accommodation, she had developed a much required stoicism which I completely lacked being an infrequent visitor. There was something about the atmosphere in and around the room that disturbed me. In the half light I could even see something crawling in the corner. I pointed it out to Deepa. She laughed. But I insisted on leaving immediately pretending a lapse of memory. I had just recalled that my sister was going to leave station tomorrow early morning and it was important for me to pass on certain urgent instructions to her before she left. I tried to mobile her but unfortunately the network connections did not seem to work. SMSing would not help because these were detailed missives. Half truth! The sister episode was bogus while the disabled mobile was true.

Deepa was reluctant. She was supposed to leave for Ludhiana the next morning on extended assignment. She had already found out a suitable connecting train with easily available seats that stopped at this station. Going back home would be an unnecessary detour. However, given the circumstances, it was not desirable that either of us pursued our respective programmes without the other. Disgruntled, my friend agreed to take the next return train home. It would reach us by ten-ish in the night but still safer than spending the night here, thought I.

But Deepa was taking so much time to re-pack her possessions. It was her resistance to leave or something else I could not figure out. Reclining on the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room, a wave of tiredness swept over me. I closed my eyes. A child appeared before me. A child not more than four or five years old with a crop of soft, curly hair, an anemic face with round, astonished eyes, his thin body covered in a rust coloured blazer and a pair of bottle green trousers, hands in pocket, he scanned the room with a lost look. I suddenly recollected a news paper article read a few years back. “A dead body of a boy found under mysterious condition in a retiring room”! From where did he come, how and why nobody knew. He was discovered lying still on the bed eyes closed by the station sweeper quite late in the evening, by then rigor mortis had obviously set in. What was the name of the station? K-a-r-i-m-a-b-a-d! I opened my eyes with a start.

The room was pitch dark. I must have fallen asleep. Where was Deepa? Why did she not wake me up? The train……has the train left? Most probably Deepa must have thought it better not to wake me up. She wanted to spend the night in the station itself. It suited her pre-planned itinerary so well. But the stillness in the room was daunting. I softly called out, “Deepa! Deepa!” No response. I stretched my arms to feel her by my side on the bed. Something silky and curly tangled around my fingers. A soft head of a child came to touch. He lay by my side. Horrified, I tried to jump out of bed. But a pair of bony hands had already reached out. And then ten tiny fingers crawled over and gripped me in their iron clutch.

I woke up with a strange heaviness in my chest. It was my room. 3.45 am. Oh it was just a nightmare! But I failed to feel relieved. The molesting little fingers had left their indelible imprint all over my skin!!!!