Ghost In My House

I was using Trillain all these days not aware that it was showing me as online even when I was staying invisible. Yesterday I installed a new software named Pidgin. It has a soft and basic interface appearing like a window in Linux. The installation file was slightly larger than Trillan but I liked what it had to offer. The typical messenger provided by Yahoo is full of bugs that trouble me like something that troubles!

Yesterday I went under the blanket around 3 am and I must have been awake at least till 3:30 am. Around 8:40 in the morning I woke up hearing my mother talk on the phone in a grave tone of voice she uses only when she has been shocked by something. I was still in the bed and her tone also told me that she was talking to my father. She sounded very afraid of something. I got out immediately hoping to hear everything was fine. She told that sometime back she saw a man walking in the living room.

That gave me immediate creeps as she kept narrating how she was in the kitchen and saw clearly a man walking in the living room and how she saw her entering her bedroom. She told me that my brother was home at that time and he was in the other bedroom changing clothes. Mother looked terrified with fear in her eyes and touches of leftover horror still on her pale face. I sat in the living room for a while as she started getting ready for office. I was still very sleepy and my eyes closed in no time even as my heart was pumping with fear of something I didn't even know.

I saw several dreams in those few minutes as I lay in the living room. I saw some man walking across the room, some weird happenings and all things we see in typical nightmares. I still couldn't believe what she told me. The only reason for me to fear was that she was telling me all that. And she was sure she saw somebody. I even thought that she must be undergoing a lot of strain at her office.

She left at 10 pm when I called a friend and confirmed that we were going to meet in an hour at Mehdipatnam from where we would go to CL's office at Himayatnagar and collect my last packet. Then we had plans to study the rest of the day. I went inside the bathroom with fear still fresh in my mind. I also remembered that my mother told she saw the man with a towel tied around his waist. I prefer not going for a bath when there is nobody at home but I had to. When I tied a towel around my waist I recollected my mother's words again. I was afraid even walking in the room. Even the curtains swayed by the breeze looked horrifying. I dressed up, fried an egg, prepared coffee, ate and drank, also had a banana and left. Like every time I check the doors before leaving, it did it again but did it several times.

I returned home with my friend two hours later. On our way I told him about everything. It all sounded funny but it was serious. It was serious even if it was just something psychological for my mother. It was something that must be cleared before it took my sleep away. I stay awake at nights and it was the biggest concern for me. Nobody can get inside the house this way. And in a towel - impossible. I was worried.

In the nights I hear so many sounds and I recognise them all. The distant howl of dogs, the sound of newspaper falling from the table in the drawing room on the carpet, the sound of the door-knobs when wind rattles the doors, the sound of the creaky windows, the sound of the curtains rubbing the floor, the sound of the dining table's cover moving over the chairs, the noise of the rat moving in the kitchen - every sound I have heard in the nights in my house - I know them all. But this seemed to be a new problem, and of a different kind. I had never seen half-naked men walking in my house except for my father, my brother and myself.

I solved one full length test paper of CAT's model in the stipulated time continuously as I do in any mock. My friend solved another paper simultaneously. Then we analyzed both the papers together. All this took us more than 5 hours and he left my house around 9 pm. Then I was asked to get 'kabaab' for dinner. We had our dinner. The tension was still there. But there was also some happiness on my mother's face gifted to her by the sharp increase in her monthly pay. We kept talking all the time even when I was enjoying some comedy show on the television. My mother finished her dinner and went to bed with my father, my brother and I still in the drawing room.

I still had the plate in my hands eating slowly when my mother entered the room again. She asked my brother if he came to her room in the morning after talking a bath to dump his clothes in a bucket there. He said he did! We couldn't stop laughing. The 'man in towel' my mother had seen was my brother. He was asked several times if he went there and he kept telling that he had not. But he did go there and he forgot. He said he couldn't remember it when asked because he is used to doing it after talking a bath everytime. I wondered how my mother couldn't recognise his yellow towel and how he looked like a man to her. My father was smiling with a cigarette in his fingers.

Tomorrow again I will be sitting with my friend to solve some more papers. It will be at his home this time where another friend is expected to join us. I have 16 such test papers with me. I am positive that this will help. I am thankful to my friend for giving me company even when he is not so dependent on CAT. It's a part of the luxury in being me!

I won't be forgetting today's incident for a long time. I might never forget it in fact. In the morning the only thing that gave me strength was the truth that only Allah can alter anything and only Allah decides. I knew that nobody could harm me or anybody at home untill Allah wanted it to happen. All this was just another bookmark in the book of my life. My life is good.