#Gibberish from a disturbed mind- Part 3

click here for the former part of the story!

Shraddha’s dreams broke as the clock struck ‘one’. She woke up in the dinner table and saw it in the condition, as it had been, when she dozed off.

She was starting to feel scared. Chetan haven’t returned yet. The heavily misty glass panes gave an impression of the intensity of the rain, outside. The distant street light looked like someone had smudged its yellow light. She drifted away to thoughts again, to that afternoon, when after the heavy rain, the rainbow coloured the dull sky, they, wrapped in one bed sheet, had spent it writing each other’s names with fingers, on the misty window pane.

Her thoughts broke and she grew more anxious.

Where the hell had he gone?

The phone said ‘Switched off’. She flooded them with voicemails. The last one, had her crying almost.

She opened the window pane, and let the rain hit her face.  Please keep him safe, RAIN!

The landline rang. She ran to get it. The receiver almost fell from her hand, when the expected voice whispered eerily, “ .. narrowly escaped death.”

She howled, “where are you?”

“On a pavement. Please come. I am so scared.”

She ran, broke open the door, and dodged the stairs. As she crossed the apartment’s main gate, she saw him.

The street lights showed blood gushing from his forehead. She ran to him, hugged him, and could barely speak, “How.. What happened?”

That followed a disturbing moment of pause.

“They want to kill me.”

“Who?”

For the whole time I thought about the incident, I thought it as someone’s else’s life. Anyone, but mine. This incident happened to SHRADDHA, not me.

Something in me smirked. You are Shraddha. YOU.

To the busy world outside, as I gazed at, I knew they take me for a girl suffering from emotional crisis, who lost her fiancé in an accident and was undergoing counselling, but all I knew was,

Chetan’s  death was not normal. It was anything but an accident..

.. to be continued.

Kolkata – Prettiest in her Festive Earrings!

Lights bloomed everywhere. From street lights to the LED decorations- the city was dressed in her best. The legs of the crowd made way for the main view- the puja pandel and the ten-handed epitome of power.

‘This city never stops’- they said, ‘This city walks on extra energy during festivals’- they never said. The funniest thing about Kolkata during Durga puja is- you don’t need to go around searching for the pandel, neither do you need to use the location-tracker application in your smart phone. Just stand in a crowd, and they will take you to the pandel, with the push.

Yes, Kolkata people are GPS trackers, when it comes to pandels, food courts, street shops, and almost everything under the sun.

And yes, we love to eat. And festivals bring with themselves, not just the feel-good air, but also the permission warrant of not paying a heed to the diet, and digging into any food and every food that catches the eye. From street food to restaurants- nothing makes Kolkata happier than FOOD!

Coming back to Durga puja, the pandels hum in the beats of the ‘Dhaak’- the best background score. And that unique smell you find in pandels- mixture of the smoke from the ‘Dhunuchi’, incense sticks, flowers, fruits- doesn’t it just make you smell for more? Addictive, isn’t it? And the good feeling it brings with itself, that happy feeling that leaves a curve on your lips..

Colours are scattered everywhere. The whole city dresses up- clothes, shoes, perfumes. I wonder what would my city look like, from over the clouds, during a festival- a haphazard pattern painted beautifully, or a colour palate that just slipped off a painter’s hand, and left an abstract scene, too mesmerising to describe.. WHO KNOWS..

But as Peter Parker says, “with great power comes great responsibility”, we Kolkatans say, with great happiness come Problems. Accidents, traffic jams, problems in parking cars, drains suffocating with garbage- and the listless problems.

But then as the Kolkata attitude says, ‘ Problems will come and go infinite times a year, but festivals come only once.’ The rest of the year is the WAIT.

Its only the festival time, when a school girl can give a damn to her homework, an office-going dad can stop worrying about his boring working-desk and threatening deadlines, a housewife mom can forget about pondering over what to cook for the breakfast, and a college-goer need not bunk classes to hang out with his friends. The best time of the year, it is. Happiness brims out of faces, and the reason is common!

Kolkata, being the home of a lot of communities, tastes all festivals- from Ganesh chaturthi to Christmas, From Durga puja to Eid. And, we, the foodie Kolkatans, the fun-loving Kolkatans, only need an excuse to celebrate- drop studies, drop work, and let down our hair.

But  then,  Life  is  all  about  CELEBRATING,  isn’t  it ??

#gibberish from a disturbed mind- Part 2

click here for the first part of the story!

I don’t know for how long I slept. All I woke up to was a very bad headache. The alarm clock was lying beside me, perhaps dead from the endless screams it did to break my slumber, but in vain. 

The afternoon sun rays hit hard on the eyes and I squinted to see the time on my cell phone.

12:30pm.

Not the time, but the notifications got my eyes hooked.

12 text messages. 9 missed calls.

I let out a sigh, it must be mom, reminding me of my psychiatrist’s appointment.

Wish you were here, Chetan.

Half an hour from then, I was back to the window. The scorching heat outside, the busy road, people, the rickshaw-pullers, made me restless.

There is a world out there, moving on, without me.

For having nothing else to do, I checked into my online account.

“Hi. Good morning.” The faceless, nameless text sender was there, again.

“Yes, morning.” Wake up with this bad a headache at late noon, and try saying ‘Good Morning’ .

“If you care, I am here to help. He won’t be back. Grow over it.”

I pulled back in shock. The mention of ‘He’ already sent a chill through my spine.

My fingers trembled as I wrote the reply, “WHO ARE YOU?”

How on earth do you know so much about me?

“Does that matter? I am here to help you.”

“Say the name, or you get blocked right away.” I felt the goose bumps, now.

“Miss, for all I know..

You WON’T block me.” And a smiling emoticon, came with it.

Who are you? A stalker? A friend? Or wait, CHETAN?

Irregular sleep, inactive days and wasting hours beside the window, looking at the disturbingly busy world outside, often makes you go beyond truths and hallucinate about impossibles. I was no exception.

“Miss, where are you lost?” the blinking chat box brought me back to reality again.

Fifteen minutes from then, I was driving to my psychiatrist’s chamber. I needed few words with her.

.. To be continued.

#Gibberish from a disturbed mind

‘Hi!’ , a new chat box blinked on the internet page.

I was still in bed, the computer left connected to the internet for simply no reasons. Lying flat on the stomach and face stuffed into the pillow, my mind was taking a stroll. I pushed myself up, and looked up to the window. The leaves bathing in the tired sunlight made a soothing ambience all around. I let my nostrils take a stretch and breathe in the fresh air. And then it dawned on me, it’s going to be night again.

Beautiful evenings come with loathsome nights in its kitty.

For some moments, I was back in my psychiatrist’s chamber. A soothing blue haze surrounded the room. I could hardly see the face that was talking to me, asking about my darkest secrets and a death.

“So, Miss Shraddha Roy, tell me about you? What’s wrong in your life? May be I can help.”

Yes right, you can help. Make a dead person alive, can you?

“We were supposed to get married this March”, I said, showing off my engagement ring. The diamond shone mockingly on the platinum crater. I felt the blue haze, the darkness, the chamber laughing at me, silently, at my misery.

‘Ma’am, you have been suffering from situational depression, but it’s okay. We can work on it together. You will be fine soon.’ The faceless voice now came into view, ethnic earrings, a big bindi and two kohl-smeared calm eyes, smiling assurance to me.

Then she went on telling something about depressions being curable, but clearly I was not listening. I stared at her moving lips and broke down, perhaps for the first time after Chetan’s death.

The morgue, Chetan’s lifeless body, the blood and the gruesome description of the accident, all at once, it came back to haunt me.

‘Hi. Are you there?’ the chat box blinked again.

I was back to the bed, to the window, the drowning sun and the air. I walked up to the computer and typed a reply, “Yes. Say?”

“Up for some schmoozing?”

“Yes, only after I know you.” I am disturbed, Get Lost.

“I happen to know your sad story. You must be very disturbed?”

“How come you know about me?” Is my ‘sad story’ doing the rounds in newspapers? Get Lost, will you?

“Miss, this is just to tell you, life is not unfair. You just need to keep calm.” And with it came a smiling emoticon

.

Love someone for five long years, get engaged and then one night receive a phone call about his death, yes life 

seems fair.

I was just about to type a reply very rude, when this nameless text sender went offline.

.. to be continued.