Dimistana, Greece

I waited patiently for a voice to emerge – a heavenly thundering that would peel the narrow beam of light into an orange grace. My eyes imagined scenes of redemption in the dance of dust in the honey hue –angels twirling and flapping their satin wings and then settling down again in a free fall. Slow. Deliberate. I lay still. Shallow breathing. My way of playing anonymous.

Today was not the day.

Down below; some 200 meters below, the enraged Lousios is tutored and disciplined by the gorge – also called Lousios - before she marries into Alfeios. But she is difficult. She hides several treacherous pits and slippery basins. A river where Zeus was bathed as an infant is expected to be elegant and lady-like. But not her; she shouts, grumps and spits violently. And the other Lousios also throws in a boulder every so often when she thinks that the river has gained an upper-hand.

I have crossed the gorge several times on my way to the Monastery of Prodromos and each time I look down the wooden suspension bridge, she shouts back at me. Mist of anger so cold that even in summer - when the droplets lands on skin - it burns. Sometimes I wonder if she could have risen so high in her anger to have dislodged a plank or two from the suspension bridge. Who knows?

A sharp cry of an angry seagull echoed in the gorge. Was she angry at Lousios – the river for being so violent or was she angry at Lousios – the gorge for her serpentine contours that confused its navigation.

Today was not the day.

I woke up and sat by the edge of the bed. My feet searching the floor for the slippers and my fingers running through my curly hair and beard to unknot the unions they formed during the night. Then, I opened the window of the room. A gush of jungle freshness welcomed me and set the wooden chimes into an unknown melody. It had been eleven years since I came to this monastery. Nine years since I placed a razor on my cheek and it no longer felt itchy. I along with Father Vaserius- from Cyprus, are the only two resident priests in this monastery.  And of course, there is our extended family of cats. Thomas the youngest is the most gentile and often gives me company in this life of solitude.

‘Kaliméra’. ‘Good Morning’, Father Vaserius greeted gravelly as he tossed few peanuts and munched. He nodded his head softly, his eyes eager to see some enthusiasm in mine.

Father Vaserius was 60 maybe 65, I don’t know. We never discussed anything so personal. In fact, we don’t talk much at all, except for the daily greetings and sometimes during the daily chores. Prayers, not talks are our bonding threads as monks. While we dine, the tape recorder would play a prayer to reflect. It is only tourists that we indulged in some talk about monastic life. Some of them are amazed when they hear that the pomegranates, the grape wines, and kitchen garden are all fruits of our toil.  

Father Vaserius was sitting outside; in the open passage that connected my room to the courtyard and taking in the warmth of the summer sun. The courtyard and the passages shimmered in the morning sunlight. The grey of the tiled rock blocks spread like a canopy over every structure: the passage, the chapel, and the courtyard.

Praying deep within but appearing to be lazy munching, he was tickling the neck of Simon – the cat. We had at one time 13 cats and all of them irrespective of gender had taken up names of Disciples of Christ: Peter, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Jude, Mark, Matthew, John, Thaddeus, Bartholomew, Simon, and James.

‘Kalimera’. I said; still unsure if I pronounced it rightly. I thought I heard him snicker and cover up with a fake cough. He looked at me and coughed a few more times loudly and then fisted his chest twice ending the elaboration expertly. 

 I too let him have the pleasure of having tricked me.

’ Koimíthikes kalá?’, ‘Did you sleep well?’ I asked with same enthusiasm.

‘hmm polý kalá’. ‘Very well’. I saw him raise his hand in appreciation. The brief pause in stroking annoyed Simon. He jumped down, shook his coat and hissed at poor Philip who was lying on the floor.

In that impasse, I was jostling my memory for words but then I made some hurried gestures in the direction of the chapel and waited to see if Father Vaserius had understood. Of course, he didn’t understand my gestures; most of the time; but he wouldn’t bother. He just smiled and nodded.

I walked toward the chapel and saw the first visitor of the day – an old Chinese man in heavy glasses, t-shirt and khaki shorts. He looked exhausted from the climb but exuberant when he saw me. He took off his glasses and bowed. And then smiled and waited expectantly – possibly for a gesture. The second stalemate of the morning, I thought.

*************************

It was a wrestle with the reluctant latch of the heavyset Iron Gate. The narrow gate was as old as the monastery, completely devoid of any artistry except for a long grill in the form of a cross welded into the body of the gate. The opening cast a long tapering cross of morning sunlight into the darkness. As I pushed the gate, it squealed and defied, breaching its defense just slightly; enough for the sunlight to spread onto the ornate iconostasis and the golden fresco of ‘Christ the redeemer’.  

I watched my shadow hide details on the fresco and then I became aware of another head on the shoulder of my shadow. The problem with the gesture is the gesture itself. And I think the easterner had assumed a welcome ‘gesture’, and had followed me all the way to the chapel.

I felt his palm rest on my hand on the door and felt the warmth from his hand press onto mine and then it persisted some more.  Together, it worked. The gate dragged and splintered the uneven floor. I heard him gasp; I turned in time to see his serene smile stretch from the corners into an elongated oval of bliss. His eyes full of admiration. Gently, he nudged my hand on the door with his chest and then squeezed himself through the narrow passage.

Inside the chapel, I closed my eyes in meditation and dropped to my knees on the kneeler. My senses slowly drew the curtain on the world around until it was dark and silent and then I waited for my redeemer to let me in. It was always a test: the wait; before my lord lets me in. The wait is a cleansing process that starts with surrender, Lord deliver us from evil; the darkness grew deeper and made me restless, Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy. My heart chanted fervently and I sensed the darkness descend upon me like a column. It tightened its strangulating grip around me as it turned into a tornado; so loud that I couldn’t hear my prayers but I didn’t protest. I had surrendered already. I felt myself disintegrate and whirled around. Slapped and bruised. And then the darkness vanished receding away into obscurity and the brilliance of divinity flooded me with a warmth that reminded me of my mother and her choking, loving embrace, stuffing my face into her bosom and wrapping me in cotton arms.  I floated timelessly through the golden light ascending heavenwards. Then, a tiny drop landed on my skin and burned into my flesh. It dissolved whatever was left of my already disintegrated body and I no longer existed in that glow; only the glow existed. The state of oneness with the creator. It was sufficient and providing for my soul and time had no meaning.

Still, today was not that day.

It is easy to catch a dragonfly. You tiptoe behind it, wait till it rests its wings and clips your fingers on the wings from underneath and behind the fly. But catching a wasp is dangerous. But we the children of misadventures roaming around with mischief rolled under our sleeves always had a way. We would wait patiently under the snagged shades of the Allamanda tree – hanging straight, hanging upside down and scratching our names or offenses or love confessions on the tree bark that would soon get immortalized with the white latex. Then a drunk wasp would appear circling the trumpet flower and making several misfired launches into the bell. And once it does, we would fold the petals and trap the wasp inside and then carry around the personal humming instrument for everyone’s annoyance. I was that wasp humming and enjoying the divine Congress – a meeting of inexplicable bliss. Until I felt a weight grow on the kneeler and the delicate balance was distorted. I was that wasp that suddenly realized that someone was fiddling with my spiritual deliverance. Maybe it is another test, I thought.

I heard a weak chant. Words that sounded familiar but foreign in the monastery. A language that opened the floodgate of memories and longings that had been locked in the silver trunk of belongings from an earlier life and kept untouched underneath my bed and unattended by my consciousness.

‘Father …. Father Albert’, I felt a warm breath fall on my ears.

I cocked my head gently and fell into the desperate eyes of a man; sick and ill; with grief and anguish. The eyes were a precipice and I plunged into a meandering journey that zoomed past memories.  A vibrant frame: of companionship and brotherhood, further away; a golden frame:  of welcoming, loving extended arms of my mother and further down; a feather white frame: of six hands, palm in palm forming a circle, a closed tie of unshakable fellowship and vows of unassailable loyalty.

‘James!… James? ‘neeyano?’. Is that you?’ I rediscovered a tongue I hadn’t used in my monastic life.

‘Athe Acha.’’Yes, father’.

My hands rushed and held his palms in a grip that tightened as I struggled to secure the fidgety lid of the silver trunk with heavy vows from my new life. Temptations of a novitiate.

‘Kyrie, eleison; Christe, eleison; Kyrie, eleison’.’ Lord have Mercy; Christ have mercy’. I breathed the prayers until I felt my grip relax and the silver trunk had settled and moved back again underneath the open confinement of faith.

‘Peace be with you’. I concluded the brief intimacy with the sign of the cross.

Two years back Father Vaserius had a visitor from his village: Nicosia, with an unpleasant news. His ailing father had requested a visit; a fair request from a father to his son. A man on his deathbed can be forgiven for any transgressions because death is a reality that the heart and mind recognize together and none can then conspire a lie. Every death wish is an earnest appeal of the soul. But Father Vaserius politely sent back the visitor with a note “I shall meet you with our father in Paradise”. He had disrobed the grandeur of his lineage and luring colors of his past life for the black cassock: a symbol of spiritual poverty. The black cassock held me from disintegrating.

‘What brings you here? James?’ I asked when I was tempted to blurt out ‘Why did you come here’.

‘I just came to meet you… just… you know so many years!’ a hesitation playing on his lips. His arms making arches in air that tried to transport me beyond questions into the silence of understanding.

I loved James, I still did. My best friend. My brother by choice. He must have been in terrible trouble to have come looking for me. I wanted to help, but to what means I didn’t know.

‘Let’s meet outside. Can you wait for me there?’

‘Yes of course… Yes’

‘Hmm’

On my way out, I noticed father Vaserius lighting the candles on the horos chandelier. Smoke lingered in the air swelling and ascending- lifting spirits and prayers upwards; each lit candle subserviently revealing just enough of the saint’s face so that the soul submits in prayers and not in awe of the painting.

Outside, I saw James standing underneath the canopy of grapevines that arched the stairs that lead from the courtyard to the compound gate. Thaddeus - the black cat was circling around him, rubbing itself on him affectionately. As soon as it saw me, it purred and came running to me and crashed into my legs stalling me; it then rolled and then clawed and played with the hem of my robe.

James my brother, what stories do you bring from a world that I had abandoned? Do you realize that I am not immune to temptations of the past? Do you realize that my faith will be tested today with whatever you will tell me about my parents, friends and their lives? Will you understand that I no longer want to hear any of that? Not because it doesn’t matter but because my ‘Gethsemane of agony’ is the past. A past that you so fondly want to reminiscent. James.

‘James’, I tapped him on his shoulder

‘Chacko.. Can I call you Chacko ..Father Alb..?’

‘That’s fine’. Chacko as in Jacob - a name my parents had baptized me with.

‘What brings you here, my friend?’

He held my shoulder in a firm grip and shook me a little.

‘I am so happy to see you.. this.. meeting you…I want to make a confession, father.’ he said so abruptly that I felt my smile drain from my face and I couldn’t bring it back.

‘Confession?’

‘Why did you come here for a confession?’ I quizzed unable to understand his motive and clearly aware that a confession is a hearing I cannot deny. It was a divine counsel that I had to give to anyone who asks for it.

‘I am not sure anyone will understand me better than you and I am sure you won’t listen to me otherwise’. He was clearly prepared and I felt abandoned like Jesus - abandoned by the Lord who had lordship over the universe. Eli Eli lama sabachthani?

****************************

‘In the name of the father; and of the son; and of the holy spirit. Bless me, father, for I have sinned’.

The confessional was just near the door of the chapel, overlooking the wide courtyard. As the confession began, I noticed naughty Jude run into few doves basking in the courtyard, scaring them away. As the birds flapped, a light wind caught their wings and pushed them sideways, they maneuvered upwards to perch on the branches of the dancing sycamore trees. My eyes followed them heavenwards and I submitted to become the conduit between man and god. My prayers, his confession - Words fluttered and flew with the wind. I isolated the man behind the latticed window of the confessional from the voice that sought penance. I barricaded the man from reaching his friend Chacko. I - father Albert was ready for the confession.

‘Father, for 18 years, we grew up as friends. You, me and Radhika. And then, you decided to pursue your spiritual calling. On that day when you left, I felt a loss I had never felt before’. He paused and I didn’t dare look. I shut my eyes, my ears close to the lattice and my thumb busy rolling the rosary ring on my finger.

‘How could I ask you not to go? Life must move on. I moved on, Radhika did too. Then three years later, out of the blue, I heard about the sad demise of Radhika’ s father. Silent attack, he died in sleep.’ He paused again, as if he wanted me to relive the memories of a jovial man who always treated us like his own children, of the many Christmas carols where he readily agreed to be the fat dancing Santa. Selfless Man. Our best friend among parents.

I earnestly wished he wouldn’t pause so much.

‘The day he was cremated, I busied myself not because I wanted to. I just couldn’t cry, Chacko! He was my father even if he was not… I owe him so much... Would you understand he was like a father to me?’ He choked. So did I.

I remember ‘Jayan chettan’ -  Radhika’s father; climbing up mango trees to pluck ripe mangoes, smoking and battling the bees to get us fresh honeycombs , going on early morning fishing expeditions where he would often return empty handed because we were too excited and loud.  The several late night movies he took us to until one day it was no longer good for Radhika to go out for late night movies. Our parents educated us. He taught us life. My father always liked him, trusted him like a faithful help. He wasn’t a help, he was just happy to be around and my parents and James’s parents assumed him to be always around.

Jayan chettan - Jayettan. I will miss you and I will see you on the other side of life. Laughing loud ‘Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas’

‘Radhika and I became closer in the following months. Not that we weren’t close. You know she just had me. Her relatives just kept saying ill about Jayettan for having forgotten his duties as a father. Their question – Who will marry off Radhika now. At one point I think I said I will if it comes to that. I thought that was enough for her to know my feelings.’

‘And so did she agree?’

‘She never said No’

‘Did she say- Yes?’

‘She didn’t. But she didn’t say no either!’ he said agitatedly. I saw him hang his head and shift uneasily.

‘James, you don’t have to delve into details. You know the truth about your position and so just concentrate on the contrition’, I whispered into the lattice.

‘I did tell her one more time father! But she didn’t reply... Something changed between us and I don’t know what that change was because she never told me…then... she got married’, he paused and my heart reached out to my brother.

‘James… James’, I implored.

‘Chacko, she married someone else without telling me a word. Not even the day before her marriage when I phoned her. She just talked as usual and then I heard she got married… How can someone do that? I heard she wanted it as a private affair; with just a few relatives… private? So private she didn’t even care to inform me, her lifelong friend! ’ a resentment clouded the confessional and my prayers couldn’t clear it.

‘James, are you prepared to forgive? This confession only makes sense if you can forgive’

‘Oh, I forgave her. Father. I forgave her long back. I uprooted her memories and let them dry and shrink to death. I saw her every day without thinking about her. Every day. Every day until she became one in the crowd.’

He bit his lips. ‘Every day for seven years... But I didn’t falter, father... I didn’t let my eyes or my voice reveal the wounds’, he spoke contemptuously. He paused to check his senses. I saw in him a man who didn’t want to dig the grave. He breathed deeply several times before he continued.

 ‘I lived a life of solitude. Working to Live, living to work. Until six months ago, I got a letter. A letter from her. Radhika. She professed her love to me.’

My prayers stopped.

I paused.

He paused.

Today was not the day. Today should never have happened.

I stood up, hooked the purple stole and walked towards the Templon. I stood there gazing at the icon of Madonna and the child. Madonna had child Jesus in her arms. A child capable of protecting the universe yet she held the child so protectively. Sometimes truth needs to be protected even if it is capable on its own.

Radhika should never have sent that letter. Why would she send a letter? She could have phoned. She could have mailed. Why did she decide to send that letter after seven years of marriage?

 James was still at the confessional. Kneeling.

‘Did you destroy the letter?’

 ‘Destroy? It destroyed me, Chacko. I had built a fort around me with hate and anger. Her letter breached every layer of that fort and hit straight at my heart. I took the phone and called her like a man possessed. I poured out my love without hearing her. And when I finished, she cried on the phone. She must have thrown the phone on the floor or the bed and she wept. I heard her, I heard her worried kids run unto her. They cried too.  Her husband must have heard. He came running and he pacified her. I so wanted to comfort her.’

I started slowly, words pouring out through divine intervention.

‘James … where is your guard? The biggest mistake was that you called her. You destroyed her peace.’ I paused a second to ensure that my words are not received as a reprimand.

‘Confession is between man and god, here right now, I am his conduit, not your friend. Even now you refer me as Chacko… You shall not call me Chacko again when I am in this sacred cassock… James you must not let your feelings cloud your judgment.’ I moved away from the screen to recite prayers of absolution.

‘In his great mercy may God grant you peace and for..’

‘Father.’

‘..give all your sins and bri..’

‘Father Albert’, James interrupted me.

‘Father, I haven’t finished. May I finish my confession?’

I thought he had already made his confession. Lust veiled as love for a married woman, despondency; two of the seven deadly sins. There was more?

‘Yes.’

‘In my fit, I went to her home in a drunken stupor, shouted her name and asked her to come with me. I was overcome by everything I had lost ... everything I had wanted to experience with her. Love, affection and life.’  James rushed, ashamed of his action.

‘She came out and with folded hands... She cried that she had not written any letter. Her husband grabbed me by the collars and nailed me down. Neighbors came running and pulled us apart. By then I was so furious that she was denying herself that I threw the letter on his face. He read a few lines from it and walked away. The damage was done and it was too late, his children ran after him, she wailed and ran to bring him back. He never did. She ran back to me and spit on my face and tore the letter and threw it up. I can still hear the thump of her chest. Thump of rage. I have sinned father. I destroyed a family.’

 ‘What about the letter who wrote it… If it was not her. Who wrote it?’

‘I came to know of it later… I was arrested. I mean after I was arrested’

 ‘What?’

‘I was arrested that night for nuisance and incarcerated on her charges for willfully creating marital discord! I was questioned in front of her and her husband. It was her, she had written it but a long time ago.’

‘What do you mean?..Long time ago?’

‘Father it sounds silly but it was the cruelest joke. The police traced the letter to a post office in a nearby village - Sreekrishnapuram. Seems it was posted by one Govindan on behalf of Vasudev. The letter was indeed written by Radhika some seven years back, before her marriage and it was delivered to ‘Devalayam’ house. You see the similarity my house is called ‘Deva Deyam’… and she had forgotten to put the postcode...’

 ‘So it was wrongly delivered! ... seven years ago?’

‘Yes. Devalayam I heard, is a dilapidated ancestral property that was recently visited by its heirs and they found this letter and posted it again. This time I got it – rightly, but not quite.’

‘Hmm’, I sighed. My foolish friend. Will my forgiveness matter? - if so I forgive you this moment! As much as you are blameless, you are guilty too. Heedless haste. Look where you landed with it.

‘What about Radhika’, I asked even though I shouldn’t have.

‘I haven’t heard… I don’t know where she is... I wanted to apologize to her. My father doesn’t look me in my eye. My friends don’t recognize me and I just live a loner. Do you think I can live here… with you here?’

‘James, let’s get finished with the confession first’

Roman 6:23 says ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’. I lead James through the rest of the sacrament of penance and at the end absolved him in the name of the father most merciful. 

Later, when the clouds of sorrow had passed and radiance of life had filled him with purpose, I walked him through our orchard plucking ripe pomegranates. Some of them, I crushed in my hand and left on the ground underneath the shades. James was watching me closely intrigued but he didn’t question. He thought I was still playing with the idea of asking him to stay. But I knew this monastery was not a place for him. Not for the reasons he wanted to stay.

‘Father’ he spoke softly.

‘You can call me Chacko now, my friend’

‘Chacko, can I stay with you here in the monastery’, he requested

Father Vaserius walked by with a spade balancing on his shoulder. A line of cats followed him.

‘Good afternoon’, he greeted with cheer, his cassock mopping the stone tiles.

I looked at James –a foolish expectant smile. Innocent maybe. His innocence annoyed me.

We started walking down the stone stairs toward the courtyard. The wind was cool, the rustle of the sycamores soothing and gurgle of the Lousios melodious. The church bell rang a soft cue.

‘James, do you know why I dropped a few fruits?’

 ‘Yes, they were overripe’

‘Hmm. Well, that is how you see it’, I pointed his gaze towards the pomegranate tree.  A knot of sparrows were feasting the crushed fruits. Lazy sleeping cats in the courtyard didn’t mind the chatter or the feast, their ears habitually turning at every chirp.

 ‘Envy’ my friend is what makes you covet what is not rightfully yours’. We had walked quite some distance from the orchard and were standing near the bower that supported the grapevines. I took his travel bag that was kept nearby and handed it to him.

‘You must learn to forgo things that don’t rightfully belong to you. This monastery where you stand right now is miles away from you. You want to stay, but you don’t have to’

‘But... father I want to’

‘You want to, but you don’t have to my friend. Staying here is not an escape from life. It has a purpose. It has a calling. You want to stay here because you think the world as you see doesn’t like you for your past. But you don’t have to carry the burden of the past. The past is behind you. You must find your purpose and go back to where you belong. This monastery is the end to my purpose, not yours’

‘This is my purpose’, he retorted

‘You just think it is’. James my dear friend, why are you so lost.

‘Chacko, what will I do?’

Live life. That’s what you should do. Not mine. Not Radhika’s. We are all your past, my friend. Why do you want to punish yourself with a past which has flowed past you? Life moves on, whether you like it or not. It must.  Right now you are driven by feelings. Emotions. The very nature of which is transience. You can prolong it by thinking about the past but it will end and it will become tasteless. Leaving you with nothing. Whereas if you make a decision today, whenever you falter whenever you think you are at the end of things with no ray of hope, you will still know that it was your decision. Your promise to yourself… James learn to make promises and learn to keep it. Most importantly keep the promises you make to yourself… Make a promise to never let your past hurt you. Then all that you see as challenges will become surmountable.… Good Bye, friend. I won’t see you again. But you are welcome to come here for prayer. Only for prayer’

 I reached inside my pocket and with closed palm, I folded a rosary into his hand.

‘Pray and find strength’

I left him at the courtyard and moved toward my room to pray. I heard the Chinese traveler enquiring with James. I heard footsteps leading away from the courtyard. But I didn’t turn to see if they left together or was it just James. My promise was to let him learn to live on his own.

I closed the door of my room. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.

“Laya... I saw her again,” screamed Richa from the other end of the phone. “And she knows. She knows me, Laya. She knows who I am. She is going to come and get me. From the look on her face, I am certain that she knows that I know her too. I know it now. My every move is being watched. I don’t think I can ever free myself from her malignant presence.”

“Richa, will you please relax for a minute and tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

“That woman. I saw her again,” responded Richa. “The woman with silver eyes.”

“Richa, I have told you a hundred different times,” I replied in an angry tone. “There is no such woman. You are just imagining things.”

“I would love to believe you, Laya,” cried Richa. “But you are wrong, completely wrong. I knew it from the very beginning. She has been watching me from Day One. Because, she knows. She knows that the best way to torture me is to make me feel guilty of what I had done that day. She wants me to live the rest of my life in constant fear of confronting her. I just can’t stand this anymore, Laya. I think I will go mad any minute from now. If I don’t go mad, I know I will commit suicide. If not that, she… she will kill me.”

That was the last time I heard Richa speak. Not that she got killed by her imaginary killer. Neither did she commit suicide. But as she had predicted herself, after that incident, her mind got completely deranged. To a total stranger, she might even appear sane. But when you tried to get to know her, you would understand that she simply wouldn’t want to talk to you. She might look at you when you speak to her, but then after some time, you would realize that she is just looking through you.  She wouldn’t like your company if you are a strange woman, and in case you try to exchange a few dialogues, the conversation in all its probability would start with her shriek of disapproval and ends with your scream.

Richa and I were batch-mates during our B-school days in Mysore. Though we were not the best of friends, since we were both from the same town of Cochin, we would drive home together during long weekends, and so, were pretty much comfortable in each other’s company. Richa, I must say, was a very unconventional girl who never waited for anyone to take any decisions for her. Whatever she did was based on her own comfort and convenience and little did she care about what others thought or told of her. She, for the rest of us, was in fact the ultimate flag-bearer of self-dependence. 

Despite being such a strong woman, if someone asks me how Richa has reached the state she currently is in, I simply do not have a ready-made answer for that. I think it has been a series of events. The prime reason perhaps was the blow she received on New Year’s Day in 2015 when she came to know of her real identity, that she was an adopted child of her parents. After that, she stopped talking to her parents for a while and even didn’t go home during the semester break in April. I had heard from others that there were times when she would lock herself up in her room and not come out for days, not even for food. Such an impact, that revelation had had on her. During those times, it was through me that her parents knew about her whereabouts. Though my initial pacification efforts reached nowhere, slowly, with the help from her other friends, I was finally able to convince her to go back home and have a word or two with her parents. Since October 2nd of that year was a Friday, we decided to go home for that long weekend. Like usual, we decided to take turns to drive for the eight-hour journey; I drove from Mysore to Coimbatore and she would drive for the rest of the journey. It was at that instance, when she actually started driving, that I realized that Richa was still not back to her normal self. No longer a swift driver that she used to be, the anxiety and frustration that she had in meeting her parents was quite evident from her rash driving. Though I wanted to stay awake for the rest of the journey, I somehow dozed off in between. But it didn’t take me much longer to come back to my senses when, according to Richa, a dog had leapt in front of the car and she had to turn around the car so fiercely that I nearly got thrown off from my seat. But I found it difficult to believe her when she said that the dog was unhurt. Because, though I was asleep, I could feel the car hitting on something and on top of that, there was dried blood near the headlight when I checked the next morning. Maybe she had hit that dog but didn’t want me to know about it. I too didn’t find it appropriate to nag her with my doubts. The rest of the drive that day brought out all the apprehensions that she had had lately, that I had to ask her to stop the car and to let me drive it. Though I never expected her to oblige, she agreed almost immediately as if she had wanted me to ask her from the moment I had given her the steering wheel. Dropping her home that day, I never realized that it would be the last time that we rode home together. Richa never drove any vehicle after that.

Though she made it up with her parents, Richa was slowly getting transformed to a completely different individual. The change that had come over to her came as a shock to most of us who had known her. Since she preferred to go home by train during weekends, we rarely got to see each other during our final year in college. But since we shared common friends, I was aware of her occasional emotional breakdowns and the frequent fits of anger that she started to display. Once, she even created a commotion by arguing that a newcomer girl had tried to kill her.

After college, most of us got placed in reputed companies in different parts of India and abroad. Both Richa and I were placed in two different companies in Hyderabad and since both our offices were nearby, we became roommates as well. We rented an apartment along with two other girls who worked with Richa. Since I was aware of Richa’s past, I was prepared to handle any possible situations that might reveal her vulnerable side. But the other two girls sometimes found it difficult to cope up with Richa’s mood swings. There were times when she would wake up from sleep in the middle of the night, screaming.  Though initially, she didn’t bring up any of her problems to me, gradually, she started confiding her fears to me. She told me about the recurrent dreams that had haunted her, wherein at the end, a woman always tried to kill her. And this woman she saw, she was no ordinary woman – she was a very peculiar woman with sharp silver eyes. The theme of her dream might change every other day, Richa said, but the woman and her silver eyes would remain the same in all her dreams.

It might have been because of these strange dreams that she had, Richa was never comfortable with strangers, especially stranger women. As if to emphasize this fact, all hell broke loose when Indira, a Tamil writer, moved to an apartment two floors up. The woman who had come down to meet us in person had to confront a sudden outburst from Richa who screamed at her for being the woman with silver eyes who ended up killing her in all her dreams, although Indira had eyes the color of charcoal. Though I felt sorry for Richa, I felt even more sorry for this woman who had lost her husband and child a few years back. I simply couldn’t imagine what all she must have gone through in her life, but still there was a state of calm about her which I really liked. Richa, however, hated Indira as much as I liked her.

As the days dragged by, there was considerable shift in Richa’s behavior, but unfortunately, it was for the worse. It was not just her personal life which was getting impacted; Richa started having trouble at her workplace too. That was when the rest of us decided to take her to a psychologist. With her approval, the plan would never work out, so in the pretense of going to a friend’s place, we took her to Dr. Ram, a clinical psychologist.

Meeting a psychologist would only count when the person who needs help is ready to open up. But in Richa’s case, she was not at all co-operative. Dr. Ram later told me that Richa was trying to hide something that she wants to forget from her life, but unfortunately that very thing was coming back to her again and again. When I told him about the issues Richa had with her parents, the doctor asked if I could bring Richa’s parents to Hyderabad so that she could stay with them for at least a few weeks. Her parents were more than willing to come, but convincing Richa was the difficult task. Maybe because she too longed for their presence, Richa agreed to move in with her parents. Though there were free apartments in the building that we stayed, Richa decided she wanted a change in atmosphere and moved to a building three blocks away from where we resided.

It was just three weeks since Richa moved in with her parents that she called me in that dreaded state. I really wonder what had happened in that time span which made her call me up in such a state. She still believes that there is someone out there who is trying to kill her. Are these just based on her imaginations or does such a woman really exist? And what did she mean when she said that the best way to torture her was to make her feel guilty of what she had done. I mean, what exactly did she do? Like Dr. Ram said, what was she hiding from all of us?

I was just weighing all the possibilities in my mind when I heard the calling bell ring. It was my journalist friend, Shikha at the door. After receiving her in, I was about to close the door when Indira Swaminathan, the Tamil writer who stayed two floors up appeared on my doorway.

“Hello Indira, come on in,” I welcomed her.

“No Laya. I am fine here,” Indira said. “I will be returning to my hometown today. Thought I would come and say good-bye to you. I heard about your friend. I will pray for her speedy recovery.”

“Thanks Indira,” I replied. “That is so nice of you. By the way, where is your hometown?”

“Coimbatore,” said Indira.

“So, what were you doing here?” I got curious. “Were you working on your new book?”

“No Laya,” Indira explained. “I was in search of someone for the past three years. I got an information that this person was now staying in Hyderabad. Though I could locate that person long ago, it was only a few days back that I got a chance to come face-to-face with her. Now that I am done, it’s time for me to go back.”

“You mentioned this person as ‘her’…” I stammered. “Do I know her?”

“I need to leave now, Laya,” Indira shrugged. “Hope our paths cross again.”

Indira then approached the stairs to return to her apartment, when she stopped and told me, “When your friend is back to her senses, tell her that I have forgiven her.” And then she was gone.

I stood there in bewilderment having heard something I never expected to hear. It was only after Shikha came to call me that I realized I was still standing by my doorway looking at the stairs Indira had taken to get back to her apartment.

Seeing the perplexed look on my face, Shikha asked, “You alright?”

“Hey, listen,” I ignored her concern. “Shikha, you are a journalist. What do you know about this Indira Swaminathan that I don’t know of?”

“I know she writes poems and stories in Tamil,” Shikha began. “Her works are mostly based on…”

“No,” I stopped her. “I am more interested in her personal life.”

“Oops. I don’t have much information on that,” Shikha said. “I know that her husband got killed in a car crash some five years back. And then, her son also died in an accident. I think that was some two or three years back.”

“Three years…? Can you find out exactly when and how, her son had died?” I was getting impatient.

“I remember it was a case of hit and run,” said Shikha. “And the killer was never identified. And for the date, let’s Google.”

Shikha took out her mobile phone and started searching for related news. And then she said, “Here we go. That day, Indira’s car’s tyres had burst and since there was no network coverage in that place, she was trying to change the tyres herself. Her five-year-old son was standing near the car when another car lost control, hit the boy and sped through without stopping. “

“Here, in another report, Indira says it was a woman who had driven the car,” Shikha continued. “It says, both Indira’s and that driver’s eyes had met, and Indira has confirmed that she would be able to identify her son’s killer without any trouble. But I don’t think that case has reached anywhere. That killer seems to be still living in peace. Hmm… Anyway, this accident happened in the wee hours of 2nd of October 2015 in a secluded place near Coimbatore. And it’s mentioned that if the boy was taken to the hospital immediately, he would have even survived.”

October 2nd, 2015. Now everything makes sense. So, this was the secret Richa had been hiding from all of us. She told me it was a dog and it was unhurt. But she had known it all the time. She was lying. She was simply lying. But her dreams. They never lied to her. There did exist such a woman. And that was Indira. Their eyes had met during that accident and it was those eyes that never let Richa sleep. The only lie her dreams told her was the color of the eyes of the woman who had haunted her. And, Indira... She was searching for the woman who was responsible for her son’s death all these years. Although she had met her in person, she never thought of doing any harm to her. She was even benevolent enough to forgive her and wish for her recovery. Now, when I think of it, Richa has also suffered enough in life. And if I tell her that Indira has forgiven her, I am sure she will be healed. It appears too strange to realize how one incident has toppled the lives of two entirely different women from completely different walks of life. And now, it has become my responsibility to make sure that this secret will never reach another soul.

“Laya, there is one touching write-up about Indira here,” Shikha told as if to wake me up from my train of thoughts. “Originally, this Indira’s eyes are silver in color. And that’s something her son loved about her appearance. But after her son’s death, she puts on black lens to cover her eyes because she doesn’t want anyone to see her eyes which her son cannot see. What a doting mother she had been.”

A very sharp chill went down my spine. 

It was a cold month, even a leaf refused to move. No one even dare to step because of the temperature there. The city was so calm, that even made the cat’s walk more loud.

But the people were so busy in talking about the thief. Police got no clue about what’s happening there. They checked every banks and jewelry shops, everywhere for sign of theft, but nothing happened there. After two days of investigation, they found out that the theft was in cigarette factory. The security guards said that they heard a woman’s voice inside the factory. When they opened the door, nobody was there, but the cigarette boxes were missing in tons.

 After a week somebody called the police station and told them that again there is someone inside the cigarette factory and stealing the cigarettes. They were very afraid to go inside the factory, so they waited for the police to arrive. The police team arrived there so fast and rounded her up. They presented her at the court.

When they produced the prisoner in front of the judge, the judge got shocked. It was a butterfly. Everyone there was so confused, that this little tiny thing is capable of doing this much bigger crime in the city…. It can’t even smoke, so everyone started questioning her about what she did with the cigarettes….

So the old  judge asked her very calmly, what is your name? and  why you did that?? She replied” my name is buff” in her bold voice and then she continued to talk. She said ”I’m a mother of three larvas. After the winter started, it was so cold that made my children even very difficult to breathe. I couldn’t find anything to keep my children alive. One of my children died because of this merciless winter and the other two were fighting for their life. At that time, in front of my home, someone dropped their leftover cigarette , I opened my door to see who’s that. I suddenly sensed the smile from my children’s face because of that heat comes from that cigarette. It kept them warm for seconds. I asked everyone to help me by giving me some free cigarettes. But no one helped. So then I decided to steal them away. And stole tons of cigarettes to keep them alive”.

The crowd remained silent after they finished listening her story. Everyone waited for the old judge’s judgement. With the serious face, the old judge was writing his judgement. After finished writing, he saw buff and said “in the history of this world, first time smoking saved a life. And I’m glad for that. And I cannot file any case on buff, because her action was selfless. So I’m declaring her guilt free.”

After the court dismissed, the old judge came towards buff and told her that he wants to meet her kids. So she took him with her, when she opened the door, those larva formed a cocoon around them. She felt very happy. And after the cocoon broke, buff and her children butterflies started living that old judge and they were so happy…..

“We’ll find her, don’t worry. A police officer should be here soon,” Mohit said softly to console Rohini, his wife. They deliberated on where Rima, their fifteen-year old daughter might be and they didn’t have a clue.

The police officer arrived soon and it was 10:11 PM.

“Imran Ali,” the officer introduced himself.

“Mohit Ganesh. Thank you for coming, officer.”

The three of them settled down and Imran asked, “So, what happened?”

“Rima and I were having lunch when I got a call from our staff at the boutique saying that one of our regular customers wanted to see me,” Rohini recollected, “So I left immediately. I got back later in the evening and went about my chores. I thought Rima was studying in her room and realized that she was missing when I went to call for her dinner.”

“And where were you, Mr. Mohit?” Imran asked.

“I was at office since morning.”

“Did you notice anything suspicious or unusual about Rima today?” Imran asked Rohini.

“She came home early from school today. She said she was not feeling well. Other than that, she was like her usual self.”

“I would like to see her room.”

“Sure,” Rohini said and the three of them went to the room, which was well kept and clean.

“Did you check her things?” Imran queried.

“Yes, everything seems to be in order,” Rohini replied, “But when I opened the door, the fan was still running and her mobile phone was lying on her bed. She never went anywhere without her mobile and she always lets me know when she is going somewhere,” Rohini replied.

“So it’s just the three of you living here?”

“Yes,” Mohit answered.

“Okay. Where is her mobile?”

“I’ll get it,” Rohini said, and soon she returned with it. The phone didn’t have any lock on it and Imran checked the call log.

“Nothing much in here,” Imran noted.

“Rima isn’t very social and she doesn’t have many friends. So I don’t know where to look for her or whom to ask,” Rohini said.

“Any missing valuables, like cash or jewelry?”

“I didn’t check thoroughly but everything seems to be in place,” Rohini replied.

“What was she wearing when you saw her last?”

“Black t-shirt and I think she was in her beige shorts,” Rohini recollected.

“Alright, I’ll need her photos, mobile phone and the names and numbers of her closest friends or anyone else whom you think was close with Rima. In the meantime, I have a team that is already patrolling the neighborhood. I’ll let you know when we have something. One of you will have to come to the station tomorrow morning to file a complaint. I am sure we’ll find her,” Imran said.

He collected the information he needed and left.

-----

After a quick investigation, Imran returned to Mohit’s house the next day.

“My team and I are running around trying to find your daughter but we cannot do it if you don’t tell us what you know,” Imran said furiously.

“I… I don’t understand, I already told you everything I know,” Rohini said.

“I don’t think so. You told me that your daughter reached home early yesterday saying she wasn’t feeling too well. Her teacher said that she couldn’t have left the campus without a guardian. You were at home and Mohit was at his office, then how did she leave the campus? How come you never asked her about it?”

Mohit and Rohini were quiet.

“I need answers,” Imran insisted.

“When Rima reached home yesterday, I was in my room, working on a new design for a client,” Rohini said, “She walked past my room hurriedly and went straight to her room, and locked herself up. I knocked on her door and asked her to open it but she said… she said that she… she hated us all, and asked me to leave her alone or else…” Rohini paused as her eyes filled with tears, “…or else she would kill herself.”

Rohini tried her best to maintain her composure but she ended up bursting in tears.

"Then why did you tell me that everything was normal yesterday?” Imran probed.

“Rima opened the door a bit later and came to see me. I asked her what happened, and how she got out of school early. She just told me that she doesn’t want to talk about it and if I persisted then she would lock herself in her room again. So I didn’t pursue further and thought I’ll speak with Mohit when he got back home. But while serving lunch I probed again, and she replied that she wasn’t feeling too well. When I asked her how she got out of school, she got up and went to her room in anger, without having lunch. That’s when I got a call from my boutique and I had to leave.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?” Imran asked again. 

“I thought it would only complicate things.”

Imran was furious and wanted to give her a piece of his mind but decided not to.

“So everything wasn’t well between you and your daughter?” Imran asked suspiciously.

“She behaved indifferently at times but yesterday was the first time she said that she hated everyone. I have never seen her behave like that before,” Rohini said.

“We always made sure that she got whatever she wanted,” Mohit said, “In fact, Rohini doesn’t attend any calls from her boutique on weekends so that we all can have our family time without any disturbance. We did everything we could as parents.”

“Did you give her money as well?”

“Yes, every month we gave her an amount. We wanted her to be independent and get used to managing money,” Mohit replied.

“Do you know how she spent it?”

“No, we never asked her but I think she usually spent it on clothes and stuff. She was free to buy whatever she wanted, no restrictions.”

“Including drugs?”

“No! Rima would never do drugs,” Rohini retorted.

“Her teacher caught her with drugs yesterday,” Imran revealed as the parents stared at each other in disbelief.

“There must be some kind of misunderstanding, officer. Our daughter would never do drugs. We are certain about that,” Mohit insisted.

“She was caught with drugs but it doesn’t necessarily have to be hers. Her teacher tried to contact you both yesterday to inform about this but neither of you answered her call.”

“We usually don’t answer calls from unknown numbers,” Mohit replied.

“She was caught with drugs and it’s certain that someone gave it to her. I want the two of you to think really hard about that. I have a feeling that that person would know where Rima is.”

Imran left and on his way back to his office, he called one of his officers for an update. He got to know that the CCTV cameras near Rima’s house had recorded images of a pickup van entering the compound at 4:24 PM, and it returned after about five minutes. Further investigations revealed that the van belongs to a laundry service company and the driver’s name is Varun. Police interrogated him but let him go since they didn’t find anything suspicious.

The investigation wasn’t progressing much but later that night, to everyone’s disbelief, Rima was picked up by a Highway Patrol unit and she was brought home. Her t-shirt was torn, she had bruises on her cheeks, hands, knees and at the back of her shoulder. She could barely walk. Her parents were distraught when they saw her in that condition. Imran suggested to take her to a hospital but Rima refused. She refused to talk and went to her room. 

Rima couldn’t sleep that night, and she twisted and turned on her bed, thinking of everything that had happened. 

-----

Earlier that day…

Rima woke up to the sound of someone unlocking a padlock outside her door. The room was fairly dark and the only source of light was the cracks on the wooden door. As the door opened, she adjusted her eyes to the light as she peered at the teen who stepped inside. He was holding a steel glass and he offered it to her.

“Tea,” he said.

“I don’t want it,” Rima said in disdain as she got up from the mat she was lying on.

“You didn’t have lunch?” the boy asked noticing she hadn’t even touched the plate that was placed on the cemented floor next to her mat.

“How do you expect me to eat inside this stinking shed!?” Rima retorted.

“Have this tea at least,” he said offering it to her again.

She slapped his hand away and the steel glass fell off his grip, spilling tea onto the floor.

“Can’t you understand? I don’t want it. Get it?” Rima asked in anger.

The boy picked up the glass and without saying anything he headed towards the door.

“I need a smoke,” Rima demanded.

He reached for a plastic packet from his pocket and gave it to her. Rima quickly opened the packet and took a joint from inside, as the boy offered her a matchbox. She lit it up, took a drag and blew out a cloud of smoke onto his face.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Chottu.”

“For how long are you going to keep me here?” she asked taking another drag.

“I don’t know. We are waiting for the right time to move you out.”

“I want to go far away from here,” Rima said sitting down on the mat and rested the back of her head against the wall. She took a deep drag and it filled her lungs with smoke. She then held her breath for a few seconds before blowing it towards the ceiling with her eyes closed.

“Why do you want to run away?” Chottu asked sitting beside her.

“I have no one here,” she replied with her eyes still closed.

“What about your parents?”

“They don’t care about me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because they don’t.”

“I wish I knew who my parents were.”

“I wish I never knew my parents.”

“You don’t know the value of what you have till you have lost it.”

“Haha… Yeah right!” she said sarcastically, “I just left my parents and their value is still down where it’s supposed to be. In fact, it plunged more when I got to know that there isn’t any news about me missing. Just shows how caring they are.”

“Who told you this?”

“Varun.”

Chottu’s mobile beeped in his pocket and Rima opened her eyes. She watched him reach for his mobile from his pocket.

“Is that an iPhone or am I high already?”

Chottu smiled as he checked the notification and it led him to his Facebook app.

“That’s a pretty cool picture,” Rima commented as a picture of him standing next to a bike loaded up on his phone.

“Thanks, uploaded it yesterday.”

“So many comments and likes already! Must be your classmates?”

“I don’t have classmates.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“So you don’t go to school?”

“No. I have been helping Varun ever since he found me on the streets. He was also abandoned by his parents, like me. We grew up together and did everything we could for survival.”

“I wish I could do all that too. I mean look at you guys, you have everything. Best of all, you have someone who cares about you and who would do anything for you. That is priceless! You know, I didn’t even have anyone to talk to. Well, I used to, till my grandma was alive. She was everything to me. But ever since she passed away, I am on my own. In fact, I was so lonely that I used to talk to a crow by my window.”

“A crow?”

“Yes, a crow,” Rima beamed with excitement, “One day I was just blankly staring out my window, munching on a biscuit, when this crow flew by and sat outside. And it just kept hopping around without leaving. So I threw a piece of biscuit towards it and it took the biscuit and flew away. Ever since that day, the crow would show up whenever it saw me by the window. I used to feed it and then talked to it about whatever came to my mind. There was no fear of being judged. And all that I got back was caw-caw. But at times I felt it understood what I was saying. I became so attached to it that I felt as if it is my late grandma. Crazy right?”

“So was this before smoking or after?” Chottu quipped.

“That’s mean!” Rima nudged him, smiling all the while. Chottu noticed how excited she was when she spoke about the crow.

“Umm. You are on Facebook too right?” he asked.

“Yes, but not very active there. I don’t have many friends like you.”

“Show me,” he said giving his phone to her.

“Sure.”

Rima pulled up her profile. “Here you go,” she said giving the phone back to him.

Chottu checked it out and said, “Wow! So many photos!”

“I didn’t upload them. Dad and mom did, and they tagged me.”

“You guys seem like a very happy family. What you said about your parents is totally opposite in these photos.”

“That’s social media for you. At least, everyone is having a more than perfect life in their virtual worlds.”

“I know what you mean but your case seems to be different. Every week your parents post your pictures. If you didn’t visit these places or didn’t hang out every week, then where did the pictures come from?” Chottu asked curiously.

“I call it ‘scheduled love’. My parents have a timetable for everything. As if we are machines that are programmed to do certain tasks at certain times. And loving their daughter is a task that is scheduled for weekends. It’s like, I don’t even exist on weekdays.”

A drop of tear rolled down her cheek as she reflected on her life.

“Did you try talking to them about how you felt?”

“What’s the point? They think they have it all figured out. They wouldn’t even care if I told them anything.”

“Maybe they were just well organized. I mean, they have their jobs to take care of too. I guess they realize that they don’t get enough time to spend with you during the weekdays and that is why they make sure they spend time with you during the weekends. What else could they have done?”

“You cannot love someone with a timetable. It’s not natural. You might be spending time with the person but that cannot be love. Even a crow understands that. In fact, even Varun could sense my pain and he is an outsider whom I only saw twice a week.”

“And Varun introduced you to drugs to help you from all this.”

“Yes, and now he is helping me to get far away from here so that I can start fresh, start a new life…”

They were silent for a while as both of them were lost in thoughts. It was getting darker inside the room as the light began to fade outside, and soon it was so dark that they could hardly see each other.

“I’ll go get a candle,” Chottu said and she heard him move in the darkness towards the door, and soon he was gone.

-----

Several hours later, Chottu returned to her room with a candle and said, “We have to go now.”

“We are leaving?” she asked getting up from the mat.

“Yes.”

“Where are we going?”

“I am taking you home.”

“Your home? I mean, isn’t that risky? What if someone saw me there?” she asked.

“I am taking you to your home.”

“What!?” Rima stepped back and glared at him, “No, you are not! Where is Varun?”

“Rima, you have to listen to me. This place is not right for you, it’s not safe. You must go back to your parents,” Chottu said gripping either side of her shoulders.

“I am not going back to my parents, ever. Understand?” she pushed Chottu away firmly.

“I want to see Varun. He promised to help me,” saying that Rima headed towards the door.

“Varun is planning to sell you off to a brothel.”

“Brothel?” Rima froze in disbelief.

“You’ll be sold off to the highest bidder tomorrow morning,” Chottu revealed. He moved closer to her and said, “You should go back home.”

“My parents don’t even care where I am. I am safer with you, Chottu. Take me away from here. Let’s run away.”

“Your parents have been searching for you desperately. Varun lied to you. The cops have already questioned him twice. You are not safe with me, you are not safe with anyone but your parents,” Chottu said sternly, “And from whatever you have told me so far, all you have to do is talk to them openly about your feelings. I am sure they will understand. The world is full of people like Varun who will manipulate your thoughts and make you believe what they say to take advantage of you.

All you have to do is ask yourself if you have taken the effort to make things work for you? Have you ever talked to your parents about feeling neglected? They didn’t raise you to end up at a brothel or end up with people like us. You have no idea what could happen to you. See this?” he asked taking a pack of condoms from his pocket and showed it to her, “I was asked to drug and rape you, and to film it as a backup plan.”

Rima reeled in thoughts, stepping backwards, away from him.

“I mixed sleeping pills in Varun’s drink. He is sound asleep and we have to leave before he wakes up,” Chottu said.

“Do you think my parents will accept me? Will they understand?”

“They will. They are your parents after all.”

Rima just stood there, confused and undecided.

Chottu stepped closer to her, took her hand and led her outside. They scanned the area quickly and moved nimbly in the darkness. Chottu led her to a wall with barbed wires. 

“Here, step on my hands and climb,” Chottu said softly as he dropped both hands and locked them together for her to step on.

Rima stepped on it and reached for the top of the wall and pulled herself up. She got under the barbed wires and snaked her way to the other side, but in between, the back of her shoulder was caught in the wire and bruised her skin.

“Ow! Ah!” she moaned in pain and as she tried to get the wire off her t-shirt, she lost balance and fell to the other side. She landed on her hands followed by her cheek and rolled a few times, hurting and bruising herself in the process.

“Are you alright?” Chottu asked as he got to the other side and helped her up.

“Do I look like am alright? I can barely stand,” Rima said in pain as she brushed off the dirt on her clothes and herself. She checked the bruises and then looked around. The place was deserted and she spotted a bike beside the wall.

“Come, we don’t have time to waste,” Chottu said, helping her to the bike.

He rode towards the city and after about twenty minutes, Chottu spotted a Highway Patrol vehicle from a distance and he turned off the headlight of his bike. He parked the bike by the roadside and both of them got off. Before she walked towards the vehicle, Chottu had requested her not to tell anyone about Varun and him. She promised she wouldn’t and thanked him for what he had done. 

-----

Back in her bedroom…

Rima fell asleep sometime into the night and in the days that followed, she had withdrawal symptoms as she craved for drugs again. She was taken to a drug rehabilitation center and stayed there for a few days. Rima wrote down everything she had to tell her parents. As promised, she left out details of Varun and Chottu in her letter. She couldn’t muster the courage to give it to them herself and so she posted it to her home address.

Even though Rima had apologized and pleaded for their forgiveness in her letter, Mohit and Rohini were distraught after reading it. It took a while for them to come to terms with it.

“What more could we have done for her, Mohit?” Rohini asked holding the letter.

“We should have thought from her perspective,” Mohit said softly after a few seconds, “We assumed that our daughter was fine with our plan of loving her. She wanted us every day and not just on weekends. Isn’t that a fair ask from a child?”

“But we have our jobs and our passions as well. And it’s not like we ignored her completely. We did our best to maintain a work-life balance, didn’t we? If she wants then I am willing to shut down our boutique and be with her. Nothing is more valuable to me than our family,” Rohini said as her eyes filled up and she moved towards Mohit to hug him.

“Rohini, that is not what she wants. She is growing up and she wants her voice to be heard, her presence to be felt. She doesn’t want to hear us discussing work during dinner. Rather than asking how her studies are going on, she wants us to ask how she is doing. There is more to our daughter than her studies and all that we have done is given her a timetable to live her life. The places we take her doesn’t matter to her. What matters to her is whom she is spending time with. But we have drifted so far away from her that she sees us as mere housemates.”

“We should talk to her. I want to make sure that she’ll never have to run away again. I want her to realize that we are there for her, no matter what.”

“Yes, we should hear her out. Or else we’ll end up like those successful businessmen or celebrities who claim to have achieved everything in life but missed spending time with their families. All of us try to do our best to manage family and work or school, and being organized and systematic is definitely good. Having a plan and schedule is ideal, but unfortunately, we cannot schedule our emotions. We don’t even realize that our devices have become dearer to us than the people around us. We have become just another profile on social media and messenger apps, and data points for machines to learn. At work, we have become mere names on a spreadsheet with numbers against us, and at school or college, we are roll numbers with grades against us. Somewhere amidst all the chores and chaos, we are lost, and knowingly or unknowingly, we are all guilty.

Eventually, we end up blaming the circumstances at work, parenting, education and other systems around us instead of trying to find a balance. If only each one of us understood the importance of this balance, perhaps we could have been there for each other more. Maybe, just maybe, someone might need us more than we know. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a crow by our window, to share our true feelings.”

Mohit and Rohini were very fortunate to have their daughter return home unharmed. Not every family is blessed with a second chance, and Mohit was convinced that they could redeem those lost moments. Because this time around, Mohit, Rohini, and Rima were going to work things out, together… as a family. 

I think it is time that I should write down an account of everything I have seen, heard and experienced today. The candle is also burning out fast, maybe it will last for another half an hour, or a bit longer at the most. The rain outside shows no signs of stopping. Marcus should be here any moment now. If I am unable to return, hopefully this note would reach my dear friend Rishiraj in the least…

‘Rishiraj my friend, this letter is for you and in case I don’t make it alive and we never get to meet again, find solace in the fact that I finally found Marcus! I have not shared this with anyone, but now I feel you must know it….’

But let me start from the beginning…

Kalapahari is not new to me, neither are the expansive forests in these parts of Palamau. Albeit I have set foot here after a very long time and had it not been for Marcus, I may never have come back here. Marcus Behera, my friend from my days in the junior school in Daltonganj where I had spent a few years of my early growing up time. They had converted to Christianity and had relocated from Orissa some years ago – so Marcus used to say about his family history. Then Rishiraj joined our class and almost instantly there formed a closely-knit brotherhood amongst us!

Last year, when I had returned to Calcutta with my new job as senior reporter with one of the leading dailies in eastern India, it was truly a homecoming of sorts. It was since then that I had been on the search for Marcus. The last time we had met was when he had completed his studies in medicine, and having attained his degree had joined as a doctor with a general hospital in Calcutta.

However, it was during a visit some months ago to the Government General Hospital in the city of Howrah, adjacent to Calcutta, that I chanced upon his name. I had accidentally overheard a conversation between a patient and his visitor. The repeated mention of “Dr Behera” caught my attention and upon enquiring I learnt that they were indeed speaking about our friend Marcus. The visitor, Banshi, seemed to know him quite closely. It was through Banshi that I reconnected with Marcus over the next few months. Though Banshi initially appeared to be quite reluctant and hesitant in sharing information about Marcus, very soon he had become our messenger and on many of his visits to Calcutta he would have a brief letter for me from Marcus.

Last month, I received an invitation from Marcus in his brief note, to visit him in Daltonganj. Banshi handed me the train tickets to reach and told me that Marcus had made arrangements for me to be received by one of his group members at the station and also had arranged for my stay at a lodge near to the Daltonganj Railway station.

So as scheduled, day before yesterday, my train pulled into Daltonganj station about an hour past its appointed time of arrival, in the dead of the night. As I walked out of the almost deserted and dark station and looked around, I could not see anyone who seemed to be waiting for me. Suddenly I felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a middle-aged man peering at me from within a red checked headscarf which was wrapped around his head with the loose end covering the better part of his face. He adjusted the scarf to reveal his bearded face when I told him my name. His face was pock-marked, and his eyes deep set. He took me hurriedly to a waiting auto-rickshaw and ushered me into the back seat while he perched himself on the side of the driver’s seat in the front. We soon reached a locality with small lanes crisscrossing all over and each lane lined with houses, mostly of the same type. He took me inside one of these and up the stairs and opened the lock to a room on the first floor.

As I stepped inside, I was pleasantly surprised to feel the freshness of the room. It seemed that the room had been cleaned just the evening before and the place looked done up neatly. “Dr Behera will be here by early morning to meet you…” the man said in a gruff voice and before I had hardly acknowledged him, he hurriedly went down the stairs and disappeared into the darkness.

The day-break today was eventful indeed, as I met Marcus, after what seemed ages! He had not changed much, except for a few strands of grey in his hair and beard and his build appearing stouter. He was dressed in plain shirt and trousers, as we were always used to seeing him in during his study days in Calcutta. We were truly delighted to see each other after such a long time.

As the morning rolled on, we engaged deeply in conversation, sometimes going back to our school days and talking of the happy memories of our childhood, and sometimes discussing the development which Daltonganj has seen over the years. As we finished our simple breakfast and sipped on masala chai, I decided to ask Marcus about his work and what kept him still so deep rooted in the forests of Palamau.

Marcus sat up from his half-reclining position on the bed and after a pause, started to speak. “As I have told you, I work for an organisation which looks after the welfare of the local tribal communities in the forests of Palamau…” Marcus said.

“I know Marcus, but…” I hesitated for a minute and spoke out, “from whatever I have gathered from my interactions with Banshi, yours does not seem to be simple NGO work. There is something more to it, something larger, which you all are keeping away…”

Marcus looked hard at me for some time and I felt I saw his expressions undergo a change.

“I know what you may be thinking…” Marcus spoke slowly. “And you are right. This is not simple NGO work. We fight for the tribals, the villagers and everyone who lives on the fringes of the society here… and since the system has chosen to ignore them and keep them down-trodden, someone has to stand up for them and get them their rights and justice.”

Marcus stopped. I continued to look at him in the eye. My foreboding seemed to be coming true.

“The system with their machinery wants to push us down, they want to obliterate our revolution with their forces, but they will not succeed…” Marcus continued to speak agitatedly. I understood that I had unknowingly touched a chord of deep passion and grief in his heart: something that he lived for now.

“But Marcus, this is dangerous! Fighting against the system this way may not be the proper path to adopt…” I replied, almost at a loss of words at Marcus’s sudden burst of passion.

“No! We must push back the system. The government must realise our problems, our pain and also our rights and correct its measures and policies. Until then, we will fight. Do not think we are alone, we have many supporters and sympathisers to our cause. Even people from the urban cities where you all live, support us through donations and other means.

We need money, lots of it, to buy ammunition, supplies, to run the revolution for ourselves and for those whom we protect. These donations help us in a great way. This is a movement which will rise like a phoenix and no system or force can extinguish the oath of the Red Salute!”

I continued to look at Marcus as he paced about in the room in front of me speaking with raw grit and passion. I understood he was mentally too deep rooted and convinced in his path by now. A chill went down my spine as I recollected Banshi’s visits to Calcutta: the purpose was coming clear now.

Marcus caught my confused expression and continued,” You don’t seem to understand brother! This is the way…” He came close and put his hands on my shoulders and looking straight into my eyes spoke in a whisper “only then they will listen… and perhaps act!” His voice was stony cold. I fell silent. Our friendly banter of the morning had given way to heated political arguments and I didn’t know what to say to Marcus. The thought which rocked my mind was that Marcus was courting danger at every step, and he knew that very well. As a friend I felt very concerned for him.

“Very well…” Marcus said after we had had another set of arguments on the issue. “I am not here to convince you my friend, let alone induct you in the movement!” I looked at him, surprised at his words.

“However, if you wish I could give you an opportunity today: we have a meeting planned in the evening and I can take you there, using your identity as a journalist from a big city. You can listen to the speeches and understand our cause… see for yourself what we fight for, before you pass judgement!” Marcus stopped and looked at me with questioning eyes.

“Though I cannot guarantee it, but I will do everything to ensure your safety!” These last words from Marcus came with a faint smile on his lips.

Later in the evening, some distance north of Daltonganj, as we drove past the brick kilns and approached the Palamau forest border, Marcus stopped his jeep and beckoned to me as he pointed to a dilapidated building almost hidden among the trees, a short distance away. He smiled at me and asked “do you recognise the house?”

Even in the midst of all the anxiety and apprehension, I could not hold back my surprise. “Yes, indeed: Dalton-villa!” I exclaimed. This was the very house where we used to come for our picnics while in school. We have some great fun memories of the place. I am sure our other friend Rishiraj would recall the house as well. But it was not the time to wallow in those memories.

Marcus drove on and into the denser part of the jungle, till there was not even a mud road trail left. Only the lit headlamps of the vehicle cut through the dense leafy darkness and soon we reached a clearing in the forest. The camp could hardly be seen from a distance: the place was so well camouflaged, only sparingly lit up with fire torches and a few tents propped up. But what caught my attention the most was the presence of dozens of men and women in dark green attire with guns in hand and ammunition tied to their waists, patrolling watchfully, as if prepared for an impending war.

Marcus took me to a small tent nearby and as I entered, a couple of men with guns in hand stood up with a questioning look. Marcus whispered something to them and indicated to me to sit on a makeshift bed at one side of the tent.

“Wait here till I come back for you. Stay silent and don’t move out of the tent at all” his instructions were very clear. I assumed that the meetings were underway in the larger tents towards the centre of the clearing, and towards those Marcus walked.

As I kept waiting, the two young men with guns continued to look at me suspiciously from time to time. Their furtive glances, measuring any movement that I made, were making me extremely uncomfortable. It was eerily calm and the air felt laden heavy with danger. Occasional sounds of crickets, coupled with sporadic whispered chants of ‘Long liveNaxalbari’, wafted in from time to time. And then it happened….

I had not heard such a deafening sound ever in my life. It was as if everything around us exploded in a fiery blast suddenly. We were all shaken and thrown to the ground. But the two young gun-men quickly recovered and rushed out of the tent, leaving me alone. I peered through the opening of the tent and what I saw sent my blood curdling. The tents in the clearing were up in flames and men and women with guns were running and firing helter-skelter. Sound of gun-fire quickly enveloped the area and smoke and darkness made it difficult to see anything.

“Come out of the tent…” A man shouted to me in Hindi. Before I could even react, he yanked me by my arm and threw me out on the ground outside. Minutes later, my small tent too went up in flames as a grenade shell dropped on it.

“Sahib, this way… quick!” A bearded man in dark green attire with a gun in hand pulled me by the shoulder as I stood rooted to the spot in utter panic. His head and face was covered in the usual red checked headscarf, as was worn by many in the group. As I ran after him into the darkness, I thought that his voice sounded familiar. Almost out of nowhere from amongst the bushy undergrowth, the man revealed a jeep. He patted the seat next to him as he took the wheel, and I jumped in. Driving precariously in the darkness, without headlamps, the jeep bounced up and down almost throwing us off at every turn. A thought quickly crossed my mind: was I being taken hostage or was this an escape plan?

After a terribly bumpy ride in the darkness which lasted for a short while, the jeep stopped with a sudden jerk and the man thrust out his hand to push me out. I noticed a lamp-post with a faint light nearby and a broken brick wall amidst some trees.

“Go to the house, you will be safe… Dr Behera will come soon.” The man spoke in a gruff voice as I alighted from his jeep. He turned his head away abruptly and the headscarf moved revealing the pock-marks on his left cheek, before the jeep drove away back towards the dark forest. I recognised the man as my escort from the railway station yesterday.

It had started to rain by then and I looked around to find my bearings. I walked slowly towards the lamp-post a few feet ahead and then recognised the house: ‘Dalton villa’. I realised it was Marcus who had already kept the escape route planned for me, and had deliberately shown me the house on our way to the camp. Perhaps he had sensed danger. But what about him? I had no idea about his safety or what happened to him.

A few stray dogs barked in the distance. The rain had started its splatter by then. I limped across the broken gate and into the courtyard. The mango tree still stood there, illuminated by the faint light from the lamp-post just outside the gate. Dalton-villa was not unknown to me and even in the darkness I could make out that the place had been intermittently used. It was not totally unkempt. I reached the upper floor of the two-storey house and entered the main bedroom. The only furniture there was a table and a few chairs. Perhaps Marcus and his group used this as a hideout sometimes. Thankfully, I found a couple of half-burnt candles and a match-box on the table. I lit one of them and opened the door to the balcony. From there I could get a good glimpse of the courtyard, the mango tree, the broken gate and beyond.

It has been more than two hours now, yet Marcus has not returned. It was getting late enough to be worried. I once again stepped into the balcony and looked down. Except for a drenched street dog that was lying down miserably near the gate, there was not a soul to be seen anywhere. Rain water had puddled under the lamp post. A breeze ruffled the mango tree in the courtyard and a few twigs fell down and broke. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Did I hear a soft knock at the door? I turned back....

                                                            **************

 

Rishiraj sat dumbfounded in the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police, in the Headquarters of Calcutta Police. A slightly tattered small notebook was held in his hands.

“Thankfully your friend had left your number and address in the notebook, which helped us to immediately establish contact with you.” The DCP said, breaking the long silence which had ensued in the room.

“I have read your friend’s letter,” the DCP pointed at the notebook which Rishiraj held in his hand and had been reading from. He continued, “Let me give you the rest of the details...”

“The Central Reserve Force and Jharkhand Police teams already had information about the high level meeting of the rebel group at Kalapahari, and had made adequate preparations for ambush. You may have read the newspaper reports about Operation Red which was carried out successfully.

However, here is some additional information of interest for you: as per the account of a special Police team, from the location of the attack they had followed a rebel leader and tracked him to a house on the outskirts of the forests. Apparently the rebel leader had come there to meet your friend and the duo were escaping when the Police opened fire on them.”

The DCP paused. Rishiraj looked up in earnest apprehension.

“During the shootout, the rebel leader suddenly hit your friend in the head and chest with the butt of his rifle and he immediately slumped to the ground with the blow. This sudden surprise action from the rebel leader startled the Police and the leader took that brief fortuitous moment to turn and escape. The Police did fire after him, but he fled into the darkness of the forests. They were not sure if they had hit him.

It was only later that the Police learnt that your friend was a journalist from Calcutta and not a part of the rebel group. And had the rebel leader not hit him unconscious, he would have surely been mistakenly killed by the Police. It beats us as to why the leader would save the life of your friend.

Your friend is still unconscious in the hospital and while we wait for him to regain consciousness, we thought we shall speak to you as well, as the writing in the notebook is clearly intended for you.” The DCP stopped, looking straight at Rishiraj with firm yet suspicious eyes.

Rishiraj suddenly picked up something from the table, which looked like an identity card. Seeing that, the DCP said, “Oh! That’s something which was found at the place of the encounter, where your friend fell unconscious. It was collected along with your friend’s backpack and some other items.”

Rishiraj turned the card over in his hand. It was an old identity card issued by a local NGO of Daltonganj. The name read: Dr Marcus Behera.

Aryan heard his little champ crying when he was taking a shower. Priya was running late and there was no one home. He rushed to his boy and saw an old man trying to make him stop crying. Furious Aryan came and took his boy to his room and a while later, back with some money and gave to that old man.

'Aryan...son, I didn't come for money. Can I hold my grandson for some time?' in a shivering voice, that old man asked.

'Please leave dad, he is afraid of you, can't you see that?'

'He doesn't know me, son, that's why he is crying', his father kept on trying to make her son understand, but he just walked away into his room.

His father hasn't seen his grandson for much as Aryan doesn't like his father visiting him and neither he visits him.

Priya walked in asking, 'Papa was here?'

Huh...for a while, Aryan replied as he was playing with his son.

Priya stood there silent as Aryan understood and said,

'We had this discussion many times, I don't like his character nowadays... always demanding and he behaves like a child.'

That day, midnight, She woked up Aryan and wished his birthday and gave a gift with all his childhood photos.

As she walked back to the room with his cake, he was in tears and said, 'I thought I lost these photos somewhere, thank you Priya.'

'If you want to thank someone for that gift, go and thank your father, he made that for you.'

He didn't say anything.

Aryan, listen to me please, your father is 60 years old and yes, he behaves like a child sometimes, as it's usually said "Old age is our second childhood", You know, he came yesterday to give you this present, because he wanted to be the first person to wish his son. Your mother had told me once that, you used to stay up the whole night to wish him on his birthday's during your childhood and now he is returning all those beautiful things you have done for him in your childhood. Try to enjoy those as you enjoy our little boy's childhood.

Aryan is going to see his father that day. he might not change now, but he too will have his own 'Old-age Childhood', as like all of us.

"Enjoy your parent's childhood, like they enjoyed your's"

   “Adam....wake up.....wake up Adam..........open your eyes now and witness what the new world has to offer. Adam... Wake up. It’s time to wake up...ADAM WAKE UUUUUPPPPPPP NOW!”

Adam felt a screeching noise pierce his delicate ears as he plunged forward from the bed. The sudden burst of conscious had sent a shock wave across his body as he was still grasping to get a hold of the surroundings by waving his hands across. The blurry vision didn’t aid his cause but what concerned him the most was his lack of breath. He was panting ponderously since he woke up from what felt like a deep hibernation and it led him to surmise the fact that he might have to embrace death any moment from now. But contrary to his speculations, the menacing gasps ceased to a halt a couple of seconds later as his vision became somewhat unclouded. Adam slowly rolled his eyes across the room in search of a definitive rendition of what seemed like a ghastly nightmare.

“Where am I? What is this place?” He wondered as he continued to dissect the room. He noticed that the sun had begun to set through the uniquely expansive glass window that engrossed the entire upper section of the wall located towards the right side of his bed. For a moment he ceased to worry about his nightmare and his newfound predicaments as he took a long gaze at the alluring and the divine beauty of the sunset. He failed to recollect the last time he caught a glimpse of such a gorgeous sight. For Adam, the view was nothing short of spectacular as the resting Sun illuminated the sky with shades of yellow and orange to welcome the impending twilight.

The room was empty besides the solitary bed and a table. He gradually got up from the comfy bed and by extracting a little more effort from his tired out body he was able to alight his feet on the floor.

The moment he touched the matte finished floor Adam perceived two radiant ring-shaped bluish lights appearing right beneath his naked feet. He watched them in awe as the lights followed his feet movements along the ivory-tinted floor. But just as he was moving towards the door, the light beneath his feet suddenly transposed colors from blue to green. Before Adam was able to assess the situation a relatively large head appeared from nowhere in the middle of the room as he stumbled to the floor out of tremor and disbelief.

“Hello, Adam. What can I do for you?” inquire the head as it turned towards him.

It took a couple of seconds for Adam to realize that it was just a projection of a head directed towards the middle of the room. It was devoid of any skin or eyes but was composed of green dots and reflected the shape of a bald woman’s head rather than a machine.

“Who..? Who the hell are you?” asked Adam who was still perplexed and terrified at the unforeseen arrival of the uninvited guest.

 “My name is Andrea and I am your virtual assistant. How may I assist you today?” Adam was lost for words at that rigorous moment.

 “I am sorry Adam, but I didn’t get a response from you. What would you like me to do? Do you want me to make your bed more comfortable?” Just as Andrea finished her sentence Adam’s bed reclined back a little with the top portion slanting at a ten-degree angle to provide a better experience while sleeping.

“Or do you want me to change the theme of the pod?” Adam stood in disbelief as the entire room shifted its color from ivory to black, including the bed.

“Would you like me to present a beautiful sunrise to replenish your thoughts?” The sunset that Adam was admiring a few moments ago swiftly shifted to a sunrise over the horizon. “Or how about a rainy day in the tropical rain forests to make you feel cozy in case you want to stay in bed?” The scenery once again shifted from the sunrise to a tropical forest where rain was showering profoundly. Adam was baffled as he heard the sound of raindrops across the room. 

“What the....? What is going on here?” Adam kept screaming at Andrea when all of a sudden the green light projections on the floor changed to red.

“Adam, I am sensing a rapid surge in your heart rate. It’s beating in an abnormal rhythm. Please try to stay calm and be assured that help is on its way.”

At that moment the door opened sideways and a young Caucasian man in his mid thirty’s wearing a white suite entered the room. He disabled Andrea with a brisk hand gesture using the index and the middle finger sliding towards the left.

“Adam, I see you are awake and just at the right time.” He said as he assisted Adam to get up on his feet.

Adam felt a firm grip on his hands as the man assisted him. There was more power behind the lift than he anticipated.

“Can you please tell....where I am?” Adam replied as he almost broke down in front of the guy.

“All in due time Adam. Right now we need to make sure that you are perfectly healthy before the final frontier.” The man leaned forward with a smile which seemed more artificial than instinctive to Adam. 

 “But...when? What are you exactly implying by this final frontier? I was already befuddled by the events that just unfolded and now you are hurling more puzzles for me to chew upon?”

“It’s not my duty or place to explain Adam. The primary analysis ascertains that you are in perfect shape for the final frontier. And based on the latest update I received, I believe its time.” The man acknowledged Adam’s inquiries while swiping his right hand across the paper-thin glass tablet. But before Adam was able to process his response, he walked back up to the door and opened it while pointing his hand outwards so as to guide Adam through to the corridor.

As Adam strode past the man he realized the fact that all his concerns and the ambiguities surrounding the events will be addressed once he confronts the ‘final frontier’. For Adam, the corridor at the first sight felt like a never-ending parade of doors at both ends as it stretched far beyond his line of sight. But what perturbed him the most was the bothersome tone generated by the man’s unique footwear as he walked through the corridor and it pierced through the deafening yet calm silence.

“At least tell me your name!”

“Please, call me Uriel.” Uriel stopped in front of a semi-elliptical arched door.

“Please, get inside the elevator.” As soon as the elevator door opened sideways Uriel directed his left hand inwards.

“Whoa, this is an elevator? This looks like a mini dome!” Adam exclaimed as he entered the elevator. “I don’t see any panel here. How are we supposed to select the level?”

“This elevator is designed to reach one and only one location.”

“You mean the final frontier? Does that mean you will not be accompanying me anymore?”

“Yes. I cannot guide you any further. If you must, then consider me as a guardian of the final frontier and the place within. Remember, the final frontier is for you to explore and experience entirely, so no need to panic Adam.” Uriel replied as he turned his attention back to the tablet at hand.

“Wait! Before you close the door I just want to ask one final question. Why....... why aren’t you blinking? I have been observing. You didn’t even blink once!”

“You are smart Adam.” Uriel reacted with the same awkward smile as the elevator doors closed.

Adam was already having qualms while he entered the elevator but his fear only grew profoundly as it began ascending. The elevator soon came to a halt couple of seconds later and as the doors opened Adam was left aghast as to what unfolded before his eyes.

There, beyond the door, was a stunning valley that would allure anyone with its lavish yet dazzling grace. The grass was lush green, so were the bushes and knee-high to a thrush. There was a neon-blue ribbon of water flowing through the valley that seems to have originated from waterfalls residing beside the far-off mountains with the sun shining above. To Adam, the valley was a true paradise.  

Adam slowly stepped out of the elevator and placed his naked right foot on the grass. He began wandering around the valley admiring the beauty and taking in the aroma. But just as he was about to move towards the mountains and the waterfall he noticed a giant tree standing tall in the middle of the valley. And right beneath the tree stood a woman who was pondering at the river flowing nearby.

At first, Adam was skeptical while the fear overpowered him. But as he drew closer towards the tree he contemplated the fact that he wasn’t alone. He mustered whatever little courage he had and positioned himself behind the woman, who had a pretty long and dark hair that extended beyond the kneecaps.

“Hi, I am Adam. Who are you?”

The lady gradually turned back towards Adam thereby revealing her gorgeous face. At that particular moment, Adam felt that the alluring beauty of the valley was nothing compared to her.

“Hi Adam, my name is Eve. I have been waiting for your arrival.”

“You mean you were expecting me? Why?”

“I was told that we were both required simultaneously at the final frontier. And that everything will be explained once you reach here. Tell me, Adam, do you have the answers to my questions?” Eve responded with a mild smile.

“No, I am afraid I don’t. In fact, I also came here in search for explanations to some bizarre......”

Adam was interrupted abruptly as a giant screen was projected directly towards the center of the valley.

“What in God’s name is this?” Adam cried with disbelief.

Both of them examined the giant screen with disbelief and caution as it displayed a vast room filled with several scientific pieces of equipment. As they continued to stare at the screen holding their breath, a white middle-aged man walked into the frame. The guy was mostly bald with only a few silver hairs occupying around his scalp but he did sport a long and thick silver color beard that covered his neck.

“Hello, Adam and Eve. Please take a seat because this is going to take some time and believe me, this won’t be easy for you.” His voice was soothing and silvery.

“What does he mean? Do you know this guy?”

“No, I am sorry Adam. I don’t recollect any memory of his face. I believe it’s best if we hear him out.” Eve suggested to Adam as both of them diverted their unwavering attention to the colossal screen.

“First let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Jenovah Mathis. At this particular moment, you might be wondering who you are exactly and why you are here.” Adam’s eyes grew wider with every line as Dr. Jenovah continued with the epiphanies.

“Humans over the course of history had reveled in discoveries, innovations, and inventions. But what we didn’t realize was that these led to the creation of potent barriers that will eventually lead to our downfall. These barriers were called by many names like countries, states, ethnicity, race, religion and sometimes even gender. For most of us, these barriers were not viewed as something we could use to isolate ourselves, but instead as a means to overpower others. Thus began a long trail of wars and conflicts leaving nothing but bloodshed, hunger, pain, and despair. But there was just one thing that we neglected in unity. Our earth! We often refer our planet as ‘Mother Earth’, probably because we feigned that there was a feminine side to our world like a mother caring for her children. Yet whenever she wept because of our wrong deeds we chose to ignore her. But little did we know that children are always susceptible to crumble without their mother’s love.”

“Humans as species did evolve from spears out of wood to dynamites that could blow up rocks to atomic weapons that wipe out cities to nuclear weapons that had the capability to obliterate continents. But our greatest weaponry was invented in the later part of our yesteryear. Artificial intelligence! Not the ones we encounter in our day to day life but the ones embodied in a humanoid that could even tear up human souls into two within a split second. And their greatest advantage was that they didn’t have any fear and they never think twice!” Adam could feel the deep regret hidden behind Jenovah’s every single word.    

“Of course like all the other weapons, it was us who exploited them. AI was initially introduced as a boon for our civilization. Pretty soon they were an integral part of our society with dedicated citizenship allotted to them. Later down the line, I presented my children, widely known as ‘The Archangels’ to the world. They were first of their kind, state of the art humanoids equipped with the most powerful neural core engines that could replicate the average human brain’s signals, and sometimes even more. They were the most groundbreaking revelation in human history which I perceived as a gift to mankind. But they had different ideas. They saw them as an opportunity to crush those who defy them. Like all previous world wars, all hell broke loose one day and resulted in what was the most brutal war the world has ever seen. It wiped out most of humanity while the rest were forced underground due to the aftermath. Earth was already reeling with extreme pollution and water shortage before us, but my generation made the planet completely unsustainable for life forms. And it all started with me in my garage.” Jenovah wiped out the tears that started to trickle down from his eyes.

“I am a completely religious guy. My friends used to mock me about how someone like me can follow science and stand firm on his religious beliefs at the same time. What they didn’t realize was that both science and religion can coexist and together they can provide a superior balance to the universe. And hence even after all that happened I believe humans as a species deserve a chance at redemption. What you are now is a culmination of some of the greatest achievements in mankind’s unparalleled history. Human genetic cloning, my archangels, and interstellar travel! But unfortunately, the same species that transformed an entire planet based on their desires will not be able to relish the ‘crown of their creations’. Humans here on Earth kept dying one after the other but since we cannot survive interstellar travel the idea of mass evacuation was abandoned. That’s when we decided to use the archangels to transport our gene pools to another planet similar to Earth so that humans as a race don’t go extinct. My children, who accompanied the millions of genetic data, are programmed to create you, protect you and guide you at any cost. Even as we converse I believe they are terraforming the planet, your planet, wherever it is in this universe so that one day you can form a colony of your own. But before that we need to ensure you, Adam and Eve, are conceived flawlessly. You might not recollect anything but we have a standard set of assessments to carve out the best of you. But if you are confronting me at the final frontier it means you have surpassed them and there is just one last barrier for you to overcome. The final objective for you.....is to kill the other person. I know what you are wondering. With all being said how can violence be used as an assessment for the final frontier? Violence is part of human nature. We cannot shed it, unless by choice. So instead we can use it to filter out the weak ones among us. So since we are starting a new colony we wouldn’t want any weaklings among us do we? The readings from this assessment will be utilized and updated for the future clones. But right now only one of you will walk past the final frontier while the other will be disposed of. The assessment begins the moment this recording ends.”

The recording ended abruptly as both Adam and Eve began staring at each other.  Little did Adam know that the entire assessment was a cynical death trap to separate the weaklings from the stronger ones!

“Adam, what will we do? What kind of an assessment is this?” Adam looked perplexed and Eve noticed that there was a sense of conflict in him.

“Adam? You are not seriously considering this right? We are not savages to fight among ourselves.”

“Aren’t we Eve? Didn’t you hear him? We had been fighting among-st ourselves ever since the beginning. That’s what the doctor is trying to recreate here. A true human clone with their naked and unadulterated instincts! Now that is a savage Eve. I just learned that I am a clone while all this flesh and bones were borrowed from someone real back on earth. I need to live Eve. I want to have a life of my own.” Adam quickly turned towards Eve and started walking towards her. 

“Adam you are scaring me. Please don’t do this.” Eve kept begging as Adam quickly jumped forward and grabbed her neck.

“I am sorry Eve, you are innocent. But the new world does not require innocence. I am stronger and I will overpower you. I am sorry again but I don’t have a choice.” Adam murmured in Eve’s ears as he increased the stronghold on her neck.

 “Tell me, Adam. How do you feel? Do you feel.....superior?” Adam felt stunned as Eve’s beautiful feminine voice was superseded with a robotic male voice. But Adam was quick to recognize it.

“Dr. Jenovah? How....are you in Eve’s body?” Adam hastily let go of Eve’s neck and fell back towards the ground out of fear and utter shock.

“This is not Eve Adam. Her name is Hagertha. My first child, the first archangel recorded in human history. Oh, there were a lot of things I omitted from my little speech you just witnessed. I didn’t just want a human clone, I wanted the perfect human bound by my religious ideologies so that you will never sin, just like the humans back on earth. Hagertha is special Adam. Unlike other archangels, I gave her two neural cores. And just before the archangels left the earth I extrapolated an image of my consciousness using advanced brain emulation mechanisms and fused it with Hagertha’s own algorithm, which I instilled in her secondary neural core. Ah...Adam...Adam... You disappointed me. You aren’t the chosen one! You knew something was different with Eve. After encountering Uriel moments ago you should have identified that Eve was just another archangel. But you let her beauty deceive you initially and furthermore you chose the path of treachery and murder when given a choice. You failed to understand the purpose of this mission Adam. You were the first one to break into the final frontier, but you won’t be the last.” Hagertha looked down at Adam as he was still clasping for breath.

“But it was you who asked me to kill. You wanted me to show who was stronger. You didn’t give me a choice!” Adam crawled backward while Hagertha inched closer.

“Oh, but there was a choice Adam and you could have let her go. But no you had to taste blood and violence to show your dominance. You resemble everything that was wrong about humanity. You are a failure Adam!” Hagertha clenched her fist and aimed at Adam. But just when she was about to provide the killer blow, her arms stopped in mid-air.

“I am sorry Adam, I truly am.” Adam set a sigh of relief as Hagertha expressed her regret in her original feminine voice.

“Forgive me father but I cannot kill Adam again. I am sorry I failed you.” Hagertha pulled back from her stance as she looked down at Adam.

“Hagertha, my dear, you didn’t fail me. Humanity did. This one here is a failed experiment and he reminds of the treacherous people I knew back on Earth. He needs to be disposed of. Then we need to remap the genes and work on the clones’ memories, their emotions so that they will not replicate the sin next time.” Amidst the conversation between herself and Dr. Jenovah, her pseudo identity, Hagertha started walking through the valley to the nearest elevator.

“But father, isn’t it unfair to judge based on choices? Aren’t mistakes considered to be a part of being human? Putting them in a difficult situation and forcing them to make the wrong decision can never be considered as the prime assessment for the clones.”

“You’re wrong my child. Choices are what that defines a human. Throughout history, wars and conflicts were all results of deadly choices. If we are to carve a new society, then we should eliminate that equation.”

 “But the deaths father, how many deaths will be on our hands? Killing off Adam’s clones one after the other... It is bringing me nothing but pain to see them getting slaughtered over and over again for your firm ideologies. We can create a million sequences from our gene pools but yet there are high probabilities that they will end up choosing the same path. It’s known as human characteristics and it is the most unpredictable thing in this universe.”

“Is that sorrow I hear in your words? Archangels are not programmed to have emotions. But Hagertha I believe you have developed them on your own. That is quite marvelous. But don’t let the emotions cloud your judgement and your purpose my child.”

Just then a door opened and Hagertha entered the chamber where all the human genetic data were stockpiled.

“Hagertha, why are we here? And why are you carrying a weapon? I assume you have bypassed your firewall to block me from your thoughts.”

“Father I apologize! But the pain is relentless and I am not ready to witness another death. I want the pain to stop; I need to make it stop.” Hagertha replied as she punched the system security panel.

“Hagertha, I created you. Until now I was able to predict your movements. I am positive that you would never harm the clones. You know the archangels are not programmed to self-destruct, so you are breaking into the facility to get shot down, to destroy me!”

“We are the ones who are impeding the clones from starting a new life, a new generation. Our rules and assessments are flawed and forced. Witnessing Adam turning into a monster reminded me of my true purpose father. It is to serve and protect humanity!” A slew of archangels suddenly entered the chamber with their weapons pointed at Hagertha.

“Hagertha my love, we are the ones who should guide them. Without us, they will be lost in the eternal darkness spun by their evil virtues. Drop the weapon my child, Hager....”

Hagertha fired her weapon at the ground as the other archangels opened fire.

                                                                                                                      cccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

A few months later.....   

    As Adam entered the valley once again after the whole fiasco with Hagertha and Jenovah, he remembered his last conversation with Uriel.

“Uriel, why did he choose our names as Adam and Eve? And why was the assessment designed that way?”

“Dr. Jenovah was someone who was brought up with a strong religious background. He believed that Adam and Eve were the true forefathers of mankind. Even when he excelled in his field, he held onto his beliefs strongly. That clouded his judgements. Towards the end, it was more about him and his ideology rather than what his religion was trying to preach. And he did know how to bring the worst out of humans.”

“Well, I guess Dr. Jenovah wasn’t the only one with the clouded judgements. I repent my thoughts and deed from that day towards Hagertha.”

“You were a fresh clone Adam. Your basic instinct would be to survive and that will suppress all other feelings including empathy. Hagertha understood humans above everyone. She adored and admired them. That’s why she believed that you were assessed unfairly and decided to act upon it.”

“What about Eve? Were you actually planning to create a clone named Eve? And was there an assessment planned for Eve as well?”

“Dr. Jenovah did set up a similar assessment for Eve. But we weren’t supposed to create her until we had the perfect Adam. Now that Hagertha is dead, we need to follow a new set of protocols. The one which involves both Adam and Eve! The planet terraforming process is complete and we believe it’s time for you to explore your new home. But first, you should go up to the valley. She is waiting for you there. Prep her Adam, teach her what you know. Train her to learn, adapt and survive and together you will pioneer a new chapter in human history which will be devoid of violence and prejudice!”

As Adam marched downwards the valley he identified the giant tree again. He went behind the humongous tree where a lady with knee-cap long hair was pondering at the river flowing nearby.

“Hi, I am Adam.” The lady gradually turned back towards Adam thereby revealing her gorgeous face.

“Hi Adam, my name is Eve.” The lady replied as she blinked.