Sunday 29 September 2013

House Hunt - II

Strings of guitar were struck, laptops were geared with speakers, cake was gently placed, and our photographer was in no mood to miss any moment. It had been just 2 days in our new flat, and we had started to gel with the rest of folks staying there. The fun that started around midnight continued till 4 in the morning when we heard the bang on our front door. The abstainers amongst us reached the peephole, and then opened the door. Residents of that apartment were pretty upset from our deafening melodies, and had come to register their justified protest. They threatened us to vacate the place which instilled no sense of worry from the rest of the crowd except from us - the two new residents who had luckily managed to get a roof on their head.

The life paces, and soon we were moving with the flow. Although there were few occasions when we found our nights of sleep were disturbed, with nightmares hitting us more often than usual. But I and my roommate never discussed it and were fine ignoring them, for we thought about them only when the body was drenched with the tiredness of day’s work. The same continued for days and weeks when one day I shared about this repetitive dream and the reaction that I got from him opened the corridors of horror on which we had just stepped in.

Can two different persons have the same dream? And if by coincidence it happens once, is it expected to repeat again? Well, to be honest, these unanswered questions and a few answered ones had started to haunt us. We often felt the disturbing presence of an unknown while we were asleep, and the repetitiveness of the experience lead us to believe in it, even when we were awake. We talked non-stop on the subject and tried to convince many rationalists how we were confronting the unknown. Many gave a scientific justification, while others laughed us off, but none dared to spend a few nights in there. Since there was a kind of conflict between what we had believed all our lives, and to what we were witnessing, we found it better to curtail the talk and work hard to move out from that place quickly as possible.

In the daylight, there were few people who were no less than the ones that invaded our dreams. Yes, those were the people who were having two things, of which we needed one badly and unfortunately always got another. The first thing was our money which we had given them as security deposits, token amounts, etc for our previous flat, which was to be refunded when we vacated the house. And the second one that we got from them was lame excuses for delaying the payment of the money. The trust levels of their talk and expectation of getting our money back were at the nadir when we took a different, not so polite approach. After a few days, rough talk loosened the deceitful and despicable clutches, and we spent no moment idle before we grabbed our righteous refunds.

While the hunt for new place was on, we were learning interesting stories about our present residence. Simple stories with weird conclusions had become a routine. Even our maid tried to put in some dust in our ears, for what all shall we do to get rid of the situation.

There are times which pass so quickly that we don’t even notice, and also there are times that appear to be still. We were putting all our energies to move ahead of the situation, but every time we looked back, we found that we were still at the same place. The monsoon had just hit the island city, and lightening had made it worse. Frequently, there were power cuts owing to heavy downpour, when thunder played its tricks. I have always felt that it is the thought and the belief that drives us, but with this 27 day long experience, I realized that it is also so easy to lose control over the mind. And when this happens, be assured that it’s not going to be simple anymore, because that’s when weirdness creeps in and messes with your entire circuitry, just to teach one lesson, "the only thing predictable about life is its unpredictability".