A New Home For A New Friend - Chapter Two - A Long Night
Nisha makes a strange discovery in the parking lot near her house, after which her life turns upside down and she finds herself in the thick of an adventure
From the passenger seat of the black sedan, emerged a slender lady, in a crisp, white saree, with her hair tied into a neat bun at the top of her head. Nisha looked in her direction and wondered in awe, if she would ever be able to command a room, in the way that this lady seemed to do. Every man in sight seemed to not only respect her, but was also visibly intimidated by her.
The lady raised her index finger to beckon the smaller man towards her. He came, bringing the snake along and stumbling under its weight into the shadows where she stood by her car. She seemed not to care, and diverted her attention instead, to the snake, petting it and taking its face in her palms with not so much as a smidgen of fear. Then she conversed with the man for a few minutes telling him to pack the snake back into its box and to take it to its next destination.
Nisha’s eyes were by now fixated on the lady, as she watched her every move. A strange familiarity seemed to creep into her mind and she wondered if this lady was an actress she had seen on TV, or someone she actually knew in real life. She inched forward on her branch and squinted her eyes to get a better look, until, much to her convenience, the lady strode into the light and began barking orders to the other men. Nisha was finally able to get a good look at the lady’s face.
It was at that moment exactly, that the realisation of the lady’s identity, came all too quickly to Nisha. She stared in disbelief, rubbing her eyes and pinching her forearm, fear having overtaken her mind and heart. Could it actually be, she wondered. Was this a dream? Were her eyes deceiving her, or had her sweet, scared, petite grandma actually morphed into the lady who was standing in the parking lot before her?
It took Nisha every little bit of willpower and strength she had within her, to keep herself from yelping or falling off of the tree. She stared in disbelief for a long, long time, until finally, she slumped back against the tree’s bark in exhaustion, wiping the drool from her bottom lip as she firmly closed her mouth shut. She watched as her grandma inspected each crate, sometimes prodding within it with what looked like a rubber ball attached to the end of a stick. Then her grandma snapped a few more instructions to the remaining men before she climbed back into her sedan and drove into the night, as quietly and stealthily as she had appeared.
How could it be? Nisha wondered. Hadn’t her grandma told her repeatedly, for years together, that the parking lot was filled with ghosts and scary things of all kinds, and that she would do well to stay away from it? What had she been trying to do? Had she concocted this story to ensure that Nisha never found out about her secret identity, and the business she conducted in the wee hours of the night, from within the parking lot building? Could it be that she thought Nisha was a big baby who just wouldn't understand? If that was indeed the case, why had she announced to the entire neighbourhood that Nisha was a grown up girl now, and that it was time for her to be married to a nice looking man? Nisha’s head spun as she struggled to put the pieces of the puzzle together in her head.
As the night grew old, Nisha's thoughts turned to more practical problems. How would she get home without being caught out of bed by her grandma? She groaned to herself as she imagined the possibility of them both arriving home at the same time that night. No, she thought, she must avoid it at all costs, she needed more information before she confronted her grandmother about what she had just witnessed. What she would do is enter into the house's back alley and climb into her room through the bathroom window. She knew it wouldn’t be too difficult because she had watched her 2 cats chinu and minu make the climb several times.
Pensive and tired, Nisha savoured the last few moments of the night before dawn would break into the sky. In the building before her, all the three younger boys had curled up on a mattress each and were fast asleep. Nisha scanned the building for the older man and found him on the ground floor, loading a single crate into the back of a car that had just arrived.
When the car pulled out of the driveway, back into the street, Nisha carefully climbed down the tree and ran home with what little energy she had left in her. It was not long before she too was curled up in her own mattress by the window in her room, looking out onto the narrow adjoining street. Soon the black sedan from earlier that night drew up before their gate and from it climbed out the woman she had always known as her grandma, with her frail nighty and bunched up hair that was coming undone. Nisha sighed to herself as she watched her grandma hobble into their front gate, gingerly closing it behind her. She wondered how it was that she had never heard the sound of her grandmother leaving the house at night. Was she self involved enough to not notice anything happening around her, or was her grandmother just that good at being deceptive and keeping Nisha in the dark for so many months and years together? It would take only a genius and an expert combined to be able to pull that. Maybe her grandmother was both. A rare coincidence. Surely, some day she would discover the truth. Hopefully sooner, rather than later.