A New Home For A New Friend - Chapter One - A Strange Discovery
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
Nisha’s grandmother had told her more than several times of all the dangers lurking in their neighbourhood. She had told her of how, from time to time, brave men would come running out of the parking lot building adjacent to their home, their faces pale with fear and their muscles spasming uncontrollably. “You must be very careful, my dear girl” she would say, shaking her head from side to side “that building is haunted and God alone knows what evils reside with it”. Nisha would listen intently, her eyes would grow wide and she would nod in agreement for she had no reason to go into that building anyway. She would allow herself one risk though, every night, after her grandmother had gone to bed, she would slip out and crouch into a corner along the periphery of the parking lot, in order to listen to the beautiful bollywood music that the attendants would play from within it. She would groove to the tunes and hum them under her breath until her heart felt full and her mind felt dizzy with joy, then she would slip back home and fall into her bed where she would stay till morning.
This story begins on a cold November night when, as usual, Nisha set out into the night to find and listen to the music. Much to her surprise and dismay, she found on this particular evening, the music was coming from much higher up in the building as compared to the basement where it usually emanated from. She considered abandoning her mission, and going straight back home but then she dismissed the idea and decided to persevere in her quest, so, she found a tree that she could climb up on and did so, with the help of a low ledge on the boundary wall. Soon, she was seated at eye level to the first floor of the building and could see in plain view everything that was taking place inside of it. The entire floor was illuminated with a single white tubelight, under which were crouched three men playing a game of cards, one of them seemingly older than the other two. A few feet away from them was the speaker on which Nisha’s favourite songs were playing and she watched as its lights glinted, wishing she too were a proud owner of a device just like that!
Almost 2 hours passed by and the street seemed to get quieter and much more lonely. There were hardly any cars about and even the homeless drunks lay in a heap, snoring loudly into the night. Nisha watched the men in the parking lot as they got more jovial from sipping on their cheap whiskey all evening. They laughed and bickered and thumped one another on the back in platonic gestures of kinship. Soon after, another young man arrived at the scene, sailing in on his bicycle. His dramatic entrance seemed to have had an effect on the other younger men, for it wasn't long before they were taking turns to each show off their best tricks on the bicycle. Nisha watched in awe as one of them, who was particularly proficient, managed to summersault mid air and land right back on the seat of his moving bicycle with startling grace and ease. She almost clapped and hurrahed when he was done but stopped herself in time, so as not to be found out. She smiled to herself thinking about how this was probably the one of the best performances she’d ever watched.
More time passed, and still the younger men tirelessly performed one trick after another, wheeling the bicycle in and out of corners no one would have imagined possible, until all of a sudden, the older man called out from where he was sitting on the stairs. “Stop this child’s play now”, he said, “it’s almost 3:15. Time to sober up” and just like that the whole atmosphere changed in the blink of an eye. One boy washed and scrubbed his face while another swept the floor hurriedly. The music was paused and the speaker hidden away. Nisha sat upright in anticipation of what was about to happen next. Would she witness the famed ghost that lurked within the building? Were the men in some sort of pact with it? Could the evil possibly care about how clean the floor was? Surely, bad things had a reputation of inhabiting that which was dirty, did it not? She frowned as she navigated the complex web of questions that were forming within her mind.
The men waited in silence, standing in pairs on either side of the sloping passageway that led from the ground floor into the first storey. At exactly 3:30AM a black sedan drove in and they watched it, nonchalant, as it parked itself right in the middle of the hallway before them. The older man amongst them, walked right up to it and climbed into the passenger seat. The others exchanged glances but stayed put as they were. Then the older man climbed back out of the car and they all waited a little while longer for something else to happen. Finally, after what had seemed like hours but was actually only a few minutes, another car drove into the building gates. It was shaped somewhat like a school van, only sleeker with a shiny metallic body which was covered with dense strips of small, blue LEDs. From it stepped out two men, one small, skinny and bald the other tall and burly with a pot belly that would have made Santa Klaus quite jealous. Without so much as glancing at the men around, they began unloading plastic boxes of various sizes from the back of their car and arranged them in a single file on the ground. When all the boxes had been unloaded, the taller man took a few steps back and positioned himself in the shadows, his arms crossed and mouth slightly ajar. The smaller man in the meantime, fetched out a screw driver from his pocket and began to fiddle with the lid of one particularly large box. Nisha was at the edge of her branch by now. She could hardly tell what was in the boxes, except that it seemed like something, fibrous. Her imagination was running wild from all the scary stories she had heard about this parking lot until then, but she continued to watch, unable to bring herself to leave.
Suddenly, things began to move very fast. What came out of the big box was to Nisha’s surprise, nothing less than a 30 feet long, brown coloured snake, its body thicker than Nisha’s own inner thigh. She whimpered softly when she saw it and clamped her palms tightly around the branch she was sitting on. The small man could hardly stand under its weight as it slithered around his body, feeling every inch of his skin with its long underbelly. Then when the snake seemed to have been convinced that the man posed no threat, it hung around his shoulders loosely, allowing itself to be petted and nudged by the man. Nisha heaved a sigh of relief and allowed her eyes to wander slightly, only to arrive upon the next shocking piece of information she would have that day.
This chapter featured in the Namma Parking Magazine published in December 2021