LOST

 

Darkness loomed upon the town like a sorceress in inky robes, enveloping it with her sinister velvety arms in a cold, forbidding embrace. She was the sort of ominous pitch-black you could cut through with a knife while you were being swallowed whole in the process. All was eerily silent, except for the sound of rain pouring steadily with angry claps of thunder and forceful gusts of wind. The road exhibited signs of carnage—fallen boughs of trees, leaves strewn like a bed of destruction, and parts of asphalt washed away from roads battered by the sheer force of torrential showers.

Madhusudan checked his watch, rolling up the sleeve of his navy shirt. It was 11:45 PM, which meant exactly fifteen minutes before the end of his shift and this awful, never-ending day. Just before he had left home that evening, his mother had warned him against going out, given the cyclone alert. Not only had he taken a huge risk driving his taxi in the tempest, but it also had not paid off well. While navigating a blind spot, he brushed his car against a colossal banyan tree. Although Madhusudan had escaped unscathed with a few scratches, he was immensely rattled, consumed with guilt and dread at his father's reaction upon seeing the car, a family heirloom and present from his paternal grandfather. At times, Madhusudan found genuine reasons to wonder whether the car was more precious to his father than himself. He wished he had listened to his mother’s advice and stayed back. He longed for twinkling lights on the porch, the warmth of his living room, and his mother’s homemade khichdi laden with ghee, rather than driving around in a gale that raged on incessantly and mercilessly.

Just as he was about to drive home, the app on his mobile beeped again, flashing a fresh notification. “Your next ride is 3 minutes away.”

Madhusudan groaned. Now, he would be home half an hour late, assuming that he accepted the ride. The garage shut shop at 12:30 AM, which meant he would have to take his car to be looked at the next morning. He was determined to get the car’s bonnet fixed before his father woke up, for he could not bear the old man’s wrath. Since his shift was not over, he could not refuse the trip either. Besides, the person waiting for a cab would probably find it impossible to get another ride in this wicked weather.

With long, jet black and silky waist-length tresses, she was dressed in a pale pink salwar suit. Her face was devoid of makeup, and she had no jewellery on, except for a minuscule silver bindi and silver hoop-shaped earrings that tinkled like little bells. The headlights of the car revealed her pensive face, almost as if she were lost in a land far away from her own. As he approached to pick her up, Madhusudan was filled with trepidation. The route led to the road straight through dense forest cover, and his mother had warned him about lost spirits haunting the jungle, especially on a no-moon night. “Well, she looks too pretty to be a ghost,” he muttered to himself. He made a mental note to request his mother not to share weird insights that unnerved him unnecessarily.

He waited till she had seated herself and was comfortable, then started the vehicle. “Madam, would you like to listen to some music?” he asked her, trying to break the ominous silence.

She shook her head, her earrings tinkling in a rhythmic manner. He saw her shift uneasily in the backseat.

After a few minutes of driving around in the dark, the unsure cab driver tried to make conversation again.

“Ma’am, what brings you outside on a night as stormy as this one? Aren’t you safer at home?” He asked her.

For the first time, he saw her smile, yet there was something disquieting about it. It was a smile wrapped in sadness, almost as if she were on the verge of tears. If he could describe that curve of her mouth with a colour, he would have chosen grey, for it was lifeless, melancholy, and dull. Her eyes conveyed a million untold stories, tales that could be centuries old, and spoke of pain inexpressible in words.

“I help people through dark times. When I was a child, my father would often hold a lantern to my path and tell me never to be afraid, for he was always with me. I grew up in a tough environment. There were struggles and emotional pain. I was afraid of shadows, afraid of evil, and afraid of the world, full of greed, and wrongdoing. When I grew up, I realised that this was my calling—to be a beacon of hope for those lost in gloom and wandering, to take them by their hand and show them the way forward.”

“So, are you a healer?” asked Madhusudan, with a curious expression.

“You could say that,” she replied, smiling mysteriously.

Realising that his passenger was a lady of few words, Madhusudan decided to let silence prevail. He drove on for the rest of the journey until they reached the destination pin location.

“Right here. Please stop," she murmured in a low voice.

He stared around. The drop location was in the middle of the forest road, with not a living soul in sight. There were no cars, homes, or signs of human habitation. How could he possibly drop her off in the middle of nowhere?

“Are you sure, ma’am? I’m sure there’s been a mistake; this cannot be your drop-off point.” He protested.

She opened the door and stepped out.

“Please, ma’am. I can drop you off at the nearest town, but please don’t wander off alone. The forest is not safe at night,” he pleaded with her.

She handed him a 500-rupee note for the trip, and without waiting for the change, she smiled quietly and walked away in the rain, falling like a sheet all around her. Her footsteps echoed on the stone path and gradually faded away into the blackness as she disappeared into the woods.

By then, Madhusudan was beyond rattled, shivering from head to toe, convinced all along that his mother had been right. No sane human being would walk off into a jungle that was home to wild animals and possibly spirits in the dead of night. Quite convinced that he had had an encounter with the paranormal, he was not prepared for the cold fear that overwhelmed him. Deciding that all he wanted was to be back in his warm bed, his foot hit the accelerator, navigating a sharp curve.

And then he froze.

“But I left that place far behind!” he exclaimed loudly.

Bewildered, Madhusudan rushed out of the car. Like a train of orange ants against pitch black hues of cloud-laden skies, he could see a line of villagers with lanterns and flashlights. He wondered what the chaos was about. It was bizarre for so many of them to be outside in the downpour.

As he inched closer, pushing through the crowd, he saw what they were gathered around, and his body went cold. Every muscle in his being froze, his mouth shaped in a silent scream. He started shaking as goosebumps sprung up all over his arms, his hair standing on end. A tingling sensation shot through him as he felt a peculiar tension in his neck. The wind was knocked out of him, and all of a sudden, Madhusudan could not breathe, having found himself before the body of a young man, spread eagled on the ground, under the banyan tree, with a cell phone by the side and a taxi driver’s badge pinned to his blue shirt.

He edged his way back, stumbling and murmuring incoherently. As he did so, he remembered her and the last words she had spoken to him.

“...those lost in the dark and afraid, to take them by their hand and show them the way forward.”

She was never afraid; he had been.

She didn’t need help back there; he did.

He couldn’t recall what had happened to him.

He was the one lost in the dark.

She had come to nudge him, show him, and guide him, for he was in denial.

He needed to be reminded that he no longer belonged to this world.