Horror fiction: A dreadful night of riots haunts a father 22 years later

Monalisa smiled and shook her head, and the two walked out of the house. A light mist was falling and the road was deserted. A few private cars passed by after long intervals. Not a single taxi could be seen. They waited for forty minutes. “It’s very late,” Amal said at last, “I doubt we’ll get a cab tonight. Let’s go home. I’ll take out my car.” They had barely turned their backs when the long yellow beams of a pair of headlights came creeping through the mist. And, surprising them both, it turned out to be a taxi. In response to Amal’s frantic waving, it stopped. The driver, a huge hefty fellow with a rough bearded face, opened the door. “I’m going home,” he said churlishly, “I’ll take you only if your destination falls in my way.” That he belonged to the Sikh community was obvious from the turban on his head.

“Where do you live?” Amal asked.

“In Alaknanda.”

“Oh! Then you can take this lady quite easily. She’s going to Greater Kailash Part 2.”

Monalisa hugged her friend goodbye and stepped into the cab. It was an old, battered Fiat. The rexine seats were shabby, dust-coated and cracked in places. There were dark stains on the glass windows and floor, and the air smelled stale and musty. She wrinkled her nose in distaste but reminded herself that she was lucky she had found a mode of transport, wretched though it was, at such a late hour. Beggars can’t be choosers, she thought, glad that Amal had been spared the ordeal of driving her home.

The taxi lumbered slowly along the road. Its windows shook and rattled at every speed breaker and pothole. She was tossed this way and that, and nearly thrown off her seat, more than once. “How old is your taxi?” she asked, gasping, after her head escaped a near collision with the roof.

The driver didn’t turn his head. He didn’t speak either. He drove on, his back stiff as a ramrod. She thought he hadn’t heard her and was about to repeat her question when he answered coldly, as though he resented having to do so. “Very old. Why do you ask?” She was surprised at the man’s rudeness. A sharp rejoinder rose to her lips. But she controlled herself. She was alone and it was very late at night. The roads were deserted. What if her words led to an argument and he harmed her in some way? She bit her lip and put up with the snub.

But as they approached the flyover, she noticed a change come over the vehicle. Its movement became more even and better controlled. It started to go faster. The leather seats felt softer and smoother. Even the smell of dust and decay dissipated and a fragrance of roses pervaded the air.

What’s happening to me? Monalisa wondered, Is this a dream? Have I fallen asleep? She sat up straight, blinked hard several times and looked around. No. She wasn’t asleep. She was in a taxi, passing the Safdarjung flyover, on her way home. She could see the driver’s broad back and large shoulders looming in front of her.

And now a peculiar sensation came over her. She felt a third presence in the vehicle. Someone was sitting next to her. Monalisa couldn’t see anything but she knew, she sensed, that it was a girl, plump and fair, in a blue satin salwar-kameez sparkling with sequins. Thick black hair waved about her neck and shoulders. A cloud of perfume, cheap but sweet, rose from her body. A big healthy body brimming with the scent and sap of youth.

How did Monalisa know all this? Was it a premonition? A sixth sense? But she didn’t believe in premonition and sixth sense. Hadn’t she argued all evening against anything that went beyond the pale of rationality?

Even as she thought this, there was a sudden grinding of brakes and the taxi stopped with a jolt, so violent, it swayed this way and that like a boat in high water. And now the sound of voices, loud and threatening, assaulted Monalisa’s ears. Harsh lights flashed in her eyes, almost blinding them, and the smell of blood and semen, hot and sickening, filled the air. She fell forward. So did the girl. Monalisa felt a large, soft body, covered in satin, brush against hers and a lock of hair graze her cheek…

“O Ma go!” she shrieked in terror. The sensation lasted just a few seconds, then everything came back to normal. The taxi became its old self, an ancient battered Fiat with cracked seats and musty smell. It crossed the flyover and went coughing and sputtering on its way to Alaknanda.

“Kya hua, madam? Darr gaye (What happened, madam? You got scared)?” The driver turned around with a laugh. She could see his teeth gleaming from a nest of rough black hair.

“N … n … nahi. No,” Monalisa muttered through chattering teeth. Her heart was pounding painfully.

The man was silent for a few minutes then asked casually, as though it was part of an ongoing conversation, “Do you believe in ghosts, madam?”

Monalisa shook her head. She had lost her voice. “You saw a girl sitting beside you, no? If I were to tell you that she was my dead daughter, that she appears every year on this night, would you believe me?”

“W … w … what are you saying? What is this … this night?”

“It’s the night of October 31, 2006. 22 years ago, on October 31, 1984, my daughter was gang raped and murdered, exactly at this hour, on this flyover. She was only 17.”

“W … why? W … who?”

“A bunch of goons. They were killing Sikhs.” The man turned his eyes back on the road. He went on speaking. Not to her. To himself …

“Her friend was getting married that night and she wanted to go to the wedding. Rumours were afloat about Sikhs being attacked, and her mother and I begged her not to take the risk. But she wouldn’t listen. She was our only child, born after the loss of three, and she was pampered and willful.

“‘Kuch nai honda, Papaji,’ she argued, ‘kyon darte ho?’

“She put on her favourite blue satin suit and her mother’s gold jhumkas. She was looking very beautiful. I took her to the wedding venue, an outhouse of a bungalow in Vasant Vihar, safely enough. It happened on the way back. They were carrying burning torches, knives and iron rods. They dragged us out. What they did to me I could bear. But what they did to her …” his voice broke and the rest came out in shuddering spurts, “the filthy beasts … tossed her, one to another, like a ball … tore her to pieces, they took turns. Yes, they took turns … ‘Dekh Sardar, dekh,’ they laughed and forced me to look at her bleeding, naked body. Then they slit her throat and threw her back into the taxi. Her last shrieks … ‘Papaji! Papaji! Bacha lein … please Papaji … mainu bacha lein,’ rings in my ears to this day. Unworthy father that I was, I stood and watched the scene with eyes that had turned to stone. I heard my child, my only child, weeping bitterly … begging me to save her, but I … I …couldn’t.”

Monalisa opened her mouth to speak. But her throat was dry as dust and she couldn’t utter a word. Time passed … minutes or hours … she couldn’t tell. Her heart was empty, her mind blank. She forgot who she was, where she was. She thought nothing. Felt nothing …

Then slowly, very slowly, her senses came creeping back again. She became her old self. She was Monalisa Roy and she was in a taxi going back home after a Khai Khai meeting at Amal and Rini’s house. It was less cold now. The mist was clearing in patches and she could see the moon floating in between. She pulled herself together. She had had an extraordinary experience. The girl sitting beside her, the lights, the smell, the sounds … were they real? No, of course not. She must have dozed off. The whole thing had been a dream. The driver was a strange man. He had frightened her with a cock and bull story. But why? What was his intention? Would he take her home as he had promised or wouldn’t he?

As the cab approached Greater Kailash 2, the driver turned around and asked in an everyday voice, “What is your address, madam?” Monalisa sat up. It seemed to her that she had woken from a deep sleep. “R-71,” she said mechanically, and a few minutes later the taxi stopped outside her house. The moon was shining brightly now. Relief washed over her. She glanced at the meter. “Rs 156,” it read. Opening her purse, she took two 200-rupee notes and held them out. “Thank you,” she said, “You don’t have to return the change.”

“I don’t need money.” The man’s voice was flat, expressionless. Monalisa was surprised, even ashamed of the negative thoughts she had harboured about him. Perhaps the whole thing, even what he had said, had been a dream …

“You say this,” she smiled at him, “because you dropped me off on the route to your own house. I’m impressed by your honesty. There are very few people in the world like you. But please take this money. I would like you to have it.” Still, he didn’t put out his hand. He stood where he was, looking at her with bloodshot eyes, his huge shoulders hunched forward like a bull’s.

Suddenly a gust of wind sprang up from nowhere and the notes flew out of her hand. She flailed her arms in the air to catch them but they were blown out of her reach in seconds. Monalisa stared aghast at the man in front of her.

The notes had whizzed past his face but he hadn’t moved an inch or made any effort to retrieve them.

“Why did you let the money fly away?” she asked in a wondering voice.

“I don’t need it. I told you so.” His voice was calm, reasonable. As though he was talking to a child.

“Why not?” Monalisa became her old assertive, aggressive self, “everyone in the world needs money. What makes you so special?”

“I am special. I didn’t tell you … but the night my daughter died … something else happened.”

“What happened?” Suddenly a wide grin flashed across his face. Two rows of white teeth glittered in the moonlight. His eyes crinkled with secret laughter as he brought his red fleshy mouth close to her ear and whispered:

“That night … I died too.”

Excerpted with permission from ‘There are More Things in Heaven and Earth’ in Creeping Shadows: Thirteen Ghost Stories, Aruna Chakravarti, Penguin India.