A clarification first: This story is based on a true happening. It happened almost an year ago. When I told this to some of my friends they didn’t believe me. Of course I didn’t tell them the entire plot then. Anyway I still have the phone number in her own handwriting. What phone number, you’ll see.
The movie got over at 01:30 am. meaning the bus service had stopped for the day. The auto-drivers were in some sort of ecstasy demanding nothing less than 200 rupees to drop me back. For my part I neither had that much money nor was I willing to shell out so much. So I decided to walk back. It was one of those warm nights – pretty unusual in Bangalore. The sky was clear but I couldn’t see any stars because of what some astronomers call “light pollution” in the cities. Not that I was keen to spot a constellation or two anyway. The streets were empty, though, with an occasional car driving here and there. And suddenly I heard the barking of a thousand dogs. I froze and looked ahead and saw a herd of street dogs. (I don’t know what you call a group of dogs, so lets stick to herd.)
Now I am not against animals. Rather I love animals (which explains my vegetarianism) but there is something about dogs and nights that I haven’t been able to fathom. The same stray-dog that begs you for a piece of bread or hides behind a pile of garbage at slightest of provocations during the daytime becomes more of a hound or sometimes even a tiger after mid-night. The lips part and the canine teeth reveal themselves shining in the moonlight. Even if you were to offer it a piece of chocolate cake, it will not guarantee you a bite-free escape. And ya – they move in a gang. Usually a gang of 6 to 12 dogs of various shapes and sizes. And breeds too. Let me stop describing stray dogs here before this story begins to sound like a paper from the journal of animal psychology.
So there I was – alone, drowsy, tired in the middle of the night – with 8-10 dogs ready to attack me, some of them possibly carrying rabies too. I started to pray. That didn’t seem to work so I did something which I would advice you not to do. (Although with what happened to me after that, you might want to do it.) What I did was to pick a stone and to frighten those sons of bitches I hurled it towards them. The effect was instant. The dogs who were initially only marching cautiously, probably trying to just scare me off, now started charging towards me to shred me to pieces. I know cheetah is the fastest land animal but stray dogs are not less fast, mind you.
And suddenly out of nowhere a car pulled behind me, the front door opened and I jumped inside the car, shutting the door close behind me. My heart was racing and my forehead was sweating heavily as the car sped away with the dogs chasing it for a while before giving up.
My breath finally returned to normal after a while and I turned towards my savior to convey my thanks. And to my utter bewilderment she was a girl. And a beautiful one at that. The very first thing that struck me about her was her nose ring – primarily because I find nose-rings cool (On girls of course). She was about my age. Her eyes looked swollen and I could make out that her heavy make-up had been partly disturbed by her tears. But she was one of those girls you get to see more often these days – girls who put on makeup although they would look prettier without that. She wore a short black party dress and it was kind of tough to keep my eyes off her legs. But since she had a nose-ring, my attention didn’t wander anywhere else, not that it does, of course.
“Thanks for saving me!” I said breaking the ice.
“Don’t bother.” She replied which bothered me even more for I had to break the ice once more. Since I didn’t know what to say and she didn’t seem to be in a mood to say anything, a silence followed. I was feeling a bit uneasy while she seemed indifferent to my presence.
“So…ah…you can drop me here, I’ll walk down from here.” I said.
“Alright, “ she said, “where do you stay?”
“Institute campus.”
“Hostelite?”
“Eeeyup!”
“That means no deadlines, right?”
“Ya, no deadlines as such.”
“You hungry?”
“Ya, but all the places I know of are closed.”
“Lets go to my place.” She said. “I’ll drop you back.”
I was in a predicament. I mean there’s this beautiful girl who has almost saved my life offering me food at 2 am in her own car. How could I say ‘no’? But then there are these stories you hear about psychopaths, rather see such psychopaths in the movies. But I was hungry as well and this was something that had never happened and might actually never happen in my life again. So I said ‘yes’.
She shifted the gears effortlessly. Effortlessly because she seemed too delicate to drive, although she drove really well. I was again caught in a dilemma. Actually it happens most of the times when I am with girls. ‘What should I talk about?’ the worst thing about most girls is that you cannot talk endlessly about other girls and cricket – two topics I think I am a pro at. I mean you cannot impress girls by quoting some cricketing statis.
“So who all stay with you?” I asked.
“Just my husband.” She replied flatly. Probably I even heard one of my heart’s string break.
“You don’t look like you’re married.” I said. – A statement that can be interpreted in many ways.
“In some sense, may be, I am not married.” She replied.
I have this motto – never try to decipher something when people speak indirectly, invariably you get in trouble. So I simply asked, “What do you mean?”
She smiled, first time since we met, and with a sharp turn stopped the car in front of a big gate. She climbed out, opened the gate, got back in and drove the car under a shade. We both got down and she went back to close the gate while I stood there silent. Last thing I wanted was the husband waking up. We then reached the main door that had a big lock on it. She clicked it open.
“Your husband isn’t here?”
“No, he’s gone to Delhi. You think I could have got you here in his presence?”
Logical question but still nothing made sense. I was beginning to get scared. Why would she bring a perfect stranger home when her husband was away? I began to sweat, more than I had during the dog attack. I followed her inside. The house was huge. The yellow bulbs gave it a mystic feeling – or may be it was all in my head. I went and sat on one of the chairs of the dining table.
“What would you like to eat?” she asked
“Anything.” I gave my standard reply. I mean I couldn’t ask for paneer butter masala in the middle of the night, right?
“I have some paneer butter masala and rotis that I had ordered in the evening.” She said.
“Great.” I said. Boy, this was one strange night.
She heated the curry and rotis in a microwave and brought that on the table. We ate. After it was over, she asked me, “Aren’t you worried what I am going to ask you to do next?”
“What?” I said, trying to act cool.
“Wash the dishes.”
“Oh, sure” I said, relieved.
She stood besides me as I washed the plates. “I crossed you twice while you were walking. You seemed enigmatic and I felt like talking to you.” This is one of the reasons my friends didn’t believe the story. Guys, some people do find me enigmatic.
“And that’s why you planted those dogs there?” I said trying to put 2 and 2 together, as the expression is.
“No, silly.” She laughed, “That was just my luck.”
“But what’s the point of picking up guys and bringing them home when your husband is away?”
She smiled and said, “Don’t say ‘guys’. You are the first and probably you’ll be the only one.”
“But why?” I have now stopped asking, ‘Why me?’ since the night the aliens came to my lab – another story nobody believed was true.
“Well, don’t get me wrong, I was just too bored. I got married ten days back and we came to Bangalore last week but my husband had to leave almost immediately for 2 weeks. So here I am all alone in a new place with nothing to do.”
“What if I was a psychopath or a serial killer? What would you have done?” I asked.
“What would you have done if I was one?” she replied with a smile. I laughed.
And then we spoke about this and that. Then played scrabble. And finally we watched a movie. By the time the movie was over the early birds had started their worm-hunting exercise.
“Well, I better get going.” I said.
“Wait, I’ll drop you back.” She said.
“No, that’s ok. I’ll take a bus.”
She held my hand gently and whispered, “Thanks!” She then gave me her phone number with her name written on it. It was then I realized that we hadn’t even asked our names to each other.
“Do call me.” She said.
“Sure.” I replied and walked away.
I reached my hostel and found my neighbor brushing his teeth in the corridor.
“Where the **** have you been, bugger?” he said welcoming me.
“Oh I just spent a whole night with a beautiful, rich and married nose-ringed girl.” I replied.
“Lair, what did you do whole night?”
“We mostly talked.”
“Bastard”, I heard him say as I rolled off to sleep.
I owe an apology for some ‘perves’ who were expecting some Hollywood style fantasy but as I said it’s not a movie, it’s the truth. This is what happened.
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