Hello!
It's October and it's time to get back to Write...Edit...Publish... where the prompt is the iconic musical The Phantom of the Opera. It is also splat bang in the middle of the main festival season in India, I have family visiting from abroad as well as from other Indian cities, so...I'll be reading with a lag, please bear with me.
This post continues the story of Shovan and Mukta, Sam and Janhobi that began last December. What's happened so far:
The MC finds a B/W profile picture on a social media platform intriguing. He writes on an impulse to the woman and finds that the picture is of her grandmother and was shot in a studio that once belonged to a relative, now dead.
The MC goes back to his hometown and explores the derelict studio. He finally comes upon a series of nudes of a woman in different stages of life, the last of which he recognises as the grandmother.
He finds a letter that breaks the bombshell news that his Great Uncle Sam, the studio owner and the grandmother had an ongoing relationship in the past.
He meets with the granddaughter in their common hometown and shares the findings...which naturally shocks the granddaughter. The MC assures her that the secret is safe with him and he will support her through this bombshell discovery. They say goodbye but he feels she will not want to see him again.
The MC goes to Sam's ancestral house situated a little way away from the city and finds the furniture that's used as props in the Janhobi's portrait - the radio, the table etc. He also chances upon an old tree engraving that clearly indicates Sam and Janhobi spent time in the house. Mukta does not get in touch as he had feared.
Read on to find out what happens next...
Chiaroscuro VI :
It was pitch dark at the window.
My transition from dream to
reality was so gradual, so seamless that at first I did not realise I was
awake. The noise of the static crackled in my ear just as it had minutes ago in
what I assumed was a dream, but now I was not so sure, was it?
Inside the room, the eye of the
old radio flashed on and off, bathing the ceiling above in an eerie apple
green. My cell phone matched it at every beat, the screen lighting up and going
dark every odd second, emitting its own peculiar bluish glow. I bent and
switched on the pedestal lamp someone had placed next to the bed. The light
came on for a few seconds and then it too joined the strange, ongoing sound and
light show. In this weird pulsing light, I could see the ceiling fan was
turning one way for some seconds, coming to a stop and turning the opposite way
for an equal time. I had never seen anything like it - I came bolt upright, the
last traces of sleep wiped clean from my eyes.
This was no dream.
***
I had got back from the discovery
of the tree engraving last evening and found that I had been given the room
with the radio to sleep. The low divan had been made up with a formidable old
three inch thick cotton mattress, spotless sheets, a pair of ruffled pillows
and a traditional woven coverlet. I was quite pleased – as I wanted to have a
nose around and see if any further evidence of Sam and Janhobi could be
unearthed. Though why I bothered I don’t know. Mukta had not been in touch, she
had probably gone back after her holiday in the old hometown.
I looked at the window again, it
was dark still. The phone as it lit up showed the time, still some way to go
till sunrise. I swiveled around and put
my feet on the floor, thrust my feet into my slippers. The wide verandah
connecting the rooms on the floor was dark and quiet. No other room was pulsing
and buzzing like mine. I paced up and down to make quite sure, there was not a
single crackle of static, not a pinpoint of light anywhere.
There was no moon, no shadows, not
even the friendly wink of a single star. The trees loomed against an amorphous
sky on the far side of the courtyard – darker shapes in the darkness grading
from a chiffony charcoal grey to indigo to pitch black. An owl hooted
somewhere. Moth wings fluttered against my face for a second and ricocheted
away, I felt the velvety movement on my skin but could not fathom their
direction. Only my shut door was thinly outlined in a pulsing green glow –
fainter, brighter, fainter, brighter, fainter, brighter – as if the beating of
my own heart had been transformed from sound to light and projected into that
room behind that closed door.
I groped for the switch of the
verandah lights and yanked the heavy old Bakelite job on. Nothing happened, not
one of the lights came on. I felt my way down one flight of stairs to the
landing, where the large, multipaned window opened out on the street and peered
outside, the streetlights were not on either. No joy there. I am not easily
spooked, I do not give much credence to other worldly happenings – good for a
fireside tale on a winter evening of course, but not much else. There must be
some sort of electrical snafu, only I hadn’t come across radios switching on
and off by themselves, cell phones and fans echoing them without missing a
beat. Confined to one room too while the rest of the house was minus power. At
least the fan inside would produce some sort of air circulation. It was muggy
and hot out on the verandah and apart from a long wooden bench there was
nowhere to park. I pushed the glowing doors open again.
The static from the radio had
resolved into some sort of music – like a number being played at the wrong
speed, slower than it should be, the words weirdly garbled, the bass too deep
and way off the mark, interspersed with lucid intervals. In dreams he
came…that voice which ca… do I dream again?
The fan…is there in sigh… your mind… The music went on, half
unintelligible, half clear, the song just hovering on the edge of recognition.
The table on which the radio sat
had two small drawers, one of them was glowing and pulsing the same way the
door had, as if some light emitting source was trapped inside. I went to it and
yanked it open. A bunch of pulsing pinpricks of light fluttered out and weaved
across the room, finally settling on the ceiling. It took me a few seconds to
figure out they were fireflies, not exactly some alien spirit beings from some
other world. The sound suddenly cleared up fully and the music played out at
the right pitch, the lyrics crystal clear and recognisable – the Phantom of
the Opera is there inside your mind… The song drew to its end and the music
faded out. A couple of crackles of static and then the green power indicator
went dark, the radio switched off and fell silent. I tried the light switch –
it worked this time, the lamp flooded the room with dazzling light. The fan was
whirring normally again. Whatever weirdness or electrical fault it was, it
seemed it had righted itself. I switched the light off, heaved a sigh of relief
and went back to bed. The fireflies were still on the ceiling. I fell asleep
watching them glowing on and off.
***
I woke past eight, the sun was up and hot. Last night felt unreal. Had I dreamt one of those hyper real
dreams?
Only thing was the drawer below
the radio was still open. I got out of bed and walked to it. A card lay on top
of a pile of papers, the whole dusty and yellowed with age. I picked it up – it
was one of those fancy invites, gilt borders and lettering…The President of
the Cine Club cordially invites Jahnabi
Roy to a special screening of the Phantom of the Opera...
My cell phone suddenly beeped, startling me. It was Mukta.
WC : 1077
FCA
Tagline : An old radio goes berserk in the middle of the night...
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