The stranger
It was
late afternoon when I knocked at the gate. There was no sign of life inside.
The car shed was empty. What could have happened? Where could he have gone, my
friend? When I visited him two weeks before, he was wearing an oxygen mask. His
wife had led us to his dark room and alerted him about our presence. After
repeated requests, he just opened his eyes and then without any signs of
recognition, he went back to his disturbed sleep. Reassuring her, we retreaded
our steps promising her to remember him in our prayers. Now the house wore a
deserted look, untidy and very much vacant. Since there was none to help, I
somehow found a doorbell at the bolted gate. Gently I depressed the switch. I
couldn’t hear any faint sound of bell ringing in the house. Three or four times I tried again with more
insistence. The deadly silence confounded me. Was his condition worse, that he
had been shifted to hospital again? Boldly I tried to open the gate stretching
my hand as far as I could. No, it was hopeless. I mumbled something to myself
about the oddity of the hour and drove back home. I did share this strange
experience to a few friends and invited stranger responses.
I got the news around three in the next
afternoon. My friend had passed away exactly twelve hours ago. How strange!
Probably the stranger had been lurking around the house when I was there
yesterday. Or probably I led him there to wait for an appropriate time. I could
sense his presence there in the deserted house. Like a thief he had waited
there determined to make away with his loot. I had not known then that I would
get back there after twenty four hours. Where did all these people come from?
Where were they yesterday? The doors and the gate were very much ajar. Apart
from some shrieks made by children, there was no sound. Only the dull hum escaping
from the cooler in which my friend lay still, silent, calm and unperturbed by
the many footsteps of those dear to him. He would have been so proud and happy
to see all those lovely faces in his remote home which he had bought a few
years ago. I spotted his wife, whispered that I had been there a day before. She
sounded surprised. She reassured me that they were there at home when I kept
knocking but she was unaware of that. May be the stranger made sure that his
presence was more felt than mine. How stealthily he had crept in there and took
him into his confidence! Had she also known his scheme? Had she helplessly
acceded to his proposition? What else could she do? She might have recognized that
resoluteness in his white eyes, the black stranger.
