The Other Side
267 performance could improve further and also enable him to start indoor admissions. He was so busy working on his report that he did not notice the clock strike midnight. His concentration was broken when the lights flickered and went out suddenly. He sighed in resignation and looked out of the window. The full moon shone brightly and lit up the lawn. The lawn was now neatly trimmed and seemed very different from how it had a month back…but he could see someone there. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief. There was a woman standing in the shadows below the tamarind tree. He rushed out of the room and looked around. There she was. She was dressed in the same clothes as last time. Her face was shrouded in the shadow of the tree.
“Poonam!” He said, “What is happening?” “I told you everything last time,” she replied, her voice sounded unearthly.
“I have been looking for you. But you were nowhere to be found,” Rajiv said.
“Don't you know that I am Poonam? And Poonam, the full moon comes only once in a month,” she laughed, the sound echoing across the lawn.
“This is not possible. I am dreaming,” Rajiv said, rubbing his eyes again.
“There are many things that science cannot explain, Dr. Rajiv. Things beyond human understanding.” she said, abruptly stopping the laughter.
“But why, how?” Rajiv shouted.
“Unfulfilled desires! Unkept promises! You know something. My father even refused to perform my last rites,” she laughed again. Rajiv could hear the anguish even in that laughter.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked softly, brushing away his skepticism in the wake of his experience.
“There are no answers. Only questions, questions and questions!” And in a blink of an eye she was gone.
The wind whistled in the trees and the moon hid behind a stray cloud. The air suddenly seemed chillier than it had been before and Rajiv shivered as he made his way towards the quarter. He pinched himself and realised that he was wide-awake. He tried to sleep but sleep eluded him as his thoughts kept moving to Poonam.
“There are no answers. Only questions, questions and questions!” the voice echoed.
Rajiv decided to investigate the matter thoroughly, if only to preserve his own mental peace and sanity. The next morning, he went out and made a thorough search of the area around the tamarind tree. There was no clue to be found. He looked around the well and even inside it. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just as he was about to exit the campus, he saw a little sparrow fleeting about wildly in the air. Just when it had seemed that its flights would carry the sparrow inside the periphery of the campus, the sparrow had turned around and flown away. Rajiv shook his head in disbelief and walked towards the village, seeking the school master's house. It was situated next to the village school, a humble abode with peeling green paint and an unpretentious exterior. He knocked on the door and waited impatiently for someone to appear. After sometime a middle-aged lady dressed in a sari opened the door. Rajiv noticed that she did have a startling resemblance to the girl he had seen twice now in the PHC. The lady looked at him questioningly.
The Other Side
269 “Sorry to disturb you early in the morning. I am Dr. Rajiv Gupta, the Medical Officer in the PHC. I want to talk to Masterji,” Rajiv said with a smile.
“He is not at home. Please come after two days,” the woman answered.
“May I talk to you just for two minutes, please?” Rajiv requested.
The lady was hesitant to let a stranger enter her house. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked.
“Your daughter, Poonam. I want to talk about her,” Rajiv said and watched the woman's expression change. The wary look gave place to a look of intense sorrow. She said. “I don't have a daughter anymore. Poonam is gone forever. We should not have sent her to the city.”
Rajiv was persistent, “I need to talk about her. It is important.”
She relented and let him in. Rajiv was offered a cane chair.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked.
“Please tell me about Poonam,” he coaxed.
“Poonam, my only daughter, was a beautiful girl. We had started receiving many proposals for her the moment she cleared her matriculation. But she did not want to marry a villager. She wanted to study further. She was the apple of her father's eyes and he sent her to the city to pursue her further studies. I did not want her to go to the city but my decision was overruled.” The lady paused to wipe off her tears with the corner of her sari. “She completed her graduation and got a job in this bank. No girl from our family had ever done that and foolishly we allowed her to work. I think her father was beginning to have dreams of marrying her off to a doctor or an officer.”