"Hello, I..my name is Chavi, I have just joined.." Chavi initiated the warm up session while the roommate looked hardly interested in making acquaintances.
"I am sure you have.." curtsy roommate replied.
"God! it's gonna be harder than I had imagined" contemplated Chavi.
After a couple of minutes of uneasy silence, the curtsy roommate having felt a little sorry for the newbie spoke up in a less hostile manner "I am Peeya, Peeya Mukherjee" just as she reached out to Chavi to shake hands out of formality.
"Nice to meet you" Chavi was as sweet as always.
Peeya just replied with a wry smile. "So which house have they put you in?" queried Peeya
"Uchashrava"
"Well that's sad. Those losers have been bottom dwellers all their life. Tough luck girl" Peeya was back to her tomboy attitude.
Chavi was wise not to respond to such loose statements. "Well that's something time will decide" she promised herself.
"Come on let's move! you don't wanna be late to the mess hall" Peeya marshaled Chavi out of the room.
The large mess hall could accommodate all the 500 students and the fare served for breakfast was standard. Military standard. The school was built on the lines of discipline and was modeled on the military norms. Hence, it was mandatory for its students to eat only with the cutlery provided and hands were a strict no - no!
There was one boiled egg, plain milk with sugar, 2 loaves of toast, a cube of butter or a small dollop of jam. Fruits were mixed dices of papaya, apple and pineapple and sometimes watermelon depending on the season.
On rare occasions when the faculty felt generous, local delicacies were also included in the fare much to the delight of the students. All sorts of food that the students would have thoroughly enjoyed at their homes were all forbidden here.
"You don't have to follow me all around the place, go find your own friends" Peeya wanted to brush off her new unwanted baggage, her roommate Chavi.
Chavi had loved it at St. Patrick's. She would have Teju for company during their 30 min drive from home to school and during lunch as well and the students there had never been rude to her. This was all very new for poor beautiful hazel eyed Chavi.
Peeya rushed towards a group of kids who looked just as angry and destroyed from inside just as she did. It was a depressing group. Peeya was in the house of Airavatha.
"You can come here if you want" a pair of welcoming eyes invited Chavi to share the table. It was the head girl of the Mayura house.
"Thank you" Chavi let her smile mesmerize the group of Mayurans.
"Oh my God! Isn't she just so pretty?" gushed PraneethiDarshan, a 9th grader.
"Yes she is! I am DishaGowda and I am the head girl of Mayura. You can call me Disha. What's your name?" Disha came around as a very nice person to Chavi, but in fact was quite vain herself since she was the head girl and Mayura had been ranking second for two consecutive years.
"Hello Disha, pleased to meet you, my name is Chavi and I am from Coorg. I am in Uchashrava" Chavi answered a bit nervously.
"Wow! you mean you are with the champion house! cool" again gushed Praneethi Darshan.
"Uchashrava are the champion house? I had heard otherwise!" Chavi was a little perplexed.
"Of course they are, but we will beat you guys this time around. you know what they say, third time lucky!" Disha Gowda sounded very confident in this rebuttal of hers.
"Who is your roomie?" asked another 9th grader, Pawan Siddhaiah.
"It's Peeya Mukherjee"
"Oh shit! that Airavatha loonie! I wonder what Sadhana ma'am was thinking putting you two together! you seem like a nice girl" Pawan did not have anything nice to say about Peeya, who was apparently notorious in the school for her rebellious & devil may care attitude. Moreover she belonged to Airavatha who were many times found resorting to cheat tactics during annual sports competitions.
"I am sure she is a nice girl once I get to know her" Chavi had hardly been exposed to anybody who had ever been rude to her and she had faith in the goodness of people.
"Don't worry, you'll find out soon, she won't privilege you with a long wait" Pawan promised her.
"Shut up guys! it's her first day at school! there's no need to go all hoohaa about her roomie" DishaGowda intervened to control the situation. It wouldn't reflect well on her if her group of friends were back biting on someone else.
After the morning prayers were recited by a trio of sixth graders, everyone had their breakfast in stark silence and proceeded towards their respective classes.
The classes were more like operation theaters where you could cut the silence with a knife. The students of this residential school were extremely disciplined and many a times bordered on stoic and eerie. There was an uneasy calm in the school.
Chavi found her way to the classroom where all of the students were already in their positions leaving very little choice for Chavi to select her chair.
The modular desk and chair were arranged in three files and each file had 5 such modular desks and chairs. Each module could accommodate two pupils taking the total class strength to 30 and there was no unoccupied module in the classroom that would eat up on space. The ACE management preferred quality over quantity. There were just two sections for each class with 30 students each.
Chavi's place had been earmarked by the students and she had to share her desk with a girl from the north east.
No smiles were offered when Chavi settled down in her place and the teacher who came in a little while later, started with the attendance & carried on with the first chapter in her subject which was political science without pausing to inquire about the kids' summer vacations or to introduce the new girl to the class.
The strangeness in the air was beginning to get very pungent for Chavi as she started smelling something fishy. Things were definitely not alright.
After prevailing through the first four hours of the first day at school, Chavi dragged her feet to the mess hall for lunch.
Since, her classmates had been less than receptive to her on her very first day, she had no option but to join the Mayuran group with it's head girl DishaGowda.
"So Chavi, how did you like the first day at ACE?" asked Pawan with a smirk on his face.
"Well it wasn't all cream and sugar. I felt the air in the classroom quite suppressed to the level of stifling. For four hours, nobody spoke up." Chavi had not wanted to complain, but the events were so strange that it had brought her to this. She needed someone to discuss.
"Welcome to ACE! village girl!" the previously gushing Praneethi Darshan now wore a more stoic gesture. Apparently her first four hours at class did not go quite well either.
"It's that damn princi!" quipped Pawan Siddhaiah.
"Will you all just zip it up!. How many times do you have to tell you people not to go yapping about things you have no comprehension about!" a furious DishaGowda rebuked the duo of Pawan and Praneethi.
"It's my final year and I would not tolerate if you bunch of clowns mess it up for me!" Disha roared.
The two just fell silent and went about their business of finishing lunch and preparing for another four hours of class.
"I'm sorry Disha, it's entirely my fault, I shouldn't have complained, I should wait for a few more days for my class mates to open up" intervened Chavi in an effort to calm down Disha.
"Look, Chavi, I appreciate you opening up with us like this. But we really don't want any trouble. We have already had enough already! I just want to focus on beating your house this year which would be a feather in my cap" Disha sounded curtsy this time around.
Chavi wondered why whoever she met acted so scared and different.
Her first day at school was drawing to an end without an event or without her having made any friends, boy or girl alike. She badly missed her family and her home. It was soon 4.30 in the afternoon and it was time to retire to the rooms in the respective hostels. First day - No gym.
The hostel lobby was a dull place which had a closed cabin that had plywood planks from floor to roof separating the warden's office from the rest of the ground floor. The warden's office was like an office cubicle but with covered walls.
The office had a simple sober looking wooden table with a glass top, a water cooler, a rack of shelves, some random photographs and paintings hung up on the wall, a calender showing 15th May, a small green plant in a brown plastic pot which looked like it could do better with some watering, an upholstered chair with no wheels and no great swivel, a phone that looked vintage but had push buttons, a photo frame that rested on the glass top of the table, a few paper weights, pen stand,a register, a whistle and just one chair on the opposite side of the upholstered chair with no wheels & no great swivel.
Chavi sat on the guest chair while Ms. Sadhana Talapatra, the warden occupied the other.
Ms. Sadhana opened the thick fools cap length register and searched for the page where she had made Chavi's entry.
"mmm.. Chavi Kumar, 8th grade, Sec A, yes! here it is.. Room no 417 with Peeya Mukherjee. Alright! Ms. Chavi Kumar! I hope you have already moved your things to your room and have gotten acquainted with your roommate Ms. Peeya Mukherjee. There are certain rules in the hostel which you need to follow very strictly. Violation of any of these rules will be dealt with very sternly and offenders will not be given a chance to repeat their mistake.
First rule - No warnings. Always stick to the rule" Ms. Sadhana Talapatra who had come across as a such a lovable character during Chavi's first encounter with her, seemed to have taken a strange new color when she was in her elements.
"Yes Ma'am" Chavi was not intimated but she was being mellow.
"The room lights go out after 11 p.m every night - No exceptions except during test and exam time.
"No mobile phones allowed inside the rooms"
"Music that you listen to should not wander out of the room in any case".
"No loud talking & shouting. Your behavior will be under continuous monitoring and I don't appreciate a single incident of violation of rules." Ms. Sadhana bombarded poor Chavi with a dozen more rules consisting of more don'ts than do's.
Overwhelmed by the day's proceedings and the latest explosion of rules that felt like warm tincture on a fresh wound, Chavi retired to the annals of her hostel corridors. Since she was hauled up for the briefing, all the other students had already retired to their rooms and not a single soul was to be found on her way up the stairs to her fourth floor room no 417.
It was about 7 o clock in the evening and dinner was to be served at the hostel mess exactly at 8 o clock. Chavi was supposed to dress up in her dinner suit and arrive 5 minutes prior to the official commencement of dinner.
Chavi never was of the whining type, so she soon started pulling out her uniforms, night gowns and dinner suits out of her luggage and began arranging them in the individual cupboards provided in the spacious room.
Peeya Mukherjee of course selected complete ignorance of Chavi's existence.
"Aren't you getting ready for dinner?" asked a concerned Chavi.
"Listen! what did I tell you about getting close with me?. I plan my stuff my way; ok, honey?" Peeya was being heavily harsh and sarcastic with Chavi.
At dinner, Chavi wore a sullen face and ate her food silently and just made an effort at smiling when Disha and Praneethi looked on from a distance.
The hostel lobby had a pay phone near the warden's office and students were allowed to use it till 10 P.M. Some of the older students finished dinner fast and went over to the phone to call up their parents or relatives.
Chavi had to wait for a while till she got a chance to call up home.
"Hello mumma!" Chavi's voice faltered a bit.
"Chavi, yes honey, how are you? you did not talk properly when you called this morning. Is everything alright there? have you got your room? made any new friends? how is the food there?" Anitha had a volley of questions to fire at Chavi.
"I am fine mumma, how are you all? It's all ok here. The classmates are all friendly. Food is ok but I prefer your cooking over thing mumma. I only wished I could be home every day to see all of you" Chavi tried to sound happy.
Anitha hooked up the phone and turned to see a surprised Sunil who had held up both his arms in a questioning gesture. "Didn't she want to talk to me?"
"Well she said there was only one pay phone and since this was the first day after the vacations, many other students were waiting up to use it. She will call again tomorrow" Anitha relayed Chavi's message to Sunil who looked despondent for having sent his beloved daughter away.
"Come on now Sunil! we have done the right thing. It's our responsibility to secure our children's future. She will be back before you could know it" they had switched places and now Anitha was consoling Sunil who looked like he would break down any moment.
"Guess you are right, Anu. I only hope Chavi be happy there"
Sometimes paternal instincts go on high alert when there is something wrong or strange that threatens the safety of the apples of their eyes. Sunil was right in worrying because all was not well at the Aaradhya Center for Excellence.
"....It is always an epic tussle between the brevity of human life and the paranormal that threatens to disturb the balance created by God.
My latest offering 'Lasting Fondness' is an account of real life incidents where a man's ugly greed
disallows him to rest in peace even after he was buried 6 feet under. Well I am not sure about the authenticity of these 'reports', I advise the readers to be very careful not to construe this is as a mere work of fiction or a figment of my imagination. I am but a narrator of life. I am no creator.
The Story of Guss Schneider, a third generation ‘self-made’ millionaire whose ancestors had set foot on American soil some hundred years back with nothing but the clothes on their back to start with.
Lasting Fondness is testimony to the corrupting power of greed that even soils the soul and destroys it's journey to its rightful owner after the body has long perished.
- Adrian O Toole "...
Chavi had just read the preface to her new favorite author Adrien O Toole's latest horror thriller Lasting Fondness.
The room itself was quite spacious for two people. After all, all the students belonged to rich and affluent families and they had to be provided the best amenities. The room was perfectly rectangular with no columns or beams awkwardly protruding in between eating away on space. There were two identical sets of cots, cupboards, reading desk, wall cabinets and one attached bathroom. There was a large window at the center of the wall that marked the end of the structure.
The window gave the inmates of the roof a generous view of the vast green pastures of the village & the huge D'Cousta bungalow with the burly rottweilers on guard, outside of the school premises.
It was already 11 P.M and Ms. Sadhana's instructions were still ringing in Chavi's head and she quickly turned off her table lamp and went to sleep.
"Good Night, Peeya"
Silence.
Breakfast the next morning and four hours of robotic assimilation of a barrage of words and equations later Chavi finally met up with the Mayura group at lunch.
"Hi Chavi" Pawan was the first to greet her.
"Hello Pawan, Hello Disha&Praneethi" Chavi greeted everyone.
"So? had a good night's sleep? congratulations for surviving the first night with Ms. Peeya Mukherjee!" Pawan was back to his ways.
"Yeah, it was not so bad"
"Glad that you are getting adjusted fast!. ACE will be your home for the next 5 years girl" chimed Praneethi
"I guess you’re right. Anyway what's with the bungalow behind our hostel block? We'd seen it on our first visit and last night too. Anything hardly happens there. Such a big place and I could see no one but the dogs there" Chavi was in investigative mode.
"Oh! The D'Cousta bungalow! the whole school knows about it! they say it's haunted" Praneethi spoke about it in hushed tones just to enjoy Chavi's reaction.
"Oh come on! surely there are no such things. Do you guys believe in all such things?" Chavi was not easily scared and she questioned Praneethi's knowledge about the D'Cousta bungalow.
"Listen Chavi, there are certain things in this world that needs no explanation. You just gotta believe and be alert" DishaGowda was losing patience because of Praneethi's tomfoolery as there was no reason she thought, to enlighten the new girl about things that could easily be taken for being silly.
"She has to know, Disha Di" Pawan challenged Disha's stand.
"Ok! if you think so! be my guest! you be the narrator" Disha scoffed at Pawan.
"Ok, Di, chill, we still got some time for the noon session, we could very well use this time for the KT" Pawan joked and starting narrating the story soon after the foursome disposed of their plates in the pantry.
Before the IT boom and the real estate had engulfed the serenity of Bangalore which was known for it's Babylonian promenades & pristine lakes where migratory birds made their nests, Mr. Richmond D'Cousta who started out as an avid art collector had bought this stretch of land at a throwaway price and had himself supervised the construction of his dream abode.
The D'Coustas had named their bungalow Ararat, after the biblical mountain where Noah's Ark finally comes to rest after the great deluge of God cleanses the earth of all its sin and sinners. The one Christian God had handpicked Noah and his family to be the custodians of life on earth because of their piousness and their faith in God and because Noah was the descendant of Adam.
Richmond was originally from a remote fisherman village in Southern India and had worked his way up in the village ranks and after he thought he had made enough with his fishing trawlers, his ambition to be someone bigger drove him towards the big city of Bangalore, where he thrived first as a full time punter in Bangalore's legendary turf clubs all thanks to lady luck showering her excesses on him.
He had met his wife through some relatives in his home town and his was an arranged marriage. Lily Mary was a demure girl whose parents had given her a decent school education if not all. Richmond was on the lookout for just her kind of a girl as he wanted an independent woman who could neither make her own decisions nor influence his.
Richmond's luck with wealth continued and his greed to amass more and more grew uncontrolled to the point that he could no longer distinguish between the right and the purely evil means of making money.
The whole process of making money in itself was so enticing to Richmond that he had renounced the whole concept of marriage and family. He had very little interests for the material pleasures that his money could have got him. Instead he was romancing the idea of making money! more money than he deserved and more money that he could have ever handled.
This small time punter soon graduated to an ugly money spinner. He willingly let himself be involved with anti-social elements and clandestine syndicates who could just about do anything for the wealth which they so dearly guarded close to their hearts that even human lives were but pawns in their dangerous schemes.
Lily Mary had never mustered up the courage to question her husband's ways. She was one of those women who even though had a position in the house, never had one in their men's lives. She only symbolized something that was necessary and not something essential.
Richmond was never a philanderer. He was no miser either. He lived life lavishly and soon he exploited his contacts to get hold of a huge piece of land on the outskirts of the city where he then constructed a bungalow so huge that the nearby villagers had only heard of such magnificent mansions in the stories that their mothers and grandmothers used to tell them.
His deep indulgence in illegitimate activities had begun to consume him slowly and painfully and because of the untold animosity that existed between the long married couple, he had no confidante to discuss his issues and this was killing him from inside. His trauma was not to be mistaken with a sense of remorse or a desire for retribution. No! he was disturbed from within since his schemes of generating more income from his ways were all turning out to be futile.
While he continued with gambling, bootlegging, smuggling he was introduced to the world of art and the huge wealth potential that this seemingly noncommercial affair held within it. He was informed by his associates and 'advisers' that there was a huge demand for art work of Indian artistes of renown across the seven seas and there was a clear lack of art suppliers. Richmond was quick to grasp this opportunity and he soon set up a 25 - 75 partnership business with an art house that regularly exhibited works of Indian artistes.
Within no time his new business venture boomed and he was adding at a quick pace to his already huge mound of wealth. But greed seldom leaves a man content.
The art house Devadutta was run by a family headed by its patriarch Mr.Abhigna Kamat. The Kamats were straight businessmen and they owned a couple of artisan guilds and gallerias across the city and they did decent business before art was being considered for investment across the progressive first world.
The Kamats' encounter with Richmond might have been made in the most inauspicious moment as this affiliation cost the former family very dear. The patriarch and his two sons and their entire families were burnt to cinders in the ancestral farm house by a freak fire that engulfed the palatial home within no time leaving minimal chance for its inhabitants to survive. The case made waves across the nation and yet the police could not nail anybody for this ghastly crime though their suspicion towards Richmond was extremely strong & valid.
Richmond became the sole owner of Devadutta since the complete family of his partners was reduced to ashes and they had no other relatives who could stake claim for their vast property. Richmond had in fact connived with the Kamat family advocates to transfer the entire title of ownership of the entire Kamat family fortune including the successful Devadutta business house to his name.
Richmond had completely forgotten his human side and had awakened the devil himself within him. He was not a man to be reasoned with. One can never reason with a man who feels no remorse and his judgment has been clouded by greed.
Greed is such a powerful sedative, a narcotic that puts the afflicted in an eternal hallucinatory state & the only escape to the soul is when greed consumes the man in whole leaving nothing more for it to feed on.
However in Richmond's case, his greed had life. It was like a tangible entity which perhaps only Richmond could experience and sometimes Lily saw it too in Richmond's eyes and she was scared, for her husband's and her life as well.
After many years of wedlock the D'Coustas did not have a child of their own simply because Richmond was too preoccupied counting his quarters to stop and smell the roses.
Richmond was doing extremely well in his art business and was already being named among the city's elite and the affluent. Perhaps Richmond's heart was slowly making him content with his position, but greed had other plans for him. It felt ignored and spurned and it did not like it one bit.
One fine Sunday, 5 years after the monstrous blaze that gulped the Kamat family, something sinister was waiting to happen at Ararat. 35 years into the marriage, the D'Coustas were just a couple with a set of burly dogs for company in a huge mansion that was full of art work and expensive furniture but still felt eerily empty like the house lacked a soul.
There was never any love or any other sentiment. Lily Mary had long stopped being angry, sad, indifferent and now was just in a passive state that can be given no definition.
Richmond had only one passion other than making money and that was fishing. After all he was from a fishing village and he made his first dime as a fisherman. Ararat's estate also had a modestly sized lake and Richmond had got a deck constructed on wooden piers and had a small boat too which he used to row to the deeper side of the lake with this anglers and fish bait.
That evening after he anchored his small fishing boat and tied the rope around the pier column, the air smelt stale. The wind had stopped blowing and a pleasant day did not seem all that pleasant suddenly. The D'Cousta house maids and other attendants were away to the town since it was a festival day and Richmond had been kind, something previously unknown to him and had let them off duty.
Only the tranquility of the estate, the silence of the huge mansion, the suppressed emotions of a wife who had long lost her purpose in life and the sound of heavy breathing of two canines gave Richmond company that day.
On his way back to the bungalow on the pier deck, he seemed to sense the presence of something invisible around him that was attempting at gripping him and stop him in his tracks.
He could not move a muscle and Lily saw him from a distance while resting on an arm chair laid out on the balcony of their room, that Richmond looked petrified.
For the first time in her 35 years with her husband, Lily saw terror - in the raw; in Richmond's eyes.
She was not in a state of mind to react, it was not her fault, it is not that she did not want to help him, may be just to be humane, but she just could not. It never occurred to her that Richmond would require her help. It is just one of those moments when rationale gallops away from your cognizance.
It all happened in a flash, the D'Cousta family hounds, Lucifer & Gabriel brought down the well-built Richmond effortlessly and began tearing at his flesh even before he realized what was happening to him. It seemed like they were possessed. While Richmond screamed in terror and searing pain, Lily only watched, emotionless and without shock like she was expecting this.
The two massive hounds maimed and mauled Richmond for such a long time and amazingly Richmond was conscious throughout the ordeal although he did not come out victorious. After a painful struggle, he finally gave up and he looked like pieces of flesh sticking to a coat hanger. The attack of the Rottweilers was so vicious that many of Richmond's ribs, thigh & neck bones were severely fractured at several places. It seemed like that something wanted Richmond to suffer the pain and it ensured that his death would not come to him in a swift action but in a slow and deviant manner.
This ghastly incident would forever haunt the villagers and this incident would be discussed only in hushed tones and the villagers best avoided it. They construed the whole thing as an ominous warning and attributed his abnormal end to