Chapter 5
Basement
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Nitin’s impatient pace could even be heard from outside the house.
Why was it taking this much long for his father?
The living room was silent other than Nitin’s case. The TV just some hours ago had been shut. It was housed in showcase, along the adjacent wall of the door-wall. Three sofas were placed in front of it.
Nitin stopped. He produced the consent form from his pocket. The last date of submission glared at him from the bottom. 28 April. Two days from now. So good for the school to give the permission form itself late.
And Nitin in no way was going to spare his father today. He knew by the greatest of his memory that his memory wasn’t great. And today he remembered it just while he had been watching a documentary on Mont Blanc. The clock struck nine. Some seconds later, the door opened.
“Great, Nitin,” Vyom smiled and kept his case aside. “You are home before me. Anything special?”
“Very special.” Nitin told himself again, he had to win the argument. “School’s taking us Srinagar in the vacations.”
Vyom was beginning to loosen his tie. He looked at Nitin as if he was asking permission to consume poison. “I believe, the Pact of 24, Nara—”
“I don’t care about any silly pact!” Nitin thought he was getting over irritated. But why shouldn’t he? His whole life he had been kept in darkness. Never been told anything more than a mere name. After all, the dream had…but it had been only a dream. Dreams aren’t reality. A dumb saying crossed over his mind. Dreams of daylight are true.
“You have to, Nitin,” said Vyom approaching Nitin and looking into his eyes. “I kept my part of promise so you—”
“Your part of promise was that you won’t marry anyone for my sake; and isn’t that what that you too wanted?”
Vyom’s mouth opened to say something, but no words issued. The glass in his eyes looked cracked.
“And why didn’t you ever tell me about Mansa?” Nitin was not going to let it go. “You never told me she was a Kashmiri! You never told me you left her alone to die!”
Vyom’s eyes were unnaturally big, which had nothing to do with his spectacles. “You—how do you—I…”
Nitin had no idea whether whatever he had said was true or not. His head was boiling. He felt betrayed. Just one day had changed him. Suddenly, the only person he loved, the only person he cared for all these years seemed to be his enemy. He didn’t withdraw his eyes from Vyom.
Vyom seemed to recover. “I don’t want to argue further. Go and sleep. ”
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That night’s sleep was even harder.
Nitin had his arms folded under his head, his eyes fixed on the fan. How could he do so? Doesn’t he care anything about me? Nitin hadn’t closed the window, and now cool breezes streamed inside the room. He closed his eyes.
Vyom’s face, when Nitin had mentioned Mansa, reappeared. Maybe he had said something he was not allowed to know. The dream…it was not a mere dream.
Stressed, he brought out the box. The seven headed snake. The water. And the riddle. Nitin tried again to decipher the meaning. He wasn’t a cryptographer. But he was in the need of one. Bringing it near his ears, he shook it. No sound issued. Something told him he should break the box apart. He should at least try. What was the harm? If it didn’t open, it was okay. And if it did open…
The man had told him to keep it a secret. He didn’t tell him he wasn’t allowed to behold its contents. And if even he didn’t know what he was guarding, what good was guarding it?
Nitin, after assuring that his instincts wouldn’t betray him, sneaked down the stairs. All the lights were off. No light came from Vyom’s window. The coast was clear. Nitin headed for the basement.
Very few houses in the neighborhood had basements. But Vyom, as one day he had told him, had made sure there was a basement in their house.
“Why?” Nitin, just five years old, had asked.
Vyom leaned closer. “Everyone has got to have secrets.”
“And that didn’t include secrets about your mother.
Nitin stopped in his tracks.
What if father was right? He wanted to dismiss the thought, but found it tugging him again and again. He was right on his way for an iron rod. Did it hurt if he sidestepped for something else?
But practically he knew everything whatever thing that lied in the dusty place. And his father wouldn’t trust such a place to hide secrets. His room was a better place. Did Vyom use reverse psychology? He might have thought Nitin would think so, and wouldn’t care to look in the basement.
Nitin walked as the progression of his thoughts became intense, and so intense that they even sounded stupid. He craned his neck around when he had reached under the staircase. His father wasn’t watching. Just where the staircase touched the floor, there was a trapdoor, that guests weren’t usually able to notice. And he had never shown it to any of his cousins, neighbors or friends.
Nitin held up the door, below was pitch darkness. Putting on the latch, his hand reached for a switch on the basement wall. The room brightened up in orange.
There were no stairs. Only a ladder, that could slip anytime. Nitin unlatched the trapdoor and closed himself in.
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He had found the iron rod just in the first glance and kept it aside so that he could take it up.
The basement was a junkyard. Every inch of it was covered in some sort of thing: furniture, plastic, some equipments and tools.
Nitin was confused where to start the search from.
The right side was a better idea. In the extreme right was a shelf stacked with his father’s old books. A good idea. He might have scribbled something in his notebooks. Nitin had checked out only the English and Bio books. Physics and Chem was out his world. Maybe, this was the time to check them out.
It could have taken him the whole night inspecting the books. But he found a smarter way. He just flapped the pages. No photograph or chit fell down. Then he checked the back papers. They too were blank save some doodles he had a craze of.
There was no clock in the basement. Nor did Nitin wear any watch. According his approximations, it was one in the morning.
The search bore him sweat, pain in arms and neck, and of course, a lot of mosquitoes. He slid back the drawer he had been viewing, then looked at his progress. If he left now, it would take him at least five days to have everything scrutinized to perfection.
Nitin was trapped in a no-air-circulation-unit.. And he was paying with his nose for it. Mostly, he was inhaling dust, with some spiders in some cases. He had no problem with spiders {“WAAAA!!!” Vidya leapt from her seat. “What’s that?” Mrs. Fatty (Fatima Singh) said, her face painted red. “A SPIDER!!!”}, but lizards. Fortunately, they limited themselves to the ceiling.
Nitin stood up, dust his pajamas and arched his back. His eyelids were heavy. He had found nothing, except a note scribbled on the first page of an old GK book: she you? It wasn’t his father’s handwriting; he always closed the tails of g and y. And it did not refer to his mother. The book was for eighth graders.
Hiding his yawn with his palm, Nitin gripped the rod and opened the trapdoor. He was going to break open the box.
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