CHAPTER 3
I never knew life could be so boring and slow, this train journey surely made me realise this. It had been forever now since i was in this train and dhanaulti was yet to come. I really never considered myself a joyous person, i knew i was boring and may be thats why i never got bored, but this journey crushed my belief into pieces. Letting out a sigh i took out the pamphlet that mom had given me yesterday about that whatever school..MOM!!! i just couldn't get her words out of my head. Nodding my head a bit to shake off those thoughts i engrossed myself into that small pamphlet and started to read its content out loud. St. Georges Academy was built in the year 1889 in the city of dhanaulti by a group of Irish brothers. The school tries to bring out the deep hidden talents of the students and help them explore their lives. Our very first aim is to make the student feel comfortable and therefore we out rightly discard the very concept of uniforms. COOL!!!shouted my brain...We sincerely have no trust on books and believe that life experiences are better teachers, but to help our students compete and survive we do teach the students the syllabus prescribed by the government and are strongly against the idea of homework. I AM ALREADY LIKING THIS SCHOOL...We have four houses in which the students are divided which actively participate in inter houses competitions. Last but not the least our school motto is- BELIEVING IS LIVING. No doubt the school seemed pretty much awesome but i was still coping up with my haunting old school memories. It was evening when i reached dhanaulti. Mom was right, it was pretty cold there but my body heat was just enough for me and i was fine without a sweater. Unlike many people in the station i was unaware of where to go, mom did give me the address to my home, but how was i supposed to manage on my own? I was busy cursing my destiny when i reached the exit and found a man with my name written on a paper. No doubt mom had planned this all...i approached that man who seemed busy trying to recognise the person he was supposed to pick up among the crowd. ahem!!! hello, my name is nandini...i think you are here to pick me up. "ohh, hello ma'am, good evening, myself bahadur, and yes i am here to pick you up, plz come with me.." and in a giffy he took my suitcases and took me to a small car. The drive from the station to my so called home was quite long. Dhanaulti was a beautiful place with mist everywhere, but something irked me, all these places, they seemed so familiar. I loved the chilly and rainy weather here, and the huge trees and greenary everywhere. Bahadur pulled over to some old house. The next thing that happened shocked me, i had a dejavu and i could swear on virgin Mary that i had been here before. The place was serene, a small hilly house surrounded by woods all over, and that mist clouding the garden seemed like heaven and i knew i had been here. You must wondering who am i right ma'am, i am the housekeeper of this house, a cook and the maid too. Your dinner is ready...and i dont want to scare you ma'am but please be careful. This area in particular has had many unfortunate incidents...mostly because of the woods and the beasts it is home to...i would like to take your leave now..". Bahadur's words were something, he was not telling me to be cautious, he was kind of warning me! This seemed weird, why would he warn me? And why would he call wild animals beasts? I was confused and scared now, either bahadur was a person who talked in metaphoric tone and was simply informing me, which was was quite unlikely for an uneducated man like him, or there was something wrong with this place, and my gut feeling said, the latter had more probability.
NANDINI'S HOUSE:
The house was small but to me it seemed gigantic. It was perfect for couples, but over here i was all alone and the eeriness of the place made it look more scary than pretty. The house was pretty old and on one of the walls something was engraved. I looked closely to realise that the engraving said-MARRIAGE QUARTERS 1897. Tired from the long journey i quickly finished the dinner which was absolutely delicious and went to sleep. Memories of my old house and mom covered my eyes, the scene soon shifted and again it was that nightmare. It was same as always, it seemed like i was small and playing with something, then a blury face of a woman told me to go out, i was playing when suddenly there was fire from nowhere and as always i opened my eyes. My breaths were heavy and idk if it was because of the exhaustion or something, but that dream had something more intense this time, something more scary than what i felt in Delhi. I knew it was a sign, i always had. I still remember when we visited a doctor who said it would go away beacuse i was just too scared to explain it to him, we returned to our home and after gathering all of my courage i asked mom if any of our houses had been caught up with fire ever, or if i had had such an incident. Mom denied at once and when i told her my dream, she was shocked, scared and angry i think, she scolded me for making up things and told me to forget it. I was just 8 at that time and since then i have never had a word with mom regarding this dream, she knew i still encounter them, but she simply ignored them just the way she ignored my other abnormal bodily functions. I was thinking about this when a wolf's cry broke my chain of thought. I had never encountered any such thing and obviously i was scared, but that curiosity or rather that attraction in that voice compelled me to peep out of my window to find nothing at all...It was getting difficult now, i had a pile of questions to be answered, and all these things and that dejavu that i felt with almost everything that caught my eyes was making this place even more eerie than i had expected.
THANQ EVERYONE FOR THE AWESOME RESPONSE. I HAD NO IDEA ONE WOULD HELP ME SO MUCH. BUT HONESTLY I AM SORRY FOR THAT RESPONSE. I PROMISE I WOULD CONTINUE THIS STORY EVEN IF I GET A POOR RESPONSE, BUT THIS SHOULD NOT PROHIBIT YOU ALL FROM LIKING MY STORY AND TO COMMENT TOO, AT LEAST NOT FROM LIKING.
Edited by deepanksha - 9 years ago
