The Room Below

By Amrita Chatterjee

Mira was scared!

They seemed to be all over the place. The men in white wearing stiff black caps with huge black pistols hugging their waists. She did not know why but the sight of uniformed policemen swarming her neighbour’s compound made her go cold.

“There! There! Can you see his legs hanging? Can you see it Mira?” Latika, her maid, was pointing out to her excitedly.

“Stop it Latika!” her mother had chided the maid.

“Take Mira downstairs. Can’t you see she is scared?”

Saddened at having to leave the scene of action, Latika reluctantly obeyed her mistress and gave an angry tug at little Mira. Relieved to leave the terrace, Mira desperately clutched at Latika’s dress as she went down the stairs. The whole day was a nightmare for her. Police came over to their house for their routine enquiries. Her mother, sensing Mira’s discomfort, packed her upstairs. She scampered into the comforting arms of her father.

‘What’s wrong Mira? Why are you so scared? It is just the police doing their routine job” said her father calmly. “Why did he have to kill himself father?” asked Mira burying her head into her father’s shoulder.

“People do that sometimes, for various reasons. Besides, Pratap was never a man in his right mind” said her father stroking her head to comfort her.

Mira knew Pratap very well. He was known as the ‘Pagol’ or madman in the locality. As he was mentally unstable, he lived indoors most of the time with just a male attendant. His apartment was immediately below the one where her friend Dabboo lived.

Both Mira and Dabboo had been neighbours since forever. Their houses shared a common boundary wall. Pratap’s room was directly visible from Mira’s terrace. Whenever they went to the terrace to play Mira and Dabboo used to come over to tease Pratap. The poor man however, never got angry at them. Rather he seemed to enjoy the teasing and would participate by laughing loudly and clapping his hands. Mira often felt sorry for Pratap and asked Dabboo to stop the cruel game. Dabboo however enjoyed the sport and came up with innovative ways to tease Pratap.

When Mira was alone, she would often creep up to the parapet at the corner of the terrace and try to get a glimpse of the room where Pratap lived. An observant child, Mira knew every person was different and identifying these differences was an attractive game for her. Looking into people’s rooms helped her understand the kind of person living there. The colour of the walls, the furniture they used, the lights and even the colour of the bed spreads she thought gave her interesting insights on the life of that person.

Pratap’s room intrigued her most because it only gave her a very brief view from beneath the faded curtains that hung to cover the window. It is the things that are barely visible that arouse the maximum interest. Most of the times, Pratap would be standing at the window, his huge frame covering the whole view. If by chance he caught sight of Mira or Dabboo, he would wave wildly at them and call out to the kids, but they would run away laughing loudly.

Dabboo lived on the top floor of a three- storeyed house that his grandfather had taken on rent ever since they moved to India in the Post-Partition period. The house had two apartments on each floor.

While Dabboo had a noisy, irritating neighbour on his floor, Pratap, was the only occupant on his. Mira loved the old archaic atmosphere the house exuded and was a regular visitor at Dabboo’s place.

However, ever since that fateful morning Mira refused to visit Dabboo’s house. Moreover, as there was no elevator in the building, Mira used to climb up the stairs to visit Dabboo. Following Pratap’s death, Dabboo’s landlord had decided to keep the floor lights switched off on that floor, to cut cost. The very thought of crossing the dark, ominous floor to reach Dabboo’s apartment was sufficiently scary for Mira.

She used to call Dabboo over to her place. Despite Dabboo’s constant teasing, Mira refused to budge. So, it continued till a rainy afternoon when fate decided to take things in its own hands.

It had been raining incessantly all morning. Mira was bored as school was closed and Dabboo was recovering from a bout of flu and was still very weak. As he could not visit her, Mira decided to pay her friend a visit. Her mother was happy that she was finally overcoming her fear and gave her a bag of sweet lemons and Bourbon biscuits to share with Dabboo.

As she reached Pratap’s floor, Mira was surprised to see that the door to Pratap’s apartment stood ajar. The police had not locked it up properly and the owner had not been bothered anyway. From where she stood, Mira could see the same faded curtains fluttering in the moist monsoon winds. The elusive interiors triggered her curiosity. It won over her fear as Mira stepped forward gingerly to explore the mysteries that lay beyond these doors.

The door creaked as Mira slid in through the opening. She could feel her heart beat wildly against her chest. It felt as if it would jump out of her mouth any moment. She gulped nervously and wished she had Dabboo with her. She thought for a while if she should run upstairs and get Dabboo.

No. Mira decided shaking her head resolutely. Dabboo was not well and could be sleeping. Moreover, he might not be interested. So, Mira swallowed hard and entered the desolate apartment and stood looking ahead, her eyes widened in anticipation.

All the units in Dabboo’s apartment were designed in a similar manner. Visitors, on entering, would stand at the head of a long L-Shaped balcony where Mira now stood. On crossing the balcony, they had to turn right to enter the bedrooms. The kitchen and the bathroom lay along the balcony on the right.

Pratap’s room was the first bedroom that lay at the corner where the balcony turned to the right. As she began moving towards Pratap’s room, Mira justified herself saying, “Just one look! What harm could one look do?”

Soon she found herself standing in front of Pratap’s room. The police had left it untouched, and Mira was transfixed with what she saw. The walls of the room were plastered with sketches. They were images from everyday life. The life Pratap would view from his little window. There were so many that it was difficult to see the colour of the wall behind it. One was piled on top of the other. However, what caught Mira’s attention was that these were sketches of Mira, Dabboo and someone else. Mira moved closer to see who the third person in the sketches was. Her eyes widened with shock as she recognised the face etched on the sheet next to her and Dabboo’s. It was Pratap staring back at her!

Mira rubbed her eyes to be sure she was not mistaken. The sketch was so perfect there was little scope for mistakes.

Mira stood stunned. She could not believe her eyes. The sketches had beautifully captured their various moods while at play. In one they were looking up laughing loudly at the sun, in another they were floating paper boats. In another they were holding hands and running.

The scenes were familiar to Mira as she could remember herself and Dabboo frequently engaging in these activities. However, she was fascinated with how seamlessly Pratap had blended himself into the sketches. It looked so alive and real as if the three had always been together. The sketches, in addition to being a proclamation of Pratap’s immense talent, were also a call for his need for a life beyond this room.

Mira’s eyes welled up with tears as she stared at the walls around her. She knew it was too late but how she wished she had responded to the call from the room below. If only she had, then the sketches would have added a whole new meaning not only to the walls behind them but to their own lives as well.

By Amrita Chatterjee