The Spirit

The following story was my entry for the 2012 Deccan Herald Short Story Contest. I did not win it, though IMHO I should have ... :-)

The last thing I remember from the time when I was alive is getting my throat ripped open by a pen. I remember being shocked. And then … I died. When I regained consciousness, my first reaction was one of bewilderment. I could not comprehend what I had become. And then it dawned to me. I had died. I realized I was now a spirit. A ghost.

I do not feel like one though. At least not like the ones they depict in movies or books. There is no bright light I can walk into. I can not possess anyone. I can not rain fire or raise thunderstorms. I can not even walk through walls. I am like an invisible web. A net of thin tentacles made of air. Heat, humidity, even the slightest disturbance affects me. I do not have eyes or ears. I do not need them anymore. I can sense everything better than the time when I was alive. I can feel your heartbeat from within this glass prison you have put me in. Even your warm breath misting it when you come close.

Physically, I am weak, like a broken spider web. In a strong wind, sometimes, my “strands” break away from me and I shrink. There is no pain. Just a slow, steady, sure erosion. In the initial days I would drift along where the wind blew. Soon, I found a way to navigate. Like a ship with sails, I use the moving air to navigate myself. The lightest breeze suffices. Sometimes, I wrap myself around things like a man sized squid. Only less threatening. A formless, almost mass-less, invisible cling-on.

One would imagine that dying would put an end to my humanity. But it didn't. My life force continues to exist. My form has changed, but I still want and desire. I was alone in a city of 6 million. It did not take long for me to start feeling it. My wonder at my situation changed to anger. I wanted to get back at the man who did this to  me.

I knew the man. Back when I was alive, I saw him everyday at the Chat Bazaar in front of my office. Every coffee break, every smoking break, he would be there. A slightly pot-bellied man of middling height, about 30 years of age. He had the dull look of a crippled domestic dog thrown to the street. Unwanted, impotent. When I was alive, none of this registered. He was a part of the street. Like a pot-hole in Bangalore roads, always present, always seen, but always ignored. At times, perhaps, I even smiled at him. The day I died, I was on night shift. The cab dropped me off in front of my office. I wanted a smoke before I logged in. So I went to the Chat Bazaar. Normally it operated till 12 in the night. But that night, it was closed. The man was there. Smoking. I turned to go back. He called out. “Want one?”, he asked. I figured why not and took it. We smoked in silence for sometime. Then he turned to me and with a lecherous grin, he said, “ I see you everyday. You come here to check me out?”. Sneering, I turned to walk away. I remember his face darkening. And he struck. With a pen invading my larynx, I couldn't scream. No-one saw what he did. Bangalore was too busy racing ahead.

He ran. I died.

Once I mastered my drifting technique, I went to the spot where I was killed. The man was still there. He looked the same. The same dog. I swam around him. I wanted to kill him. I could sense his ragged breath, the arrhythmic heart beats and the slightly swollen liver. Not in the pink of his health, but not nearly sick enough to die anytime soon. Incapable of harming him as I was, I resorted to haunting the man, looking for a way to exact my revenge. The movies got that right at least. Ghosts do haunt.

The man's lived in a locality surrounding an IT park. In a manner characteristic to such localities, houses were built like boxes piled one next to the other. Stacked so closely that they might as well be adjacent rooms. Built only to be rented, lacking any kind of natural lighting, ventilation, drainage or municipal water supply. Generally, these apartments housed either bachelors just out of college or the not-so-successful IT-walas. This man rented a room in one such building. Clearly he belonged to the latter group.

A TV that was always on, a mattress laid on the floor, a stool with a water dispenser and several beer bottles were all the furnishings he had. Clothes were hung on a rope tied across the room. Lack of fresh air and sunlight meant that the room was dark and had a musty feel to it. Like an old attic. I found a corner for myself and settled down.

He would get up at 7 in the morning. Water had to be filled at the ground floor and carried upstairs. Feeling too lazy to fill up more than a bucket, he would finish his ablutions with just one. He would then smoke and leave for work by 8. In the initial days of my haunting, I did not follow him. By then I had lost much of my new body. So I did not dare to venture out. I stayed in my corner. But the man was rarely home. On a good day, he returned home by 8, otherwise at 12.  After returning, he would smoke till he ran out of cigarettes. On weekends he would just lie in his room, drinking beer, smoking, watching TV and falling asleep in a drunken stupor. Once in a while he would go for a movie, alone, never really enjoying it, just to break the monotony.

I realized that I was not about to get a chance to kill him from my corner. Revenge is a strong motivation. I decided to risk my existence. And so I began to haunt him even when he was not home. I left my corner and clung to him. His body sheltered me and protected me. In a way I possessed him. I was with him wherever he went. His life revolved around the office, Chat-Bazaar and his room. As did mine. He never spoke with anyone but the Chat-Bazaar-wala, the office security guard and his manager. The Chat-bazaar-wala had in him a loyal customer, the security guard had to check his ID card and his manager, well, had to manage him. He had no friends and few acquaintances.

Like me, he was invisible.

He worked as an entry level software analyst. He was stuck in the same position for years. Too old to befriend his fresher colleagues, too proud to meet his old peers and incapable of finding a better job or getting promoted, he was in a rut, socially and professionally. He had become a loner. His sole solace were the dozen smoking breaks at the Chat-Bazaar.

His mother called once in a while. She was audibly proud of the man. After all he was an IT-wala. I could sense his rising pulse, his shame, his anger and his frustration. How was he to tell her that he was not really as successful as she imagined him to be? But he had to keep up the appearance of success. How could he tell them that he was a failure? He wanted to at least show people he considered friends back in his college days that he was important. That he was living “the good life”. He knew that they hardly anyone cared for him. No one ever visited him. He did not matter to anyone but his mother. For her sake, he continued existing.

And then, a few months later, she died. Someone called and broke the sad news to him. He just took it with a dull resignation. He wanted to quit his job and go away. Somewhere. Anywhere. But he did not have the will or the courage. He continued to exist. Anger was his companion. I felt sorry for the man. I thought that perhaps he never really meant to kill me. That perhaps in a blind fury, he lashed out against a society that was binding him, imprisoning him, denying a meaning to his existence. That I just happened to be the victim. I thought that maybe he was too consumed by his misery to feel sorry or guilty about what he did to me.

I was wrong.

Killing me was one moment in his life when he mattered. He had influenced my life. At that moment, he felt potent. Alive. He craved for some recognition. Some meaning to his life. And so he bought a new pen. His weapon. And set out to matter again.

I was aghast. Angry. Helpless. A floating creature that can observe everything but do nothing.

I clung on to him, desperately looking for a chance to end him. He had become a creature of the night. Wandering the streets. A dark heart with a dark motive. Over time, even the dogs stopped barking at him. He was a part of the night. Looking for chance to feel alive.

And he found one.

It was a dark street and a lady stepped outside her house to throw garbage into the dump. He hid behind the garbage can. When she turned her back, he saw his chance. He leapt. The pen moved. The blunt teeth glinting momentarily in some reflected light, rushing down to dig into her flesh. Killing someone in a blind fury is different from killing in cold blood. It needs a certain skill which, thankfully, he lacked. He missed and the pen nicked her neck instead. He fell clumsily on the woman. She panicked, kneed his crotch, rammed the steel dustbin on his head and scampered off. Blind with pain, crying at his wretchedness, the man walked back home. And that was the end of his hunt.

He had always been alone. But that incident broke him. Till then he had not realized how miserable he was. And when it hit him, it hit him hard. In a city of  6 million souls, he was alone. Friendless. Enemy-less.He did not even exist for anyone. He was a chicken caught in a buffalo race. Incapable of being a part of the race. Safe only as long as he stayed out of it. Originally I wanted to kill him. But he was worse than dead, I realized. By killing him, I would be actually be setting him free. His existence itself was his greatest punishment. And so I continued to haunt him, savoring his failures, reveling in his frustration.

Till the day he hung himself from the ceiling.

No one called to check on him till his rotting body raised a stink. I half-expected a soul like myself coming out of him. Nothing did. Perhaps it had died long before the flesh did.

After his death, I had no motive. No direction. When the man was alive, I had a mission, a purpose. But after he died, I had nothing. I just drifted, endlessly, pointlessly. For months, I wandered simply observing people. I was amazed at the sheer number of people like him. The chickens, unable to keep up with the buffaloes, standing helplessly, trying to make sense of their life. I was tired. Time had taken its toll on my spirit. I had eroded. There was only a little part of me left. I needed shelter. But I craved for company. Someone to talk to. Someone to know of my existence. I was almost completely gone. I tried screaming into a microphone once. But the disturbances I created were too feeble to register. There was nothing to do except wait for my existence to end. And that is when I ran into you. A ghost hunter with his glass sphere.

Getting locked in your glass globe was the happiest moment of my life. Yes, I believe I am alive. For some time, I thought I was dead. But NO. I have an identity. I have feelings. How can I be dead? My form might have changed. But I exist. I had been floating around helplessly, getting ripped apart and torn, till you captured me, put me in this glass sphere and attached these sensors to it. For now, at long last, I can talk to someone. I am now safe from the winds that threatened to wipe my existence. You gave me safety and companionship. If there ever was a heaven for me, it could not have been sweeter than the one I am in now.