“Bruno, where are you baby?,”
enquired Aisha as she entered her house. An eerie silence prevailed all over. She
switched on the lights of her drawing room, but there was no sign of her Alsatian
anywhere. Every evening after Aisha returns from her work, Bruno comes wagging
its tail, making a whining sound. He jumps on her arms, licks her face and
starts whirling around her, but that day was a bit different as she was
surprised by Bruno’s absence. She looked under the bed, went to her study room
and searched every corner; there was no trace of her dog. Aisha was very
emotionally attached to Bruno, she started crying. He was her only friend in
New Delhi since the time she shifted her base from Bangalore.
Depressed and all distressed,
Aisha decided to have a final look around the house. She opened the backdoor –
a pungent smell caught her nose. She covered her nose with her hand. A deep
moan of pain came from the other end of the garden. Aisha ran. Bruno laid on
one end of the garden. He was murdered brutally with a knife. As drops of sweat
formed across Aisha’s forehead, she could feel a vaccum in her voice witnessing
the gruesome death of her dog. The torch dropped from her shaky hands making a
tinkling sound. The broken glasses brittled all over the ground. Aisha was
unable to fathom this obnoxious reason of her pet’s murder. With her hunched
knees on the floor, Aisha kept looking at her beloved Bruno. Drops of tears flowed
down her cheeks as she fought with her emotions of losing her close friend in
the capital city.
“What’s that?,” murmured Aisha
with a raised eyebrow as she saw a piece of white cloth lying across Bruno’s
lifeless body. She went near it, she saw that the cloth got tangled with the
branches of the plants and stretched itself even to the top of the wall. It was
only then, Aisha realized that somebody was involved, but who can be that
person? She didn’t make any close friends in the three months of her stay in
Delhi, neither did she had any personal grudges with anybody, that would sow
seeds of revenge in anybody’s mind.
It had been a sleepless night for
Aisha. She couldn’t accept the fact that her only companion was now missing
from her life. A silence prevailed all over the house. As lines of tension
formed over her forehead, a thought struck in her head. Yesterday, Aarti, a
maid had come to her house for a conversation. Probably, she had a disagreement
over her expenses because it was too difficult for Aisha to afford such an
expensive maid after paying a hefty rent which she had to pay for her 2BHK
apartment at Defence Colony in Lajpat Nagar. So, did Aarti………? No, why would
she kill my dog?
Cring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aisha feels
a mild pain at the back of her head. She removes the quilt from her face. With
closed eyes she searches for the alarm clock and with the tip of her index
finger presses the ‘snooze’ button. It’s 6:30 am, she wakes up in a hurry, but
then pulls back the quilt realizing its Sunday today so no office rush.
She breaks down as the thought of
Bruno again strikes her mind, but why is the door of her room opened? Aisha
wakes up to inspect. A series of a dog’s mud stained paws fill her dining room.
She pinches herself. “What the hell?,” Aisha asks herself as she follows the footsteps,
“Where am I going? Where am I headed to now?”
The paws lead to a dark place
where a man dressed in a black cloak welcomes Aisha.
“Welcome to hell little lady. Don’t
be surprised. You are dead now. You had no past, you have no present.”
A scream followed “I am not Aisha
now.”
Then who is she?
It’s really difficult to understand
who do we become and what we think once we die.
