MYSTERY IN HOSTEL 10 -
Prakash Thapa
Anatomy of a mystery
"Aaah …….." I heard the cry. It seemed as
though someone had fallen down from the window of one of the
rooms of our hostel. I opened the door of the toilet and rushed
out. Nishcal wasn't there. I had asked him to stay outside the
toilet, as I was scared to go to the toilet at night. I hurried
towards the porch of our hostel.
When I reached the scene of the accident I felt like vomiting.
Sajal, one of my roommates, had fallen from the window. The thing
that horrified me was the state of his body. His abdomen was slit
open and his intestines and stomach had come out of his body. A
portion of his chest was cut open and his heart and lungs could
be seen. They were moving rapidly …… desperately. He
was alive. His eyes were open …. . He stared at me for a
moment, wanted to say something, but he couldn't. His body
twitched, his hands flapped helplessly for a moment and his eyes
rolled. He left his body ….. his body which was bleeding
immensely till then.
The police and experts came in. The press got hot news. The
police found a strong, very thin wire outside the window of our
room. It was a special sort of drying wire. I had tied it there
myself. It was the cause of the death of Sajal. I felt very
guilty. When the police checked the dead body, pieces of glass
were in his collar and hair. They couldn't have been from a
window pane, as they were silvered.
Despite many flaws in their theory, the police announced it an
accident, but I knew it wasn't. Every instinct of mine said it
was murder, but who murdered him? … WHO ?
A Murderer's Diary
2056/5/32
Today I sent her flowers. She rejected them straightaway.
Accepting flowers is nothing bad. It just meant friendship. It
didn't tell her how much I needed her. It didn't tell her that I
would do anything - absolutely anything to win her love.
056/6/1
Today I have known the reason for her rudeness. She is already in
love with someone else. It's lucky for him that he got her love,
but it's very unfortunate for him that he happened to cross my
path. If only I knew his name, ….
056/6/2
After school when I reached my room, I found a letter in my
friend's desk. It was a love letter signed by her. It was
addressed to Sajal, my roommate. Statistics tell there has been
more crime in the name of love than in the name of hate. Poor old
chap! He was such a nice guy!
056/6/3
Today I smuggled two pieces of thin mirror into our hostel. When
they were arranged suitably, they could cover the wall that had
the window. I changed the drying wire that was tied on the
handles of the window. The new hanging wire is very thin but
strong. It is ready to serve as a knife!
Murder Plot
8:30 p.m. Mix sleeping pills in the milk of Sajal and Nischal.
9:30 p.m. Go to bed.
1:00 a.m. Wake up. Wake Nischal up. Pretend that you're scared to
go to the toilet andask him to accompany you. Lock the toilet
from inside and open the tap. The soundof water will dominate
over any other sound. Open the window. Jump out and go to the
room.
Take the pieces of mirror which were hidden behind the full
length mirror attached to the door. Arrange it suitably, so that
it will cover the wall that contains the window. Rotate the body
of Sajal when he is asleep. When he wakes up, he will see the
image of the door in the mirror. Wake him up and ask him to
accompany you to the toilet. Due to the effect of the sleeping
pill, he won't know anything. He'll move towards the mirror. He
won't be surprised to see his image in the mirror, as he is
accustomed to seeing his image in the mirror attached to the
door. He will carelessly move forward, as the mirror is also a
part of the room,from his perception. He will strike the mirror
and then he will realise that something is wrong, but it will be
too late. His momentum will drive him out of the French window
and his body will be cut open by the special rope.
Pick up the pieces of the mirror that will have fallen on a piece
of cloth lying on the floor. Everybody will have gone to the
scene of the accident. Go to the opposite room. Climb down from
the hostel and enter the toilet from the window. Lock it. Open
the door and rush towards the death spot.
BEWILDERING BOARDER
BRATS - Sovit Jung Baral
Usually we followed the school norms and only a few rebels slept
throughout the morning study hours. Nevertheless, our hostel
frequently used to be raided by our assistant hostel father. We
used to wonder how one of my roommates, on the top storey of a
bunk bed in our room, managed to survive each time. He used to
tell us that he had even seen his friend in the bed below getting
a scolding and forcibly being sent to the classroom in the middle
of study hours.
Our assistant hostel father, who was also our physics teacher,
was the one to make each ambush and he always preferred things to
occur as a surprise. He adored the word surprise so much that
there used to be surprise Physics tests once in a week. Which
would be the test-day? We never knew. We were the casualties of
his surprise questions, which we hoped never to appear in exam
papers. The result was that failure was rampant, but that made
him surprised.
One morning, in the study hour, he crept silently into our hostel
- on his usual routine of raid making aand checked all the room
with pin-drop jerks. The turn of our room came soon. There was
someone sleeping inside the quilt in my bed. He was surprised to
find someone sleeping warm as a pig, while he was on duty in that
chilly morning, just like a one-legged flamingo on its daily
routine of fishing. He made up his mind to give the sleeper a
nasty surprise. He swiftly walked to the bed, gripped the quilt
with both his hands and pulled with the speed of light. The
sleeper gave a loud jingle; which caused him to jump back
suddenly. He was surprised to the utmost when he saw the guitar
in my bed. In the morning, before I went for study hour, I had
left it covered with the quilt in my bed. Never had our assistant
hostel father been so surprised, because he had two big surprises
in a single day. The latter surprise was that we told all those
happenings to him and bluffed that we knew these things because
we had a video camera in our room, that could catch any
trespasses in our room.
The camera was none other than the same friend sleeping on top of
the next bed with his one-way-viewing mosquito net. He always
considered himself lucky, for he had seen through the net what
seniors do when they are alone. Whatever they might do, they
never forget to have a glance at the mirror.
Next day, the one-way viewer was perhaps more lucky. No sooner
had the bell rung after study hour, than there was a rush of
another roommate in the room. He thought he was alone in the
room, but our one-way viewer was ready for spying. First of all,
he put on the latch to the door and at once headed to the
cupboard mirror. He stared with an angry face like the
protagonist in the concluding bout of a Hindi movie. Then he
gently smiled and later laughed, showing all his canines. Our
one-way viewer was astonished. He recalled hitting his friend on
the head the day before, but had it been so hard? He quietly
watched as the friend now waved his hands and said `Hi' to
himself in the mirror. He must have been rehearsing how to deal
with the school bevies. He now turned left and gave a Devanand
look (popular squint-eyed look of the movie star). Fifteen
minutes passed and then he went downstairs singing with the soap
in his hand.
It was I who was forbidden to touch any electrical things in our
room. The boys said I was expert at causing fuses. One night I
said I would light an extra light in our room, so that our room
would gleam like the Taj Mahal in the moonlight. I took a
wretched old lamp from my cupboard. The boys tried to stop me.
But I assured them I was experienced in electrical matters. As
soon as I clicked on the light which I had wired, the lights went
out in the entire hostel. We thought it better to latch our room
and cuddle into our beds and repent during the night, rather than
listen to the earful of curses from the ravenous night readers.
ALL MYSTERIES - Nitin Sharma
I'm a young guy and every time I walk around, my eyes go on
searching for someone, someone special! "Am I that
crazy?" I question myself, but without a reply. I don't know
where she is or even what she is but my heart, only my heart,
knows her. It doesn't tell me; that's the reason I'm helpless.
She's a complete mystery for me. Is there anything in the world
for which I'd have gone so crazy? I know my heart more than
anyone else does. Still the very mystery of whom it has been
eagerly waiting for has been striking my mind time and often. I
visit different places to find out what thing I see might evoke
the response in my heart. "This mystery is never going to be
solved," I think.
I have my fiancée and she's so lovely. But what on earth would
be more beautiful than her to me that my heart is so infatuated
with? We had our engagement a week ago and next month we are
going to marry and she'll be my missus. Four days ago, I had a
date with her and we had gone out in a park. I had noticed that
she was not in her usual mood that day. We had not sat there for
more than five minutes when she said she had to go. I didn't
object to what she said; instead we drove back. I felt awful that
day. The next day, early in the morning, she called me and after
a long pause said that she could not marry me. She gave no
reason.
I was shocked. I was restless. I felt bad, so bad that I began
thinking ill of her. What had I not done for her? Had my love for
her been so less? I had kept my faith in her and now she turned
away from me. I was totally furious and tragedy struck right on
my head. `Love bites. It stinks!' I cried. Now it was the time
for me to write my emotions in my diary. As usual, whenever I had
any sweet or bitter emotions, I jotted them down in my special
diary. I found it missing from my room. I started searching and
at last I found it lying on the table in the drawing room.Then I
sighed with relief. I had solved the mystery why my love had left
me, why my fiancée had refused the marriage.
The next day after our engagement I had invited her for coffee.
I'm sure she read the diary which she took from my room and left
in the drawing room. Perhaps, she read all about my infatuation
with the unseen charm which I had written about in my diary. She
mistook the charm for another girl and so she went away from me.
I made up my mind to go to her and tell the truth. I explained to
her how much I loved her. At the same time I told her all about
my emotions, my feelings and infatuation towards the unseen
charm. She understood me and my feelings: after all she was my
love! And now there's nothing else in this world that can turn me
away from her.
Nevertheless, I was still searching for the thing, that very
mysterious thing. The next day was our marriage and we were so
happy that we were getting married. So, we decided to go to the
suburbs of the city. While walking there, my heart leapt up when
I saw the thing down on the small pond: so attractive, so heart
throbbing, so liliac, so fresh and so fragrant. After all, it was
my craze. Guess her name or rather its name.
There ends the story …...
LONGER SHADOWS -
SETTING SUN OR FALLING NIGHT? - Anita Pokharel
Each time despair and guilt are pulling earthward
Trying to find memories to fill the silence
but in vain, I find always myself
My eyes fully focused on the single failure
betray no will to see victories
No scale to measure their partiality
Has made me prone to embark on evil deeds,
Evil deeds making my shadows even longer
threatening me each time
No image can be seen anywhere
but only blind shadows.
I never knew before
silent shadows could be so painful
Now feeling more bitter than anything else-
I'm always seeking for the solution
either moral or immoral,
Meantime,singing to conceal the subterfuge
but they laugh at me
The heat of sorrow is rising and rising.
Getting no idea to come out of that quicksand
I ask myself,"Should I suicide?"
but I get the response
"Are you a coward?"
Meanwhile these two eyes
which have either seen
too much or too little
tell me "Shadows are long
for the night is falling
but not for the Sun is setting
There is not a day
without an oasis
as you deserve it."
MISUNDERSTANDING - Manoj
Kumar Shrestha
It was late evening when I heard that a boy had hanged himself. I
didn't believe the story; why should one need to hang oneself?
Sometimes I feel like dying, but again I think it is a work of
cowards (people say so). But he didn't die because he was a
coward. I hadn't known him; he was not from my locality. It takes
at least two and a half hours to walk uphill to his house from
mine, on the main road. I hardly come in contact with people
other than those I'm interested in.
One of his friends claimed that he was a laborious boy and a bit
moody too. "He liked lonely and peaceful places", the
next pointed out. Talks always become interesting when the main
person is absent. He was dead and there were many to give their
views.
He had been doing well in his high school, but he was
unsuccessful in passing SLC as a regular student. He became more
moody and reserved. He had worked hard, but the result showed
that his hard work was useless. For the student of government
schools of remote areas, it is difficult to pass SLC with better
results. He had failed in English. He had secured 26. Bad luck
followed the next year also; he got no more than 26 in that year.
Then he had to repeat all the papers.
That was the third time he had appeared in SLC and he was quite
sure that he would pass that time. The long awaited day came; the
result was published. There is no facility of tele-communication
service in his village and it takes at least two hours to reach
the nearest telephone booth.
Some of his friends tried to play a prank upon him. So, one of
them told that he had failed, though he had passed in second
division with top marks. The boy showed no response; instead he
told the boys that he was going to find the truth himself.
Thinking that they were successful in tricking him, they told him
nothing besides showing sympathy to him for failing. The boy left
the others and headed towards `chitti ' where there was the
nearest booth.
Then he did what he had promised to do if he failed. He had
promised to hang himself if he failed that time.