The Telephone Bell

CHAPTER I

I hate telephones, rather, fear them. The ringing sound, particularly the good old ‘Trrring Trring’, can send me into delirium, and I thank god that I live in the age where cell phones have fancy ringing tones. But not without reason.

It was the summer of 1985 that put this abnormal fear in me. I had graduated from high school when Mom, Dad, and I moved to Madras. I soon got a job, nothing fancy, but I could practice my typing skills and give myself some pocket money. Having lived all my life – Twenty one years of it, all in a small town- I was still getting used to living life in a metro.

In the beginning it was a little tough. There were many people – auto drivers who charged double the fair price for a trip, rude bus conductors, wandering lotharios – that I’d rather not meet on the roads, but I soon learnt to live with them. Nothing wards off these characters like a thorough bred town girl with a stiff upper lip. After all, I had dealt with a good number of goons back where I grew up.

Dad’s portly friend Rammohan came home one day. Mom slapped me in the kitchen for constantly giggling and commenting calling it a ‘pot’.

‘Ranga, you should send Shalini to work.’ And with that statement he became my best friend in life replacing all those I had grown up with back in school. The pot suddenly didn’t seem funny anymore.

‘Of course not. Why would I do that? Some more months, once my business settles down, I’ll find her a super match. Why should she work now?’ That was Mr Ranga, my boring father.

‘You should not say that. The sun is setting on the days when women sit at home learning to cook food and stitch clothes all the time. And that ‘super’ groom that I hear from Parvathi (my mom) you keep mentioning has started expecting his wife also to help him support the family. Times are-a changing Ranga’ 

I got slapped once more for telling mom that I loved Rammohan so much that I would have married him if he had been young enough. It was not easy, but finally dad grudgingly gave in. To be fair to my dad, though he is initially negative to new ideas, he usually sees the glitter in them soon.

I passed a typing course and joined work in a place opposite the now decrepit Safire theatre. Office timings were unusual - I went at noon and worked till seven. Madras of then was not very crowded so I usually got home by eight. There were other girls too at office, but all of us worked at varying timings and hence I was usually alone when I left for home. The job  was entrusted with was easy – I just had to convert lots of pages of handwritten material into typed text – and I enjoyed life, especially because I didn’t have to stay at home all the time. Being out was fun, more fun than being at home anyway. The buses were mobile theatres – screening full length arguments and fights – and hence made the ride to office something that I looked forward to daily. At times, some of the raunchy gossip made me gasp, but I was sure that most of it was just because of people trying to say something sensational rather than the truth.

My workplace was an hour's drive from home. The quaint little area was a posh locality and even housed the Chief Minister of the state. The security convoy – made up of twenty (I counted) white Ambassador cars all with their red lights flashing –zoomed past twice a day, once when the minister went to whichever place he worked in and once when he returned home. Gun toting guards leaned outside the windows during these trips and glared suspiciously at passersby, almost expecting them to jump onto the convoy with a bomb in hand. Some of them leaned so far out that any more and they would have fallen out. 

 

Opposite my office, on the other side of the road was a magnificent church. It was built in the middle of a vast piece of land; the rest of the area was used as a cemetery. The entrance to the church was in a different road, but an irregular hole in the wall also served as a side entrance to the premises. A path ran from the hole to the base of the church building which was a tall white inverted cone, the spire of which was so high up it seemed to pierce the clouds. I thought to myself that when I committed a serious sin in life, I would get into this place and get rid of the sin. I have heard that people could do that.

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

Events began to unfold that December. I had more work than usual one night and left office alone at half past seven. The entire church building was clothed in decorative lighting and the tiny yellow bulbs that I could catch sight of between the coconut tree leaves twinkled merrily. I scurried along the road to get an uninterrupted view of the lights. The sight was something that I had never before seen in my life. Light bulbs strung on wires ran all along the entire height of the grand edifice. The church had closed for the day, so the last few people remaining on the grounds were leaving the place.

Soon after there was complete silence. There were no cars on the road, no distant ringing of the fire engine, not even people walking on the road. It was eerie. And Iwsa startled when the ringing of the phone sliced through the silence. It was an old phone by the sound of it - the kinds in which the receivers jangled to the traditional ringing sound. I didn’t give it much thought and walked on but after taking two more steps forward, I paused wondering where the telephone was.

The sound came from inside the church compound wall, somewhere near the side entrance. I looked around for the watchman, a bony fellow who perennially had a beedi* between his lips, but he had apparently gone out somewhere. He usuallly sat on a steel chair solving crosswords in a Tamil newspaper and we would exchange the occasional greetings. But at that time he was nowhere to be seen. I strongly felt the urge to attend the call, but resisted. After all, it was none of my business.

I pried my inquisitive self away from the place and walked away. I saw the watchman ambling towards me and I stopped him on the platform.

“Sir…”

He looked up and down at me, one of his bushy eyebrows inched up, as if in appraisal. He threw the beedi to the ground and snuffed it out with his leg.

‘Yes,’ he said in a gruff voice.

‘You received a phone call. I mean… the phone at the gate rang sometime back.’

‘Hmm…yeah it rings,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘It rings, it rings daily’

Both of us stood in silence for some time, me expecting him to explain that cryptic statement and him waiting for me to leave.

He broke the ice.

‘You don’t bother about that girl, get going now. It is a late hour and your folks would be worried.’

 

The few following days were nothing out of the ordinary, and I managed to speak to the watchman at times. Bose was a reserved character and would not talk much, not that I wanted him to, but he was one dull type, never uttering more than he should.

I was delayed at work once more and I heard the phone again while I was walking back from office. I peered into the entrance with thoughts of stepping in to pick the call. With no lights and no people around - hell there was a cemetery nearby - there was no way I was going in there. I walked away from there as fast as my legs could go and met Bose on the way. As I opened my mouth to talk, he raised his hand and stopped me.

‘Yeah it rang. So what?,’ he was mildly annoyed.

‘Why are you getting irritated? I was just trying to help.’  His irritation gave something away. There was something amiss and I saw it as clearly as I saw the night then.

The next night I purposely stayed back late and whistled past the church compound at the same time as the previous night. I was only mildly surprised to see Bose gone when it happened. In fact, I immediately crossed the road and hid behind some parked vehicles, and later on saw him re-appear soon as the ringing stopped. I was convinced that he knew that the phone would ring and that he still he left the place despite it.

Or maybe because of it!

Back home I spent sleepless nights mulling over the evening and then finally decided to solve the mystery by going to the place on a weekend and confronting the situation head on. And what better day than the next, a Sunday. 

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

I tried hard to mask the tremor in my voice as I told dad :

'Appa*, I've to go for work today also. You won’t believe the workload I have off late.'

Dad did not look up from the paper that he was reading. ‘Of course I won’t believe’, he said under his breath. I barely managed to stop myself from asking him to repeat that in a more audible tone. 

 

'How long will you be gone?'  

 

'Not long Pa. I'll go at six and be back by 9. Since it’s a Sunday, there won't be much traffic. In fact I will also get a holiday one of these days for working today.' 

I wished and prayed that my voice was casual enough. My mom came out of the kitchen, stood in the corner and started flipping channels with the remote controller. She always did that when she acted oblivious to things going on, but wanted to eavesdrop on dad’s reactions and I didn't like it one bit.

'Ok, but be home on time.' I experienced the same rush a race horse inside the starter gate would feel when the gates suddenly swing open. I simply wanted to break out.

But as luck would have it, by the time I reached the end of the road, the sky had darkened. The clouds hung in the sky like giant grey water balloons that held more water than they could. Dad would not be pleased if I went home at nine, completely drenched,. I turned and walked home to take an umbrella, cursing the weather all the time. 

My dad's voice was audible as I entered the compound.

'This is why she should not be working. Going out on odd days and at odder timings. Who is to assume responsibility if something goes wrong?' 

'You talk as if I only seletcted her in the interview.' That was mom. 

'You did not say anything when the girl....'

I did not want the umbrella and was soon on my way again.

Traffic was thin.

Soon a big drop of water hit the tip of my nose. I ignored calls by the conductor to close the window and he finally gave up. The rain drops hit the window sill and shattered, slowly wetting my dress. The bus rushed through the roads as the driver, obviously eager to finish off his quota of rides for the day and retire to bed, zoomed past not bothering to halt at bus stops if no passenger wanted to get down.

The rain abated when I was getting down.

 

CHAPTER IV

The chill wind seeped inside my body and I embraced myself instinctively. The office gates were locked and that was a sign that it was empty. Keeping an eye on the church gate, I tip-toed and hid behind a car that was street parked in front of the office.

Bose came out of the gate, stretching his hands above his head and letting out a yawn. It was 7:15, but the only visibility was due to the one or two street lights that splashed bright orange light onto the road surface.  'Go go go,' I whispered as I willed Bose to leave. By this time, I had bitten off a considerable portion of my right thumb nail.

As if on cue, Bose looked at his own watch and there was a fleeting look of alarm on his face. He soon regained composure, folded up his lungi* with both hands , tucked them into his waist line, and left the place whistling. I sat there gulping in sticky strands of saliva, wiping the sweat off my brow despite the cold evening. In the distance, I could faintly hear the stray automobile rushing past but apart from that and my breathing, the place was dead calm. Then came the wail, like a woman crying out loud or maybe a cat that was in immense pain or fear ….. 

 

CHAPTER V

Never have the revolving red lights been so reassuring. The convoy’s front men, the two motorcyclists, were thudding along towards my direction; the high powered beams of the powerful Enfield motorbikes cast unwavering white circles of light in front of the convoy.The sirens restarted when the convoy neared me as if acknowledging and disliking my presence in the area. What a time for the old man to be driving through.

Looking down at the other side of the road, I could see Bose standing still and watching the line of vehicles go past him. The noise was deafening what with twenty cars zipping past me. I was relieved to see the last one go by me and awaited calm to follow when I heard the dreaded sound. For the second time in the last two minutes, my heart missed its regular ‘lub dub’ rhythm as the sound of the ringing slowly transitioned into the vacant space that the sirens had left behind.

I was so engrossed in the moment that I failed to see Bose leave. He was already turning the corner of the road by the time I realized his absence. My heart screamed at me to go to the phone though my mind was adamant on me staying back or better still, going back home. I could sense a strange force almost pushing me across the road towards the instrument and I felt helpless as I succumbed to it.

It was an analog model with a rotary dial – the kind that made you hang up and frustratingly start going round and round all over again if you dialed  a single wrong digit out of the six required to place a call. But right now, it evoked a feeling of fright and not frustration.

I cleared my throat and slowly lowered my trembling hand. As I grasped the receiver, I involuntarily stiffened and my heart thudded on like the engine of the Enfields that had gone by sometime back. The ringing suddenly stopped and there was silence for a brief moment. Lightning streaked across the sky splashing white light and revealing the wet phone. 

'Hello, Hello, who is this?' The shrill voice came from the receiver soon as I was picked it up.

 

CHAPTER VI

'Are you the one? I am sure you are the one, aren't you? Speak up.' It was not a very friendly voice and she sounded as if she had some kind of liquid stagnating in her throat.

I kept looking nervously toward the end of the road hoping that Bose would return soon.

'I-I don't know what you are talking about. I was just passing by.' 

'You are lying. Where is Bose? I know that you are his secret lover and I was looking for you all these years. Ten years...'

'N-N-No. Not at all. I work here… nearby. I don't know Bose well at a...'. It started drizzling again as she interrupted me furiously.

'I lost my life because of you. I will never forget the accident. You will pay for this.' The loud, guttural tone of her voice made me quiver and move the receiver away from my ear. It is surprising how one can get scared so soon. I didn’t even know this lady here, and yet I already started fearing my life. There was a spot of orange light in the distance and wisps of smoke came out of it in regular intervals. That was Bose's beedi. 

'Uh, I think you have mistaken me for someone else,' I blurted out, as the icy rain drops trickled down my face steadily. 

'No! I know who you are and you will repent for taking Bose away from me..'

No signs of relenting in the tone. The orange light was bobbing up and down gently. I had to buy some time, just a few seconds more.

‘Taking Bose away from you? You are wrong.’

'Do not talk another word. I will pull you into my world soon….very soon…' And then a cackle of laughter… It did not echo like it usually did in cheap horror movies, but it was a thin, raspy laughter. The type you would not want to hear during dark stormy nights, especially when alone.

I stood so still I could have replaced the guy (at the VGP theme park) that stood like a stone no matter how much people tried to tickle him. Soon Bose’s labored breathing became audible over my shoulder.

The lightning that accompanied the crack of thunder illuminated his face. There was a look of terror in his blood shot eyes and the beedi was gone. The phone dropped from my hand and dangled swinging up and down.

CHAPTER VII

'What are you doing foolish girl? Why did you pick up the phone?'

His voice was fraught with anguish and fear. 'Go away, run away from this place and do not come back again.' 

'What happened here? Who was that?' I shouted above the now deafening roar of the rain and the whoosh of the coconut tree leaves above. 

I was cut short by a shriek that leaped from the receiver like the hungry flame of a dragon 

'You were here that night also, weren't you? I'll get you, I'll get you... you wait …. YOU just wait...' the voice trailed off. A click and the phone went dead with steady intermittent beep.

I looked at Bose and though I was terrified, I knew that it was no ghost I had spoken to. I was too big to be falling for that kind of thing. 

'You talk too much young girl. You talk too much and are nosy. That has put both of us in trouble now. Go away now!!!' He was delirious and his hands were shaking in rage. But the next moment, he sat down heavily on the platform and buried his head in his hands.

CHAPTER VIII

'Bose Anna, Bose Anna...please tell me what is happening. Maybe I can help.’

Bose quickly regained composure and his ever stony expression was gone, softened by what had happened.

He looked me long and hard before uttering

'Ok, I will tell you what happened but you promise never to return to this place, and not to tell anyone about tonight.'

'Yes yes, I won’t. I promise’

A promise was the least thing I would have given for unraveling this mystery.  

'The lady was my wife.'

'Wife? Was my wife? What do you mean was my wife?’

‘Yes. She thought I did night shifts so that I could cavort with some girl here. I don't know who put that thought in her mind, but she always was suspicious.' he said looking at the ground.

‘Oh, that is bad. And you weren't doing that? Cheating on her?'  I gave myself a mental kick. What an insensitive question to ask. Bose’s face shot up, but thankfully he did not get angry. The sorrow on his face became evident as he struggled to get a grip of the past.

'Of course not. I would not dream of doing it. She was just too possessive. And that lead to her downfall.'

'Downfall? But what happened? And where did she call from? '

'She died four years back. Car accident.'

I could not believe what I heard. I could not stand straight as my legs became two rubbery strings that would give way anytime. 

'Come on you are joking and just because I am from a small town you cannot tease me like this.' I did not know how else to react. Maybe I was doing it this way to avoid being commiserate, something that I can never comfortably be.

'Well, you can choose to ignore what I said, but that is the truth. One night, she came here to check on me and by chance there was a girl next to me. Nila saw that from afar and flew into a rage. So blind that she failed to see the speeding truck. The coma lasted for a month and she finally slipped away. Since then she calls exactly the same time every night. Initially I used to attend the calls and did not believe my ears myself. I did not tell anyone, lest I be branded a lunatic and lose my job.’

‘Slowly I became used to her tantrums and threats of killing me and that ‘other’ girl in my life and hence started ignoring the calls for long now till you did it tonight.'

'No, no, no. That can’t be true. Dead people don't talk, they don’t come back. I won’t believe this story of yours!'

I started taking steps backward, away from Bose, away from the scene. This was too incredulous to be true; I came looking for a scandal, but this!!! I was not prepared for this! He was trying to scare me away from the scene so that I would not come back and figure out the truth that I knew he still was hiding.

But whatever the truth was, I was not sure I wanted to know about it anymore. He had won. The wind caught the fan like coconut tree leaves and shook them to their spines, causing me to shudder.

'Ok, I will leave now.’

‘Don’t tell anyone!' He caught my arm. I wiggled myself free and began to walk away all the time looking back. I had heard the most  nonsense anyone had ever told me and was not about to be taken in by his spiel. It was frightening all right, but even the most innocuous of tales would be so if heard on such rainy nights. Bose could see I didn’t believe.

'Don’t tell anyone. Please don’t. You won’t believe me? You won’t believe what I have been going through for years now? Now look, look at this. Look at this, believe your eyes, and don’t tell anyone!'

He grabbed the phone with one hand and shook it above his head. I didn't understand what he was trying to tell or show. But at that moment, I didn't care. Being as far away from the madman was what in my mind. I was just turning back to break into a sprint, when I saw it. 

Lightning spot lit the entire place and I saw it, as clear as in daylight. What he had said was true. The image of the phone that had no wire running from it was etched in my memory since then. I had spoken to a ghost! A ghost that had been haunting him and the place for long, talking over an unconnected phone.

I turned and ran and took his advice of never returning. In the days that followed, the shivers and the fever were attributed to the heavy rain, my sudden dislike for work was looked upon as a happy sign that I was bored of working and wanted to get married, but no one could explain why I never ever wanted a phone in my house. Maybe you do now….

Glossary

Lungi - A piece of garment wrapped around the waist by men in India.

Beedi - A type of cigarette with tobacco rolled in a tobacco leaf

Appa – Father