The Night It Rained in Mumbai

It all began with a gasp.....A gasp that woke me up from the fathoms of the unpleasant relentless nightmare that I had been having. I sat up on the bed much like a dog's ear pricking up at the slightest disorienting sound in the distance. At first I could hear nothing but my own heart thudding against my chest waiting for my brain to process the sudden transition from sub consciousness to physical reality. Then the other sounds reached my conscience. The tick-tock of a grandfather clock on the wall opposite the bed .....the chirp of the cricket somewhere underneath the cupboard to the left.....the crack of the lightning......the rain bashing against the window somewhere to my right.......the rain....the rain.... Years later I still find it beyond my comprehension that why at that very moment, none of the things in that sickening room had invoked the slightest suspicion in me as much as the rain did........ Maybe it was because the rain had caught me offgaurd much like the rest of the inhabitants of the city that night.

It was then that reality started flooding me. This....This was not my room.....this was not the room which I had known since high school...this was not the room which I had grown up listening to ear blasting rock songs in.....and with a sickening thought I realized....this was not the room in which I had slept last night........Now that was disturbing.....A sense of panic overwhelmed me before I could soothe my mind to think of some rational explanation as to why I was sitting on a filthy, moth-eaten bed in a room half times the size of my closet flanked by a wooden cupboard that I felt even the termites had chosen on better judgement not to intrude and a window the size of a vent and a sole purpose of permitting the most minimalist of the outside light (wherever that was coming from) to peer into this Godforsaken hellhole that would have induced claustrophobia on Houdini. I tried to shut and open my eyes a few times... a foolish but justifiably desperate act to make all this seem like another nightmare. But this was not one. This was real.....and this was happening to me now......at this very moment. I tried recollecting what I had seen last. I could not. All I could remember was me wishing my parents good night and locking the door to my room before turning off the lights.......My thoughts trailed off to another sickening thought...one that wrenched the pit of my stomach.....my parents....Oh God.....what was happening? How had I landed up here....Where was here......What about my parents......my family...... Another gasp escaped my throat. But it was not just a gasp...it was a whimper....I was on the verge of tears.......

No...I convinced myself. No. This is crazy. Dont panic. Something bad has happened...that’s for sure......but this is no time to become submissive.....think...act.....do.
In one quick motion I swung both legs over the bed......While doing so my hand brushed against something wet on the bed......it was a towel....but the wetness was not just water.....I rubbed my fingers together and held them up in the dim light.....blood.....I felt my forehead.......there was a gash on it......my blood....the wound it seems had stopped bleeding....... I took a deep breath...for the first time I started to realize that something bad might have been or IS being DONE to me.....I gulped and got out of the bed. I walked to the door.....not surprisingly it was a short walk.....about 2 steps.....I slowly twisted the knob...locked. I took another deep breath and tried the door again.....No beef. Think. There are two ways to go about it.....1. Bang on the door.....make a racquet..... 2. Wait in the room trying to figure this thing out until dawn. There was only one flaw in both the plans..... Whoever was there beyond that door would come in sometime or the other.....and then what? Another gash on the forehead?? Another long bout of unconsciousness. No. He could not take that risk. Whatever...whoever they were they were not going to take him down that easily.....they? I asked myself curiously. It was weird how my mind had just assumed that whoever it was it was a 'they' and not a 'he' or for that matter a 'she'. Or maybe it was beyond by conscious mind. Maybe my sub-consciousness knew everything that had happened and relayed this small bit of information to my physical state of mind that it was a 'they' for sure.

Amidst all this I made up my mind. I would escape from this place.....get to the nearest phone booth...call the cops. Simple. Problem? I still had no clue where I was.....I did not even know if there was a telephone anywhere close to this place. And worst yet I had no idea what exactly had happened to me...