Chapter 4

Mounika woke with a severe pain in her head - or so she thought. When she opened her eyes, there was no dizziness, or the nausea associated with a hard hit to the skull. She slowly sat up and still there was no sign of any pain which surprised her. She couldn't believe that after being hit by a motor vehicle she could be scratch less!

She checked her hands, but she found no traces of any injury or pain or at least a swelling that told her that she was not dreaming. She patted herself in the hope that she would feel some pain - but she was disappointed.

"How can I Not be injured after flying in the air and dropping from a height of 50 feet!" she exclaimed in confusion. "This is simply not possible!"

She stood up slowly in the hope that she had broken her leg or at least twisted her ankle. Nothing! She growled in frustration since she must appear foolish to anyone who was watching her. And that brought another thought - why was she alone?

She could not find a single human being beside her! Had humanity died all of a sudden? Why was no one helping an accident victim? Was she really the victim of an accident? If she was, then where were the injuries? Why was she unharmed? And since she was facing the direction, she had been coming from, where was the motorist who had hit her? Had he run away after hitting her?

Mounika was bewildered; she found it hard to believe that she had imagined it all! She did not have that creative a mind that writers seemed to have. Yet, here she was, sitting on the road, looking like a confused teenage girl. Was this all a dream? Had she really woken up that morning?

"This is all a dream, and I will wake up soon." She chanted several times as if it were a mantra that would save her and then opened her eyes. Nothing! She was still sitting like an idiot on the road staring straight ahead. She clutched her fist and growled at herself for being so stupid.

"If this is not a dream, and I waws hit from behind, and I flew 50 feet in the air and fell from that height, and I am sitting on the road, and I have no injuries, then something must have happened!" she kept her right hand on her chin and started thinking about everything that had happened till then.

"Let me explore my surroundings, perhaps that will give me a clue to what is happening to me." she decided and slowly looked around her expecting to find the worst.

The first thing she noticed was the absence of the mango tree in her neighbor's courtyard. This was a landmark for that street demarking the turn she had to take on her way home. She looked around confusedly and was relieved to see the tree in the far distance.

"So, I haven't reached there yet." Mounika knew that the mango tree had given her a lot of sweet memories apart from being a landmark to find her own home. She threw a flying kiss at the tree and then started observing other aspects of her surroundings more closely.

The houses were all exactly as she knew them to be - no uniformity like the housing board colony houses. Yet, each house was unique in its design and ambience. There was a homely look despite the modern facilities that the locality boasted of. As she walked slowly forward observing the houses, she felt an eerie coldness emanating from them. It was as if the inhabitants did not want to be seen or heard by anyone.

Another strange thing was the road - it looked too dusty and looked as if the sanitation staff had been on strike. Either that or the staff were doing a poor job of keeping the surroundings clean. The road seemed to be strewn with leaves that had been swept off the road in heaps. The dust bins were overloaded, and the houses appeared to be older than she had known them.

"Why do I have the feeling that the residents are poorer than they should be?" she wondered noticing how the paint on the walls was fading. Some of the wooden gates had become rickety and patched up roughly. "What has happened to them? How can things be so bad for everyone?"

"And what has happened to all the people who used to stay at home while the others were out to work?" there was no trace of a home maker or toddlers running around on their cute tiny feet laughing as they tried to run away from their mothers. There were no elderly people enjoying a quiet morning reading a newspaper or sharing happy moments with loved ones sitting in the balcony or under the shade of the large neem trees.

It all appeared surreal. Mounika felt a chill run down her spine as she focused on placing one foot in front of the other, her mind warning her that things were not right. Yet, the only safe place she could think of at that moment was her home. "Why do I have the feeling that my home is not what it used to be? What has happened that is giving me this creepy feeling?"

She looked around warily unable to shake off the feeling of unease that was growing in her body or the tight knot that her stomach was giving her. "Why am I feeling as if I have walked into a nightmare? A nightmare where I will be facing trouble?"

She did not know how to understand this feeling, nor could she explain why she was feeling that way. She had by then reached the landmark - the mango tree of her neighbor. She had to take 50 steps to the left and she would be home. She was surprised when she saw the rusty iron gate in front of her house. Little did she know that an even bigger surprise waiting for her.

What was she going to face?