Harshan Nair's girlfriend

Bored while lunching, and with most sites blocked, went to trusted old friend sulekha to browse some content. Below is the contest winning story from a couple of years ago. Enjoyed reading it. I could predict where it was going, but still, I think well written.

http://creative.sulekha.com/harshan-nair-s-girlfriend_619000_blog

with sulekha you never know. so copying it here

By M V Balaji

I have always hated locked room mysteries.
I just don’t have the patience to find out how the guy got murdered in a locked room in which no one could have entered or gone out or how a precious piece of jewellery disappeared from a locked safe. I always turn the pages until the last chapter to find out whodunit and howdunnit.
And now I don’t even want to hear about any such mystery---after one such puzzle landed bang in front of me and that too not from the pages of a book.
When I got that call from Dhawan, I should have expected something weird to happen particularly after the events preceding it which began with a lot of amusement for me that slowly turned into worry with an undercurrent of fear.
 “Sirjee!” Dhawan virtually yelled on the phone without any preamble “Fikr ho rahi hai, I am worried! Do you think I should call the police?”
I didn’t have to ask who and what was worrying him. It certainly was his tenant and my friend Harshan Nair.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“Harshan sirjee’s room has been bolted from inside for over a day. He hasn’t come down. Hope he is not ill or …” He didn’t have to fill in that blank. The missing word was DEAD.
“Don’t do anything. I am coming” I said.
The road was slushy as I stepped out. Monsoon had been hitting Delhi with a vengeance after playing truant for a couple of weeks giving the lie to the weather office predictions.
Mercifully that day there was no rain though the sky was clouded.
 As I took an auto rickshaw to Dhawan’s  East Patel Nagar residence, my thoughts traveled back to that  skinny, darkskinned bespectacled  guy with an unshaven face and uncombed hair who always sported  a sheepish grin.
Harshan, a native of Kerala who was doing his PhD in International Affairs from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and I were drawn together by our love for books. The shy Harshan who had few friends substituted human friends with books. They were his true pals besides the cigarettes which he smoked non-stop, I was the closest thing to a friend that he ever had. In fact, It was I who helped him get the room at the top of Dhawan’s house when he said he didn’t want to stay in the JNU hostel and wanted a room where he can work on his thesis in peace.
Initially Dhawan hemmed and hawed hesitant to rent out that room saying that there was seepage there and it would be really bad during monsoon. But ultimately my persuasion and Harshan’s perseverance won the day aided by Dhawan’s inability to resist the temptation of a good five figure rent.
Things went on nicely for a year or so with Dhawan happy with the rent and Harshan happy with the room despite its seepage that led to the wall plaster peeling off. The moisture seemed to have worked as an artist peeling off the plaster selectively, creating figures of humans and animals giving a fresco effect to the walls.
Then one fine day, Harshan made an innocuous remark which set the ball rolling for the ominous events that followed.
“Hey, I am in love” he said.
                                                            2
Vivek Dhawan, a short, thickset man with  his receding hair and thick moustache dyed red, was waiting at the gate and came running towards  me as fast as he could move with his  beer and butter chicken belly when I alighted from the auto.
“Sirjee, what can we do?” He panted.
“Calm down” I said. “He is probably knocked flat after getting drunk (a lie, Harshan smoked like a chimney but never touched alcohol). If he doesn’t open the door we will break it open”
“Should I call the cops?” He asked again.
“No . That would cause more problems, that’s all”.
As Dhawan and I climbed to the terrace where Harshan’s room was located, the landlord kept panting and muttering something about evil omens and bad luck to which I didn’t pay attention.
“You knock sirjee,” said Dhawan, “May be your voice would have some effect. Me and the missus have been trying to make him open the door for hours”. Mrs.Dhawan, a mournful looking thin,  weasellish creature with silver grey hair who looked  a lot older than hubby dearest nodded.
“Harshan are you there? I called.”Open the door”.
No response.
I knocked. No answer.
The knocks turned into bangs and the decibel level of my voice kept going up  gradually but to no avail  Finally we decided to break the door.
We didn’t need any outside help. Dhawan was a bull in human form. . . All he had to do was to ram his shoulder against the door and it gave in.
:”Ooh, my shoulder” groaned Dhawan as we walked in to face a pile of cigarette butts.
.
And nobody and little else.
The room was empty. Harshan had gone missing from a room bolted from inside whose window with a grille and mesh should have made it impossible for even a mosquito to enter or exit.
                                                                  3 
.
“I am in love” repeated Harshan as we got out of the British Council library.
Surprised, I didn’t respond to him when he uttered that line the first time, The thin, not very good looking and introverted Harshan with his nicotine stained nails was hardly loverboy material.
“Hope it is not a one way traffic,” I said..
“What do you mean? She was the one who took the initiative, drawing me into a conversation. We chatted for days over everything under the Sun. Though she was the one who started the conversation it was  I who mostly spoke and she listened. She is not much of a talker but is a very good listener. We came close pretty fast”.
Harshan was not much of a talker either but I supposed that some people, particularly girls had this knack for loosening tongues.
“Is she pretty?” I asked.
“Very” said Harshan blushing.
“What’s her name?”
“Triksha”
“That sounds like rickshaw or the name of some extraterrestrial. And when are you taking me to meet her?” I asked.
“Now if you like. She is in my room”.
That was the second surprise of the day after Harshan’s earlier confession about the girlfriend.
“Does Dhawan, know that he has got another inmate in his house?”
“No, if I tell him, he will think I am crazy”.
“And ask for extra rent too I suppose” I said. “But how are you keeping her hidden from him?”
Harshan just smiled shyly.
As we reached his place Harshan opened the locked room.
“You are keeping her under lock and key?” I asked jovially though a strange kind of unease was slowly getting hold of me.
No reply. Only the smile.
And we entered an empty room.
“So she seems to have run away. Or is she invisible?” I asked..
“Run away? No chance! She wouldn’t leave me. She wouldn’t dream of it.” Harshan said   sharply”
“So where is she?
“There” he pointed at one of the walls.
I burst out laughing.
“Is it some kind of a joke Harshan. Your girlfriend is on the wall?”
“Look closely”.
As I have already said the walls of Harshan’s room seemed to be home to a series of frescos created by the plaster getting peeled off due to the monsoon-induced seepage.. giving the impression that  animal and human figures had been painted on them...
.
 “Just a wall with peeled off plaster” I said.
“Just a wall? And what is on the wall?”
“Looks like the good monsoon is an artist. Through seepage, the rain gods have created works of art”.
“That’s a little better and look closer. Do you see a lovely female figure in the middle of them?”
“I looked closely. There was indeed what appeared to be a curvaceous female figure where Harshan pointed his finger.
“That is Triksha “Harshan said.
I burst out laughing.” Harshan you have brought me all the way to your room to play a silly joke on me?”
“This is not a joke” Harshan said. “She is real”.
“OK then go and announce to the whole world that you are in love with some figure created by peeled off plaster” I said.
“They would think I am nuts. I thought you would be the only person who would understand”.
I thought he was stark raving mad but didn’t say so. I was in a hurry to quit that place and go home.
After that I avoided Harshan for some days but he caught up with me.
“You too think I am crazy don’t you”. He asked me mournfully. “And I thought you would understand” he said when he ran into me at one of the libraries.
I said nothing.
“You see everything on the wall is not peeled-off plaster figures. Triksha is real and may be there are others like her"..
His earnestness checked me from cracking a joke. Such people need to be handled with care.
“Oh forget about that. You keep Triksha to yourself and let us not talk about her.But Harshan, I know you’re a native of Kerala but where in Kerala? That you have never told me.”
“Kochi”.
“Your parents are still there?”
“Father and stepmother only but why are you asking me all this? I hope you aren’t trying to cajole my home address out of me and write to dad  saying I have mental problems and need treatment, are you?”, he asked shrewdly,.
“Harshan…” I was about to assure him that I meant no harm but he suddenly yelled “I AM NOT CRAZY!!!!!!!!” making a couple of the library staffers put their finges on their lips to shut him up. He abruptly got up and walked out.
I was partly relieved thinking that I wouldn’t have to suffer any more rubbish about fresco girlfriends. But I was wrong.
Within a week there was a knock on my door at about eight in the night. And to my great irritation, it was Harshan, looking very unhappy.
“I don’t know what to do” he said without any preamble as I rather unwillingly let him in.
“Why has Triksha eloped with some other figure on the wall?” I couldn’t contain my sarcasm.
“No she wants me to join her. If I do there is no way I can return to this world. I am my father’s only child. My issueless stepmother has brought me up like her own son. Think how much suffering I will cause to them if I leave them for Triksha. But at the same time I don’t think I can live without her.”
Some sanity at last, I thought.  
“Tell you what” I said “Pack your bags, vacate Dhawan’s room and go back to your JNU hostel. Finish your PhD, get a solid job and settle down.”
He nodded mournfully, got up and slowly walked out.
End of the affair I thought heaving a sigh of relief. There was still a shred of reason left in Harshan, I thought.
And I thought wrong.
The next time I ran into Harshan few days later it was at one of the movie screenings at some embassy cultural centre.
“I have decided” he said with a clear note of insane joy in his voice as we walked out after the film. “I have decided to join Triksha.”
“But….”
“No buts my friend. This is the last time I am seeing you. I know you never miss the movie screenings here. So I came here to bid farewell.”
He walked away briskly before I could stop him.. A strong spell of helplessness seized me and I stood frozen...
I should have phoned Dhawan. and told   him to evict Harshan immediately.or got him put under psychiatric care. But only heaven knows what prevented me.
.
                                                                 
                                                            4
“Sirjee I knew this room is jinxed. Earlier whenever I tried to get the room properly water-proofed, plastered and whitewashed some unfortunate things kept happening. One worker fell of the ladder and broke his neck. Another quit when his daughter died suddenly and some tantrik told him that the house in which he was working had some kind of supernatural forces that didn’t want the work to continue
“I called a priest and tried to get a havan performed. But before he could complete the ritual, the priest suffered a severe heart attack and was admitted to a hospital. He barely managed to survive.`
“After that I kept the room locked. But when you brought Nair sirjee I was having some serious money problem and the rent he offered appeared godsend to me and despite my instincts and my wife strongly resisting it, I gave the room. Now see what has happened”
I was only half listening to Dhawan’s blabber, my eyes were looking at “Triksha.” and suddenly I got a jolt.
Next to that female figure, a newcomer had appeared. I looked at it closely. It was the figure of a man, a skinny, bespectacled guy with an unshaven face, uncombed hair and a very clear sheepish grin.