I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up To No Good

I was on my way to the pantry at our office, when I bumped into one of my friends who was also going the same way. We were both talking about the weekend, when my phone rang. It was my wife. The name "Lucky Mumbai" flashed on the screen. My friend giggled and asked, "What have you stored her number as?"

I showed him the screen, "Lucky Mumbai", it read. He was still giggling when he asked, "But why?". "Well, she hasn't changed her number when she moved to Bangalore last year, after our marriage. So it's still stored as Mumbai.", I explained. "But her name isn't 'Lucky'. Are you trying to subtly point that, she is lucky to be with you", he mocked. I smiled at his joke, shook my head and started wondering where to start the explanation from.

It was the first semester of my engineering. My college was a good 60kms away from my home, and so I used to stay in the college hostel. One evening when I was returning to my room, my phone rang. I used to have a LG phone those days, one with a small 1.5" screen. . It was an unknown number. "Must be one of the telemarketers", I thought. Looking at the number on screen, I was contemplating whether I should ignore it, or pick it up and give them an earful. I chose to do the later. I picked up the call, and before I could hurl some of the most choicest abuses, I heard the "Hello" from the other end. It was a girl.

"Hi!!", I managed to mutter. "Pehchana nahi", she giggled. A tug of war started inside me, between the fluttering heart which was already skipping a few beats and the ever so defensive brain, which had started drawing a list of suspects, behind what was obviously a prank.  "Ji nahi, nai pehchana!! Kaun bol rahe the aap", I sloppily said. "Kya yaar... School khatam ho gaya toh doston ko bhi bhul jaaoge kya". She is clearly flirting with me, my Sherlock of a brain thought. "This is Srabani", she said. It took me a few moments to register. "I got your number from Ipsita, thought would check up on you. But now it seems it was a waste. Tumhe toh main yaad bhi nai". In my defence, we had hardly ever spoken in school. I used to think she was way out of my league, and the only reason she knew I existed was because she used to sit next to my sister. To be actually talking to someone for whom you had once nursed a crush is unnerving in itself, let alone being caught off-guard.

"Arey yaad kyun nai hai. Bilkul yaad hai, woh toh yahaan network kharap rehta hai toh sunai nai deta theek se. How have you been". At this point in time, I had switched from being defensive to full on damage control mode. We spoke for about 20 odd minutes. It turned out, that she had taken the year off to prepare for her medical entrance examinations, and her days were mostly being spent in either coaching classes, or hogging street food, or sleeping. She said that she had gotten my number that afternoon, and she thought it would be fun to prank me. I remember standing on a piece of rock, right outside my hostel when I was speaking to her. I remember it because, ever since then, whenever I have spoken to her from that hostel, it has almost always been, while standing on that piece of rock. By the time I had hung up, I was already itching to text her.

Later that night, after a lot of retrospection I mustered up the courage to send her a text. Torn between wanting to text her and looking like a desperate loser, I zeroed in on one of the forwarded messages lying in my inbox. It took immense effort to press the send button.

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"Sent"

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"Delivered"

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"Why wasn't she replying."

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"Maybe she hasn't seen it yet."

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"Oh come on!! It was sent ages ago. Of course she has seen it."

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"She just thinks you are a los.."

"LOL" she had replied. I looked at that for quite a while, before sending her another text, asking her if she's had her dinner yet. That opened our first ever dialogue over sms. I told her about my college, my hostel life, my exam for which I hadn't started studying at all. We chatted for quite some time. After wishing her good-night, I kept the phone aside, opened the book and started thinking about her. A couple of hours of day dreaming later, I closed the book, switched off the lights, and went to bed. I spent the next hour in bed, re-reading our texts.

The next morning, I woke up just minutes before the exam, thanks to my roommate. I managed to get myself in the college uniform(yes, our college had uniforms), grabbed my belongings, and ran towards the college building. I reached the exam hall just in time. I kept my notes and my bag, outside the class, and was about to switch off my phone, when I saw it's screen flicker to life. "1 unread message from Srabani". I opened the message. "Best of luck. Call me after the exam.", it read. I switched off the phone, and entered the exam hall, with the most moronic grin possible, plastered across my face. I sat on my desk, totally oblivious to my surroundings. "She remembered...", that's all I could think of.

"Abey chal.." The roll number behind me barked. "Behra hai kya bey. Bola na usne, question papers print ho ke nai aaye hain. They are going to reschedule this paper at the end of this week. Ab chal." I followed the trail of my ecstatic classmates, out of the exam hall, out of the college building, and towards the college canteen. "Ek veg patties aur ek coke", I ordered and dailed her number. "Itni jaldi exam khatam ho gaya tumhara. Kuch bhi nai likha kya" she laughed. "Exam ho jaata aaj, to sahi mein kuch nai likhe paata. Padhai ki kahan thi maine. Woh toh shukar hai ke aaj ka paper cancel ho gaya.", I explained. "Wow!! Lucky you", she teased. "Indeed. Actually all credit goes to you. You wished me before the exam, and that seems to have bailed me out. I am pretty sure I would have flunked otherwise." I said with as much sincerity as I could. "Oh really!!", she faked surprise in the most adorable manner. "Now you can't let this gift go to waste. It is now your moral duty to wish me before every exam. You don't want me to fail do u. I would need all the luck I can get, and it turns out that you are lucky for me." By this time, we were both short of laughing out loud. "You know what, that's what I should call you from today, Lucky. Infact, right after this call, I am also going to save your name as 'Lucky' in my phone."

Oh, I was just flirting with her. I have never addressed her as 'Lucky', ever. But I did do something else. That day after hanging up, I went into the contact details of my phone, and changed her name from "Srabani" to "Lucky". It's been more than 10 years since I edited that contact in my phone.

Since then, we have fallen in love, finished our colleges, spent years apart living in different cities, fought often with each other, and ocassionally with the world. In this last decade, my phone has changed too, and so has her number. But through all of this, through all these years, she has always, without fail, continued to be, "Lucky" for me.

I grew up in a joint family, during my initial years. We had three tvs, one was a big color tv, that was in the living room of our house, an uncle of mine had another one, a tad bit smaller color tv, but with a remote, and my parents had a smaller black and white tv in our room, one that came with knobs. All three tv sets had one thing in common, they had only two channels that aired. That seemed to be enough back then.

Occasionally we would rent a vcr, and watch one of the recently released movies. Every Sunday morning we would all sit infront of the big color tv in the living room, and watch a few of those shows, that every Indian family used to watch on Sunday mornings. Mind you, the younger ones like us never had a say in what was to be seen, nor that it really registered to us.

In those days, when we used to have our summer holidays, it was always the same place we went to, my mom's hometown. Year after year, the same trip, two nights worth of train journey, followed by atleast ten days of the most amazing time with cousins from my mother's side, who like me used to come down there every summer for their vacations. There too the story was same, a couple of black and white tv sets, with knobs, and the same two channels. But the place had an upside, it had a cinema right next to it. And me and an elder cousin sister of mine used to have free access to last row seats now n then, courtesy of the usher to whom we were like nieces and nephews.

One such summer, we left my home town, and kicked off the vacation on a familiar note - two nights of train journey, followed by a 3 hour long car drive, to my mom's native. There used to be these vast mango troves outside my mom's native, through which the car took us and finally dropped us in front of the house. This time too I was greeted with the same black and white tv with knobs, but there was something different about it. It didn't just air those two channels anymore. My uncle had installed something called 'a cable connection'. It was like this treasure box of channels, all i had to do was turn the knob and the picture on the screen fluttered to something else entirely. No more static hissing, no more day long boring programs, no more of those two channels. There were channels that played music all day long, channels that  kept playing movies one after the other, channels with just cartoons in them!!!

That summer, we hardly ever went to the cinema next door. The mango troves outside the house remained unexplored. The early morning ritual of visiting the market with my uncle became a rare occurrence. We were glued to the tv for as long as I can remember. Amidst all these new shows, I Dream of Jeannie, was my favourite. It simply cracked me up. I remember it used to come at 9 in the morning and was repeated at 7:30 in the evening and I made sure to catch it both times. My cousins meanwhile, used to go gaga over these early versions of reality shows that were just on the cusp of their infancy. It was a summer love affair for us, with these channels, with this new way of tv, and of course for me, with Jeannie. The whole vacation passed in the blink of an eye, and before we could register, it was already the day before, I was supposed to leave.

Memory is a strange thing, isn't it. There are certain times in our life that stay imprinted in our conciousness, even though they might not seem so significant. I remember the last day of the vacation so vividly, that I can still close my eyes and be there again. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the tv, and I Dream of Jeannie was on. I was engrossed in it, but I wasn't quite enjoying it that day. The blues of leaving that night had already started haunting me. My dad was on the landline next to the table, talking to his brother, sharing the train details of our departure. He then asked me to take the phone, it was one of my elder cousins who wanted to talk to me. I dragged myself to the phone and placed the receiver next to my ear.

My elder cousin sister was on the other end of the line and she was exhilarated.

"Guess what happened while you were gone", she squeaked. "What did happen", my slow monotonous voice droned. "You won't believe it. We have gotten something called skyview two days back, it's a cable connection. They are giving out 99 channels, Sony, Zee, Cartoon Network and so much more. We can also call them and request them to play a movie and they will. We don't even have to rent a vcr for that now. And there's this show that we all watch every Sunday morning now. It's on Sony. You will love it. It's called 'I Dream of Jeanie.'". I was listening to her voice, with this ear to ear grin pasted on my face, while i overlooked the tv, just when Jeannie in her signature style folded her hands, and winked.

You know those rare times, when you are aware that you have to get up and move, and you only have a few moments to be in the state you are in. And you are in this awareness zone in those few fleeting moments, fully conscious of the fact that time is passing away. Well, I am right now in one of those moments. 

I am lying here, in conflict with myself, listening to the lull hymns of nothingness around me, wondering about what is real.

Did I really see what I think I saw? Could it be possible! Or was it a dream? And how long have I been lying here. I am pretty sure it was a nightmare, just had a bad dream. I am chickening out, nothing else. I should clear my head. I should focus.

"Are you sure it's not real!!!"

I don't know what is more unsettling. The crackling coldness of the silence around me being shattered by this high pitched voice or the fact that this voice seems to be coming from inside me.

I need to stay calm. It's all in my head. Here I am in my own house, in my own bed. There's nothing out there. I have this portrait of God hanging above my head. I look at it intently and try to gather some courage. I keep looking at it, and slowly it dawns upon me, that my God is within me too and as long as He resonates from my being, I am safe. 

"Do you really think so? If you have so much faith in Him, why don't you come out for a little stroll and we shall see if you are really safe"

This time I am sure the voice was coming from inside my head. The same high pitched crackle, leaving me shivering with cold sweat. Against my best judgement, I finally got up from the bed and started walking towards the verandah. There's a glass window next to the door of the verandah through which I peeked. Pitch black darkness, not a sound, absolute void. I slowly opened the door and before i could step out, a blast of cold air hit me.

With every strand of hair in my body standing, I started praying in my head and stepped out. The verandah was huge, so there was quite a bit of ground to cover. With slow unsure steps, I moved till the edge and turned around. I could see everything from here, my eyes accustomed to the darkness by now. 

The entire verandah was empty, there was no breeze, as if someone had sucked all the air out of the place and yet i could feel the chill in the air, piercing through me. The door stood open as I had left it, with the vast silent verandah spread in-between. Never before had the night seemed so still. I shook my head and started walking back in. After a few steps i stopped, somewhere halfway between the edge and the door. I had this phantom feeling that something moved behind me. I slowly turned at that spot towards the edge and even before I could register what I saw, I found myself in my bed.

Did I really see what I think I saw? Could it be possible! Or was it a dream? And how long have I been lying here. I am pretty sure it was a nightmare, just had a bad dream. I am chickening out, nothing else. I should clear my head. I should focus.

"Are you sure it's not real!!!"

- Avra Sengupta