Lost And Never Found

Chapter One 

I have lost my soul. 

Is that even possible? 

I guess. 

I don’t know. 

But I feel numb. Unhappy. Empty. Aren’t those all the signs that something is wrong with you? Maybe. 

We are on a family vacation to Delhi. And you must be thinking, girl, who goes on a family vacation to Delhi? No mountains. No clean waters. No pure air. Have you seen the recent air quality rate of Delhi? Me? Nah. Figures don’t matter to the Jain family. 

And besides, my grandma lives in Delhi and that means we all have to visit her time to time to give her the feel of having a family. 

By the way, did you know that breathing in the air of Delhi means smoking five cigarettes a day. God. Plus the trees in Delhi are so brown that you don’t think that they were ever green. 

I say this because I cared about my birthplace. But not anymore. 

You know why? 

Because I don’t have a soul, remember? I am feeling nothing. So what Delhi is spoiled? She’s not my kid. I don’t have the responsibility to think all about it when all others are doing nothing. This is how not having a thoughtful soul makes me feel. Nothing. 

You can come to me at this moment and say that my grandma died. Nada. You won’t see a single tear in my eye. 

That’s how things work. 

A human is both mortal and eternal. At death, the mortal form dies and the soul lives on. And no one knows…where it goes. 

So that’s why I am searching for my soul. I don’t want to lose it before time. I want to live on, until my body gives in, I want to live until that time—and then? 

And then even the most stubborn humans accept death without a tussle which they are already destined to lose. Same will I do too. 

But I want my soul back. It’s gone somewhere and it’s not planning to come back. I need to find it. 

Three hours ago at 12 noon we had visited my aunt in Delhi. She was one of the many relatives of ours who live there, so mom thought it would be nice to get together. 

For me, it wasn’t nice. 

Because I am positive, that that’s the place where I lost my soul; where some destinies must’ve been planned this way—for me to be separated from my soul. But I wasn’t supposed to know about it. Yet I do. Because I notice everything. I noticed it when the people there were behaving a little differently after lunch; I noticed it when things got awkward. 

I am going to find the reason for that change. 

So I asked my brother to drop me there. And the reason I told him was that I had lost my mathematics textbook somewhere and I was sure it must be in their house. 

Now I am standing in front of their door, gathering my courage which isn’t there, and wondering how will I manage to look for my soul. I have no guide on that issue. 

I reach up from my hand and ring the doorbell. Somewhere from inside the faint sound comes. I wait. Then there are voices, voices of someone talking, and my heart rate increases for just a second. I am having some trouble meeting people. They make me feel so small nowadays. 

There’s one voice which is getting louder and louder with every second, and I can even hear the footsteps of the person who’s coming to open the door. 

I need to do this. 

I need to find my soul. 

The door swings open. My cousin sister, Mitali is standing there, looking at me through her round glasses beneath her baby-cut hair. She tells me not to say baby-cut, and instead call them bangs, but they look cute—like a baby's hair, so I guess it doesn’t kill her to accept the cuteness I am entitling her to. 

However, today as I stand there, my eyes momentarily examining her hair, I realize that they’re not that pretty. Maybe I was mistaken in taking them so. 

Mitali is frowning at me confusedly. 

Come on, I am your sister. We met an hour ago. Remember? 

She does. Oh, she does. Because she raises her eyebrows at me. “Esha. What happened?” 

“I—” 

“Come in,” She steps out of the way and then closes the door behind me as I walk in. 

In the hall, my cousin brother is sitting in front of the television screen, looking at it—or more like staring at it because he has black earphones in his ears. My other brother, Manu, who is only seven is bouncing around on the sofa and grinning like seven-year olds should. The moment he sees me, his face splits into a grin of surprise—and even though we had met in the afternoon and he should not have been thrilled to see me, he is. 

“Esha!” He exclaims and jumps down from the sofa and runs to me. He hugs my left leg. Oh, he is short. 

This particular show of affection he did isn't doing much effect on me. Okay, I hadn’t thought that my brother would be happy to see me, but he was, and that was actually nice considering how they usually didn’t act nice. But I have other matters. 

I look up at my sister. “I guess I forgot my mathematics textbook here.” 

She raises her eyebrows again. Has she been part of some beauty treatment? Why are her eyebrows so perfect? “You brought it here?” She asks. 

“I guess.” 

“Well…” She purses her colored lips. Violet. “Then you can look around.” 

I nod, then hold my brother away from my leg and deposit him back on the sofa. Then I stand up straight and look around. I hadn’t thought about this. Soul-hunting can be misleading. 

And Mitali is standing there, waiting for me to start my move. Only if I knew my move. 

“I'll...look,” I say. “You can go.” 

I almost think that she will raise her perfect eyebrows again and say that being a year younger than her, I should make sure I don’t dare to talk rudely to her. But she doesn’t. Instead she turns around and goes into her room, almost as if she was just waiting for me to allow her to go on. Maybe she was standing there just because of her guest instincts. 

I turn back and see my brother Mahir—the earphone guy, but now he didn’t have earphones—staring at me. “You?” He asked. 

I nod. “I forgot—” 

“Esha?” My aunt is standing in the doorway, looking at me with an amused expression I sure do hate. “What happened, dear?” 

I nod again. So many people—all with their eyes on me—do give me the creeps. And I don’t want the attention they are making me the centre of. 

“I forgot my mathematics textbook,” I answer. 

“Ohh. Did you come alone?” 

“Prateek dropped me,” I say. 

She nods. “You must’ve forgot your textbook when you came out after playing the trade game in Mahir's room—that is, if you brought it with you in there. Do you want my help? Or Mahir’s—” 

“No,” I say. “I'll look myself.” 

“—Mahir, help your sister look for her book.” She commands, then smiles at me, and goes back the way she came, probably into the kitchen. 

I don’t feel much but one thing I do is that she doesn’t trust me with her house. Maybe she is afraid that I am lying about the textbook and maybe what I only want to do is to steal something. Surprisingly I don’t think about it twice. But then I turn around to see Mahir glaring at me from his position on the floor. 

I must’ve interrupted him music album, or podcast—or whatever he was listening. 

He shot up and then walked past me to his room, shooting me a reluctant ‘Come’. And I followed. 

My soul must be getting anxious and fidgety, waiting for mommy to come. 

I don’t want to see a soul fidgety. 

Chapter Two 

“Did you really forget your textbook here?” He asks as we reach the door and he opens it. 

“Yeah.” 

“When you came here, weren’t you empty-handed?” He asks. We step into the room and I look around. 

Was my plan so poorly planned? 

“I was?” I ask. 

He nods. “You didn’t even bring chocolates. Where was your book? In your mouth? Because that’s pretty big considering how much you talk.” 

Considering how he is younger than me and is still managing to talk so much rubbish, I should feel angry and push him out of the room and complain to his mother. 

The Esha Before would do that. 

The Esha Now is too preoccupied to care. 

What change can one more person insulting me bring in my life? I have already been pushed around here and there, and ignored, and made fun of. Now it feels like a routine. 

But Mahir is surprised that I am not yelling at him. He stares at me with wide and confused eyes. “Esha?” 

I pretend not to hear, then step further into the room and looks round, knowing perfectly well that something as precious as my soul will not be hiding beneath the pillow and waiting for me to pick him up. 

My soul would be a her, right? 

I should call her ‘her’. Fine. 

“You can go,” I say. Mahir is still standing there. “I don’t need help.”

He goes. Just like that. 

No second thoughts. 

No ‘Are you sure’. 

No ‘sorry for saying you have a big mouth'. He goes. 

I sigh, then look around into the room. 

It is messy. The monopoly game we played an hour ago is still there, set-up just as we had left it. The bedsheets are creased. And so is my forehead. 

Can I even find my soul like this? 

Just glancing around waiting for it to pop out of the cupboard and say ‘Voila, here I am!’ wasn’t going to work. 

The standard protocol is to recall every single place I went, every single emotion I experienced, every single person I met—and then arrange them in graphical representation to see which ones are highly likely to have created the circumstances to take away a part of my essence. 

It is going to be hard work. 

Maybe I should go as my aunt says, starting with this room—where I spent most of my time when I was in their apartment—and then working ahead. 

I remember coming in from the main door—empty-handed, yes—and then greeting everyone present there, then coming and standing close to my aunt, because she asked me to, because she couldn’t believe how much had I grown. 

Then the elders talked about boring topics, like our studies and their work and how they all were doing. And of course, weather. Delhi is so hot in the summer, and it is always freezing in winters, they said. And then they asked how's everything going in Surat—that’s where we live. 

Then Mitali suddenly said that she wanted to show me something. And then they told us to go, and maybe also play a game with Mahir and Manu, so that they could stop being so not awkward and so uncertain. Right there, I could see something was up. Once the kids were out, except my elder brother Prateek, of course—he's too old to go with us teeny-meeny kiddos—the elders started on the real topic they must’ve been waiting to talk about. 

I don’t know what it was. 

But I did hear one word while on my way out. 

Grandma. 

Mitali showed me her new colour set—with twenty-four different types of brushes and a box of acrylic paints, then poster colours, then watercolours, then pencil crayons and plastic crayons, and shading pencils, and sketching pens, and markers and then at last a small pocket size set of brick paints with a small red brush the size of your index finger. Then at last she showed me her sketchbooks—one with white pages, one with creamy white pages, and then completely black pages (I don’t know, it looked a little over-the-top). 

You can almost think she was sponsoring a district painting competition. 

She asked me if I would like to draw with her. 

I said no. 

But still I got jealous. 

My soul must’ve been with me at the moment, otherwise I wouldn’t have experienced the emotion. 

I told her that I have a tablet—electronic one—which has high features for digital drawing and painting. She laughed and said that we should go play a monopoly game in Mahir’s room. I got her there. 

I did not mean to bluff. But I got a tablet. My parents bought it to me a few days ago, and now that I come to think of it, I do feel a little confused. It wasn’t my birthday. Why had I parents got me the expensive tablet which they knew grandma had already promised me a few months ago? 

Mahir and Manu were sitting on the bed, setting up the game. And I smiled at the sight of it. We used to play it so much when we were younger. I jumped down beside Manu and the game started. 

Are you still with me? 

Yeah, my soul is still with me too. 

The game was easy, considering how trade games are nothing but rolling dices, seeing the numbers and wanting more, and then moving the pieces, and landing on whole cities concentrated in two centimetres squares. Repeat. 

Nothing else. 

But still there was something in the togetherness and love of the siblings which I liked during my visit there. We were meeting after so many days. Nothing particular had changed. Expect maybe Mitali had grown a little proud of her possessions, Mahir had grown a little arrogant, but still he was my brother. And Manu had grown in height. 

Me? 

You know what happened with me. 

Mahir won. Because he plays the game all day long, sometimes with himself. 

“That was fun,” he said, then smirked up at us. “Losers.” 

“One more please,” Manu said, looking at me. 

“Losers.” 

I looked up at Mahir. “He was not talking to you, idiot. He wants to play another game, not be called loser one more time.” 

Mitali laughed. 

“Okay, fine,” I said. “If—” 

That’s when my brother poked his head in from the door. That’s when he made the most bored face he could behind our backs. That’s when he said, “What the heck have you kiddos been doing? Lunch's ready.” 

“Okay,” Mitali shrugged. “No need to be rude.” 

He raised an eyebrow at her, a gesture which indirectly meant no messing with me. 

We went for lunch. 

My aunt cooks really bland food. There is no spice because she says it’s not good for anyone. I don’t know which health magazine filled that detail in her mind. 

After taking a bite of his food, my brother made a face, then mom casted him a furious look, and then he quickly wiped the disgusted expression off his face before anyone could see and went on eating the undernourished food.

I didn’t exactly feel pumped up when it was time for dessert. Was my soul lost by then? Or maybe it wasn’t. Because dessert was a normal thing in their house, they ate dessert in lunch and dinner. And sometimes after breakfast too. Everyone loved it because it was the only thing not made by aunt. 

So maybe I was fine and just bored by the slow and lazy turn of events. 

Things now seem like a blur. 

We watched a film then, but I didn’t have my mind in it. But then I was busy in telling Mahir about the new piece of music I learnt on guitar. Mahir told me that he would someday like to hear it. 

I don’t even remember seeing the name of the movie. Or did I see it? Did I see it and still not remember it? 

This really gives me headaches. 

This void inside me. 

My soul has abandoned me and so along has She taken my sanity. 

Chapter Three 

I can’t remember. 

I just can’t. I can’t feel anything, can’t remember anything that happened. Neither can I find a way to find Her. 

I sit down on the edge of the bed and hold my head in my hands, digging my unpainted, colourless nails in my hair. 

It’s been so long It’s starting to hurt.

My head vaguely feels empty. My body feels weak and not being able to stand on itself. Your body can’t live without the soul for long. It is what gives you the immortality—the temporary immortality we humans possess. Without the soul the body is going to rot, permanently. 

And surprisingly, it doesn’t give me the creeps. Maybe you can’t even be afraid if you don’t have a heart. The heart is what is so afraid of the consequences. 

Because the heart thinks a lot, about everything, and if anything is missing from the puzzle, it is the heart which spends every moment to come into figuring out from where to borrow the missing piece. 

My mom always used to say, that it is when you start thinking too much about something that you start losing it. Your thinking. 

Just like...while you’re busy weeping over the answers your life has given you, your mind is all along not even bothering to remember the question. 

What’s the gist of it? I don’t know. Maybe...don’t cry. 

Mom is very unpredictable. 

“Psst.” 

I look up and see Mahir standing at the door. “Are you done?” He asked. “We're busy here, you see.” 

I turn away and pretend to examine closely something kept on the drawer. I can feel his eyes on my back. I hope he can’t sense the fact that I am empty. 

“I’m still searching,” I say. “Go away.” 

I wait until I hear the door closing. Then his receding footsteps. 

Again. No sorry. 

——————

“I can feel nothing 

It all looks so dumb 

And even though the world is wiser still...

I do feel dumb...oooh...I do feel dumb. 

And even though everyone does see it...

I am going to succumb...right...I am going to succumb. 

...

But life is starting to 

Look some new 

If you see it through 

Your eyes two.

I’m sure it’s starting to 

Look some new 

If you see it through...you do 

Just need your eyes two.” 

Definitely not my best. 

If you are thinking I make these types of bad songs with even worse rhyming schemes, then please reconsider. Okay, sometimes I do like this...I forget the main point and meaning of the song and focus on just matching perfect rhyming words and see in which way can they be put and still manage to make a little meaning and save my embarrassment. 

But not always. 

However, in this song, I feel a little confused. 

The first part is so sad, because the person is going to succumb and all and it means he is going to his doom. Right? And in the second part, he is jolly well talking about life and how it can be new and beautiful if only you just open your eyes and see clearly. 

It looks a little messed up. 

But the person feels like me. I feel the same. 

I have lost Her. I can’t do anything, maybe She’ll come when She’ll wish to. Till then, I am left numb. But how bad is it? I don’t have to care about people and how they feel about me. I don’t have to be sad or broken, because there'll be nothing to break. I'll be strong because what else can I be? People who've already put up to grief once don’t feel the pain again. Grief is like a doorway they passed once, and now in front of them is the same world, but with a completely different story and view.  

I keep Mahir’s guitar away in its place and then I lie back on the bed. Just a minute. Then I am going to go out and go away. Because She is coming back only when she wishes to. Till then, I have to cope up with everything...myself. 

I walk into the hall and see Mahir again gaping at the TV in his usual state with earphones and stupidity. Manu is now sitting tiredly on the sofa after doing some fitness jumping exercises. That’s the moment the phone chooses to ring. 

I pick it up, then look at the name. Someone named Saket Jain. 

Oh, right. My father. I pick it up. 

“Hello?” I say, 

“Esha?” He says. “Where are you?” 

“Where did you call?” 

“Oh, right, Esha,” he says. “Why are you at your aunt's house?” 

“I forgot my maths textbook in here.” 

“Huh?” 

“I forgot my maths textbook in here.” 

“You took your book there?” 

“Yes,” I reply. “Prateek dropped me.” 

“Are you sure, Esha?” Papa asks. “I mean...are you all right? Prateek dropped you?” 

“Yeah, so what?” 

“I didn’t see you bring any textbook." 

"I brought it in my bag." 

"Oo-kay...And how come your brother drop you so easily?” He laughs, but it is a nervous laugh. “He usually doesn’t do all this, does he? And you made him your chauffeur?” 

I frown. Because papa is right. 

My brother never usually does such things. When I used to ask him if he would drop me off to my friend’s house so we could do homework together, he used to deny. Clearly. 

Now when I had asked him if he would drop me to aunt’s house where we had just gone...how could he have agreed before denying? 

“I don’t know, papa,” I say. 

“Yeah....I don’t know either,” Papa says, “Maybe he got a little common sense. Um...well, take care Esha. Come home soon. I don’t know which maths textbook you’re talking about, but...I'll tell Prateek. He'll come to take you. Bye.” 

...

Soul. 

A good soul. 

I don’t even remember to end the call. Maybe dad would do it. All I remember now is the thing he said. 

Some common sense. 

Some goodness. Kindness.

A good soul. Prateek got a good soul. 

I lost a good soul. He found one. 

Chapter Four 

As my brother pulls his bike in the apartment complex, he eyes my hands suspiciously. 

“Have you found your book,” he asks. I shake my head. 

He smirks. “Was your book in your fantasies too?” 

I don’t get what he is saying. “What fantasies?” 

“You don’t know?” 

“No,” I say as I mount the bike behind him. 

“Shocker,” he mutters. 

How can you fantasize if you don’t even have a soul? Isn’t it the place from where all the dreams and fantasies arise? 

My brother doesn’t understand. 

And then I wonder—would he have known it when my soul had gone into him? Does he know now—that I am numb, because he has my property, my existence in himself? As we are riding home, I am staring at his back. He wears a black hoodie. He looks nice. He has changed so much that now the past—the time when we both were kids and we both played together and when we didn’t need anyone else but just the two of us to find every happiness in the world—that time just feels like the past, now not ready to come again. 

I know this sounds creepy, but I am trying to figure if I can look...into him for a part of me. Maybe something crammed into him. You can't have two souls at the same time. 

I could’ve told him about the lost soul part, but we never actually had the relation. Just...big brother, little sister. Not much more. Nothing. 

This realisation was holding me back. 

Besides...

How do I even know my soul is with him? 

Just because he is acting a little nicer than before—just because he agreed to take me where I wanted to, when I wanted—doesn’t mean that he has some nice soul within him. I can’t do this on this basis. I just can’t. 

“Here comes home sweet home,” He parks the bike in the parking area of our temporary residence. Mom and papa said that we won’t live with any of our relatives. I don’t know why they said that. I don’t even know why we aren’t living with grandma. Beats me. 

I hop off the bike and then stand beside it. Before Prateek can get off, I muster up my most serious face and keep a hand on his arm. He looks at me. 

I think that maybe this moment will do something to him and he'll know what I am asking for. 

He isn’t the least bit moved. 

“What?” He asks. 

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But you need to give my soul back to me, okay?” 

I am staring at him. Seriously. 

He is staring at me. I wish he would do it seriously too. But then his face splits into a grin. “Come on, I am not interested in your latest eyeliner.” 

He gets off and my hand falls down. 

I look down at my shoulder frantically. Huh. 

Thank God, my arm is still attached. Maybe I just had a figure of speech. But it really scared me. 

“I’m not in mood for stupid jokes, Esha,” Prateek says, then starts walking towards the house. I am left alone. He pulls out a phone and then gets busy on it—apparently forgetting that he has a sister. 

I run after him. “No! Please, what use is She to you? It’s not like you’re a girl so you’ll need Her.” 

He freezes. 

He slowly turns back to me. 

Then he stares, with his mouth falling open with every passing second. 

“What?” The word is high-pitched. His voice doesn’t normally sound like this, but then normally he doesn’t look this lost either. “I mean, what?” 

He shakes his head slowly at me, all the while with his face set into a permanent disgusted expression. “You talk rubbish,” he says, then turns around and storms over to the stairs. 

That’s the precise moment my body wishes to break down. Without a soul, it’s like an orphan. Without a soul, I’m dead. 

My legs feel weak, just like they did at aunt’s house, and my knees buckle. 

With a thump I fall down on the concrete ground. And I lie there, my eyes open and staring at the blue sky—waiting for it to consume me—waiting to die. 

A few seconds later I see the face of my brother appear above me and fill my vision. His eyes are concerned, roaming around my face to look for something unnatural. 

“Are you...okay?” He asks doubtfully, letting away by instinct that he already knows I am not. “What game are you playing?” 

“I have lost my soul,” I whisper. “You have taken it.” 

He frowns. “I have taken what?” 

“My soul.” 

“Are you kidding?” 

“You took my soul. Return it, please. Else I am going to die.” 

He blinks rapidly, as if that’s going to put some sense into his head. We sit there like that for some time, the deserted parking area, my deserted mind. “Esha...” Prateek says gently after a couple of minutes. “Get up, please. Come on.” He holds my arm and pulls me up. 

We both sit down on the ground. 

Ready for some talk. 

I look up at him curiously, with wide eyes and childish admiration. 

“You have been alone in your room for two months now,” he says. “That has...that has made you distant...from all of us. Are you understanding? Stop living in your dreams and come out.” 

“What are you saying?” I ask slowly. 

“Stop fantasizing. Just stop with this pretence!” 

“Pretence?” 

I look down at my hands, my mouth falling open with every passing second, because of which realisation—I don’t know. I actually want to lie down. Close my eyes. 

But my brother seems to have answers. I want to listen to them too. 

“The world is stories and fantasies is nice,” he continues. “But real life is better. You need to stop with...hating it so much.” 

I narrow my eyes at him, irritated. “WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?!” 

He looks taken aback at my sudden outburst. But the thing about two months and pretence and all that he said...he has lost my trust. He tries to take my hand but I jerk it back. Then I stand up on wobbly legs and still manage to remain up. He shoots up too, panic and fear visible on his face. 

“You just don’t want to return my soul! Aunt was right. She told me about it!” 

I’m making this up. 

“Grandma agreed too. They know! You don’t want to return me my soul. You like Her there!” 

Prateek's face twists in a bizarre expression. “Grandma?” 

“Grandma, yes of course. She told me!” 

“Esha, wh—which grandma are you talking about?” 

“We have only one alive grandma! I'm talking about her. Not about any other grandma who’s come out of the box of ashes!” 

“Esha, we have z—” 

“She’s our grandma! How can you forget her? She lives in Delhi. We visited her yesterday. We stayed with her! How can you deny?” 

I’m breathing heavily. 

He's still staring at me. And he's shaking his head slowly, backing away quietly so his shoes make no sound in the complete silence. I stare at him, wanting him to come back and answer me, tell me everything's fine. He doesn't. The sun is dipping low now. The parking area is dark and gloomy. 

It feels like the world is going to end. 

I shouldn’t have shouted. 

But maybe my outburst now will remind him of the grandma who used to change his diapers some sixteen years ago. 

“There’s something you need to be updated upon,” he says, almost snaps. “Grandma died two months ago.” 

Chapter Five 

A shattered glass can’t break twice. 

Chapter Six 

Is he lying? 

Is he lying just to make me forget about my soul and mourn over my grandma? 

Besides, how can my grandma die? We met her this morning. Before we went to aunt’s house, it was her residence where we stepped first. And how can I even mourn if I don’t have a heart to feel pain in? That’s why I am asking for my soul in the first place. 

I look at him for a few seconds, then turn away from him. A heavy and paining lump is forming somewhere down my throat. It hurts every time I breathe. And my skin is so hot I am afraid it will burn. Are these signs of dying? Are these meant to be the window through which we can hear and see the approaching footsteps of death? 

The world around me is cruel. It is massive. It is populated. 

But the only people I have ever dared to confine to about my sorrows are the people who come into my dreams. My grandma come into my dreams. She tells me that in this savage world of wisdom, blessed are those who possess emotions in their heart. 

You need to be able to hear the soft hum at the end of each day—a hum which is inviting the night to just have a companion for the span of time the darkness is going to bring. 

Grandma, is she really there, or is it just what my brother says—a pretence? 

Does she really mean good, or is she just...dying and wanting me to accompany her to afterlife? Besides, isn’t afterlife just like the night? People are scared of it. They don’t want it to come. They just want to live in the day, the life. The Immortality. 

I am grandma’s companion, ain't I? I should go. With her. 

I remember a thing. 

Something my grandma used to mutter in the evenings. Sounds creepy? 

What isn’t? 

She used to whisper, sitting in her rocking chair at the end of each day, facing the dark forest just in front of her house, she used to whisper: 

Don’t come forth, people. Don’t come forth. Your true identity is so precious. I must advise you never to drop the charade. 

Chapter Seven 

ONE WEEK LATER 

“Grandma died two months ago. It was a quite funeral. Only a few relatives and family. We all went. Only...Esha couldn’t cope up. She was close to her. Very close. So she broke when she died...like a piece of fragile glass, the piece of glass you’re afraid to touch; when you’re afraid to see what’s written in the destiny of the million shattered pieces it divides into.” 

Prateek waits for a few seconds, while his friend notes down everything. School projects can sometimes be interesting, given how you can dig in the deepest secrets of someone. 

“I didn’t know mental illnesses could be so frightening,” his friend says. 

“I was afraid of the fate the million atoms of Esha had had written in their destiny. We had almost expected her to be angry, to yell, shout at someone to bring her grandmother back. But she didn’t do any of those intense things. She just went into her room, and didn’t return easily. As those who loved her, we tried. We tried to bring her back. But no luck. I still didn’t know what was wrong with her. But I did know one thing. She was not alone. Her room was filled with...things. Books, drawings, stuffed toys, letters she wrote to someone, most probably our grandmother, thinking one day she would read them. 

“We weren’t afraid. Esha wasn’t soft hearted. She could’ve never done any wrong thing. And so two months passed. It was 20th June. Hoping she would get reacquainted with the outside world, we thought of taking her to Delhi, where grandma lived—and died.” 

Prateek pauses for a few seconds for the moment to sink in. “No one knew what was going to happen within that short time.” 

“Cut to the part about the soul thing.” 

“I had just come to pick her up from her aunt’s house. And the moment she saw me, she started asking questions, saying sorry but also that she needed her soul back and so I should give in.” 

“That’s...strange.” 

“She had thought she lost her soul.” 

“How can that happen?” 

“It can’t.” 

“Then why was Esha behaving like that?” 

“She was afraid she had lost her soul. She had read so many fantasies in her two months room stay that now she had started behaving like one. Like a fantasy, thinking it was epic. But the truth was that, grandma's death had created a hollow inside her. A void. She was empty from inside, she couldn’t feel anything and as she read in so many books that your soul represents your thinking and all...she thought...no thinking capacity means no soul.”

His friend whistles. “Your sister sounds a little...out of her mind.” 

“During the vacation to Delhi, she thought that we were visiting grandma, that grandma was still alive. Fear overtook her senses and she began making stuff up—she began making excuses for things she did. Like...when she didn’t feel like laughing at a joke I told her, she thought there was nothing left inside her. She didn’t get angry at one of her brothers, she thought that maybe it was because of some sin she had done while ignoring and not talking to us during the two months in her room when she shut herself in. That’s the punishment she chose to give herself. She convinced herself that all this is happening because she lacks a soul...so she started on a soul hunt.” 

“Whoa.” 

Prateek holds up a hand. His friend looks at him, waiting for more. 

“We took her to our aunt. In new surroundings, her mind started conjuring up things. It made up the fact that her soul was lost and now she needed to find it. And maybe it was with me. It pushed away the realisation that grandma had died. That’s why she didn’t remember it when I told her. She still thought that her grandmother was all right, at her house; and that we had met her that morning.” 

His friend nods. “That’s really helpful, Prateek. I bet my professor is going to be impressed. So now what is going on with Esha? Where’s she?” 

“She now takes appointments with the doctor. It’s a pure psychological condition. Just...if you ask me...it feels like a very high level of PTSD. So we hired her a psychologist, who is trying to bring Esha back from the scary world of her dark dreams. I guess she must be having one of her lessons at this precise moment...” 

Chapter Eight 

I open my eyes slowly, then look at the man sitting in front of me, staring at me curiously. 

My psychologist.

“Did you try meditation?” He asks.

I nod. 

He grins triumphantly, thinking he has been successful in connecting me to God and spirituality. “Tell me things, then,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “What did you think about?” 

I smile a little. “I thought about an incidence in my childhood. When I was younger, I used to like tragic stories, stories with bad endings. I thought they were closer to life.” 

He nods slowly. “Okay, go on.” 

“So my mom used to teach me lessons in a similar way. Like...many people do...when I didn’t eat something, she used to tell me that I'll be undernourished and unhealthy and that I won’t be able to live a normal life. When I didn’t go to school she said that I'll grow up to be unemployed and uneducated and all.” 

“She said true things.” 

“One day I felt weak, and sad, and uncertain,” I say. “She didn’t have an answer to that one.” 

He purses his lips, then locks his hands behind his head. “Well, she could’ve said that when you are afraid of something, the fear will grip you again, stronger this time.” 

“She didn’t want to be negative. No mother wants to be negative about their child.” 

“Okay, you’re right in there.” 

“So, I used to complete her tradition, of telling me the consequences of everything I did. So the next time when I felt sad and unhappy from inside...like a void, I told her...” I bend forward towards him, not breaking the intense eye contact we are having. “When the devil arrives and sees the empty house within you, do you know what does he do?” 

He has a little amused expression on his face. I know it’s going to crumble soon. “Well, what?” 

“He enters without knocking.”