An untellable secret
(Some secrets may better remain secrets for ever)
Kotra Siva Rama Krishna
Sometimes your mind wakes up first but not your body. When your mind wakes up that you can know about the surroundings, about yourself, about where you are and you desperately try to move. But as your body does not wake up it would not cooperate with you. You do have a feeling that you are tightly tied with something. You cannot even open your eyes.” Niranjan explained.
“How this sleep paralysis is going to be useful to us?” Sukanya asked.
“I already said to you. It makes you to stick to the bed restraining from doing whatever you are doing in a dream. If there is no sleep paralysis you do everything that you do in a dream. In fact you can come to know about this sleep paralysis only when your mind becomes completely sober while your body is sleeping. If your mind is in semi-sleep that means in a dream state, you cannot be known about this sleep paralysis at all.”
“Interesting indeed!”Sukanya nodded her head.
“You are right” Menaka said.
“Even in sleep paralysis also you do one thing for sure that you can control. That is breathing. Take long and deep breaths. That makes you conscious of your body and you can come out of this sleep paralysis. If ever you subject to sleep paralysis just do this”
“Alright, I sure shall try it.” Sukanya laughed. “If ever I subject to this.” Menaka also nodded her head and smiled.
“We indeed came to know a very important thing on this day” Sukanya said. “You are really a very much interesting person.”
“I am not an interesting person. Human mind itself a very interesting thing. Psychology itself is a very interesting thing.” Niranjan said.
“I want to ask you a question.” Sukanya said. “Do you believe in para-psychology? I mean black magic, voodoo , etc.”
“Why do you want to ask this question to me?” Niranjan asked her with a smile.
“I don’t know. I just want to know your opinion.”
“Before I tell my opinion to you.” Niranjan said. “You tell me your opinion. Do you believe in this supernatural?”
“Really difficult to say. Tough question.” Sukanya smiled. “I cannot say I believe in these. Because I have no experience whatsoever in it. At the same time I cannot say I don’t believe. Because I have heard stories from my friends who have experience in supernatural.”
Niranjan hissed out heavily. He did not say anything.
“I said about me. You tell your opinion on this.”
“I have belief in supernatural.” Surprising them both Niranjan said.
“Really! You do believe in supernatural? You do believe in black magic, voodoo like things?” Sukanya asked him still with surprise.
Niranjan laughed and said. “I said I believe in supernatural. I did not say I believe in black magic, voodoo like things.”
“What that means?” Menaka asked him.
“I believe in god. I believe in telepathy. I believe in ESP. I believe in knowing the future in before. But not in the things like black magic, voodoo etc.”
“You believe in god?”
“Why should not I believe in god? I have complete faith in god.”
“You believe in ESP? You believe in knowing the future in before?” Sukanya asked him.
“Yes. I think I have said this so to you.”
“Then can you tell me what happens in the near future?”
“You are asking all the tough questions.” Niranjan once again laughed and said. “I said I have belief in knowing the future before. But I did not say I have the ability to know the future in before.”
“Unless, otherwise you have some experience in it you would not have said it like that. You must have some ability to know about the future in before.”
Niranjan did not say anything. The small smile is playing its role on his lips.
“Try and tell me. What is going to happen in the near future?”
Niranjan remained silent for a moment. His face became serious.
“Have you come to know anything at all about future?”
He suddenly said. “You do come here again with your mother in one or two days. In fact your mother would take you to here.”
‘Really? Why my mother does take me here to you? She is not having much acquaintance with you.”
“Only that is what I came to know. But I cannot say why your mother wants to take you here. It can be known only after the incident happens.”
Menaka and Sukanya remained silent. They did not know what to say immediately.
“Is there any particular purpose behind your visit to me on this day?” after few seconds silence, Niranjan asked them.
“No.” Menaka nodded her head in negation. “Suddenly Menaka and I thought to come and talk with you. It is always a pleasure to have a discussion with you to anyone.”
“Thank you. But I don’t think myself as interesting or amusing. I am just a normal and ordinary person.”
“May be you are thinking yourself so. But our opinion on you is different. In fact Nirupama also thought about you in the same way.” Sukanya said.
“Nirupama is a different girl. So enthusiastic and so active. I was always quite sure that she would become a great psychologist.” Suddenly there was sorrow in his face and his voice was full of sadness.
The place filled with heavy silence. Only Niranjan broke it. “She used to tell me almost all the things of hers. Why she did not prefer to tell me anything at all before committing that ghastly thing….”
“Nirupama wanted to keep it a secret from one and all.” Menaka said.
“Why you are thinking that Menaka wanted to keep that thing which compelled her to commit suicide a secret?’
“She took particular care that not to be revealed to anyone. No hint … no clue ….nothing.”
“But what about the writings she has left? ‘I cannot bear this’ and ‘I want to pluck my eyes out.”
“Are you thinking that she left these messages intentionally? Not at all. They were her involuntary and unintentional acts.”Menaka hissed out.
Niranjan paused for a moment and then said and smiled. “You are right. My opinion also is exactly that. I just want to see what you do say to that. You are also thinking in a perfect way.”
“Thank you sir” Menaka’s cheeks were blushed on hearing that.
There was some silence again prevailed in that place.
“How long ago you visited her house before she committed suicide?”
“I often go there. I am a relative to Nirmala. There is strong friendship between me and Ranganath also.”
“I know about that.” Sukanya said.
“Not many times before her committing suiside. May be on only one occasion I think I went to her home just fifteen days or so before her committing suicide, I have to go out of station. I have come to my home only after her death.” He paused a second before saying again. “I don’t remember much about it now.”
“Was Nirupama always friendly and affectionately to you?” Menaka was observing him keenly. She was remembering the discussion that went in between her and Sukanya about Niranjan.
“Hundred percent. She always has great respect for me. It is because of me she took psychology in her post graduation.”
“I think I heard so.” Menaka said. “Anyhow can you make anything at all out of the sentences she left for us to break our heads to know the meaning?”
“I am sorry. I have been also thinking about those sentences but could not come to any conclusion at all.”
“Did my uncle meet you again to know about anything? I think that he had mention to me to come to you to see if you remember anything vital regarding Nirupama.”
“Not recently.” Niranjan said. “I am trying very hard to see whether there is any important thing that I can remember with respect to Nirupama. But I could not.”
“It is surprising. None of us can understand why she had written those sentences so.” Sukanya said heavily. After her discussion so with Menaka, she could not feel all normal at Niranjan even however much chance was there that their presumption was wrong.
The conversation with Niranjan was more than half an hour or so. But both of them also could not feel at home after a discussion like that about him. As usual Niranjan did not take off his back spectacles even for once all the time.
&&&
It was 8 in the night. Menaka completed her dinner early and came into her room upstairs. Ranganath was not in the home then. Nirmala said that she would take her dinner late.
Menaka was not feeling comfortable. She helped her uncle in some mysteries before. In all the matters she was successful. It was the only mystery that she was feeling frustrated. Even after having two clues directly from the person concerned, they could not go anywhere. Her uncle was still feeling optimistic but she could not feel like that.
She got off from the bed and looked around the room carefully. All the Nirupama’s articles were adjusted neatly after she entered into the room. One cupboard there filled with her books. She went through the books many a time finding for a clue. She searched page after page in vain.
When she found Nirupama’s dairy in that cupboard she felt so happy. She thought she sure could find clues in that to their mystery. But however many times she went through that the result was the same. She did not write it regularly. It appeared that she wrote it whenever she felt so happy. All the incidents narrated in it were someway or other related to the happy moments in her life.
‘I am feeling so happy on this day. The first day in the college went on so joyously for me. It should be in fact dismaying to me. I have been separated from Sukanya my best friend. Why I have preferred to study psychology? Why Sukanya did not prefer to study psychology? But I got other friends.”
Who were the other friends? Menaka surprised again. She already inquired with Sukanya.
“She did not make any serious friendship with anyone. Very few friends with less intimacy anyhow. I was the only close friend to her all the time. I am not thinking that she revealed anything about her secret to them either.” Sukanya disappointed her. Menaka flipped over some more pages.
‘What an interesting person Niranjan is! I am really so much interested. If it were not for Niranjan, I would not have joined in psychology at all. I am not regretting at all for my joining in psychology. Psychology is indeed a very interesting subject.”
Menaka hissed heavily and flipped to further.
“It seems Sukanya also is enjoying whatever she is studying. No surprise she selected that major herself. Still I cannot have anyone else as a friend as that much of Sukanya. She is really so wonderful. I do enjoy a lot talking with four people. Father, mother, Sukanya and Niranjan.”
Menaka nodded her head helplessly. ‘Why did not you leave a single clue in your dairy Niroo?’ she thought disappointedly while flipping the pages. She suddenly stopped at one page.
‘On this day my new friend Mallika said ‘your eyes are so beautiful. They are the main attraction in your face’.
Menaka sat bolt straight in the bed. She missed it reading previously. My god! She continued reading it.
‘It is not new to me that people praise my beauty and my eyes. But I oddly felt even more happy when Mallika said that my eyes are more beautiful and attractive. I observed myself carefully in the mirror. I am glamorous of course. But I cannot see that much special in my eyes.’
‘The most important thing here is’ Menaka thought ‘whether she believed it or not Nirupama felt happy that other people praising her eyes. She did not despise them. There is no chance at all that she hated them that much to want or strongly wish to pluck them out.’
(I hope that you enjoyed upto here. I shall publish the next chapter as soon as possible. Please don’t forget to rate and review.)
