THE NEVER GONE

I had just returned from the coaching class and sat down to dinner. Usually I let my mother's talk wash over me while she served me food — mostly it was about whether I was dating someone, or when I planned to marry. I would nod, say "Hmm," and keep chewing. But that night, the word possessed stopped me mid-bite. A piece of chapati hung between my fingers, halfway to my mouth.

"What?" I said.

"Arrey, Lokhande's Prakash — that Pakya — a ghost has taken him. Since last night he's been acting strange, talking in some other voice," my mother said, chin resting on her palm, as if she were describing the weather.

I finished eating before I let myself react. "Ghosts, possession — Aayi, it's all superstition. Good stories to tell over tea, nothing more."

"You educated people think you know everything. On top of it you're a Nastik, an atheist — you won't even trust your own mother. After everything I did to raise you, to educate you—" I left before she could finish. I knew emotional blackmail when I heard it coming.

Prakash was from my chawl — a waiter-cashier-cook, all in one, at the nukkad's chai stall. I walked straight to his jhuggi. A crowd had already gathered outside, the way it always did in our locality whenever something unearthly was rumored. People here loved nothing more than a good fright to pass around. I pushed through the shoulders and elbows until I could see.

Prakash sat on the ground, knees drawn to his chest, shivering — in April, in that heat. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips cracked and colorless. Fresh scratches ran down his arms. His shirt hung torn at the shoulder. I was still taking in the state of him when he opened his mouth, and the shock of what came out of it hit me harder than anything I'd seen so far.

"I won't leave him. I won't go anywhere."

It wasn't Prakash's voice. It came from somewhere lower in his chest, hoarse, edged — a woman's voice, furious, wearing his throat like a borrowed coat. I felt my own skin go cold, April heat or not.

"He shouldn't have kicked the Utara. Now I won't leave him. Never." He kept saying it, over and over, banging his head against the wall between each sentence, until his father and brothers pinned his arms down.

I didn't stay to watch more. Someone in the crowd muttered that Pakya had kicked over an utara left in the lane — a lemon pierced with pins, dusted in kumkum, meant to hold a spirit that had been conjured out of somewhere it didn't belong.

That night, I heard voices in the chawl, low and urgent. A woman knocked and told my mother, "Shut the door — now. They've caught the spirit in a lemon, they're carrying it out." My mother closed the door before the woman finished the sentence. When I opened my mouth to ask why, she cut me off: "During this, you don't leave a door open, and you don't cross the tantrik's path while he carries it. The ghost can jump to whoever's nearest." It was, I thought, the single most ridiculous thing I'd heard her say. After the ritual passed, every house threw a bucket of water across its verandah, to wash the chawl clean.

The next morning, on my way to office, I saw Prakash sitting alone on his porch. He looked like himself again. "Good morning, Amit," he said, and I returned the greeting, though I didn't have the nerve to ask about the night before. By afternoon, word had gone around the chawl: the spirit was gone. He was fine.

For a few hours, the chawl exhaled. Kids ran hide-and-seek under the hundred-watt bulbs strung along the lane. Women sat out on their porches, trading the day's gossip. Men played cards in a haze of beedi smoke, laughing too loud, the way people do when they want to prove to themselves that they're not afraid.

Then a scream cut through all of it.

The cards stopped mid-shuffle. The kids froze behind their mothers' legs. The scream came again, sharper this time, from Sheru's house. The men were the first to move, and I saw their faces change before I even reached the doorway — Sheru's younger sister, Sanaa, sat in the middle of the room, hair torn loose from its braid, eyes red-rimmed, lips cracked and pale.

"I won't leave her. I won't go anywhere," she said, in a voice that wasn't hers — hoarse, furious, and exactly, unmistakably, the same voice that had come out of Prakash the night before.

"She shouldn't have kicked the Utara. Now I won't leave her. Never."

(to be continued)