402-A

Pretha lived in an apartment 402-A in East Bangalore. She was a housewife with two little kids. Her husband Raj was a serviceman with a very busy schedule at work. He loved them but could hardly buy any time for his family which he was rueful for.

It was a weekend night when she alongwith her kids was waiting for him to come back from his overtime work. She had prepared his favourite dish for dinner. It was quarter past ten as her phone rang. She rushed to get it expecting his call. But the number flashing was an unknown one. When she recieved the call, the voice on the other side said that her husband has met with an accident on the highway and is in a hospital.

Hearing this she went numb for a while. She somehow managed to rush to the hospital counter and asked for his ward number. The receptionist searched through his database and reported that there was no patient with his name. She insisted that the phone call gave her this address only. But the person on the counter refused again.

She quickly visited her phone call history but failed to find the number that had called her. She had probably deleted the number by mistake. Her anxiety augmented. She didn't know what to do or whom to ask for help.

An elderly man observing her restlessness suggested her to try calling her husband’s phone just in case he answers. This was much of a common sense thing but under the haze of worry she had not thought of this option.

She quickly reached out to her phone and dialed his number. The bell rang. But no one answered. Tears mixed with her sweat of worry trickled down her cheek. She only wished in her subconscious mind that it were just a bad dream.

Just when she had almost given up her hope on the situation, her phone rang. No, it was not him. She lost her consciousness and fell there. The old man took the phone and received the call. It was her neighbor Rita who in an anxious voice, without hearing this old man, said, ‘Pretha where are you? Your kids were running out of the apartment and your door was ajar. Why can’t you be careful with your kids and home? Please come back from wherever you are as they are crying and looking out for you.’

This man replied that she has come to the hospital looking for her husband who has met with an accident. She promptly replied, ‘her Husband who died two years back, has met with an accident!!’, and she took a deep breath, having understood what just happened. But the man still seemed perplexed.

Then she explained him the tragedy about Pretha. “True that her husband died in a road accident. But it had happened two years back. And Pretha is since then under a deep trauma, from which she has yet not recovered. She keeps waiting for him everyday and at times when her adrenaline rush is really low, she ends up hallucinating about him in different ways like this one”.

Rita came to the hospital and took her back home. Pretha’s kids came running and jumped into her arms. Pretha realized that what just happened was just another sour outcome of her misery. She loved her husband badly and could still not recover from the pain of his loss.

She used to engage herself with her kids. She was under medication to battle her depression.   But at times when her soul failed to fight strong, the medicines would also fail. Life went on with her relatives and friends visiting her now and then.

One day when her kids came back from school, they saw a herd of people including the relatives standing in their house. In a corner was their mother’s dead body lying. Their granny held them and took to the other room where they learnt that earlier that day their mom had hung herself from the ceiling fan. This was indeed a shock of their life.

They were taken to their grandparents who took their charge and started looking after them from then. The kids by now had learnt that their life was not as gifted as their friends. But they had to learn to live and to fight all odds, to succeed in life.

402-A was gradually declared a haunted house as the people around often complained that they heard human voices coming from the locked house. And that they heard sounds – of Rita singing - her husband laughing – the (already disconnected) landline phone ringing – and so on.