Yesterday evening, I was en route home from a bookshop , wending my way through a dimly-lit alley . My house stood silhouetted against the moon a couple of meters or so off where I was . From afar ,I could see the rooftop of my house in the semi-dark night . The moon waned ; clouds were scudding ; chill hung in the air, to the accompaniment of wind , blowing intermittently .

I cut corner ; bounded along through another alley , brimful of street light ; and saw a girl , aged close to 15 , scurrying past me and disappearing , in a flash of light , into a nearby alley . Before I could come back to my senses , a lanky boy about the same age scrambled away into the same alley where the girl had slunk into .

Consumed by my inquisitiveness and a bit of uncanny trepidation , I summoned up courage and decided to follow those two nocturnal beings into the pitched dark alley . I walked on tiptoe , lest I should frighten them away . Nothing could be seen there ;no light ---- street light or the moon ---- could penetrate there . I was seized by an inexplicable thrill , verging on adventure in a ghost story .

Distant whisperings came wafting into my ear . I stood with bated breath , motionless as if time and space had merged into me , weeding out all duality . Silence oozed out of silence : stone silence permeated everything. Nothing moved . Their whisperings petered out into 'shhh , shh, sh, h, h....'

I stood there awhile ___ in self-abasement ! and resumed my pace homewards ,my mind brimming over with an overpowering sense of guilt .


__________ Debasish Sinha.