Night Drive
Photo: Karan Madhok
Short story: ‘Suddenly, from just ahead of the lamppost in front of the hawa-ghar, appeared the frame of an elderly man. Mr Rathore could swear that nothing had been there just seconds ago.’
Exiting the 19th century stone-and-wood bungalow that was the last house on Parsonage Road, Mr and Mrs Rathore stepped slowly down the stairs to the motorable road, and crossed to where their car was parked. It was May, but there was still a nip in the air; odd for this time of year. The night was almost black, and the few lost stars in the sky above were far apart and sickly pale.
“Not a bad evening at all, Kapil,” said Mrs Rathore, as she wrapped her shawl around her slight but firm shoulders.
“Not at all,” replied her husband as he started up his 1987 Ambassador. For twenty-four years, this Ambassador had been nothing but a model of sophistication and purpose, but over the past two evenings Mr Rathore had taken her out, it had started coughing upon ignition. Must have it checked by Rawat, Mr Rathore thought to himself.
“That Mrs Mukherjee is quite something, though,” continued Mrs Rathore. “Give her a glass of Merlot and she’s tougher to stop than a speeding juggernaut!” She laughed as she completed her sentence, and her head tilted backwards. Mrs Rathore, too, had finished two glasses of cabernet sauvignon, and there was a lilt in her voice.
Mr Rathore gave her a smile as he flipped the switch on the panel. Immediately, the deodar trees ahead stood bleached in the car’s ghostly headlights.
“Shall we?”
“Yes, my love,” said Mrs Rathore, patting her husband’s arm.
With that, Mr Rathore steered the old Ambassador down the concrete strip. The couple said goodbye to the row of bungalows and cottages that made up Parsonage Road.
It had indeed been a jolly evening. Mrs Kashyap, wife of a former ambassador to Zurich, had thrown a nice dinner. Aside from the Rathores, she had invited a motley crew of hillside residents, and a few of their guests: Mr Dayal, who ran the town’s only antique shop; Mr and Mrs Mukherjee, from Kolkata but who summered in the hills; the Mathews, from the Mission School; Jeet Romola, the writer; Moira Llewellyn, the Anglo-Indian widow, and her niece from Michigan, Aditi; and Ramesh Nautiyal, the Padma Shri-awarded photographer, who had walked in late with a sparkling young thing on his arm.
The group had talked politics and education and films and writing, idle chatter mixed with guarded responses, and whisky and gin-soaked opinions.
Now, as the Ambassador rounded a corner, its lights making a path in the darkness of the night, Mr Rathore had an idea. He was still enlivened by the drinks and the conversation. He wasn’t yet ready for the night to be over.
“Ayesha, shall we take the old chakkar, via the graveyard?” He was in a bit of a romantic mood, looking lovingly at his beautiful wife. It had been some time since they had done something impulsive. Not that this was a very impulsive thing to do, take a night drive on an old back road in a scenic hill station, but the idea excited Mr Rathore on this starry evening.
Mrs Rathore didn’t look at her husband, but replied with her eyes fixed on the road ahead.
“The chakkar?”
“Yes, remember where we walked during our honeymoon and when Rahul was in primary school. That one weekend when we took him out of boarding.” His right hand rested on the steering wheel as the other reached out to touch his wife’s arm.
“Yes, I remember it well, dear,” said Mrs Rathore. “But would it be safe at this hour?”
He had desperately wanted to lower his own window, to air out the car, which had now acquired the powerful smell of what Mr Rathore could place as close to being a mix of mildew, sweat and decaying... something. He tried to look at the plastic bag wrenched in the man’s fists to see if that was the source of the awful odour.
Mr Rathore checked his watch. “It’s eleven-fifteen. Late, I know, but I’ve heard the road has been paved by the municipal board. There are lamp-posts at almost every corner now.”
“Hmm. OK, Kapil; only if you think it’s safe.”
“Sure, jaan,” said Mr Rathore, smiling back at his wife. She looked so pretty, her hair done up in hairpins, wearing her mother’s pearls, and orchids that he had given her.
The couple drove in romantic silence. Mr Rathore cast affectionate glances at his wife, hummed a Hemant Kumar tune, and his fingers tapped on the wheel. Mr Rathore adored his wife for her simplicity and her ability to put him at ease in uncomfortable situations. Mrs Rathore had been smitten by his good looks, his athletic build and neatly-manicured moustache, when she had first seen him at university in Delhi over twenty years ago. They had courted, and then married, relocating to Kanpur where Mr Rathore’s family mills were booming in the late eighties. Even now, each had the ability to surprise or puzzle the other with a touch, or a glance, or a word, sometimes even a kiss.
They reached a junction from where the road diverged. Straight, it carried on down to the main town; on the right, there was the passage to the Cantonment headquarters. And off to the left, the chakkar, dotted with silver oaks and long-needled pines, laid waiting for the Rathores to bypass the town and head home to their neck of the hillside.
Mr Rathore turned once again to his wife, who grew even prettier with age, and smiled warmly. She returned the smile, cuddled closer to him and softly said, “Drive safely, my love.”
Mr Rathore turned the car left onto the paved road below the old Mission School, and it powered its way up the small slope before settling into a comfortable hum on a straighter strip of ribbed concrete. For a kilometre the road stretched, dark and lonely, and occasionally wounded and twisted through the woods. The concrete was dry and cracked and worn, Mr Rathore noticed.
At a distance, he saw the entrance to the old Protestant graveyard, illuminated by a flickering tube-light, and from inside the trees seemed to wave a salute. As they approached a sharp corner under the graveyard, with some of the gravestones nearly two centuries old, Mr Rathore slowed the vehicle.
Suddenly, from just ahead of the lamppost in front of the hawa-ghar, appeared the frame of an elderly man. Mr Rathore could swear that nothing had been there just seconds ago. He slammed the brakes and the Ambassador screeched to a halt. Mrs Rathore let out a yelp and instinctively stretched out a hand to prevent herself from slamming into the dashboard.
“What the hell ...” Mr Rathore’s words ceased as he looked from the almost ethereal man in front. Mrs. Rathore was shaken up next to him: her hair had come undone from its tight bun, and little wisps caught the breeze rushing in from the car’s open window, looking like bits of ribbon.
“Ayesha, are you OK?”
Mrs Rathore replied in the affirmative, one hand to her chest and the other on the dashboard. Then the couple looked forward at the figure which had appeared in front of the moving vehicle, seemingly out of nowhere.
Standing there, illuminated by the Ambassador’s headlights, was a small, stocky, grey- haired Caucasian man, wearing brown corduroy pants and a plaid green woollen shirt. His chest heaved and he wore a distressed look on his face. He raised a hand to the Rathores, and opened his mouth.
Both Mr and Mrs Rathore heard clearly. “Please, please help me ...” The man had an American accent.
Mr Rathore started to get out of the car but felt his wife’s grasp on his arm. He stopped himself, rolled down the window, and stuck his head out.
“What’s wrong?” he shouted.
The man took a few steps to the opposite side, the side of Mrs Rathore, whose reaction was to slide closer to her husband. As the man approached the window, Mr Rathore leaned forward.
“Can we help, sir?”
The man came close to the car, but not so close as to intrude. He looked at Mrs Rathore and took a step back. There was healthy grey hair plastered to the sides of his cheeks. His breathing was unusually fast.
“I need to get home to my wife,” he said. “My wife, Norah. My car - it broke down a couple kilometres back near the Tibetan market and I could not get it started again.”
He paused, ran a hand across his face to clear some sticky hair and glanced momentarily back at the road behind the vehicle. “I walked this far. My house is on the other side of the Mall Road, after the Amity junction ... behind Dalhousie Manor, near the old Hampstead Home.”
Mr Rathore ran the names the man had taken through his mind rapidly. They were all places he had either seen or heard of, and were all on the main road which ran through the town. Despite it being so late at night, he didn’t think anything unordinary about what the man was saying.
“Can you please drop me home?” the man’s panting had slowed. “Norah must be so worried, and it’s so late. I would be much obliged.” He looked at Mr Rathore and then trained his gaze on Mrs Rathore, holding her husband’s arm, and held it on her pleadingly.
Mr Rathore looked at his wife for a second, then at the hawa-ghar, and nodded. “Yes, of course we can. Get in, sir.” He indicated for the man to open the back door.
Mrs Rathore looked at her husband, a look of concern on her face. “Kapil.”
Mr Rathore knew that look, that tone. It meant: Don’t do something stupid. Back when they had been young friends, she had given him that look for the first time when they were shopping in Greater Kailash in Delhi, and Mr Rathore had tried to intervene in a fight between a drunk and a shopkeeper. In later years, he had gotten that look a few more times.
The door behind Mr Rathore opened and the man got in. The Ambassador sagged as his heavy frame sat down, and the man held the door handle as he adjusted herself into the car. He had a plastic bag in one hand, scrunched up in his thick, knobby fingers. He was sweating profusely, and Mr Rathore noticed sweat had seeped into the neck of the grey t-shirt he had on under the plaid woollen shirt. The man let go of the door handle and wiped his brow, then began patting down his hair and rubbing his eyes, as if an attempt to make himself more presentable. Then he smiled at Mr Rathore.
It was then that the couple got a whiff of a smell most foul, like rotten garbage. Mrs Rathore’s right hand reached out and her fingers dug into her husband’s hand, her arm taut as a stretched bow. Mr Rathore shifted and looked at his wife. Without saying anything, he put the car into motion with the other hand, steering it around the bend and leaving the hawa-ghar and the lamppost behind. He drove at a cautious speed, and when he could he reached over and looked at his wife, stiff as a frozen shadow.
After a few minutes the man spoke. “Are you two from the hillside?”
Mr Rathore looked into the rear-view mirror. The man was looking at him, smiling a faint smile.
“Uh, yes, we have a cottage at the other end of town.” He brought a hand to his neck and scratched aimlessly at the skin under his chin, unnerved by the stench emanating from the man in the back seat. “Rowandale. It’s down the road from the Blind School, on the way to Jagraon.”
The man smiled. “That’s nice. I know that area well. And do you live here in Mussoorie year-round?”
“No, not year-round,” said Mr Rathore, his eyes following the beam of the car’s headlights. “We live in Kanpur, but come up twice a year. Our eldest son is in the tenth standard at St Aloysius. We’ve come to take him once the semester ends next week.”
“It’s a lovely time of year,” said the man, now looking out the window. “Do you mind if I lower this?” His right hand was already on the window handle, ready to crank it down.
“Sure,” replied Mr Rathore, looking at him through the rear-view mirror, and then turning again to Mrs Rathore who was staring at the road. He had desperately wanted to lower his own window, to air out the car, which had now acquired the powerful smell of what Mr Rathore could place as close to being a mix of mildew, sweat and decaying... something. He tried to look at the plastic bag wrenched in the man’s fists to see if that was the source of the awful odour.
The man lowered the window and the cool wind blew across his face, again making him smile.
“And what do you do, if I may ask?” Mr Rathore found himself asking the question more to cut through the awkwardness than for any genuine interest.
The man behind Mr Rathore turned his head toward the driver of the car and replied, with a sigh. “I used to work in the plains, in the Punjab. Ran a Mission hospital there. I grew up in these hills, and bought a house down near the Hampstead Home in the sixties.”
The two turned to each other, and in both of their eyes was an unmistakable curiosity. There was another look from his wife now that he understood, without the need of words. The look that told him that she, too, had been thinking what he was. There was a strange, eerie desire that had wrapped itself around both their heads.
“OK, OK,” said Mr Rathore, his mind running over the names. Hampstead Home. He had heard of the old bungalow. God, he wanted to get out of the car and breathe fresh air.
Sitting next to him, her fingernails gnawing at her husband’s wrist, Mrs Rathore felt nauseous. Why did her husband pick up this stranger on a desolate road? And what was that rancid smell?
The car hummed as Mr Rathore pressed harder on the pedal. Speed was not one of the Ambassador’s finer points. The headlights made the mild drops of rain shimmer against the dark.
The man’s voice snapped the silence. “What brings you two out so late?”
Mrs Rathore’s grasp on her husband’s wrist tightened. She was pleading with him not to utter another word, to stop the car and ask the man to get out.
“My wife and I had gone for dinner to a friend’s,” replied Mr Rathore. His nose crinkled at the smell. He knew they were approaching the end of the back road, and that ahead was the artery that connected to the main town. It was peak tourist season and there were sure to be some tourists or locals at the square. Next to him, Mrs Rathore hoped the same.
“Very nice,” said the man. “I don’t get out much myself. I was on the way back from the plains after some brief business down there, and then the car broke down. Wasn’t a flat. No, something inside the engine. I waited to see if anybody would pass by, but after a while decided to walk. Poor Norah must be near a wreck by now.”
“Don’t you carry a mobile phone?” asked Mr Rathore.
The man shook his head and grunted. “Nothing doing. Can’t wrap my head around those things.”
“It would have come in handy in your situation,” offered Mr Rathore, now trying hard not to become overpowered by the foul stench. He looked up at the rear-view mirror to observe the man – the pinched pallor of his wrinkled, handsome face, the feverish brightness of his blue eyes, the shabbiness of his well-made but ill-fitting clothes. His grey hair was wavy and dripped down over his temples.
The old man caught Mr Rathore’s eyes in the mirror. The smile had vanished and he was matching regards with Mr Rathore, studiously and intently. That feverishness in his eyes suddenly made Mr Rathore nervous.
Focusing on the road, Mr Rathore steered the car without trying to look back now. Mrs Rathore, meanwhile, had not moved an inch since they had picked up that man. Within minutes, the car rounded another bend, and there in front were the welcoming lights of the town.
The horizon quickened with activity. Mr Rathore saw vehicles moving in the distance, the beams from their headlights bobbing up and down in the valley below. Hotels were open, and there were indeed people walking – in twos and threes and more – against the backdrop of sour Hindi film music along the main road. This road led into the heart of town, which would be throbbing with activity by the morning. Next to a dhaba with its shutter half down, a horse was eating a mess of muck from a shallow pile on the road. All this was a brief exultation for the Rathores.
Behind them, the old man shifted in his seat.
Mr Rathore again tried to speed up his old Ambassador. As it did its best to barrel down the artery, Mrs Rathore’s grasp released. She again pulled her shawl over her shoulders. Approaching the half-shut dhaba, Mr Rathore spoke, firmly, looking into the rear-view mirror again.
“Sir, I will drop you at the main road, next to the cinema.”
The old man’s face changed. It became less human, more a mask.
“Oh no, please, my house is not more than a kilometre down the road from the junction,” he started to plead. The plastic bag rustled in his grip. “Norah ...”
“No, sir, I’m sorry,” continued Mr Rathore, trying to be firmer. “This is as far as we can go. Please, we’ve got you this far. I’m certain the hotels opposite the cinema will be open. You can call home or get a taxi from there, easily.”
The man reached out a hand and held the back of Mr Rathore’s seat. His eyes burned. “No, please: it’s not far to my house from here. Norah will be waiting ...”
Mr Rathore cut him off, raising his voice. “No, sir. I will drop you outside the Apollo and you can go in and use the telephone or get a taxi. I’m sorry. Please understand ...”
The man started to lean forward. Mr Rathore sped up and brought the car to a stop at the curb of a three-star hotel known as the Apollo. It was one of the town’s oldest establishments. At this moment, it gave off a feeling of relief for the Rathores. Behind its doors there were people, Mr Rathore could see from the outside. Two men, definitely hotel staff, behind the reception. On a couch flipping through a magazine, a Sikh man. Another Sikh, in shorts and sweater, was on the phone.
“Sir, you can get down and go inside,” said Mr Rathore. “They will surely assist you.”
The man said nothing. His eyes were briefly fixed on Mr Rathore’s face. Mr Rathore thought that he was going to speak, to argue, but he didn’t. He sighed again, turned his gaze to Mrs Rathore, opened the door, and slowly dragged himself out of the Ambassador.
The door shut, not with a slam.
Next to Mr Rathore’s side, the man put a hand on the window and spoke. “Thank you.”
Mr Rathore nodded his head and started the car, pulled away from the square. But when he looked back back in the rear-view mirror, his eyes widened and his mouth hung open. There was no trace of the man whom they had dropped off under a lamppost on the steps of the Apollo not seven seconds ago. Nothing. It could not be possible.
Mrs Rathore saw her husband shiver. He looked to her as if he had plunged his head into a bucket of ice water.
“Are you OK, Kapil?” These were the first words she had spoken since they had picked up the foul-smelling passenger under the graveyard.
Mr Rathore gripped the steering wheel tightly. He did not wish to tell his wife that the man they had picked up may have been a ghost. Maybe she knew it, but Mr Rathore wished not to talk about it. He nodded, four quick movements of the head, and took a moment to find his voice. “Let’s go home, Ayesha.”
Mrs Rathore saw her husband’s nose sharpen, jaw tighten, and eyebrows come together in concentration. Then, she turned to face the road ahead, too. Mr Rathore drove out past the edge of town and down the road towards home. They said nothing to each other.
As they neared the final slope towards their cottage, on the road where in the mornings after breakfast the married couple liked to walk amongst the cows and goats and an umbrella of trees to glance at the mountains, Mr Rathore stopped the car. The two turned to each other, and in both of their eyes was an unmistakable curiosity. There was another look from his wife now that he understood, without the need of words. The look that told him that she, too, had been thinking what he was. There was a strange, eerie desire that had wrapped itself around both their heads.
Was there actually a broken-down car near the Tibetan market?
Mr Rathore turned his Ambassador around by backing into the driveway, and retraced their journey back to the square. From there, he swung down another road, one which would take them up behind from where the old man had said the car had been stalled. Now, there was excitement in Mr Rathore’s eyes. His tongue, tinged with the taste of promise, brushed the caverns of his mouth as he drove.
Mrs Rathore, however, was devoid of any excitement. Instead, she wished for a resolution, to wish away the stench, to wish away the man from her thoughts, the man who had never addressed her. She knew that she had felt a pang of helplessness with him in the back-seat, but, perhaps unlike her husband, she also felt a hint of compassion. Perhaps, she had even wondered between the unnerving sense of fear, the the old man really had been in trouble, that he truly longed to get home to his worried wife. Mrs Rathore had been unable to get that thought out of her head all drive long, and now as the Ambassador turned corners in the darkness, her stomach tightened.
As soon as they had passed the Tibetan market, the couple trained their attention on the road, peering out over the car’s headlights, trying to make out the first glimpse of an abandoned vehicle. Mr Rathore instinctively slowed the car and leaned in toward the windscreen.
There was no vehicle in sight. They drove slowly through the woods, a little afraid to be there. At least, they knew that they had each other. Mr Rathore gripped Mrs Rathore again, tighter than he had when they had first left the dinner at Parsonage Road, in a time that had felt like another time.
Faster than they knew, they had completed the stretch of road where the old man could have possibly walked, and returned to the same junction where they had fatefully turned left over an hour ago.
Mr Rathore halted the car. Mrs Rathore looked out her window, scanning the junction and the trails of the streetlights. Then she again turned to her husband. There was no car where he said it had broken down. Mr Rathore was certain that, from the rear-view mirror, he had seen nothing outside the Apollo. Mrs Rathore could still feel the tingling on her skin from the time the old man had sat in their car, as if a warm ghost had passed it in the dead of night.
Now, sitting in the middle of the empty junction in the vibrating Ambassador, Mr and Mrs Rathore still could not bring themselves to speak about what had happened.
And just then, a man’s unsteady voice shattered the silence and snapped the Rathore’s out of their state. “Please, please help me ...”
An American accent.
The Rathores spun their heads to the left and saw, slowly approaching the Ambassador from the steps of the Mission School, a small, stocky, grey-haired Caucasian man, in brown corduroy pants and a plaid green woollen shirt.
“Please, my car broke down back on the ....”
Mr Rathore did not wait to hear the rest. He revved his trusted old Ambassador motion and sped away into the night.
***
Jamie Alter is a sports writer and journalist in the digital world, having covered cricket around the world including three World Cups. After nearly five years working for ESPNcricinfo, Jamie served as Sports Editor of the Times of India Digital, Cricbuzz, Cricketnext and most recently as Group Sports Editor (Digital) at Zee Media. He also also authored two cricket-related books and dabbled in acting. You can find him on Twitter: @alter_jamie.
