It was just like any other day. I came back from my coaching class, had lunch and then I slept for 2 and a half hour. I woke up at 5 pm and sat down to study with one of my friends. I studied with him for 5 hours with a 1 hour break in between for dinner. This was in Kota where I stayed for 1 year preparing for the IITJEE exam. I stayed in an apartment with 7 other students like me. Mine was a double room but I was the only one staying in it because my roommate had moved into a slightly bigger adjacent room.
At around 11 pm when I could study no more I decided to go to sleep. I went out into the balcony where my friends were enjoying a cool breeze and chit chatted with them for sometime. Then I came back and closed both the doors of my room(entrance to my room and the exit to the balcony) in the preparation to go to sleep. I set the alarm for 5 am. I shifted all the stuff, the books and the clothes, that were lying on my bed to the study table and the chair that were there between my bed and the other spare bed. I switched off the light and crashed on my bed. The room was still dimly lit by the light coming in from the adjacent room through the ventilator. It used to serve as my night lamp...
I had a dream that night: I am at home, in the kitchen talking to my mom when I hear the sound of metal grinding against a cement wall. I come out of the kitchen to check what is happening and I see a huge man there. He has bicycle drive chain which he is grinding against a wall. He jumps on me, throws the chain around my neck and tries to strangle me. I struggle...I try to shout but he covers my mouth and my voice gets muffled.
Now, as it happens when you have such scary dreams, I started to shout for help while asleep. And because of my own shouts, I woke up!!......... And when I woke up, he was there in my room....he was an old man....he was sitting on my chair....I could not see his face. It was hidden behind the alarm clock that was there on my table. But I could see his shirt and his pants with his legs hanging down from the chair. I could see his white hair shining in the dim light. After the dream that had just woken me up, I could think of nothing except that this old man is going to pull out a knife and kill me.....I was scared as hell....My heart was beating so hard that I thought it is going to come out of my chest and fall on the ground!! I tried to shout for help...But I could not speak...I did not move...I could not move! I was too scared to do anything. I thought the end has come....
....So there I was on my bed waiting for him to make a move....but slowly as my eyes adjusted to the poor lighting it started to dawn on me....No one was there in the room except me....the lighting in the room and the way the things were kept on the chair and the table had created such a scene...and my mind did the rest...all the imagining.... what I thought to be the old man's shirt was actually my own that I had put on the chair's back rest before going to sleep and what looked like his pants were also actually mine that I had put on the chair. His shining hair was the fluttering pages of a fat book that I had kept on the table behind the alarm clock...finally when I realised the actual scene, I took a big sigh of relief. I got off the bed and switched on the light. I found myself smiling at all that had happened in a small span of 5 minutes....
But the thought of an old man actually being there with a knife in his hands still haunts me.....
