‘Wrrroom wrrooom, rrrrooom, rroomm, and now ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts, we will be landing shortly, this is your pilot Ajay speaking’.

I was in my car, parked outside a house in one of the crosses of Bharatnagar. It was a hot afternoon, and I kept the door open for the small, occasional bits of breeze. A friend was in the parlour next door getting her hair straightened. Miscalculating the time it would take, I had reached an hour earlier. Not wanting to be subject to it’s smells; the outdated women’s magazines; the chemically altered, Photoshop perfected pictures of models and the ever critical assessment of perceived physical shortcomings by the receptionist, I opted to stay in the car to wait for my friend.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you can now unfasten your seatbelts, thank you for travelling Ajay air, this is your captain Ajay signing off’.

The voice was coming from the upper floor of the house. I guessed the boy’s age to be about ten or eleven.

‘ Wrrroom!!!’

Ajay, perhaps, was ready to fly another plane. His attempts, however were cut short by another voice. It was an elderly man’s voce.

‘Please stop now Ajay, sit down’ he said. ‘No…wroom, wroom, there are too many passengers, Tatha’. Ajay was obviously in no mood to listen.

Ajay had begun to run now, from what I could gather. The annoyed mumble of the grandfather was getting drowned by the sounds of Ajay’s running and incessant, repetitive imitation of an aero plane. The afternoon wore on. A dog came up to the car and wagged his tail. I petted him and wished that a petty shop was nearby so that I could get him a bun. Hardly anyone was about. The silence and emptiness had a strange, unnatural quality to it. It was the silence and eerie feeling you expect to have at 2am if you are walking down an empty street. Everything seemed so still, the air was heavy; I could almost smell the heat, taste it almost. Trees, I thought. Why can people not plant more trees? All these houses; surely I reasoned, there is enough room in the compounds to plant at least one.

‘Tatha, when will they come? ’ Ajay’s voice was high, complaining, irritated. ‘They will Ajay, wait’. ‘But they have gone so long’. ‘Keep quiet, Ajay, please’. His grandfather sounded angry and Ajay said nothing more.

The house had seemed particularly empty as compared to the others in the lane. That was one of the reasons I choose to park the car there aside from it being next to the beauty parlour. I looked at it carefully now. There were no plants. That was what had struck me. That is what I had unconsciously registered while parking the car. The windows were empty too. There were no curtains. I peered into the driveway. No car, no scooter. In fact it was an upswept driveway, dead leaves from roadside trees and debris lay scattered all around. Glancing at the compound wall, I could see layers of mud on the wrought iron lattice work that once must have had creepers growing through it.

'Honk, honk’ said Ajay. ‘I think the car has come. Mommm Daaad, is that you?’ ‘Ajay, please’ said his grandfather. ‘Sit down, I said, They will come, just wait’.

I looked into the window of the ground floor. The room was empty. There was nothing in it. No furniture, pictures, nothing. I looked up, at the window from where I could hear the voices of Ajay and his grandfather. From what I could see, it was empty. I walked up to the gate. It was locked. Locked!. Why had I not seen that before?

Wroom…wroom…continued Ajay.

The heat was beginning to get to me and the sudden ringing of the mobile made me jump. It was my friend. She was done and was wondering if I had reached. Lunch, she said, was something she could have three servings of. I told her that I waiting outside.
She came out, hair shiny and pin straight. ‘Wow, amazing, it really suits you’ I said, insincerely. I took one last look at the house as I backed the car. It was silent now.

(I did hear a conversation like this. We were waiting in the car while our dog was being groomed. The house outside which we had parked looked empty. At least the ground floor rooms were empty. From the upper floor we heard a boy pretending to be an aero plane and an elderly man's voice could be heard too. When i looked up, the upper rooms also looked empty. So my husband and I, as we often do, made up a story to explain this apparently strange situation)