A skeletal frame with a gaping mouth stood beside a pile of human carcasses & held out its hand towards her………”Come to me”, it whispered….Jahnvi woke up with a start. It was five in the morning. She remembered that they would be traveling to Pelling, their last destination in the Sikkim trip. After a hot shower, Jahnvi decided to take a stroll in the hotel complex before waking up Aakash. Their hired vehicle was supposed to arrive at 8 am.
The drive to Pelling was a long one. Jahnvi read about The Ruins of Pelling in some travel magazine. Being a History Major student, she had always wanted to explore it. Aakash’s hectic office schedule made it difficult for them to plan a holiday. She wanted it badly. Two and a half years of wedded life and she does not remember any holiday other than their honeymoon trip to Goa. But now they were finally in Pelling, the place Jahnvi had been longing to visit.
The next morning, Jahnvi & Aakash got ready for sightseeing. Their first stop would invariably be The Ruins! An hour’s drive or so brought them to the ancient capital of the Sikkimese rulers. Jahnvi felt a nervous excitement as they stepped out of the car and headed towards the entry point. They would have to walk much before arriving at the actual site. There were a few other tourists, mostly foreigners, who had a local guide with them. Jahnvi and Aakash walked up to the main area. Something was hypnotic about the place, thought Jahnvi. Meanwhile, Aakash got busy taking pictures of the ancient seat of power. Jahnvi quietly strolled around the place, soaking in the antiquity. She wondered about the events which these broken down structures had been a witness to – wars lost and won, regal weddings, conspiracies, secret affairs, births and deaths – the walls seemed to tell so many stories!
Aakash suddenly realized that Jahnvi was nowhere in sight. Where did she disappear? The other tourists were on their way out. He called out to her but in vain. The sun shone strongly, leaving his throat parched. He discovered a stone slab in the shade and sat there, gulping down almost the entire water from the bottle. The heat made him drowsy and Aakash thought of a quick nap as he waited for Jahnvi to return. An hour and a half elapsed. Aakash woke up to the sound of footsteps nearby. Jahnvi walked towards him, a haggard look on her otherwise cheerful face. Before he could ask her anything, she informed him that she had seen a monk walking towards a passage inside the broken down palace. Curious, she had followed him quietly. He turned back and saw her but continued to move on. Jahnvi thought he looked rather gaunt and frail in appearance. Almost skeletal, one could say. The passage grew darker as it sloped down to some kind of an underground chamber. Before she realized where she was, Jahnvi found herself all alone. The monk, whom she had been following, simply disappeared! The hot air choked her and she groped her way back to the entrance of the passage, somehow. Jahnvi confessed that she would have loved to explore the underground chamber. Aakash felt an eeriness about the whole episode and said it was time to leave. They had other places to visit.
That evening as they dined at the restaurant, Jahnvi was lost in thought. While Aakash relished some local delicacies, she contemplated on her next visit to The Ruins. She has to visit it again. Aakash woke early the next morning. He decided not to wake Jahnvi since she had a disturbed sleep the previous night. She was mumbling something about the monk and the dead people in her sleep. Aakash decided to take a walk in the crisp morning air and clear his mind of the strange thoughts about Jahnvi which troubled him all night. An hour later, he returned to the hotel and was informed by the receptionist that Jahnvi has left the key at the front desk saying she would be back in a couple of hours. Aakash instinctively knew that she was back at The Ruins. He felt so helpless, so confused. Why did Jahnvi get obsessed with that place?
Meanwhile, Jahnvi walked briskly towards the broken down palace. There were no tourists yet and she was glad for that. She strode straight to the passage and looked around to check if anyone was watching her. Then she steadily walked down the passage, gradually descending into the dark chamber below. Switching on the flash light, Jahnvi took one step at a time, trying to study the faded wall murals. There were symbolic graffiti on the walls – human skulls, distorted and agonizing faces, fire in a pit, ritual dances, scenes of copulation, etc. Suddenly she heard the familiar “Come to me…” being whispered into her ears! She looked around to discover the gaunt monk standing close by. He held out his bony hand towards her. As if in a trance, she took his hand and was led further down. A pungent, rotten smell made her nauseous. Soon Jahnvi stepped on something hard and almost tripped. The flash light dropped on the floor with a thud, the sound reverberating through the emptiness of the place. She groped for the light in sheer darkness and having found it, switched it on at once. To her utter horror, she found herself amidst a pile of human skeletons, the ones she had dreamt of on several nights. Jahnvi realized that she was inside some kind of a crypt. The monk had vanished again. Was this some kind of a death trap? She tried to scream but couldn’t. A bony hand seemed to strangulate her and she gasped for breath. Jahnvi saw the monk with the skeletal visage towering over her. “Come to me”, it whispered again. She blacked out…
Recovering her senses, Jahnvi found herself in the hotel room with Aakash sitting next to her on the bed. She was running high fever. The hotel manager had informed a local doctor who was on his way. One of the attendants stood near the door, asking if any help was needed. Jahnvi turned to look at him…his gaunt and frail look seemed so familiar! Aakash said that they would be checking out within two days. Jahnvi would surely recover by then, he assured her. But The Ruins still beckoned her....could she ever go back, she wondered.
