Myriad of illusions – Part 1
Anjali had very recently transferred from a fancy Mumbai school to a school in Shimla. She was in tenth grade and had to reluctantly leave all her friends, the familiar environment for an unknown journey. Her father, Viren, was transferred from the corporate office to the Shimla branch office as the head. He welcomed the move as he felt that a change of place would do good to both him and Anjali. Viren’s wife, Raina had passed away two years back in a freak accident and it was getting difficult for him to live in the same house he had shared with her for twenty years. Anjali did not resist the move as well, but deep down inside was sad to leave.
The first week of the new school was hectic for her, remembering the names of classmates, teachers, figuring out other nitty gritty regarding books, canteen, etc.…The batchmates were warm and friendly and welcomed the new student. She felt she could adjust here. She spent the weekend helping Viren set up the house.
In the newly established routine, Viren dropped Anjali near the school gate and went off to work, the next Monday morning. Lost in her thoughts, she kept walking towards gate, stepped inside and strolled towards the classroom. She chose the same the seat near the window which she had occupied the entire last week. She sat down with her head leaning at the grill staring outside. She realized after a while that she had briefly dozed off as well. In an effort to keep herself alert, she sat straight and sipped some water from the bottle in front. As she looked up from her desk, she was surprised to see that she was alone in the entire classroom. She looked at her watch and the time was an hour past the usual class time. She assumed she did not have the correct timesheet, and hurriedly started looking for it in her bag. She rechecked the schedule from every possible source and it confirmed that the class was supposed to have begun by now. She waited for another fifteen minutes, but no one showed up. She thought of looking around the campus to check other classes. To her shock, there seemed to be no one in the hallway or other rooms. There wasn’t a sound coming from either direction. She marched out, walking towards the admin building, the playground area, canteen, and found that not a single person was present in the entire school campus. She wondered if it was a holiday, but thought of her father’s office functioning. She took out her mobile to call her dad. He disconnected mentioning he was in a meeting and will call back. She was standing alone in the middle of huge campus area, in a new place with chilly wind brushing her. She was a bold girl who braved the streets of Mumbai all alone since childhood. But at this moment, an alien feeling of fear was clouding her thoughts. For a second, a thought crossed her mind, ‘Has the entire school disappeared?’, brushing it past as ‘silly’, she looked down at her phone to see her father calling….
