Deadly Indian Secrets

He was just about to put his foot down, when he heard the sound. It was Priyanka, the neighbor who at the time didn’t want to be heard but failed miserably. A young attractive girl of sixteen, she came from a strict orthodox family, her father being a member of the Bombay Police force was overly protective over her. Hyder made a murmur and seemed to catch her attention—just as he was about to say a word, her father stepped out the front door.

“Priyanka!” he loudly and strictly proclaimed. “What are you doing outside?”

Priyanka almost jumping out of her skin, scurried through the front door to get back into the house.

Having been gone from home sometimes for weeks, this was the first time Hyder had been away from home for so long.

During this time, Mahatma Gandhi was trying to drive the British out of his homeland while simultaneously keeping Hindus and Muslims from slaughtering one another. At the start of one especially busy day, Gandhi said: "I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one."

Hyder was heavy into meditation and contemplative practices such as Buddhist

meditation, yoga, lucid dreaming and astral travel. He’s been experimenting

with different practices such as balancing your chakras, Zen Buddhism and

Vinyasa yoga sometimes really leaving his own body. Often during his sessions,

while being in a deep meditative state, from time to time, for brief moments,

his sense of self-awareness would drift away and then back into focus. The

instant that started to happen, he would willfully focus on the feeling of his

exhaled breath and the movement of his belly—and, instantly, he felt he was in

another dimension. This experience of drifting in and out of a deep meditative

state went on for a prolonged period of time, sometimes even hours.

At some point, he must have lost the will to refocus his concentration during one

of those moments when self-awareness returned. He had been far gone in a very

deep and peaceful place, but he started to come back. He really didn’t know how

long he had actually been sitting in the same position, but the first thing he

became aware of was the pain in his legs. They hurt a great deal from sitting

in a full-lotus position for so long. This was normal for sitting in that

position for such long periods. The normal mind chatter hadn’t started yet. He

was barely locked in self-awareness, kind of dazed, but very peaceful and

deeply mesmerized by the experience. He would have continued to a deep

meditative state, but an amazing thing happened. From just a few inches in

front, where his sense of awareness had been centering came a booming voice. It

said very sternly: “Do you or do you not want to know what is ahead of you?”

This was not the normal mind chatter he was so used to getting entangled with. Ever since he first noticed that chattering voice, it was talking behind, above and

below where he sat inside but never in front. In any event, its stern challenge

shook him to the depths of his being. He didn’t feel the need to answer the question, because every drop of him yearned to go deeper. So he took a breath in, then deeply pushed himself into the out-breath, and he was gone.

When his sense of existence began to coagulate again, his sense of being was very

different from anything he had ever experienced before. He felt pain in his

legs, but they were very far away and the pain had a warmth and beauty to it.

As he regained some awareness in his body, he tried to lean his head a tiny bit

forward. Nothing moved. It was as though his forehead was pressed against a

wall. Something very solid was resisting even the slightest movement of his

head forward. He immediately realized that the sheer intensity of his

concentration had created a well-defined force that flowed outward from his

forehead and curved back to the point in his lower abdomen where he had been

focusing his awareness. To him it was completely unfamiliar. It felt like a

magnetic field that was so strong he simply could not move against it.

This was not the only powerful energy he was experiencing. He had been sitting in a full-lotus posture with his hands resting on his crossed feet. In that position

the whole of his hands, arms, and shoulders formed a closed circle. Now that

complete circle had become another one of those force fields. He could neither

move forward nor sideways. Whenever he breathed out, the flows became more

tangible and intense. The entire experience was so completely enthralling that

he did not actually regain awareness of his surroundings for some time. He only

came down far enough to see that his body was overcome by these energy flows.

Then, once again, he heard: “Do you or do you not want to know what is ahead of

you?”

He immediately took a deep breath in and with great intention slowly exhaled

through his nostrils. It was as though the outgoing breath pushing against the

magnetic force fields created upward lift. That upward and inward propulsion

began to drive him to an even deeper place, beyond any sense of self-awareness.

One more breathe in and out, and he was completely gone.

A few hours later he came back to a state of full self-awareness. Hyder sat

quietly for a moment, letting consciousness slowly return. How long had he been

unconscious? Everything seemed normal at first. Then he started to wonder why

he was in this strange place. It felt as if he was hit by a bus. He was in a

hotel room as he had been working at another air force base far from his home

town having absolutely no idea how he got there. He still felt some pain and

stiffness in his legs. For some reason nothing seemed familiar. Even though he

had been there a few times before, he really did not recognize anything about

the hotel and the room he was in.

As he attained consciousness even though he was now fully awake, he realized he was really still in a dreamy state. The night was quiet: street lights were dim,

roads were wet from the day’s heavy rains. Just the steady humming of the

engines of cars driving by could be heard in the distance. He felt himself

becoming more and more dreamy, almost completely nodding off to sleep. He

reached for his water bottle and tried to put it to his lips thinking this may

wake him up.

Fatigue weakened his defences, as he had not slept for two days. As he eventually

decided to give into this feeling of fatigue he squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the furry blanket so tightly that his knuckles grew pale. His shoulders

locked, and the muscles behind his knees and in his calves tightened. He

slithered back into the bed, trying to breathe normally but knowing that he was

gulping each breath. He was helpless, impotent, and paralysed. It was back.

That dream. This time he saw Priyanka’s face clearly. He hadn’t seen her since

she was sixteen but somehow she forced herself into his dream. He knew very

well this was a dream but normally he could control it because he often had

lucid dreams and was by now highly skilled at it.

He squeezed his eyes tighter, so hard that tiny pinprick explosions of red, green,

blue and yellow light cascaded against his lids. The dream raced towards him

like the pitch-black mouth of a tunnel, inexorable and unavoidable, and

suddenly he was plunged into it. It was as vivid as reality. As it started to

unspool, like a familiar film he tried to hide away in a dusty box, his

rational mind was able to observe and assess it, to compare it with the past

which now became more and more blurry, and to acknowledge that he was far from

cured.

Priyanka was calling him in the dream but he tried to avoid her and leave her

semi-detached apartment. He could almost hear her father’s howling-like voice

in the background like in the old days. He somehow could not get to the front

entrance, and before he could blink an eye he was standing on the dull, dusty

cobble-stoned balcony at the rear of the apartment facing a dilapidated tarmac,

and old netball court, which now doubled as a kids play park.

Priyanka was now begging him to stay, grabbing at his shirt collar and simultaneously using it to pull her quivering, body up against his. Her lips were almost touching his and at that point he began to two-mindedly turn his face away from hers. She was beginning to sense his discontentment and slowly started to move away from him bit-by-bit, inch-by-inch and her grip became weaker and weaker.

Next thing he knew she was climbing onto the wall of the balcony itself now

balancing herself on the thin wall barely keeping herself steady.

He yelled, “Priyanka, what are you doing? Get off that wall right away.” She

simply ignored his instructions and glanced far in the distance and doing

everything to keep herself from looking down at the ground of the big open area

behind the apartment which was at least 8 feet lower.

In his mind he was thinking, she will never survive this fall if she decided to

take it that far. He could already hear the sound of her supple bones breaking

as she hit hard ground and pictured her lying lifeless in a pool of blood. These

were the images going through his mind.

Just at that moment, again he regained consciousness, he prised open his eyes while feeling quite feverish. His white shirt completely drenched with sweat, stuck

like mud to his skin while he dragged himself out of bed. He could not

understand what he had just seen. “Who is this Priyanka, and why had she

climbed up the wall of the balcony?” Hyder confusingly kept asking himself.

He could not clearly remember his past so he had no recollection of the events

that already taken place. Priyanka was his neighbor and lived alone with her

father in a semi-detached apartment. Together with his family they occupied the

other half of the two semis.

He literally watched her grow up in front of his eyes but this was all a blur to

him now. Thus far all he remembers was these dreams about Priyanka and her

father and how she attempts to take her own life. Priyanka had a crush on Hyder

since she was a child of around 6, a sort of childhood crush that never really

went away. Hyder was 10 years her senior and eventually left the semis when he

married Priyanka. A Hindu girl, marrying a Muslim man was always frowned upon

in Bombay, and most other parts of India. It was rear that this ever happened. Priyanka, however was determined and relentless in her pursuit for Hyder. She saw him as

some kind of prize and would not give up her pursuit. Nothing would stop her

not even Hyder tying the knot with Rafeeqah.

Hyder now had the perfect life, a beautiful wife, with two young daughters, a great

career as an air-force pilot, a stunning home, he had it all including the

white picket fence. The whole marriage thing and he moving away devastated Priyanka.

Since he had married and left the village to live closer to the city, she

became immensely depressed.

Life went on as per normal, but as time went by, for those three nights in his Hotel

room he had a similar dream, this time it wasn’t Priyanka in the dream but his

wife Rafeeqah. She was in Priyanka’s apartment.

Now Hyder was confused, this was the last night he was spending in this hotel

before he headed off back to the main air force base in Bombay. What was his

wife doing their? He felt feverish again, and as he felt the sweat droplets

building up on his upper lip, he clenched his right fist but it wasn’t empty.

He was gripping a revolver—the cold metal by now had heated up quite

substantially from the fever he had developed and his sweaty palms were

loosening his grip on the gun.

He could not even remember why he had the pistol in the first place and what he

was planning to do with it? But that voice inside his head kept saying, “Get

the hell out of there”. He did recognise his wife though and was not planning

to leave her behind. He was walking towards her while she was standing not

moving an inch in the living room of the apartment and he was barely two feet

away when Priyanka’s father stepped into the living room pulling his

state-issued pistol on him and pointing it directly at Hyder’s chest. He had

another three uniformed policeman standing behind him in their freshly ironed

khaki attire ready to pounce on him. “You’re under arrest,” Priyanka’s father

loudly proclaimed in a very stern, hostile tone.

“Drop your weapon.” he instructed. Without saying a word Hyder quickly leaped towards Rafeeqah, and as he threw his body behind hers, he flung his left arm around the front of her neck as to almost suffocate her while simultaneously pointing the gun at her head.

“Get back, get back right this moment or I swear I’ll pull the trigger,” Hyder

frantically exclaimed to Priyanka’s Father. Priyanka’s father was quite taken

aback by this action, he immediately took a few steps back while still pointing

his gun at Hyder now raising it a little so it points to his head instead of

his chest.

Hyder eventually managed to slowly get himself and his wife out of the apartment. As he was exiting the apartment through the front entrance, guns still point at

him and still holding his wife hostage, he heard someone hoot outside, it was

his father with that old yellow van of his, ready to help them escape. Hyder’s

father had his two daughters in the van and all he had to do was jump in with

his wife which he did. He hadn’t seen his father in ages and had lost complete

contact with him. Priyanka’s father and his crew followed them almost right to

the van, but did not attempt to stop them.

Once Hyder and his wife were safely in the van, they sped off and eventually

disappeared into the dusty sunset not to be seen for months to come.