Kishore Singh: Don't be afraid of the dark

In all the years we have been married, my wife has had no occasion to be alone at night, whether by design or default. Mostly, we are out till late - my wife enjoys a large circle of 'friends' - else we have people over till the wee hours of the morning. Familiar sounds as I write into the night - the startling whirr of a refrigerator, the slow drip of a tap, the tick-tock of the kitchen clock, doors sighing and breathing, the tap of a branch against a window - are alien to her. On our few quiet evenings, she prefers sleep over what relationship gurus call "quality time".
 

Which is why she panicked when I found myself pulling an all-nighter at work. This would not have been a problem if our son had not decided that, having won a court case, a celebration was in order - or so he said. He might equally have been dating a new friend. He went off on this noble mission straight from office. Our daughter had planned a hookah evening with her friends and was not to be deterred, even though the fog was descending like a curtain over the city. The staff had retired early for the night. Dawdling about in her usual fashion - my wife had called in great excitement to say she had found an old purse with a wad of money she had forgotten about - she hadn't noted the absence of people till it was time to go to bed. The children's rooms were empty. The dog lay snoozing in his bed. The clock chimed the hour eerily.

"I'm going to my friend Sarla's home," she called to say, causing me to laugh. "Seriously," I protested, "you can't be afraid of the dark." She was, she insisted, and she wasn't about to sleep alone in a house when any moment someone might creep out of the shadows and kill her. "Switch all the lights on," I giggled. Instead, she intended to drive over to Sarla's home, only, unfortunately, her friend wasn't in. So, "I'll lock the bedroom door and slip the key under the mat," she informed me in a stage whisper.

The hours passed. She called once to ask if I would be long. She called again to say the children were so spoiled, they hadn't bothered she was alone at home, so would I shout at them the next time I saw them. The third time she called to say there was an intruder outside her door, what was I going to do about it? "Go back to sleep, please," I pleaded, "it's just your imagination." A few moments later, my son called to say his mother had phoned him to say there were strangers knocking at her door. "How polite of them," I chuckled, "at least they're gentlemen thieves."

It was my daughter who alerted the cook, who came down at the same time as the neighbours who had been summoned by then by my wife. There was indeed an intruder, only it was the dog scratching at the bedroom door, wanting to be let in. "I might have been killed," my wife insisted in the morning. "You're behaving like a loony," my well brought-up son reprimanded her. "Mom, yaar, get a life," my daughter said. Now the two have decided she's not to be left alone, the outcome of which is that I've been grounded till future notice. "You found her," my son informed me sagely, "so you get to keep her."