The evening in Gwalior was the colour of wet cement. It was a typical middle-class Tuesday-the air thick with the smell of diesel from the petrol pump and the sound of pressure cookers whistling from open windows.
Vranda, seventeen and tired of her textbooks, stepped onto her porch to catch a breath of air. She was barefoot, her feet resting on the cool stone. That was when she saw him. Across the road, standing under the flickering neon sign of the petrol station, was Kundak.
Her heart lurched. Kundak was her classmate from the government boarding school-a boy from Odisha who had come to Gwalior on a one-year migration exchange. He wasn't supposed to be here.
"Kundak?" Vranda ran across the asphalt, her bare soles stinging. "What are you doing here?"
Kundak looked at her with bloodshot eyes. Beside him stood a woman in a faded cotton saree, clutching a plastic bag as if it were a lifebuoy. "Vranda... we are lost. We went to Jagannath Puri for the pilgrimage... on the way back, we boarded the wrong bus at a midnight stop. We woke up here. Our luggage, our phones, our money... everything was stolen while we slept."
He leaned in, his voice a terrified whisper. "We have to get home, Vranda. My grandfather... he was a powerful man, a guardian. The Mahapooja is in two days. If we aren't there to light the ancestral flame, his spirit will turn. My mother is the only one who knows the chants to keep the peace. If we miss it, our house falls."
The urgency hit Vranda like a physical blow. "There is a private traveller bus!" she shouted. "It leaves for Raipur in ten minutes! From Raipur, you can catch a local to the Odisha border. Come!"
She didn't tell her parents. She didn't grab her shoes. She hailed an auto-rickshaw, pulling Kundak and his mother into the cramped seat. Her family, spotted her near the station and, hearing the crisis, joined the race, pulling out their wallets to pay for the tickets.
But the "System" had already decided their end.
The Gwalior bus stand was a chaotic sea of sweat. Vranda's father ran back from the counter, face pale. "The Raipur bus... it's gone. A wealthy family-a wedding party-they paid the manager four times the fare. They 'chartered' the entire public vehicle just to carry their wedding gifts and extra luggage. There is no transport left tonight."
The silence that followed was deafening. The supernatural wrath of a grandfather felt far away compared to the cold greed of the living.
"I need... water," Kundak's mother whispered. She stumbled toward the public washrooms-a place the municipality had forgotten for a decade.
Vranda stood outside, the air suddenly turning unnaturally cold. A low hum vibrated in the floorboards-the grandfather's presence, perhaps, or just the heavy thrum of a distant train. Then, a sickening clink echoed from the tiles.
Vranda burst inside. The floor was a lake of stagnant, soapy water. Kundak's mother lay there, her leg fractured at a sickening angle. But it was her head-she had slipped and struck the jagged, rusted remains of a broken iron water tap that jutted from the wall like a spear.
"Ambulance! Someone help!" Vranda's screams tore through the station.
Her family scrambled. They called 108. They begged the police. But outside, the sirens of a VIP convoy began to blare. "Clear the road!" the officers shouted, pushing the crowd back. "The Minister's cars are passing! No one moves!"
The ambulance was barely two blocks away, its lights flashing uselessly, trapped behind a wall of black SUVs and tinted glass. By the time the roads opened, it was too late.
In the flickering yellow light of a neglected station, Kundak held his mother's cold hand. She didn't die from a curse or a ghost. She died because of a slippery floor, a greedy bus driver, and a road blocked for a man who didn't know they existed.
The Great Pooja in Odisha would go dark that year. The "System" had finally taken its toll.
...
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