The Lady in Blue.....

It was a fun-filled day for me at my school that day.I was in 8th grade that time and we were allowed to go outside the school during lunch break to buy our meal as we didnt have canteens then.That day Raghu,Sanjay and I were planning to save our money given to us for lunch and use it for a horror movie that had recently come in our town.
We were simply thrilled by horror movies,especially hollywood ones as their gore bloody scenes made the movie worth watching.So as lunch break progressed we started feeling pretty hungry.To curb our bloody appetite we started wandering about in the market place.Soon our eyes fell on a sweet shop where the cook was frying jalebis and samosas(delicious Indian snack).Our eyes fell in love with it and our mouth couldnt stop watering. Soon it became obvious to the cook that three young boys were eyeing on his food without any intention of buying it. So he started giving us dirty looks which meant buzz off. We knew we had no choice, but to go back to school with an empty stomach and then sit through the maths class with our heads spinning around was too much for boys of our age. So we decided to stick around for some more time. What we didnt realize was that an old lady was watching our every move from a distance. And by our behaviour it was obvious that we were hungry.
     Soon the lady approached us. She looked as if she was in her 70's. She was wearing a pale blue saree , some cheap bangles and a large nose ring. She pretty much looked malnourished herself. She came close to Sanjay and told him that she wanted to take us kids for lunch at her house. When asked why she simply told us that we reminded her of her grand children and that she cannot see hungry children.
      We were more than ready to take advantage of that fact because if we hadnt, our stomach would have digested our insides! She then led us to a small cottage which was not very far from that place. The place looked as if no one had visited the house for decades. Dust had settled on every part of the house and the silence in the atmosphere was more than spine chilling. But we were not going to mess that with our appetites. She made us sit in a corner of the house which looked pretty clean compared to the rest of the cottage. By the look of the house, we were pretty sure about the kind of meal that would be served to us. But we kept hope. Something was better than nothing. We had a price to pay if we wanted to watch the movie!
     Anyways, she set three clean plates in front of us and went into the kitchen.The rest that happened truly amazed us. She brought all kinds of dishes for us including our favorite jalebis. We were more than glad to eat them all. The dishes kept coming and we kept on eating. Soon we had over eaten.After finishing the meal we suddenly realized that we were late for school and only few minutes were left for the lunch break to get over.
So we quickly washed our hands and left.We didnt even have the time to thank her for her kindness.We were lucky enough to reach the school just on time.
    After school got over,we decided to go to her house and thank her for the meal. We plucked some flowers from a nearby garden, tied them into a bundle with a piece of thread and took it along as a thank you gift. It was the least we could do.Soon we reached the cottage and to our amazement saw that the gate had a big rusted lock on it.The house seemed abandoned. We were very confused at that site as only a few hours ago we were inside it eating a delicious meal.

      We decided to ask someone about the lady.We went to a nearby shop and asked the shopkeeper if he happend to know anything about that lady.We told him about our meal and how we wanted to thank her. The shopkeeper started laughing and asked us to stop joking.When asked why he told us that the lady about whom we were talking lived in that house 80 years ago and had died long back.When asked how she died, he told us that her children had left her and went abroad for their job and she was left alone. She died with the picture of her children and grandchildren close to her chest.The cottage has been locked ever since.
        At that moment everything around us stood still..It felt as if we we plumetting into a world of darkness.Then the dawn of realization fell upon us.Now we knew how she managed to get us all kind of food inspite of being so poor.We were so foolish we didnt think about it even once at that time.It all seemed so believable.And suddenly we started feeling hungry again. Was all that food real or was it just an illusion? I can bet my life that we were not hallucinating anything and everything we felt was real.But still it seemed so unreal. We were so scared that we didnt even think of going to a horror movie that evening. We never spoke about it to anyone else. We were sure that if we did we would be declared mad and sent to a mental hospital. We will never know what happened that day and to this day the hair at the back of my neck stands up thinking about that incident.What do I call this incident? I dont know..But I surely think twice before going to anyone's place for lunch again! ;)

Peace
Mrinal