It was during the mid 90s, Kathmandu was a lot cleaner and less chaotic or you may say it really justified the quote"City of dreams". My family had a house on the middle of a road, left and right a narrow space enough for a small car and vehicles to pass through. During the silence of the night, it was quite normal for us to hear people's chat as they were passing by, frequent swearing of words, sometimes even a hard running chase situations. As they say ignorance is quite a bliss, we adopted this thought and made it mandatory for all family members.
Frequent short load shedding at the night affected the city life at that time, some people even finished their dinner and went to bed before the power cut. In the thin line of my consciousness, a growing up child at that time I was engrossed in doing my school homework. My other 3 elder siblings too must have been busy in their own curriculum exercises as I don't remember their situations clearly. My mother was checking on the flash light as it had stopped working... She proceeded to open a packet of candles. As expected the power went out, my mother burnt a candle and kept near me. She went on to other rooms to light up the dark that moment between darkness and light made me realize I had been holding my pee in anticipation of finishing the homework faster. Although we had attached bathroom inside the house, my mother forbade the use of it in the summer due to to odor issues.
My mother sat beside me and started knitting a sweater from a wool ball. I told her as it is dark outside if I could use the bathroom inside to pee. She instead advised me to take the candle and use the toilet outside. That slim glimmer of hope faded away, I had to walk down that small alley like passage in the compound to reach the toilet. Analyzing my blank expression she offered me to call my name continuously until I return, it gave me a faint sense of belief that I can tackle my fear of darkness. I got up and took the extra candle and started walking, mom started chanting my name, we had our kitchen at the end of our house and the long passage to the toilet could be seen from the kitchen door. I reached the kitchen and looked through outside the transparent door, as expected pitch darkness surrounded every where.
Holding only good thoughts and remembering holy mantras I slowly opened the door as I gazed ahead what I saw was a strange source of light coming from the passage towards the toilet, there was a strange sound of footsteps coming along with it. The naive mind inside me immediately figured out our house flash light was not working so zero possibility of it being my siblings. As I kept observing, that source of light was not something ordinary it was moving with sheer pace and equally menacing foot steps like some invisible giant figure holding the light. My heart beat raced, panicking I closed the door and took a deep breathe as I looked ahead the source of light had gone. I looked towards the living room, she was chanting my name.
Checking to see if I was daydreaming, I again slowly opened the door, the same sight started playing again, rushing towards me. This time I froze, my eyes were wide open, I wanted to call my mother but my lips were glued, it was only some inches away from me now, those footsteps getting frighteningly louder dominating my mother's call. Now I could feel the light sucking me in to its dimension as if my soul is pulled inside like a dust into a vacuum. Suddenly my mother yells "come here" with loudest pitch as possible. I return to my senses and close the door then rush towards her without turning back, she calmly tells me to use the bathroom inside.
Totally bewildered by the circumstances a moments ahead as I was about to open my mouth to explain, she said "I saw that light too".
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