At the stroke of midnight Varun felt that someone was in his room. He opened his eyes a crack and felt the curtain move. He hugged his blanket closer to him as he heard the gong of the grandfather clock in the hallway.

“Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!Gong!”

It was strange that this should wake him up because it was a sound he had grown up with. It was a sound he he’d heard since the day he was born.

“Your grandfather got it as a graduation present,” he remembered his mother telling him.” His father got it specially for him to keep in his new office. It is now over a hundred years old but it still tells the correct time,” she used to say with pride, ” not like those Quartz clocks that need battery replacements every month”.

Varun loved the deep sound  of the grandfather clock made hour after hour every day of his life. He loved watching his mother wind it up every Sunday at 9 o’clock sharp. Every time he heard it gong the hour he felt a sense of calm and peace, a reaffirmation that all was well with his world.

But tonight something was distinctly different. There was a slight chill in the air, unusual for this time of the year. He slowly rubbed his eyes open and propped himself on his elbow as he tried to make out what was happening.

He looked around and then he spotted  it – a figure dressed in white, huddled over his desk. His heart ran cold. Who could it be? He stared hard and could make out the shape of a shrivelled old person, the white hair glinting in the faint light. Slowly he got up and went close to have a better look.

“Ajji?” he asked the person, hesitantly not knowing whether he was dreaming or imagining things .

“Varun?” she replied,”What am I doing here? In your room?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you?”

“Why am I here? How did I come here?”

“I don’t know Ajji, but come I’ll take you back to your room,” and the two of them walked downstairs to his grandma’s room.

Varun tucked his grandmother in her bed and patted her head.

“Go to sleep Ajji,” he said, ” come, shut your eyes. I’ll stay here with you if you want.”

“No,” said the old woman, clutching on to his hands, ” I don’t want to shut my eyes. If I do they’ll take me away.”

“Who will?” asked Varun, “There’s no one here. See there’s just you and me,” he said putting on the bedside lamp for a minute so that his granny could look around her.

“No!Put the light off! They don’t like it,” she insisted, ” Please , please put off the light.”

Immediately Varun put off the light and said, ” Ajji, don’t imagine things. There is no one here. There’s just you and me. I’ll stay with you the night if you want.”

“Thank you, beta,” she said patting his hand, ” Thank you. Don’t leave me alone,” she begged. ” They’re all there waiting for me. They come every night and call out to me. They’ve come to take me away.”

“Who’s come?”

“Can’t you see them? They’re all there – Nana, and Aai and Baba. And my atyas and kakas too. Even Bhau is with them. They have their hands outstretched and they’re calling out to me.”

Varun looked into the frightened rheumy eyes of his grandmother and felt a shiver go down his spine. Were they really in the room with him? All his dead ancestors who abandoned their photo frames every night to invite his grandmother to join them in the other world?

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda