Today after school I had to take Little Po to his music class. I was told to drop him off at the entrance and that he’d make his way to the class . I was to wait down for him till he returned an hour later .

But it was a dark gloomy monsoon afternoon and it was his first day . I wanted to see for myself where this room was deep inside the large, imposing building .

We pushed open the large doors to a huge cavernous lobby that literally gobbled up Little Po as we walked on the purple musty pile carpet .

We got into a lift and made our way to the third floor. The industrial looking vestibule with cement floors and cold unadorned walls had no markings apart from a sign in red saying ‘Restricted Access’ .

Did we have to march ahead or turn right ?

There was no one to ask. Looking around helplessly , we suddenly saw someone approach and I ask where we had to go . No answer – just a finger pointing reluctantly, the other way.

As we walked down the cold corridors I was spooked . The silence was chilling . We walked down the poorly lit shadowless corridors in dead silence . On one side were dusty panels with strange looking objects peering out – contorted statuettes, broken trophies and aluminium trunks with names of people piled one on top of the other. And the last bit of corridor was lined with half empty bookshelves from some abandoned mansion or library.
Occasionally we saw a surly looking east European or person of indefinite descent . Man or woman was hard to differentiate – big , burly and as mentioned before surly. They looked at you with slitty eyes , questioning but not willing to show you the way .

Heavy, grey metal double doors – the first hard to pull open and the second even harder to push in . No indication of what was going on inside, or what will go on when you leave your little boy alone inside .

I go down yet another corridor and I find a young girl sprawled on the floor amidst sheets of music . Her hair is long, straight and silky, she is slim but hardly waif like with her huge feet and clunky sandals.
I’m scared to leave my boy alone with her in the room .
She asks us to wait . We were too early she said .
Exactly a minute before four, she brings along four more children. Each one looks terrified. Not a smile . No hello .

A man with colourless slitty eyes came out from a closed door saying ‘Don’t, Don’t’ to a young boy who was trying to shut the door behind him .
He held a heavy headed drumstick in his hand as he led the boy in …….

And I remembered the plate I’d seen on a table at the beginning of the corridor – a half eaten meal covered with piece of crumpled tin foil and a piece of bone poking out.

Was it the remains of a little finger ?

Ciao