Late at night, I was driving back alone on a secluded road leading to my home which was still about three kilometers away. Suddenly there was a tap on my shoulder and I heard a man, “I will get down here.” I froze for a moment and turned my head back. It was dark and I just saw the silhouette of a head behind mine. Shocked with disbelief, I stopped the bike.

“Who are you? When did you…”

“You gave me a lift,” he replied.

“You are kidding me! I didn’t stop anywhere. I have never seen you before,” I said.

“Neither have you now,” he was right, “Not everything is what it seems to you.”

And then he just vanished, leaving me alone with the soft purr of the bike reverberating through the chill of the night. I shook my head and set the bike rolling again.

I reached home. The garage light was on and the shutter was up. As I rolled my bike in, I saw a small pair of legs jutting out from under the front wheel of my Dad’s car. Shocked, I parked the bike in a hurry and went forward to the front of the car and saw my nephew lying there, blood all over and the tire parked on top of his groin. I recoiled back in horror, heart in my mouth and felt like vomiting. I pulled myself together and rushed inside. My mother was in the kitchen, in front of the gas, cooking something.

“Ma, Sonu, Sonu, he is…”

“Don’t worry,” she said, “He asked me. Let him play in the garage.”

“Ma, he is… the car has run over him. He is dead.”

“Stupid, must be playacting. You know how kids are. Relax. The car can’t move by itself.”

I didn’t know how to convince her. She was so calm. What the hell was happening? I was looking around when I saw it.

“Ma, there’s a cockroach in… whatever you are cooking.”

She looked down and then laughed, “Oh, I am sorry, forgot you don’t like it.” Then she picked up the cockroach by a tentacle and put it in her mouth, “You don’t know what you are missing, go on, and get ready for eating.”

I was still sweating with fear, shock and grief. My father would understand. I went to the hall and saw him sitting there with a Playgirl magazine in his hand with my niece next to him. He had opened up the centerfold and was pointing out things to her. I rushed to him.

“What is wrong with you?” I snatched the magazine out of his hands.

My father looked startled, “How dare you?” he thundered and my niece started crying.

“How can you?” I shouted back, “She is too young for all this. Your own granddaughter, for Christ’s sake.”

“There’s nothing wrong in it,” he had stood up and snatched the magazine back from my hand, “There is no age for learning and the sooner she learns about these things the better it is for her.”

Perplexed out of my wits by the happenings in the house, I started “Sonu is outside….” Father, who was extremely wild and looked it, cut me off again, “Your mother will take care of Sonu, Get lost.”

I was almost in tears by now; my whole world was crashing around me.

I moved across the hall to the small corridor separating the three bedrooms. My sister, a painter by profession was in her room. She was standing in front of her easel with a drawing paper mounted on it. There was no brush in her hand. She turned around and looked at me. She had a forlorn, distant look on her face with a hint of a smile. She then touched her right index finger to her left wrist and drew a blood red line across the paper. She had slit her wrist and then I noticed blood dripping on the floor. My legs started trembling and I put my hand on the door to stabilize myself.

I staggered to my own room. My wife!

As I reached the doorway, I saw her in bed. There was a man lying next to her and she was kissing him on the cheek. My head throbbed with pain, the fear and the anxiety turned to anger and hatred and I rushed to the kitchen. As I took out the large butcher’s knife from the drawer, I saw my mother emptying the contents of a carton into the vessel on the gas stove. Cockroaches of all sizes, live ones, tumbled into the vessel. I felt like screaming, and rushed out. My father had my niece on his lap now.

As I passed my sister’s room, she called out, “Hey, have a look at this!”

I entered my room, rushed to the bed and pushed the man away from my wife. My wife stood up startled at seeing the big knife in my hand and cried out, “Stop, what are you doing?”
I raised my hand high and was about to strike down when the spell broke.

I froze. The knife fell from my hand. I stared at the bed in disbelief. My two-year old was lying where the man ought to have been. He was crying now and my wife was staring at me. Oh my God! I was shocked at the thought of what could have happened.

I rushed out of the room. My sister was still at it. She had a paint palette in her left hand and a brush in the right. She had painted a beautiful portrait of mine.

I went to the hall and saw a National Geographic in my father’s hand, “What is with you today?” he asked.

Across the hall in the kitchen I saw a packet of Nutrine nuggets next to the gas stove. Somehow I knew what would be in the vessel on the stove and didn’t bother to check. There was still one more thing. I went out the front door into the garage and saw my nephew playing with a dinky car. When he noticed my presence, he looked up and said innocently, “I am not talking to you Mamu (uncle). You didn’t even say hello when you came back.”

Legs quivering, I leaned against the garage wall, closed my eyes and remembered what the man had said to me, “Not everything is what it seems to you.”