It all happened on a chilly night in the month of November in a small town in western Odisha. My husband was away on a tour to Bhubaneswar and had informed me that he would return that night by 12’O clock. I kept waiting for him up till 2 a.m, watching the television, and then went into a deep sleep.

All of a sudden, my sleep broke, yet I was still in a drowsy state. I heard some sort of faint sound, just like the jingle of the keys. I turned my head toward my right, where the shelf was. Furthermore, I saw the light of a torch with low battery power. It was someone trying to search for something. At first, I thought it was my elder son who was in class six. He normally got very nervous during the examination and got up quite a few times at night. I was about to pronounce his name when in that dim torchlight I saw a person with lungi and a shawl around with his hair up till the shoulders. For a second I thought that my husband had arrived, and the children had opened the door to give me a surprise, but then how could his hair grow so long within two days? Moreover, he always used trousers at home.