Sanjh's POV:
The journey continued with loud music, endless antakshari, and at least three arguments about which song belonged to which year. Prithvi bhai insisted a 90s song was from 2005, and Sriya di got so frustrated that she threw a chip at him. Hima laughed so hard she almost fell off her seat, and Yuvi bhai had to remind everyone that they were supposed to be playing a game, not fighting. Ujwal bhai and Yuvi bhai finally decided on a restaurant called Sharma Dhaba for breakfast, claiming it had the best aloo parathas in the entire state. They were right. The parathas were amazing, and for a while, everyone forgot about the song argument.
We stopped two more times after that. Once for lunch at a small roadside hotel where the chai tasted like burnt sugar, and once because Hima desperately needed the washroom and we couldn't find one for twenty kilometres. That particular stop led to Prithvi bhai getting yelled at by an old woman because he accidentally walked towards the ladies' side. The woman waved her rolling pin at him and shouted something about young boys having no sense of direction. Sriya di did not let him live it down for the next three hours, and every time Prithvi bhai tried to defend himself, she would just say, "Ladies' side, Prithvi. LADIES' side."
Somewhere in between, I dozed off with my head on Hima's shoulder. When I woke up, the sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. The roads had changed. They were narrower now, less crowded, with dense trees on both sides. No more shops. No more people. Just trees and darkness creeping in. I asked Ujwal bhai where we were, and he said we were almost there, maybe another hour. Yuvi bhai glanced at the GPS and muttered that the signal was getting weak. He hoped we wouldn't lose it completely. Famous last words.
Twenty minutes later, the GPS froze. Then the screen went blank. Prithvi bhai leaned forward from the back seat and asked what happened. Ujwal bhai muttered something about no signal but assured us that we just had to follow Ramesh uncle's car. They knew the way. We could see the headlights of the other two cars ahead of us, so we kept going. The road twisted and turned, the trees growing thicker and darker with each passing minute. No streetlights. No other vehicles. Just us and the forest pressing in from both sides.
And then, without warning, our car made a strange sound. A cough. A sputter. And died. The engine cut off. The lights went out. Everything went silent. Ujwal bhai tried restarting the car, but nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. The other cars' headlights kept moving forward, getting smaller and smaller until they disappeared completely. Sriya di's voice came out of the darkness, saying that they hadn't noticed us stopping. Yuvi bhai tried to sound calm, saying they would realize soon and come back, but I could hear the uncertainty in his voice.
We sat in darkness, surrounded by trees, the night air suddenly feeling colder than before. Hima grabbed my hand and held it tight. No one spoke for a long moment. Then Ujwal bhai spotted something up ahead. A large, weathered board with faded letters barely visible in the darkness. It said, WELCOME TO NISHIGIRI. Ujwal bhai whispered that we had made it to the village, that the car just had to stop right at the entrance. Prithvi bhai opened his door and said he would check the engine, maybe something was loose. He got out, and Yuvi bhai followed with his phone's torch light.
The rest of us waited inside, the silence pressing against our ears. Hima whispered that she was scared, and I squeezed her hand and told her not to be, that it was just a car problem and they would fix it. But something felt wrong. The darkness outside was too dark. The silence was too silent. I decided to get out too, thinking fresh air might help. I stepped out and walked towards the board, curious about this place called Nishigiri.
The board looked old, covered in moss, the paint peeling in long strips. Someone had scratched something beneath the letters, but it was too dark to read. I reached out to touch the board, to feel if it was as old as it looked. And then I slipped. My foot caught on something—a root, a stone, I don't know—and I fell hard. My hand slammed against something sharp near the base of the board. Glass? Metal? I couldn't see. But I felt it.
The pain came a second later. Sharp. Burning. I looked at my hand and saw blood. A lot of blood. Too much blood. Sriya di was out of the car in an instant, running towards me, asking what happened. I couldn't answer. I was staring at my hand, at the blood dripping down my fingers, falling onto the ground near the board. Dark soil. Dark blood. Disappearing into the earth. My blood. And then I remembered. Hemophilia. The word hit me like a truck.
I whispered to Sriya di that I was bleeding, and she reached me and saw my hand. Her eyes went wide. Being a medical student, she knew exactly what this meant for someone like me. She told me not to panic, her voice steady even though her hands were trembling. She tore a strip from her dupatta and started tying it tight around my wound, saying we needed to stop the bleeding, we needed—
The car engine roared to life.
All of us froze. We turned to look. The headlights were on. The car was running. Perfectly. Prithvi bhai stood near the hood, his face pale in the dim light. He said he hadn't done anything, that he didn't even touch it, that it just started on its own. No one spoke. Then, in the distance, we saw headlights coming back. The other cars. They had noticed. Ujwal bhai let out a breath and said thank God. But I couldn't stop staring at the board. At the ground where my blood had fallen. At the darkness beyond.
Sriya di finished tying the bandage and told me to keep pressure on it, that we would get proper help at the house. I nodded, not trusting my voice. The other cars arrived, and my mother was out before they fully stopped. She saw the blood on my hand, the makeshift bandage, and her face turned white. I told her I was okay, that it was just a cut and Sriya di had helped. My father was there too, his hand on my shoulder, his grip tight with worry. Even Ramesh uncle came to check on me. But it was my grandmother who I noticed most.
Nirmala Verma stood a little apart from everyone, her eyes fixed on me. On my hand. On the blood. Her expression was not angry. Not worried in the normal way. She looked scared. Genuinely, deeply scared. She came closer and said in a low voice, "Be careful, Sanjh. Be very careful." That was all. No lecture about the jumpsuit. No comment about running around at night. Just those words, spoken like a warning. Like she knew something. Like she was afraid of something.
I wanted to ask her what she meant, but everyone was already herding us back into the cars. The drive to the house was short—barely ten minutes. The house stood at the edge of the village, huge and traditional, made of stone and wood with a tiled roof that sloped gracefully. Warm light glowed from the windows, and as we got closer, I could see intricate carvings on the wooden pillars near the entrance. It looked old but well-maintained, the kind of house that had seen generations pass through its doors. A wide veranda ran along the front, with clay pots hanging from the ceiling and flowering plants lining the steps. Despite the late hour, the house felt welcoming, almost like it was inviting us in.
Manoj uncle, my father's friend, was waiting at the door with a warm smile. He folded his hands and said, "Welcome, welcome! Come in, come in. The house is ready for you." Everyone filed in, tired from the journey, eager to sleep. The inside was even more beautiful—high ceilings with wooden beams, old furniture that looked polished and cared for, colorful rangoli at the entrance, and photographs on the walls showing generations of a family. The air smelled of old wood and agarbatti, and somewhere from the kitchen came the faint aroma of chai. It was aesthetic, traditional, and strangely peaceful.
We were shown to our rooms. The cousins were all on the same floor, and Hima and I shared a room with a large bed and a window that opened to a view of the dark hills. The bed was soft, the sheets smelled fresh, and for a moment, the unease from earlier felt far away. Hima was asleep within minutes, her breathing soft and steady.
But I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, my hand throbbing beneath the bandage. Something was wrong. The car stopping at the exact spot where we entered Nishigiri. The way it started again on its own. My blood sinking into the ground near that board. Grandma's face when she saw it. And her words. "Be careful, Sanjh. Be very careful." They echoed in my mind, refusing to leave.
I wanted to sleep. I was exhausted. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw the board. WELCOME TO NISHIGIRI. And beneath it, my blood, disappearing into the dark earth. As if the ground had been hungry. As if it had been waiting.
I must have fallen asleep eventually, because the next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming through the window, warm and golden. Morning had come. The room looked beautiful in the light, the wooden furniture glowing, the hills outside visible in the distance. It should have felt peaceful. It should have felt safe.
But the unease from last night hadn't left. It sat in my chest, heavy and cold.
And somewhere deep inside, I knew. This was only the beginning.
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