Nine years back, I had been in the middle of switching jobs. My visa transfer got delayed and I decided to stay with a friend for the indeterminate time period of my visa approval. After my furniture was disposed off to an Albanian family who had moved into the riverside apartment I had been staying at previously, I moved in to ‘S’s studio, with just two suitcases and a sleeping bag.

The studio apartment S was staying at was actually belonging to a wealthy Indian family who were extremely suspicious of youngsters, especially those not speaking their language (S was a good deal elder to me). The L-shaped studio had a small kitchen and a single room with a row of windows facing the yard outside.

S was learning to play the Veena, from another common friend of ours, so evenings would be spent peacefully with S practicing her lessons and me lying flat on the futon, reading a book got from the library which was a mile away. I would go for jogs along the tree-lined avenue up to the lake near the library. As the evenings grew chillier, I stopped doing that and focused more on helping S with the cooking.

S is a great cook and from her, I learnt to make exotic dishes like akki roti, parupusali, koots, etc. We had a co-operative relationship; S did most of the cooking, I made the rotis or parathas and we shared the responsibility of keeping the house clean (like me or even more than me, S was finicky about this)! S had her quirks, in a funny sort of way. “Absolutely no garlic in my food!” she would say, but we would drive off to Bertucci’s, to have Margherita pizza and pasta. I think garlic is mandatory in most Italian dishes, especially the sauces.

After the Veena practice in the evenings, S would boil ‘Horizon’ brand organic milk and add some saffron to it and pour it into two steel tumblers – one for me. “Drink it up, kanna!” The warm milk would taste delicious and I would drift off to sleep in no time at all. Since time immemorial, I have enjoyed the comfortable feeling of being pampered and babied.

Come winter and my car posed a big problem for me. On-street parking was not permitted during the winter months, which meant that I would have to park my car in the common lot at the City Hall. The City Hall was a three miles round trip from the house and had strict parking hours. The five months that followed, I would drive to the lot after seven in the evening to park the car and walk home and wake up at six in the mornings for the one and half mile walk to the lot, often times in a half-asleep state and oblivious to any suspicious characters on the road.

That December, S got unexpected vacation and decided to go to India for a month. I had the studio all to myself and I had been following the parking routine tediously, waiting for spring and the elusive visa to arrive.

The studio had many large windows facing the front yard and the side street. As a result, the curtains would be closed most of the times and because of the bitter cold the windows could not be kept open either. After S left for her vacation, I decided to keep the curtains drawn back, to help alleviate the claustrophobic feeling. The place would be deathly quiet after about eight in the night. The main door was in line with those large windows and had motion-sensory lights above it, so that we would not have to fumble in the dark with the keys in trying to open the door.

In the middle of one night, I woke up, thirsty. I walked to the kitchen and got a glass of water when I realized that I did not have to turn on the lights but had managed to find the glass in the dark. But it was not dark. The source of light was from outside the house, right near those big windows up front! Cautiously, I walked up to the main room. The motion-trip lights were on, which meant someone was outside! The digital clock showed one a.m. It was like a nightmare come true. I crept to the windows and peeped through the glass. Not a soul! Maybe the intruder was hiding behind the door.

I closed all the curtains, scrambled back to bed and pulled the comforter over my head, trying to fall asleep. After a few minutes, I peeped out from the covers and saw that the lights had turned off. Back under the comforter, I started chanting my prayers. In five more minutes, the lights had turned back on! Whoever it was, had returned! Perhaps it was one of those suspicious characters who had followed me from the City hall during my early-morning walks for the car. Creepy thoughts refused to leave me, but sometime in the night, I dozed off, tired and weary the next morning.

The following night, back-to-back episodes of X-Files were being broadcast on the t.v. I watched dramas about serial killers, psycho kinesis, black magic and other such bizarre phenomenon. Guaranteed to be a sleepless night for sure! I got to bed at eleven or so, but like the night before, I woke up after a few hours because of the harsh glare of the motion lights from outside. This time the lights stayed on for long. My heart was racing madly. I had to ask the owner of the house if he had any clues.

The next evening, I managed to get hold of him while he was shoveling the snow in the yard. Even before I approached him, I had begun feeling stupid about the whole thing.

“Umm…these motion-trip lights. They had turned on last night.”

“Okaaaay?” he, bewildered.

“I do not think it could be an animal, right?” I began, thinking why had I not thought of the possibility of an animal. The question was which animal was large enough to trip the sensor.

He guffawed and said, “Could be those damned raccoons!”

Raccoons??? I felt like sinking underground for being so stupid and paranoid.

“Yeah, there is a family of raccoons in a hideout next door and they climb over the wall and the roof at your side of the house and then cross over the front yard to the trash cans.” he explained.

I was the biggest dunce alive. The next night being a weekend night, instead of visiting friends, I decided to keep awake and keep an eye on those motion lights. Tough luck. The lights did not turn on that night and I did not get to see those shifty raccoons – maybe they were partying with their loot somewhere else for the weekend. Or maybe the landlord himself was a dunce and indeed there was another, more sinister visitor those previous nights! Aaaarrgghhhh!

Footnote : No, those lights did not turn on again, the rest of the winter after my roomie returned. And I was reminded of this incident after seeing hubby walking about with a medicinal paste plastered over his left eye - not too unlike a raccoon! hehe