We had an exam the next day. It was not the theory exam – that was really a dreaded one. This was just the final chemistry practical examination. Not exactly dreaded because we knew that the examiners always passed everybody in the practicals. But still it was the final exam and the internal examiner was a bad tempered lady. The external was supposed to be even worse – an ogre. So we had to study for the viva-voce if we did not want to become food for the monster. Mukund, my best friend, was going to come over sometime late in the evening and we were supposed to be waking up the night, burning the midnight oil, so to say.

 

When Mukund finally came over, he barged into my room. I could see he was excited.

 

“Got the stuff, finally,” he said.

 

“But we have exam tomorrow?” I protested.

 

“Oh! The merit student speaks! Shit, man, you just have to pass and this small amount is not going to make a difference. Just a few puffs and things will actually be easier. As it is, the ogre is not going to make it any easier for you tomorrow no matter how much you study.”

 

There was logic to what he said. First of all, the overnight study was not really going to help us much since the subject was just too vast. Secondly, Ganja is not supposed to be a drug that gives you a bad reaction although it is psychoactive. It’s just like tobacco and roughly half the population smokes tobacco. Then again, we were getting ganja after almost a gap of ten days and a few puffs would only quench our craving for it and put our minds at ease.

 

We were five boys in our class and the remaining about 40 were girls. Out of the five, I was the son of an academician, Mukund was a son of an Indian Airlines clerk, Milind was a son of a rich businessman, Mukherjee was the son of someone we knew nothing about and Maske came from a habitat that was more a slum than anything else. My father wanted me to do only one thing – study. I was of an age where rebellion comes easy and so everything he wanted me to do was exactly the thing not to be done. My father never smoked, drinks were like once in a year or so, did not chew tobacco, did not have any vice whatsoever. It was therefore very necessary that I have all the vices in the world and invent a few that were not there. Mukund’s father smoked and was a real gentleman. Of all the other fathers, he was the one who looked at me with a welcoming smile when I went over to Mukund’s house. For the fathers of other friends, I was just a nuisance they had to tolerate. But if Mukund did not like his own father, it was okay. I mean, no one liked their father. Milind got a pocket money that made our eyes pop out and our mouths gape. But he did not like his father either because he thought that the amount given to him was nothing compared to what his father earned. In his opinion, his father spent far too much upon himself and less when it came to him. Maske’s father beat him up regularly as a sport and therefore he was bound to hate him. And Mukherjee, we never knew much about him anyway.

 

It was Maske who introduced us to ganja. He was smoking it from the time he was in school. He was a tall, gangly boy whose Adam’s apple kept bobbing up and down even when he was not speaking or eating. Where he lived, ganja was available cheaply sold by some peddlers who were into all sorts of addictions themselves. Maske learnt to purchase more than he needed and then to supply it in the college to boys who could afford a higher price if it saved them from buying it directly from sellers in the seedy locality where Maske lived. He earned a good bit doing this and that kept him in money for his other needs. For the past fortnight of or so, Maske had been ill and our source of ganja had dried up. And that was precisely why Mukund was so excited today – he had met up with Maske in the evening and had been able to procure two cigarette worth of ganja from him.

 

“Let’s go get some cigarettes,” Mukund suggested.

 

The method that Maske preferred for smoking ganja was to get a chillum and tie a wet cloth around its bottom and smoke through the wet cloth. The chillum was passed from one person to another and usually we held in both the hands and inhaled deeply. You had to exert a bit to get the smoke out from it and into your lungs. But once the smoke came, it came in large volumes. The wet muslin cloth tied to its base became yellow with the deposition of our collective sins. Mukund and I preferred the other way of smoking ganja though there was no likelihood of resorting to this way in the collective smoking. Whenever we were alone, we would buy a cigarette, shake off the tobacco in it and refill it with ganja flakes. Much less effort was needed in this method to pull the smoke in and it was less messy owing to the fact that you could simply throw away the butt. Also, the requirement of a wet muslin cloth was done away with.

 

We bought two cigarettes that night since Mukund had bought enough ganja for us to smoke a cigarette each. The time must have been eleven in the night when we started back for home. Midways, we stopped. In front of Mr. Pahade’s house was an arthi and on it was lying a body. The face was quite blue but you could make out that it belonged to a middle-aged person. People were milling about but all was eerily silent as it always is around a dead body. The blueness of the face delayed my recognition of the person but in a moment I could see that it was Mr. Pahade himself. And then it all came back to me. About a week before mother had been telling father that Mr. Pahade was leaving for Mimbai along with wife and the elder son for an open heart surgery to be carried out there. Nagpur did not have good hospitals in those days and so this visit was necessitated. So, the operation had not been successful and the result was lying there in front of all the people moving about. The last anointments of the body before the final journey were in progress.

 

“Hey, come on, let’s get away,” Mukund whispered urgently breaking my spell. He must have seen the expression on my face and understood the thrall the dead body was exercising on me – especially the face.

 

We moved away slowly.

 

“I used to play with his son and have eaten at his house. He was an ok sort of a guy,” I mumbled.

 

Mukund remained silent and impassive.

 

We reached home. My parents had gone to sleep in their upstairs bedroom. The technique of smoking was quite simple really. We opened all the windows. When we lit up the cigarettes, we sat close to the window, holding the cigarettes out in the garden through the grille. This was necessary since it allowed little smoke to enter the room and so the room smelled normal minutes after the deed was done. The cigarettes were brought in only momentarily to inhale. For exhalation, we pressed our faces to the grille and threw the smoke out into the garden again. The cigarettes were over very quickly and now it was time to get back to the books. Our nerves were now calm since the much needed fix was given to them after ten days.

 

Mukund opened his book almost immediately and started in right earnest. But I was in a different world that spun ever so slightly and was more beautiful than it really is.

 

“I am going to lie down for a few minuites,” I informed Mukund and prostrated myself on the cot that was by the window. “If I go to sleep, wake me up in fifteen minutes.”

 

The moment I closed my eyes, somehow the scene that was in front of me was of a mountainous terrain – most probably the Himalayas. The important thing is that I have never been even near Himalayas. I have only read about it and have seen pictures. I think it was the Himalayas – Garhwal I think – because of the obvious cold and the Devdar trees (Himalayan Cedar). The road went through the mountains and kept winding. There were two cars – both white – speeding in a single file. They were racing because the car that was behind tried to overtake the one that was ahead whenever the road straightened out a bit. It was quite dangerous. The road kept winding and the plane kept getting steeper as the cars went ahead. I was seeing all this quite vividly and thoroughly enjoying myself. The white cars on the black tarmac made wet by the condensation, the dark green silhouette of the Devdars against which they were set and the undulating landscape. The cars went on chasing each other and then the road started curving – curving up and steep. The cars did not lose any speed. The road curved further and then started falling back upon itself in an impossible curve as you see in a roller-coaster. To traverse this road, the cars will have to hang upside down and not fall! The cars did it and I was mighty pleased at the effort till I realized that this was impossible. The gravity should have pulled them down. I got up on the cot with a jolt and opened my eyes. Mukund was sitting hunched on the chair, the book on his lap, and was reading with complete concentration. He looked up and then put his head down again. My mouth was parched and I was thirsty.

 

“I will drink some water. You want any?”

 

Mukund shook his head and I went to the kitchen. It was summer already but the temperature had not climbed sufficiently for us to start keeping water bottles in the fridge. The old earthen pot still provided water cool enough for the season.

 

Our kitchen has very large windows and we keep them open in the summer. Keeps the house well ventilated by the cool night wind. The earthen pot is kept near the window. I picked up a glass, bent down and pulled the lid off the pot, and was about to dip the glass in the pot when Mr. Pahade’s head came out of the opening and gave me a smile. His face was as blue as I had seen last and the lips parted to give a sinister edge, a menacing twist to the smile. I hurriedly put the lid down and looked away. I think I ran back a bit in fright before deciding that I was being a fool. I was possibly half asleep and the car race that I had just seen was a dream sequence. And the face that craned out of the pot was an illusion due to my half asleep state.

 

I went back slowly to the pot with the glass still held in my hand. I bent down gingerly, ready to flee the moment it was necessitated. I lifted the lid. No Mr. Pahade. Just as illusion as I had thought. I breathed easy as I filled the glass and even hummed a song. It is a habit in our house to drink from the glass without touching lips to it. I straightened up and lifted the glass and poured a steady stream into my open mouth while facing the window that was open. Mr. Pahade was standing there now, smiling the same sinister smile. I gagged over water and dropped the glass in the sink.

 

“Go on. Smoke marijuana. You will get the same heart disease that I got,” Mr. Pahade whispered from the window. “I had a valve problem. You go on now. You will have the same valve problem.”

 

I ran back to the room where Mukund was sitting and sat down on the cot panting and sweating.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

I told Mukund the entire story whereupon he laughed. He debunked the whole thing and took me back to the kitchen with him. With him I felt secure and, of course, Mr. Pahade was nowhere to be seen.

 

We came back to the room. I tried to study. But I felt a tightness in my chest that was very uncomfortable and grew more so by the minute. Eventually I threw away the book and checked my pulse rate – it came to about 130 per minute! 130? That way my heart was going to burst. I mean it was going to go to smithereens from the pressure. I rechecked and the number came to be almost the same. I grew further restless and remembered Mr. Pahade’s prediction about my heart and its valve. At this rate, the valve would get damaged before the night was out.

 

I told Mukund what was happening. He looked at me.

 

“130?” he asked derisively. “Give me your hand. Let me check.”

 

I extended my hand to him.

 

“105,” he said with a smile that said many mocking things. “That can happen sometimes. Now study. You have an exam to give tomorrow.”

 

I breathed a little easy but study I could not. The uneasiness was not going away and the tightness in the chest had increased even further. I told Mukund that I was going to sleep. But sleep I couldn’t – I tossed and turned and tossed and turned. Eventually Mukund suggested a short walk which I readily accepted.

 

The short walk in the cool night air calmed me down a bit. By the time I came back, I felt a bit better. Though my pulse rate was only marginally down, I slept.

 

Next day after the exam was over – we had escaped the ogre rather well – we were pedaling back to our house.

 

“For a moment you had got me worried yesterday,” Mukund said.

 

“Worried? But you were laughing and you measured the pulse rate to be 105.”

 

“You know what your pulse rate was?” Mukund asked. “Over 160! My sole worry was that if something happened to you, what was I going to say to your parents.”

 

I never ever smoked marijuana again and to those who say that the drug is not hallucinatory in nature, I have this experience to offer.