Superstar: Horn OK Please (4 page)

***

Roses are red and violets are blue,

The howling begins faraway, as if on cue;

The Beast is restless; she feels scared, she feels fear,

In the house of pain; she can feel its presence so near;

It’s there inside her head, in the darkness of her mind,

Questions are many but the answers lie within, she must find;

Merciless rain, howling wolf and a fearful moan,

Huddled inside her room, she trembles with fear all alone;

She’s trapped inside her body; her soul longs to be free,

Oh! When will he come and rescue her from misery?

She clings on to hope; the end is always near,

He is here, she loves him; so is the pain and fear;

She doesn’t want him to know, the truth she shall hide,

Will he ever know her love for him, just before she died?

The beast is inside, it’s the Devil within,

She’s done nothing wrong, she’s committed no grave sin;

Yet, it won’t leave her, she knows it wants her dead,

She must not give up hope, that’s what her mother once said;

But if smiles and Imagination makes you say ‘Cheese’

Drive on, that’s the spirit of Horn OK Please…

***

The Mansion:

It had been months since we’d taken a break from driving around aimlessly. A little bit of solitude and life at an unhurried pace was the collective craving. Though the dream was about to become a reality in the current scheme of things, I wasn’t so sure about our break at the mansion. Of all beautiful places around the world, we had to choose this place. On hindsight, I wish we’d chosen more wisely. Maybe, it was our collective destiny...

The sole purpose of this break was to reconnect with ourselves. I wanted a place away from the mad rush to complete my next book before I could send the manuscript across to my publishers. Goose wanted to spend some quality time with his camera and not us. The mansion and the plantation had shown the promise of unparalleled beauty and wildlife photography. He’d even borrowed huge sums of money from every living friend of his to buy a new wide-angle lens. While he fussed over his photography equipment, we had all bled through our noses to pay for it. 

Hound claimed that he wanted to spend the time writing poetry. For some reason, he liked to believe that he was quite good at it. Well, at least someone believed in his non-existent skills. He claimed that he always wanted to compile all his poems and turn it into a classic soon, just that he never had the time to put his words into action.

They say nature inspires the poets and being an amateur Hound couldn’t have been more privileged to be in a place like this where the cadence of the nature beautifully blended with the routine of the inhabitants of the place. This place was just perfect and he’d have all the time in the world to work on it.

Derek wanted to spend his time playing golf. The place offered him a 9-hole golf course where he could just spend his time doing nothing. The estate seemed to attract some pretty good crowd per its website, so we were sure that we’d also get lucky around the place.

The reviews about the mansion had been good. It offered very few suites and promised a break from civilization. It had promised us breathtakingly beautiful, quaint suites with awesome views overlooking coffee estates. There were just seven suites in the building, yet they called it a resort.

It had stopped raining when we finally arrived at the mansion to check in at 11:30 PM. It wasn’t exactly a five-star resort though. It was an old, ancient, building from the colonial era, but hell, this is exactly what we’d signed up for when we all voted unanimously for this place.

As the smell of the wet earth filled up the atmosphere, calmness began to seep in. It had been a long day and we were dead tired, mentally and physically.

The mansion looked ambrosial, bathed in faint yellow light. The mercury lamps at the entrance made the water drops on the tree leaves resplendent as the water shimmered with golden tint.

The road that led to the reception arch of the mansion was graveled and lined by jasmine plants on either side that exuded their characteristic smell giving comfort to the soul. A huge chandelier hung from the arch and it gave a royal look to the fabled ‘Mansion of the Gods’. 

Jenny was there to receive us at the door along with her uncle. Standing along with them was an ancient woman, probably a few hundred years old, as old as the mansion itself. Dressed in a garishly pink gown, the old bat looked a lot scarier than the apparitions I had seen in front of the old cemetery that night.

The security guards at the gate stopped at the perimeter of the mansion itself, it seemed that they weren’t allowed inside. Jenny introduced the shockingly old and pink disaster of a witch as ‘Nanny’.

I was sure she looked after the estate by flying around on her pink broom every night. Probably she had more wrinkles on her face than she had hair on her head. It was close to the witching hour and I hoped the old bat would soon take off anytime now, at least out of my sight.

Jeremy D’Silva, the owner of the place, was a man in his late fifties, trim and fit but looked and reeked like a dipsomaniac. His lanky appearance and a full crop of hair made him look a lot younger than he actually was. He had an athletic build and always carried a pleasant smile on his face.

He wore rich clothes, some branded stuff that not many people can afford. He was Jenny’s Uncle. Right now, he was wearing neatly ironed black trousers and a white shirt. I figured that the family had an abundance of white shirts.

“Jenny tells me that you saved her life today. Please accept my heartfelt gratitude. You’re lucky that you made your reservations in advance. We have just six suites for guests. Counting you, we’re going full starting tomorrow. I’ll personally ensure you good service, Nanny is here at your service as well, aren’t you, Nanny?” said Jenny’s uncle, pointing to the ancient bag of bones resembling an old woman. Nanny smiled an evil smile and said, “At your service”.

I bet she was already dreaming of recipes about us – roasted Goose served with bat wings, minced Chief served with hot garlic sauce, boiled Derek garnished with cheese and deep-fried Hound dipped in honey, served with toasted bread and mashed potatoes.

“What crap! Your website says you’ve got seven suites, isn’t it?” snapped Goose, unable to hold back his observation when he noticed that there were only six rooms up for occupancy. We had taken four rooms and now with one room out of commission, his chances of getting new golf partners dipped by a large percentage.

“Er…yes. But the 7th suite room is in a terrible state. It’s a 350-year old building, you see. We just keep junk in there. It used to be Jenny’s great grandfather’s meditation room long ago and now we keep it locked. But you don’t need to worry, you shall have very clean rooms”, replied Jeremy, avoiding eye contact with any of us.

Nanny nodded as though we’d go by her endorsement any day.  Forget our rucksacks, I was sure that the old bag of bones wouldn’t be able to lift a barf bag, yet she was at our service.

“You call this a mansion? This is an old, dilapidated building that’s falling apart. This is just an ancient building! How dare you trick us into this mansion, De Saliva or whatever your name is?” thundered Derek, he was livid with rage.

That’s exactly how the D’Silvas had marketed it to us. The very fact that we had to spend a month in this dump made him freak out and he lost it.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Derek. I understand that you had a hard day. But since you saved my niece’s life today, I’ll give you a week’s free living in this mansion. It’s on the house. You just pay for the rest. Is that fair?” replied Jeremy apologetically, slightly taken off guard.

It was evident that the man was loaded with cash and this business was mere pocket change for the drunken, old bandicoot.

Derek mumbled his gratitude and proceeded with Hound to their respective suites while Goose and I decided to look around the house that Jeremy called the ‘Mansion of the Gods’. I wondered what he intended to do with us.

Maybe, he was planning to throw us into the dungeon and Nanny would help him stuff us into personalized, pink iron maidens before dumping our remains into pink coffins.

But it was an old, beautiful and quaint place indeed. It was a sprawling mansion, well-kept and taken good care of. There were six guest suites on the first floor, two on each side. Each suite had a name – Nicholas, Walter, Edmund, Henry, Christopher and Bernard.

The seventh suite room, Winston, was on the ground floor, close to the lounge, at the far end of the lobby near the main entrance to the building.

The living room at the center of the mansion was visible from all the suites on the first floor as the doors of all guest suites overlooked the lobby. It was huge. Had they removed all the junk furniture that cluttered the place, we could have played football in there.

The lounge was covered with dark teak wood flooring, end-to-end. The wooden floor betrayed the age of the building as it creaked while we walked on it.

The place was well lit up with yellow light coming from really expensive, crystal chandeliers all around.

There was a big fireplace adjacent to the seventh suite room, towards the eastern corner of the house. Large portraits of Jenny’s great grandfather adorned the walls; at least that’s what Jeremy told us.

Extra large, comfortable sofas and couches lay in front of the fireplace. The warm fire from the fireplace gave the mansion a nice, cozy feeling and the smell of musky furniture gave it a very vintage feel. If only I could bottle up the air and mix it with alcohol, we’d have a nice high.

Massive curtains and drapes adorned the lounge from the roof to the floor. There were ghastly bronze statues and flower vases all over the place, giving the hall a cluttered, yet open, royal feel to it.

Needless to say, the vast football stadium of a lounge was a breathtakingly beautiful museum of antique art from a long time ago. The adjoining lobby made sure that the lounge had enough fresh air.

Near the fireplace was an old teak side-table adorned by the rich silk tapestry. It would have been really old as the once white fabric was now yellow that it had acquired as it had journeyed across the generations. It depicted a royal wedding.

On one side of the tapestry were the bride and groom busy greeting people followed by a joyous crowd. On the other side of the fabric was a dense jungle with a pack of wolves hunting down a fawn. I found it ominous and evil. The entire place had a strange connection with wolves. We chose to ignore the omen and moved on. 

“Check out the portrait of that evil dude right above the fireplace, bro?” whispered Goose, “I’m sure he would have been the perfect son of a bitch. This place is spooky, I wonder how we’ll spend a month in here”.

I nodded in agreement. I wondered if a day pass to a museum might have been a better idea than spending a month inside one.

The evil man in the painting looked like a mad man’s version of Galileo on weed. Draped in Portuguese attire, there was a red-color cape that looked like fungus and seemed to bloom like poison ivy before withering down to the floor. It resembled Superman’s cape dipped in tomato ketchup.

But unlike Superman, this evil dude didn’t wear his underpants on the outside. However, he had stuffed his loose fitting trousers into his socks and had put small belts with hooks around them. His shoes were exactly the kind my headmistress from high school used to wear, ugly black shoes with shabby buckles. I was scared of her to the core when I was a kid. I still am.

The dude seemed to have a severe attitude problem as he looked down upon us from the portrait, his piercing black eyes made the painting look really evil. He was leaning on some kind of a pedestal that had a clay pot and an urn kept on top of it.

A black, leather diary with a golden buckle in one hand held close to his chest, the evil dude rested the other hand on the pedestal. The background of the painting was black. It must have been a reflection of the artist’s mood when he painted the man.

“Jeremy says it is Jenny’s great grandpa. Come, let’s go, this ol’ man has something obnoxious about him”, I said as we walked towards a passage that led to another part of the mansion.

The passage to the annexure, which was probably built later than the lounge, led to a library stacked with old, musky books from a long time ago. There were neatly bound books stacked wall to wall, roof to floor on all four corners.

A big wooden stool was kept in the center to access the books on the top shelves. “These must be the secret recipe books for toothpick Nanny”, said Goose. I gulped and nodded in agreement.

There were books that covered a gamut of topics. The topmost section had books on gardening, origami, charcoal painting and so on. It seemed to have been put together by an aesthete. The middle section had books on various religions and civilizations that flourished across the world.

It had books on the Mayans, the Incas and the Harappans. There were books on Egyptian, Roman and Greek mythologies as well. The section seemed to have been tastefully decorated by a theologian.

The last section had books on travel mainly authored by Hiuen Tsang. There were books on unexplored places and some trekking adventures in the Himalayas. This section belonged to a really ancient road hog.

We concluded that whoever would have bought these books would have been a polymath. My respect for the person grew manifold as I quickly noted down a few names to be added in my ‘to read’ list.