The Witness

[A short story by Mr. Venkat Manthripragada titled ‘The Witness’.]

With a very slight noise of leaves crackling in the garden due to closed window, Arvind went to the window and looked outside though the glass pane. A stray dog moving for an unknown reason.

Though he hates the presence of the wall clock in his room, Arvind looked at it.

The time shows 3 am. It is a brahma muhurta – very sacred time as per his grandmother. His heart suddenly plummeted as the face of his maternal grandmother lingered in front of his eyes.

I do not know how many days ago I saw and talk to her. She must be sleeping now, he thought.

Arvind is confined to his room for over thirty years. Though he lost track of time, he could spend his day very well with the books he had in the old book rack. He had been reading the same books again and again and feels like a new answer he got from every reading.

Arvind had lived inside the tight spiral of his mind. A life ruled by precision and pattern, by the daily exorcism of invisible threats – counting tiles before stepping on them, checking the light and fan switches eleven times, folding clothes to immaculate corners that only his fingers knew.

His family – especially his mother and father – have always struggled to understand Arvind’s isolation.

Can a mere fear of dirt and germs on public places, the railings of staircases, truly shatter a boy so handsome, so intelligent?

Is that the reason he withdrew – or is there something else, something he could never bring himself to say?

He wasn’t broken either. Only busy. Some member of the family presents themselves at the door step and keeps food all three times – Arvind takes the plate inside from the door with a glove on. He washes his hands and the spoon many times and eat the food. Some days he keeps the plate out without consuming if the curry or dal or any other item gives him an impression of dirt.

His room had grown quiet over the decades. The city outside ballooned into a neon swarm of food delivery boys, voice notes, dating apps, drone cameras, podcasts on speed-play. Arvind barely noticed. His world was internal: soap, light switches, toothbrush heads, doorknobs.

Some days he’d realized he hadn’t spoken to a human for multiple days. At that time, he wrote it down on a yellow sticky note and said it aloud. Just to hear his own voice. His niece, he never saw her nor she saw him keeps giving some stationery and new books of her choice. Depending on the mood he uses them or keep pushing them to a corner.

He whispers with himself that I do not need this dirty world. I am a self-sufficient man of great intellect. Other human being in this world is very low class in terms of intellect. I am waiting for someone who can match their thoughts with mine.

He has not reacted to the sight of the dog, stepped back. He felt like his eyes are wide open and cannot be closed and invite sleep.

He suddenly stood up, and with a strong urge taking control of his brain instructed him to take on the rituals – hands scrubbed red, floors cleaned thrice and arranged items in his room in an order. None of the family members noticed switching on of the light and slight noises of his rituals. He lay in bed, blinking at the ceiling, counting breath intervals.

Then a silence fell – not the regular kind, but one that had depth, like a vacuum between dimensions. He didn’t fall asleep.

Something.. detached. It wasn’t a dream.

Arvind stood – or rather was – in the middle of a strange plaza. No people. No dust. Just infinite screens floating mid-air. Each screen showed a different life: teenagers lip-syncing, office workers crying in toilets, influencers applying filters to sadness, families eating dinner in silence, eyes on their own rectangles.

Another screen in his head played a looping video of a man checking his door lock seventeen times before finally walking away in tears. Arvind flinched. Was that him? Suddenly his chaotic mind became silent – he fell asleep.

The soul – his soul – wandered on.

***

The soul entered a park, but no one was laughing. Not sure which city or location where it is located. Everyone wore smartwatches telling them when to breathe. One man asked a chatbot how to grieve. A woman took a selfie next to her mother’s grave. Two boys scrolled through memes while standing in line for therapy.

It entered a child’s dream, where the dream was shaped like a game. In it, the child fought off monsters by buying digital armour with his father’s credit card. No one questioned the logic.

It hovered above cafes where every face glowed not from joy, but blue light. Conversations were stitched in abbreviations and unspoken rules.

A feeling arose in Arvind – something he hadn’t felt in years. Sadness.

But it wasn’t his alone. It belonged to the world.

The soul wandered into an old village once full of communal meals, loud festivals, and shared water. Now, there were steel gates, private schools, nuclear families. Old people were parked in senior homes like forgotten cars. Everything was scheduled. Spontaneity was archived.

A group of teenagers passed by – they didn’t look up. Not even at each other.

The soul wanted to shout. Shake them. Say: “Don’t you know how alone you’ve become?”

But it had no voice. It was just witnessing. And perhaps, that was enough.

Somewhere in the metaphysical distance, Arvind felt the pull of his old body – the way a child might feel their home calling when night falls.

But before returning, the soul hovered one last time over a digital shrine where people left “likes” instead of flowers, condolences typed in emojis, and grief packaged in 15-second reels. The soul trembled – not from fear, but from grief.

Grief that the world had turned its wounds into content.

***

He awoke. Not sure how long his consciousness left him and wandered in the world.

His ceiling fan spun lazily. The room smelt of antiseptic, just like always. But something was.. different. The silence wasn’t sterile. It was gentle. Arvind sat up and touched his hand – once, not eleven times.

He walked to the window, opened it fully (without counting the locks), and let the air in. It wasn’t disinfected. It was alive – carrying sounds, smells, chaos. He stood there for a long time.

He didn’t rush to wipe the window frame.

He went to another corner of the room and stood Infront of a large mirror. I am very handsome he felt. On days when he is disturbed, same reflection appears utter ugly.

He walked up to the table – sat on his chair, took out his white papers and a pen, started writing cautiously –

You are
my dearest friend – You alone.
You are
my most despised enemy – You alone.
When I rise
above these dualities,
I find myself
standing before the mirror.

He read his lines again and again and felt that he has represented Advaita (non- dualism) beautifully.

His soliloquy about his appearance, poetic sense and responsibility to save the world by not spreading dangerous germs continued for some time.

Finally, he fell asleep again, not sure what was the time.

***

Arvind woke up hearing the noise of the room door.

He walked up to the door and shouted “stop the non-sense noise. The sky fallen or house gutted”

“Sorry uncle, it is very late, there was no noise from you nor did you eat your breakfast” said a feeble voice trembling slightly. It must be his niece.,“Ok, go away. Let me do my things peacefully,” said Arvind. His voice softened slightly not sure why. May be on hearing a younger and soothing voice.

Internally he felt sad for his tone and attitude towards the little lovely niece. Though he never saw her, basing on her voice, he formed a silhouette.

In the days that followed, Arvind began to write more. Not about his rituals or routines – but about the wandering. He wrote of the blue-lit loneliness, the emoji-shaped mourning, the death of dialogue, the performative healing. He filled notebook after notebook with observations, laments, hopes.

His obsessions didn’t disappear – they never do entirely.

But something shifted. He started talking with his elder brother, sister-in-law and niece for longer durations explaining Advaita philosophy, recite the poems penned by him.

He often used to say “I’m trying to remember what it felt like when we were still human.”

Nobody laughed. They were happy that after quite a number of years, he is more grounded and attempting to come back to the normal human world leaving beautiful, idealistic inner world.

He went back to his writing table and started writing a poem –

The room where I sit and sleep is the map of all I am –
a compass of routine and quiet breath, drawn in sunrise and exam.
It holds no storms, nor sudden stars, just the rhythm of repeat,
a cradle of inherited hush,
and warmth with traces of heat.
It’s not a prison, yet not free, a measured, muted spell –
a tender cage of ordered days, a home, a silent shell.
No whispers from the outer winds, no sparkle from the skies –
just one in all, and all in one, where stillness never dies.

To the disappointment, this has not continued for a longer time. One day, his brother stood at the door with pungent attar.

Arvind smelled such a thing for the first time and felt that it is a dirty and he retreated into his cocoon.

The ordeal of the family and Arvind continued.

***

Years passed. The young niece of Arvind now became a psychiatrist.

She tried joining the dots of her observations and opinions of the family and realized that he is suffering from chronic OCD with Schizophrenia – may be schizo compulsive disorder.

She tried helping coping mechanism in Arvind. Like the collateral artilleries developed by body when there is a block, Arvind developed his own coping mechanism in the belief that he is a great soul and isolated to take up penance for the safety of the world.

Few years passed, family members grew old and realized that they have to supply food, soaps, razors, clothes with no emotional attachment.

***

One morning the servant who took over the charge of Arvind from his niece who is now married and moved to a different house noticed that the food left at the door was not consumed nor was he answering the knocks on the door.

With a suspicion the family broke the doors and found that Arvind lying down on the bed. The soul caged for multiple years in the isolated body finally found freedom at set its journey in search of the celestine energy of another world. His face was pale but emitting brightness. A small drop of tear on the side of his righteye corner breaking the hearts of the family members. The puzzling question of how he survived alone and what is the value of his life is grilling their hearts.

After performing his last rites, the family looked at the room they have not entered for last three decades.

Books and papers neatly arranged; no dust anywhere is the room. Clothes neatly arranged and ironed. Arvind’s room showed how well he lived in his room and experienced the world solely created by his inner energy.

They found lot of notebooks and paper bundles with excellent poetry, short stories depicting the natural forces as characters – presenting the move of human race towards extinction because of their madness to control nature.

Arvind’s handwriting is exceptionally beautiful like spreading of good shaped pearls.

Most startling piece of writing they found was a long bunch of A4 sheets he got from his niece with a heading “The Witness”. It is his own story of how he developed fear about dirt, germs and interacting with people with a fear that they might be carrying dangerous germs which can give him fatal illness.

The story was presented the condition of his life quite vividly. It was clear that these number of pages not written in a short period. He must have written

since he got the sense of fear which he could not understand a chronic OCD condition.

While reading the manuscript, the niece realized he had been evolving as a thinking human seeing the constant improvement of presenting his ordeal over the years.

No body in the family understood what is the meaning of a life spent lonely and aimlessly in the middle of cacophonic world? Why should such a life be recognized and cared for.

Some called him a prophet of the digital age. Others, a madman with a gift. His writings weren’t solutions – just reflections. Quiet mirrors.

He never claimed to understand it all. Only that once, his soul left for a while.. and when it came back, it brought news.

Not from heaven. Not from hell. But from here.

End