The Magical Door

The Magical Door

It was Monday. I had set an alarm for 6:30a.m. but I only woke up at 7:15a.m. after snoozing the alarm clock thrice. The small, narrow window in my one bedroom apartment hardly let any sunlight in, thanks to the massive gurudwara right in front of the only window in my apartment. On weekends, I’d always draw the curtains close and sleep in until late in the morning. The room would always be dark and the gulli that I lived in was also very quiet and far from the hustle-bustle of the main chowk. 

I woke up and checked my phone to see what time it was and hurried off to the toilet to get ready for the day. I lived in an old building and the apartment I shared with my best friend was converted from a terrace into a shabby living space by the miser landlord and rented out to young, miserable college girls like me who had no source of income and survived on petty pocket money sent by our parents. The place was livable in a sense that it protected us from the rain and animals and nocturnal birds. The tiny kitchen where we only ever cooked tea and maggi had an old, rusty exhaust fan that made a loud, explosive loud sound every time we turned it on. It almost sounded like it was angry for being woken up from its slumber. There was one tiny bathroom where only one person and one bucket with the mug inside it could fit in. Adjacent to the bathroom was an even tinier toilet with a commode and nothing else. I tried opening the toilet door but I couldn’t. I was confused for a moment if my friend, with whom I shared the apartment, had returned home from her boyfriend’s place. But I realised that she hadn’t because we couldn't even afford to make a spare key and there was no way she could have entered the apartment without me letting her in.

I cursed my landlord for refusing to fix the door of the toilet that always got jammed and locked, especially when we had guests or on mornings like this one, when I was already too late for college. With all the energy I had from the previous night’s double pack maggi and two eggs and a mug of hot milk that I finished drinking in one shot, I pulled open the door and for a moment I lost my breath and sight with the wind on my face and bright sunlight blinding me. I shut my eyes and covered it with the back of my palm and held onto the door knob as I slowly tried to make sense of what was happening around me. I saw thousands of people in what looked like a stadium, chanting ‘India’ ‘India’. It was a bright, sunny day and everyone was in a frivolous mood. I lifted my right foot and stepped into the stairways that led to the stands. I walked slowly, careful not to fall. When I looked back, the door was closed behind me and it looked exactly like my toilet door. For a moment I thought it was a dream and I was going to fall off the stands and startle and wake up from my dream but when I smelled the biryani that a little boy was eating next to where I was standing I realised this wasn’t a dream. 

I kept walking, trying to find a familiar face or someone who looked as puzzled and confused as I was and figure out what was happening. But everyone looked so ecstatic, I didn’t know whom to ask. I saw three empty seats so I went and sat down in one of them. I tried reading the banners and posters that people were carrying. I saw pictures and names of some of my favourite cricketers, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, etc. On the big, black scoreboard I saw it written in big, bold handwriting with a chalk ‘INDIA v/s PAKISTAN- 2007’, Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium, New Delhi. It slowly dawned on me that I was about to witness this epic test match at Kotla stadium which was happening after many years and what made it even more exciting was the fact that it was being played against Pakistan. I had tried very hard to buy the tickets for this game. It was the first time Dhoni was playing in New Delhi and I had to watch him play in real life. I had tried asking the few friends I had made in college for tickets but this game was so hyped up that tickets were quickly sold out and I had lost all my hope of seeing Dhoni play. The last time he was in Delhi, he had come for the inauguration of one of the newly opened outlets of Mcdonald's at GK. I missed seeing him in person by a few seconds then and this game was my only hope. I had cried, screamed, and refused to eat meat until the time I saw him in real life. My friends called me crazy, fanatic when I started cutting his photos from newspapers and writing him love letters. They said I had lost my mind when I bought a life size poster of Dhoni and pasted it on the toilet door because there wasn’t any other space in our apartment to paste it. My best friend complained every morning that she had to take a dump looking at Dhoni’s face. I still don’t know why that was a problem. 

So it kind of made sense that the toilet door turned into this magical door that led me to the stadium to watch Dhoni play in real life. I was tapping my feet, biting my nails and looking back at the door and even pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I turned back at the door to see if it was open when I saw my best friend and my cousin walking towards me. They were laughing and doing a hi5 and pointing at me and laughing even louder. I sat there nervously, waiting to be thrown back to the toilet. They came and sat next to me and handed over a hot, packed meal that smelled like biryani and said, ‘We are sure that you will eat meat now that you are going to watch him play in real life.’ I took it and waited for them to tell me something about the door or even about how we got here but the game started and in all fun and frolic, I completely forgot about it myself. I watched as India started batting and set a score of 228 runs with Dhoni scoring 57 runs. 

The game finished at around 5p.m. and everyone got up and started walking towards the exit. The stadium was very crowded, I was afraid there would be a stampede. We held each other’s hands tightly and walked slowly. I kept looking back at the door from where I came in but it stood there, quiet, privy to our secret and still. We somehow managed to exit the stadium after almost half an hour and waited for an auto rickshaw for another half an hour during which I looked for some signs in our conversation that told me what happened earlier during the day. Nothing. No signs. No secrets shared. 

As soon as we reached home, I tried opening the toilet door and unlike itself, the door opened with a new smoothness, without a creak. I went inside,closed the door, sat on the commode and stared at Dhoni’s poster. It looked the same. His eyes were on the ball that we couldn’t see and his knees were bent and he was ready to hit a sixer. His hair was long and he was wearing a blue cap. I could never tell this for sure but I think something in his smile had changed.