Hello folks! I would like to tell you all a story involving a friend of mine. This friend, who is in his early forties and whose name is Rajan, works for a well known pharmaceutical company in Madras. He is married and has two children. Rajan is quite distinguished looking, though with a fair share of grey hair, in fact fairly handsome. He has his normal male impulses but is not a compulsive wolf. In the course of his work as the regional marketing head he travels to the major towns near Madras fairly often. One of the places which he frequently visits is Coimbatore. Since Rajan's wife's grandmom lived in Coimbatore in a sprawling mansion, he would stay there during his visits rather than a hotel.
My story goes back two years. The household consisted of the grandmother, another elderly cousin and Padma, the housemaid. Padma was a rather plain woman in her late twenties, unmarried and of an average build. She did all the cooking and cleaning and was a live in housemaid as opposed to a part time servant. She belonged to Palghat, a nearby town and would go there once a year for a week but otherwise stayed with her mistress right through.
Rajan had of course seen this woman often during his visits but had not really noticed her. On one such visit, he had to tour the outlying small towns and reached Coimbatore late evening, fairly tired after a busy day. He had dinner with the old ladies and then retired to his bedroom around 9.30 pm. It was the rainy season in that part of the country and there was thunder and frequent flashes of lightning, a rather wild night. After he had dozed for an hour he was aroused from his sleep by someone shaking his shoulder insistently. He saw that it was the maid Padma. She seemed rather agitated and whispered, "Sir I saw someone outside walking in our compound outside my window. I'm really scared." She kept repeating that she was frightened so Rajan spoke to her soothingly and somehow calmed her down. He said, "Let's take a look without waking the others in case it was only a shadow or something like that" He walked quietly into the kitchen where Padma usually slept, and she followed close behind .