The 70-year-old man had been living alone for 50 years and had made it a rule that women were not allowed to enter his house. I sneaked in in in the middle of the night, but was stunned by the view inside.

I was born and brought up in a small village in the Ganges delta. At the end of the street was a kutcha house made of wood and raw bricks, with an old tiled roof. A 70-year-old man lived alone there for decades. People used to call him Baba Hansraj. No one in the village knew much about his past; All they knew was that he had made a strange rule: no woman was allowed into his house.

Every time a woman passed by, he would lock the door loudly. If someone accidentally set foot on the stairs, he would angrily chase them away. In this way, the house became taboo and full of mystery. Grown-ups stayed away from him, children were curious. As far as I’m concerned, the older I got, the more curious I became. One moonlit night, the wind whistled through the bamboo and neem trees, and I decided to do what no one in the village had dared to do: sneak into the house.

In the middle of the night, I was walking down that deserted street, my heart pounding. The rotten wooden door cracked open. In the dark, the house was so gloomy as if it wanted to swallow me.

It was so quiet inside that I could hear my own heartbeat. The smell of wet wood, burnt incense and old lime combined to suffocate me. On hard ground, near the corner of the cold stove, lay a cot and a surahi (earthen water pitcher). I was walking very slowly; My eyes slowly darkened.

Then I froze.

There were portraits of women on all four walls. Some were pictures made of coal on rough paper, some with faded water colours. Dozens, then hundreds, faces: sad eyes, gentle smiles, sometimes an indescribable silence. There was a coldness on their faces—as if they were watching my every move.

In the middle of the main room, there was a statue of a young woman neatly placed, her face soft, her long hair scattered. The moonlight filtering through the window bars fell on the face of the neem wood statue, making it look vibrant—a frightening life.

I stepped back, then suddenly a hoarse cough sound came from behind me:

— “Who… Who dared to come in here?”

I turned around. Baba Hansraj was standing there—a slender man, an old kurta, a gamcha on his shoulder. His eyes were old, but bright. I stammered and apologized. They weren’t angry; He just sighed and sat down in a small wooden chair.

He began to tell.

At the age of 20, he fell deeply in love with a village girl named Lalita. The whole village admired him. But just before the wedding, Lalita met with an accident on the highway – a bus that never returned. This shock turned Hansraj to stone. He swore that he would never let any woman into his house, because he had only one figure in his heart.

Those paintings and sculptures were his memories. Night after night, he sat alone in the light of a stormy lamp, making that face again and again with memories. Year after year, she made that house her own monument to the memory of her lost love.

Hearing this made me shudder—not out of fear, but because I could feel the utter loneliness in his hoarse voice. People thought of him as a freak; Basically, he was simply an old man stuck in the past, who could see no way out.

She looked at me, her eyes moistened:

“You’re the first to dare to come here. Look at… There are no ghosts here. It’s just an old fool who’s still talking from his memories. ”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just bowed my head. At dawn, I left his house with a heavy heart.

Later, whenever I passed by the kutcha house at the end of the street, I was not afraid. Rather, I felt pity for a heart that had been buried for half a century because of an unfulfilled promise.

Baba Hansraj’s story made me understand: There are some wounds that time never heals – we can only learn to live with them. And sometimes, a small lamp lit in the heart is hotter than all the rumors circulating outside.