13

I don’t know how are you going to react after reading this one, but I am writing what I felt when I was in Malaysia on 13^th June on 13^th floor. The hotel was, MANDARIN COURT HOTEL. I was in KL, and the view from the hotel room was awesome. The Twin towers and the KL tower, both were visible from the room. We reached the hotel on 11^th, the day went fine and even 12^th was good, we had a city tour and we were supposed to leave on 13^th morning at 6.00 hours. I slept at 00.30 hours on 13^th.

And then a funny but a real incident started. We had two connected rooms, in one, were my mom and dad and in another were me and my sister. Our room was the fun house, everything started on the thirteenth morning while we were in last night's sleep in Malaysia. My sister was hearing the sound of water, like someone is turning on and off the tap of the basin in the washroom, I on the other hand was continuously disturbed by the talk of people, it seemed like there are people in our room and continuously talking in their language i.e. Malay, I was frustrated and irritated with there talk (and moreover I was not understanding anything, at least talk in Hindi.)

Someone was taking our blankets off us, and this didn’t happen once, this happened a lot of time and surprisingly with both of us, this just cannot be the co incidence, right? And not only taking it off but also scratching my feet as if trying to wake me up. But fortunately, I was a sleeping like hell and didn’t wake up to find out that I am in real hell and that to in my own hotel room, but yes, I could feel the scratching. I asked my mom and dad in the morning that if they were doing that, but that the answer was a straight no.

And again I clearly remember it was around 2.30 in the morning and my dad’s phone started, stated on its own, with no one even near it, it doesn't even have a timer to start on its own, just the music started not even the screen. The music was as if someone has switched on the phone. This I could hear clear and nice and also my sister heard it. But in the morning we found out that is was switched off as was kept the last night. That night was over we got up at 4.00 and left the hotel at 6.00. But 13 didn’t stop following us, we reached the airport in about 80-90 minutes, and till the time we checked in it was 8.30. And the gate number we got was C-13, yes right, C-13, somewhere in my mind it was disturbing me because of the fresh experience I had about the number-‘13’. The flight was at 9.30 and we were waiting there till 9.15 and no one was showing up. Almost 45 minutes had passed and no one was there. Then came our tour manager running towards us, we had a sigh of relief. But he came for a different reason, he was not here for the flight but to search us, because the flight was at gate C-31 and not C-13, it was a misprint on our boarding passes.

Some how we made it till gate C-31 in time or rather on time, but we had to run a lot, almost more than half a kilometer. The KL airport is very very big. We reached Chennai, and then to Mumbai, now I was feeling better, people around me were talking in Hindi and Marathi felt like I am at home. Feeling better for one more reason that the 13^th day of the month had passed, just few more hours to go. We boarded the flight to Nagpur, but it didn’t stop following us, the seat I got was 13-B.