TALK ME TO SLEEP
I have a strange habit. I can’t sleep alone. I need to have someone beside me, talking to me, to help me sleep. My girlfriend, ex-girlfriend now, was the one who used to talk me to sleep. Now, I had been awake for 5 days. Try as I might, I had been unable to fall asleep. I tried so many things; listening to soothing songs, the numerous sleep apps, listening to audiobooks, but somehow, I couldn’t fall asleep.
It was 12 in the night and all I could think about was my ex-girlfriend’s soothing voice as I sunk into sleep. Picking up my phone, I dialed in her now-deleted number from memory. I knew it was late, but I needed to sleep, damn it! If it needed me to beg her to talk me to sleep, well, I was ready to do that too! The phone kept on ringing and no one replied. I redialed the number, again I didn’t get a reply. I redialed it; the call was picked up by the third ring. Hallelujah!
SHE ANSWERED
It wasn’t her. I had dialed a wrong number. The ‘Hello’ was different, smoother, and silkier. It was a voice that instantly soothed the storm raging inside me. I was desperate for that calmness, a peace that could lull me to sleep. And I did not shy away from her as I expressed my misery to this beautiful voice on the wrong number, begging her to talk to me, just for some time so that I could sleep. I didn’t need to know anything about her, I just needed her voice caressing my monsters as they clash within my head, till they were tired and asleep. And she did. That night, I finally fell asleep, like an exhausted, lost hiker, finally returned home. I slept for the whole day.
It became a routine for us. I would call her in the night. Her name was Maya. We used to talk about life, about our dreams and hopes. She loved to talk. She always had amazing stories to tell me, to which, like a curious toddler, I would fall asleep every night. She told me about her dog Rainbow, yes, she named her dog Rainbow! She had stories about her friends, her brother, and her family. She told me about her city, her school, the marketplace where she eats Tikki; she told me stories that mesmerized me, making me wonder how it would feel to experience all that with her. Stories I would record and listen to in the day, dreaming of her.
I never realized how she had become an integral part of my life until one morning, I decided to meet her in person. But, to my shock, she refused. She said that she didn’t want to meet me. For her, it had just been a call in the night that helped a friend sleep. That was how it had been, that was how she wanted it to be. That was the last night when she talked me to sleep.
THE HUNT
I was desperate to meet her. It had been four nights since I had talked to her, four nights since I had slept. The monsters in my head were back, hungrier than ever. Day in and day out, I searched for any trace of her, the internet, the phone companies, and any place I could think of. But it felt like she had fallen off the face of the Earth. The phone companies claimed that the number did not exist, none of the Mayas on Facebook knew me. It felt like a dead-end. In the night, I lay in my bed, replaying her voice, trying to fall asleep to her stories, but the monsters won’t soothe. They wanted to talk to her.
Finally, I decided to search for the landmarks in her stories. Maybe that would tell me where she was. That was how I finally found her area.
I asked about her everywhere, standing in the marketplace, stopping strangers and forcing them to listen to her recordings. For three days, I stood there, trying to find anyone who could recognize her voice and tell me where I would find her, but all in vain. For three days, my monsters ate at me. Till on the fourth day, one old man confirmed that he knew the voice, that he knew a girl named Maya. Till he talked fondly of a girl and her dog named Rainbow. Till he confirmed that he was her brother, the brother of the girl who died years back. Till I realized I might never sleep again.
