Thy will be done!!

I was living in an old rented house after college. Not the kind of house you show off. The kind you take because you have no money and no choice and three friends who are in the same boat. We were clearing pending exams. Away from home. Away from parents. Away from anything that resembled responsibility.

The house was old. Traditional. Mud walls. Tiled roof. A bit big, actually, with ample space. In a city that was not mine, surrounded by people who were becoming family. There were three of us sharing the rent. Living in the house. My two housemates were from far cities. I was from somewhere else too. We were all away from home, trying to finish what we had started.

We had a central hall. A sofa. A dim light that someone had probably installed thirty years ago. The light was perfect for a bar. Soft. Yellow. Forgiving. And we turned it into one. Almost every evening. Drinking. Singing. Pulling each other's legs. Chewing old college memories until they had no flavor left but we kept chewing anyway.

Mobile phones were not common that time. We had a landline. A fat one with a coiled wire that stretched across the room. It sat on a small table near the window. Sometimes it rang. Mostly it did not. We did not care. We had each other. We had the dim light. We had the cheap rum and the louder laughter.

A bunch of friends would visit. Regulars. Locals. Some from our college days, some from the neighborhood. They would come in the evening. Stay late. Smoke. Drink. Crack jokes on each other. Watch movies on my computer. The house was never really quiet. Until that day.

One day, my housemates were away. Their cities had called them back. Family. Something urgent. Something that did not include me. I stayed. I had no money to travel. No reason to leave. No place to go.

The day started normally. Then the electricity guys came. They were not wearing uniforms. Just men with tools and a paper. They looked at the meter. They looked at the bill. They cut the line. The payment was past due. I knew that. I had known for weeks. But knowing and fixing are different things when your pockets are empty.

I did not have any money that day. Not a single rupee. No cigarettes. No food. No way to buy either. The landline was not working either. Just by chance. Dead. Silent. No dial tone. No way to call anyone. No way to reach out. No way to beg.

I was alone. In a big old house. With mud walls and a tiled roof and a dim light that would not turn on. The silence was different without the usual noise. Without the laughter. Without the clink of glasses. Without the smell of smoke drifting up to the ceiling.

I passed time. I do not remember how. I walked from room to room. I sat on the sofa. I stared at the dead light. I went to the window. I looked at the street. People walked by. They did not know I was there. They did not know I was hungry. They did not know I was craving tobacco so bad my fingers were shaking.

Morning passed. Noon came. The sun was high. I was sweating. Not from heat. From frustration. From helplessness. I had never felt so trapped. A house with no electricity. A phone that would not work. A stomach that was growling. A brain that was screaming for nicotine.

One o'clock. Two o'clock. The afternoon stretched like a rubber band about to snap. I was hungry above all. But the craving was louder. The body is strange. It can survive without food for a while. But without the thing it is addicted to? Every minute feels like an hour. Every hour feels like a punishment.

I was praying or not. I do not know. There was no formal prayer. No folded hands. No closing eyes. Just a helplessness so complete that it became a kind of surrender. A giving up. A letting go. I cannot fix this. I cannot change this. I cannot make anyone come. I am here. Alone. Hungry. Craving. Waiting.

By four o'clock, I had stopped hoping. The day was almost over. The light was changing. The shadows were getting longer. I was sitting on the sofa, staring at the wall, when I heard a sound. A bike. Pulling up outside. An engine cutting off. Footsteps.

One of our regular visitors. A localite. Not a housemate. Just a friend who came by almost every day, even when others did not. He knew the house. He knew the sofa. He knew the dim light. He knew the cheap rum and the louder laughter.

He walked in. It was almost five o'clock. I had been waiting for something to happen for hours. And now something had.

I poured everything out. The words came like water from a broken pipe. No electricity. No landline. No money. No food. No cigarettes. The whole day. The hunger. The craving. The helplessness. The silence. The terrible, endless silence of a house that was built for noise.

He listened. He did not say much. He was not the kind of person who says much. He was the kind of person who does.

He walked to the back of the house. Where the electricity meter was. Where the disconnected wires hung like dead vines. I stayed where I was. I am afraid of electricity. Always have been. I cannot even change a plug without my heart racing. So I watched from a distance.

He found an old piece of electric wire. Something left behind by a previous tenant. He peeled it. With his teeth. With his nails. I do not remember. He took the bare ends and plugged them into the open terminals of the fuse box. There was a spark. A small one. I flinched. He did not.

The light in the hall flickered. Then stayed. The fan started turning. The refrigerator hummed. I do not know how he did it. I do not know how he was not afraid. I do not know how he knew which wire went where. But he did. And the electricity was back.

Then he took out a cigarette from his purse. He had a habit. He always kept one spare cigarette in his purse. Just one. In case of emergencies. It would be in bad shape. Crushed. Bent. The paper wrinkled. But we knew how to fix that. Roll it between your fingers. Tap it on your palm. Make it cylindrical again. It would not look pretty. But it would smoke.

He handed it to me. I lit it. I do not remember where the lighter came from. Maybe he had that too. I took a long drag. The first smoke after a long gap. The relief was physical. My shoulders dropped. My jaw unclenched. My brain stopped screaming.

Then he went back to his bike. A small one. A commuter. He lifted the dash cover. The plastic thing that shields the handlebars from dust. And he took out a parcel. Wrapped in newspaper. Tied with a rubber band.

He opened it. The smell hit me before I saw what it was. Aroma of home made chicken curry. The kind that comes from a mother's kitchen. The kind that no restaurant can copy. The kind that makes you close your eyes and breathe in before you even look at the food.

There were chapati. Soft. Smeared with a little oil so they would not stick. And the curry. Dark. Rich. With pieces of chicken that fell off the bone. I do not know how long the parcel had been in his bike. I do not know why he had brought it. I did not ask. I did not care. I just ate.

I ate like a man who had forgotten what food tasted like. I ate like a man who had given up hope and then had hope shoved back into his hands. I ate until the chapati were gone. Until the curry was a memory on my tongue.

Then we went out. He bought more cigarettes. From a shop around the corner. The walk was short. The air was cooler now. The evening was settling in. We smoked again. Standing on the street. Not saying much. Just being.

I told him. You were sent by God. Today. To me. You are an angel. In human form. He laughed. He called me an idiot. He said do not be dramatic. He said it was nothing. He said he just happened to come. He said the food was from home, his mother made too much, he thought he would share.

I did not argue. But I knew. I knew that the chances of him showing up on that exact day, at that exact hour, with a spare cigarette and a parcel of home made food, while my housemates were away and the electricity was dead and the landline was dead and I had no money and no hope — those chances were not small. They were impossible. And yet it happened.

He was a devil by character. He is still a devil. He drinks too much. He fights too much. He has a mouth that does not know when to stop. But on that day, he was an angel. Not the kind with wings and a halo. The kind with rough hands and a spare cigarette and a parcel of chicken curry from his mother's kitchen.

I have thought about that day many times. The helplessness. The hunger. The craving. The silence. And then, out of nowhere, the arrival. The wire. The light. The smoke. The food. The friend who did not know he was an answer to a prayer I did not even know I was praying.

I cannot explain it. I do not try. I just keep it. In my memory. In my chest. In the collection of moments that make me believe that something, somewhere, is paying attention. Not always. Not predictably. But sometimes. In the exact moment when you have nothing left and you are not even asking anymore.

That is God's hand. Not in temples. Not in miracles that split the sky. In a friend who keeps a spare cigarette in his purse. In a mother who makes too much chicken curry. In a man who is not afraid of electricity when you are. In a day that was dark and became light without any explanation that makes sense.

I do not know what you believe. I do not know if you have a word for it. God. Grace. Luck. Coincidence. The universe. Call it what you want. I call it God's hand. Because I felt it. On that day. In that old house. With mud walls and a tiled roof and a dim light that came back on.

And I have never forgotten. Not the hunger. Not the craving. Not the silence. And not the way it ended. With a spark. A smoke. A meal. A friend who was a devil and an angel in the same skin.

That is the story. I do not have a moral. I do not have a lesson. I just have the memory. And the memory is enough. It has to be.