The Paper Boat

Twenty years ago, when I was sixteen and sweating through my Ordinary Level exams, I attended an extra class in the dusty town of Mulapet, a place that existed only as a blur of bus stops and auto rickshaws between my school in the city and my friend’s school in the coastal town of Kalpat. We met every weekday at the junction of the old fish market, where the smell of dried anchovies hung in the air like a stubborn ghost. My friend, whom I’ll call ‘Ravi,’ was a lanky boy with a perpetual smirk, destined for medical school and a future of sculpting faces. I was destined for nothing in particular, which made the afternoons we spent together all the more precious.

Our routine was as fixed as the tide: school ended at 1:30, and we would ride the crowded bus to the junction, eat a hurried lunch of oily parotta and mutton curry from a stall run by a woman named Fathima, and then catch the 3:15 bus to Mulapet for the class that began at 4:30. The class was held in a dilapidated building above a hardware store, and our teacher, Mr. Shastri, was a small, intense man who paced the room like a caged tiger. He had a peculiar habit of ending each session with a question he refused to answer: ‘And what if the reflection in the water isn’t your own? But let’s proceed to the next problem.’ We never knew what he meant, but it lodged in our minds like a tiny splinter.

One Tuesday, we missed the 3:15 bus. A minor argument over the bill at Fathima’s stall—Ravi insisted he’d paid for the tea, I knew I had—delayed us. The next bus wasn’t until 4:00, and the class was a forty-minute ride away. We were going to be late. Ravi, ever the pragmatist, said, ‘Let’s take the shortcut through the quarry marsh. It’ll cut fifteen minutes off.’ The marsh was a patch of reclaimed land near the disused quarry, where the locals said a boy had drowned years ago in a flood. We’d never gone that way, but the thought of Mr. Shastri’s cold stare if we arrived late was a stronger deterrent than any folk tale.

We pushed through the tall, rustling grass, the ground squelching under our shoes. The air was thick with the smell of stagnant water and rotten vegetation. Under a gnarly, low-hanging tree, we came across a small, dark pool, its surface covered with a green scum. Floating in the center was a paper boat, folded with the meticulous precision of a child’s hand. ‘Who’d throw a paper boat here?’ I asked. Ravi shrugged. ‘A kid from the neighborhood, maybe.’ He was about to pick up a stone to toss at it, but I grabbed his arm. Something about the boat felt wrong. It was perfectly intact, as if it had just been placed there, not a speck of water on it.

We hurried on, but the marsh seemed to stretch longer than we remembered. The path we thought we knew twisted and turned, and the grass grew taller, blocking our view of the road. We walked for what felt like an hour, and the sun, which had been high, began to dip behind the clouds, casting everything in a sickly yellow light. ‘We should have reached the main road by now,’ Ravi muttered, his usual confidence fraying. We came to a clearing, and there was the same pool, and the paper boat was still there, as if we had walked in a circle. ‘That’s impossible,’ I said. ‘We went straight.’ We looked around, and the landscape seemed alien—the trees we had passed were gnarled, their branches twisted into shapes that looked like grasping hands. The air grew cold, and we could hear a faint hum, like a far-off engine, but it was coming from the water.

We decided to retrace our steps, but the more we walked, the more the marsh seemed to close in on us. The light dimmed, and we saw figures moving among the reeds—tall, thin silhouettes that dissolved when we tried to focus on them. I felt a wetness at my feet and looked down. The ground was becoming saturated, and water was seeping up from below, flooding the path. Panicked, we broke into a run, and we stumbled into a small clearing where an old, abandoned well stood. ‘Let’s rest here,’ Ravi gasped, leaning against the stone rim. He peered into the darkness of the well. ‘I saw something down there,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘A face, looking up at me.’ I forced myself to look. The water at the bottom of the well was still, but then, a ripple spread, and a pale face emerged—a boy, maybe ten years old, with dark, empty eyes. He smiled, and his mouth opened, and a voice spoke in a wet whisper: ‘Why did you leave my boat?’ I stumbled back, dragging Ravi with me. We didn’t care where we ran; we just ran, our breath ragged, our legs burning.

Suddenly, we burst through the grass onto the main road, the bus stop in sight. The bus was just arriving, and we scrambled aboard, our hearts pounding. The other passengers looked at us oddly—we were soaked, our clothes stained with green slime. We sat in the back, not daring to speak until we reached Mulapet. When we arrived at the class, Mr. Shastri was writing on the board. He turned as we entered, his eyes sharp. ‘You took the marsh path,’ he said, not a question. We nodded. ‘Did you see the boy?’ We exchanged a glance, and Ravi said, ‘We saw a paper boat.’ Mr. Shastri nodded slowly, his face unreadable. ‘He’s been waiting for someone to play with. I used to teach him, before he died. He liked to fold paper boats. He was fetching one that had fallen into the well when he slipped.’ He paused. ‘What did you do with the boat?’ ‘We didn’t touch it,’ I said, my voice a croak. Mr. Shastri’s face relaxed, and he said, ‘Good. If you had picked it up, he would have come with you. Now, take your seats.’

We sat through the lesson, but our minds were elsewhere. After class, Ravi and I stood outside, the cool night air doing nothing to calm our nerves. ‘We almost died,’ Ravi said. I shook my head. ‘We almost didn’t leave.’ We never took the marsh path again, and we never spoke of it. Years later, when Ravi was in his first year of medical school, he sent me a letter. It said, ‘I had a strange patient last week. A boy brought in by his mother, he was complaining of a recurring dream—a paper boat in a dark pool. He said a voice was calling him. He was fine physically, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. Tell me, do you still believe in ghosts?’ I never replied. But I kept the letter, and sometimes, at night, I swear I can hear the whisper of water, and I see the paper boat, floating, waiting for someone to pick it up. And I wonder, if it wasn’t the boy who was watching us—but something else, using his shape to reach out from the water. I still don’t know. But I know one thing; I will never fold a paper boat again.