I was born and raised in a small village in the Ganges Delta. At the end of the street stood a ramshackle house made of wood and mud bricks, with an old tiled roof. A 70-year-old man had lived there alone for decades. People called him Baba Hansraj. No one in the village knew much about his past; all they knew was that he had a strange rule: no woman was allowed into his house.

Whenever a woman passed by, he would slam the door shut. If someone accidentally stepped on the stairs, he would angrily chase them away. Thus, the house became a place of taboo and mystery. Adults avoided it, children were curious. As for me, the older I got, the more curious I became. One moonlit night, as the wind whistled through the bamboo and neem trees, I decided to do what no one in the village had dared to do: sneak into that house.

At midnight, I walked down that deserted street, my heart pounding. The rotten wooden door creaked open. In the darkness, the house was so gloomy it seemed to want to swallow me.

It was so quiet inside that I could hear my own heartbeat. The smell of damp wood, burnt incense, and old lime combined to suffocate me. On the hard ground, near the corner of a cold stove, sat a cot and a jurahi (earthen water pot). I walked very slowly; my eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness.

Then I froze.

All four walls were lined with portraits of women. Some were charcoal drawings on rough paper, some were faded watercolors. Dozens, then hundreds of faces: sad eyes, gentle smiles, sometimes an indescribable silence. A coldness radiated from all their faces—as if they were watching my every move.

In the center of the main room, neatly arranged, was the statue of a young woman. Her face was gentle, her long hair disheveled. The moonlight filtered through the window bars, falling on the neem wood statue’s face, making it appear alive—a frightening life.

I stepped back, when suddenly, a harsh cough came from behind me:

— “Who… Who dared to come in here?”

I turned around. Baba Hansraj was standing there—a thin man, wearing an old kurta, a towel over his shoulder. His eyes were old, but bright. I stammered an apology. He wasn’t angry; he simply sighed and sat down on a small wooden chair.

He began to tell me.

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

Those paintings and statues were his memories. Night after night, he sat alone in the light of a hurricane lamp, recreating that face from memory over and over again. Year after year, he turned that house into his memorial to his lost love.

Hearing this, I shuddered—not from fear, but because I could sense the utter loneliness in his hoarse voice. People thought he was crazy; in reality, he was just an old man trapped in the past, unable to find a way out.

He looked at me, his eyes moist:

“You’re the first one to dare to come here. Look… there’s no ghost here. There’s just an old fool who’s still talking to 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 the mud house at the end of the street, I didn’t feel afraid. Instead, I felt pity for the heart that had been buried for half a century because of an unfulfilled promise.

Baba Hansraj’s story taught me: 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 burns warmer than all the rumors circulating outside.