Her name was Sita Devi, a teenage girl who looked like she could still afford to gain a few pounds. Presently, she appeared to have lost her sense of direction, and was standing uncertainly on a gloomy, desolate patch of earth.  Strangely enough, she could see everything very clearly even though it was nighttime. Sita didn’t know what this place was, or even couldn’t imagine how she got here. The place was in a state of complete dilapidation. A few large trees she saw here and there were all uprooted. There were no houses, but some fallen bamboo walls and thatched roofs and other similar remnants of houses like poles in various degrees of erectness told her that the place must have been inhabited before some kind of disaster that had befallen there. The most miserable sight welcoming her was a couple of rotting corpses alongside some bloated animal carcasses. The stench coming from the dead and decaying animals was starting to choke her. She lifted her shirt collar over her nose and looked around more carefully. She was all alone except for a few dogs that remained alive. The dogs looked more like skeletons with a few wisps of fur stuck on them. Barely alive, they dragged themselves about, totally ignoring Sita’s presence. She walked on, wondering what on earth was happening to her. How far was she from her home?

            In about twenty minutes or so, Sita began to see several small, battered old houses. She walked faster. Maybe someone could tell me the way back home, she thought. Her footsteps made squishy sloshing sounds as she slid across the mud frantically. When she reached the first house, she reached to press the doorbell. There was none. At a closer look, she could see a small, blackened copper bell hanging on one of the bars of the frail wooden gate. She shook it tenderly, but to her astonishment, the entire gate collapsed into a powdered heap. She stared in horror at what she’d done, wondering whether to run for her life or stay to apologize.

 She had just decided that she didn’t dare to stick around and was taking numerous steps backwards, still unable to take her eyes off the fallen gate, when someone emerged from the door of the dirty small house. She was an elderly woman of about 65, dressed in rags, and her skin clung tightly to her bones. All she had for eyes were dark empty, gaping holes, but they seemed to be staring directly at her. The woman raised her hand and pointed at Sita.