Monday, February 16, 2009

Flight of a crocodile

I sat up on my bed and looked out of the window. From the extreme right of the window I see a bunch of crows flying around a dead body trying to snatch it out of the jaws of a crocodile ( or the Indian Ghadiyal). Limited by my 3 feet of height I stand up on the bed. As they go closer to the window, I scream and suddenly the visuals go dark. Dead dark. I find myself standing on the bed and screaming when I wake up. It was a bad dream. Was a dream? How did I stand up then? That wasn’t part of the dream.
A lot of my childhood was spent in fear. And I was a petrified child. I wouldn’t sit on a chair with my feet hanging. What if something/ someone attacked me from underneath the chair? I wouldn’t walk upstairs at night. And during day I’ll climb it from the safer side. I wouldn’t allow my parents to switch all the lights off. .I would kick open the door to the bathroom in case there was some’thing’ inside. Well…. It was there…I saw him…..her…..it. There was no sink near the earthen water pot. So whenever I had to drain water from the glass at night, I had to walk to the sink right next to the bathroom. And IT was always there. Standing in the corner of the bathroom which was hardly 4X4 feet. It wasn’t wearing white cloths…..nor black. It was a lean superthin human figure. Sunken eyes.
I’d take my time having a look at it. Then suddenly will get really scared. I’d scream and throw the glass at it and run back to parents’ room. My father would later come back carrying me in his strong arms and show me with a torch the naked wall of the bathroom “see! Where is it……nothing is there….u coward!!”. It did not stop. Something pulled me to it.
Day after day I’d get up to have water (wouldn’t ask parents), walk up to the bathroom, see it, scream and run back. It was getting bad. I was very sure that I saw those things. My parents would laugh it off. In summer vacations I was taken to our hometown. There I was taken to a ‘pandit’ who tied a black thread around my arm and asked me to break it after a week and throw it into a well. With that thread the ghosts were consigned to the well. I’d make fun of my(former)self and will show off how brave I had become.
When I got back to the haunted house, the news was that a dead body was found by the police in one of the houses behind ours. The very thin wife of a Sikh taxi-driver. Not-natural-death.
Never did i see it again. Until… I heard it..........

Years later………many…… I returned from Delhi having attended the funeral of a person who, had he lived longer, wud’ve been a good friend of mine. And could even have changed my life. I came back to a house, keys of which had been given to a ‘dear’ friend in case he needed something. The previous night I had cried in front of him at the death of the said person. There was a party at my house. The keys had been appropriately used. Having scolded my dear friends out of my house on that sad night, I tried to sleep. My very old fear was back. I did not switch the lights off. The paper lamp shook vigorously and when I slowed down the fan it shook gently, almost whispering. It said ‘Ssssannjaaay…..sssannjayyyyyy”. I got up. Startled. I tried to sleep all night. It whispered till I had to switch the fan off.

Next day my younger brother visited me. And upon request, he decided to live with me for a few days. Knowing my brother was snoring in the adjacent room I slept well that night. Now the room I slept in, and the room he slept in, both opened out to the veranda outside and both did open to area where bathroom /washbasin were located. As I brush my teeth at the washbasin the next morning, my brother still in bed in the other room, from the corner of my eye I could see someone walking into his room from the door that opened out to the veranda. I do not pay attention. That woman/ girl stands next to my bother’s bed and talks animatedly. I wonder what the matter is but do not interfere. When I finish brushing etc I walk to my brother’s room (hardly 8 feet distance) and find him snoring (again?). I wake him up and ask him what the matter was and who that woman was. He says ‘what woman? No one talked to me. You just woke me up’. A cold shiver travels through my back and legs…………