Ghost

GHOST

         I walked up the half-kilometer approach road.  The caretaker, a mild mannered local man, was already on his way back to the village as he had no news about my coming. He looked a little worked up when I told him that I was going to stay there for the night. I suddenly remembered that even that ‘good Samaritan’ who gave me a lift on his bike up to the cross road, had an intriguing smile on his face when I mentioned the forest guest house. Now the caretaker!  All this made me sit up and take notice. I pressed him for an explanation. The caretaker was reluctant. After some persuasion he opened up.

         He told several stories of the unwelcome guests in the night.  They came in strange forms and caused much disturbance.  Some of the pranks played by them were interesting. Once, two persons sleeping in the adjacent rooms were interchanged as if by magic.  On several occasions the belongings of the lodgers disappeared without a trace.  Some guests discovered themselves naked in the morning.  They were obviously disrobed in the night unaware! The place was known to be haunted.

         He, however, insisted that he never meant to scare me, or anything of that sort.  He was only putting across the experiences for my benefit ; some of his own and some others narrated to him by others. All through, I thought he looked rather sympathetically at me.  While all this only amused me, I had to put on a very curious face. 

      I knew well enough that there were no such things as ghosts.    After all, wouldn’t their existence defy all the known laws of physics, besides being contrary to the principles of evolution and natural selection?

         Having opened the room, he gave me the keys along with a few useful instructions like the location of the toilet and how to operate the taps etc.  He also showed the switches for the fan and the lights which could be useful if and when power was available in those parts.  Reassuring that he would return early enough in the morning to be able to greet me with a cup of hot tea, he left.

         I did go to sleep very soon; out of the weariness of the day long trek and the loneliness of the place.  Only the sounds of the nocturnal creatures punctured the quietness of the place.

      As usual, the isolated forest guest house had no power that evening. A candle was the only source of light. 

         It must have been well past midnight.  I was fast asleep.  Suddenly I woke up shaken by somebody.  When I was half awake and my eyes were still closed, I realised that some body or a thing was rocking my cot violently making me roll on it! 

         It was a sturdy cot; properly bolted, nutted and welded. Even such a heavy cot was creaking with the strain of the rocking.  It was beating its legs, all four of them, against the floor rhythmically making a characteristic ‘tap tap’ sound all the way. It was also sliding back and forth on the smooth red-oxide cement flooring.  The cot actually appeared to be in the throws of death!  The dusty and torn mosquito net was swinging. 

          Soon, I was fully awake but being dead scared, I tried to lay still and quiet; so still as not to open my eye lids and so quiet as not to let even my breath out.

         My very first thought was; being the forest area, a big game could have trespassed into the cosiness of the guest house, if only to escape from the nippy nights out there.  It was still early spring, after all!  I was certain that it could not have been a herbivore like bison or 'Sambhar'; they did not have the grip in their hoofs to hold the steel cot and rock it.  Elephant, an herbivore again, was also ruled out, as its sheer size would have prevented its access to the bed through that small door without bringing the entire building down.  It could only be a huge bear or a big cat!  Having found a silly primate sleeping on the cot, it must have thought of dislodging it from there so as to enjoy the spacious soft bed all by himself. 

         I tried to recollect all that I had heard or read about animal behaviour.  I had to quickly devise a suitable strategy to neutralise the threat before I could make any other concrete move such as opening my eyelids.  Two moving or shaking eyeballs, however dull, colourless and shapeless they may be, could attract attention and provoke the big game to some extremely unpleasant and decisively pre-emptive action!

         The air was blowing rather viciously through the joints of the roof-tiles. Strangely, all other nocturnal sounds had stopped. Beyond the hissing, whistling and whining of the wind, there was an eerie silence. 

         The rocking was still going on.  My dis-lodger appeared to be quite determined.  I wondered why he was not pushing me over to the ground with his powerful paw or heavy head.  A light tap on the shoulder or just a pat on my cheek would have been enough to send me packing down to the floor.

         The second thought was; could it be a group of drunkards or a bunch of hardened criminals groping in the dark to locate a bottle of liquor or  trying to shake me up to get some change, if not diamonds or such other precious stones, dropped from my person? Once the chances of encountering a wild animal were somewhat discounted, I made up my mind to open my eyes and stare the intruder in his face.  Open I did, my eyes but what did I find?.........Nobody! The rocking of my ‘boat’ ceased almost instantaneously!

         Fully convinced that there was neither man nor beast around, I got up boldly.  Tearing out of the mosquito net, I searched out my cigarette lighter, lit it and went round the apartment for any tell tale marks of the intruders.  There were none.  Half an inch was all that had remained of the candle.  It had burnt out leaving a lot of wax melted down.  I scrapped it all, put into the earthen ash-tray and lit the wick. I looked around once more and got back on to the cot, trying to examine the other plausible explanations.

         Suddenly it struck me; could it be the handywork of the spirits which were said to be haunting the place?  The thought sent a chill down my spine!  As I was counting the consequences of such a possibility, the rocking resumed.  It quickly built up to a crescendo almost throwing me off the cot.  This time even the roof-tiles seemed to be rattling so violently that I felt the whole structure would collapse anytime like a pack of cards.

         All along, I had entertained certain romantic notions about the ghosts that haunted stately old mansions.  The stories relating to them always evoked the mental pictures of rather kindly souls. Yes, they could sometimes unsettle the dwellers by suddenly revealing their presence at odd hours. On the whole, they were fickle minded but friendly, scary but largely harmless. 

        The fury and force of the present lot really caught me off guard.  I meekly surrendered.    I could not do anything better than just submitting myself to their strong will.  It was a ‘no-win’ situation. 

        Fortunately, the rattling was soon reduced to a rumbling and it quickly ground to a halt.  The candle still flickered.  It slowly dimmed and finally the flame went out sending a long column of soot up into air.  The room was thrown into complete darkness.

         I must have been lying there stunned for a long time before slipping into a brief nap early in the morning.  By the time the forest foul woke up and broke into a song, I was feeling much better.  The harsh and loud nocturnal sounds of the forest had ceased. Chirping of the birds was a lot more reassuring and welcome.  Slowly, the pitch darkness as seen from the windows first turned gray and then silvery bright.  At long last, I heard the much awaited knock on the doors, the caretaker’s.

         So profound was the impact of the night’s experience that I did not wait for the promised morning cup of bed-tea.  I just brushed, gathered my bags and left after settling the bill.  When the caretaker pressed the tea cup into my hand, I simply gulped it down in one go and walked out.  Mercifully, he did not make too many enquiries about the night. But, I did suspect a smirk on his thick lips and a fleeting smile of mischief on his graying beard.

         After I reached home I did not speak about it to anybody for the fear of being ridiculed. The champion of rationalism I was, it was difficult to open up even to a  friend or close relative.  The day passed peacefully in the routine while turmoil went inside me constantly, myself trying to figure out the meaning of all that I went through.

      Next day when I was browsing through the front page of the morning newspaper, a one column item drew my attention. It was brief. It went something like this; “…last night, in the midst of the storm, gale and rain, many parts of the western ghats felt a series of tremors.....earth quake.....epicentre.....200 KM away….significant seismic event.....3.5 on the Richter scale…..”