Ghost Short Story – The journey of a lifetime
Photo credit: blary54 from morguefile.com
Ghost stories have always made me uneasy. Even as kids, when my friends huddled together, telling tales in hushed tones, I squirmed to get away. Not that I believed I would get spooked at the next turn, but other-worldly beings, hanging upside down from a Peepal tree wasn’t a pretty image to have.
So when the topic started in the train compartment, I felt the same uneasiness. It just melted out of nowhere and mingled in the flow of our conversation. Maybe it was Swati, the young college girl, who had started it. As she spoke about tales from her hostel corridors, I shifted in my seat. Trying to divert my mind, I looked outside. Light breeze from the window was messing up my hair, and I smoothed it into a ponytail. It was dark, completely dark, except for tiny dots of yellow, shimmering eerily in a distance. Wasn’t a very comforting sight when you wanted to get away from the dark stories being narrated beside you. I looked back inside and glanced at the faces in front of me. The three women stared wide-eyed at Swati, quite speechless. Rajlaxmi’s young daughter was already asleep on her lap.
“Is it true?” Priya, a manager in a textile firm, asked.
“Yes, I saw it with my own eyes. It was all white and glided above the floor.”
“Must be a prank,” I interjected coolly, “We’ve played enough during our hostel days. With skates and bed sheets.”
“No, no -”
“Want to hear a true one then?” a soft, clear voice spoke up.
I turned and looked at its owner. An old lady, about eighty, sat at the far end of my berth. I wondered how I had missed seeing her before? Maybe because she had been silent all this while. Dressed in an impeccable green cotton saree, with a maroon bindi on her forehead, she reminded me of my own grandmother. “Same era,” I thought. In a swift sweep of the eye, I saw everyone else was as taken in by her as me. She appeared unaccompanied and it astounded me. But it wasn’t unusual for she seemed in good health.
“Ji Amma,” I said courteously, wondering what grandma’s tale she had up her sleeve.
“It is an incident I cannot forget,” she began straightaway, in crisp, pure, unaccented Hindi. Her voice rustled with her age and had a mesmerizing sing-song quality to it that for the next thirty minutes or more, kept us spell bound. What I am presenting here is as close an English translation of her story as possible.
“I cannot explain it. It was the year when the massive earthquake had hit the Eastern parts. We lived in the small village of Bihar then. I was maybe 11 or 12. There had been severe causalities, you may have heard.”
Some of us nodded mutely.
“I saw my own house crumble and devour my grandparents. Thankfully my parents and us five siblings survived. The air was full of echoing wails. Then started the struggle to stay alive. Even a slight movement seemed like the nightmare being repeated. The government had set up a relief camp. Homeless people like us had no option, but to shift into it. Even people with houses moved in there. They were too scared to sleep under the bricks. But children being children, their innocence and ignorance puts in fearlessness in their spirit. After the initial panic went away, we became somewhat carefree. We had a lot of free time, but the elders kept restricting our movements. We had heard of a waterfall near the camp. Just beyond the fields. It sounded like a good adventure. But we knew it would be forbidden like everything else. And sure enough this time we were told stories of ghosts to keep us away. Still, we didn’t give up. Ghosts didn’t come out during the day, right?”
She paused, as if expecting a response. But we sat like statues, listening in rapt silence. Even me.
“In a few days we had our plan. After lunch, most elders tired from re-building their houses, took a siesta. It was a good time to give them the slip. On the decided day we could barely conceal our excitement. We surprised our elders by doing all they wanted us to do. Once they fell asleep, we got together wordlessly and tip-toed out of the camp, then scampered into the fields. By our estimation, the waterfall should have been no more than ten minutes away. But when we didn’t reach the spot even after half-an hour, some of us decided to return. Raju assured us we were very near. We could hear the gurgling sound of water too. And sure enough, a beautiful sight rose before us as we cleared the next clump of trees. Surrounded by a grove, sparkling water dropped from a ledge into a clear, shallow pool below. After ages we enjoyed a cool refreshing bath. We were so engrossed that we failed to notice the sun moving westward. We had to return quickly, lest we got caught.”
She paused again and smoothed her saree.
“What… about the… ghosts?” Ritika spoke haltingly.
“Listen…,” Amma admonished, “So, as we groped our way back through the fields, we saw some people walking towards us. Our first thought was that our parents had come looking for us. On second look we realized it wasn’t them. Moreover these people were walking in a direction perpendicular to us. There were men and women and some children too. We assumed they were people from neighbouring villages moving towards a camp. As we drew close, the crowd seemed to swell. By the time we walked through the crowd, it had increased to the size of an entire town! We had to push our way through them and somehow managed to not get crushed. Once we crossed them, we resumed our sprint. And just then I had an urge to look back. Can you guess what I saw?”
“Whaaaat?” Swati’s voice quivered with anticipation.
“The entire crowd had vanished in thin air. Whoosh…,” Amma threw her hands up in the air like a magician, “As if gone up in smoke. I stood rooted at my place trying to decipher it. I assumed they might have reached the woods ahead. But the grove looked far too quiet, not even a leaf moved. My mind struggled to explain what my eyes had seen. Suddenly my sister’s shrill cry brought me out of my stupor. She also saw what I had. I hadn’t hallucinated. We ran for our lives after that.”
Amma stopped talking just as suddenly as she had started. In the silence we could only hear the grinding of the wheels. The breeze from outside seemed to have gotten cooler, raising the hair on my arms. I gathered them together for warmth. For once I wished I was in the AC coach. I wasn’t sure if I was spooked or if I was beginning to believe in ghosts.
“What happened after that?” finally Swati spoke in undertones.
“Nothing much. I could never explain this occurrence. We couldn’t ask our elders either. I have travelled far and wide. But never saw or heard anything like this again.”
At that moment the train blew the horn and crunched to a halt with a jerk. It literally shook us from our trance. Ritika craned her neck and announced we were approaching a city, probably Guddur, which meant it was already midnight. None of us wanted to sleep, yet we mutually agreed to put up the berths. I threw my handbag on the topmost berth and climbed up. I desperately needed to fill my mind with happy thoughts, thoughts of meeting my husband in another six hours. Closing my eyes, I fell asleep instantly.
Next morning, I woke up early to the sounds of “chai-chai”. From experience I knew we would reach Hyderabad soon. I peered down to see who else was awake. To my amazement Amma wasn’t there. I had assumed she was travelling to Hyderabad too. Instead, a young woman in a burka occupied the lower berth. Curious and concerned, I got down to enquire. Turned out the young woman had boarded the train at Guddur. When I asked her about Amma, she replied there had been no one on the berth when she came. It perplexed me, but I didn’t give it much thought. My co-passengers also concurred that her berth might have been elsewhere, and seeing us all women, she had sat here.
The incident was soon forgotten until I came across a message in the Times of India few days later. The accompanying black and white photograph was of an old woman in a crisp cotton saree and a bindi on her forehead. It was her fifth death anniversary.
