Ghost(s)?

I have been brought up on Ghost stories of the Gangetic planes from the mid of nineteenth century. There was this lady in a white sari in Allahabad who would appear on the terrace of the house at midnight where death used to come calling within a couple of days of her appearance. There was the famous man/men with horses hooves for hands in Lucknow.

These were all stories from my childhood of days (nights?) much before my time. I now stay in a well lit, huge tree lined, park facing neighborhood of educated people. 

Everything that you take for granted as signs of civilisation and modern times can appear like a thin veneer to the primal past at times. I had a minor glimpse of this yesterday.

I think it started in the afternoon when I noticed red thread tied multiple times around a huge tree in the park with vermilion and turmeric rubbed on it. I found it a bit strange and mystic but forgot about it after a while. 

Late at night while walking Alex after his meal he came up to a house at the end of the lane where his friend Jenni used to live. She was a 2 year old Golden Labrador who passed away suddenly around a month back. Alex goes to her gate still, everyday and gently whines while wagging his tail and looking at a spot as if he can see her/something there. It's a bit spooky, but she was a sweet kid so not so scary. He needs to coaxed away from her gate everynight. 

Just as I was about to get back to my gate I saw a kind of mini commotion outside my next door neighbours gate. He is an executive in Airtel and seems to be waiting for me. 

The first thing he said to me is that there is a problem. I thought my boys would've broken something while retrieving the shuttle cock from there terrace in the evening. But it turned out to be something else. 

He said that there has been this lady who has been coming to their gate deep into the night and peering inside. His boys and nephew had seen her thrice and he had even called the police regarding this. According to the description it was a stalky woman in a ghagra choli who walks up to their gate, peers inside and then disappears. I had nothing to say to this and was totally flummoxed as to how to respond to this. He seemed a bit worked up and a bit shaken up. 

I told him about the tree, thread and turmeric but he had an idea about who did it and when. Then he told me about a 3 storeyed yellow house across the park where a middle aged lady stays with her daughter. I had noticed that the house is always dark and looking at it you can't say whether it is habitated or not. He said that the lady has been deserted by her husband and there is something not good about that place. 

Here I was, all oblivious to my surroundings, happy with my cocooned life, and there I was in the midst of a semi-horror plot with proper spirits, ghosts and witches, within a matter of minutes. 

One thing is there. You might be all secure in your faith in modern world with all the bright lights and wi-fi broadband, but it just takes a person who is deeply convinced about occult and evil to rock your boat for that night at least.

Cycling sensibilities- 3

Not about sensibilities but more about silliness and it's related consequences.
Yesterday morning while cycling along Kathauta lake I came across a Durga Puja pandal near the pump station, which was being taken down. Like a hero (or an idiot) I cycled through it and almost at the end of the pandal the right brake of my cycle got stuck in a white curtain.
The bike turned right with a jerk and I found myself flying in the air. It all felt as if it was happening in slow motion.
Somehow, instinctively, I had the sense to roll over on my back, duck my head and break the roll with my palms to break the momentum of the fall. I got up as soon as my roll got to a stop.
I was a bit shaken and mildly bruised. Gave myself a once over, picked the bike and got back on the road. I realised that my right palm was bleeding a bit once I got moving on the cycle. Was contemplating whether to proceed with the cycling or go back home and dress my wounds when my thought went towards the cell I use to calibrate my cycling route, distance covered, calories burnt and time. The Samsung cell was not in the pocket of my shorts!
I realised that it must have slipped off when I fell down and as it had been more then 10 minutes since then my chances of finding it seemed remote.
Trudged back to the spot with a heavy heart, ruing this day and morning. I reached the spot and was pleasantly surprised to see my cell on the road!
The screen had cracked but the cell was functioning! So there was a silver lining in the dark cloud after all.
I was all fine the whole day, except for the minor twitches when the cloth brushed against the multiple bruised areas in the legs and palms. It was only when I lay down in bed at night that I realized that my left bum aches. I must have landed on it pretty hard.
Thought of going for a spin in the morning today but then I felt my body deserves a break for a day atleast.

Analysis of Misogynistic asshole

The other day I was called to the Principal office to enquire about a written complaint submitted by an intern about her batchmate.
The guy when he turned up for questioning was pretty chilled out about the whole thing. Was smiling in-between and had a cavalier attitude about the proceeding.  He had threatened the complainant that he will strip her and will pull her tongue out. He felt it was a minor thing and an unnecessary fuss is being created about it. It was only when I shouted at him in the end that he was able to grasp the seriousness of the situation.
We submitted the report after enquiring from the rest of the batch and the facts tallied with the one written in the complain.
Now today when he was given the formal letter from the Principal office that he came to me.
He was all repentant and crying today. What amazed me was the way his thought process worked. For one he imagined himself to be the victim. He quoted about another Professor who had been chucked out for sexual misdemeanor expecting me to be sympathetic. When I said he should have been kicked out a long time back he was taken aback.
Then he took the track of how the complainant doesn't do any work and goes around with guys outside. I asked him if the other 9 people in his batch had no issue with it, why is he so bothered? He had nothing to say.

3 wishes

In most of the fairy tales 3 wishes are granted for a good deed. It's a pretty standard ploy. Not 2 or 4 or 10. Just 3.
I had a similar experience a couple of days back though unfortunately no one told me that my wishes were about to come true.
First one was about shoes. I had been passively obsessing over getting a new pair for Alex's morning walk after the older one seemed to be on their last leg (no pun intended). 3 pairs had bitten the dust in as less as 9 months. I had fond memories of the my white school PT sneakers. They were from "Power" and with their thick canvas cover and a tough rubber soul were practically indestructible. I was thinking where would I be able to get them and if they were still available.
Well anyway, moving on, we went to Spencers later in the day and there, right in front were similar sneakers, that too in blue colour and
on a 70% discount!!!

In the second wish, I had been after John Wick - Chapter 3 since it was released a month back. I missed its release by a day in Lucknow, the timing was not right in Delhi and didn't realize it was playing in a multiplex next to my hotel. Looked it up as soon as we got back from Kashmir. There was just one show running and that too in Phoenix, which is a good 20kms from my place. Got on the app to book it and turned out to be House Full!!! Plus there was no show for the day after. Disheartened I put my mobile aside.
After my luck with sneakers I opened up the app once again and saw that there was a show today also in the same theater and booked my ticket in a jiffy. I got a discount of almost 30% on this too.

My third wish was something like a late release response. While going up the escalator to the theater in the mall I saw the Hanes shop whose tracks and boxers I usually buy. I thought if only there was a sale I would have definitely bought something. But it wasn't there.
On my way back after the movie I just gave a cursory glance towards the showroom and there they had put up a 20% discount sign board! Well needless to say I did from my shopping from there.

I realised the chain of events only while reminiscing about the day at night just before going to sleep. If only I would have known that 3 of my wishes would be coming true, things could have been so different today!

6 pieces of silver

This is a story from long, long ago.
Ok its not that long ago. Maybe over a month or max a couple of months old. But it played almost like a fairy tale, hence the opening line of this blog.
There I was on a pleasant morning walking along with Alex on our regular perambulation, when I came across something shiny in the huge sand heap alongside a house under construction. I poked with the stick I carry along to check the source of shininess and along slid out a round silvery thing as the one in the pic. Initially I thought it was a 1 rupee coin but on closer inspection it turned out to be a plain, round, silvery disk. Out of curiosity I poked the stick in the sand and a couple of disks fell out. Now I was mildly intrigued. I kept on poking the sand and more and more disks slid out. By the end I had around 8-9 at hand.
Once the discs stopped appearing I was lost as what to do with them. So as a prank I thought of spreading them at a distance from each other on the roadside and to check the next morning as how many people have been fooled into thinking that it was a Re.1 coin.
In the evening I was musing at how they must have come around at that one particular spot, there purpose and the odds of my finding them.
The next morning I was curious to check the result of my prank/psychological experiment. I walked towards the sand mount and just out of curiousity I poked my stick again into it, and out rolled out another disc! This was almost like magic cause this one wasn't even visible and it was just by chance I had poked there. Once more 5 more discs magically appeared out of the sand.
And this time I kept the 6 pieces of silver.

P.S.: the other pieces of silver spread out the day before had been taken by some hapless souls who I am sure would have cursed their luck, or me.

Return to PG days

I had the most amazing dream last night 😀
I had joined MDS again and that to in Oral Pathology 😁
We were 4 Pgs in the new batch and there were 2 girls and a guy other than me. They of course were much much younger.
Our head was a South Indian and he had called us to his place that evening and had told us to get a bag (something similar to a large grocery bag) along. Maybe he had some notes or books to give, I don't know and he didn't specify why.
Now the interesting part is that before I could go there, the head of NHSRC, Rajni Ma'am met me on the way and told me to come along with her 😳 Rajni Ma'am is kind of a Dean or the director of the place where I have joined to do my Pg in so I am not that worried about being late to my HoD. Plus I don't have the bag either as I was stopped on my way to the market by Ma'am.
She took me to a classroom kind of place where there were 2 lady teachers already sitting. We sat across the table and she said
that Anil should have gotten a better rank in the exams and tells them to review the papers once again. They go through each paper one by one and Ma'am keeps on pointing places where I should've gotten more marks. 😄
In-between somewhere she turns and pats me on the head also and says "Anil is a good boy" 😅 Something similar to the way you would say to a dog 😋

Sequelae of a dream

I dreamt almost the same dream on two different nights. This has never happened before and made me wonder. There was nothing much about the dream except for the fact that it was very realistic.
In the first one we had bought a house somewhere else in Lucknow. It was a busy street and somewhere in old city. I am not sure about the city, but it was somewhere in the north. There was an ECG or ultrasound clinic next to the house which I realised on the way out. The clinic opens up on the road.
This was two nights back. Today in the morning I dreamt about it again and this time I had a daughter and a son. I had gone to the house and we had yet to shift in. It was a single storeyed house with a driveway. I was talking to my daughter about the house and was asking her how many bathrooms there were, she said I think one and I thought we need to make another one before we shift.
The dreams were ordinary and pretty mundane but the continuity and the realistic part made me wonder.
Past life regression was one thing that came to my mind but this was pretty recent. Maybe somewhere in the late 90s or maybe present day. So that was out of the picture.
Parallel universe was the only possibility that comes to my mind.