Ghosts on the Veranda

Anil’s mother’s memory was stored with an incredible amount of folklore, and she would sometimes astonish us with her stories of sprites and mischievous ghosts.

One evening, when Anil’s father was out of town, and Kamal and I had been invited to stay the night at Anil’s upper-storey flat in the bazaar, his mother began to tell us about the various types of ghosts she had known. Just then, Mulia, the servant, having taken a bath, came out to the veranda, with her hair loose.

‘My girl, you ought not to leave your hair loose like that,’ said Anil’s mother. ‘It is better to tie a knot in it.’

‘But I have not oiled it yet,’ said Mulia.

‘Never mind, but you should not leave your hair loose towards sunset. There are spirits called Jinns who are attracted by long hair and pretty black eyes like yours. They may be tempted to carry you away!’

‘How dreadful!’ exclaimed Mulia, hurriedly tying a knot in her hair, and going indoors to be on the safe side.

Kamal, Anil and I sat on a string cot, facing Anil’s mother, who sat on another cot. She was not much older than thirty-two, and had often been mistaken for Anil’s elder sister; she came from a village near Mathura, a part of the country famous for its gods, spirits and demons.

‘Can you see Jinns, aunty-ji?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘There was an Urdu teacher in Mathura, whose pupils were about the same age as you. One of the boys was very good at his lessons. One day, while he sat at his desk in a corner of the classroom, the teacher asked him to fetch a book from the cupboard which stood at the far end of the room. The boy, who felt lazy that morning, didn’t move from his seat. He merely stretched out his hand, took the book from the cupboard, and handed it to the teacher. Everyone was astonished, because the boy’s arm had stretched about four yards before touching the book! They realized that he was a Jinn. It was the reason for his being so good at games and exercises which required great agility.’

‘Well, I wish I were a Jinn,’ said Anil. ‘Especially for volleyball matches.’

Anil’s mother then told us about the munjia, a mischievous ghost who lives in lonely peepal trees. When a munjia is annoyed, he rushes out from his tree and upsets tongas, bullock-carts and cycles. Even a bus is known to have been upset by a munjia.

‘If you are passing beneath a peepal tree at night,’ warned Anil’s mother, ‘be careful not to yawn without covering your mouth or snapping your fingers in front of it. If you don’t remember to do that, the munjia will jump down your throat and completely ruin your digestion!’

In an attempt to change the subject, Kamal mentioned that a friend of his had found a snake in his bed one morning.

‘Did he kill it?’ asked Anil’s mother anxiously.

‘No, it slipped away,’ said Kamal.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘It is lucky if you see a snake early in the morning.’

‘But what if the snake bites you?’ I asked.

‘It won’t bite you if you let it alone,’ she said.

By eleven o’clock, after we had finished our dinner and heard a few more ghost stories—including one about Anil’s grandmother, whose spirit paid the family a visit—Kamal and I were most reluctant to leave the company on the veranda and retire to the room which had been set apart for us. It did not make us feel any better to be told by Anil’s mother that we should recite certain magical verses to keep away the more mischievous spirits. We tried one, which went—

 

Bhoot, pret, pisach, dana
Choo mantar, sab nikal jana,
Mano, mano, Shiv ka kahna

which, roughly translated, means—

 

Ghosts, spirits, goblins, sprites,
Away you fly, don’t come tonight,
Or with great Shiva you’ll have to fight!

… But the more we repeated the verse, the more uneasy we became, and when I got into bed (after carefully examining it for snakes), I couldn’t lie still, but kept twisting and turning and looking at the walls for moving shadows. Kamal attempted to raise our spirits by singing softly, but this only made the atmosphere more eerie. After a while we heard someone knocking at the door, and the voices of Anil and the servant girl, Mulia. Getting up and opening the door, I found them looking pale and anxious. They, too, had succeeded in frightening themselves as a result of Anil’s mother’s stories.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Anil. ‘Wouldn’t you like to sleep in our part of the house? It might be safer. Mulia will help us to carry the beds across!’

‘We’re quite all right,’ protested Kamal and I, refusing to admit we were nervous; but we were hustled along to the other side of the flat as though a band of ghosts was conspiring against us. Anil’s mother had been absent during all this activity, but suddenly we heard her screaming from the direction of the room we had just left.

‘Laurie and Kamal have disappeared!’ she cried. ‘Their beds have gone, too!’

And then, when she came out to the veranda and saw us dashing about in our pyjamas, she gave another scream and collapsed on a cot.

After that, we didn’t allow Anil’s mother to tell us ghost stories at night.