GRANDMA TALES: SEVEN

If you had read the story about grandma and the crocodile, you may perhaps identify me. No, I am not the crocodile in the story. Do you recall that six-month-old baby, the one who was carried in by Aneesh’s aunt and plonked over grandma? Well, I happen to be that baby, born to the second daughter of grandma, actually the third of the four children she has. We are actually seven in all, grandma’s grandchildren, that is. And I am proud to say that I am the seventh, and the third girl in the family.

I hate my parents for bringing me in so late. Most of what grandma said, I learned second hand from my cousins and brother. Many of the stories, like the crocodile one, I am reading just now. When the others were on that day, grandma’s birthday, lapping up grandma’s story about the crocodile, I was busy grabbing her hair and doing all sorts of things to her to make her take notice of me. I was not allowed to proceed with my attention-grabbing pranks as one of my cousins plucked me away from grandma that day and put me back with my mother.

When I started becoming aware of the family traditions, I realized grandma had grown quite old. Must be in her eighties or more. But an opportunity came my way, though through unfortunate circumstances. Grandma took ill or something and was sent to our house for some time to be taken care of by my dad who is a doctor. It was nothing serious, for grandma, I remember, went about her job quite cheerfully. It was just her bones, I gathered, that needed fortification for they had become rather fragile. She had, in fact, slipped at Aneesh’s place and broken her left hand, which now was kept in plaster. My dad said grandma had to be careful and should not slip or fall, for her bones broke easily.

It was therefore by sheer accident, literally, that grandma landed up at our house. My sister was ecstatic and even planned to bunk school to be able to spend maximum time with grandma. For those of you who are wondering what all this hype and hoopla is all about a blind old lady who is our grandma, let me fill you in.

My grandma is the undisputed star of our family and every kid worth his salt had made it big in his life just because the old lady was his grandma. She is a frail lady, tall and beautiful even in the ruins of her youth. Fair and slim as you can imagine. She hardly went to school and so you will call her illiterate. But only a blind person could miss the intense qualities that my grandma possessed. She has this gift of the gab, so to say, and can turn anything with her words to gold. What she told us were not mere stories, mind you. Her stories ranged from the ridiculously childish (like the star falling on her and the crocodile swallowing her up) to deeply insightful (read what she said to Pratima and others on love and sex). For us, she was a diva, a philosopher, and a mentor. She was old but wily (read how she resolved the ban on Aneesh). You could never say whether what she told us was true or just the product of her most fertile imagination, but you read between the lines and you will learn a few tips yourself. For a person who barely read, she could pose questions that can stump you. I don’t know much about other grandma’s but this one is definitely the best, I can say that.

Well, both my sister and I were quite determined to have our share of excitement and fun with grandma. Despite my dad cautioning her, she insisted on going out with us for a movie. She loved movies and her lack of sight hardly deterred her from watching a movie in a theatre. I remember how people around us in the theatre gaped at her, surprised to see a blind woman in a movie hall. She loved popping the corn and sipping cola in the multiplex. And we loved keeping her updated with expressions on the face of the characters on the screen.

Then it happened. It had to. I knew there would be a story cooking somewhere inside her. It was strange. Stories just grew inside her, like plants. And just like plants finding sunlight, the stories she had in her would find kids like us.

It was night and we were all comfortably settled in her bed. It was chilly, and we had wrapped grandma in a quilt. She insisted on wearing a monkey cap, which made her look funny. And she wore the woolen gloves which my mom had made especially for grandma. Her feet were covered in a pair of socks and for effects; we threw a muffler around her neck. The heater was turned on and the room was really quite warm.

I was inspecting the plaster on her hand and trying to write something good about her on it with my color pencil. My father peeped in and warned me to be careful, lest I should break another bone. 

“I so much like all the attention showered on me.” Said, grandma. “I feel like a child, not a grown-up woman anymore. Do you guys believe in ghosts? Of course, I don’t but I can’t say that with conviction. At least not after seeing one when I was quite young.”

I giggled. Grandma and ghosts, it was sounding exciting. “Grandma, don’t tell us that you saw a real ghost! There are no ghosts except in stories.”

“I am reminded of ghosts because of the fracture to my hand. I broke my leg trying to run away from ghosts. That was long long ago.” Grandma looked withdrawn and was traveling back in time.

“Really; how did it happen?”

“Those were times of madness. I was still a young and unmarried girl, having lots of time on my hands with nothing to do. In those days, it was very common for wild animals like hyena and tigers to enter the village and carry away someone or the other. There were night vigils, groups of villagers would stay awake with fire torches to ward off these animals. Still, there were occasions, even in broad daylight, when these beasts would come in and kill people.

I don’t exactly remember how it came to happen. I think there was some discussion amongst friends about beasts and ghosts. Someone was suggesting that these attacks could be either by animals or villagers themselves wanting to mete out revenge or by spirits and ghosts. 

Superstition was rife during our times, and it was a common belief that ghosts and apparitions exist. Dead souls haunt lonely homes and solitary places. There had been several instances of people from the village seeing apparitions. There was this house in our village which was sort of abandoned by its owners in the belief that it was haunted by evil spirits. No one dared to go near the place. There were other places too, like the large well and the old temple where such spirits were reportedly sighted. We girls were all sternly warned by our elders to stay away from such places. The boys in the village would always talk in hushed tones about these places. Some of them had surreptitiously visited these spots in daylight and had returned spooked. Though I doubt they had experienced anything.

Rita, have you ever been scared out of your wits?”

“Actually, grandma, I have been scared many times. Spiders, cockroaches, insects, dogs, cats…almost everything scares me. You know, the other day, I was having a bath and I saw this lizard on the ceiling of the bathroom. I was locked in and alone. This big lizard was stuck on the ceiling, staring at me with its bubble-like eyes. My heart stopped and I thought I am going to die that day. I, however, managed to escape, cutting short my bath and bolting from the bathroom.”

Grandma tousled my hair and laughed heartily. “Yes. I can understand how you must have felt. You know, all of us are possessed by fear. Whatever we do not know or understand we fear. That’s why we pray to Gods so much, we hardly understand God! Do you know why nights are so fearsome? We cannot see, our vision is impaired in darkness. So our eyes stop sending messages to the brain and the brain gets confused. It is this confusion in the brain that releases certain chemicals of fear and apprehension. And fears and apprehensions cause ghosts of our mind to be released. Our mind can conjure images of anything when it is thus confused.

There were a lot of stories around the temple, well and the haunted house and it was all something of folklore. Everyone talked about these places and what happened there, but few with authority. One day, I proposed to my friends that we should visit the haunted house at night. The girls were shocked by my proposal. I told them that if we were able to stamp out fear of the place from our mind, nothing will happen to us. My friends thought I had gone mad or something. Even elders were afraid of the place, what to talk of children. I asked them to consider one important factor. To date, we had heard of nothing serious happening in the house. People who happened to pass by the place in the night had heard strange sounds and some had seen visions of a lady and her child. It was said that the house was owned by a rich landlord and his wife and child had died there in some fire which took place. After the incident, the landlord had abandoned the house taking it to be unlucky for him and his family.

So you see, I told my friends, the stories about the house were merely imaginary and strengthened by the superstitious belief that ghosts and spirits existed. Even if we did see ghosts there, there was nothing to believe that they would harm us.

One of the girls suggested that if at all we went there we should take some of the boys with us. The girl said that this would at least give the girls some level of comfort. I tell you, Rita, we women depend a lot on males, and then complain this is a male-dominated society. We are born and brought up to believe that men are more courageous than we are, is it not. Again a superstition, according to me. If men were so courageous, how was it that we never heard of any man going to the haunted spots? I have no doubt in my mind that God made all of us alike, with necessary biological differences to distinguish our sexes. It is we women who have further developed this misconception that men are strong and superior to women. Maybe we woman gave them this right to believe they are strong and they, therefore, live in the belief that they are superior to women.

Anyway, it took me time to convince at least three of the girls to join me in our nocturnal visit to the haunted house. It was winter and the days were short. We prepared well, torches, knives, and blankets. Ghosts were afraid of the light that was the belief because people never saw ghosts during the day. If we could have enough light with us, I reasoned, we could scare the ghost if at all we saw one.

Let me tell you about the haunted house. It was a huge two-storied building located at the very edge of the village, on the southern side. It was fenced by a massive compound wall that rose to quite a height. To secure the wall from being scaled easily, shards of glass with their pointed edges facing up were stuck to the top edge of the wall. The building inside was surrounded by a garden, now a veritable jungle of weeds. The main gate of the building was a sturdy iron structure and grilled so that nothing can pass through. That night, as we neared the building, a chilly wind was blowing. The sky was clear, but only a pale moonlit the night. The building itself was yellow and looked every inch neglected for years. We could see plants growing on the walls of the building. The gate was locked, and we went around the building to find an entrance. It had a small gate in the rear to allow servants and staff, and the gate was all but broken. We went in quite easily. There were no locks on the doors, as no one ever has any plans of occupying the place. 

There was the sound of crickets and insects which lent the night the mystery and a haunted aura. We took care to negotiate the weeds lest we should end up bitten by snakes or insects of some kind. Every time something moved in the grass, the girls would squeal. We circled the building and came to the front side, from where we could see the main door of the once-stately house of the landlord. It was shut, but not locked. We stood there, in hushed silence, wondering what to do next. One of the girls was already suggesting that we abort our mission and return home. There was nothing here and we had seen enough and come close enough than any other villager. 

I suggested, since there was nothing unusual here, we should relax and get inside to see the rest of the house. A flight of stairs, about twenty-five of them led up to the house. We climbed those stairs quickly and stood before the main door. All that was audible now was the collective panting, that heavy breathing which was the result of four animated minds and the consequence of climbing the steep steps to the house. I went up to the door and tried to push it open.

Grandma paused dramatically. In that silence of the night, in our bedroom, we could hear sounds which we had never heard before. The heater was making some sort of crackling noise. We could hear something else, maybe insects or anything, we don’t know. And we could hear the night itself. Listen carefully in the night and you will hear the sound of stillness. We looked at grandma, head hooded by the monkey cap, and she could have been an apparition herself. I looked at my sister and saw her eyes wide and mouth open. She stared back at me and together we looked at grandma and broke out in an uneasy giggle. But to be honest, I felt the goosebumps. 

“What? Rita and Rachna, the brave girls, afraid?” Grandma’s throaty laugh brought back the normalcy and comfort, just as day manages to end the disquiet of the night.

“Go on grandma. What happened? We are not afraid at all. It is just the way you are telling us this story. That makes our mouths go dry.”

“Well, well. We are all cowards, and fear is something that strikes the heart of the bravest, whether in light or darkness. I walked up to the door of the haunted mansion and pushed the door open. There was nothing before me. The torch in my hand caught the dirt flying all around the large hall and was making strange patterns. Soon, other beams joined mine and we looked at the crisscrossing patterns before us in utter fascination. We moved ahead towards a door to the right of us, almost near the end of the room. 

It was then we saw the apparitions. They just swam into our vision, rocking us out of our wits. The beams of our lighted torches had made something like a cinema screen before us, made more real by the dust floating around in the room. On this screen appeared two ghostly apparitions, one a tall male-like figure and the other smaller female-like figure.”

Grandma had paused again, and we held our breath. Was it then true? That ghosts existed? I thought, my mind racing with numerous possibilities and stories I had heard myself. My sister was clutching my hand. And there was grandma, staring into nothing, monkey capped and all, her blind eyes glistening. Her face was straight and serious. I thought her hands were trembling, as she pulled them out to wipe her face and reset the cap which was falling over her eyes. We waited with bated breath.

“Have you ever observed the light from the projector in the cinema hall? From where the film is projected, if you watch the light streaming towards the screen, you can catch the images trapped in the light. What we saw was something like that. The images before us were swaying in the torch-lit screen we had created. That was the most frightening moment of my life, ever. Before I could gather my wits, I heard this whisper “What are you doing here?” 

We fled like mad, like being chased by a pack of wolves ready to kill us. It was then that I tripped on the stairs and fell. I tried to get up and continue with my flight, but I only felt a pain in my leg. My legs would not allow me to stand up, leave alone run. The other girls had reached the bottom of the stairs and were shouting at me, not knowing I had broken my leg.

A pair of skinny hands picked me up. I closed my eyes and began my prayers; I don’t even remember what I was praying for. “Don’t be scared. We are not ghosts.” The voice was masculine but fearful, and it must have given me some comfort. At least, I managed to open my eyes and look behind me. I saw a dark, skinny figure, bare chest and wearing only a dhoti. The eyes that were looking at me were pleading and pitiful. This could not be a ghost, I said to myself. But even that thought could not erase the tremors of fright that were ripping through me.

“Please baby, do not be afraid of us. We are poor peasants from another village, and we are just staying here for the night. We were passing by the village and it was getting dark. I saw this old house vacant and decided to sleep here for the night.” Behind the man, I saw his wife and a small child. I cast a glance down the stairs and saw the girls frozen in fright. I waved to them signaling all was ok. They trooped up tentatively. I was still unable to stand up and I could feel that something bad had happened to my leg.

Well, that was it. We did not have too much discussion with the poor peasants; we had already disturbed their sleep and it was getting late now. With help from my friends, I hobbled home. But to date, I can never forget those shimmering images in the light. My search for the ghost ended with a fractured leg. I had a lot of lying and explaining to do at home for the accident.

We felt deflated, after all the build-up. There was still no conclusive proof that ghosts and apparitions exist. But we do still believe in them. How we were hoping that grandma had encountered a real ghost!