Growing out of ghosts...

It was like a haunted house, that ancient, double-storied building my mother had inherited. So many people had lived and died in it that we, the children, always believed that there was a poltergeist thriving in the dark, spooky corners of the palatial building, causing the wooden ceiling to creak every now and then. I kind of imagined it sliding down the rickety old staircase with its imposing balustrade.

Evenings always brought with them such scary visions and I never dared to go to the backyard, beyond which there was a hillock with innumerable cashew trees, which resembled a dense forest. To make matters worse, close to home, there was the place where they burnt the dead. Like any traditional Kerala home, our house too was situated in the middle of an estate, full of coconut and areca palms, mango trees bearing pepper vines and overgrown coffee plants scattered all around.

Once I entered boyhood and the delights of reading spooky fiction, I used to smuggle horror novels into my room from the nearby library and pore over them at the dead of night. This was prohibited activity, by the way. The elders had ruled that I was too young to read novels! But there was no way they could keep me from laying my hands on Bram Stoker, and the like.

One day, as darkness set in, I was lying down thinking of a possible spirit creeping into the room through the window and wringing my windpipe. As I got up to close the window, I could see a dull crescent in the distant sky.

Although the scene may have inspired an adult into writing poetry, for me it was a spine-chilling scene because, to my utter horror, I saw a blue flame rising to the sky, exactly at the necropolis. The shriek that rose in my throat brought the whole household to my side. All I remember of the incident was my lying on a hospital bed with high fever, attended to by a clutch of elders.

It took me many years indeed to realise the chemistry behind the “ghost” and the big role in its creation that the human imagination had played.

Later, when I came of age and became a full-time politician, I was returning home after attending a meeting in a distant village, all alone and on foot. The whole village was asleep and a sudden downpour lashed the area. I was completely drenched and was shivering with cold. Suddenly, to my great disbelief, I saw a fire rising in a thatched shed.

Desperate to make myself warm and to take refuge from the lashing rain, I made for the hut. It was certainly a relief to sit beside a warm fire. It took me awhile to discern that I had placed myself next to a funeral pyre! I decided, nevertheless, to stay until the weather cleared.

The next day, I heard people talking about a ghost, who was sitting in the cremation grounds at the previous night.