Bhoot bangla in Kumaon

GHOST stories all over the world have one thing in common viz. they are centred round a place where someone met an unnatural death. It may be a patch of road, a particular tree or a grove of trees but most often it is a house where the deceased had lived. His or her spirit continues to visit it after dark. People who believe in apparitions sense the presence of these spirits around them at night, those who do not, snore peacefully. Some spirits can be mischievous. The German poltergeist makes its presence known by disturbing fittings like pictures on a wall or dropping a vase or a tumbler. But most frighten the living by appearing in misty forms for a fleeting second or two. Since ghosts are a posthumous phenomenon, their presence is all-pervading in graveyards and cremation grounds.

Some countries have ghosts found nowhere else. The Shivalik hills and adjoining plains have mummaaee waaley, both men and women who have their feet turned backwards. At times they are seen in broad daylight but their bodies cast no shadows.

I do not believe in ghosts of any kind but am dead scared of them after dark. I dare not visit a cemetery or a burning ghat at night. I have lost nights sleep in houses known to be haunted. But my dear friend and protege, Namita Gokhale, loves ghosts. Namita is a daughter of the Kumaon hills. Her favourite stamping ground is the region around Nainital, Almora and Ranikhet. It is densely afforested with pine, deodar, oak and rhododendron and rich with bird life, bears, panthers, porcupines, snakes and a variety of butterflies. To the north are the snow-covered Himalayas which keep hill streams gushing with ice-cold water through the summer months. To the south are the Gangetic plains which become an inferno during the summer. Whenever life in Delhi becomes too sweaty, Namita escapes to Kumaon to rejuvenate her spirits. This is the theme of her third novel The Book of Shadows (Viking Penguin).

The story goes somewhat as follows: Rachita teaches English in a Delhi college. She is engaged to marry Anand. It is a very tumultuous affair with as much love as violence thrown in the courtship. (It sounds very much like Namita’s relationship with her late husband Rajiv Gokhale). One day in a sheer fit of passion, Anand hangs himself in his room (Rajiv died of cirrhosis of the liver). Anand’s sister who teaches chemistry in the same college flings a beaker full of acid in Rachita’s face, cruelly disfiguring her. Rachita decides to get away from everybody. Her uncle who lives in Bangalore owns a house in the Kumaon hills which has remained unoccupied for many years. Lohaniju, an old retired soldier, who lives in the servant’s quarters, is its caretaker. The house had been built by a missionary couple who wanted to live in seclusion. They found this idyllic spot commanding a spectacular view of the mountains and forests with a stream running by. What they did not reckon with was that the site was inauspicious as Kumaonis of the neighbourhood knew it to be. After the missionaries died the house was occupied by a succession of Englishmen, soldiers, civilians, imposters, men and women who communicate with the dead. Some were murdered, some took their own lives, some were eaten up by panthers.

Their spirits continued to inhabit the house. Rachita had no problem having them around, making love to them, hating them, mocking at them. At one post-dinner orgy when their food was laced with bhung (marijuana), all the ghosts had a go with each other. It is a tale as bizarre as I have ever read. Namita has come a long way from her first syrupy-sweet novel Paro.

Namita Gokhale understands bird language. Of all birds, she loves crows the most: they are wise, perceptive and cunning. She writes: "Crows have ancient eyes, they look into the twenty-seven depths of surface events and understand their totality. There is nothing which they do not know. Their opinionated cousins, the ravens, are parvenus and pretenders , the object of much pity and ridicule in refined circles. The walrus, I understand, is acquainted with death, with the synapse between the worlds. The cat too is companion to many mysteries. But it is crow, lustrous, black, benign in the indifference of its cold intellect, which can be trusted totally in delicate matters.

"The Himalayan crow, in particular, is cognisant of the power of dreaming and receptive to the web of interconnectedness. I do not leave my habitation much, but my friends the crows are eternal wanderers. Much that I have learnt in the course of my existence has been gleaned from the feathered denizens of the deodar tree that fronts the house. (I have always, at a distance of course, admired the spirit of the deodar, a dryad of beauteous charm, courteous, gracious, a true vanbhanjika. I have not so far ventured her closer acquaintance, but it is a promise I have made to myself — only the moment is not yet ripe.)

"And so, driven by the compulsions of love, I sought out the crows. There is a time, just before dawn, in the last throes of the night, when the crows talk. Their words and their visions are known to the wise as the kagbhushandi, the speech of the crows."

September

September is an odd month, neither here nor there. It is the one month of the year that has no character of its own. The two months preceding Sawan and Bhadon are full of rain. The two following it October and November are the pleasantest and full of festivals. During September it may or may not rain; there may be just an odd tree in flower. And birds are too busy feeding their young to have time to sing.

During the monsoon our rivers are in flood because of heavy rains. In September and October they continue to be in spate because by then snow and ice on the Himalayas, melted by the summer sun, begin to flow down. Misery created by floods, malaria and water-borne diseases continue to take their toll. So do snakes and scorpions. I often wonder what induced Kalidas, a rare exception among Indian poets, who wrote on nature, praise September as the advent of the season of fulfilment.

Over the rice-fields, laden plants are shivering in the breeze;
While in his brisk caresses dance the blossom-burdened trees;
He ruffles every lily pond where blossoms kiss and part,
And stirs with lovers’ fancies fond the young man’s eager heart.

September is also a singularly fruitless month. The last of our best varieties of mangoes — langra, chausa and rataul disappear from the market. Citrus fruits have yet to ripen. Only apples, red and golden delicious, begin to trickle down from Himachal and Kashmir. However, not all is bleak about September. For the nature-lovers there is much to look out for. Watch cuckolded crows feeding koel chicks off-loaded on them by their real parents: if you have a good ear you will notice the chick imitate crows cawing as it begs for food with wide-opened beaks. Look out for the arrival of the first winter migrants, wagtails and red-starts. And the first of autumn’s flowering tree, the chorizia bursts’ into flower sometime mid-September to stay with us till the winter sets in.

Instant pregnancy

Banto boarded a crowded bus. Finding it difficult to bear the jolts, she requested a passenger to give up his seat to her because she was pregnant.

The gentleman stood up and offered his seat to her. Standing by her side, he carefully examined her anatomy and felt cheated. He asked, "Bhahenji, when did you become pregnant?"

"Only this morning," replied Banto.

(Contributed by Madan Gupta ‘Spatu’, Chandigarh)

Haryanvi English

While taking the English period, Dhajja Ram, Principal of Senior Secondary School, completed a sentence by using "I says....". Pointing out his mistake, a student asked him to complete the sentence by using "I say....". Using his wit, Dhajja Ram replied that when he used "I says", it means "Dhajja Ram says".

(Contributed by B.P. Malik, Panchkula)

Note: Khushwant Singh is away on holiday. There will be no column next week.

This feature was published on September 11, 1999