Every Ghost Has a History

It was the eeriness of the song that woke up Kavita. She looked at the time on her mobile phone. 1.23 am. Ah, there’s something musical about that number too. The song came from the hill behind her house.

Kavita and her husband Vijay had shifted their residence to this village just a few days back. They worked in the city but didn’t like to live in the city. They would agree with Shelley that hell must be a city. The city is a roaring rage, Kavita said to Vijay many a time. I want the sound of cicadas in the night coming from green all around me.

Vijay found her a lush green habitat. Kavita was the music of his life. Her desire was a command for him. No wish of hers would go unfulfilled as long as Vijay had the ability to fulfil it. You want the saugandhika and I will go to Gandharvamadana to get it. That was Vijay. Kavita’s own Vijay.

When he took this lovely house on rent, Vijay was warned that the hill that towered behind the house was haunted. A haunted hill? No, not the whole hill, the informer said. The crumbling house on top. Oh, that’s ok, Vijay said. We won’t have anything to do with crumbling old houses on top of a steep hill.

The song from the crumbling old house in the middle of the night was a different matter, however. Vijay didn’t hear it. Kavita did. When Kavita told Vijay about it the next morning, he didn’t take it as seriously as he should have. He was a computer engineer with too many projects on hand each of which had a deadline. Dead line. That is what the life of a computer engineer is, Vijay thinks. But he has never pursued that thought any further. Where does he get the time for thinking. Algorithms eat up all his time.

Kavita was a teacher in a CBSE school. She taught Shelley and Shakespeare to adolescent students who had lost the poetry in their hearts. All her students wanted to become doctors or engineers. And go to Australia or Canada. Most girls became nurses in the process and migrated to some country like antinational traitors. Boys migrated soon after school and became anything from automobile mechanics to babysitters and were happy counting dollars at weekends and drinking whisky since brandy was not in fashion there as in Kerala. Kavita continued to carry Keats and Shelly in her heart and soul though she did not fall on the thorns of life and bleed. As long as Vijay was there by her side, there was no question of any thorn pricking her flesh.  

But Vijay was not ready to take her to the crumbling house on the hill. Leave ghosts alone, he said very unromantically. Even if they sing. Dead lines held him in thrall. There is no music in deadlines. Why ghosts sing is one of the many mysteries that computer engineers fail to understand. The truth is that computer engineers have no music in their souls. 

Kavita had only music in her soul. She had won many prizes in various music competitions in school and college. Music is the language of angels, she knew. And now it appeared that music is also the language of ghosts.

The song came in the dead of the night from the hilltop again and again as if it was inviting Kavita to make a visit. That is why she did make the visit.

It was 1.23 am when she looked at her mobile phone that night too. Many nights had already passed after she heard the eerie song from the hilltop the first time. The song haunted her night after night. And then, one night, unable to bear the pain of sweetness any further, Kavita decided to climb the mountain in the dead of the night. Spirituality is an inescapable grip if it ever manages to get near you.

Vijay was sleeping with a snore that Kavita didn’t ever really mind. Where there is love, snoring is never a problem. Let him snore away. Kavita wrapped a shawl around her and walked out of home with a torch. She was in a kind of trance. But she was sensible enough to carry a torch. The way to the hill wasn’t easy because there was no way. Kavita had to make a way through the tall grasses, between the huge trees. The music from the hilltop was her way, in fact.

Hills look majestic and intimidating from far. When you start climbing them, you’ll realise that they aren’t as challenging as they look. A lot of things in life are like that. But people don’t like to try, Kavita knew, having taught a few thousand youngsters. She climbed the hill easily enough. Climbs are easy especially if there is some eerie music beckoning you.

“Hello,” Kavita said as she stepped into the dilapidated house which did not even have a door. The door had collapsed aeons ago. The walls carried marks of death and decay. The stench of rot hit Kavita’s nostrils like a boxer’s punches which she hated on the TV screen.

The song had stopped a few moments before Kavita entered the crumbling house on the hill which had anthills inside. Who can live in this kind of a place? Kavita wondered. Even a ghost must have better sense of hygiene if not aesthetics.  

“Ghosts don’t need a place to live, my dear.” Kavita heard a voice. She flashed her torch all around. “Ghosts don’t have a body, don’t you know? We are spirits.”

Oh, yes, Kavita recalled. Spirituality has no body.

“But how can I speak to a mere voice?” Kavita asked. She was a teacher and hence used to speaking to bodies.

Voila! And there appeared a body. A beautiful body. A young woman with a heavenly figure. That is, an unearthly charm. No wonder why spirituality is so charming.

“Hi,” said the ghost, “I am Neeli. Welcome to my world, Kavita.”

“You know my name!”

Hahaha… Neeli the ghost laughed. The laughter wasn’t at all ridiculous like the ghost-laughter in Malayalam movies and TV serials. It was a plain human laughter. Like that of any girl next door.

“Aren’t I you?” Neeli ghost asked. “Tatvam Asi, they called it in the old days when the Brahmins ruled the roost.” Neeli laughed again. This time the laughter sounded slightly different. Was there something ghostly about it? Maybe, Kavita was hallucinating. When you’re standing in front of a ghost in a dilapidated building in the middle of a jungle on a desolate hill, and that too at about 2 o’clock in the night, reality will be quite different.

What is reality?

Come on, writer, this is supposed to be a ghost story, not a metaphysical thesis. So, let’s return to Kavita teacher and Neeli ghost.

Neeli was telling her history to Kavita. Every ghost has a history, Neeli asserted. Male or female, every ghost has a past. Neeli’s past belonged to the days of the Channar Revolt in Travancore. First half of the 19^th century. The low caste women of Kerala were not allowed to cover their breasts. The higher caste men made all the rules in those days. And they were all oglers. Oglers made the rules, the rituals, the prayers, the gods, the taxes…

Today we don’t call them oglers, Kavita wanted to say. We call them by sweet names like Pegasus. But Kavita’s thought was overtaken by Neeli’s narrative.

Neeli was a young girl. A pubescent girl, the ghost said. “I was quite fair, you know, by the standards of the low caste people’s fairness in those days. But still they called me Neeli (Bluish) because we the lower caste people were not allowed to take proper names like Rama or Sita or Narendra. We had to be called Blackie or Silly or something.”

Neeli could sing well. She sang sitting in her hut which didn’t even have a proper roof. Most low caste people didn’t even have a hut in those days. They slept under the trees or just anywhere. Who cared anyway? Who could afford to care? Even the gods were captives of the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas. 

Music travels far, Neeli went on. That’s the problem with music. It is that problem which brought you here too, you see.

“I love music,” Kavita said. “And you were singing mostly in Hamsadhwani raga. Oh my god! How lovely is that raga!”

“I know nothing about Hamsa and raga, Kavita. I am an illiterate untouchable girl who was treasured like a pearl by her father and brother.”

What about mother? Kavita wanted to ask.

“Mother?” Neeli ghost read Kavita teacher’s thought. “All women were mere slaves of men in those days. Their likes and dislikes, thoughts and feelings, even their breasts were properties of the men. Pegasus has more than wings, Kavita.”

“I too have a history,” Kavita said.

“I know,” the ghost responded promptly. Neeli sounded as if she wanted to tell a lot of things and there was no time for all that. “I know, that’s why I charmed you to this place.”

Kavita belonged to what they call a scheduled caste. The label ‘scheduled’ was meant to give some benefits to the caste members. Those who benefited in the end are the upper caste people. Those who know how to manipulate the present control the past and the imminent future. “But the ghosts are spiritual creatures,” reminded Neeli. “We know better because we see more.”

Neeli was summoned to this hill palace by the Brahmin master of the palace which is now ruins.

“Send your daughter to the Illam,” the Namboothiri with a colossal butt ordered. Neeli’s father was the Namboothiri’s kudiyaan, slave. “I want to listen to her songs. Hamsadhwani.”

My father didn’t understand what Hamsa-what-ever is. He had no choice anyway. What choice does a stray dog have? It was not my song that the ruler of our village wanted. His massive butt smothered me.

But you were an untouchable, Kavita exclaimed.

Untouchability was confined to the daytime, my dear teacher. At night, untouchability is invisible. Even today.

True, Kavia knew it too well. She was a product of that invisibility. Her mother was seduced by an upper caste man who knew how to coin new slogans every time he met Kavita’s mother. Slogans like Empower Women and so on. He empowered one woman. Kavita was the product of that empowerment. Vijay married her knowing that she was what they called a bastard. Vijay is a handicap whom you euphemistically call ‘physically challenged.’ His father had no sense to give him the Polio vaccination because his father was an illiterate low caste too who struggled to make both ends meet. One of his generous teachers helped Vijay to pursue BTech and he became a computer engineer who will be developing the next version of Pegasus for some big guy up there who will haunt his perceived antagonists.

Don’t use the word ‘haunt’, Neeli ghost protested. Haunting is our job. We are not malicious like those big guys. But…

And then suddenly Neeli’s demeanour changed. She seemed to become annoyed. “Butt…” she said. “I hate men even now. I will shoot them in their butts if I get hold of them. No man dares to come here…”

And then Neeli breathed hard. Like the ghosts seen in Malayalam movies and TV serials. Kavita wondered whether she was supposed to feel frightened.

“What happened? Why are you upset? I can help you. I love to help. I’m a teacher, you know, in a CBSE school.”

Neeli ghost cooled down. Teachers have a way even with ghosts. Teachers do it in class wherever they are. Particularly CBSE teachers.

Then Neeli laughed. “Your Vijay was here just now.” Neeli pointed to the darkness behind Kavita and said, “there. But he ran away when said I would kick the butts of men if I get hold of them. Hahaha. Men are silly creatures, Kavita. But some of them are good too, you know.”

Kavita realised that she wasn’t doing something quite right. Like how does an Indian wife leave her husband’s bed in the wrong hours of the night and make a rendezvous with a ghost. Vijay has a right to run away. And question me later. Even burn me alive. But Vijay won’t go that extent, of course. He loves me more than Neeli ghost can ever understand. Love circumvents traditions.

Kavita said a sweet goodbye to Neeli who responded with a heavenly smile. Neeli’s Hamsadhwani song rose in the haunted hill as Kavita descended.

When Kavita reached home, Vijay had just woken up.

“Where were you?” Vijay asked as if he had just woken up from a bad dream.

“Washroom,” Kavita said hesitantly. “My stomach was upset.” It was very clear to her that Vijay hadn’t moved out of bed at all that night. Like in any other night. He dreads darkness. He thinks ghosts are real.

The Hamsadhwani song in the hills was still audible. But only Kavita heard it. Spirituality is not meant for everyone. Even history is not, though many people fiddle with it unnecessarily.

PS. I hardly write stories nowadays. I don’t know why this story arose in my fancy last night. I can tell you one thing, however. I have written a few ghost stories and in every one of them the ghosts are more benign than human beings. You can read the best of them here, all at my expense.