The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : The narcissism of the neurotic

The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : The narcissism of the neurotic

A Yellow Tennis Ball

I have never played tennis. I liked to see yellow tennis balls that piled in the wooden box of my college sports room. With my child hood friends I was staying in the college men’s hostel when I enrolled myself to pre-degree, year after I got through my matriculation. Those were the time we less studied and more played. It was so wonderful to play cricket with tennis ball and we hated hard balls as it hurt us very badly. I remember about tennis ball is not for I played with it or thought it was the best in the ball games. My association of memory with the ball was bit farfetched.

It was our passion in search of ghosts in nearby forests and tells everybody with the same vigour about our adventures with a little inflated imagination. My roommate Anandan was a peculiar one. I observed many extra terrestrial beings made noises in his dreams when he was in deep sleep. In one of the midnights he stood on a wooden stool in one leg to save himself from the ghosts that appeared in the form of snakes.

He used to get up early morning to sing some bhajans and subsequently to chant some slokas to be free from nightmarish dreams he had a few hours ago. Though unable to recollect what those were, he was a firm believer in ghosts and the fear of them could be overcome by a regular pujas and other offerings to the gods of the temples wherever he found.

“Anandan, why can’t be a little rational? You are a studying a quite lot of science now a days. I am failed to understand you.”

“It is very difficult for you to understand my problem. I was haunted by ghost from my childhood when my cousin hanged himself. My grandmother had to suffer a lot in her life from her cousin who died unexpectedly in her sleep. My grandmother used to tell me how she hated her like an enemy. The only way to be free from all these curses is not reading science books but find out reasons why somebody wants to destroy others. Do some pujas and other prescribed rituals to emancipate them from their thirst for vengeance to the living.”

Anandan believed that curses of different forms fell upon him like anything. Certainly we bring them down, perhaps through the practices suggested by the daredevil wizards with their various type of rings and magic threads with pearls and shells. Till the clouds of the curses move away and befall on somebody.

As a roommate I had to be pity with him and forgave the inconveniences he caused me very often with his too sensitive and adaptive mind which was not self reliant. We tried to make him confident himself and concentrate in other activities in the college campus. But it didn’t become fruitful. I told him many stories of hallucination of mind and my own experiences with those falsehoods. I was not sure whether he listened to me or convinced to my versions. I told about Anandan to my close friend Jayan and wanted to know how he could help with his ideas to reduce the burden of accumulated layers of dreams that threaten the very existence of reality. He told me that it was futile to make an argument. He thought some other ways where Anandan should be convinced by his own experiences.

“I have a plan. It won’t remove his present hallucination. But it can give some sort of relief and perhaps it might help him to introspect a little about it.”

Though Jayan’s plans were bit adventurous I liked his idea. Anandan knew Jayan as an arrogant and irregular in his manners. He didn’t like the idea and horrified to hear that we are going to visit grave yard in the midnight of coming Friday.

“Are you crazy? It is not wise to be there at midnight. If you are courageous it should be utilized in a better way. Not like this” Anandan expressed his displeasure.

“You see” I told him. “It’s not anybody’s sake we set out for this search. Now days me too started believing in ghosts and spirits after staying with you. By this, I wanted to make sure myself the fact .I need your help in this matter”

“What help?!” he asked.

“Just accompany us”, looking at the distant green I said.

“No way! I am sick of your idea! And seems not strong like you. I will be the victim”. I could see his face getting a little pale.

“No, my friend, I mean not in the midnight just in the day time” I pacified him.

“Day time too, I can’t” he was decisive.

“I want your signature on this tennis ball” I revealed our plan. Anandan would accompany us in the evening to the grave yard in the forest and place the signed yellow tennis ball on one of the buried bodies. After a prolonged persuasion he agreed to accompany us to the grave. He didn’t come near the spots where dead bodies are buried. Jayan placed the tennis ball and made sure that Anandan saw it. To our surprise it seemed that slowly Anandan getting himself interested in our entire exercise.

I found he was happy not because anything we did to reduce the intensity of his obsession but he might have found himself being part of our adventure. He was really impatient to wait for a midnight.

We took a special permission from our watchman to go out night. Jayan carried a big torchlight, a cane stick and a muffler with him. Anandan came with us till the hostel gate.

It was really a dark and moonless night. I was bit scared. I just followed Jayan’s steps. I was happy till the mud road ended. The thick undergrowth started with various sounds which I never heard before. To reach out the grave is a difficult task. My enthusiasm made the way for a creeping sensation of fear. I talked continuously to Jayan.

“Jayan, don’t you think it is very difficult for to reach over there. We haven’t evening finished half way. It looks very far. In the evening I didn’t feel it.”

“Yes, you are right. Now fear has been engulfed you!” Jayan was very casual in his tone.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I tried to inflict a sort of fear in him. I wanted to give up this attempt and be freed myself from this horrible breathless situation.

“I don’t know about ghosts. It depends upon the people. I came here not to see any ghosts or something. I wanted to take the tennis ball and give to him. That’s all” Jayan touched something with his stick. It was a molted snake skin looked like real one.

“Don’t have any fear? My adrenaline crept up.

“Yes, I do. But at this time I control it”. He said it sarcastically.

We were almost near to the grave yard. I felt something suddenly ran through my legs. To my horror Jayan jumped himself into the near bush. His torch light in his hands was thrown away to some distance. It was as if a big darkness eaten up by a huge darkness. I shouted “Jayan! Jayan! Where are you? What happened to you?”There was no reply. I found a thick smoke coming out of one of the buried spots. I shouted but no voice heard. I felt water was drained up from my body and slowly became blood less.

“Jayan, Jayan help me... Help me Jaya……. I fainted and fell on the ground.

I didn’t know when I opened my eyes. I felt my head cool and tried to touch it. It was wet. Jayan was sitting beside me holding the yellow tennis ball. He told me that it was the mischief of foxes that made us frightened. He told that he was in search of his torchlight without which retrieving the tennis ball was impossible. He found me in unconscious state and sprinkles some water from the bottle he carried.

I was certain that there was no ghost existed. Had Jayan not with me I would have certainly believed in ghost as I was predominated by my fear over my reason to think about the situation.

Jayan showed Anandan the yellow tennis ball. He caught it with his one hand and threw to the wall in the room to take the return of it with the other hand.

A Shake Hand With A Ghost

“Sir, do you believe in ghost?”

The class was so eagerly to get another ghost story as usual. Nothing makes them more interesting than hearing the stories of fairies, ghouls, genes etc.

“How many of among are you sure that a ghost can come right now here? Or in the midnight the same place?” I asked. Most of them were not sure of right now but approved the midnight as they believed ghost was always “alive” in such wee hours.

I had been dealing with considerably hallucinated young minds that were accumulated by innumerable horrible stories of the spirits and extra-terrestrial phantoms with different spectacles and shapes for quite long time. I was often helpless to paint a good shade of rationality in irrationally conditioned world of my pupils. Those were such times where anybody with a bit wild imagination could cook sort of ghost stories to intimidate them and to get strange pleasures out of it.

I remembered how I was a bit cruel to my brother who was just young to me, scared of darkness always held me with his body very closely when we walked through the darkness to reach my home from nearby temple without torchlight. I used to find a strange pleasure to see his frightened breathless face that asked me for pity.

Ghosts always followed my brother in his dreams and his loneliness.

“It was my father who told stories of ghosts he met and removed the ghost fear from our minds gradually.” I told the class.
“Many times he saw them very near and once he even shook his hands with one of them.” I found it was interesting and the pupils were eager to get into the real story.

Many years ago, my father visited a far away city. Me and my brother were young and expecting his return in the evening. He had seldom stayed elsewhere other than our home in his life. He was a village man and lived with a sort of principles and punctuality inherited from my grandfather. Ours was a rustic village where wooden electric posts had started appearing here and there and the villagers were in a long wait to see a first bulb to glow. We were afraid of darkness; we had a kerosene lamp which burnt throughout night. Many of unseen insects had made noise of silence and Jackals of the night were howling one after another at the darkness.

“You can have your supper and go to bed; father will come late.” mother told us. My heart started beating fast thinking how my father could get into home that night. That too in the midnight of a Friday; the ghosts were having their revelries with flesh and blood.

I got up early morning and looked for my father. He was as usual sleeping with my brother. While having breakfast I told him how we were frightened by his absence at night. I was bit dumbstruck to hear from him that he reached home midnight all the way walking from the town.

“How could you come across Bhoothpara?” I asked him. Bhoothpara was a haunted place where even day time people dare not to walk. Our minds were filled with the horrible stories of that cursed place where strange incidents took place time to time.

“I wanted to tell you; I met a ghost yesterday night. I even shook hand with it. I didn’t surprise at my father’s words as it was his habit of giving lightness to whatever grave situations.

He continued. “I was on the one end of the long narrow road to Bhoothpara. The moon light was so bleak that cloud covered it partially. I could feel the other distant end of the mud road so familiar with its red soils and round stones.

Singing meanwhile a folk rhyme to evade the loneliness and to forget about the never finishing walks of mine, I saw the other end of the road, where Bhoothpara starts, two round red eyes!!”

My brother became breathless, he widened his eyes. “Then?”

“It was turning round and coming close to me; I felt. Though I didn’t believe in such things I was bit frightened and thought of turning back and took on my heels. With all my strength I decided not to do so. I had to face whatever it might be. I stepped so fast to reach out those big red eyes to ensure that it was a hallucination. To contrary to my belief I felt those were real eyes and becoming clearer to my vision.

I was almost reaching the other end of the long road and further to the spot at Bhoothpara where those burning eyes appeared. I made the way by moving the dried bushes in front of me with a stick one hand and a torch light in other hand. I closed my eyes and opened them frequently to make sure of the reality of that scary night. I must have moved further more.

I caught him!!

It was a familiar face with two torches made of dry coconut leaves in his hands waving them in the air”. “Who?”, we asked.

“Beerappu, the drunkard! His wild boozing habits in the midnights was interrupted perhaps the first time”.

“Oh! Sir it is you! Forgive me for my irresponsible act. I could not find any suitable place.” He folded his hand.

“I took his hands and said that it was okay. I reminded him how many of the villagers would have run by seeing his ‘red eyes’ in the midnights. A few of them might have been unconscious by seeing them with their fearfully hallucinated minds. Had I been a coward I would certainly have not got myself in to the fact.” My father concluded.

I looked at my brother. My father had to tell a lot of such real stories from his experiences later years to remove my brother’s obsessive fear about ghost that he inherited from a distant great grandmother who loved to tell ghost stories out of her pure imagination.

I looked at the class; it reminded me my brother who was always insisted my father to say some more stories.