Mixed bag - An ounce of horror

When people talk to me about ghosts, I rubbish them. You see, I do not believe that such things exist. Oh, I love horror and supernatural movies and stories! There is absolutely, no doubt about that. They make great thrillers and captivating reads, not to mention, edge of the seat kind of movies. The other day, I started watching a so called horror movie on Tata Sky – 1920. A very pathetic take-off on exorcist! It was around midnight when I started watching it and Gautam, my husband, was trying to discourage me saying that I may not be able to sleep afterwards. So, I made a confession to him – told him that I would watch a horror movie, only if he is next to me, even though he is blissfully asleep.

Oh yes, though I do not believe in ghosts and do love watching horror movies, I lack the courage to watch them, when I do not have company. Reading is another matter, I would still read horror stories, whether or not I have company. But, do I really believe in the existence of supernatural? No, I do not and I am not very convinced about the arguments that others have for me on this topic, for the simple reason, I have never experienced any paranormal experiences in my life. I believe, there is a perfectly normal and rational explanation to all that people say is “supernatural”, like the way I do about the story I am about to recount. However, if I give that explanation here on this blog, I do believe that I would be disowned by almost all my relatives, hence I will leave up to my readers, as to how they would like to interpret. For the believers, it is a ghost story and to the non-believers, brush up on Freud!

Ammamma was a beautiful lady, fair, but a bit plump. She wore a red vermilion (sindhuram) bindi on her forehead that used to enhance her round face further more. Her kohl laden eyes cannot be classified as doe-shaped, but they were intelligent and sharp. Nothing escaped those eyes! She got married very young and I was told that by the time she was 14, she had her first child and by the time she was 29, her first grandchild. My guess was when we were at Cuttack, she would be in her late forties or early fifties.

From what I can make from the stories in circulation among the family, her life was not exactly a bed of roses, with tatagaru. He was a health inspector and was always away from home, touring the villages and back waters of Andhra Pradesh. He was very fond of hunting game and extremely partial to the zamindaari ways. The rajahs and zamindaars of East, West Godavari , Visakhapatnam and Vijayanagraram districts were always inviting him to go along with them on hunting expeditions. He was a handsome man, with light eyes and I guess women found him irresistible. There was even a story that he had a mistress tucked away in Vijayanagaram, and ignored ammamma during her last years.

When they were young, it was left for ammamma to look out after the children, educate them and ensure that they got married. It was no easy task, getting eight daughters married off, especially, when there was taboo around the community to which they belong to – Kalavanthulu. I do not know a nicer way of explaining this, but my mother’s family belongs to, in what was known in the olden days as descendants of prostitutes. No, they are distinctly different from Devadasis. This is a community of artisans who are groomed to entertain men, much like the courtesans of the Victorian era and the geishas of Japan.

There was an interesting story around how the family became Kalavanthulu, but will talk about it some other time. However, what is relevant at this point of time was that, the family decided to move away from tradition and was focused on getting the daughters married off to give them a respectable standing in the society. My grandparents were first cousins and in those days, consanguineous marriages seem to be the way out of the situation that the family was in. But to get respectable alliances for eight daughters was like climbing the Mount Everest, given the social standing that their community had. Yet, ammamma did it single-handedly, while tatagaru was busy enjoying the patronage of zamindaars, hunting tigers and cavorting women.

Coming back to Cuttack, ammamma came back to be with us and help mummy while Susi is recuperating. I was glad that I get to hear a new bed time story every night and by now, Bobby also started competing with me for her stories. Susi replaced Bobby in my parents’ bedroom.

Things started happening then. It was Susi, who started it all! (So says Bobby! Honestly, I do not remember this part...) Apparently, she was playing on the bed and fell off it, and cut her lip real bad. Since then, she started complaining that she could see an old woman, whom no one else could see. She started saying that the old woman is staring at her, making faces, etc.

And then Ammamma started complaining about a woman she started seeing and hearing in the night. A woman she said stood outside the bedroom window beckoning her. She asked daddy to spray vibhuti on the windows, so that the woman would not haunt her during the nights. He complied and it became a ritual in the night for daddy to carry the vibhuti in his hand and move from room to room, sprinkling the white powder on the windows and doors. Ammamma told us that this white powder is so powerful that it would keep away all the ghosts and banshees away from the home. Daddy would also smear our foreheads with vibhuti to take care of any nightmares that we were likely to have. Years later, when I realized that daddy was an atheist, I asked him about this ritual. Why would he do something that he never believed? He told me that he did because the rest of us believed in it and gave us a feeling of safety and security.

One night ammamma woke me up and gesticulated wildly towards the window. She demanded if I can see a woman in a white sari standing under the seethphal tree, beckoning her. With my eyes full of sleep and head all groggy, I tried peering into the dark of the night. I did not see anything except the seethaphal tree, but don’t know why, did not have the heart to tell her the truth. I said I did! She immediately, started chanting some mantras and sprinkling the vibhuti that was kept at the bedside, on the window. After a while, she asked me to go back to sleep, as the “ghost” disappeared unable to withstand the chanting and the vibhuti.

One day when I woke, I found my parents all worried and going about talking in whispers. Ammamma was still in bed, which was highly unusual. Mummy took me away from the room in which ammamma was sleeping, into the corridor that ran alongside the rooms. There at the end of the corridor, close to the bathroom, I saw a pile of wet clothes. They all belong to ammamma and I immediately recalled that she wore them to bed last night.

Mummy recounted to me what happened last night after I went off to sleep. She was also fast asleep, while daddy was reading, as was his habit. While the connecting door between our bedroom and parents’ bedroom was closed, the door leading to the corridor from their bedroom was kept open. Daddy sensed someone walking past the door and assumed that it was ammamma going to the toilet. Confirming his suspicion, he heard the bathroom door closing and water running. There was something amiss, as the water continued to run and it stopped as abruptly as it started. He continued to read his book all through and when he thought that ammamma returned to the room, he got up and went into the bathroom. The bucket was empty and the bathroom was all wet. Surprised, he filled the bucket and came to back to the room, to resume his reading. Another 10 minutes passed and he again thought that someone walked by the door, again he heard the person entering the bathroom and this time he stopped reading.

Daddy heard the person lifting the bucket and pouring the water. He was flabbergasted, as he knew that it could not be ammamma. You see, she was constantly complaining of pain in her right hand and could not lift any heavy objects. So, it cannot be her who is lifting the bucket. Then, who could it possibly be? As daddy was trying to figure out the mysterious person, the person herself came and stood in front of him. It was, in fact, ammamma! And she was dripping wet, her hair all undone and spread across her back. Her vermillion bindi was running down her forehead onto her nose. Her nostrils were all flared and her chest was heaving heavily. She was glaring at daddy, as though she was about to murder him.

Daddy tapped mummy on her shoulder to wake her. And when she did, both of them handled her. What have they done to bring her back to normal, was never made clear to me. I was convinced about their explanation, but as I grew up, it was too fantastic for me to believe. Mummy said, they smeared vibhuti on ammamma’s forehead and she calmed down.

We were warned not to discuss the night’s events with ammamma. And, for once, I managed to keep my curiosity under control and tried to behave as though nothing transpired. As the day came to an end, and night fall dark and thick, the evening vibhuti ritual was underway. Daddy was sprinkling it all over the windows and doors and he started it with their own bedroom. The three of us were busy playing in our parents’ bedroom, while mummy was busy setting the mosquito net on the bed. Ammamma was in our room. Daddy finished sprinkling Vibhuti and was headed towards our room, when ammamma appeared in the doorway. She was not her usual self, angry and totally not in control of her senses. First thing, she did was knock the vibhuti out of daddy’s hand. She then proceeded to grab daddy’s hair in her left hand and slapped him right across his face with her right hand. And she went on slapping him!

Bobby started crying and Susi, though did not understand what was going on, seeing her brother, started wailing. I was too stunned and scared to cry and sat frozen on the bed. Mummy gained her senses and ran towards them, quickly scooped the vibhuti from the floor and smeared on ammamma’s forehead. The minute vibhuti touched her, ammamma’s eyes rolled up and she fainted. Daddy quickly caught her before she hit the floor and between them both my parents lifted her and laced her gently on the bed. While daddy was busy trying to revive ammamma, mummy came to us to pacify us.

Ammamma decided she would not stay for a minute in the house, after this incident. She was convinced that there was a ghost in the house, who possessed her. So was mummy! While ammamma took the train back to Vijayanagaram, where tatagaru lived, mummy gave daddy ultimatum to look out for another house. And daddy was left with no choice but to search for another house. While the rest of the family is convinced that ammamma was truly possessed by a ghost, I am not convinced that there must be a perfectly rational explanation for this phenomenon. The reason why I believe that it was not the work of supernatural, lies in the fact that when ammamma saw a woman at the window, I did not!

But before we move to the last and final abode for us in Cuttack, there is still so much I have to share with you that happened in this house. However, those incidents precede this little ghost story!