Geetanjali Krishna: Ghostly tales from the hills

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

Ghosts were all around us in the mountains of Kumaon. They hid in the deep valleys, calling the unwary to join them in the nether world. They haunted the streams and rivulets, unwilling to break contact with what they'd left behind. And as we sat around the dying embers of the bonfire late at night, they lurked in the shadows beyond. Ghosts were everywhere, because the hill people believed in them.

Was it because they lived in such isolated little homes, that hill folk needed to believe there were invisible others around? Did their deep faith in God somehow make it easier for them to believe even after dying, their spirits lingered on in this world?

"Ghosts aren't just figments of our imaginations "" we've all seen them!" said Raghu, our local driver, "ghosts are as real as you and me!" He told us of the earliest encounter he had with spooks: "when I was a child, there was a ghost, seven or eight feet tall, who'd just accompany people walking home late at night.

He was benevolent enough," he said, pausing to shudder, "but if anyone turned back to look at him, he didn't live to see the next morning!" We didn't argue with him, lest his attention wavered from the winding road to Ranikhet. I stared at the deep chasm alarmingly close to the road.

"Never look down!" said Raghu, catching sight of me in the rear-view mirror, "people say that the ghosts of the people who fell down and died here, may hypnotise you nto jumping in!"

He told us that a few years ago, two boys tried to peer down just for a lark, and only one returned alive.

But ghosts are often very benevolent, said Raghu, if they get their due respect. Like the time, he said, nonchalantly overtaking a truck from the wrong side, when he gave a lift to an old couple when he was driving towards Bhimtal late one winter evening.

"They were going to Almora, they told me. I felt sorry they had to walk in the cold, and said I'd drop them. They blessed me, and got into the back," he narrated. His car had central locking, and he distinctly remembers telling them to roll up their windows to keep the cold out.

"Two hours later, when I reached Almora, I turned to ask the couple where they'd like to get off, but the back seat was empty!" said Raghu. But the blessings of that ghostly couple proved lucky next morning, when he got paid by someone whom he'd given up hoping for money from.

"The last encounter I had with a ghost was when I was walking through the forest to my village in the middle of the night. As I neared the stream behind my village, I heard the sound of someone washing clothes, and a baby crying nearby. I switched on my torch to see who could be crazy enough to wash clothes in the jungle at night, but the noise suddenly ceased. Puzzled, I switched off the torch, and the noise resumed," said Raghu.

He began feeling so scared that he sprinted all the way home, only to hear that a woman and her infant had died that day in his village. Silence fell and I remarked, "how sad that that even after turning into a ghost, if that's what you encountered, that poor woman didn't get nirvana from housework?" Raghu didn't laugh: "you'll probably truly believe in ghosts only after you've seen one yourself!"

It was the mountain air that sent a chill down my spine, nothing else.