Ghostly Visitation

The mysterious presence

Today we got the scare of our lives. As we were about to start the exercises, Razia Khan drew our attention to a pile of clothes lying abandoned on a bench close by. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a human form – completely motionless and covered, but for two hands jutting out. It bore a striking resemblance to the famous hollow-faced sculptures of Anna Chromy. Our arrival nearby made no difference to it.

Anna Chromy's Die Pieta

The solitary presence and its frozen stillness had cast an eerie air around -- in spite of people stopping by on the walking track to give it a second look.
Arora joked that it could be ghost – a disenchanted spirit that had descended from a tree above. But nobody laughed. Even as the exercises continued, everyone’s eyes flitted back and forth to ascertain whether the hunched figure had moved. Yusuf Rassiwala urged Nahid Khan to go check if it was alive. “No way, you better go!” she refused bluntly. “This could be a chudail, an evil spirit.”
“Shekhawat should have been here,” opined Nafisa Sayyad, doing a little number to mimic a demented woman possessed by spirits.
“This is no laughing matter,” Yusuf warned, eyes riveted on the mysterious entity on the bench.

Nafisa goes to inspect

The girl emerges from her shroud

“Who knows what this is,” Razia agreed. “Is it dead or alive? We should take a photo.”
“I think I can see a beard,” Arora said, not budging from his place. “He’ll beat us if we act funny… Bahut marega!”
“I’ll go and check,” offered Nafisa bravely, but stopped short about six feet away and returned. “No beard, it is hair. It must be a female,” she reported.
From that point, Nafisa too became serious, casting side glances at the human form. “Maybe it is that vagrant, the beggar woman who used to visit the Garden,” Razia said, by now half an hour into the exercises. Everybody had become dead serious, fearing the worst. That we were all talking within earshot of the hunched figure and still, it was not reacting had made things all the more scary.

Sai Baba's prasad provides a welcome diversion

“No, this cannot be a beggar woman,” Yusuf pronounced sagely after some time. “The clothes aren't tattered or dirty!”
“Hili!” Nafisa exclaimed suddenly. “It moved… It is a girl, it is a girl… I told you!!!”
The girl must have been stone deaf or drugged… or whatever, but she sure was a stunner. Barely in her twenties, fair and fresh-faced with blood red lipstick, make-up done and tattooed forearms, she shook herself and stood up – not giving us even a glance. We had stopped exercising. She punched the air furiously, did a few stretching exercises, lifted a haversack marked 'Threads' and within minutes, she was gone.
Yusuf was not amused: “I feel sorry for such girls. She must have come from some small town hoping to be a movie actress and got waylaid. Now she is frustrated. Maybe, she has no place to stay. I could see she is suffering from severe depression.”
This wasn’t a ghost at least!
Harish Wadhwa:
A fiction novel story line! Well, everyone has the freedom to sit and meditate in isolation. We must respect that and leave it at that.
Srichand Arora:
WOW, what a description! Our blog monster can only describe like this. Kahte hain naa, murde mein bhi jaan daal di.
Jagmohan Papneja:
Sometimes things happen unexpectedly in life. Today's incident was quite interesting and funny.