That Night (Part 1)
Those were the days when India had a much smaller population. The edges of towns were dark, quiet and unfrequented. It was rarely that a loner was seen and when he was, the one spying him looked out to decide whether it was a man or something that could no longer be described by that name. It is not that India has no ghosts left now. Only, its growing population has forced the poor creatures to leave the towns, where they had once inhabited in their human form comfortably, and to loiter towards haunts where there are fewer suspecting minds and pointing fingers. Of course all ghosts cannot be described with a single definition. There are ghosts and ghosts. There are the peace loving ghosts and the noisy ones; there are the inquisitive ghosts and the unconcerned ones; there are the pretty ghosts and the ugly ones; and so the categorizing goes on. So let us enter this world of the years gone by, when the odd ghost walked into a town to see what was going on in the lives of its not so dead counterparts. Ghosts may leave the living world, but they seldom leave the living to themselves. Several tribes and communities in Asia and other regions of the world link all good and ill actions in our lives to the spirits that hover around us. Tibetans, particularly, believe that if a man has fallen ill, the reason can be traced to some evil spirit that has started taking interest in him.
Though ghosts do not have names I am naming one of them Pran for the sake of convenience. I am here to investigate from some spirits certain facts for my novel. Human beings of that time are now all dead and gone, long back. It is only these ghosts that had left Allahabad in the 1960s, to settle in darker, more remote, places that could help me with information. Ghosts cannot be interviewed like living souls, and there’s no one more conscious of this than myself. Ever since I have come to this very rural setting of Gaipura, I have felt the near uninterrupted presence of Pran in this region.
He is not exactly an ugly ghost. He actually has fairly good features. But there is a perpetual disgruntled look, a kind of peeved expression. This expression is made more evident by his sliced off nose. He probably does not shave. I don’t think ghosts can shave and surely they don’t need to. But he does not have a beard or moustache. It is an unshaven look that his face wears, making him sufficiently rough. I have never seen him smile unless it is to point out some shortcoming in me. He and I have developed a relationship of sorts, a relationship in which the chief emotion is that of bitterness against each other. If you ask me why he entertains my questions the answer as I have understood it is this, he has some expectation from me, an expectation of which I am yet ignorant. It is as though after not getting on with practically every ghost around, Pran has decided that he will allow me to remain near him. He does not mind my company, though he creates problems for me whenever he can. He wants to use me for his recreation and then put hurdles in my way. And yes, he cannot tolerate my attempts to access other spirits who live in this region. He is a jealous ghost who will never fail to tell me that I am kinder to others than him. Forgive me for using the word, ‘him’ for a ghost rather than ‘it’. I have felt that he has some features that make him so much like some living people that I have started looking upon him as someone with flesh and blood. But then, suddenly, he gives me a a vacant look that sends a chill down my spine and makes me shiver in the heat of June and July.
I am now clearly on the wrong side of seventy though I have often tried to seem sixtyish. I have used every chemical dye and natural colour available to make my hair look black and have kept the right food habits to keep my skin from sagging. Either the ghost in Pran is unaffected by human aging or he has been deceived by my age-defying strategies because he has treated me as though I am in my late forties. I have often wondered whether this is what happens to those who step out of human time into that timelessness which makes them feel like ghosts. Yes, talking about trying to look younger than I am, I am reminded of a senior boy in my school in Allahabad, the well known actor, Amitabh Bachchan. I am only a few years older than him, and if he can work hard to look younger, so can I. Pran has, I would like to correct myself, a love-hate relationship with me. He is either at my side with sweets to appease me or he is insulting me with weird allegations, making me feel that I am unkind and unfair. Ghosts are sometimes rather fond of sweets and I have found Pran and the other spirit, that I call Manoj, picking up sweets, on the sly, from the shop of the halwai in Gaipura. They have even fought over sweets with each other.
Now that I have mentioned Manoj, I must tell you that Manoj is a nobler ghost. He has never insulted me or made allegations of any kind against me. Manoj is a very pleasant ghost, you always see him smiling and promising to be helpful. When I am fed up with Pran’s rudeness I find myself complaining to Manoj. He always hears me out and promises to set Pran right. But I always ask him to avoid that as Pran can be dangerous. But how can he be dangerous, Manoj once asked me. He is so revengeful and psychotic! He can commit suicide, I said. Manoj laughed at the word ‘suicide’ and I remembered that these two were already dead. I am hardly involved with the living now and my mind has settled here with the dead to the extent that I have actually become a part of the dead community of living spirits. Why am I spending all my time with these more than dead things? Only for one reason; I still continue to think of Sonali, decades after her death. The lovely Sonali!
I think it was 1963. I was about 28 then. I had been a student of philosophy and I was seized by a desire to write something new, propound a new theory of existence. I was doing research on Existentialism and had started taking the “Individual” very seriously. I did not want to accept society’s moral codes without questioning them. I was drifting towards an idealism of sorts. In the university my friends started calling me Sartre. Most people who did not have a close relationship with me forgot that my actual name was Sanjeev Raghuvanshi. I liked to be called Sartre and when the odd person called me Sanjeev, I wasn’t quite happy; it was like a coming down to become myself again. In that year a girl called Sonali Singh was admitted to the Philosophy Department for a master’s degree. She had obviously not been a student of the university in BA because someone as striking as her would have been noticed most definitely. She had come to study from somewhere and disturbed the general atmosphere of the university. Students (boys) would come even from the Science Faculty to see who this newcomer was. Girls came to make a note of what she had decided to wear on every other day. The colours she wore came into fashion; her hairstyle became the hairstyle of the season and her mannerisms became the models of imitation amongst the butterflies of the Arts Faculty. The Science girls were too hard pressed for time to butterfly themselves into a Sonali existence. But there were some male butterflies too. Pran was one of them.
I do not say that Sonali was a butterfly. She was too accomplished to be described by that description. But she was one closely pursued by the butterflies, girls who were only interested in dressing well and looking attractive instead of working hard for their education. Sonali was a brilliant student, a good debater, a fine stage presence and even smart enough on the sports field. I must have been at least four years her senior, and one for whom socializing with girls was too much of a luxury because of my pursuits in philosophy, but even I thought of her striking presence. I suppose anyone would be drawn to her, given her outstanding charms.
But Pran fell head over heels for her. He became passionately involved with her. He was a year senior to her and could have been quite right for her, age wise and otherwise too. He began to imagine that there was no one more suitable than himself to befriend and possess her. He began to think about her day and night and think ill of anyone else that thought of her or thought ill of her. Pran forgot that he had joined the Philosophy Department for a Master’s degree in Philosophy rather than in Sonali. Sonali was quite cool about him. She always knew exactly how close she was going to allow him to get. She never let him feel that she was too interested in him or, for that matter, that she even felt that he was too interested in her. This began to hurt Pran. I too was interested in Sonali but I never fell head over heels for her. She therefore never worried too much about me. She would now and again discuss something about philosophy which gave my ego immense satisfaction. I distinctly remember, even after so many years have passed, that she came to discuss David Hume’s Theory of Custom with me once and, then on another day, G. E. Moore’s Axiological Intuitionism. Those were both wonderful days for me. She cast her magic on me. Pran asked me why she was meeting me privately and his tone suggested that he felt hurt that I was willing to help her out. He seemed to me no more than a stud, as he spoke. I was reminded of a bull that would fight with another bull daring to come in contact with cows in his territory.
Pran wasn’t too rude with me to begin with but then Sonali came to me and put suspicion in his mind. Whenever she saw me near the Philosophy Department she would come up to me, perhaps in the hope that I would help her during her examinations. But each time she met me, she stabbed Pran in his heart. Pran was conscious of the fact that he was better looking than me but he also knew that his knowledge of the subject was thin and that I had more years of experience with the subject. I was therefore posing some kind of intellectual threat to him which made him anxious. He never mentioned his anxiety but he did not give me the kind of regard one would expect from him. He was sometimes very polite, no doubt, but sometimes he was pretty offensive. I being senior, it was necessary to behave more maturely with him. I tolerated him and even tried to boost his morale when he seemed too disappointed with Sonali. But his passion for her kept mounting and no amount of consolation seemed to work.
The real problem began when Sonali, not only disregarded Pran Agnihotri’s love petitions but began to show an obvious interest in Manoj Singh Rathore, the sports star of her batch. Manoj was rough looking, definitely not handsome, but with a benevolent look on his face. He was like an open book that Sonali wanted to read with interest. Manoj had a lot of faith in me and shared everything with me, in a most excited manner. He never got to know that I too was not entirely out of the race. But when I discovered Pran’s passion for Sonali and Sonali’s increasing interest in Manoj, I decided to step out of the race. Being naturally inclined towards philosophy, I knew that one rarely had everything served on a platter. Very soon I realized that I only admired Sonali’s versatility; I never loved her. But the problem was still not over. There were still two men and only one woman. In order to have peace around me I needed only one of the men to be interested in her. Which one deserved her more? That was the question.
Manoj was noble like a very friendly Labrador who almost always responded to affection. How could he ignore the caressing remarks that Sonali made for his consumption? His simplicity and openness were disarming and his forthrightness was heroic. You knew exactly where you stood with him. Not so with Pran. Pran was a different breed of fish, slippery and difficult to catch or survey. The two were obviously opposite to each other and Sonali did not have to make much of an effort in her choice of Manoj. With Manoj she felt an expansion, an unfurling, of the soul; with Pran a contraction, a squeezing up. It was like going into a grand building, an edifice of gothic architecture, or, on the other hand, like entering a modern-day flat in which there was too much cramped in too closely and cleverly. Sonali made it a point never to miss a single football match in which Manoj was on the field. Her heart ached when someone snatched the ball from him and kept thumping till he was able to shoot a goal. She sometimes made her feelings so obvious that many of the people, who had come to watch the match, began to watch her instead. Pran was the leader of such people. He was, in fact, the one who could not bear this and he burned inside and felt worse and worse. Then one day he came to me and created a scene on the field.
‘You are our senior, Sanjeev, you have some responsibility for the peace and reputation of the Philosophy Department. But you are so absorbed in yourself that you hardly notice what’s going on around you.’
‘What’s the matter Pran? Did someone say something to you?’
‘Who will say anything to me? People are laughing at what is going on in our Department.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Don’t pretend that you don’t know. Someone is fooling around with Sonali and you sit quietly watching everything? I thought you were interested in her, yourself!’
‘Speak out more clearly and stop making baseless allegations, Pran!’
‘Your favourite, that rustic Manoj, is on the point of eloping with your Sonali and you’re sitting patiently for the great event to take place?’
‘My Sonali? Elope? What’s wrong with you Pran?’
‘Yes, something is wrong with me. Everyone only finds me in the wrong. The rest of the world is innocent and free to do as they like.’
‘Stop using that language. You have no right to talk so irresponsibly about a girl. If someone said that for your sister, how would you feel, Pran?’
‘Sister? She must be your sister, she’s not mine.’
‘We’ve got to be responsible. Every individual has his or her own requirements . . . choices . . . and we’ve got to respect them, Pran.’
‘Disgusting! Now don’t go into one of your lectures on Existentialism! Only I have to respect everyone’s choice; no one needs to respect mine! That’s what you are trying to say Sanjeev, isn’t it?’
It was pointless trying to make him see sense. He just wouldn’t. Even I was disappointed to an extent due to the new affair that was developing, but I had my philosophical bent of mind to support me. Pran had no philosophical makeup to show him a way out. He was trapped in himself.
