In the morning when I woke up the first thought that came to me was that I should go to Bailey Road to see the site of the well. On reaching there I found that a sweet shop had been built on what was once a well. The construction was of a temporary kind and the shop, a make-shift one. The owner wondered what I was scrutinizing and asked me what the matter was. When I told him about the well he said that someone had mentioned such a thing once. But more importantly he said that he often heard voices when he was about to close shop in the night and the voices puzzled him. He had heard these voices in certain times of the year, not always. He had heard them at the time of Pitrapaksha, the time when our dead ancestors looked down upon us in remembrance, and in those times when there was a mal-maas (an extra month according to the Hindu calendar). These voices always had put the fear of God in the shopkeeper and he felt horrified when this happened. What was more, he was surprised to discover that in those phases the sweets in his shop would suddenly disappear even when no customer had entered at the time. Once, when he was calling someone to help him investigate as to how the sweets were disappearing, someone had slapped him hard saying, ‘Just shut up and make some more sweets. The empty look in the shop is very irritating.’ He had felt that the place was surely haunted. He did not tell people that he had received the slap as that would only make him the butt of ridicule.

From what I heard, I was reasonably convinced that Sonali and Pran were still somewhere there after so many years, or perhaps still returned to this place at times. On asking the tantric I was told that there are times in the year when spirits get more freedom to loiter about. Periods in which auspicious things are avoided, as they are during mal-maas, the dead become more active.

The next thought that came to me was that Sonali and Pran were visiting him in one of such periods. Which meant that he had to do his investigations before the mal-maas was over, and that was a mere nine days. It was too short a period but that is what it was.

Time moved fast in the day and slowly in the night. The day passed off and evening approached and with it my fears rose again. God knew what was to happen on this evening. I used to experience a very strange kind of emptiness in the atmosphere when some spirit was approaching me. Today as I waited for a spirit to arrive I had a vague recollection of something that I have forgotten to narrate to you. On the arrival of a spirit there was a sudden whiff of a perfume of loads of flowers which alternated with strange smells of bodies rotting. I had forgotten to ask the tantric about what the smells meant. Waiting for something to happen I was reminded of a song I used to hear in the 1960s, ‘Phir wahi raat hai, phir wahi hai darr.’

The night did come, and instantly appeared Sonali. Her presence made me feel rather anxious, even though I should have got used to her by now. The presence of a spirit, I have begun to realize, deadens the air around it. Anyone in close proximity to the spirit experiences a strange kind of lifelessness surrounding him. It is as though death is in the air and nothing is left a

nywhere near life. It leaves you sapped of your vitality and nothing seems to be right. Again Sonali repeated the ritual of taking me to the Bailey Road and there she jumped into the same well without uttering a word to me. I woke up and found myself perspiring, my pillow absolutely wet. It was very disturbing for me to be deprived of some part of my strength every time she came to me in my dream. She was there next to me as I slept and in my dream I was conscious that even as I was dreaming there was a parallel living (for the lack of a better word) presence there, quite close to me. I felt that if I opened my eyes I would be surrounded by a ghastly whitish light, very unlike anything one experiences in real life.

The tantrik suggested, and I agreed with him, that Sonali wanted some kind of help from me which I was failing to understand. My nephew, Umang, who I had telephoned a couple of days back and asked to come from Shahjahanpur to stay with me, suddenly arrived. He, like a real foolhardy, got excited at the idea of seeing a spirit but his excitement only irritated me. He just wouldn’t believe that Sonali came only in my dream and I could not make him a part of it. He was optimistic that he would somehow jump into the scene and see her. He was just twenty, a typical boy, who was yet far from wisdom. I was relieved no doubt that now I had someone with me and I was not alone. But the fear of his coming to some harm began to disturb me.

After having our evening meal we sat in my study. Umang tried to persuade me to go to sleep so that something could begin to happen. But then there was a rattling of the doors, which greatly scared Umang, and there she stood before us in a visible form and in his presence she began to speak for the first time. He sprang up from his chair and came running towards me. There was that whitish ghastly light that I had been imagining about. She stood close to us and spoke to Umang.

‘Umang, you wanted to see a spirit, did you not? Look here I am ready to show you myself.’

Umang was very upset at the sight and clung hard to me as my study table began to start shaking and making a noise with the floor. Then one of its legs began to rise higher and higher tilting the table oddly. Everything on it including my laptop began to slide and fall off. The scene became further horrifying when Sonali came up to Umang and held his hand as he yelled out in fear.
‘Come close to me my boy and let me give you a kiss,’ she said as Umang began to faint and I tried to rescue him.

Umang was soon unconscious and when he fell on the ground, the spirit changed its form. It became Pran and laughed loudly at me.

‘See I fooled you again! How stupid you are Sanjeev. You never learn from your mistakes. Old fools are the real fools. Sonali can only come in your dream. She is a less evolved spirit than me. Understand that, you blockhead! I’m off.’

The moment Pran left the atmosphere normalized and I felt like a real fool. I sprinkled water on Umang’s face and he gradually opened his eyes. I wiped off the perspiration from his face and then found that my own face needed the same treatment.

When Sonali repeated the same act in my dream several times, I had no option but to find out what her problem was. I confided in the sweetshop man and he was relieved to hear that I wanted to get rid of my problem somehow. He too had been pestered by the spirits to the point that he was considering leaving that place and going elsewhere. I made a suggestion. We could pool in money to have the place dug up to see what condition the well underneath was in. That could provide some clue. The deal was struck and the project begun. It took about fifteen days for the diggers to reach the point where the water level must have been some time back. Everyday some strange incident would occur with the diggers and we had to continuously keep changing the men who were digging the place. Then one day one of the diggers screamed when he saw the remains of a skeleton, the other diggers then began to dig further and discovered parts of two more skeletons. Then some rings and earrings were found. The earrings were the same that Sonali was wearing in the black and white photograph kept on my study table. The rings were probably those that Pran or Manoj wore. There was much excitement on Bailey Road but for me it was not a happy scene. The district authorities were informed. The home addresses of the three were traced out from the university records. Inquiries were made but with no result. Surprisingly no one responded to my letters at these addresses and then as per the advice of the tantric we performed some last rite ceremonies and prayers for the three. Umang left me and returned to his place after he found it difficult to adjust with the spirits. This was my battle and I had to fight it alone.

On the night Umang left, Manoj came in my dream. He stood smiling. His spirit was more rested than the other two. But even his arrival almost gave me a heart attack. He left behind an address on my table. In the note Manoj said, we rarely come to Allahabad now, it has become too populated and noisy. We have chosen a quiet and deserted place of residence where we want you to come and stay. If you don’t come we will be compelled to visit you here and keep taking away your peace. It was the address of a quiet stretch of land deep into a secluded setting of rural Gaipura. I had no option but to go there for now I had resolved to unravel the mystery. This would after all provide me with the second half of my novel.

The people of Gaipura were simple and kind. They were hospitable to me because a much respected class fellow of mine from this village had become a country farmer there and had offered me a room in his house. I did not tell anyone here about the real purpose of my visit. I just said that I was writing a novel and needed absolute peace and solitude to write it in. The people cooperated and I would walk out of the house every evening and walk to where the spirits were. I walked there daily at the risk of never returning, being killed by Pran or any one of the other two. I knew that without risk nothing could be achieved and with a little risk I could become the author of a best seller novel.

I had gone to Gaipura on Manoj’s invitation, not Pran’s. What on earth could I have done to help spirits? Why was I needed in the world of the dead even before my time was over here? I thought a lot about this question and realized that the answer to this question would be very valuable for my novel. I would be telling the world something about the other world which was new and revealing. Of course I could have been killed in the process. But there wasn’t much point staying on in Allahabad and being traumatized by the spirits there.

The first evening in Gaipura was very distressing.

I asked the people of this place where a broken down, lone, isolated, and now almost unused road led to. They told me that it went straight into ruins of the haveli of the erstwhile raja of Gaipura. The place was said to be haunted and no one dared to go there after sunset. I wanted to know about the raja and no one seemed to know much about it as no one had inhabited the building since about a century. There were contradictory and strange stories told about this place by the people of the region. But most of the facts were covered with layers of dust and rumour. I thought this was a wonderful place for me to visit as this could give me something interesting for my novel. I took the road to the haveli and walked with all my ears and eyes open. I needed many more than just a pair of each. I was probably the only one who had ventured that side in the evening for years, and that against the advice of the local people. I had hoped that Manoj would notice me there and would come to me and then inform me why it was so necessary for me to enter the world of the dead before my own death.

The birds sitting on the trees were very suspicious of me and would screech out a disturbed shriek and then settle down silently as I moved ahead. Then there would be the howl of a hyena followed by the howls of dogs. The howling dogs would suddenly yelp and squeal as though someone was hitting them for howling so loudly and pathetically. The sounds of the dogs were so terrible that I felt like returning rather than proceeding. Every minute it seemed as though someone would catch hold of me. I could not bear the tension much longer and decided that I’d go back that evening, and start my journey much earlier the next evening so that I could cover much of the distance in daylight. Just when I was turning back . . . .

Just when I was turning back I felt as though something had held on to my right leg, just under the knee. When I looked down I discovered that a human skeleton that must have been lying on the ground had turned and caught hold of my lower limb. I tried to free myself but it was too determined not to leave. My heart began to thump loudly and I tried to run as fast as my old limbs could carry me. The skeleton dragged on with me and seemed to laugh at my horrification.

           ‘Stop, I command you!’ it said in a nasal accent.

I stopped and discovered that, seen from another angle, the skeleton looked exceedingly like Pran. Finally, it became Pran. And he was having a great laugh at me. He first laughed and then became very serious.

           ‘Why did you come here? And who told you about where we could be found?’

The best option for me was to pretend to faint. I leaned against a tree and gradually slipped down to the ground. I did that within a minute or less. Pran was upset to see me faint. He was at a loss to know what to do. He came back to me in a minute with a glass of water. This act of his reassured me that Pran was not all bad. He sprinkled some water on my face and gave me the rest to drink. I partook of his help.

          ‘Quick, now tell me how you got to know about us.’

I had by now started getting used to the spirit and I had the presence of mind to even become inventive and tell a lie.

          ‘A class fellow of mine lives here and I am his guest. I like to walk in solitude. So here I was walking, ignorant of the fact that my one time friend would try to kill me.’

          ‘Friend? Okay . . . But I never tried to kill you. And never call me your friend. You were a rival and I can even call you an enemy. You liked Manoj and you always favoured him.’

          ‘Can’t one ever like two people together?’

          ‘No. I believe that you can be true only to one if their interests clash. If you like two rivals, and befriend both, it is like getting married to two women. Can you be true to two wives at the same time?’

         ‘Why not? Raja Dhasrath was true to three.’

         ‘Did you ever live with him to see how true he was to each? And listen, Sanjeev, I don’t like too much argumentation. It can make a ghost lose its ghastliness.’

Just then there was some sound. Something came there and Pran disappeared and I too almost ran back towards where the people of the village lived. It was quite a narrow escape, I thought.

Why was Pran behaving in such a hostile manner? After thinking for some time I came to the conclusion that all actions of spirits cannot be explained away by our limited intellect. As a soul continues its journey from one birth to another it keeps collecting traits of the various births and absorbing them, allowing them to surface in its actions even after the particular births are over. Thus someone who has done hard work in one field in a particular birth can reap the benefit of it in another birth. An accomplished musician in one birth can start singing in a masterly manner even as a child in the next because the soul has absorbed the art of music earlier and will show quick results in that art’s acquisition now. 

Pran’s spiteful behavior seemed to have resulted not only from his disappointment in his last birth but from earlier disappointments that had gone into shaping his nature. He could not help being wicked. He could not respond to goodness as readily as Manoj, for instance, could.

With the next morning began the Gaipura Mela, the festival of six days. It was believed that every year in these six days the powerful goddess, Vindhvasini, left her temple in Vindhyachal, which is only a few kilometers from here, and came to reside in her Gaipura temple. As a result this village sprang to life at this time with thousands of people coming to worship her here. There were interesting stalls of goods that arrived from various parts of the country. There was music and fun, filled in the atmosphere of the place during the six days. I had heard of this mela but never experienced it before. The temple had been erected by the raja of Gaipura and the mela was also the result of what he had begun.

Manoj’s asking me to come to Gaipura at the time of the mela seemed to contain some answer to the mystery of the spirits I have been telling you about. I was keen on meeting Manoj thought I had no clue of how I could do that. I went and sat under a tree at a distance from the mela ground to write a chapter of my novel. It was daytime and I could never have imagined that my concentration focusing on Manoj could draw him towards me even at this bright hour. It was as if I was having a dream, or rather a reverie. He came there and stood wearing a beautiful state costume. He looked like a real raj kumar. His smile was gentle and yet the overall effect of his arrival near me was disturbing. A spirit was after all a spirit, no matter how hard it tried to become a living being. I wanted to keep looking at him even though I was constantly gripped by the fear that the next moment could be the moment of my death.  I found him looking handsome and stately. His regality was an intrinsic part of his character and had been absorbed by his soul. Perhaps Pran did not like him for this reason as well. Pran seemed ordinary in comparison in spite of his slightly superior intellect. Manoj did not say a word to me, but as he stood there I could feel that he was showing me some kind of gratitude for coming to Gaipura, the region of which he had been the raja in the birth before he was born as Manoj Singh Rathore. I was able to gather this in a second, through intuition, as he stood in front of me and gave me a royal smile. The haveli belonged to him and he seemed to be asking me to visit it in the daytime.

I woke up from my reverie and had a better feeling than I usually had after my encounters with spirits. Manoj was clearly a nobler spirit as he was a nobler human being. On an impulse I left for the haveli. In the day there were no obstacles on the way to the haveli. I felt as though spirits preferred to rest and remain unseen during the day. At last I reached the place from where the haveli could be seen. I was struck by the grandeur of the building. It must have looked really majestic when it was occupied by the living. As I came nearer the building I began to get more and more apprehensive about what was to follow there. But I knew that I was going there on Manoj’s invitation during the day and was therefore in a rather safe position. On reaching the place I looked around and discovered a hut that was made of old bricks but with big patches of mud. I thought someone was inside and through one of the gaps between the door and the wall I could see that someone was asleep inside. This was a big relief. There was another human being living so close to the haveli, virtually inside it. I knocked at the near broken door of the hut. The man sleeping inside turned towards me, got up and looked in surprise. He open the door and looked at me very astonished.

                   ‘How did you come here? Who are you?’

                   ‘I wanted to see this haveli,’ I said in the absence of another reply.

The rather tall man looked at me from head to foot in amazement. And then gave me a smile. He did not want to speak much to me. He only wanted to see how such a gutsy person had gathered the courage to reach this point.

                  ‘So you want to see the haveli?’

                  ‘Yes.’

                  ‘Why?’

                  ‘Because I want to.’

                  ‘O. Really?’

                  ‘Yes. Please help me to enter.’

                  ‘Don’t you feel scared?’

                  ‘No’, I managed to say. ‘Why should I feel scared, if you don’t?’

                  ‘I feel scared,’ he said and vanished.

I could find no trace of him after that. I looked towards the hut and found that missing too. There was no sign even of the hut. I wonder what you would have felt in such a situation, but I was rather scared.

Manoj’s invitation to visit the haveli in hand, I decided I would still enter the haveli to see what further fear was in store for me. Climbing up the dusty veranda I was confronted by three sets of double doors, which must have been green to begin with but had now become grayish green with age. I tried to peep through a little hole in one of them. It was too dark to be able to see anything. I tried to pull the door open and on applying a little strength one of the rusty hinges on which the door hung broke. Its iron had been totally corroded. The door could now be pulled to one side and my hand could reach the latch that was closed from inside. The doors now opened but as soon as I entered they strangely closed behind me. I was now trapped.  It could mean that this was the last day of my life but it clearly was not, or I would not be here to give you this account. One of the doors through which I had entered had slipped a little and made place for some light to filter in.  I could therefore get a glimpse of the room from inside. The haveli had several portraits of the royal family. The most brightly painted was the portrait that seemed to resemble Manoj. Then there was one that had resemblance with Sonali. The woman in the painting was wearing earrings that were long and like two little balls hung with chains. When I looked at Sonali’s portrait I had a strange eerie feeling. She seemed to be there somewhere, outside the portrait. Then one of the earrings in the painting fell out of her portrait as though it was a real one as opposed to a painted earring. It fell and made more noise than something of its weight ought to have as it rolled down slowly but surely. Then both of her payals which had resonant little tinklers, fell out of the portrait and made a sound as if she were walking close to me. My blood seemed to freeze with horror. Then the sound stopped and when I looked at the portrait the woman in the picture began to smile at me.

The smile made me feel encouraged to speak to her. I was not at all comfortable inside and did not know what would happen in the next moment but I decided to speak to her. So I looked at the portrait and began talking to her.

              ‘Are you Sonali?’

              ‘Sonali? Yes I was Sonali in one of my births, the birth when you and I were together in the University,’ a voice seemed to say from somewhere behind me.

              ‘Why did you come in my dreams so often?’

              ‘I need your help.’

              ‘I will do anything for you, Sonali.’

              ‘I am not Sonali anymore. Spirits must forget what they were. The spirit that cannot forget has to undergo a lot of pain. My circumstances have been unfortunate because of which I still have to remember my past.’

              ‘How terrible! I am indeed sorry for you Sonali. What kind of feelings did you have for me?’

              ‘I do not remember too well. But I think I did not dislike you. But that is beside the point because you were not like the person you knew as Manoj. My soul has been wedded to the spirit that was once named Manoj. All other spirits are no more than names for me.’

             ‘Why did you always come in my dreams, Sonali? You were never like Pran who could venture out of dreams and move about freely?’

              ‘I have been law abiding. He has done something for which he must suffer and burn in flames that seem to emanate from sulphur. He did everything wrong and continues to do so even till now. Do not remind me of him. He has tortured me so much.’

              'Okay, please continue with your tale.'

              'Please don't call it a tale, it is the reality.'

              ‘Okay. Let me know the reality.’

              ‘In my birth before this last one I was the daughter of the raja of Sipra in the then township of Jigna. Jigna and Gaipura were neighbouring areas. Then I was Suneeti, a young princess, and I was betrothed to be married to the Rajput prince of Gaipura, the kindly and handsome  Kunwar Pratap Singh Chauhan. He was reborn as Manoj as you knew him. However, the son of the pujari of our estate, Gokul, who often accompanied his father to our prayer meetings was very disturbed by my engagement with Pratap. His father was the renowned pandit of this area and in matters of spiritual learning, considered the most accomplished among the priests of seven districts of the United Provinces, the then name of Uttar Pradesh. Gokul’s father was proud of his achievement and Gokul inherited his pride. He thought himself no less than a prince. He had been seeing me from the time of our childhood and began to nurture thoughts for me that were not proper for one of another caste as inter-caste marriages were not socially permissible. He would tell me about his love for me and that he would kill himself rather than see someone else marry me. Kunwar Pratap also visited us frequently with his family. We fell in love and our families decided that we would marry each other. I never responded to Gokul’s gestures of friendship as he was of a lower status though he himself thought that he was much higher. I only advised him to keep away from me. But that advice only made him furious and he created a great deal of tension for me and my family. When Pratap learned about Gokul he met him and told him to be careful lest he got into trouble. But Gokul dared to continue his antics. Their differences grew into hostility and that then changed into enmity.’

‘It became rather embarrassing for me to be the centre of attention for two males. I loved Pratap  but I knew Gokul equally well because I had grown up with him. The problem with Gokul was that he was very jealous. He could not see anyone else prospering if he had not prospered himself. He was becoming destructive. In those days caste and social status were important considerations. If ignored, one was ousted from one’s community and boycotted. Only tragic heroes and heroines jumped into inter-caste marriages. I may sound very self-centered but then I was mortally scared of tragedy and tragedy for me lay in the arms of Gokul because I could never imagine how I would ever survive without Pratap. It was the same situation in my next birth when Gokul was born as Pran and began to vie for my attention. Every birth seems to be sealed off from the rest and complete in itself. But now as a spirit I can clearly see how the same soul enters different bodies and yet retains its basic nature,’ said the spirit that was once Suneeti and then Sonali.

                          ‘O, I see now. But so much still remains for me to understand.’

                          ‘Please don’t ask me too much. And, look at me; I am talking to you as if you were a fellow spirit. We are not supposed to interact with you and when we do we are faced with such harrowing experience, which would be something like soul-shredding, like a hacking up of the soul. Let me leave before that Gokul, or Pran as you knew him, turns and begins my mental torture.’

                         ‘I am here, my sweetheart. And I have been listening to you since some time. I am indeed pained,’ said Pran.

                         ‘O! I must leave immediately,’ said Sonali and disappeared. Her earrings were back in place in the portrait and so were her payals. I was now left in the more unpleasant company of the disgruntled Pran.

                         ‘You are playing the same role for us that you played when we were in Allahabad. How stubborn you are. I think you need some rough treatment from me! Should I show you what it is to interfere with spirits? I can teach you a real lesson in two minutes.’

                         ‘First teach yourself to be sensible. And stop making those terrible eyes at me. They will burn my eyesight,’ I said as I began to faint.

When I awoke I found Manoj/Pratap sitting near me. He looked genuinely concerned about my plight. He said that he was extremely sorry for the way Pran/Gokul had spoken to me. He had used all his ghastly strength to set the fellow right. They had fought for hours and given each other ghastly pain while I was lying unconscious. Finally Pran had to leave as he was getting seriously wounded.

                        ‘But do spirits also get wounded?’ I asked in surprise.

                        ‘They very much do if the one inflicting the wound is also a spirit. It is people like you, not belonging to our domain that cannot wound us physically. You can, of course, wound us emotionally.’

                        ‘O, really? Okay, now please tell me why you wanted me here, in Gaipura.’

                        ‘Yes. That is the most important thing for you to understand. You may find it difficult to accept what Sonali and I want from you, but you will have to help us because if you do not, we might keep suffering birth after birth as we have been doing.’

                       ‘Me? How can I help you?’

                       ‘You were the learned one in Gaipura in your last birth. You were Gokul’s father. He is an ungrateful wretch and so does not give you sufficient respect. He does not treat you as a father ought to. He has changed now as you have taken another birth. You have to first realize that there is no one with as much wisdom as you and then you have to tame him with your wisdom. Only you can make him see sense.’

                      ‘I doubt if I can ever do that. I am so scared of him. I fainted when he showed me his angry eyes.’

                      ‘But you will have to do this for us and for yourself when you have turned into a spirit because you are intrinsically connected with us. If you do not help now we will all probably keep taking birth after birth in which we will come together in similar relationships, to suffer, till such time as the basic conflict is resolved.’

I decided that I would have to gather the courage to settle matters with Pran, who had been a son to me once. I had to agree after realizing the significant role I was playing in the whole affair. I would suffer silently and reform Pran. He was after all connected to me so closely. If he was full of pride and obstinacy he had inherited some part of his negativity from me. I made up my mind that I would spend the remainder of my life according to a spiritual plan. I would even die to save the world of the spirits.