It was towards the end of the monsoon and beginning of winter when we cousins decided to take a break and stay with our grandparents. Towards the dusk of their lives, old people start to feel lonely. They feel like they have had a roller coaster ride in a jiffy and they didn’t get time to soak life in themselves. It’d be kind of us youth to give them company and share our excitement in life with them. By doing so, they feel less alienated by the world and they look forward to the rest of their lives. They feel they’re being treated as a part of us youth and there is nothing to refute that. We all shared this view and besides, we needed a break from our regular studies.
Our grandparents live in the forest ranges of Nallamala near the Orissa- Andhra Pradesh border, in a village called Tekkali. Tekkali is a beautiful place. A soul polluted with anxiety, trauma, stress, misery and drudgery can be cleansed and rejuvenated with high spirits there. The house is on the top of a hill. The village itself is spread over 3 hills close to each other. The thick forest cover makes it seem a very remote place on earth. Four of such souls as mentioned above (us cousins) and our grandparents were sitting outside the house on a dark evening with a gentle, warming fire at the centre.
“It is ridiculous if in such times and this age people still believe in ghosts!” said Rahul, who was the oldest amongst us cousins. With a contorted facial expression, I (the second oldest) nodded my head in a way to suggest, “Of course! Isn’t it understood that it is ridiculous? Whoever even believes in ghosts?” The others – Vinit and Surya – too agreed. I started wondering how so smoothly we stumbled upon this topic starting from discussion on topics in physics. Physics, in turn, was preceded by Table Tennis (Ping Pong), as our topic. It was I, who was explaining how chops and smashes work. When one looks back at such occasions, especially immediately after such conferences end, it isn’t surprising that people say that the Mind travels faster than light. There may not be a quantitative proof of it, but one can’t but agree as if it were a universal truth.
Take for instance our conversation. Starting with the regular sports, we traveled physics, chemistry and biology and then went across to social studies and “why humans play sports”. After wading through those, we even went to astronomy and thus extra terrestrial life in distant galaxies. It was hard, not to jump across to nearby places like aliens, parallel universes, probability and “how humans are nothing but nothing in this universe” and “how things are beyond our control often”. Chance, freak coincidences, déjà vu and here we were, talking about ghosts.
My grandfather, a retired forest officer, who was so far actively participating, interested in our topics, airing his views on occasions, stopped suddenly. My grandmother, who was listening to us all, with the pride that grandmothers feel about their smart grandchildren, grew grim. He had a grave look, contributed to by his furrowed face. “You haven’t seen life!” he exclaimed, as one of his eyebrows rose, as if to ask, “Do you want to challenge my statement?” Surya, the youngest cousin, couldn’t wait for him to continue his speech at his pace. “Maybe we haven’t. But what is wrong with what we said? There is no scientific…” he said, and was about to continue saying that there was no proof, when grandfather raised his hand. Surya stopped and sat in silence. Vinit saw, as we all did, that grandfather had something to say. He said, “Go on taataa (grandfather in South Indian languages)! We want to hear from you.”
