Fire burn, and cauldron bubble

Earthquakes are real bad things, take my word for it. Especially if they mean business.
My childhood perception of earthquakes was a little different from the real truth, though. More than the shaking and crumbling, I imagined the ground splitting into two and gobbling up everything in sight. At least, that's what my early geography books made me believe.
My books also taught me that in Japan, where earthquakes are as frequent as evening showers, people built their houses from paper. This, I felt, may create hilarious domestic conversations... like this one:

Dad: Kwung-Choo... my son, get me a peice of paper, please. I gotta jot down this phone number.

Kwung-Chuu: In a minute, dad ... (and, a minute and several ripping sounds later) Here, will this door do?

Dad (very angry): Son! This is the third door you have wrecked this month! The next one's going to come from your NOTEBOOK!

No, but seriously ... though I must admit that paper walls crashing on you during an earthquake may not hurt half as much as concrete ones, what do they do if the place catches fire? As far as I can imagine, Kwung-Chuu's proud castle will be lighting up the place like a Japanese lamp.
Or, what would he do if the Big Bad Wolf decides to come and huff 'n' puff outside his door?
Now, I know that I have been making these conclusions without doing adequate research. For all I know, Mr Chuu must have treated his walls with some kind of anti-fire solution .... and maybe he kept a cannon behind his paper door to drive away the wolves.
Well, in any case, this post ain't about Kwung-Chuu or his paper mansion. It's about earthquakes. About the two quakes I had the good fortune to experience in the last 28 years of my life.
Why do I say good fortune? There are reasons...

Strike 1

The first one struck when I was residing in Gadchandur, about thirty kilometres from the railway track I had blogged about two posts ago. As fate would have it, I was in the bathroom - taking a shower even as I bathroom-sang a certain Mithun Chakraborty number.
At first, I didn't notice it - it was more like a slight vibration creeping up the walls, the sort you experience when you're on a bridge and a tanker's passing by. But then, the vibration started getting louder - until I could literally see the walls around me shake in their shoes.
Even as I heard my folks yell in alarm from the outside, I stood on the crossroads of an awful dilemma. The question was: Do I run outside stark naked and save my life, or do I stay in here and save my modesty.
And as I stood there, debating the issue to myself, the walls stopped shuddering and the floor under my feet seemed to go back to sleep. And that's how I managed to retain both my life and my modesty.
Indecision may have cost Hamlet a lot, but for me it seemed to have brought nothing but good luck.

Strike 2

My second encounter with the quake-guy happened when I was doing my second year (English Literature) in MCC.
It was eight-thirty in the evening and I was sitting in my room, reading a book. Suddenly the walls, the earth and everything around me started shaking ... and I jumped up with a full-fledged war-cry on my lips.
Everyone around me was running for the stairs. And even as I tried to join the great majority and reach for safety, I slipped on a pool of water on the floor and landed on the floor with a resounding SPLAT.
When I looked up, the quake had stopped and everyone was standing around me, giggling.

But the real action was happening at that moment in our hostel chapel, where a certain firebrand pastor was delivering his evening sermon.
Now, the Bible has a line that goes something like this: "Though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, I shall stand my ground - because the Lord our God is with me. (Psa 46:1-3)"
According to reliable sources, the pastor was explaining the meaning of these very words when the earthquake started. And even as the small congregation of students watched the walls around them tremble, our man picked the Holy Book and sprinted out of the building.
Maybe the Lord was trying to make a point there.
Ol' Mac was so busy conversing with somebody in a phonebooth at the MCC maingate, that he never even noticed the quake come and go by. I can't remember if Shain was around, then.

P.S: I must admit that the god of earthquakes has been quite merciful to me until now. But the next time he attacks, I hope he doesn't catch me with my pants down...

(Dinosaur sketch: Courtesy www.cartoonstock.com)

What's the name, again?

High up, on a prominent branch of my family tree, used to live a balding uncle called Baby.
Neither was he two years old, nor did he possess any cozy, cuddly features of your average toddler ... in fact, he was more of an aged booze-gulching army veteran than anything else.
Now, the next question would most-probably be - why did everybody call him that? It's a short but sad story.
According to informed sources, the uncle was a hot favourite in family circles during his infancy. Whenever he wore his cute pink diapers and came tottering around - bawling for his usual share of milk, the elders would pinch his cheeks and call him "babeeeeee" and "bayboooo" in ridiculous tones.
And, as luck would have it, the name stuck. Years after my uncle had given up his milk bottle for a McDowells one and the pink diapers had given way to military fatigues, everybody still called him Baby. And for us nephews, it was Baby uncle.
Hell, I can't even recall his Christian name.
My homeland, Kerala, churns out thousands of such horror stories every moment of the day. Everyday, as babies are born all over that small piece of Malluland, they are mercilessly stamped with names like Laiju, Tijo, Baiju, Gaiju, Shoju...
I don't know if you can even begin to realise the gravity of the situation. Methinks there should be a law against this.

The animal connection

Okay, I'll quote another example to prove my point - right from the innards of my home in Mallappally.
We got this black daschund from an uncle. And my dad named him "Kitty".
Now, though I admit that a daschund looks more reptilian than canine, I think that naming it after a cat would amount to insulting doghood as a whole.
So, after repriminding my indignant dad, I tried to make a last ditch effort to rechristian him "Blackie". But it was a lost cause; the four-legged idiot just wouldn't let go of his feline tag.

The Fauxest of pas'

Similarly, I was introduced to a new aunt last year at a family gathering, when I went to visit my relatives in Chennai.
"Hi Jimmy... Meet her - she's Sissy."
I blushed. Then shook my head docilely and muttered: "Naah, you don't mean it... She's not - I'm sure."
The others around me stared at me with great bug eyes. "What do you mean, she's not?"
They were offended with me for some reason. So, I did what I had to and conceded meekly: " Sure, if you insist... anything you say."
The truth dawned upon me nearly an hour later, when I was standing at the juice stall and downing a cool glass of lemonade. Her name was Sissy - not she. And, ohmigosh... how silly of me! Women can't be sissies!
But the damage was already done. For all I know, the aunt must have gone and checked her name out in dictionary.com. Never heard from her again; I took great pains to ensure that.

Birds too?

Recently, I had the opportunity to work alongside a lady who happened to share her name with a certain kind of songbird.
Now, that was quite an experience, considering that I could actually walk up to her whenever I wanted, and without any fear of bodily harm, inform her: "Hey, you are Cuckoo!"

----------------

Note: The author is permitted to speak on this sensitive subject, particularly because he knows the hardships of having to go through life with a doggie name..

Lookin' back

Just a photo of ours from a few years ago, posing atop the Heber Chapel. There's Thangchin Mawi (the Sachristian), Mathew Alexander (a.k.a. Bones) and Roji (who is now conspiring to become a priest). I'm the one in the Lee T-shirt and the big guy in shorts is ol' Mac, when he was still in possession of some hair. Sandwiched between us (in the shadows) is P Issac, a.k.a Bhatinda.

The year was 1999. I was leaner then.

On The Wrong Track

Watched Stand By Me yesterday, with a bottle of golden ale by my side.

Now, though I would swear that I liked The Body (the Stephen King novella, on which the movie was based) much better than Stand By Me, there was one particular scene that struck me like a ten-ton battering ram.

Because it brought about a deja vu-like feeling. Or maybe it was more than just that, because, in my case, it was real.

This was the scene. Our four under-teen heroes are on the wrong end of a railway bridge, deep in the forest of who-knows-where. There’s nobody around but them, and the idea is to cross the bridge fast - before the next train comes around. Which would mean a grisly end. On the tracks or in the river under it.

Now, I wouldn’t want to tell you what happened next. It is a personal favourite (second only to The Shawshank Redemption - also by King) and I don't have the heart to do a dirty spoiler.

What follows is my story. About the time when a friend and I crossed a railway bridge. And a train almost ran us over.

I was doing my pre-degree in the Guru Nanak College of Science, Ballarpur. It was a small ramshackle of an educational institution where students who didn’t give a damn were taught by teachers who didn’t give a damn either. Most of the working days were single-hour ones, after which the students would take to what they do best - play cricket on scorched cotton fields or sit around appreciating the finer points of the opposite sex.

Behind the college was a railway track that trailed off into the forests of Rajura. Which was, simply said, the best thing about the place. Every day after college, Dinesh and I would walk down this track to the Ballarpur railway station — from where we could catch a private bus to our industrial township.

The beauty of these walks was an overwhelming sense of loneliness. There would be nobody around, save for the two of us, the trees, the birds and a long railway track stretching into the horizon. And even if we did see another human being, he/she would just be another small speck doing something vague in a great, vague distance.

Every now and then, trains would go by — and we would shut our ears while the world around us rocked to romantically rhythmic thuds. It was beautiful.

Well, on that particular day, we found ourselves free for the entire afternoon. And the bus was due only at seven-fifteen in the evening.

Dinesh turned to me and said: “Why don’t we go the other way today? We can follow the track till Rajura railway station and catch the bus from there...”

I was not so sure. For one thing, Rajura station was quite a long way off ... and, for another, we had never been into the woods. But my friend was more than excited about this, and he had already decided for the both of us.

So, we started off in the opposite direction — the railway track serving as our guide.

This route was more wooded than our usual one, and it was starting to get darker and, in many ways, scarier. With every step we took, the chirping and hooting of birds seemed to get increasingly louder and just when it seemed to touch an awesome crescendo, Dinesh tripped over a rock and fell.

Almost immediately, there was a deafening fluttering of wings and we stared dumbstruck as thousands of flying rodents erupted from the trees overhead, flapping their giant wings and screeching loudly as they swooped on us.

We had seen bats before, but never in a gang as big as this. And even minutes after they had left, we were still gasping with fear.

Meanwhile, the birds had gone silent. And though we were now scared out of our wits, the journey to the other end of the railway track continued.

Two hours into the jungle trip, we were still trudging along obstinately. Now that we had come so far, there was no going back.

“Look here...” Dinesh called out.

I looked down. Lying on the railway track was a green-and-yellow snake, lifeless because it had been cut into two by a passing train. The creature’s mouth was still open and its forked tongue was lying motionless on its side. A living creature killed by man.

However, it was fear, rather than pity, that troubled us back then. The forests were crawling with venomous reptiles and if anyone of us were to get bitten, medical help would be an eternity away. The initial excitement had worn thin; now we just wanted the ordeal to end.

Okay, I did not know Murphy back then — but I did know a little about his laws. And when I saw the railway bridge up front, I realised that the ol’ master of misfortune was up to his nasty tricks again.

It was a long one, stretching over the Wainganga river — which separates Rajura and Ballarpur. Unlike the modern bridges that have railings on both sides, this one was open — completely exposed to the elements. On both sides was a steep drop... stumble once and find for ever a watery grave.

“No way!” I said, “If a train comes along while we are on the track, there’s nothing that can save us.”

However, Dinesh pointed out that there was no other way out. We couldn’t possibly walk back to the college; it would take three hours, and our bus would have left by then. “Besides, there are these platforms on the side of the bridge,” he said, “We could always climb onto them if a train’s coming.”

Indeed, there were a few small steel platforms — meant for railway workers who come and check the tracks occasionally. Flimsy ones... but platforms, nonetheless.

Carefully, we began our journey across the bridge. Though we tried to walk across as fast as we could, we couldn’t afford to be rash... lest we trip and fall. Under us, dirty-green waters rippled — as if in evil anticipation. And every now and then, we would “hear” the sound of a train whistle, only to realise that it was just our imagination running riot.

Admittedly, Dinesh was the more courageous of the two. Even as I stumbled along — hoping to make it across in time — I could hear the dude humming to himself with hands outstretched, like that Winslet woman in Titanic.

That was when it started.There was no warning whistle, and certainly no noise of thudding wheels. Just a vague sound of vibration — running like electricity through the rails.

“TRAIN’S COMING!!” I yelled to Dinesh, who was walking ahead. He couldn’t hear me; the wind was carrying our voices around, I think.

“WHAT??” he yelled back.

I did not have to answer. The sound was more evident now.... the sound of doom, riding on steam-powered wheels to run us down. And even as the thudding of iron wheels drew closer with each speeding moment, we broke into a run for the nearest platform.

Which wasn’t there. Apparently, it had broken off and collapsed into the river a long time ago.

Cursing a then-unknown Murphy, we looked back.

The engine of a goods train was climbing onto the bridge from the other side. And even as deafening noises filled the air, we raced for the next platform.

It wasn’t that close a shave, actually. We managed to get to safety about twenty seconds before the train raced by, with an enraged engine-driver shaking his fist at us. But it was scary all the same, because this wasn’t some Bond movie... this one was for real.

Then we started laughing like madmen, the way you do after having smoked a rolled-up stick of dry hemp. Laughed, laughed, laughed, laughed ... and finally, when we could laugh no more, we sat down heavily on the flimsy platform. It heaved, as if it wanted to break.

But we couldn’t care less. The worst was over.

Later, we got off the platform, crossed the bridge and caught our bus home. And as we went about our everday lives, the incident became just another memory from the days gone by.

About nine years later, it has taken a movie called Stand By Me to bring it all back — draped in autumnal orange and gold. And, by Golly! I would sure like to watch it again!

(PS: The photo is just something I pinched from the Net. The real bridge was longer and the water was deeper and dirtier.)

The Fulfilled Wish

He was limping on the beach one day,
Waves caressing his only foot, then slowly drawing away,
“The story of my life,” he thought with unhappy mirth,
“The way things have been, from the day of my birth.”

Sure... good days would come, only to back away,
Money, love, happiness and joy - just a passing phase,
Then came the war, which cost him an arm and leg,
But got him a medal - cold comfort in bed.

In the distance, he saw a boat - slowly bobbing away,
Getting smaller, until to the horizon it became a prey,
“O mighty one, take me too,” he looked up and said,
Then stumbled, sobbing as he collapsed on the slushy sand bed.

Suddenly, as if in response, the sea-waters grew,
Reached for the morning sky, becoming a huge wall of blue,
Crashed, to the accompaniment of frightened shrieks,
And then left, leaving the world black - and in complete peace.

He was limping on the beach one day,
When the tsunami came and took his life away...

The Read, The Unread & The Don't-Wanna-Reads

Ok. Now, let me start by saying that as I'm not a very well-read person, this list is not going to bring me half as much pride as it is going to cause me embarrassment.

If you actually have the patience to go through the list of hundred, you are most likely to notice that the “READ” mark is put on more Harry Potters than Kite Runners. Also, you might notice more “SAW” tags than “READ” ones because I belong to that stray school of thought which believes that a movie should be watched before its book (on which the flick is originally based on) is read.

And the few classics, which I did happen to go through, were forced into me at gunpoint, while I was doing my literature in college.

I bow my head in shame.

But, in keeping with this great tradition of our particular blog community, I have shamelessly reproduced the list with a few minor changes ... hope you guys don’t find it completely offending. Ga ha!

Type "READ" beside the ones you've read.
Type "WANT TO" beside the ones you'd like to read.
Leave blank the ones that you aren't interested in.
Type "AGAIN AND AGAIN" beside the ones you could read again and again.
"TRIED" for those books that you've tried to read...again and again.
For those books you haven't heard of "??"
"SAW IT" For those books you shamelessly watched the movie of instead
"YUKK" for those books you ploughed through and wish you hadn't.
"READ & SAW!" For those books which you read and then had to see (or vice versa)

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) SAW IT
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) READ
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) READ, WATCHED
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) WATCHED
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) READ & SAW
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) Again and Again READ & SAW
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers Again and Again READ & SAW
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) ??
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) ??
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) ??
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) READ & SAW
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) READ
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix READ
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) ??
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) WANT TO
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone READ AND SAW
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald) ??
18. The Stand (Stephen King) - YUKK
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban READ AND SAW
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) TRIED
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) READ
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) READ
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) WANT TO
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold) ??
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) AGAIN AND AGAIN (Movie-YUKK)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) READ
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) ??
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom) ??
31. Dune (Frank Herbert) ??
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) READ
34. 1984 (Orwell) READ
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) ??
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) ??
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay) ??
38. I Know This Much is True(Wally Lamb) ??
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) ??
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) (NOT BEN JONSON'S PLAY? THEN NO...)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) ??
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella) ??
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) ??
45. Bible (...) READ, SAW
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) READ
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) READ
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) SAW
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) WANT TO
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb) ??
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver) ??
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) READ
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) ??
54. Great Expectations (Dickens) READ
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) READ
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence) ??
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) READ
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) ??
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) ??
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger) ??
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) WANT TO
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) READ, AGAIN AND AGAIN
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy) READ
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) SAW (But Psceeeechhh!)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis) ??
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) WANT TO
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)??
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) READ
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) SAW
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) ??
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) SAW
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell) ??
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje) SAW
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) ??
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay) ??
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)??
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving) ??
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence) ??
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)??
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley) ??
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) READ
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) ??
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind) ??
85. Emma (Jane Austen) READ (In college)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams) ??
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) ??
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago) ??
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer) READ
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje) ??
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) READ, SAW
93. The Good Earth(Pearl S. Buck) WANT TO
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) READ, SAW
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) ??
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)??
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford) ??
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) ??
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) (FEW CHAPTERS HERE 'N' THERE)

Colourful Moods

Do you have those moments when life feels like an Ingmar Bergman movie; when even pushing a foot forward takes near-herculean effort.
I do. And I hate them.
During those trying times, which generally occur the morning after drowning myself in an Royal Challenge bottle or the night before a test that I'm gonna flunk, I notice things that I would never do otherwise.
The ant crawling up the wall - making krrch-krrch sounds that only my heightened senses can catch; the ceiling fan wobbling unsteadily over my head; the deafening drip drip of water escaping a leaky faucet in the kitchen; the salesman out there, selling something that sounds very much like MUCHIKREE, MUCHIKREE; the incessant tick-tock of the glimmering table-clock; and shadows creeping up the wall in vain attempts to find a place they can retire to.
I wouldn't refer to these moments as blue ones. Blue is a beautiful colour.
I would call them brown-with-a-tinge-of-ugly-green moments. Because, unlike the greater poets, I don't burst into verse everytime I am down. When I have these moments, my system shuts down completely, an incurable writer's block takes over and I become sensationless - save for that horrible gnawing at my soul. And even when I am spoken to, sources say that the best I can manage is a sound very similar to errrmmm, duh!
Could you believe it, the brown-with-a-tinge-of-ugly-green moments overshadow even the scariest Nightmare-on-what-could-possibly-be-Elm-Street ones. And, for one thing, the Elm-Street moments are exciting, not depressing.
Let me tell you about them. Imagine me walking down a lonely street, with nobody around. A full moon's out and bats whirl around in glee. And yet, I walk around with a tune in my head and feet that go hoppity-hop, skippety-skip. Everything's pink - everything's going my way - until I think I see a shadowy figure following me. "Oooh, Now didn't his top hat look like Freddy Krueger's? Is it him with his fancy fangs?"
Now, deep down, I know that its just my imagination. So I slow down to check if the guy is real... "Nobody there... just like I thought."
But the Elm-Street moment cannot be shrugged off that easily. Even as a shiver runs up my spine, I think, "Hey, he was there just a minute ago... Krueger's disappeared. Just like he does in those movies."
Suddenly I can't take it anymore, and so I break into a run. Run all the way home.
From then on, it's Evil Dead, Exorcist and Omen all along. I jump into the shower only to be reminded of the blonde lady in Psycho. I tremble my way through, and not just because of the cold water. Finally, a relieved me comes out of the bath and leaps into bed. Only to be reminded of that scary scene in Halloween when the bed opens up to swallow the one on it. And even as I mutter the Lord's prayer and surround myself with Bibles and crucifixes, monsters under my bed gnash their teeth non-stop till daybreak.
At the stroke of seven, I stumble off the bed bleary-eyed to start my day - which promises to be filled with yet more brown-with-a-tinge-of-ugly-green moments. It's a vicious cycle, indeed.
But it's the orange moments that I like best. They are nice and fulfilling. During orange moments, I feel like THE dude... like I am the king of the world. I feel like I can do anything I want to.
But orange moments are also expensive. You need at least four pegs on the rocks to bring them about. And they, by the next morning, darken deeply to become brown-with-a-tinge-of-ugly-green moments (or a splitting headache) too. GAH!
P.S. I don't have red moments often. Abhor violence.

"I see them..."

Do you believe in ghosts?
I do. Because I am sure I have seen a couple since I was a kid. Or at least, I think so.
And as they don't have fangs or bloody nails (unlike the prettier ones that haunt your conventional B-grade movie), I am sure there must have been some more that I did not notice in the hustle-bustle of humanity.
Now, before the medics strap me up and throw me into a padded cell, I would like to concede that maybe - just maybe - I could have been wrong. But, still, I shudder to think of those times because - in all fairness - I could have been right, also.

My first encounter with the supernatural occurred when I was a kid, and asleep in bed with my parents by my side. There was these noises coming from the living room, which were not letting me sleep. The drip, drip, drip, drip of water trickling into the hall wash basin.
I got up. There was moonlight streaming in from the window overhead, and so I could see everything around. My dad was sleeping, snoring slightly.
Quietly, I stepped on to the cold floor. And as I tip-toed my way to the living room, the drip drip sound seemed to get louder and louder. Louder and louder.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw there.
Somebody was sitting on the sofa, reading a newspaper. In the dark.
I could not believe it, so I moved closer - expecting the apparition to transform itself into a bundle of clothes or a piece of paper flapping in the wind. But no, I was only getting closer to a person, some weird person who could read newspapers in the dark.
Fear wouldn't let me breathe. And even as I felt some kind of uncomfortable, warm sensation running down my heart into my stomach, the ghost lowered the paper to reveal a face engulfed in darkness.
I retreated back to the bedroom, too scared to wake anyone up. And there I lay with my face buried in a pillow, gasping, trembling - until sleep came and transported me to a sunny tomorrow morning.

The next day, under the glare of the hot Sunday sun, the sofa sat innocently bare. And nobody believed my story, of course...

The second incident occurred when I was in class nine, and sitting on my doorstep preparing for a geography examination. I always preferred to study sitting outside my house because, this way, I could exchange hellos and goodbyes with passersby and have fun getting distracted.
My parents took quite some time catching up with my ploy, but then - I was quite a coot back then.
Anyway, there's this guy I would see at four pm, almost every other day - Anurag Tiwari. And he would be skipping and hopping down the road to fetch milk from the nearby store, generally humming a tune to himself. He was doing the same on that day, too.
I glanced at him through the corner of my eye, just barely lifting a hand to show that I have acknowledged his presence. Anurag smiled, then continued on his way down the road until he became just another speck on the horizon.
I was still engrossed in my lesson when my cousin, Ann, came along. "So, who all did you get to meet today?" she winked knowingly.
"Oh, nobody," I answered absently, "Just Anurag. Maybe it's too hot for the others to be out..."
Silence, chilling silence, met my words. And when I looked up, Ann was looking at me through the widest eyes - her jaw nearly touching the ground. And even as my own throat ran dry, I realised what had happened.
Anurag Tiwari had drowned to death in a nearby reservoir just a week ago. The town police were still investigating into the matter.
Which means I could have been mistaken. Or not.
Mom, as expected, did not believe me. Instead, she accused me of falling asleep during my study hour.

My third brush with the fantastic was the scariest. It happened in my hostel room, during the fag end of my final year in the Madras Christian College.
It was a hot Sunday afternoon and I was sprawled on my bed. The idea was to just lie there without moving a finger. The idea was to achieve complete relaxation.
The door was open, and it was letting in a hot, humid breeze.
I never even realised when the man came in. He was medium-built, a hint of a mustache on his face. I cannot remember what he was wearing, but I'm betting it was some kind of a sweatshirt. The weird thing was, I did not even know who he was - but the man was looking into my table drawer.
I tried to get up and ask what he wanted, but I couldn't. It was as if my body did not want to respond to my brain. And even as I remained in that helpless position, weird , loud noises started filling my head - threatening to wipe out the very whisper of sanity in it.
The noises rose and rose until they reached the highest crescendo, my skull feeling like it needed to burst.
And then, suddenly, everything stopped.
I opened my eyes to see Kelly, my friend and neighbour from Room 156, strolling into the room with a bathroom mug. "Hey, why you sweating, da?!" he asked jovially.
I asked him if he had seen anybody leaving or entering my room, and he replied: "No... I was there drying clothes on the bridge for about ten minutes now, and I did not see anybody entering or leaving your room... Why?"
For ten minutes, I tried recounting my experience to Kelly - but it seemed quite a hard thing to do. So I left it at that.
Maybe the man was a man. Maybe he was the ghost that occupies Heber's haunted room (Room 134? Can't remember) . Or maybe he was just a bad dream.
Who knows?