Castaway

 

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‘It has been a long time. So many years have passed.  Your father had fond memories of you. Your father was almost of your age, when I first saw him. Believe me, when I say, you are his spitting image. The same eyes, the same wide forehead and even the mole on the cheek is the same.’ Nimmi, the old woman whom the driver had taken to be my mother said. Nimmi looked in her late sixties and bent as she walked.

‘You must be tired. I will cook a dinner for you. We have ample time to talk,’ She said as she placed her hands on her knees and raised saying ‘Rama Rama. These legs are otherwise perfectly fine, but once I sit at a place for a long time, they simply don’t want to walk.’

‘I will help you or for a change I will cook,’ I said.

She smiled and so did the wrinkles on her face, ‘You have come here for the first time. Deep in my heart I knew you would come here someday.  It wouldn’t be wrong if I say that I have been waiting for you all these years. So let me cook.’

She placed a woke on the stove and started cooking khichadi. All the while she regaled in the tales of my father. What he did, what he liked, how he laughed and how he walked. It felt like she missed him deeply. At the same time, when she spoke, I felt like my father was still there with her. I never heard even my mother talk like that.

***

‘This is the tastiest khichadi I have ever had,’ I said as slurped the watery gruel by the side of the bonfire.

‘Your father too loved it. Soup style, he would call it.’

She sat on her haunches and pushed the wood into the bonfire further.

‘We all are connected. We are destined to meet, so we meet and spend the time that we are meant to spend together.’ She said cupping her hands and placing her face into it. I could see the reflections of the flames into her dark black eyes. Her eyes were so full of life  and looked much younger than rest of her body.

‘People say, I have died long back.’ She said.  A shiver ran down my spine. Was this some sort of joke?

Sensing my ashen face she said, ‘Don’t worry I mean no harm.’

I was eating a gruel prepared by a dead person, I realized. I placed the bowl by on the floor.

‘Finish it off. Not everyone is lucky to have a  supper cooked by a dead person.’ She said and then laughed at her own joke.

I was frozen and I didn’t find anything funny in what she had said.

‘Eat it. I have prepared it with the love of a mother. Didn’t the taxi driver say that I was you mother. Indeed, I am.’  She stared at me point blank. That piercing stare was like a spiral tunnel with no end to be seen.

I involuntarily picked the bowl and finished it off.

‘That’s like a good boy,’ She said.

‘Don’t try to run away from me. Now that you have come here, I will always accompany you. That is a promise. It is another matter that you may not be able to always see me.

I was about to piss in my pants when she said, ‘Please don’t be afraid of me. I am like your mother. Don’t you believe me? See…’ She said and moved her face away from me. Now I could see only her head. She gave her neck a jerk and turned her face towards me. What I was seeing was incredible. My mother’s face was transposed on her face and then she spoke in mother’s voice.

‘I… am not left with much time,’ She said and gasped for breath the same way like my mother did in her last moments. She continued, ‘I always felt your father was wrong. I played the victim card to the hilt. But today in these final moments of my life, I feel maybe I was wrong. There is always other side of the coin too. Maybe he too had his version of things, something which I never wanted to listen...’

Then she again changed her voice to her normal, her face still of my mother, ‘Only this Nimmi knows the secret of your father and she thought it died with her. But no, that was not to be. Both your parents held a strong desire at the time of their death that you should know the truth, and it is because of their unfulfilled wishes that I am dangling here between life and death.’  She let out a sigh and then grieved in a loud voice. I could hear the window panes shatter. I tried to move from my place, but I couldn’t.

I remembered what my Guruji would say, ‘There is nothing to be afraid of the dead. They don’t have a physical body. They can’t hold a knife. For that matter they can’t touch or hold anything. All that they can do is to terrify you. Like many other relationships the  dynamics of the relationship of a man and a ghost is a mind game too. There is one who dominates and another who gets dominated.’

Remembering these words, I gathered some courage. I tried to move my legs and was able to do so. Slowly I stood up. Nimmi cast a glance at me. Kudos! What I saw in her eyes was fear. For the first time I was seeing a ghost who was afraid of the human being. The fact that the fear was momentary is another story.

‘True to your blood. Like your father you too love to play with fire,’ she said and then took out a burning stick with a flame as large as a coconut in her hand and swallowed it.

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