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Motherland Magazine: Ghost Stories Issue - "The Thing" by Aruni Kashyap
Motherland Magazine: Ghost Stories Issue - "The Thing" by Aruni Kashyap
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The Thing
Revisiting a childhood experience of living in a haunted house.
TEXT
ARUNI
KASHYAP
ILLUSTRATIONS
RESHI
D E V
The next day, while having tea with the landlady, my mother asked her if one of her four sons
was called Ganesh. The landlady stood up suddenly, her face pale. But my mother hadnt
noticed. Laughing loudly, Ma said, The two girls
were so scared. I told them to not worry, and said
maybe its someone from the landlords house.
The landlady said she didnt know anyone named
Ganesh. But she looked uneasy.
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back, when we returned with a packet of charmed mustard seeds. Ghosts, she said, are afraid of mustard seeds, iron
rods and the smell of fire-roasted red chillies.
The charmed mustard seeds worked and we slept
peacefully for five nights. But the sounds returned on
the sixth night. My mother and I hurried back to her
colleague. He asked her to check whether the mustard
seeds had germinated; on the third night, there had
been rain. How beautiful the light green, curved shoots
were, I still remember.
Things took a sinister turn when Baneshwar-da, one of
my mothers favourite students, came to stay the night to
attend a job interview in Guwahati the next day. That
evening he turned in early. Hed travelled a long way and
was exhausted. We set up a bed for him in the living room
and the girls moved into the dining room for the night.
In the middle of the night we woke to his screams.
Ma instinctively thought a robber had broken in, and
started shouting, trying to alert our landlords. But that
wintry, foggy night was too powerful and trapped people
in their dreams and quilts.
When we heard what had happened to Baneshwarda, none of us slept for the rest of the night.
I couldnt breathe for a long time. He was hairy,
heavy, red eyed, long nailed, too-tall-too-tall, he said,
sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat, though it was such
a cold night. It was only after I promised that I would
sacrifice a black goat in Kamakhya Temple that the
thing took his hands off my neck. Ma later explained
to me that you could appease angry spirits by sacrificing
a goat at this temple in Guwahati.
Ma tried to reason with him, saying that he mustve
imagined it all, and he was just tense because of the
next days interview. But he wouldnt calm down. He
jumped up and started to pack his bag to leave as soon as
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