Ghost Busting

These are the tales of a feisty childhood, of uncorrupted thought and emotion, of bravado, of quixotic attempts to tame all evil, of being a hero, of knowing, of exploring, of limitless inquisitiveness, and of unbridled joy. All are oft narrated silly incidents and come a few years late.Nevertheless, I should scribble them down lest I forget who I was, lest I become immune to the charm of 'Small Things'. :)

The story begins with me exploring the place just beyond the football field in our school. Just in front of our school building, we had our basket ball-volley ball courts, the stage, then the steps cut out of rock which led us to the football field which was lined by what we called Christmas trees. Beyond that stood even taller, older trees. Then came the grass, taller than me and most students in primary school. It had snakes and squirrels and pigs! One of the engineers working on site brought a dozen or so pigs and let them loose in this grassland(if I may call it that :D). It was a sloping land which extended some distance and from here you could see the playground of Central School and the Graveyard. By the time I was in middle school this place was bulldozed and a second play ground was created and with plenty of space and grass still remaining. And much much later, an audotorium was built. But that is at least a decade ahead.

I was fascinated by this place. I remember discovering this place and taking my good friend Shahid there during the lunch break. Getting here the first time was inspiring-I suppose it is the kind of feeling you might get if you ever get into Jurassic Park. Slowly I started venturing deeper and deeper. We were forbidden to play here. If caught it could lead to expulsion. The grass here wasn't very friendly either, very often it cut into your skin. We finished our lunch quickly and went about playing in this place. At least for now, nothing bothered me much.

I'll tell you a bit about the 'me'. I was quite a handful for my teachers in primary school. Never unruly, but restless and the usual complaints received during PT meeting were 'naughty' and 'talkative'.
Talkative-Started talking very early and just couldn't stop. Teachers would always express their surprise at the volume of stories, jokes I had to tell especially when they were teaching. Naughty-Like when we were distributed our first ever class photograph, I forgot to get the money for that. Everyone else had it. During the class, staring out of the window I noticed my uncle-he was a civil contractor for our school and was getting some work done. When Sr Mridula turned to the board, I slipped out of the class and got the money from my uncle. I sneaked back in without the nun knowing it. I went to her and got my photograph and the 5 Rs balance. She smiled at learning that I went out without permission and asked me not to do so again. By the time she turned to the board to continue what she was teaching, I was off again to return the balance amount to my uncle. So technically, I bunked class in Kindergarden. Then I wasn't the biggest in my class but I was quite a fighter. Fight! That was an awesome thing to do. Very often I would get into a scramble with the big kids in my class and I beat them well! In WWE terms, I was the 'undefated' kinder garden champion of the world! :D
The only exception I took was with Diana, she was the biggest in my class and luckily I never got in much trouble with her.The biggest scalp was 'Super Now' or Suparno. But like all heroes I never fought without good reason. A challenge was a good enough reason though. I remember the day when I was playing and Ashwin appeared from nowhere and said 'Bibu, save me!' and he hid behind me. A group of 10-12 boys from our class with Suparno as their leader were there to get him. I said 'Let him go.' He said "Get away. I don't want to fight you". He moved forward to get him and I shoved him and he took a fall. He got up and announced 'Run!Run! He's gonna thrash us all! Ah! The glory! :D.

So back to the incident. Now there were many tales about this place- of hidden dead bodies, of ghosts that took a refuge from the graveyard which was just a 'fence jump' away from the place, of the creatures that lived in here and the many many legends. Now the farthest place on our school property had a cave/hole big enough for a man to get into and be completely invisible. The legend had it that the denizens of this place were evil spirits from the neighbourhood(read graveyard). So after weeks of deliberation and gathering of courage I decided that I had to go in there. One morning, I was dropped early to school. So I gathered 4 lads from my class-Rohit, Waseem, and two more- one was Zaman? I cannot recall! I wanted to find out if ghosts really lived there. So we marched on from the left side of the playground, which was the only way we normally took to get to this place. After lots of jumping over/ducking under the grass/trees we got there-at the hole. At lunch, a few lads play around here but early in the morning, no one dared! And we were here at this hour to challenge the super natural! Somehow we stood around the hole, me along to the right and others to the left and I announced " Where is the ghost? Where is the ghost?" And then what happened is like a flicker in my memory. A figure emerged from the hole with his hands up in the air and he was going 'Baaaaah'! All this happened in a matter of seconds. No time to think. The others took the way we had come but standing on the other side I had to take the opposite route-the long dreary, unfamiliar route. I ran like mad, no second thoughts, and no looking back. The school must have been at least a few hundred metres away and I must have run for minutes but the memory of that sprint must be as long as that of a heart beat. I never ran so hard. I ran for my life! When I got to the safety of people, all I could recall was that the 'monster' was in our school uniform. He was big. It was more like a grown man in white shirt and grey shorts.

I'd like to tell you that on my way back, something tried to grab my feet and I almost took a tumble, but I guess it just might have been a bush. I like to imagine that he had a monstrous, ugly face. But I think I never saw it in first place.

Came back home in the evening, and I was all pumped up. Tried talking about it to my mother.Did not help-mothers can never really appreciate boy stories! Father came in very late that day and I saw him the next morning. I told him- "Father, there is a bhoot is my school and I want to kill it! Please get me a machine gun." and he used the most subtle of tactics. He said,"Okay son! How about tomorrow?" :)