Kajal Chatterjee
Ghosts! Though I loved to hear or read ghost stories immensely in childhood, still a chill used to run down my spine if somebody uttered ‘Bhoot’ in darkness to scare me!
Despite such fear, ghost stories used to attract me the most perhaps because of the might of the pen of Bengali litterateurs, the Who's Who of those who appeared in different avatars of ghosts. While few ghosts are indeed scary or revengeful; but many ghosts were indeed timid, humorous, cooperative with many having tragic stories bringing lump in our throats and place in our hearts!
However not all ghosts are indeed ghosts! Two such stories vividly come to mind.
A boy visited his maternal uncle's farmhouse after hearing that he has got engaged in a business of ghosts! The uncle showed him ghosts of all varieties of various groupings and ages --- all looking just as human beings! Somebody gardening, somebody engaged in tending cows.
Some lady ghosts were cooking. Later a White couple from the West arrived. The uncle warmly welcomed them in the office. They came to adopt a ghost. The uncle selected a boy for them and warned them not to misbehave with him because "these ghosts are very obedient; but try to intimidate them, they will break your neck and leave"!
The foreign couple assured him that the ghost would be well looked after and left with it.
Later to satisfy the inquisitiveness of the protagonist, the maternal uncle confided to him that they are not at all ghosts in literal sense. But thanks to the indifference of the society, these poor marginalised outcasts do not get the treatment as deserved by human beings. So if they are not ghosts, then what are they!
So on witnessing their plight, this business of ghosts came to my mind. Why not engage them in various activities which will provide them sustenance in my farmhouse! Their produced vegetables and fruits can be sold in the market fetching us revenue. The hapless children can be put up in safe adoption guaranteeing food and shelter with the tag of ghosts acting as the shield from torture!
And Rabindranath Tagore's short story 'Jeebito O Mrito' (Living and dead). The middle aged lady of the joint family met a sudden death. In the cremation ground, the corpse bearers noticed a slight movement in the body, resulting in the frightened amongst them to escape and falsely reported in her home that she has been cremated!
But actually she didn't die. After getting rejuvenated, she returned home to find her startled family members. Far from believing her version, they were treating her as a ghost. Failing to tolerate such behaviour from all any more, she committed suicide by jumping from the roof with Tagore ending his story with the heart-splitting sentence, "By dying Kadambini proves that actually she didn't die"!
That brings us the message that to be a ghost, it is not necessarily required to die! Full-fledged living person can also be treated as "Ghosts" by society!
And why not! In Sanskrit 'Bhoot' means Past. So anything past can become a ghost in its own right!
And why I am also not a ghost! As far as mindset or behaviour or viewpoint is concerned, my personality has also undergone a sea change be it for better or worse with passage of time.
So, I wonder if the drastic change of relationship has undergone with certain persons with passage of time from attraction to indifference! So seen from that angle, my old avatar is certainly the ghost of me!
Also the good side of me which I have lost. Many times I have tried to rectify myself, but failed to do so. So my ghost itself is playing hide and seek within me, prompting American author Stephen King to write “Monsters are real and ghosts are real too. They live inside us and sometimes they win”.