“I am not happy with what I am doing nowadays…”
“This was definitely not what I thought I would be doing two years later when I started my MBA…”
“For the entire rigor, hard work and slogging I went through during my two years in MBA, is this what I get?”
“I just can’t find the right girl to marry. How are we going to decide, in one meeting, if we will be able to live our entire lives together? This is stupid. Impossible!”
“We are growing too old… I feel old already…”
“I can’t imagine doing the same thing for the next five years or more or for that matter, less”
Conversations nowadays are incomplete without these sentences thrown in at regular intervals not unlike a person suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for cleanliness; her day is incomplete without washing her hands (or whichever part of her body) every now and then.
Days begin with a sigh – an exasperated sigh for having to go through another day of this boring routine. And, no it doesn’t stop with that one sigh.
The sighs continue…
When I put on my trouser and, with great difficulty, manage to fasten the last button of the trouser
When the security guard at the office entrance doesn’t let you in without checking your “eye-dee”
When the second security guard doesn’t let you in without checking your “eye-dee” and your bag
When the third security guard doesn’t let you in without checking your bag (yes, again!)
When you turn up late to office and people around you give you that ‘you-are-always-late’ look
When you turn on the computer and find your mailbox filled with spam mails from all the unnecessary groups in the company doing thankless work
When you go for coffee to the cafeteria and find half of the company folks there in queue for their ‘cup of tea’
When you go for lunch and find the same menu written in the same illegible handwriting with a host of spelling mistakes (not the same, spellings change every day)
When you sit staring at your Google homepage thinking hard what to type and nothing comes to your mind
So, you get the flow right?
And, the sighs continue…
With all the negative thoughts and depressing news around me, I decided to become an optimist and think about some positive things that surround me presently which get overlooked and ignored because of the negativity around. So, instead of thinking of all the things that make me sigh, I decided to list things that I enjoy – small things that make me happy. So, here I go:
Those quick jigs in the office lift to the song playing in my iPod (Only when I am alone in the lift, of course!)
Those hours of chatting, cribbing, gossiping over one cup of Assam tea
Those aimless errands in the office campus only to be shooed away by the security guys
Those over the top plans for the weekend, most of which do not work out!
Those roadside mirchi bajjis sold right across the street
Those bike rides back home without the slightest care for other people on the road
But I am able to think of only these many things as of now.
And, the sighs continue…
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Monday, February 15, 2010
Black & White
The Unwise Falcon: A wise falcon hides his talons!
The Rustic Home: To grow old and go to...
The Rustic Home: To grow old and go to...
Friday, January 01, 2010
Life, Death & Fluttering Nuisance.
“Hush…Bhurrr…Fly away you moron…Off you go….Don’t come back ever again.”
But it came. Everyday. Every hour. Every minute. If you thought only dogs have curled tails, think again, because pigeons are worse. They just do not understand that I did not want them to come back. They act purely on instinct, on habit. They are stupid. So however much I would intimidate them, they would come back as if nothing had happened a minute ago. I got tired of running over and again to the balcony to shoo them away but it did not seem to matter to them. They were stupid. How could it matter to them? So, this ritual would take place everyday, every hour, and if I had the patience, every minute. It was all about my patience because they shamelessly came back. No self respect, absolutely.
Then I had to go to Mumbai for four days. Of course, it was more important than shooing pigeons. So I went. When I was travelling, I read this poem by Robert Frost – something to do with a minor bird. Let me quote it here:
I have wished a bird would fly away
And not sing by my house all day
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear it no more
So far so good! I could perfectly identify with Robert Frost. An honour, I must say! I share same feelings as one of the greatest poets world has ever produced. But then he changed his track. Why this sudden change of heart, I did not understand.
The fault must have been partly in me
The bird was not to blame for his key
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence a song
I couldn’t identify with him any more. Two reasons for this: First, it was a bird which sang not a pigeon which irritatingly gutergooed all day. Second, he was Robert Frost and not I. So, not even the great Robert Frost could change my heart. I still loathed the pigeons. I was just hoping to get a surprise when I return. I would close my eyes, move towards the balcony, slowly open the door and voila! No pigeons!
It was wishful thinking. The pigeons had been family planning in my absence. And, now there were these two eggs nicely planted in the corner of my balcony using twigs, straws and my slippers (yes, really!) as an excuse for nest! Pigeons are not only stupid, lame, shameless but also extremely lazy! But I could not do anything now. Their conspiracy had worked. I couldn’t shoo them away with the eggs in my balcony. So I gave up.
I just persevered till the eggs turned big (This is what I thought, the eggs were too small for the babies to come out) and the pigeon-lings hatched into the cruel, competitive and merciless world (And, because pigeons are also an integral part of the world, the world is also lazy, shameless and stupid). So, one not-so-fine day, the eggs hatched. The chicks were ugly with ugly being used a very euphemistic word here. They had nothing of the pigeon gray on them, they were yellow. Now, I got another reason to hate pigeons. They show their true colours, quite literally, when they grow up.
I saw them grow. It is amazing how fast they change. On one day they are ugly, yellow, mangy, little lumps of flesh and the other they suddenly turn noisy and irritating while maintaining their ugliness, yellowness, manginess and bigger lump-of-flesh-ness. So, they grew uglier by the day. They started changing colors now with a tint of gray, shade of white and patches of blue all over them. My friend found them really endearing and cute and he fed them. They could not eat, so the mother ate everything.
The pigeons are also always hungry. Try this. You throw a teaspoonful of grains; they are eaten up in 2 minutes. You throw a fistful of grains; they are over in 2 minutes. You throw a bag full of grains; they are over in 2 minutes. I did not try this, but I am sure, if you throw a sack full of grains and they will be over in a jiffy. The pigeons just don’t know how much to eat. They eat like there’s no tomorrow. I have been told there have been cases when pigeons died because of over eating.
The chicks became bigger and the feathers grew out of nowhere. The yellowness was almost gone. They were becoming tolerable to look at now. They could not fly but always fluttered their wings. This annoyed me but when they would unfold their feathers, the sight of the inner darker version of their feathers was amazing. Mom would still feed them. They looked big enough now but were still flightless. Just a few more days and they would learn to fly – to explore the exciting limitlessness of the sky and to hunt for food through tree tops and dust bins. About 5-6 days was my surmise. Of course, with this they would become independent and away from the protective shield of their mother. Every day would be a fight for survival. I suddenly did not want these pigeons to go in to the cruel and competitive world.
But they did and not in a way I had anticipated or wanted, despite my hate for them.
The earlier night, I had slept a little too late. I had no morning classes the next day and had plans of sleeping through the breakfast and getting up just in time for lunch. But the pigeons had other plans for me, as usual! They had conspired to ruin my great plans for the day. The next day early morning they fluttered and flapped so loudly and so continuously that I had to wake up, go to the balcony and ask them to shut up. Well, they did not listen and resumed as soon as I got back into the room. I tried hard to sound proof myself with the help of not-so-efficient pillow but all in vain. The fluttering continued and I could sleep no more. So here I was, wide awake at seven in the morning with absolutely nothing to do. I had breakfast, watched a movie, had lunch and attended the afternoon classes all the time cursing the pigeons.
The same thing happened the next day. I was foolish enough to sleep even later than the previous night only to be woken up by the continuous flutter of the most irritating birds on the planet. This time the flutter grew louder. I had decided not to get up no matter what! I pressed the pillow hard against my ears and tried to sleep. But the pigeons, being pigeons, did not give up so easily. I felt the flutter growing and coming closer towards me. I must have left the balcony door open, I had thought. I could almost feel the feathers of pigeons near me now. That was it. I could take this no more. I had to teach them a lesson now. I got up in anger from my bed. My eyes which were red with anger suddenly did not know which color to assume as they saw the silhouette of a cat expertly carrying two continuously fluttering pigeons in her mouth out of the main door…
But it came. Everyday. Every hour. Every minute. If you thought only dogs have curled tails, think again, because pigeons are worse. They just do not understand that I did not want them to come back. They act purely on instinct, on habit. They are stupid. So however much I would intimidate them, they would come back as if nothing had happened a minute ago. I got tired of running over and again to the balcony to shoo them away but it did not seem to matter to them. They were stupid. How could it matter to them? So, this ritual would take place everyday, every hour, and if I had the patience, every minute. It was all about my patience because they shamelessly came back. No self respect, absolutely.
Then I had to go to Mumbai for four days. Of course, it was more important than shooing pigeons. So I went. When I was travelling, I read this poem by Robert Frost – something to do with a minor bird. Let me quote it here:
I have wished a bird would fly away
And not sing by my house all day
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear it no more
So far so good! I could perfectly identify with Robert Frost. An honour, I must say! I share same feelings as one of the greatest poets world has ever produced. But then he changed his track. Why this sudden change of heart, I did not understand.
The fault must have been partly in me
The bird was not to blame for his key
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence a song
I couldn’t identify with him any more. Two reasons for this: First, it was a bird which sang not a pigeon which irritatingly gutergooed all day. Second, he was Robert Frost and not I. So, not even the great Robert Frost could change my heart. I still loathed the pigeons. I was just hoping to get a surprise when I return. I would close my eyes, move towards the balcony, slowly open the door and voila! No pigeons!
It was wishful thinking. The pigeons had been family planning in my absence. And, now there were these two eggs nicely planted in the corner of my balcony using twigs, straws and my slippers (yes, really!) as an excuse for nest! Pigeons are not only stupid, lame, shameless but also extremely lazy! But I could not do anything now. Their conspiracy had worked. I couldn’t shoo them away with the eggs in my balcony. So I gave up.
I just persevered till the eggs turned big (This is what I thought, the eggs were too small for the babies to come out) and the pigeon-lings hatched into the cruel, competitive and merciless world (And, because pigeons are also an integral part of the world, the world is also lazy, shameless and stupid). So, one not-so-fine day, the eggs hatched. The chicks were ugly with ugly being used a very euphemistic word here. They had nothing of the pigeon gray on them, they were yellow. Now, I got another reason to hate pigeons. They show their true colours, quite literally, when they grow up.
I saw them grow. It is amazing how fast they change. On one day they are ugly, yellow, mangy, little lumps of flesh and the other they suddenly turn noisy and irritating while maintaining their ugliness, yellowness, manginess and bigger lump-of-flesh-ness. So, they grew uglier by the day. They started changing colors now with a tint of gray, shade of white and patches of blue all over them. My friend found them really endearing and cute and he fed them. They could not eat, so the mother ate everything.
The pigeons are also always hungry. Try this. You throw a teaspoonful of grains; they are eaten up in 2 minutes. You throw a fistful of grains; they are over in 2 minutes. You throw a bag full of grains; they are over in 2 minutes. I did not try this, but I am sure, if you throw a sack full of grains and they will be over in a jiffy. The pigeons just don’t know how much to eat. They eat like there’s no tomorrow. I have been told there have been cases when pigeons died because of over eating.
The chicks became bigger and the feathers grew out of nowhere. The yellowness was almost gone. They were becoming tolerable to look at now. They could not fly but always fluttered their wings. This annoyed me but when they would unfold their feathers, the sight of the inner darker version of their feathers was amazing. Mom would still feed them. They looked big enough now but were still flightless. Just a few more days and they would learn to fly – to explore the exciting limitlessness of the sky and to hunt for food through tree tops and dust bins. About 5-6 days was my surmise. Of course, with this they would become independent and away from the protective shield of their mother. Every day would be a fight for survival. I suddenly did not want these pigeons to go in to the cruel and competitive world.
But they did and not in a way I had anticipated or wanted, despite my hate for them.
The earlier night, I had slept a little too late. I had no morning classes the next day and had plans of sleeping through the breakfast and getting up just in time for lunch. But the pigeons had other plans for me, as usual! They had conspired to ruin my great plans for the day. The next day early morning they fluttered and flapped so loudly and so continuously that I had to wake up, go to the balcony and ask them to shut up. Well, they did not listen and resumed as soon as I got back into the room. I tried hard to sound proof myself with the help of not-so-efficient pillow but all in vain. The fluttering continued and I could sleep no more. So here I was, wide awake at seven in the morning with absolutely nothing to do. I had breakfast, watched a movie, had lunch and attended the afternoon classes all the time cursing the pigeons.
The same thing happened the next day. I was foolish enough to sleep even later than the previous night only to be woken up by the continuous flutter of the most irritating birds on the planet. This time the flutter grew louder. I had decided not to get up no matter what! I pressed the pillow hard against my ears and tried to sleep. But the pigeons, being pigeons, did not give up so easily. I felt the flutter growing and coming closer towards me. I must have left the balcony door open, I had thought. I could almost feel the feathers of pigeons near me now. That was it. I could take this no more. I had to teach them a lesson now. I got up in anger from my bed. My eyes which were red with anger suddenly did not know which color to assume as they saw the silhouette of a cat expertly carrying two continuously fluttering pigeons in her mouth out of the main door…
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
The Quest for reality...
It has been a long time since I have posted on my blog. The IIFT schedule has sapped me of all my imagination. Now that I am doing my internship, I m trying to revive my weird imagination and blogging habit! This story, needless to say, is purely fictional. This time I ve cut loose with a high probability of sounding ridiculous! So feel free to comment/criticize, I m not too sure if I ve written a good story this time around. Anyway, it feels great to blog after a long long time.
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I packed my back pack, put on my shoes and slowly tip toed out of the room. I slowly closed the door behind me, which creaked loudly. I almost thought I had woken up my roomies. One of them turned from one side to other but did not wake up. I heaved a sigh of relief. I checked my watch. The fluorescent light showed 4 AM. This was the time when generally everyone in the hostel would have gone to sleep. I had planned it all well. I had couple of hours to go and be back in time for the Yoga classes. There would be some souls still wandering around the campus or in the computer center but I had planned to jump over the back gate of the campus, towards which not many people went. I slowly got into the elevator and went down. The guard was sleeping and the door was closed. I had to be extra careful. I put down my bag and opened the door first, which was not locked, thankfully. I came back, picked my bag and very meticulously slid out of the door. I did not bother closing the door behind me.
I started walking towards the back gate. I had considered all alternatives, but I was left with no choice, only this one seemed correct. I had to go like this. The gate remains generally closed. As a result, lot of weeds had made their home all over the Iron Gate, most of which was rusted. Through the railings of the gate, I could see the dense darkness of Sanjay Van towards the other side of the road. The silhouette of the tall trees and their branches looked like a giant witch with her hair loosened over her face. I wondered why I always have such weird imagination; it was just a forest after all. I reached the gate. I tried to estimate the height of the gate. My friends would agree, I am not very good with such estimates as heights of such structures. For instance, my friend rolled all over the floor laughing when I estimated the height of Charminar to be sixty or seventy feet at the maximum, when in fact it is well beyond a hundred feet, twenty more actually. So I didn’t bother telling him what I thought was the height of Delhi Gate. Okay, “not very good” is actually an understatement after this example. Agreed, accepted and acquiesced! I am bad with such estimates. But anyway, I reckoned the height of the gate to be around ten feet. Ten feet was easy. I climbed up and jumped over. I set out to complete my self-assigned long pending quest…
Rewinding two days back:
“Hey! Have a look at this. This is amazing. I did not know we live in such an exciting place”, exclaimed Vivek, my neighbour in the hostel and a very good friend. He went on, “Sanjay Van is one of the most haunted places in India. Look here, Wikipedia has an article on it”
I, Vivek and Rohan were sitting in Vivek’s room doing some the economics assignment when Vivek took a break to browse and god knows how he landed up with this piece of information.
“O wow! That’s cool. Read on. This is interesting”. Rohan, my roommate, seemed genuinely excited about this news. He rubbed his palms against one another and gestured, with joined hands, towards Vivek to continue. I grew curious too. It was a welcome break from the boring assignment that we were doing anyway.
Vivked obliged and continued “ It is said that a woman with white hair in a white dress and a stick rides on a deer between 4 AM and 5 AM in the morning just before sun rise. People have heard screams and strange sounding voices while passing by the road adjacent to the forest during that time”
“Ah, well. We have seen it in hundreds of Hindi movies, this white sari stuff. It is so contrived and banal. It has to be a wild imagination of a B-grade horror movie fan or a jerk who had nothing better to do than post such stuff on Wikipedia”, commented Rohan suddenly losing interest in the entire matter.
“Yeah, rightly said Rohan. But I like the imagination of this lad. What an imagination he has! White Sari clad woman on a deer? Of all the animals in the forest, a deer? Sounds damn stupid and funny to me” Vivek added and both of them laughed.
I joined them but just with a weak smile. Lots of thoughts crossed my mind. A deer. Last time we had gone trekking in Sanjay Van, we happened to see a huge deer. It was a Nilgai, I think. Besides, there were not many animals in Sanjay Van apart from deer, peacocks and monkeys as far as I knew. So, it fit in properly for the mysterious woman to be riding a deer. Although it did sound funny, it was possible. I wanted to check it out and confirm it myself. I turned towards both of them and tried to put in a proposal for a probably once-in-a-lifetime expedition to the Sanjay Van, a quest for the ultimate reality, but both of them were back on their laptops with their assignments. For the fear of being laughed at, I dropped the idea of asking them to come along although I did not banish the thought of the expedition altogether.
That night when we were lying on our beds in the room, I casually asked Rohan if he really thought the whole Sanjay Van thing was a joke. He did not answer. He simply nodded his head lying on his bed on the other end of the room which I could not have seen from my bed had I not turned in that direction. He asked me to put out the lights and go to sleep. I put out the lights but did not go to sleep. I was planning. I had to go to Sanjay Van and find it out for myself. It had to be the night after that night so that I could sleep after the Yoga class at 7 and get up well in time for the session at 11:30. I started thinking of the supplements that I would require for my expedition- a torch, a match box, a candle, a camera, a water bottle and a thick stick, just in case. That’s all I could think of, then. I decided to collect these things the next day. Having contemplated, what I thought of as a decent plan, I slept and decided to plan for the rest of the things the next day.
Fast forwarding to present:
All the discussions and lengthy talks that I had with others on this matter were all going through my head as I walked towards the entrance to Sanjay Van. The entrance generally closes after 6 PM but one can easily jump over the fence to enter the forest. In fact, even under normal circumstances, it is easier to jump over the fence than to use the main gate, which is so small that barely one person fits in at a time. Let me not get to the estimates now but it is definitely less than 5 feet (I hope!).
I jumped over the fence and entered the forest. It was darker than coal and I couldn’t see a thing. It was August, so the night was not as chilly as it would probably become in December. I slowly treaded the mud pathway, with my torch light ably guiding me. I walked along the path for a long time. This was a familiar path. We had walked this way a lot of times earlier up to the ruined fort. After walking for about ten minutes, I reached the small bridge which had dirty water flowing under it. It was dark everywhere except wherever my torch pointed. I stood on the bridge for a while and pointed the torch towards the water right under me. Then I slowly tilted the torch head towards the flow of water. I saw something that looked like twigs of a tree. I turned my torch in that direction. The small branch of the tree was followed by head, neck and a full body! It was the deer.
My first impulse was to drop the torch there and run back as fast as I could. But, I decided to persist. I tried to observe the deer closely. It was drinking water. Its eyes were closed. I pointed the torch light directly towards its eyes. It got disturbed and opened its eyes. What a sight it was! The eyes sparkled in the dark background. I quickly switched off my torch. It continued to stare at me. The darkness was of no help, it was directly staring at me. The probability that it stared in some random direction and that direction could be my direction was very bleak. So, I concluded that it could see clearly in the night.
It started to move in my direction. It took a couple of steps, bent forward with its nose tilting upwards as if to sniff something. Then, all of a sudden, it retreated and started running in the opposite direction. I quickly put on the torch and started running in behind it. It was a futile exercise, I knew. In seconds it was out of sight. I cursed myself. I shouldn’t have startled it in the first place. I stood there in darkness with my hands down and the torch pointing the earth under my feet. I saw the hoof-prints of the deer, which just vanished into thin air, under the circular brightness created by my torch. I started following the trail. It took me deep into the forest where I had not gone anytime earlier. After walking along for about ten minutes, I reached a dead end: grass! With no more hoof marks, I just moved in some random direction. I treaded along until I heard some noise. I felt my heart pounding inside. I was sweating too, partly because I had walked for quite some time and majorly because I was scared.
I somehow managed to muster enough courage to move closer towards the ‘noisy’ area. It was coming from the area behind the rocks in front of me. I climbed onto one of the smaller rocks. There was a small slit in the wall formed by the pile of rocks. I peeped through it.
There is a famous saying which goes something like this “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity”. I stood there, peeping through the crevices of the wall, with an aim to provide empirical evidence to that saying, inadvertently of course! If it were not for this incurable state of mind, I would have been sleeping soundly. However, since the first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity, we must also learn bear its consequences. Consequences can be good or bad and I was probably among those lucky few to have faced good consequences that night, or so I think!
The deer stood there nibbling a long white cloth in the process of gripping it in its mouth. When it finally managed to take the white cloth in its mouth, it moved backwards. The slack cloth suddenly became taut as if the other end had got stuck into something. It indeed had, not to ‘something’ but ‘someone’. The white cloth turned out to be that someone’s garment. And, that someone was sleeping on the ground on a bed of dead leaves. The deer clearly did not like that and was determined to wake the person. The person finally got up and that is when I saw her for the first and the last time. She had draped the white cloth around her and left one end flowing. It was not a sari but looked liked one because of the way it was worn. She had a decent looking face and her hair was let loose. She gently tapped on the deer’s head with a stick lying on the ground on her ‘bed’. The deer seemed to like it and made some strange noise encouraging her master to do it again.
Then suddenly, both the deer and the woman looked in my direction. They were directly staring at the exact location where I was standing. I felt exposed although there was a huge wall of rocks between us. My heart began pounding so hard that I was convinced it will get tired very soon and give up beating all of sudden. Their eyes shone brightly in the dark. They had a strange malice in their eyes. I couldn’t see that any more and closed my eyes. I was sweating profusely and shivering. I could feel them come close to me, their footsteps growing louder every moment. I could feel the wall between us vanishing into thin air. I could hear their breathing, they were very close now. And then, I couldn’t hear anything. It was all dark and my mind went blank. I fainted.
When I woke up, I was taken by surprise. The dense forest was nowhere to be seen; instead it had got converted into an atrium. It was indeed the atrium, where we have our yoga class everyday. And, worse! The woman had got converted into our Yoga professor and the deer had yet again vanished. The professor was standing right over my head and nodding his head to display his disapproval. His eyes were shining too, not unlike that of the woman and the deer and were red with anger. He was demanding an explanation for my snoring during shavasana…
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I packed my back pack, put on my shoes and slowly tip toed out of the room. I slowly closed the door behind me, which creaked loudly. I almost thought I had woken up my roomies. One of them turned from one side to other but did not wake up. I heaved a sigh of relief. I checked my watch. The fluorescent light showed 4 AM. This was the time when generally everyone in the hostel would have gone to sleep. I had planned it all well. I had couple of hours to go and be back in time for the Yoga classes. There would be some souls still wandering around the campus or in the computer center but I had planned to jump over the back gate of the campus, towards which not many people went. I slowly got into the elevator and went down. The guard was sleeping and the door was closed. I had to be extra careful. I put down my bag and opened the door first, which was not locked, thankfully. I came back, picked my bag and very meticulously slid out of the door. I did not bother closing the door behind me.
I started walking towards the back gate. I had considered all alternatives, but I was left with no choice, only this one seemed correct. I had to go like this. The gate remains generally closed. As a result, lot of weeds had made their home all over the Iron Gate, most of which was rusted. Through the railings of the gate, I could see the dense darkness of Sanjay Van towards the other side of the road. The silhouette of the tall trees and their branches looked like a giant witch with her hair loosened over her face. I wondered why I always have such weird imagination; it was just a forest after all. I reached the gate. I tried to estimate the height of the gate. My friends would agree, I am not very good with such estimates as heights of such structures. For instance, my friend rolled all over the floor laughing when I estimated the height of Charminar to be sixty or seventy feet at the maximum, when in fact it is well beyond a hundred feet, twenty more actually. So I didn’t bother telling him what I thought was the height of Delhi Gate. Okay, “not very good” is actually an understatement after this example. Agreed, accepted and acquiesced! I am bad with such estimates. But anyway, I reckoned the height of the gate to be around ten feet. Ten feet was easy. I climbed up and jumped over. I set out to complete my self-assigned long pending quest…
Rewinding two days back:
“Hey! Have a look at this. This is amazing. I did not know we live in such an exciting place”, exclaimed Vivek, my neighbour in the hostel and a very good friend. He went on, “Sanjay Van is one of the most haunted places in India. Look here, Wikipedia has an article on it”
I, Vivek and Rohan were sitting in Vivek’s room doing some the economics assignment when Vivek took a break to browse and god knows how he landed up with this piece of information.
“O wow! That’s cool. Read on. This is interesting”. Rohan, my roommate, seemed genuinely excited about this news. He rubbed his palms against one another and gestured, with joined hands, towards Vivek to continue. I grew curious too. It was a welcome break from the boring assignment that we were doing anyway.
Vivked obliged and continued “ It is said that a woman with white hair in a white dress and a stick rides on a deer between 4 AM and 5 AM in the morning just before sun rise. People have heard screams and strange sounding voices while passing by the road adjacent to the forest during that time”
“Ah, well. We have seen it in hundreds of Hindi movies, this white sari stuff. It is so contrived and banal. It has to be a wild imagination of a B-grade horror movie fan or a jerk who had nothing better to do than post such stuff on Wikipedia”, commented Rohan suddenly losing interest in the entire matter.
“Yeah, rightly said Rohan. But I like the imagination of this lad. What an imagination he has! White Sari clad woman on a deer? Of all the animals in the forest, a deer? Sounds damn stupid and funny to me” Vivek added and both of them laughed.
I joined them but just with a weak smile. Lots of thoughts crossed my mind. A deer. Last time we had gone trekking in Sanjay Van, we happened to see a huge deer. It was a Nilgai, I think. Besides, there were not many animals in Sanjay Van apart from deer, peacocks and monkeys as far as I knew. So, it fit in properly for the mysterious woman to be riding a deer. Although it did sound funny, it was possible. I wanted to check it out and confirm it myself. I turned towards both of them and tried to put in a proposal for a probably once-in-a-lifetime expedition to the Sanjay Van, a quest for the ultimate reality, but both of them were back on their laptops with their assignments. For the fear of being laughed at, I dropped the idea of asking them to come along although I did not banish the thought of the expedition altogether.
That night when we were lying on our beds in the room, I casually asked Rohan if he really thought the whole Sanjay Van thing was a joke. He did not answer. He simply nodded his head lying on his bed on the other end of the room which I could not have seen from my bed had I not turned in that direction. He asked me to put out the lights and go to sleep. I put out the lights but did not go to sleep. I was planning. I had to go to Sanjay Van and find it out for myself. It had to be the night after that night so that I could sleep after the Yoga class at 7 and get up well in time for the session at 11:30. I started thinking of the supplements that I would require for my expedition- a torch, a match box, a candle, a camera, a water bottle and a thick stick, just in case. That’s all I could think of, then. I decided to collect these things the next day. Having contemplated, what I thought of as a decent plan, I slept and decided to plan for the rest of the things the next day.
Fast forwarding to present:
All the discussions and lengthy talks that I had with others on this matter were all going through my head as I walked towards the entrance to Sanjay Van. The entrance generally closes after 6 PM but one can easily jump over the fence to enter the forest. In fact, even under normal circumstances, it is easier to jump over the fence than to use the main gate, which is so small that barely one person fits in at a time. Let me not get to the estimates now but it is definitely less than 5 feet (I hope!).
I jumped over the fence and entered the forest. It was darker than coal and I couldn’t see a thing. It was August, so the night was not as chilly as it would probably become in December. I slowly treaded the mud pathway, with my torch light ably guiding me. I walked along the path for a long time. This was a familiar path. We had walked this way a lot of times earlier up to the ruined fort. After walking for about ten minutes, I reached the small bridge which had dirty water flowing under it. It was dark everywhere except wherever my torch pointed. I stood on the bridge for a while and pointed the torch towards the water right under me. Then I slowly tilted the torch head towards the flow of water. I saw something that looked like twigs of a tree. I turned my torch in that direction. The small branch of the tree was followed by head, neck and a full body! It was the deer.
My first impulse was to drop the torch there and run back as fast as I could. But, I decided to persist. I tried to observe the deer closely. It was drinking water. Its eyes were closed. I pointed the torch light directly towards its eyes. It got disturbed and opened its eyes. What a sight it was! The eyes sparkled in the dark background. I quickly switched off my torch. It continued to stare at me. The darkness was of no help, it was directly staring at me. The probability that it stared in some random direction and that direction could be my direction was very bleak. So, I concluded that it could see clearly in the night.
It started to move in my direction. It took a couple of steps, bent forward with its nose tilting upwards as if to sniff something. Then, all of a sudden, it retreated and started running in the opposite direction. I quickly put on the torch and started running in behind it. It was a futile exercise, I knew. In seconds it was out of sight. I cursed myself. I shouldn’t have startled it in the first place. I stood there in darkness with my hands down and the torch pointing the earth under my feet. I saw the hoof-prints of the deer, which just vanished into thin air, under the circular brightness created by my torch. I started following the trail. It took me deep into the forest where I had not gone anytime earlier. After walking along for about ten minutes, I reached a dead end: grass! With no more hoof marks, I just moved in some random direction. I treaded along until I heard some noise. I felt my heart pounding inside. I was sweating too, partly because I had walked for quite some time and majorly because I was scared.
I somehow managed to muster enough courage to move closer towards the ‘noisy’ area. It was coming from the area behind the rocks in front of me. I climbed onto one of the smaller rocks. There was a small slit in the wall formed by the pile of rocks. I peeped through it.
There is a famous saying which goes something like this “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity”. I stood there, peeping through the crevices of the wall, with an aim to provide empirical evidence to that saying, inadvertently of course! If it were not for this incurable state of mind, I would have been sleeping soundly. However, since the first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity, we must also learn bear its consequences. Consequences can be good or bad and I was probably among those lucky few to have faced good consequences that night, or so I think!
The deer stood there nibbling a long white cloth in the process of gripping it in its mouth. When it finally managed to take the white cloth in its mouth, it moved backwards. The slack cloth suddenly became taut as if the other end had got stuck into something. It indeed had, not to ‘something’ but ‘someone’. The white cloth turned out to be that someone’s garment. And, that someone was sleeping on the ground on a bed of dead leaves. The deer clearly did not like that and was determined to wake the person. The person finally got up and that is when I saw her for the first and the last time. She had draped the white cloth around her and left one end flowing. It was not a sari but looked liked one because of the way it was worn. She had a decent looking face and her hair was let loose. She gently tapped on the deer’s head with a stick lying on the ground on her ‘bed’. The deer seemed to like it and made some strange noise encouraging her master to do it again.
Then suddenly, both the deer and the woman looked in my direction. They were directly staring at the exact location where I was standing. I felt exposed although there was a huge wall of rocks between us. My heart began pounding so hard that I was convinced it will get tired very soon and give up beating all of sudden. Their eyes shone brightly in the dark. They had a strange malice in their eyes. I couldn’t see that any more and closed my eyes. I was sweating profusely and shivering. I could feel them come close to me, their footsteps growing louder every moment. I could feel the wall between us vanishing into thin air. I could hear their breathing, they were very close now. And then, I couldn’t hear anything. It was all dark and my mind went blank. I fainted.
When I woke up, I was taken by surprise. The dense forest was nowhere to be seen; instead it had got converted into an atrium. It was indeed the atrium, where we have our yoga class everyday. And, worse! The woman had got converted into our Yoga professor and the deer had yet again vanished. The professor was standing right over my head and nodding his head to display his disapproval. His eyes were shining too, not unlike that of the woman and the deer and were red with anger. He was demanding an explanation for my snoring during shavasana…
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