I am still hesitant to call this a ghostly encounter, but I cannot account for it any other way.
It was an uncertain sliver of a moon that floated behind a curtain of cloud, but otherwise the night was dark, darker still because of a power outage that had seeped the whole neighbourhood in utter blackness. The rutty, bumpy road that swung craggily through a row of houses on one side and walled off, empty plots on the other was only partially visible under the lights of the cab, and all was silent but for the tinny music that played from its cheap stereo system.
It had been a long day for me. At that time, sometime during the summer monsoon of 2005 it was normal for me to put in 13-14 hours of work each day, not counting in travel time to and from office, and it must have been near around midnight when I had left my workplace, aching in every joint and struggling to keep my eyes open.
My driver on the other hand had been full of beans. A wiry fellow, with a ready, mischievous smile and the glitter of a piece of gold in one ear he was all good humour that night, ceaselessly jabbering in his language, Kannada which I can understand and speak, but haltingly. At some point in his chatter, he decided that he should throw some of the spooks into me by embarking on a series of ghost stories.
Now I am not easily spooked. That’s because I can spin better ghost stories than most people. I’ve cut my teeth listening to strange, dark episodes, some from my brother, some from a hugely imaginative uncle and some from close friends. There have been a few incidents that I will stand testimony to, not because I believe them, but because they were strange and singular in themselves and to which I could not and still cannot find any explanation. So, in my fatigue, I leaned back in my seat and made an effort to listen to his tales as he spun them around and around.
The rutty road that we were on was the last leg of my journey home. It ran between the afore-mentioned concrete structures, now dark shapes with darker holes that marked off windows, like great skulls against an overcast sky. A spooky night after all – however it was lost to me partly because of the fatigue of the day and partly because of the constant swaying of the cab. The road was horribly bumpy, so my driver was dead slow, negotiating around every pot hole, as he climbed gradually to meet a railway line at right angles further ahead. After the railway line, just a street further on was my home.
Now two years before this, a horrible train accident had occurred at that very spot, in the early hours of the morning. The crossing had not been manned at that time; there had been no gate and no warning system to announce the passing of trains – all of them expresses, booming to and from the north of the country. Coupled with the senselessness of the fatality, the apparent disregard for safety and negligence of the administrative bodies had made the deaths all the more tragic.
An auto-rickshaw driven by a green-horn high school boy with the driver, most likely his friend in the passenger seat behind had broken to a halt directly on the line. The cause had been simple. The boy didn’t know how to drive and had tried to top the slope to the railway line in high gear. The vehicle must have struggled under the mismanagement of the gears and had jerked to a halt on the line. The blaring horn of an approaching express had made matters worse, and panichad likely seized the poor school boy. Rather than sensibly jump out of the auto-rickshaw to save their own lives, both the fellows had done the unthinkable and had tried to save the vehicle instead by attempting to shove it into first gear and start it. Very likely they had started the engine but it had been too late. The express rammed the auto-rickshaw square, its cow-catcher shoving it some distance before casting it beside the track a mile further down, mangled and twisted and utterly deformed. The impact cost the school boy both his legs – he would die later in hospital. The driver had been tossed into the air like a rag doll, to crash into a culvert by the side of the tracks, a broken neck and a shattered skull – he had been killed instantly.
So, when my driver began to humour me with his own stories, I alluded to the above incident, reminding him that we were to pass over that very spot where the tragedy had occurred; I had pointed added with a grin that it was well past midnight, at the hour when all the devils and demons were afoot.
“Not once,” I snorted. “Twice.”
“Why twice?” he asked.
“Once while you drop me home and twice when you are on your way back.”
“Hah!” he laughed. “Ma’am, have you seen my eyes? They are green – like a cat. That means that no devil or demon or ghost has any power over me.” He cast me a glance in his rear-view mirror and added pompously, “that also means that I can never get scared of all such stuff.”
“Have you had the chance to take a peek at my brain?” I wanted to ask him conceitedly. “It has the knowledge of 17 years’ worth of academic study plus years and years of work experience. For me ghosts are mathematical equations, theorems and the concepts of force and gravity.
I didn’t. He wouldn’t have understood. I only stifled a yawn and told him that the colour of one’s eyes had nothing to do with warding off evil spirits.
“It’s true Ma’am,” he asserted and made a reference to mine, which, by the way are as common as the next kite that hovers over a smelly market place.
“That’s why people like you get scared,” he stated. “Because your eyes can’t frighten them away.”
“And yours can?” I asked with a little sarcasm that must have gone unnoticed because he nodded innocently.
“Oh yes Ma’am,” he answered with a smile. “Now tell me Ma’am,” he continued as he approached the railway line. “Would you have the guts to walk over this track in the dead of night, alone?”
Courage had nothing to do with it, I thought. It was all about sense. This was a lonely area in the day time – so much more during the night. The track to my left cut through a small gorge that was lined with slanting trees, forming a dark tunnel over the tracks. To the right the track ran on, to disappear around a bend – this side too was lined with trees, however unlike the left side where the sky could never be seen if one stood on the track in the night and looked upward, the right at least afforded that luxury. Regardless of any luxury, it was a known fact that the trees offered excellent cover for anyone who was up to no good – and a good many times folks had been waylaid, even during the day time by miscreants. I told my driver as much, but he only laughed scornfully.
“You won’t admit it,” he said.
He climbed the small slope to the track and then, suddenly with the giggle of a very naughty boy, cut the engine and turned off the headlights.
Silence!
We were now bang on the tracks – to my left and right there was utter blackness. Then, as my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I made out the outlines of the trees to my right. To my left it was still a world of pitch-black night. I turned away quickly and uneasily, trying very hard to remain calm. Then he flicked on the cabin light and turned toward me.
“Admit it Ma’am,” he grinned. “You are spooked.”
“What is there to be spooked?” I asked hoping that I looked calm. Then, observing his smug face, the uneasiness gave way to a little anger, because he had chosen this time to play a prank – after 16-17 hours of being away from home and rest. “Can you start the cab now?” I asked.
“Ha,” he guffawed. “You are frightened to death Ma’am. Come on. Just admit that you are very, very frightened now.”
“I’m not,” I asserted, cursing inwardly for telling him all about the horrible accident in my own endeavour to spook him. “Just because two idiots were killed here, doesn’t mean that their spirits are roaming around.”
“I don’t know – maybe they are,” he shrugged his shoulders. “But I do know that they cannot touch me – know why?” the grin spanned his face and he pointed to his eyes. “They can’t even scare me.”
By this time, I had shrugged off my uneasiness – there was nothing that I needed to be scared of, least of all the dark. This dark was nothing compared to the dark of the jungles, and I had had enough trekking and camping expeditions behind my belt to realise that it was the utter blackness that made the stars brighter. But no stars up there! Above me was the roof of the cab. Above the cab was an overcast sky.To my left was the black mystery of the track in the gorge, where in a culvert, not 20 feet away had lain a battered body, smashed by a speeding train. Still, I said, taking in a deep breath:
“You do realise that I can just as easily get out of your cab and walk home. My place is not a minute from here.”
“Hah! You don’t have the guts,” he laughed.
It’s a fact that I didn’t want to get out. Not because of ghosts, but because my younger brother had once been almost mugged by goons posing as cops a few months before. My driver was beginning to irritate me, and suddenly I had this unsporting thought of just whipping out my mobile, calling the office’s transport department and lodging a formal complaint against him.
As soon as I had thought of that, I decided against it. My driver had always been a good, cheerful man and there was nothing wrong about him. Ever ready to do his job with a smile, no matter how tired he was, he, like any other man his age, liked his share of pranks and imagined, I think that he could throw a of scare into a woman some seven or eight years his senior. So, I did the only thing that would bring him back to senses. I reached for the door and pretended to open it. He promptly turned on the central locking system and burst out laughing, turning out the cabin light to plunge us into complete darkness once again.
Instantly a huge beacon illuminated the blackness of the night to my left and the hollow blare of a train horn shattered the silence. Shaken right out of my skin, I whirled around, gasping as a train, not 20 feet from us began to slowly chug forward, blaring its horn once again. In the darkness, with only her beacon blinding us, she looked massive and terrifying, her cow-catcher like a row of teeth scraping the tracks, and her puffs of white steam from her engine like the snoring of a huge monster.
My mouth went dry and I stifled a yell of terror – but it was nothing compared to my driver’s reaction. All I remember now is a sobbing mass of hysteria, shoulders hunched, yelling out as he desperately tried to locate the keys in the ignition to start the cab.
The cab kicked forward as my driver released the clutch and accelerated, but his co-ordination had not been timed and the cab jerked to a halt. With a scream of terror, he reached for the ignition again with the vehicle in gear – when I think about it now, I reckon his leg had already been pushing hard against the clutch, so the cab began to roll down the slope. He released the clutch and the cab roared to life.
I turned around to look as we sped away – except for the beacon that cast an eerie triangle of light on the track ahead of her and the ghostly white puffs of steam from her massive engine, all the rest of the train was pitch-blackness. Except for the distinctchug and tack of her steel wheels against the points of the track as she picked up speed and the deep, hollow blare of her horn, all the rest was total silence.
I shivered.
I reckon my driver does not set store by the colour of his eyes anymore. He continued as my driver until I shifted houses, moving as far as possible from that railway crossing.
As for me – 17 years of academic knowledge and an equal, if not more number of years of work experience still cannot account for singular encounter that dark night.
At best I can only tell the story as it happened.
