A Spirit Encounter

It is a story about my encounter with a spirit that happened with me a few years ago. I will write this post as truthfully as my memory allows me to. Names have been changed due to privacy concerns.  

It is a very long post. I could have split it in part 1 and part 2, but I choose not to do so. 

Confession: I am almost 80% sure that it did happen with me but there is a 20% doubt because spirits are not human bodies to give concrete evidence to people who live in my dimension. 

Or maybe I am mad. 🤪

***

A pair of siblings- Nina and her younger brother Cheeku. There is a two year gap between them and I first met them in the Physics tuition back when I was in standard 11th. Nina was in 10th in that year. Me and Nina became very good friends, the friends who would sit side by side and gossip away anytime. Nina was very cheerful with sparkling eyes, beautiful smile, a moon faced chatty girl who would lift up the mood of the entire lot and engage everyone into a conversation. But I did not have much good relations with Cheeku. Disagreements, arguments, blaming was all there midst me and Cheeku and one fine day, he misinterpreted something I said and threw a pathetic abusive word at me. A kid younger to me, threw a piece of the worst thing he learnt at me and for the first time I heard that from anyone on face and this was enough to make my grudge go stronger and deeper. Though my friendship with Nina was good enough but Cheeku’s existence was exceptionally irritating and useless for me.

Like time, life goes on and we all gave into a new circle of friends and moved away. After twelveth, I got busy with the nerve -wracking admission process of hunting down a college and eventually it was decided that I will go to Delhi for my graduation. Obviously, I got busy fixing myself into a new world of handling an excessively meddling pg-owner, teachers, college classes and new friends in a new found freedom due to which the memories of school and tuition took a back seat in my head. 

I was in Delhi when all of a sudden a guy from tuition gave me a call. He was older than us, did not talk much with us but he was calling me. It was suspicious. Anyway, I picked up his call and he said that Cheeku has committed suicide, he is dead. My hatred for Cheeku and the grudge against him was so damn bad that I thought to myself- Achha hi to hai, vaise bhi konse kaam ka tha. (It’s a good thing. Anyway, he was useless.) But of course, I did not say that on call instead said something socially acceptable because that guy was sounding very surprised and shocked. He told me that he got to know about his death from the newspaper article he read which later I searched on Google and read it as well. 

Anyway, the one who died wasn’t special for me so I brushed it off without feeling bad for anyone and continued with my life. The food in PG was bad and me and my room-mate included momos in our staple diet. We tried momos from various places, from vendors to restaurants but nobody was able to beat the vendor near our PG. His veg momos were awesome and the pimples sprouting on our faces were awesome too. Health was kept aside for the sake of tongue and we were happy like that. Two room-mates constantly motivating each other and venturing out to find even more tasty things to eat, clicking pictures with filters on at certain angles to make pimples disappear and come back to the room to face the horrific face of the owner was a part of our routine. Life was good until one Friday when I woke up and looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see normal pimples but boil like pimples and acne all over my face. I got hell scared, called my mom and got ready to go back to my hometown which takes almost 7 hours to reach from Delhi by a bus.

On the next day, that is, Saturday I had a medical check up and was given some medicines and a few pills which worked and I could see a difference. On Saturday night I bid my parents a goodnight and slept in my room. I don’t know what happened then and what time it was but all of a sudden I saw a white structure of Cheeku standing in front of me. I had my eyes closed but I was aware and this white, smokey  Cheeku was staring one-pointedly at me, without blinking. He had an angry expression, a displeasing expression like the way we look at a person we don’t like when he or she isn’t looking at us. He was dissatisfied. I saw it but I was not feeling scared. Rather I thought, why the hell has Cheeku come to meet me? I opened my eyes in that direction and there was nothing, closed my eyes back again, and there was this weirdly staring Cheeku right in front of me.

I asked him- Why did you come? 

I did not like the way Cheeku was staring at me with so much discontent so I began to imagine him smiling. I don’t know what power my mind has, I made him smile. I wanted him to behave properly and I made him smile through my imagination. Or did I? I am not sure about this part. Maybe,I was in denial that Cheeku’s spirit has come and once when you deny the reality, you make up lies in your mind. Maybe, I was doing that. 

Cheeku moved a little and then I saw images of me and Cheeku laughing and smiling in the tuition room due to some common joke or something, I don’t know but those beautiful pictures passed by one after the other like a person flipping the pages of a book. It was beautiful and it made me so happy that I said to myself, Cheeku is not that bad after all. Those were absolutely beautiful images or memories which gave out the vibes of friendliness and it made me blissful.

All of a sudden, those images stopped displaying and I saw Cheeku once more. This time, he was fierce like he would do something. I had this inner voice in me that if I don’t forgive him now, it would be very very bad for me. This inner voice sent me chills and I mentally said to him- Cheeku, you ain’t in this world now but we should end this completely. I forgive you and there are no more grudges. You are free now, you came for forgiveness, go! You ain’t tied anymore.

The moment I finished saying that, Cheeku disappeared like a click just like he had appeared out of nowhere. I opened my eyes, there was no Cheeku. I closed it back again, and Cheeku was not to be seen. I did it a few times and this time, there was no Cheeku at all. So, I went back to sleep thinking that I was dreaming again.

It was too real to be a dream. Next morning , Sunday, I had to go back to Delhi. I tried hard to remember why I hated Cheeku, but nothing came to my head. I tried to remember everything but I could not remember anything except a few of those beautiful images, Cheeku’s presence and me forgiving him. It was weird. I knew the reason just a day ago, I knew it. I speculated while I was on the bus- was I thinking so much of Cheeku that he came in my dreams? No, the last time I thought about Cheeku was on the day he died and after that I never cared. Anyway, I decided to call Nina, Cheeku’s sister, to tell her everything. She said that she had exams going on so she was not willing to talk about Cheeku at that moment so, I just summed it up to her saying, Cheeku has gone. He won’t come back. Don’t worry, study. We agreed to talk to each other on this topic after her exams would be over in a few days. Miraculously, those boils like acne subsided that very day.

I was thinking about that incident and after three days of this thing, all of a sudden, I managed to recollect the reason for my hatred. I had forgotten it for three days and suddenly remembered the reason- that one pathetic word he once said to me. I was thinking and thinking and maybe, some things got clear to me.

After a few days, when Nina’s exams were over, I called Nina and told her everything. Each and everything. From the reason for my hatred to holding grudges, not feeling bad about his death and him coming to meet me, I said it all to her. After that, what she said completely blew my mind! She told me how Cheeku’s spirit was constantly troubling her after the day of his death. Cheeku in his spirit form would sometimes slap her, pull her hair, beat her, puncture the vehicle she was traveling by and never let her study. She was scared, she was irritated and she told me that after my call on that Sunday, Cheeku did not come back. 

Through my limited mind, I understood that Cheeku wanted me to forgive him and Nina was my friend. He had access to Nina, his sister and through her, he wanted to come to me. Somehow, pimples no less than boils appeared on my face and I was rushed to my hometown. Cheeku and Nina too had a home there. Cheeku was at his home when he hung himself to the fan. He wanted me to come back. He appeared and eventually disappeared. I understood that my grudge was so bad that it halted Cheeku or maybe there was some other reason. After this incident, there is one thing I am clear upon- no matter what, just forgive and move on. Holding any emotion so dear to the heart at the expense of a human being is definitely not good, at least, it wasn’t good for me. I have become a bit flexible now and I am still working on myself but I don’t know what this thing will bring upon me. Have I committed a big blunder which has made my negative karma thing a bit heavier or is it normal? Why was Cheeku dependent upon my forgiveness? Did Cheeku really go away? I don’t know because Nina has blocked all the tuition people away. We don’t have any contacts anymore and that’s okay. Has she blocked us or is it something else? I don’t know. I don’t have answers. I want to stay in oblivion yet want some answers. I don’t know what it all was. It is a real thing for me. And, I will have to forgive people constantly, no matter what, this is what I Learnt because I don’t have much knowledge about all these things. Do you have any knowledge about it?

***

Dear reader, I appreciate your patience as you chose to stick around till the end. It was my story, an experience but I am still not 100% sure. Had it been a dream, how did the incidents then match up with Nina’s? There are things I have no answers to but at Swamiji’s grace and Baba Neeb Karori’s grace, there is no room for negativity. We all are safe here. Jai Shri Hari!🙏😇

You are free to laugh it off. After all, it’s just a story. Maybe, I am imagining stuff.