Puncture Moments

Puncture Moments

The Tamarind Tree and The Ghost Mother

In the summer, we would go to our grandmother’s house in Kadmoor, a remote area with no means of transportation. We had to travel four hours by bus and another two hours on foot across fields and a river to get to her house, which was a large house with plenty of rooms and a big backyard. On vacation, all of my brothers, sisters, and cousins, from various locations used to come there. It was a huge group of 23 kids.

Since it was an agriculturally dominant family, there were plenty of hoes, harrows, ploughs, bullock carts, oxen, buffaloes, cows, sheep and dogs.

The village was without electricity at that time, and the house was lit by chimneys. The house at night was so dark that it was hard to identify even our parents🤔

In the backyard, there was plenty of space. After dinner, all of us would gather and sit there. During that time, many stories used to come out from my cousins or my siblings. One of my cousins — Bhaskar, who was the eldest in our group — told us a story by pointing to a big tamarind tree near the house. He said that under that tree lived a mother ghost 🧟‍♀️ of 7 children, and she would come out every Amavasya night. She would be very hungry and eat people whom she found near the tree. Hearing this, all of us started running like crazy inside the house with fear😢 😭

That night was the most fearful night. We slept covering the whole body with blankets and the next morning I heard my aunt scolding Bhaskar because he urinated in bed out of fear. He wanted to scare us but he himself was so frightened that he urinated in his pants😂😂

         Come Tomorrow

“Come Tomorrow,” I saw in large chalk lettering on the doors of numerous homes, including my neighbours’. But I couldn’t figure out why they’d framed it that way. When we arrived at school as usual, our teacher inquired about the whereabouts and reasons for the other lads’ absence. “Didn’t that ghost take them away?” he laughed.

Hearing this I was terrified. Only a few classmates were absent that day for unknown reasons, but after hearing what my teacher said, I came to the conclusion that they had been abducted by a ghost.

I was afraid; even going to the bathroom by myself was tough. I told my older sister what our teacher said in class. She, too, became horrified and added that she had heard the same stories and that many people are writing “come tomorrow” on their front door to the ghost, so let us do the same. I thought that was a nice idea. So we scribbled the same thing on our door too. 

However, after discovering it, my parents deleted it and chastised us. For several days, I worried about how to protect myself and my family from that ghost.

My Hindi Teacher

When we were in high school, we once went on tour. In Tamil Nadu, the bus that was carrying us (the students) got punctured in the middle of the road. It was around 9:00 o’clock. Every one of us got off the bus. There were many trees, giving the impression of a forest. And we were all seated, lying down, moving along the sidewalk, or standing still. It was pitch black. The only source of illumination was the bus’s parking lights. One of my friends was recounting a story about a ghost that used to visit his house and knock on his door all night long as we were seated a little distance from the bus.

He asserted that several residents of his neighbourhood had disappeared, and numerous witnesses had seen a ghostly apparition flying through the air while dressed in a white sari 👩🏿‍🦳. Then, from a distance, we heard a noise. While we were unaware of her presence in that darkness, our Hindi teacher was silently listening 👂🏼 to all that was being talked while seated at a distance from us. She then scolded us and left, saying, “People won’t let others sit comfortably,” and sat with the other teachers who were further away from us. 

She was absolutely terrified, we were confident of that😂😂

Love and Peace,

Narendra