A ghost story

My ancestral home is in a remote village, where electricity has reached only a couple of years ago. My ancestors were jamindars of that village and a few adjoining villages. Our home is just beside Damodar river, its partially in ruins and a small portion, which was earlier the courtroom of my ancestors is still in good condition, where we used to go every durga puja and kali puja.

During durga puja the place is full of people, we take generators with us and the entire place is lighted up, but during the kali puja the place is exactly the opposite. There are very few people there, only a very limited no of villagers who have the energy of attending the full night affair and a couple of family member. At the max seven or eight people, including the family members stay there through out the night and another half a dozen who are indispensable part of the Puja.

There are two seats, one seat on either side of our main entrance, seats which play the role of musical chair during the puja, but were free for all now. One of the seat faces and the other had its back towards a bedi, where our ancestors have performed tantrik rituals and one of them even got siddhi. According to the villagers our ancestral home is safe for the people of our family, but outsiders often meet a lady dressed in white colured, red bordered saree, who disappears all of a sudden. She is seen especially if some one commits some mischief there. That is why the place is deserted at night.

That year I went there with my uncle and my brother. I attended the puja but when the animal sacrifice started I left the puja mandap. I had the idea of lying down on the verandah of our house, to give myself a break after fasting the entire day, it was almost 3 AM in the morning, I was lying there exhausted when all of a sudden I heard sounds coming from inside the locked room. As if some one was banging the furnitures with a stick or some thing like that, a chill ran down my spine and I bolted from there, I went outside to sit on that seat, which had its back to the bedi. Actually I was thinking of lying down, when all of a sudden I heard a sound like some one has dropped some thing, right behind my back, I slowly turned back and saw nothing. I was weak from fasting the entire day, it was almost 3:30 in the morning, and I prayed that I heard it wrong, but then it was repeated again, then I went to the seat of the opposite side facing the bedi, to know what’s going on before bolting again.

Then to my utter amusement and relief I saw that the people of Burdwan were celebrating the diwali, and the sound of their cracker was reaching our small village after crossing damodar and its sand bank like nothing is in between.