Phantom footsteps, ghostly voices, haunted homesteads. Never before had the village undergone such eerie experiences. Yes, they’d whiled away many an evening sitting around a bonfire in the chaupal or village courtyard, listening to supernatural stories handed down the generations from their great, great, great—who knew how many greats—grandfathers times. And yes, the forest a short distance away was “known” to be haunted.
But to actually have a paranormal happening as a result of tragic events bang in the middle of the village itself was an entirely different matter. I’d been taken to this village more than seventeen years ago by my mali or gardener who hailed from the village. With help from my guides and others, we had had been able over time to bring a considerable measure of stability and overall peace in the village. However, we had been unable to induce the troubled spirits to leave, and their homesteads remained haunted.
It had in fact been two intertwined love stories led to the existence of two haunted houses. It had been a tragic case of two love stories going awry, but there was no doubt that justice, albeit of a strange kind, had been meted out to the guilty. To recap happenings, when Revathi was born, there were celebrations in the entire village. People who heard that the birth of a girl was cause for celebration were surprised because the arrival of a girl was usually cause for gloom. But then they didn’t know that Revathi was the first girl to be born in the family after several generations.
The joy and long drawn out ceremonies surrounding Madhav’s birth in another family didn’t surprise outsiders either—a male child after all was always welcome. But here again, what many people didn’t know was that Madhav was the first boy to be born after a gap of several generations. And appropriately perhaps, Revathi and Madhav—both born in special circumstances—tied the knot in a very special way. Later, the Revathi-Madhav wedding became the comparison point for all weddings in the community and the region around.
The years rolled on and Revathi and Madhav remained happy and contented. They were in the ninth year of their marriage when a cloud descended on their happy existence. The cloud took the form of Madhav’s cousin’s wife, Sneha. Deepak, Sneha’s husband, was a skilled metal engraver. After spending many years in Moradabad, he decided to return to his roots and settle down on land that had been with the family for generations. As chance would have it, their land was adjacent to Madhav’s ancestral property.
As neighbours, it was but natural for Deepak and Sneha to turn to Revathi and Madhav for guidance and whatever else. But Revathi soon noticed that the interaction between Madhav and Sneha was more than neighbourly. Before long, the Madhav-Sneha love affair became common knowledge and the village elders decided to take the errant spouses to task. But Madhav and Sneha were defiant and declared that they had decided to live together as man and wife.
The community and village elders were appalled. But they had reckoned without Revathi. Her questions and pleadings led to several meetings and finally, through a mixture of threats and appeals, Madhav was persuaded to stay with his family till an acceptable solution could be found. The period stipulated for coming to a decision was three months. But none of this deterred Madhav from meeting Sneha secretly in the woods or in the fields. It must have been during one such secret meeting that the plot was hatched.
There were horrendous screams late one evening and even as people rushed in the direction of Madhav’s house, he came rushing out shouting that Revathi had been attacked by a bear. On entering the house, people found Revathi gasping for life, her face a bloody mass of blood. She died before anybody could recover from the shock. Nobody believed the wild bear story. The cremation over, the collective village grief turned into outrage. How could Madhav and Sneha be brought to justice?
Even as the community discussed various ways, Madhav was cornered by none else than Revathi. In less than a week, he came to dread the evenings, because the moment dusk fell, he would be followed by footsteps which he knew were Revathi’s. If he sat down, the footsteps would start moving in a circle around him. In desperation, Madhav and Sneha fled from the community and began living in a village more than a hundred kilometres away. But they couldn’t escape from Revathi’s footsteps.
They moved away yet again but there was no reprieve. There was no escaping the punishment of the footsteps. It wasn’t yet six months after Revathi’s death when the community got news that Madhav and Sneha, unable to bear being haunted constantly by footsteps, consumed poison and died hand in hand. Back in their village, the houses Revath-Madhav and Madhav-Sneha had occupied remained deserted over the years, and even though we had ensured that screams and ghostly sightings no longer frightened villagers, lights continued to shine at odd times at night, there were often footsteps and the sound of doors and windows being opened and closed after nightfall, and sometimes, there were voices.
Everyone gave the haunted houses a wide berth. But now, more than seventeen years after the tragedies, the village has been gripped by fear and anxiety again. The land on which the haunted homesteads stand is to be acquired, along with the land of some other homesteads for a government project. Villagers fear that when the abodes of Revathi, Madhav and Sneha are razed, their spirits will begin troubling the remainder of the village, the horrendous screams will return along with ghostly sightings and the hard won peace of the village will be shattered.
The villagers fears are not unfounded. How can Revathi, Madhav and Sneha’s spirits be restrained or given mukti or at least peace of some kind when their abodes are demolished? That is amongst the latest challenges before me and others who handled the situation years ago. We have plans, but have decided to wait and see how Revathi, Madhav and Sneha’s spirits react to their “de-homing”. Villagers are extremely anxious. Will we succeed in ensuring peace for both the spirits and the village? If not, what will be the consequences? Will keep you informed.