The Ghost

In the month of February, it is still cold in the foothills of the Himalayas and a thin veil of mist lies low in the mornings and evenings but the days are one of sun filled warmth. This is the season when tiger sightings are common in the forests. We drove down to the Corbett Tiger sanctuary one morning hoping to witness the thrill of seeing a tiger in the wild and shoot it, with my new Nikon and its impressive long-distance lens.

When we started our journey from Delhi the sun was shining brightly and the earth smiled with the cheerfulness of late winter. Unfortunately for us we never got to see a tiger. But we did end up seeing a ghost.

It was not for want of effort though that we missed sighting the tiger. We did everything that the experts told us to attract the beast. Beware of going out after the dark, a tiger could be lurking behind every bush. We made sure to come out at night with the new one foot long four cell flash light, specially purchased for the tiger safari. It cast a powerful beam which cleaved through the pitch darkness and if ever a tiger was hiding it would be soon exposed in the bright white light.

We had booked rooms in the jungle rest house, a two hundred old wooden bungalow deep inside the tiger reserve where many a shikari had spent nights in the past century, when it was legal, shot and killed hundreds of tigers whose skins hung in Maharaja’s palaces and old Indian army messes as hunting trophies. But alas, nary a tiger was around, and we spent two fruitless nights there. In the effort we got bitten by numerous mosquitoes and scared to death by the creaking sounds of the night jar whose call was entirely new for us city bred. A pair of hawk owls who had made their home on a tree near the lodge kept us company staring at us disapprovingly with their round eyes and hooted intermittently as if telling us to leave the jungle alone.

The only redeeming feature was the lodge’s cook who served a fabulously cooked chicken curry garnished from herbs that he grew in the surrounding jungle and of the fowl which clucked around in the compound.

On the advice of the rest house manager, we took along with us, Ram Bharose, the most experienced guide available on our hired open jeep for the jungle safari. The drivers and the guide know each track the tigers take inside the forest like the back of their hands and Ram Bharose was the best of them all. He took the jeep through dusty earthen tracks surrounded by tall dry grass – the ideal hiding ground for tigers and cutting off the engine we waited patiently.

A sudden screeching of monkeys and a call of the barking deer warned the jungle that the tiger was nearby but it remained well hidden from us. Ram Bharose pointed to the pug marks a male tiger had left crossing barely fifty yards from the jeep, but that was the closest we came to spotting it. Scratch marks on a nearby tree trunk were tell tale signs that a male tiger had indeed been there marking his territory. We even heard the rasping cough of a leopard, but that silent creature slipped unnoticed into the darkness. Broken branches along the way indicated where an elephant herd had crossed and we saw a large group of them in the distance with a couple of large males with their long, curved tusks.

We took other trails known for tiger sightings and one where a tiger and her cubs were known to cross every morning and we waited patiently nearby but the tiger had decided not to come that day or maybe sensed our presence. These tigers were not known to be man eaters so we were not in any real danger but that did not diminish in any way the thrill of being so nearby the wild untamed beast. In the end, when the time came to return next morning, we had to remain satisfied with the sightings of elephant herds, jungle birds, numerous deer and monkeys.

The four of us, my wife and I and my friend VK and his lady M, sat in my Maruti esteem car and drove off starting our 200 miles return journey to the capital. It was around eleven in the morning and we hoped to emerge from the forest by three, safely before darkness enveloped the floor of the forest. The rest house manager had warned us about exiting the forest well before dark. The local people believed that the ghost of a villager eaten by a man-eating tiger whose cremation could not be done for want of his body lurked in the forest and emerged after dark.

We had traversed the same road barely two days ago and were confident of the way driving as fast as the barren, bumpy and dusty earthen road would take us which in those conditions was barely15 to 20 kmph. It would take us around three – four hours of driving before we could emerge from the forest on to the metalled high way.

We had covered two thirds of the way and had barely an hour of the forest left to pass when a depression in the road loomed at a point where the road was turning and we slowed down to a near halt, When I tried to take the car up from this depression the wheels got stuck in the soft earth. Attempts at accelerating the car resulted in the wheel just spinning at one point and the spin causing a further deep trench forming under the wheel. We were stuck and all of us came out of the car to inspect the wheels. We decided that it would be best to place small pieces of rock and stones under the stuck wheel to act as a grip and move the car forward.

The four of us moved around searching for such small rocks and stones and when we had gathered a sufficient quantity, we carefully wedged these under the wheel. I went back in the car after we thought that our manoeuvring would work, and started the engine giving it a quick acceleration. The other three people outside gave the car a push from the rear hoping to dislodge it. It was all in vain. The car wheel remained stubbornly in one place and simply spun around instead of budging forward.

We were in a deep forest of tall Sal trees its large leaves forming a shield preventing sunlight seeping in and casting long shadows on to the ground below. The road was bleak on which only rare vehicles travelled and no help was to be found. It was three in the afternoon and in an hour or two darkness would overtake us. We realised that we were in big trouble and wondered what we could do next. I broke off with a curse looking at the barren desolate scene. A stealthy silence had enveloped us.

At that moment a faint sound of the tingling of bells wafted through the air gradually getting louder as the sound moved towards us. Meandering through the forest a herd of about fifty or so large horned greyish white cows emerged near us, followed by an old farmer and his dog. The farmer was dressed in dusty faded and coarse clothes and a white cloth tied around his head for protection against the sun and carrying a stout stick in his hand. We considered his arrival a miracle. He looked at us and taking in the sight soon guessed our predicament.

‘Our car is stuck and we need help to get it out. Could you please give it a push,’ I spoke to him.

He heard me and without replying nodded his head and moved towards the rear of the car. I got in, started the engine and he along with the others pushed the car forward. This time the car jerked ahead with ease and crossed over the depression where its wheels were stuck and with the accelerator pressed leapt out and move ahead coming to a stop on firm level ground. We all heaved a sigh of relief.

Thanking the poor farmer profusely as some saviour messiah for us we all got in the car and drove on. As we were driving everyone was uncharacteristically silent and brooding. We must have gone nearly three to four kilometres ahead when my wife spoke out,

‘Did you see how easily the farmer pushed our car. He seemed to have supernatural strength in his thin hands. We should have paid the poor man some money instead of merely thanking him with words.’

‘Yes, he did seem needy in that old frayed jacket that he wore.’

A similar thought has been nagging me all this while and I spoke out ‘Let’s turn around and find him and give him some money.’

‘Are you sure you want to turn around now, it will be dark soon and we can soon be safely out on the highway if we go ahead. Afterall we may be being very silly; people don’t always expect money in return for help’ said VK.

I decided to take the risk and slowed the car. At that moment a green coloured open jeep speedily over took us from behind. In it were a band of four young men. These rakish revellers had loud music blaring from their vehicles speakers and were wildly waving as they crossed us making it obvious that they had imbibed a lot. They shattered the silence of the jungle as they sped past us leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

‘Don’t these ruffians know that playing loud music and shattering the silence of the jungle is banned’ remarked Mrs M in disgust.

I turned our car around and started the drive back along the road which now seemed familiar.

‘It shouldn’t take us more than fifteen minutes to reach the place where our car had got stuck on the road and the farmer with his cows would surely be nearby.’

A little while later we spotted the farmer sitting on a road side boulder and easily visible in his loose white cotton dress and head scarf. Strangely none of his cows were nearby. Bringing the car to a halt beside him we got out.

“I was waiting for you to return’ he said surprising us.

Both VK and I took out a 200 note each wanting to hand it to him and I said,

‘We want to thank you for your help with our car. If you had not come, we may have been stranded for hours and here’s a small token of our appreciation for the help.’

He smiled at us and refusing to accept the renumeration replied,

‘I could never accept any money for helping a fellow person in need and I don’t really need it either. You might think me to be poor from my clothes but I live in the village bordering the park and am sufficiently well off for my needs.’

‘How did you know that we’ll be back?’ asked my wife.

With a twinkle in his eye he replied,

‘There was someone waiting to take all four of you away but now you are safe: he has found some others. Because of your charitable good intentions, you escaped him.’

We turned our faces away from him to see if anyone could make out any meaning from his statement and it appeared that all of us were equally puzzled.

The next moment when we turned around, he had strangely disappeared as if in thin air. A breeze rustled through the trees.

‘Where did he go?’ we were left wondering as there was a fair bit of clearing from where we stood and the edge of the forest.

‘Let’s go said VK as darkness would soon fall and the forest was not a safe place in the dark.

‘Wonder where he’s vanished like a ghost and what on earth he meant – strange fellow.’

We sat in the car as I turned it around and hurriedly drove away. In a short while we emerged from the forest into the glow of a sunset. At that point the road suddenly dips over a culvert under which flows a trickle of a stream. Just short of this point a road barrier had been placed manned by a forest guard who was holding and wildly waving a light to prevent us from going any further. We came to a stop.

‘Can’t go any further,’ said the guard ‘the culvert has been inundated by a sudden flash flood from the mountains due to unexpected cloudburst there. The little stream has turned into a torrent and swept away a jeep with four young men who went ahead before you. They are all dead and their jeep has been found many miles downstream.’

We heard all this through the roar of the raging waters below, in shock and amazement.

The old man had been right after all. Was he a ghost?

Death had truly been in wait.