The anklet

'I have never experienced anything like this before in my life',I heard my brother saying.He was talking to my uncle and apparently to my mother who was busy making tea.His attempts to include me among audience had failed after his several iterations of 'IT-IS-SO-REAL' and 'IT-IS-SPOOKY' kind of loud statements near my bed.I had no habitof bargaining my good-morning sleep with anything less than a rich tea.Mom had just announced that it was ready.Idea of a cup of hot tea defeated the torpor state of my mind and I was out of bed, when I heard this statement.Different faculties of my brain were still adjusting to the newly awaken state.'It was well past midnight',he had added the next statement to his talk.I was sitting among his listeners now.I had never witnessed him being serious in life.But today he was or at least he was acting serious.'I clearly saw her.It was the female ghost.''You know,' I cut him short'you have a career in management'.Suddenly I was the centre of the stares.NOW-WHERE-DID-THIS-COME-FROM.'Well,you are talking darn crap and you are serious about it',I explained my prediction with a sarcasm sodden smile.'I do see somebody as a Bihar Police constable.Who else can have such visionary deductions.' Before I finished the first sip of tea,he had returned my comment.I experienced, first ever in my life, that words too can cause concussion.My brother had just demonstrated his ability to do so.A constable was a bad exchange against a manager. Under unavoidable circumstances,I can talk crap with conviction but I can never negotiate a bribe in broad day light.I imagined myself potbellied standing outside a police station chewing tobacco.I almost spat the tea out at the thought of tobacco. My brother had finished his story of how he bumped in to the notorious female ghost. It had happened last dark-street-lamp-less night when he was returning from the
play rehearsal in which he was playing an honest police inspector.Perhaps his roleplay was the spark behind his derogatory attack against my sarcasm.My brother was the best reader of my expressions.He apologised for his remark and declared,'I can prove what I said' and walked out.I was relieved by his apology but more perplexed by 'what he'll prove and how?'.He returned nearly an hour later with a victorious smile on his face which faded slowly by seeing amusing grin on our faces.Trying to figure out the reason behind our amusement and regain his confidence,he pulled out something from his pocket.It was an anklet.'Look,this was there at the place where I bumped in to her.'
Laughter burst out.I saw the formation of wrinkles on his forhead,upward twist of eyebrows,broadening and upward shrinking of his nose simultaneously.His expression of obfuscation,if recorded,would have served as a chapter in comical acting.Just after he had left home in search of proof,our domestic help had brought the news that a girl from the neighbourhood had bumped into a walking skeleton last night.She had hurt her knee badly and lost her anklet in the process and was yet to recover from the shock of this ghostly encounter.A local exorcist was invited to treat her.


Piktru says 'Ghosts are not superstitious,they don't believe in humans!'