‘Sir, it was pitch dark. And time... well, it must have been about 2 or 3am. While patrolling, I saw the figure of a very fair-complexioned lady dancing under a tree in the backyard”, a quivering Bhim Singh, our night watchman, told my father.
As our family members listened to him intently, he said, “I stopped in my shoes wanting to know whether it was hallucination or a reality. The pale skin memsaab [Madam] had blonde hair. She wore a skirt that sparkled in the dim light from a lamp post nearby.
“Sometimes she spun clockwise, sometimes anti-clockwise, bent slightly on sides as if she was holding the hand of someone who was, however, not visible. She looked suspended in the air a few feet above the ground, her legs not being visible either”.
The watchman said it was a horrifying and bone chilling experience for him. He felt like screaming but did not, lest he incurred the dancing lady’s wrath. He withdrew into his one-room tenement located in the big compound and bolted it. The man said he peeped through a crevice in the door and found her still dancing. After half an hour or so, she disappeared.
While we kids got goose bumps listening to him, my father appeared sceptical as well as confused. He did not interrupt and just let him have his say, perhaps to ascertain whether he had concocted a cock and bull story with some ulterior motive, or was it a real happening?
Two years earlier, an unemployed Bhim Singh had approached my father seeking employment. He had not eaten for 3-4 days, so he was given food and hired as a night watchman to look after our huge compound in Aligarh, in Uttar Pradesh. The walled compound had our locks factory on one side and a huge bungalow on the other, divided by a road. My grandfather had bought the locks business and the bungalow from the British family of one Mr Sparling and his daughter Katherine when they left India for good in the late 1930s.
Bhim Singh went on to say that he had heard about some memsaab (Katherine) who had died long ago. So, the figure he had seen must have been her ghost. My father comforted him and advised him to forget it, saying it was as a bad dream.
After the watchman left, my father told us that Katherine, popularly known as memsaab, was so attached to the bungalow and its surroundings that she was reluctant to leave the place.
Known as Sparling Compound, it had a backyard farm which was irrigated with water drawn from a well with a big leather bag that was pulled by two bullocks in the typical traditional way. Katherine used to watch it with interest.
The compound had, among other plants, bougainvillea shrubs of all hues that lent a lot of charm. But of special interest to Katherine was a tree near the well where she used to spend considerable time sitting. It was here that Bhim Singh claimed to have sighted her.
Mr Sparling was aware of his daughter’s love for the place but they were driven by circumstances to leave India. After about a decade, the ghost story got wings, some people claiming to have been eye witnesses. But that left a few questions unanswered. Even assuming that the ghost lady did appear dancing, witnessing it was not possible for any outsider. Located in an isolated area in Aligarh of those days, the big compound was walled and no outsider could have entered a private compound, that too at 2am.
Bhim Singh quit his job, leaving us wondering whether he had done so because of his genuine (or fake) fear of the “ghost” or because he had landed a better job. Maybe the latter was true but he was not opening up out of modesty and respect for his benefactor who helped him in distress. Another question that kept nagging us was whether Katherine, “the very pale” lady who died perhaps in England, could have appeared at her favourite spot under a tree in Aligarh.
Much has been written and discussed on this subject the world over. I need not delve into it. However, I share the view that souls do travel, distance being no constraint. And unlike mortal beings like you and me, souls do live forever.
I also share the feeling that the dead worry for their living loved ones as much as they loved them when they were alive. Another point with which I concur is that souls do move (also called haunting) around their loved ones and their favourite places. Perhaps they can see us but we can’t see or touch them. We might only feel their presence.
This is a never ending debatable subject so I would leave it here.
Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.
