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Waiting for the Ghost
A zigzag path through life feels utterly restless in the hot summer afternoon. A heavy lunch lulls the body into a nap on a holiday, only to trade it later for a sleepless night. I pounded the pillow, blaming it for failing to offer the comfort that might lead me to sound sleep. Outside, the streetlights on the college campus glowed dully beneath a gloomy sky. Barking dogs and wandering wild boars were the only witnesses to my wakefulness.
There’s always a game between the dogs and the boars; a midnight drama that oddly reassures me. I’m not alone in my insomnia; I have companions. The dogs, like opposition party members, bark loudly at the royal procession of boars. And true to the proverb, “a barking dog seldom bites”, their howls hold little power. The boars, majestic and unmoved, cross the road masterfully, ignoring the coarse barks hurled at them.
Among the chaos, a naive puppy; too young to understand the tension follows his mother, not to chase the boars but for a few precious drops of milk to fill his empty belly. Once the boars disappear into the deep shrubs, the dogs fall silent. At that very moment, a second gang of dogs; those from the canteen try to join forces with the dogs from the quarters. But the male, stalwart black dog, the gang’s leader, growls in protest. Not because of turf war or boars. No, his fear is more personal that these newcomers might charm the mother of his pup.
The five-day holiday has dehumanized the campus. Only a few like me remain tucked away in their quarters. This humanlessness emboldens the beasts, letting them rise with posture and purpose. Alas, there are no stars in the sky tonight, only drowsiness in my eyes. Sleep has no power to chain my lids. Cupid holds no charm to lure them shut with romantic dreams. Only the dazzling, man-made streetlights provoke my fingers to tap on the keyboard, capturing the sweetest scent of this dark night.
The breeze touches every sense, except taste. My tongue is otherwise engaged, sipping a cold strawberry milkshake. The beautiful sight of the Walden Pond surrounded by wildflowers, where I often imagine the Raas-Leela of Lord Krishna and Radha at dawn, is invisible in this shadowed hour.
Suddenly, all movement ceases: the boars, the dogs, the breeze, gone. What is there now to gaze at? A creeping feeling rises within me; a curiosity to see a ghost. Beyond the streetlights, beneath dense bushes, my eyes fix on a tomb. No ghost appears. But hope lingers to see a glimpse of that so-called terror. Seconds pass. Then minutes. Then hours. No one, and nothing, emerges. I begin to feel like Didi and Gogo in Waiting for Godot.
Perhaps this nothingness is the presence of ghosts in everything. My little eyes grow fatigued. My big belly, famished. I drift into drowsiness, still clinging to the hope of spotting a ghost among the shrubs. Waiting. Hoping. For another sleepless night. To catch the Godot-like ghost.
The Crisis Within
Where to begin, and what to begin, I truly don’t know. It’s no exaggeration to say that life is not a bed of roses. Ironically, nobody cares much about someone’s biography, yet everyone is deeply interested in the private affairs of their neighbors, colleagues, friends and especially their exes. They rarely celebrate others’ growth or goodness. But a downfall? That becomes a feast of gossip.
The more we advance in the outer world, the more we seem to decay inwardly. If a wife escapes a brutal marriage and reaches the zenith of fame, her abuser may shoot her in the dead of a winter night. Our society has become so modern that it has forgotten its inner core. We often remain unaware of the person living right next door until they take their own life.
Ironically, our minds are like Wikipedia, overflowing with details of what’s happening across the globe, yet completely blank about the life unfolding just meters away. When a celebrity is murdered, we march, strike, and protest until the culprit is caught. But when a thief robs and kills a man in our own neighborhood, how many of us react the same way?
I felt strangely hollow when my neighbor asked my name six months after I had moved in. I wondered: was she truly that busy, or did she simply not see me as a person worth noticing? Look back at the battlefield of Kurukshetra; good and evil stood clearly defined. Now glance at modern society. You might find the very person who once plotted to sabotage your job riding joyfully behind you on your motorbike, as if you were lifelong friends.
This crab mentality not only degrades the individual but poisons the generation that follows. Emotional growth has stagnated. The word emotion itself is facing an identity crisis. The sacred bond between husband and wife has become the birthplace of something disturbing, an existential crisis. A father selling his daughter for a bottle of rum. A mother crossing lines with her son in pursuit of physical pleasure. These are not fictions. They are grotesque truths reflected in the mirror of our society.
Much is said about how people in Western countries face higher rates of depression and alienation. But the media often overlooks the emotional alienation suffered by people in the East; those who appear happy within families but feel empty and abandoned inside. To fill this inner void, many turn to religion or spiritual paths. Sometimes, it brings peace. Yet even in that silence, a question detonates like a nuclear bomb: “Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? For whom am I earning? What exactly am I living for?”
