Me... big mouth and coward

I have a big mouth. That's sheer objective analysis. It dawned on me doubly as I was speaking to my friend today. She is going around with a guy. And before they started going around, I told her one day, "You know what? If you ever go around with him, I will feel very sad for you". To this day I rue those words. Because each time I talk to her she reminds me of that one line.

And I am a terrible coward. It was reinforced as I went to bed very reluctantly on Saturday night, actually morning. I watched Ghost Ship on Saturday evening. I had heard it was a scary movie from S. Even then I was so badly drawn towards it that as it struck 9, I surfed to the channel before I could stop myself. To mitigate the effect, I tried to watch other things at the same time, like the film Plan. Of course, it didn't help. As an extra measure I read an MB before turning in. That too, didn't. At 4 I went to sleep with the lights on. After some time, I switched it off and jumped into bed shrouding myself in a bed cover. Hence forth, I lay on the bed, stiff as a ramrod. I was waiting for morning and my maid to come and knock on the door.

Every time I see a scary film it's the same. I wish there was some remedy.

Once my brother told me about an experience that scared the lights out of me. It happened to him while he was in a hostel. The building in which he was staying at the time faced a Muslim cemetary. He was told by his teachers about some of the known incidents. One night he was studying alone in the hall when the windows (which were tightly shut) started flapping to and fro. My brother asked his teacher the next day about it. He was told, "See you can't do anything about it.You have to stay here. So there are two ways you can deal with it. You either ignore these happenings or get affected by them and cower each time they take place." My brother chose the former. I couldn't sleep three nights in a row after that.

There is one story of my father's that just confuses me. Do I believe him or not is the question that I ask myself till date. He till sticks to it. When he was a little boy and stayed in a joint amily, they used to have a separate kitchen where they used to dine together. To get to the kitchen they had to take a flight of stairs that was outside the house. Next door was an old British mansion. One evening as my father was going up the stairs for dinner, he happened to look into the neighbour's lawns. And what he saw apparently chilled him to the bone. It was a skondokata (that's the Bengali word for a headless ghost). Each night after that he would race up the stairs and refuse to look next door.

But once I read a book called The Adventures of Holly Hobby. It belonged to my friend Amy and it was the story of Holly Hobby, a ghost who came down to meet one of her descendants. They embarked on an adventure which led them to the jungles of Guatemala. It was a beautiful book and one that reaffirmed my faith in ghosts. Good ghosts that is.