Conversations with Sredni:

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the
universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the
living and the dead"

- James Joyce, 'The Dead'.

***

I had seen only a glimpse of her. Inspired by my own spontaneity and

seduced by the romantic scenes unfolded slowly by the mists of Manali, I
decided to follow. I told my friends to go back to the room and wait for me.

Adventure gave me wings that evening. But I failed to catch up to her. She
was always a reflection, a glimmer, a far mirage that revealed itself only
when all my hope was lost, and she dutifully obliged by giving me the
slightest hints of her whereabouts. She was always that edge of shadow
around the corners of unknown streets. She was always a retrospect, an
afterthought who forced me back in the chase at the last moment, sensing
that I had almost given up.

She slowly led me out of the beautiful town of Manali. I had seen her near
the small, wet market place. Far, White Mountains bear witness to the fact
that it was she who saw me first. She who started the chase, the hunt. Not
that it matters now.

It is night now as I climb a snowy ridge and jump over to the other side of the
hill. It had begun to snow an hour ago, giving a further edge to the chase. I
can hear her anklets, if I listen carefully, muffled as they are by the falling
snow. But that is not necessary. I am now able to see her footprints clearly. I
follow, unsure of where her steps will lead.

Her eyes. Something in the way the light of Manali's evening sun fell on them
- that's what started this. Something almost Arabic in her eyes. They seem to
be bending the light towards her. Tuning, manipulating...matching the Sun's
wavelength. That's what mesmerized me. That's why I am not giving up yet.

The snow and the wind are becoming stronger now. It’s very difficult to walk
in the snow, especially on a rugged terrain like this. You can't judge depth,
and I have already tripped thrice. Once, I scared a squirrel that was trying to
climb up a tree. It fell down, scurried around and climbed up again, safe in its
comfort. I thought of turning back then, towards the warm room that awaits
me. Back to my friends.

These thoughts return again as I lose sight of her footprints. I stop and take
deep breaths, leaning against a tall pine. It shelters me against the snow and
wind, so I sit down, deciding to rest awhile.

I take stock of the area around me as I realize just how much the terrain has
changed since leaving Manali. I am now in a narrow trail, overlooking a
yawning valley on the right and a dark pine forest to my left. I look ahead
unable to judge how far this chase will take me. I look back, knowing for sure
if I turn back now I will regret it later. I decide regret is better than
hypothermia.

I look at my watch and find that it’s close to 11.30 in the night. Suddenly, I
realize the foolishness and the madness of this chase. "What was I thinking?"
I ask myself. I realized later that when you are out traveling, you tend to do
things that you wouldn't think of doing normally.

Also, as soon as I checked my watch, I regretted it. With the realization that
it was close to midnight came unbidden, superstitious thoughts of the night. I
imagined - saw and heard - ghosts around me. The fast moving clouds, the
full moon light, the howling wind, the trees half-covered with snow and the
falling snow itself, all came together in an eerie dance to scare me. It’s fine
until you think about these things. Once it pops into your brain, it’s hard to
stop thinking.

I shake my head and peer into the darkness, trying to scare away any
imaginary beings that haunt these mountains. I scare away the fear with
slowly gathered courage. I get up, giving myself a pep talk, and take just one
step in the direction of Manali - away from the chase.

As if sensing my decision, a dark voice whispers in the wind,

"Blood of a Tigress..."

***

I whirl around, heart pumping away crazily, almost smashing into the pine
that had sheltered me. The fear that came from the understanding that there
was someone beyond the darkness talking to me was overshadowed by the
very words that were spoken! Blood of a tigress?! For a moment, the rush of
wind convinces me that I had imagined those words. But there is an
unmistakable chill in the air now. I am more cold now than on the entire
chase, and the snow that falls on me could well be falling on my soul. I can
hear my heart beat wildly over the shrieking of the wind.

I force myself to calm down and turn around, my back to the girl. In my
mind, she is no more the girl with the stunning eyes. In my mind, she takes
on a morbid attire of death and decay. She develops black wings and
bloodied claws and teeth. Without legs, she floats into my thoughts and
threatens to merge into my reality, chasing me without making a noise, so
that she can close up on me, grab my neck and snap it upwards with a
powerful jerk.

A single, spine-chilling scream cleaves the noises and plunges the night into
icy silence. The wind stops howling, as if turned off by whatever mysterious
being held sway over this night. A trickle of blood flows into the trail from
somewhere within the darkness of the forest, and slowly reddens the snow. I
hate seeing red snow. I have seen it once before and the memory always
leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The collars of my jacket whip around in the wind, bruising my neck. I am

more worried about the scream than my bruised neck. The scream didn't
sound like anything remotely human. It was guttural, somber, deep and
mournful. A full throated scream, not a shriek. I remember thinking that the
scream sounded more 'animal than human'.

I decide that I can't take a chance on an assumption, and find myself

nodding at my own thought that someone might need my help. I peer into
the darkness of the pine forest and with a final deep breath, plunge myself
into its depth - towards the direction of the scream.

Every few seconds, I hear almost inaudible little moans. I fearfully realize
that even if I reach the person on time, it might be too late for him or her. I
find myself praying that it’s not a woman...the woman. Believe me, if
someone were screaming in the night, in the pitch darkness of the pine
forests of Manali in the middle of a snow storm, I'd be fervently wishing it’s a
man. A woman makes for a far scarier ghost in these settings.

As I am thinking along these lines, I fail to understand why I started this

chase in the first place. I am lost in an unknown city after I see this girl who
literally bent the sunlight towards her eyes and I take off on this wild hunt,
thinking on parallel lines about the turn of events. Am I supposed to save this
person who is screaming? Or is it more sinister than that? Am I being lured
into a trap by a blood thirsty demon?

I stumble forward, unable to see anything farther than a foot in the darkness
and snow. Three minutes into the walk, I see a strange luminescence coming
from a clearing in front of me, and I hear what immediately feels like a final,
drawn out moan. I was not prepared for what I saw when I entered the
clearing. Strangely, it was not snowing here, and the aforementioned
luminescence seemed to be coming from the sky, as if the clearing was lit by
a full moon. The moon wasn’t out yet. In the darkness, the light was sending
out a message of understated threat - 'I am not afraid to face you in the
light'.

I step into the light myself, expecting to see a human form writhing on the
ground and at least a little blood on the snow, which as previously
mentioned, I don’t care for. I see a beautiful feline form, sprawled on its
stomach, its fur white under the light and snow. Blood is rushing out of
sockets that previously held its eyes, holes that now face heavenward.
Someone has snapped the white Tiger's (tigress, I realize a few scary
seconds later) head completely reverse, so that if it were to look down it
could see its own back.

I take a step back.

I stand frozen to the ground for half a minute. Behind me in the darkness
outside the clearing, it’s snowing furiously. Thoughts of my friends, snow and
the girl all disappear. I am left with many mind-numbing responses - Panic.
Fear. Escape.

Blood is still slowly oozing out of her eyes and mouth, reddening the fur and
the snow around her. 'Blood of a tigress...' now makes sense, but not
completely.

Who would do such a thing? I fortify myself and decide to look for any clue
before turning my back on the whole thing. Curiosity still gets the better of
me.

After a few minutes of frantic search, I fail to find anything. Frankly, I am

actually happy about that. I give one last look at the tigress, feeling for it,
and I am about to turn around when I realize its position must mean
something. Its eye-less holes still stare at the open sky above.

Somehow, I expected that looking up would be a mistake. Intuition, perhaps?

For the first time since entering the clearing, I look up. Hovering silently
above the tree line with a menacing smile on her indistinguishable face is a
tall, white ghost. Her eyes are as empty as the Tigress', nothing except
black. That’s the only part of her that's dark. Flowing white hair covers her
face. Her whole being is misty, as if yet undecided on which dimension she
wants to merge into. Thin, very tall, very smoky and very, very haunting. Her
eyes are fixed upon mine as she slowly descends.

Face to face we stand now. She gives me a wicked smile. I am unable to look
at her directly any longer. My body decides I have had enough, and I
promptly faint and fall.

***

I wake up and find myself staring directly into her black-hole like eyes. She is
so close that I can feel her breath upon my nose. Have you ever been
breathed upon by a ghost?! Believe me, it’s not something to laugh at.

She is lying directly on top of me, but I don’t feel her weight. I learn that
ghosts don't actually have weight. I realize how this would look to an
onlooker and decide enough is enough. I try to push the ghost away from my
body. Instead, my hands go right through her smoky whiteness. What really
scares me and makes me scream is that my hands don't re-appear on the
other side.

The moment this happens, I promise myself to think back to this incident and
wonder what happened to my hands - if I ever got out of this situation alive.

I did do a little thinking and research on where my hands disappeared to. I

have a theory. Ghosts are creatures that are not supposed to exist. They are
an almost alchemical expression of bugs (not insects, the computer ‘bugs’)
in nature’s code. They are not supposed to be. Whereas, I, and by extension
my hand, are real things that are supposed to exist, have been existing and
will exist for some considerable time (depending on the ghost’s mood). A
ghost is not supposed to happen. Interaction between a real thing and a
ghost is an even bigger no-no. My hands disappeared into a place which I call
‘The cheat code room’. If you play computer games and use cheat codes to
get out of situations that are dangerous or simply irritating to your character,
then you will know what I mean.

I did this once. I think the game was Doom 3 or Halo. I entered a cheat code
that allowed me to walk through walls. Its fun in the beginning, but there are
only so many walls in a computer game. When you reach the final wall and
fly through it, you reach a zone that is not designed by the coders to exist in
the real time. It is out of the environment of the game and you are not
supposed to be there. In comparison, this is where my hands must have
been floating numbly. It is a weird picture to imagine.

I pull my hands out quickly. In the few seconds they have been there, my
hands have turned completely blue and I am unable to move them as quickly
as I'd like (under the situation, hands wouldn't be of much help, anyway). My
host realizes that I am slightly uncomfortable with the position. She floats up
and decides to hover annoyingly near my head.

I get up, dust myself and ask her, "Who are you? What do you want from
me?"

She lets out a chilling whisper (as is their wont), "Ear bone."

"What?!"

"Need your Ear bone."

Ear bone. I have always been sacrificing about my ear bone, especially when
the rest of my well-being is threatened by a freakish wisp of smoke.

“What did you do with the tigress?”

“Needed the eyes…blood.”

I am silent for a few minutes. I don’t know what to say, to do. Her presence is
definitely scary, but I have overcome the initial shock. Actually, I am quite
happy she is standing in front of me, visible, instead of playing mind games
with noises in the wind.

“Do you have a name?”

“No.” I detect a hint of sarcasm in her tone.

I can see now that ghosts necessarily need to be monosyllabic. They don't
have a lot of storage options in their smoky bodies. I understand this now.
Back then, I didn't know a lot about this subject. But I learnt quickly that
night.

If you are as curious as me, there a lot of questions crowding your mind
when you are kidnapped by a ghost. For the first time that is. The 5th or 6th
time this happens, the monosyllabic conversations become monotonous.
Take my word for it.
There are many things to ask a ghost. They know a hell of a lot of what's
happening out there in the world. They see and hear things that can create a
lot of controversies or make people rich. If you know a friendly ghost, you are
made for life. Take my word for it.

There are many stupid things you can ask a ghost too. No.1 on the 'stupid
questions to ask a ghost' chart would be 'How's life after death?". 2nd would
be "Why haven't you moved on?" or "why are you stuck in the middle?” The
2nd question would make you see why asking the 1st one is a big mistake.
This is how we usually progress:

Human -> Ghost -> Soul.

1 2 3

Most often, we skip from 1 to 3. But some people get stuck at 2. (CHART or
PIC)

But the one question that really gets them mad (hence, the question is off
the chart) is "Where are you from?" Ghosts go crazy over this one! They are
incoherent as it is, but when you ask this one, they go all internal
combustion engine on you! Take my word for it.

So, I ask:

"Where are you from?"

She screams away into the night, frightening the night owls from the forests
of Manali. Fifteen minutes of Ghost FM later, she turns down the music and
focuses on my ear bone again.

But I gather a lot of things from her incoherent mumblings.

She is afraid, she is lost, and she doesn’t remember a thing about her life,
except the one thing that keeps her locked in this state. I realize that ghosts
have no sense of 'I' in their perspective. They cannot say "I am a ghost" or
"My name is xyz". They will understand you are speaking about them when
you say, "Why do you need my ear bone?" but they will realize this in an
almost detached way.

They know they exist, and they know they exist only for 1 sole purpose - To
cut the thread that ties them to their human life; or transcend it. They roam
around the empty streets of ghost-earth, unable to think, unable to plan,
having almost no will power, except when they CHANCE upon a path that will
lead them to their goal. That's all they have - a mere chance to fulfill what
wasn't, to complete what was unfinished. Their lives are lost to timelessness,
waiting without an option for the chance that will set them free.

I'd have to frame my questions in such a way that she'd be able to

understand them. But by the time she finishes screaming, I am about ready
to gift wrap my ear bone.

I tell her as much. But she refuses to take it immediately.

"There's a time for everything, boy!"

So we sit down and have a staring contest.

At least I sit down on a large piece of wood and she hovers close to me, her
face angled towards the tigress. I understand she wanted my ear bone and
'blood of a tigress' for some ancient ritual and instead of wasting time on
asking her questions about that, I can ask her to reveal some secrets of
nature.

Ghosts are chatty creatures.

"What happens to us after death?"

"Worm food."

They show a great sense of humor when they want to. Unfortunately, they
never do. She was not joking.

"Worm food? That's it?! No interviews at the pearly gates? No secret door to
throw you in hell? No floating on clouds?"

"No. Life is a mathematical equation. Bunch of coincidences."

That was the longest coherent sentence that had come out of her mouth. I
was happy to keep her talking. It delayed the painful moment of parting with
my ear bone.

"Please explain."

"7 billion people, many trillion interactions a second, people think it’s Karma
or fate or destiny. No. They are just an equation in a larger equation. So
many people create so many permutations of interactions and data. Data will
coincide and conflict with other data. That’s its nature. People leading linear
lives cross paths with people leading linear lives, forming a gridlock, a
matrix, a maze of individual lives that are lost in the confusion!

People believe in heaven and hell and justice. People believe in belief, faith,
trust, religion, God. There are no such things. All that can be explained in a
mathematical equation. People feel the need to believe in something
because they don’t believe in themselves anymore. For them, the
interactions have been cruel. For some the interactions are kind. There is no
basis on which the selection is made. Its just luck. But after death there is
nothing but darkness and the end of thoughts.

There is only the last thought and the eternal hunt for it. Death was not an
accident. Collision of 2 cars in a billion cars is not karma. It is simply the
interaction of data. Realize after death, life is cold calculation."

I heard a hint of self-pity in the final sentences and found that she was
talking of her own physical death. I understood her pain. To find that you've
lived all your life and died a painful death, and you are nothing but a
mathematical cog in the equations of mindless proportions, and that you are
death was a minute glitch, an error in the interaction of data - must be
painful.

Especially if you are stuck in the twilight as a ghost.

Just my luck that I run into an atheist ghost who by the way, believes in
pagan rituals involving tigress' blood and ear bone of a man.

I understand her atheism and I agree that in some cases, religion does
exploit people. I think of asking her if she is spiritual, at least. But that feels
insensitive in many ways. So I get back to the ear bone.

"Why do you need my ear bone? And why did you kill that animal?"

"Vidnar told me that I should drink tigress blood using ear bone of a man as
straw", she said, very matter-of-factly.

I assume Vidnar is her colleague in the art of performing these crazy rituals.

"What happens then?"

“I…become…human…again.” I notice she has difficulty saying those words

and that this is the first time she has said “I”. In my many rendezvous with
ghosts, I have come to realize that the ghosts do not possess an ego. There
is no sense of I and self. Except when they speak of or do things that directly
relate to their sole objective – the fulfillment of their final wish. With the
benefits of my extensive know-how of ghosts, you may presume that she
was able to say that sentence only (and it’s a very big ‘only’) because
becoming a human again was her sole purpose. Take my word for it. This
begs the argument that her final moments before death were spent in the
contemplation of life and its advantages and its lures, instead of the
contemplation of death and its adventures. Here, in a few crucial seconds,
her after-life changed for the worse.

I have come to like the ghost. She is not hurting me (yet), nor is she that
scary after you get over the initial shock. I also believe that the ritual
involving my ear bone and the blood of the tigress will be anti-climatic, which
will be sad for her. As she waits for the moon to appear ("There's a time for
everything, boy!") I think along the lines of her argument to see if I can find a
loophole and convince her to let go of this foolish belief in Vidnar-ish rites.

As with any data, a pattern emerges if you look at it long enough and if you
have enough numbers to crunch. Your brain is an Excel sheet with a huge
amount of data pouring in from all sides, consciously and sub-consciously.
The ghost is partially correct. Life is all data. But that doesn’t mean things
like religion, faith, belief and God don’t matter. They do, because they help
us analyze this data.

Why do we pray? Why do we close our eyes and sit in silence? Why do we
meditate? Why do we contemplate? Why have humans written so many
prayers and hymns and mantras and other religious texts? There is a reason.

Humans are impressionable. Each thought, each change in the environment

is a vibration that affects us. We physically and mentally react to every
situation and with every reaction, we are changed. We react consciously and
sub-consciously. Prayers, meditation, contemplation, silence and the reading
of religious texts – allow us the time our brains need to analyze this massive
upload of data. Our brains organize this constant upload of data and detect
patterns in them, recognizing future opportunities and/or threats. This is
intuition. It’s a little like de-fragmenting your computer. We have been
given the gift to use the data that is always around us. But we ignore this gift
in the chatter and break-neck speed of everyday life. Calm down. Take a
deep breath and really *look* at the world around you. Notice the people
that walk into your life and those that walk out. Notice the birds that fly in
the sky. Notice the flowers that have bloomed in your garden in your
absence. Observe. Listen. Analyze. Organize.
I come out of my reverie and find her staring at the sky. My prayer and
meditation talk is definitely not going to help her now that she is dead. But I
tell her all this anyway.

“You are so attached to the life that you had, you are failing to experience
the new adventures that await you. You said that there is nothing after
death, but look at yourself! You are a ghost. A scary, beautiful ghost! Did you
ever think in your lifetime that you would become a ghost and haunt me and
kill a tigress? No! Those sorts of things don’t happen in death. They happen
in life! You are alive - you are just blinded by the fact that you are physically
dead.”

A slow change comes over her pale face. A shadow, perhaps of optimism,
passes over her. Encouraged by the change, I continue.

“You think of returning to the life that you had as human only because you
feel that there is no life after death, which is obviously wrong because here
you are – hovering in front of me, able to kill tigresses and kidnap humans
and meet Vidnar! I am sure, that if you let go of your wish to become human
again, you will become a soul. You’ve had so many adventures as a ghost,
imagine what you will live to do as a soul!”

She sat down on a stone and contemplated (at least, I’d like to think so – A
contemplative ghost is a beautiful picture). To let go of your dreams and
ambitions is a painful and DNA-altering experience. Your very cellular
structure undergoes an apoptosis of sorts and you emerge out of that
experience a new being, more powerful than the previous one because you
have learnt lessons through that experience and you have transcended
something. For a ghost, it must be an even more painful experience because
the pain is not physical, but purely mental and emotional.

You have to understand – the whole purpose of a ghost is its singular

ambition. I can go as far as to say that their entire body itself is a
concentration of that single thought. Letting go means automatic death. Yes,
a death that transforms the ghost into a soul. But the ghost doesn’t know
that for sure. I don’t know that for sure. No one does. It’s all theory.

But there lies the adventure.

She is kneeling over a rock and silently shaking with fits of anger and pain. It
is clear that she has decided to let go of her wish, the bond that ties her to
Earth.
Above the clearing, the clouds have gone and the sky is a beautiful pink.
Dawn is coming and I have a sudden feeling that this meeting is over. My
last glimpse of her is of her kneeling over the rock, one smoky hand on the
grass on the ground, crying softly. Slowly, her form dissipates, her smokiness
carried away by the cleansing winds of the morning.

I am not sure if my speech worked and she let go or if the morning did its
job. I have a feeling that both are one and the same.

***

The Ending:

A ghost is not a usual form for a life force to take. It’s an aberration, an error
in the code of life that is caused by extreme tension and pressure. A ghost is
created when a human being is so attached to something or someone (and
in many cases to a single unlived dream), that when at the time of death the
soul tries to split from the body, the body doesn’t let go. The soul, being
much stronger than the body, tears itself forcefully, in the process merging
itself with some essence of the body. This is a ghost.

A soul is the purest object in the entire universe. In the most basic terms, it
can be defined as a single thought of contentment. It is an almost invisible
entity and is the only object in the entire universe that has no mass at all.
Technically, it is nothing. Hence, it is a significant symbolization of the fact
that everything emerges from nothing, just like the universe did before the
moment of the big bang.

Standing in the silence created in the wake of the ghost’s departure, I feel
like Vikram without his Betaal. I definitely do not have the energy or the
intent to go hunting for a ghost. I can see the sky blushing in the east, a sure
sign that the sun is kissing the horizon.

A three hour walk and a gloriously wet Manali-sunrise later, I find myself at
the hotel room minus my friends. The entrance into Manali also brings a
pleasant ping on my cell phone, indicating that it has detected a network. I
call my friends to let them know. They promptly hurl abusives at me and
invite me for breakfast at a nearby eatery.
You would agree with me that saving ones ear bone from the grasps of a
ghost always leaves one hungry.

I join my friends, who are refreshed after a good night’s sleep and are eager
to hit the road. A day’s ride through the mountain and snow awaits us and
our bikes, which stand gleaming under the sun.

A short trip to Kullu has been planned in my absence. I am more than willing
to let go of the thoughts of yesterday and focus on today. As we eat, I regale
my friends with the story of the smoky one (as I have come to recognize the
now-spirited ghost). They very intelligently (note the sarcasm) observe that I
always seem to be running into females, albeit of the dead variety.

***

I have not mentioned how I finally came to know the name of the ghost. The
fact that I know her name is evident in the title of this story. In my research
over the years to understand the happenings of that fateful night, I found
myself depending more and more on the internet. The place is filled with
people like me who have saved their ear bone. There are also many poor
souls who have lost theirs. There is actually a lost and found website for
those who have suffered the loss. (Please contact me for details on the
website).

Anyway, on one of those days of heavy research, I came across a blog by a

young and, I must say, quite dashing writer, who had had quite the same
experience and had escaped with his wisdom tooth intact from Sredni (the
smoky one) by fooling her. At the time, the ritual demanded a wisdom tooth.
How did he do that? When Sredni was not looking, he took a tooth from the
dead tigress that lay in a pool of its own blood (I told you – ghosts are
monotonous creatures) and offered it to Sredni saying it was his own. Quite
brave, I must say.

He has entered this memoir in his blog. I personally contacted him and in our
conversations, he explained how he came to know her name. Our
conversation has been kept a secret for a higher purpose and will not be
disclosed here or anywhere else. For this reason, you will find that the blog
written by him is interesting, but will not divulge the exact facts on finding
out the name of a ghost. Interested readers can visit his blog to read more
about (affectionately) – the smoky one.

***
STUPID QUESTIONS TO ASK A GHOST:

0. Where are you from?

1. How's life after death?

2. Why haven't you moved on?

3. Pizza?

4. What's your name?

5. Can I give you a call sometime?

(CHART OR PIC)
 THINGS YOU CAN SACRIFICE TO A GHOST TO SAVE YOURSELF:

1. Ear bone

2. Left Pinky toe

3. Right Pinky toe

4. Appendix - This is why we were given an appendix. Take my word for it.

5. Fingernails. It will hurt but it will grow back.

6. Hair

7. Your left wisdom teeth. I am sure it won’t affect your enormous intellect.

But remember this, no matter what happens do not, DO NOT, give away your
right wisdom teeth. Fight with your life, if need be, (or run like hell), but do
not part with the right wisdom teeth.

(CHART OR PIC)

***