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“Ask If You Will”

The chill breeze blowing in through the half-open window added to the general air of spookiness. The lights were off. In the centre of the room glowed a solitary candle. There were 6 of us in that hostel room and all of us were affected by the atmosphere. The candle threw shadows on the wall disjointing our profiles. Even the pin up of the model which held pride of place on the biggest wall seemed muted. A thick haze of smoke added to the mugginess. Some one had lit up although smoking was strictly forbidden. Fervent pleas for slugs of Old Monk to pep us for what lay in store had been brusquely turned down. An Old Monk bottle, older than the one surreptiously being passed around, had been pressed into service as the holder for the candle.

Since it was largely at Srini’s behest that we were here, he was the boss. We had agreed to listen to all that he said. He was the guy with all the occult stuff. We were accomplices ranging from the brazenly unbelieving to the somewhat skeptical. I quickly thought of how it all began.

“Did I tell you I know about occult?” asked Srini one evening. We were returning from a late class. Occult tells you the future he said. If you are a believer it will predict the future for you. I will show you how it is done one of these days.” He made it sound quite easy. I don’t know how the topic came to his mind. I don’t know about occult.

He was a voracious reader and an eloquent speaker. He seemed to know everything about most matters. With his thick spectacles, heavy beard and slow and ponderous way of speaking, he looked and talked like a professor. A junior student once mistook him for a Prof in the early days of first sem. He had asked Srini the way to the library but ended up spending three hours listening to his lectures on subjects ranging from the Indian economy, through spiritualism to yoga and meditation. He had asked the way to the library but got a severe headache instead.

But I am straying….back to that night.

Srini was clearly the man in charge. He was in his professorial element. His slow and measured tones added to the gravity of the occasion. On the floor of the hostel room, he had drawn 3 circles with chalk. In the circle on the left he had written “Y” for “Yes”, he left the centre circle blank and wrote “N” for “No” on the one on the right. A stainless steel “katori” or small bowl borrowed from the Mess was kept in the centre circle. It was like the start point of our search of the unknown. With a bold script, Srini drew an outer circle with chalk on the floor. He wrote the numbers around it much like the numerals of a clock except that they were from 1 to 9. In an inner circle he wrote the alphabets from “A” to “Z”. Cigarettes were put off, a few quick ones went down the hatch and we were ready to start our mystery quest.

“We start by calling the soul of some one who will guide us as the spirit” announced Srini. He laid down the rules once again: Two people would participate at one time. One would call a spirit and the other would ask questions. The katori would move guided by the spirit and give us the answers. The questions should never be asked aloud. They should be asked mentally, he said. He also pointed out that he had marked a kind of “Exit” for the called spirit to depart after the session. This made Shyam quite relieved more than anybody else because after all it was his room. He still had 1 year 10 months of the course to go!!

The preliminaries were over and we watched with bated breath as Srini almost went into a trance (or so it seemed to us). A giggle or two were quickly extinguished by a scathing look and the mood changed to somber silence. Suddenly the katori moved. Ashok who was partnering Srini was taken aback because he paled and his worried frown showed us that the katori was- unbelievably- moving on its own. “No” was the first answer, followed by “S-R-I-N-I-“. Some of us thought this might have been a trial run as it were, the question being the person’s name. As Holmes would have said “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

We were gripped by what followed. Several friends tried their hand with varying degrees of success. For some the spirit they called came easily. It was as if they knew what was going on and were just around the corner waiting to be called. However, for others they simply refused to come. The caller of the spirit had to make way for the next in line after a few futile efforts.

By and large the questions asked were fairly predictable. They ranged from the practical; (examples: “Will we have a surprise test in marketing tomorrow?” What will we get for dinner on the 4th? “Will India win the next Test?’” Is there something going on between Raj and Sheela? Will I get placement on Day 1?”) to the bizarre “Will I win the Nobel Prize for Literature after 25 years”,’Will There Be World War III”,”Will I become a millionaire?’, “Will I find gold?” .The answer to the last question was a furious
“F-O-O-L-I-S-H” which sobered the asker of the saucy question like cold water being thrown at his face.

A few hours later, Srini, turned to me:” Your turn now”, he said” Call someone who is no longer with us”. Attempts to call John F. Kennedy, Meena Kumari, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rock Hudson failed much to Srini’s annoyance. “Call some one you know, dammit” he said. Suddenly I remembered my grandfather – the one with the cheerful dimpled smile, the twinkling eyes and easy manner- sadly no more with us any longer.

My grandfather seemed to be in the right frame of mind, if one may use that expression, because I don’t know for a fact whether spirits have a frame of mind. Possibly they do, because all my questions were cheerfully answered.

The same sadly cannot be said by the questions asked by Srini. For every question he asked, we got weird answers. This brought the session to a halt.

We didn’t have Google Talk in those days but our subsequent analysis would have revealed the following transcripts:

Question: “ Will I get Married in the next 2 years” . Answer: “Horse” (left us puzzled, Marry a horse? Asked one. “Did he mean mare?” asked another)
Question: “Where will I get placed?” Answer: “Mars or Venus”
Question: “Will I get top grades in Stats?” Answer: ‘36-24-36”
Question: “Are you serious?” Answer: “No, I am Ramanathan Krishnan”

This last series of answers left us baffled. Either the spirit was dipping into the sauce
(“By the way, is there any Old Monk left?”) or just being frivolous.

A few yawns and some of the early to bed guys slinked away. After all it was past midnight. Suddenly an inspiration hit me. I could visualize my granddad telling us a story with those twinkling eyes. He seemed to be pointing at his watch. He had a mischievous smile.

I cried out “I should have known!” I said.’ “For God’s sake, he is kidding us. Guys, look at the date. “

They looked. It was April 1. April Fool’s Day.

Publication Date: 10-03-2009

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