Twelve-year-old me was a loyal customer of supernatural stories and conspiracy theories. I would gobble them all up, no matter the shape and size. Any story that an adult wouldn’t believe or would scoff at would pique my interest, probably owing to the admiration for Nancy Drew novels in which adults are often too dumb to see the truth right in front of them. For anyone with such an affliction, especially in the late 2000s when Jio hadn’t walked into our lives with free internet – water in Kerala’s public pipes during April drought was itself a pipe dream, let alone free internet – a steady supply of local folklore was necessary. Priests did half the job, sharing stories that reverberated through the stone-cold temple floors right into your beliefs. Tales of Parikshit, Ahalya, Narasimham, witches, and much more, ringing in tune to the slow chant of saffron-clad men. The rest of the supply was provided by my cousin – Unni Chechi.

Most weekends, Chechi and I visited each other and did what little girls do – make ambitious plans for art projects and games and abandon them equally quickly. Some days we would sit on her home’s cement terrace and share stories from school with a black and white filter through which good and bad kids could be easily distinguished.

On some rare days, though, when the rain came knocking, we would be huddled in a room talking in hushed tones. Then the real stories would come out. Chechi would look warily around and back at me with determination. I recognize that cue even today. It means she has something extremely important to say, and my aunt would not be too pleased to hear it. I would sit up straighter as she shared the most believable ghost stories of the village.

Her stories would go like, “You know, the pond on the way to the temple… there is a ghost in the water which eats up children. People don’t send kids alone that way. It doesn’t harm you if you are with a grown-up”. “You know, someone who lives on the road told me that a man went missing from the sanatorium road.” Sanatorium is a desolate hospital campus where leper patients were brought from far and wide and often abandoned to die back when it was a stigmatized disease. “He was walking back home at midnight and heard a laugh from inside the walls. It’s the ghost of someone who died there twenty years ago. Must be a dissatisfied spirit; after all, no one cared for her when she died. Now he is missing. No one walks by that road after 8 pm now. You do know there are palas in the sanatorium cemetery, right? The witch must have caught him.” Palas were trees fabled to host witches. “If there were palas in the sanatorium, and that too in the cemetery of abandoned spirits, no wonder the man went missing,” I would think.

So on and so forth, our tales tagged along wherever we went. Be it walking by a temple pond (not the haunted one) looking for the little tortoise that lives there or playing make-belief at our home, stories of possessed humans and equally eccentric spirits would come visiting. I would greet them all and often bring along a few tales I got from school as well. Sharing and collecting stories, years passed by. Soon I was walking around my college campus in Gwalior while Chechi did her post-graduation in Kerala. Fables had become a thing of the past, of somewhat forgotten early teens, until one day, they tracked me down.

*******

I was in our institute’s library, beating my head on research work one late evening. Early winters in Gwalior are particularly comforting, and I found myself drifting off to other thoughts, scholarly pursuits thrown out the huge glass dome. Most people had left the reading room by then. Shresth was still there. We started talking about random things, and soon enough, we were discussing his favorite tree on campus. He was obsessed with this tree for so long that everyone in his acquaintance had met it and its serene flower. I have to agree, although the tree is relatively unremarkable to look at, its flowers are unique. Little white bunches on every branch of the tree with a fragrance so ethereal. They are at their best when winter settles in. Walking beneath them from the main gate to the flag post through a parallel road in winter was one of our institute’s most divine yet underrated experiences. It was a shame we didn’t know its name, so we started searching.

Few targeted keyword searches later, we found the tree – ‘Alstonia Scholaris.’ But Google rarely stops there. It went on to tell us a ton of history about this tree and, along with it, the Indian colloquial name of the tree – ‘Shaitan ped.’ We stopped on our search tracks for a moment and opened the link. And there it was, the tree whose fragrance could bewitch one was literally called Devil’s tree, also known as Pala in certain parts of Kerala, the tree known for being the host of witches who use its fragrance to ensnare people before devouring them.

I regularly walked by the same tree whose resident witches kidnapped people walking by the sanatorium road! The stories of old ran 10x in my brain. The eerie feeling when a plot falls into place, but the twist clutches you in the stomach engulfed me. Memories of Sunday afternoons spent chasing ghosts shut into a box along with other thoughts of old popped open somewhere in my head again. And in that instant, after several years of logic and science, I believed again for a second – before forcefully snapping back.

Too much research gets under your skin, be it AI or ghosts. I shut my laptop and headed back to the hostel, my mind still reeling, suddenly awoken from a dream, or rather, into one. The red-bricked road from the library to the flag post was well lit, white light flooding the newly paved path. The flag post was almost deserted, although usually, it is not very clear in the dim light. I walked past a few guards and turned right to go to our hostel. The road was relatively dark from the thick mini jungle on either side of the narrow path. Before entering that patch, I hesitated to decide whether to be brave or walk around the longer but properly lighted path. I could not let the ghosts of the past back into my life. I took the right turn into the dark road, but before long, the fragrance caught me by the barest thread of courage I was hanging on to.

Pala – Shaitan ped – filled me up with the ethereal fragrance no one can walk away from. I stood transfixed as I could not move on from the spot, but neither could I turn back to the left where the tree was. Slowly I heard someone calling out to me – ‘Harryy… Harryy’. A chill went down my spine as I remembered this is what the stories said – once enchanted, the witches sweetly call out your name and bring you closer to the tree. My logical and dreamy brains decided to wage war. But the voice was insistent; it kept on calling ‘Harry.’ I had no option but to turn back.

There, in the caddy parked near the flag post, Nigam and Shukla sat eating peri peri fries and takeaway. Nigam was calling out to me. Most parts of me suddenly unclenched in a sigh of relief and curled into a corner. I started walking towards them before I looked suspiciously spooked.  But the rest of me was still not sure how many of those words were actually from Nigam. The rest of me is still not sure.

*******

Once in a while, when recollecting memories, I glance back at this one too. The day when the forgotten tales of my past came visiting. And even as I write this in a lighted room at midnight, I wonder if thinking about them would actually lure them to visit. Ghosts of the past – both figurative and literal.

I hear a rustle at my window –

<Originally published on Muffled>