The bajra trees were swaying in the wind, a cool breeze was blowing and the full moon was sometimes coming out of the clouds and sometimes hiding behind them. Jackals were also making their usual haunting sound, and it started drizzling as well.
I was eight years old then, and my grandmother had asked me to get some vegetables from a local baniya shop, which was in the market, about one and a half kilometers from our home and the path which led to the market passed in between the fields which were full of the bajra crops; and you know these plants really give an eerie feeling when there is a wind and full moon. It seems as though thousands of skinny men and women are standing and swaying.
I was praying to Lord Hanuman (a Hindu deity who is known to protect one against devils and spirits), and cursing my grandma.
“Is there nobody else she can send to the market? She has found only me,” I was murmuring to myself.
Suddenly there was a hush sound in the field, as though a snake passed by my legs.
“Oh my God!” I screamed. “Please save me Bajrangbali (another name of Lord Hanuman)”
“I will offer you sweets if nothing happens to me.”
Chanting his name, I continued my dreadful journey. I tried a lot restricting myself from looking into the fields, but couldn’t because the path was exactly in the middle of it.
To add to my misery, I also remembered the story of the witch which lived in the fields. My grandmother had told that there lived an old witch in the bajra fields, who always wore white clothes, spoke from her nose, and had sharp pointed teeth and above all her legs faced her back.
I thought what would happen to me if she came out running from the field and caught me and bite me from her teeth. Then again the moonlight falling on some of the trees, the shadows of which seemed like black human ghosts. I was not even looking at my back, because I felt that somebody was following me.
After fighting with my fear for about twenty minutes, I reached near the baniya shop. The shop was located a bit away from the main market, and with no electricity in those days, was dark from inside. A very small oil lamp was burning, which hardly had any effects on the darkness inside the shop.
“Kailaash, Kailaash, please give me one kilogram potatoes and onion and brinjal,” I said in one stretch.
There was some movement from inside the shop and a lady came out from one of the back rooms. I could not make out clearly who she was but thought that it was Kailaash’s wife. Her face was covered from her saree (a dress worn by women in India), and there was hardly any light to recognize anyone.
“What do you want?” she asked, looking at me carefully, in the dim light.
“I told you to give me one kilogram potatoes and onion and brinjal,” I repeated.
“Okay. Stand here properly. I will get the vegetables from inside,” saying this; she swiftly went inside the back room.
I found her behavior very strange, because I had been to Kailaash’s shop many number of times, and had seen and talked with his wife as well, and found her nature very friendly.
I started thinking, “Isn’t she behaving in a very different and absurd way? And and …Isn’t she speaking from her nose?” “Oh my God! Is she the witch?”
I was lost in my thoughts, when she returned and started putting the vegetables on a weighing scale.
In the dim light of the oil lamp, I put my whole efforts to get a look at her face covered with the saree, and could figure out her white pointed teeth. Then with an intense feeling of fear, I looked at her feet.
“They are turned towards her back...”
I did not think for a second and ran from the shop, as though a mad dog was chasing me.
Breathing fast and loud; thinking of the witch, the moon, the bajra crops, the shadows of the trees and again the witch running behind me …Lord Hanuman was the one who saved me from the clutches of that witch, that night!
Even to this day, I feel a bit scared when I remember my encounter, with the so “thought witch,” and a smile automatically comes on my face. Thanks to my grandmother for all her stories!
