Ganpat and The Khais

Ganpat and The Khais

            She was our Mhatari Aayi (the old mother), our grandmother, the best story-teller I have ever met. After our dinner, we children would gather around her in the front yard waiting for her stories. As we would sit in the circle, she would take her tobacco pouch out, take a pinch of it and rub it on her palm, and like a movie hero, in slow motion, she would make it disappear between her lips. Like the most wanted narrator, she would tell a new tale every night. Though she had a great stock of stories, our favourite was the ghost stories. 

            We, the kids between 4 to 14 years old, would listen to the ghost stories with great amusement. They were unique as they had a weird kind of lead character, silence and suspense. Just to prove that we weren't scared of ghosts, we would sit there listening to the story till the end, and then would slowly sneak into the bed. We would be so scared that we would control not dare to go to the bathroom. 

            One night, as usual, we sat next to her to listen to the story.

            "Can you see the moon tonight?" she asked.

            We looked at the sky, looked behind the neem tree standing with a back bent in our front yard, and replied, "No. There is no moon tonight." 

            "It is amavasya (amavas)", she said, and this sentence was enough to send chills across our spines. We sat closer to each other, some holding each other's hands. 

            "Once there was a young man named Ganpat in our village. He was an educated but over-smart fellow. He never listened to his elders as he used to think that they always talked rubbish and irrational."

            "What is irration, Mhatari Aayi?"

            She looked around for an empty space and spat the tobacco. "Hmm ... Irrational .... Irrational means something illogical." 

            "...so, this Ganpat had the habit of not listening to people. His father would tell him not to do something, and just to prove his father wrong, he would deliberately do that thing. Once, he heard the story of a Khais from his grandfather." Mhatari Aayi looked at me with eyes wide open and paused for a while. I gulped something which I was not eating at all. 

            "Mhatrai Aayi, what is Kh kh Khais?" Somebody dared to ask.

            "Khais is a daanav, a rakshas, an evil spirit, that lives on the banyan tree, and can disguise as anyone, anything."

            "Baap re!" someone would jump off the seat. 

            "His grandfather told him the story of a khais that stayed on the only tree on the barren land outside our village. A banyan tree. If you look around, you would not find a single, black dog, not even a single plant. Only long-stretched land, and the lonely banyan tree, standing all alone like a ghost. Anyone, who would walk down that deserted road, would be troubled by the khais. However, the khais never killed anyone. His grandfather told him that the khais would become a police inspector if he would find any drunk person. He would slap him so tightly that the drunken person would run so fast that he would reach his house in no time. For someone who lost the road, the khais would turn into a guide. For women, he would turn into a saviour."

            "One amaavas, one thief was passing through that barren land. The thief had robbed some villager's house. He saw this banyan tree with the sprout roots touching the ground. Suddenly, lightning struck, and it started raining. He had to take shelter under that tree. To his surprise, he found that he was not feeling the rain at all. He looked at the sprout roots. They were long and thick. He went closer to one of them and touched it. To see how high this sprout root was, he looked above. It was not the sprout root. It was the long, long leg of the Khais who was sitting on the topmost branch, looking down at the thief. The Khais was darker than the night. Two horns were born out of his head like mustard sprouts coming out of soil. His eyes were red as burning coal. His hand reached the bottom of the ground. "Would you like to touch my hands too?" He asked the thief. The thief was so scared that he fainted on the spot. The thief was never seen again. Nobody knows what happened to him."

            "But this Ganpat, he did not believe this story. An educated ignorant. He made fun of his grandfather and his stories."

            "It was an amaavas night. Ganpat had gone to the city for some work and it was turning darker now. He had to pass that barren land to reach the village. As he was coming closer, he saw the banyan tree, and remembered the stories about the Khais told by his grandfather. As soon as he reached near the tree, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He paused for a while. Was he scared? Yes, he was. He turned and saw that it was a man, with a build of a wrestler, wearing a pagadi. He had the dense, round, grey moustache. He moved his finger on his moustached and asked Ganpat, "Do you have a matchbox?" Ganpat, an occasional smoker, always used to carry a bidi bundle and a matchbox. He gave the matchbox to the stranger. The stranger lit his bidi, smoke a puff or two, handed over the matchbox back to Ganpat, and said, "Thanks." 

            Ganpat started walking with an assurance that there are no ghosts and Khais, and then suddenly he paused as if hundreds of questions popped out in his brain. He looked behind. The man was not there. The man was nowhere. Nowhere on the endless barren land. Not even behind the banyan tree. Ganpat was shocked. He was wet with sweat even in that cold night. He ran as fast as he could to his village."

            The next morning, Ganpat's father took him to the village doctor. Ganpat was suffering from cold and flu. He was blabbering something that could not be understood." Mhatari Aayi stopped. 

            The story was over or not, we did not dare to ask her. The striduliating sound of the crickets and whooshing of winds through the rustling neem leaves added more horror to that amaavas night. Light were gone. We went inside the house. Mhatari Aayi was still there in the front yard, sitting all alone on the charpoy, looking at the sky, searching for the unknown answers. 

                                                                      

                                                                                                                                               - Amit Kharat