Call from eternity

Something is wrong! Every time I pick up the telephone ……. the voice on the other side tells me an old story in a husky voice. When I ask about her number, the old woman stops speaking a word. I could not remember but could faintly recognize her voice. It seems very close to me, but why, I can’t remember her? Was it, that I visited a place called Jotishpur about more than a decade ago in one of my weekend outings? It was near Rupnarayanpur named by the river Rupnarayan, in between the districts of Howrah and Midnapore. I visited a childhood friend, who invited me to spend some time with him. I stayed there for about a week, on an evening stroll in the surroundings of the house, I unexpectedly went a little far. I was feeling that someone was calling me from within myself, to go there. The other side of the town of Rupnaryanpur is also called Jotishpur and I came there, quite unexpectedly during the evening walk. It’s the month of November coming to an end and during morning and the evening cold is being felt. In this Mo fusil area the cold is felt much more than in Kolkata. While walking, I reached a field and beyond it saw some bushes and trees and a broken house in a very deplorable state. Since, winter is gradually setting in and a small town so both traffic and people are becoming less visible. I hurriedly crossed the field; the boys have already left the place after their game. The place is almost deserted; after crossing the field and negotiating the bushes and trees, reached the basement of this massive palatial building. Almost a destroyed house, I met an old woman there, all of a sudden.

She asked me, “Where you have you been all these years?” but I was unable to recognize her. She again asked, “Why you were so late, in coming here?” She touched my hand and I felt a shiver, running down my spine. Her hands were cold as snow and I gradually lost my consciousness and fell down on the ground. I did not know how long I was lying there? My consciousness came back when my friend Sridhar came calling to rescue me with some of his local friends. I was feeling a pain on the back of my head and saw at a distance that old woman waving me and disappearing among the broken walls. Returning to my friend’s place, after dinner went to sleep. In the very early hours of the morning, a dream almost engulfed me. I saw myself as a zamindar’s youngest son and was looked after by a middle aged maid. I could recognize gradually the face of that maid and found resemblance with that old woman, I met. She took great care of me, since my mother was sick and my father left me at a very young age. I saw everything in my dreams.

Later, the rest of the week I stayed there visited that haunted house and heard some female voice calling me from a distance but never got the sight of that woman. The voice resembled that woman. I heard from the local people and my friend that this was a Zamindar’s palace. They were said to be related to the Chand Saudagar’s family of ancient Bengal and they practiced the ritual of not worshipping, the snake goddess Manasha. So they were cursed and any one member of the family would be bitten by snake bite. It was my father’s turn and he was bitten by a king cobra while inspecting the renovation work of a lake in our village. He died within a few minutes in spite of providing the best of health care of that time. I remember all the events in my dream and they come one by one. I also see that old woman calling by my name,”khoka”, long ago called by my mother who is too old to remember those things. When I asked my mother after returning from my friend’s place. She seemed mesmerized and reclused herself into deep thinking.

Later at the dining table at night, she asked me about the description of the old woman in her standard weak and feeble voice. She said that long ago about two hundred and fifty years ago, these events took place, but how I am related to it is quite impossible to her to understand? It seemed that I was related to that place from my previous birth. My mother also recalled the same thing and said that old woman is present at that place as a spirit and has no physical presence. This left me totally dumb-struck, even on reaching and in my sleep, I saw that woman. The last and the most awkward thing happening for the last month or so is getting phone calls and the voice on the opposite side is of that woman. I am getting increasingly helpless and feeling psychologically weak. I am feeling that woman is trying to hypnotize me and eventually kill me. But my wife and my mother is assuring me that, since she loved me so she will not harm me but is trying to influence me to unearth some mystery. So one day, taking a few days’ leave from my writing job, me, my wife and my friend along with a local priest went there. We dig out the place where the old woman disappeared and found an ancient skeleton in a very deplorable condition at about two feet below. We cremated it and performed the holy rituals and left the place. That very night, in my dreams she came and blessed and congratulated me for this noble deed and she also said that I did the true job of a son, tears flowed down my cheeks and I went up.

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