What makes the ghosts disappear?

I barely manage to watch half the movie that it gives rise to this ghastly ‘ghost grotesquerie’ in my mind, and I feel possessed. Immediately, I shut the TV off and sit like a clogged pipe; no movement just a strange apparition circling around me. Instantly, I remember what my mother told me once; to chant some ‘mulish mantras’ in the most appropriate arabesque to invoke the ‘Gnomic Gods’ for protection. I do and I feel better but it takes 2-3 days to get over the angst, but still at times the ‘ghost’ squawks some gobbledygook in my dreams; the wind blowing off the distorted human in circles.

There is this uncanny eccentricity about ‘ghosts’ that has fuelled our minds auld lang syne. Although, the experience left me to indulge in ghost dilettante with my friends but still their pursuance to trouble humans bewilders me.

Unworthy of their appearance, they enjoy in an unrestrained way. This is how they are depicted in movies; a scuzzy face with a serrated hand that is sartorially white or all black bewitching a sardonic laugh. Their dental hygiene is a scrimmage as some of them do not have hands. Some are like white flyers hooking up in the sky making a ballyhoo of their torrid tales.

Their existence is ambiguous; more than the shifting, stirring and tossing of opinions, it is a matter of belief. On one of my vacations to Scotland, the ‘ghostly cubicles’ and the ‘ghostly bus rides’ reveal the phantasmic arcana of the country. One is led through the underground vaults by a guide demystifying the sinister tales and ghostly stories of public executions, deplorable incarcerations and torture. I am introduced to a ghost named ‘James’ who lives on one the of vaults dejure. Through the opalescent turns, the orotund voice of the guide makes a slow howling sound. My feet move precariously crunched in fear, and in a jiffy I move my hand inside my bag to get hold of the prayer book that has now become a sine qua non after the deadly experience. I don’t see ‘James’. He has suffered a lot and is only seen by people who understand his agony; I don’t! Or maybe, he finds me heavy-handed as I carry a prayer book.

Are ghost afraid of the mighty transcend Gods? Or they are quick to pick the poetic rendition of prayers from far away to make the fury well up their chest? The prayers have helped me and now I am not that bedeviled by their existence. Speaking about the ‘ghosts’ and ‘spirits’, their turpitudes are well known. Some have effortlessly seen them, and some with a gift of ratiocination find the ghost soloist playing on their mind scourging off their sanity. But, ghosts definitely exist either in mind or as an amorphous matter on this Earth.

Are there other ways to ghost them? The flounce is permissible on the face of ‘tantrics’ who befriend the broom to dust off the ‘spirits’ or ‘ghosts’ that take shelter inside a human body. I have heard of the labored slanging match from my house keeper who got an ‘evil-spirit’ evicted out of her son’s body; unbelievable though but if that how the world of ghosts works, I am sure they must be having a larger number of dwellings, with a choice to pick the humans as per their own impressionistic beliefs. One is also at a cliffhanger to know their whereabouts after they have been bludgeoned by the broom or the prayer has played its trick? Maybe they have a ghettoized ghostly paradise. However, their dancing in the twilight on the human propensity of fear has made them a burgeoning reality.

So, what is really done to snap off the ‘gauche ghost’ whirring around our sensory illusions? Or, maybe one has seen something awkward and unusual that has excavated a depth of paranoia that needs to be settled. Often, the combination of lemon & green chilli is seen hanging outside houses & shops to ward of negative energies and evil spirits. Many wear religious charms and amulets to protect against monovalent energies. How all this cracks a whip at the ghost is best left to the Gods’, perhaps derring-do of fisticuffs invisible to the naked eye.

With a appellation of an illusionist, the ‘bhairo babas’ and the ‘aghori babas’ spill a cannonade of ghosting paraphernalia into an ignited cauldron to make the ghost fervently feverish to shrink to a smoky mist pulled up by the doors of hell. It’s often believed that we have ghosts and spirits walking around us but the ‘Divine’ protects us; also if you are benefitted through good soul karma, they don’t touch you.

Many of us settle for ‘ghost frying’ where the thought of an encounter with the ghost scurries the restless legs into involuntary spasms. In case an empty house speaks to you at night, even a slight inapposite makes fury well up the chest; in a blink of an eye, we feel groggy looking up if obscurely we have welcomed a ghost. However, we have also been made to understand that these invisible entities carry a mist of disgruntlements or a baggage of past perfidies. Are these bedraggled souls trying to find life in flashes of impetuous scruples as if they have defeated death? Someone make them understand that the death carnivalesque is a memento mori.

As young adults, we often indulge in the inconspicuous scherzo to call spirits. Once knee- deep into this imperturbable experience, I realized that ‘Divine power’ is profound to beat the ‘bogey’. ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ resting in situ in my back pocket got the spirits confused and it was a ‘no show’.