I tasted the pickle of sour imp 📻

Maybe I am the person who gets a little (factually a lot) jittery when one tells me some horror stories. Maybe I am the person who finds it better to remain with a parched throat than going downstairs at night to fill up the water cup. Maybe I am the person who finds it better to not watch a horror movie on the TV.

BUT

On May 22nd I cracked up way too loud when I heard my Nani Ji’s ‘Chham-Chaam and Chhapaak’ terminological inexactitude, in basic words fabricated-lie-tale.

The hour hand was at twelve and minute hand at eleven in the afternoon. The anchored time for lunch. The lunch, where I and my blissful family sit at the lunch table and impart the basics.

We were talking some antique tales and guffawing at them.

It felt like I was travelling with nothing with me as a piece of luggage excluding my chuckles. By train, from one station to another with great enthusiasm and also with a ‘Yee-Haw!’ mood. I laughed my humour out on one fable and then on another. The ongoing process of me feeding my wobbly self a flavoursome dessert of my Nani Ji’s tales which mom was telling me and flinging my laughs on the chocolate wrapper in front of me.

Now all the stories mom told me was nothing, like nothing in front of the one I am going to cast my witching spell at, and going to make your blood run cold with. Are you ready for it?

Ready like Taylor Swift?

*Excuse me for this flat joke.

But bear in mind that this story is going to electrify you and give you chills at the same time.

So, in rural villages of India exist myths and hilarious believes of people.

Go back exactly 50 years back.

In villages, there used to be no toilets in houses. Thus, what the ladies did was, woke before hens and headed towards the ranches and bushy farms.

This practice dolefully still exist in the remote and poorly developed whereabouts of India.

It sounds disgusting and paradoxical to few but it is really really really really casual in India.

Continuing further.

Women of the village opened their eyes at 4 a.m. and head towards the bushes in a group.

Yes……...A group.

My Nani Ji was newly married and also new in the tiny village. It was her first morning, and guess what a pleasant surprise she got. A call to wake up early and join “them” for the toilet walk to the bushes when the sun was down.

It could be scant steps to the washroom rather than a pretty long walk to the ranches with a chatty group, but the people who lived in 1971 in the “1971” thought that walking with the personal lotaas was a much better option.

As Nani Ji walked with gabby ladies who were gisting on their way.

Nani Ji heard some Chham-Chham sound of a payal. In English, tinkling of anklets.

She felt like someone was walking behind her with anklets that made that constant sound.

She turned around but she could see no one and when she stopped walking the tinkling stopped too. It was dark enough for her to not able to see farther than the point she could see people.

She kept turning around and told the woman beside her that she could hear the clear jhankar of payals but the lady who was used to hear this sentence, with pretty faith in what she was saying said, “Nahi nahi, don’t turn around! It is not good to turn around.”. My innocent Nani asked, “But why that?”.

And the response is what I blast into tears of myths.

The women spilt the tea, “Voh chudail hai. Peechai mat dekho, voh chipak jaati hai.”

Which is translated to English a, That is the witch. Don’t look behind, she gets on people.

The gabby ladies and probably the whole village thought that there was an imp who follows the ladies when they went to the bushy farms in the dark and spoil people by ruining their mind.

When they passed a well, the sound of the payal stopped and what they heard instead of that was a chhapaak, as if someone had just fallen into the well.

Well, well, well,

The women beside Nani Ji also told her with the needless belief that a lady suicided in that well years ago and it was said that the imp was that lady who followed them every day as they headed on their outrageous mission, and if someone kept turning around the imp got in their brain and made them a maniac.

Had the people of that village known that the fancied imp had already got in their brains and made them a maniac?

Oh, they didn’t. (as you can patently see)

I laughed as if I was the imp and I had destroyed their brains and was wholly happy how I performed my spells.

Crazy tales by the fibbers and their existence will never end.

If I was in Nani’s shoes I would’ve felt like ate a mixed pickle and my tongue had burnt by the sourness. I would have said, “Khatta!”

I am that one girl who keeps her mouth shut when others are discussing whether they have watched ‘Annebelle’ or ‘Conjuring’ sitting at the last bench in the classroom because I get creepy dreams if I do watch them.

So I better live with a tasteless tongue than a sour one.

Although, it doesn’t mean I will believe anything. Anything, like a witch following me when I am just going to the rural and undeveloped washroom.

Therefore, when you are heading toward any bush and you hear any Chham-Chham please for the sake of god, turn around. In case you don’t see anyone and still hear the tinkling, please for the sake of me, don’t listen to your baaju vaali chaachi.

May 22nd:

I tasted the pickle of sour imp