An Eriee Encounter (14/02/25)

An Eriee Encounter

In 1996, I was working at WPS, Bumthang in central Bhutan. A bachelor, I had occupied two rooms on the ground floor of a two-storied, solitary house, on the way to Jambay Lhakhang (temple) some fifteen minutes away from the school, on rent. My South Indian friend, Ashokan, stayed with his family in the room opposite mine. The first floor was occupied by a company. The few employees working there stayed till 4.30 on the weekdays, then everyone left.

At the beginning of the new academic session in March, 1996, Ashokan got transferred to another Dzongkhag (district), leaving me broken and battered. I had missed him, his family so much after school that for some days, I didn’t feel like getting back to the house. Right after school, I’d go down to the market, some half hour’s distance from my school on the other side of the town and try to drive away my loneliness by having a bottle or two of Golden Eagle, an Indian-made beer.

That fateful evening I was joined by my friends from U/dee Carpentry Workshop. They were plumbers from across the borders and used to call me “Bhattacharjee Da” or “Master Da”.

We consumed two cases of beer within no time. As it was getting late, I got up to go. Uttam, the leader of the pack, a young, handsome chap, stopped me,” Why do you wanna go back to that desolate house, Bhattacharjee Da? Don’t you feel lonely? Come to our cottage. We are cooking chicken tonight.”

In those days, especially in a place like Bumthang, chicken was a rare commodity, so I couldn’t resist the temptation.

Later, we played cards till 10.30 PM, joking, pulling each other’s legs, having a gala time while some others were busy preparing dinner on a rusty bukhari (a kind of locally-made, multipurpose oven). The owner of U/dee Carpentry Workshop, one Mr. Ugyen Dorji, the father of one of my students, invited us up to his room for a movie on the TV.

It, being a ghost movie, had us all shaken to the roots. We got down to the cottage at around 12.30 PM to have dinner. While enjoying the delicious dinner, we simply couldn’t stop talking about the movie.

I don’t know why but I remembered an important lesson with a class the next day right then and decided to get back to my lonely den. My friends protested, pestered me for staying the night there and leaving early in the morning but I was adamant.

Uttam then, having made sure it was in working condition, handed me a torch as I bade them ‘Good Night”.

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It was springtime. The sky overhead looked pristine with the silvery ball shining down on the valley with the golden paddy fields on one side and the majestic mountains on the other. The concrete road lay in between. I was enjoying the walk when suddenly, the moon got hidden behind the clouds! Everything turned black at the same instant! I took the torch out of my overcoat pocket and tried lighting it. God! It didn’t work at all! I tried my level best but the torch wouldn’t oblige anyway!

That was when I had my first feeling of unease. By then, I had reached near my school, half way between my house and the carpentry workshop. I recalled then that the chorten (a kind of rectangular structure made of brick and mud with a lot of valuables supposedly buried underneath) was just opposite the school gate. The warnings of my students came flooding to my mind. They had told me several times not to come anywhere near that place after dark. The place was haunted.

I had an eerie feeling the very next moment that someone was behind me. Like someone wearing a pair of slippers, was close at heels! The slippers dragged as I kept walking, stopping as I did so.

When I was a child, I heard a lot of ghost stories from one of my aged aunts. She would tell us that the greatest mistake one could make at such times was by looking back. But I just wanted to see if there was anyone behind me or it was my imagination playing tricks. Finally, I made up my mind to turn my head backwards. As I did so, I could see the silhouette of a shadowy figure wrapped in all white. Two burning, glaring eyes boring into mine, unnerved me. I stumbled before breaking into a run for my life. I ran like the wind, sweating profusely, till I found myself in front of the wooden door of my house. I unlocked the door, scurried and latched it from inside before switching all the lights on.

I stopped quacking and panting by the time I retired to my bed.

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That’s not how the story ends. Next day, there was a volleyball match between our school and Jakar High School. I had to accompany the boys up to the high school at the Headmaster’s request.

As the match was going on, Mr. Saha, the Economics Teacher, was seated beside me on a fallen log. At some point of time, he turned his head towards me, jumped up and ran like he had seen someone possessed!

After a while, I saw him coming back, accompanied by Mr. Pandit, the Physics Teacher-cum-Health In-charge of the high school. They came down to me, looked at me from a distance before Mr. Pandit, shaking his head, remarked : “You are right, Saha. Bhattacharjee has chicken pox.”

Mr. Saha should know as he had lost three of his close relatives, including his father, on the same day due to the dreaded disease!

The only thing troubling me since then has been how I got afflicted with the disease when I had it in my childhood? Aren’t people believed not to suffer from chicken pox more than once in their lifetime? Was it because of the eerie encounter of the previous night? Was there a sinister being chasing me that night?

The answers, I guess, I will never know.

The end