Neither can the bhooth nor the pishach come near, when I chant the name of Hanuman. This is a line from the famous Hanuman Chalisa. In yet another chant in Tamil called the Kandar Shashti Kavacham, there is a line Brahma Rakshas and other ghosts will run away when they see the spear of Subrahmanya! Well, if at all I repeated these lines and some other chants on the Goddess Durga who inspires boldness, it was during the first of the 10 days that I spent staying alone on the top floor of a beautiful building that quite a few people have declared as haunted and made good their escape!
Granted, I did put up much of a brave front as I was listening to fantastic stories close to bed time, at the dinner table about how a female ghost appeared at night to a young German and was forcing him to leave the building at once, and how the same ghost was banging the door and running down the floor, screaming — again the witness was another German girl! (Has it something to do with only the Germans or unmarried youngsters?), I couldn’t help feel the same movement in my spine that the Namboodiri priest in the movie Chandramukhi felt, when his big toe touched the haunted house and he said, “It is there!”
There was a bold girl who slept in a room in the ground floor and I was the only other seemingly bold person who had to go up and sleep all by myself.
I kept the light of the big hall on, opened the door of my room, switched on the lights, fan, A/C etc., then keeping the door opened, I switched off the hall light, got into my room, latched the door as I was chanting Shiva’s Maha Mrithyunjaya Mantra. I lit the lamp in my room and thought it was by some mysterious design that the fan of the A/C was trying to put off the lamp. I waved the incense sticks, drawing Om with the smoke in the four corners and the middle of my room. I tired myself into sleep, preparing for the second day of a Sanskrit workshop I was conducting.
Durga is the powerful feminine and so I chanted ‘Durge Smrita Harasi Bheetim Ashesha Janthoho Swasthaihi Smrita Mathimatheeva Shubham Dadasi, Daridrya Duhkha Bhaya Tarini, Kadwatanya Paropakara Karanaya Sadartha Chittha’… may be 108 times, but I was asleep with a small light on.
I woke up early at 3.30 a.m. to the sound of howling dogs and again remembered to chant. Soon it was 5.30 a.m. and was time for yoga practice.
A discussion of this with the maids who came to that bungalow evoked laughter. The maids said they have been working here for eight years now and have not seen such a thing. It is all in the mind. Chant the name of god, light the lamp and the incense, and go to sleep peacefully was all they said as a parting advice, leaving me to sleep alone the same way the next day. I am sure, I will be safe when you are reading this a week later and shall get back to you with more details if any.
(www.swahilya.blogspot.com)