I was in my pre-teens when Dad began to dabble in spiritualism in the mid-1950s. He had read a few books on the subject and acquired some basic knowledge of it. Keen to put this into practice, one monsoon night he got his four sons, aged 10 to 16, to sit round a polished circular wooden table that had the alphabets A to Z chalked in capitals, neatly and equidistantly, on its periphery. In the centre was an inverted glass tumbler substituting for a planchette.
He explained that this was called a seance and its purpose was to try and establish contact with the spirits of the dead. Asking each of us to place the tip of the forefinger of our right hand lightly on top of the tumbler, he himself followed suit, intoning solemnly, “Will any passing spirit kindly take possession of this tumbler and identify yourself?”
We had been warned not to push the tumbler around; it would move by itself when a spirit occupied it. And we were told not to be frivolous about what we were doing or the seance would fail.
His eyes closed, Dad reiterated the invocation in all seriousness, his face sombre and his tone turning more importunate with each repetition. My youngest brother and I just couldn’t suppress our amusement any longer. Never one to take things seriously and ever the practical joker, I slyly pushed the tumbler with my forefinger. Dad quickly sensed what I was doing and froze me with a withering stare. The seance produced no results and Dad roundly blamed it on my levity.
In another seance a month later, however, I recall the tumbler did move by itself, albeit fitfully. Awed and incredulous, we boys watched it edge, unaided, towards the letters ‘GRA’ in that order and then stop altogether despite Dad’s repeated requests for the full identity of the spirit.
Dad opined the incomplete letters ‘GRA’ stood for ‘GRACE’—the name of his elderly cousin who had passed on earlier. I remembered Aunt Grace, a deeply religious spinster, and shuddered to think that her spirit was lurking in the room, benign though she had been with us kids!
Roping in relatives and close friends, Dad continued to hold seances occasionally, his ultimate aim being to communicate somehow with his late wife, our mother. Sadly, I don’t know whether he succeeded.