A DATE WITH THE GHOST

It was my summer vacation. My younger brother Kittu was working in a factory in Bangalore. I wanted to go on a long trip on my newly fought mini bullet from Royal Enfield Company. My brother happily joined me. We packed our things and left Bangalore at 5 PM. The understanding was first 200 Kilometers I would drive that is till sunset and the rest he would drive till we reach our home. That was the agreement..

Everything was fine till I went away from the National High Way 36. After that I had to drive in the State Highway which is even now only a double road. You can not over take any vehicle so easily unless you make sure of the vehicles coming towards you and the vehicle going in front gives you clearance either by hand signal or by tail light signal. I drove with an average speed racing with the sun and the sun set but I continued. 0f course I had some difficulty whenever a lorry came in front of me as I was wearing spectacles for short sight. Somehow I covered nearly two hundred kilometers.

We halted at a roadside motel. We decided to have our dinner. We had a hearty non vegetarian food. I lay down on the coir cot in front of the motel. I had a nap. My brother woke me up telling me the time. It was 11 PM. I washed my face and had my cup of tea. My brother started the bike. He had to go through the five hair-pin bents from the Stanely reservoir build by British engineers in 1929 on the river Cavuery that separates the Karnataka and Tamilnadu.. We reached the other side of the Mettur Dam. We stopped again at a motel to have a cup of tea. We started our journey again at 11.45 PM.

My younger brother drove very confidently. We were surprised to see that no lorry was either coming in front of us or overtaking us The Bullet light was so bright that was illuminating the road and the tamarind trees on either side so beautifully. We were negotiating a curve.Suddenly some one crossed the road from left to right. I shouted at my brother to stop or else he would run over the man. He applied sudden brake and the vehicle came to a sudden halt. We wanted to look for the man. We could not find any trace of any body. I lighted a match and we found that man was lying between the front and back wheel. I told my brother to start the bike. He started the bike but the light was not there. The vehicle refused to move an inch even in first gear. I lighted again the match. Now the man was not there. But the vehicle did not move at all. We managed to move the bike a few feet front. Now the bike started to move. But the lights went off. There was pitch darkness all over. We stopped the bike to check up the light. We struck so many matches but we could not set right the lights of the bike. We waited for some vehicle to come on our way so that we could ride behind it. Unfortunately no vehicle was on that route.

We reached home well after 2 AM. Next day we were telling what happened on the way. My uncle told that we were lucky to have come after such an incident. He told us that so many accidents happened at that particular road curve. Strangely on full moon days accidents found to happen. Because some one was knocked down by a lorry on that day and the spirit is still haunting that place and it takes revenge. The spirit will cross the road in the form of a human being and the vehicle driver not to run over it will avoid it and ultimately he will hit the tamarind tree and die. Another person told that we might have seen a plastic white paper and imagined so many thins because it was dark.

Any how we had a date with the ghost.

BY K JAMBULINGAM