Where have the Ghosts gone? Eeeee! Vanished.

Searching abode for ghosts!

By: Rajbir Deswal
Nobody, these days, seem to be interested in talking of ghosts and witches. Apparitions and spirits don’t (really) make their appearance, except in dictionaries. It is not very long ago that we heard stories of ghosts but nowadays they seem to have simply vanished in thin air. Where have our spooky and formless friends gone, is the question!
It occurs to me that, well, maybe this is one reason no ghost wants to be run over on the busy roads not only because of the heavy load of traffic and red lines in particular but also for, who knows, the police photographer who, after the mishap, may click them, and ‘expose’ them.
The roads are no longer safe for ghosts and spirits because almost every nook and corner has been illumined by mercury and sodium bulbs.
Then, should they have found shelter in ruined castles and buildings or deserted havelis, where the land-lady having had been issueless for a decade, died in mysterious circumstances? No. Even these structures have been encroached upon by property dealers. Haunted houses are unheard of these days, thanks to existentialist human beings talking them over.
Once upon a time the heroes and heroines in our granny’s bed-time stories, who these long forgotten ghosts and witches were, did need a roof above their ‘heads’; after all going by the popular belief, they, too, had been human beings only whose life was cut short by some accident.
Should the endangered species have been hibernating in the hollow stems of haunted trees or their thick and leafy branches, the environmentalists’ axe could not really axe the tree-fellers’ axe and even the trees being thus lessened, there seems to be no befitting and respectable place for the formless phantoms.
Wells, too, could be another habitat, a makeshift one, till moving in a proper accommodation, for the ghosts. But with the ground water level dipping down, farmers have put electric motors and pump sets some 50 or more feet deep into the wells. This must surely have disturbed the real estate dreams of ghosts. Those who were known to be giving shocks are obviously afraid of electric shocks!
What does remain then where the ghosts could hide themselves? Crevices and cracks? But these are already infested with crabs, scorpions, lizards, snakes et al which are fast becoming edible stuff for human beings at fast food jaunts all the world over.
These creatures, too, in a way belong to the ghost family, since many people are afraid of them, too. Yet, given a choice, ghosts are still a better option for me atleast for the reason that they inspire awe but not hatred and nausea.
I wonder if the ghosts have migrated to foreign lands but a question, which baffles me is the passport and visa issue. Their counterparts in the U.S.A. or the U.K. must have definitely objected to this mass refugee-like exodus from a Third World country to theirs. An American or an English ghost. I am sure, and going by the presumption that ghosts, too, have similar temperament as human beings, should have looked down upon our light and bare-footed bhoots.
And who knows, how, sheepishly our bhoots would stand before their drakulas, phantoms, and the Loch Ness monster. Not only would our bhoots only be branded as not having a scientific temperament, they would even be accused of shop-lifting. And with that vanishing capability, all the more.