By Raunaq Bhagwat
In the heart of New Delhi, Amrita Singh a recent graduate from the National Institute of Media has joined a professional photography studio, ‘Indian Apertures’ as a junior photographer. Since childhood, Amrita had a keen eye for photography- be it a product, capturing a person, or simply framing the beautiful skies, she clicked it all. She thus went on to enroll in one of India’s finest media colleges and selected her beloved course. Indian Apertures usually covered different rural parts of the vibrant Indian states instead of focusing on the more urban centric cities. And as part of her first task as a new joining photographer, Amrita was assigned to capture the small town of Lakhot in Rajasthan by her boss. On getting the news, Amrita was all excited and geared up to explore this destination. Her task - to capture any piece of beauty which caught her eye and to some extent brought out the character of that particular place.
On reaching Lakhot, she realized that the place really wasn’t what it seemed like. With very few people on the street, rare sightings of public transportation and the hot ‘loo’ simply burning her down, Amrita felt a bit disheartened at first but was hell bent indeed to complete her assignment. Grabbing a local rickshaw after about half an hour’s waiting, she headed to her hotel, ‘Padharo’ as she looked on to the road. She had come here for 3 days, and the first day would most likely go in understanding the place and getting her reiki done right. On the way she saw a park amidst the desert and found it really interesting. She asked the driver about the place, and he said ‘Its called Khaansa Talav and the property has been shut for years’. As she turned her head again to look back at the park, she saw a young, brown and dusky looking boy, dressed in the original white dhoti, a pista green angrakha and donning the iconic orange turban, carrying some hay and crossing the road. The look in his eyes instantly caught Amrita’s eyes as the rickshaw took the turn. Just for a moment she felt so happy to see an oasis in the desert and indeed a chocolate boy out of nowhere!
Reaching the hotel, the already tired Amrita decided to shortlist a few places and go there the next morning to check them out. As she travelled the following morning via the same route, she looked for the ‘boy charmer’ but wasn’t seen anywhere. On reaching her destination, she realized there wasn’t anything which really caught her eye or was that interesting enough and the fact that it could be found in any random town of Rajasthan. After getting a few clicks, post lunch she left back for the hotel. This time to her surprise, the chocolate boy was seen gathering stacks of dry grass, dressed in the same traditional attire, as she instructed the rickshaw driver to stop.
Amrita met the boy and asked his name, as he replied, Bhanwar. She asked him about his job and he again simply replied that he collected dry grass and sold it to his maalik, besides doing regular farming at his home a few kilometers away. The sight of this tall, well-built yet innocent looking face, made Amrita blush to the fullest. She further went on to inquire to whom the park belonged to and if it was allowed to enter inside. Bhanwar while looking at the park stated that, ’It used to be owned and looked after by an old man, but over the years with hardly any visitors showing up this park had been shut.’ Amrita felt that perhaps this was the perfect setting for her assignment and asked Bhanwar if she along with him could trespass the property. A bit concerned looking Bhanwar asked her what is in it for her, to which she replied it was part of her task to capture something which caught her eye and hence wanted to click photographs of him as her model beside the gentle cool waterbody inside. Bhanwar still a bit hesitant finally agreed on Amrita’s assistance.
They opened the eerie sound making gate and entered the park, walking on the brick laden pathway leading towards the pristine waterbody a few steps ahead with the typical dry desert landscape on both their sides. On reaching the talav, she was so mesmerized and in awe with the clear blue water amidst the dry surrounding, that she went ahead to quickly wash her face, with Bhanwar standing right behind, watching. It indeed was a respite to feel the water in this scorching afternoon heat of the desert. Looking at possible photoshoot spots and looking back and forth at Bhanwar, she stood and asked him if he could pose in front of the camera in a directed way, to which he agreed but on a condition that she won’t have a look at his photographs in his presence since it made him feel awkward.
Amrita simply couldn’t refuse this reserved request from Bhanwar. The photoshoot then went on for quite a while, with Bhanwar posing in the same way as directed by Amrita with the beautiful blue pond as the backdrop. Once done, they sat on the bench to relax and discuss life. As Bhanwar started to talk about him and his family, there suddenly emerged bubbles from the pond. Amrita staring at the same looked at Bhanwar when suddenly out of nowhere an old sage like man came from behind the bushes and looking at Amrita and said, ’Ma’am please go from here, it’s not safe here’. As Bhawar stared at him, Amrita told Bhawar to shift a couple of seats ahead, stating perhaps the old man wanted to rest there. And the moment they left, the sound from the pond stopped and the old man vanished. She felt slightly startled, but ignored what had just happened. When they again started talking, the same bubbles emerged from the pond, this time Bhanwar too looking at it and the moment, Amrita turned to talk back to him, the same old man emerged and repeated the same line. Amrita now panicked and told the old man to leave them alone but he kept on insisting her to leave. Bhanwar kept on staring at the old man but didn’t say a word. Amrita held Bhanwar’s hand, got up and started walking towards the bench close to the main gate. And as they walked a few steps ahead, the sound of the bubbles from the pond faded and the man disappeared again.
A now frightened Amrita mentioned that something was wrong with the place and the moment she said this, the old man emerged for a third time with the water from the pond now splashing all across as if something exploded from within it. Bhanwar in a fit of rage held the sage’s collar and warned him that he will hit him again if he came close to them. Amrita interfered and pulled Bhanwar aside and started running towards the gate and out.
A rickshaw just taking a turn caught Amrita’s eye, as she called for it to wait for her and Bhanwar, but Bhanwar grabbing her arm simply replied, ‘I have to complete my job. It was indeed a great time we had this afternoon. You should better get going, Goodbye!’ and started walking in the opposite direction. A still shocked Amrita looked at him as he was walking and turned back to run and sit in the rickshaw. Once seated, she for one last time turned back to see if Bhanwar was still there but he was already gone.
A disturbed and tired Amrita called her boss and told him of her assignment completion and informed him that she would take the night train back to Delhi and meet him in office to discuss her work and ‘narrate a tale’. Amrita packed her belongings and on reaching the station bid a final adieu to the desolate Lakhot and the delightful Bhanwar!
The next morning after the night train journey and the constant images of the old sage in mind, Amrita as she waited for her Boss’s arrival in his cabin, kept her camera ready to show the pictures captured by her and remembered of the ghostly experience she encountered. As her boss entered the cabin, he quickly asked Amrita to show the pictures since he had to leave early for a meeting. Amrita gave him her camera and started narrating about her discovery of the park and Bhanwar, and that how he was so fit to actually be a part of the modelling industry. Her boss laughed at her and said, ‘Yeah the waterbody photos look great, but I never realized the plants and the landscape around had a name!’
Amrita didn’t understand his comment as she told him about the Greek god like Bhanwar posing for her in the photos, to which her Boss bizarrely replied, ’There is no one!’
Amrita snatched the photos from her boss and to her horror, Bhanwar was not seen in any of them.
The angry boss left the room fuming with Amrita still in shock looking at the photos again, but with no luck. That’s when she started getting a hint of what really was happening. Amrita with the photos rushed back to her desk and searched on the internet about any particular story regarding the Khaansa talav in Lakhot. As she scrolled, she came across a headline titled, ’Old sage allegedly drowned in Khaansa talav over Park property dispute’. She read further along only to come across the photo of the same old looking person she saw that afternoon. It mentioned some local allegedly drowned the sage over the property and the incident took place during the afternoon. And in another article published 6 months after the incident, it reported that the local allegedly responsible for killing the sage was none other than Bhanwar. He argued that the property belonged to his family and not to the sage. In a fit of rage, he ended killing the sage and after 6 months on the very same road he became a victim of a hit and run during a sunny afternoon. Amrita shocked on reading now started understanding the plot and discovered that indeed Bhanwar was a ghost (the fact that he always appeared during the afternoon time, his blood thirsty eyes staring at the sage in the park and him mentioning to hit the sage ‘again’!).
Amrita after having joined the dots concluded that your ‘true you’ always came from the inside and was seldom depicted on the outside. What seemed was not real, everything just a mirage. She further derived the fact that the sage was indeed a ‘good ghost’ as he was trying to save her from the ‘bad spirit’ of Bhanwar, with Bhanwar too perhaps realizing his mistake and experiencing karma thereby instructing Amrita to leave the place. The boss came in quick from his meeting in the afternoon and saw her waiting for him. This time a more convincing looking Amrita looked at her boss and asked him to ‘Listen to the tale she got…’!
By Raunaq Bhagwat
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