"A Letter to the Editor" - short story

"A Letter to the Editor"

Sharad Bailur

Most fiction is based on some kernel of truth, it is said. As is the story below. There really was an Adenwalla Bungalow, reputedly haunted at Tardeo in Bombay till the early 1960s when it was brought down and replaced by a twenty-plus storeyed skyscraper. The advertisement also actually appeared in the Evening News of India of December 11 and 12, 1984 and can still be seen in the library of the Times of India. The Evening News, rather unfortunately, died a rather early death shortly thereafter. My original aim, in 1984, when the advertisement first appeared, was merely to send the letter to the editor as from the ghost, as a prank and in the hope that it would afford the staff of the Evening News some amusement and topic of discussion. It was not to be. The advertisement got lost in my records for nearly ten years. I found it only recently. Hence this story.

"So you have no faith in the supernatural, right?", asked my friend Deshpande.

"I consider myself a rationalist", I said, "and am therefore willing to change my opinion on matters like the supernatural, if new, scientifically verifiable evidence presents itself. But in all my forty plus years I have not yet come across a phenomenon that can be genuinely described as supernatural either in the sense that it was God inspired or otherwise."

I was clearly being pedantic and sententious but then I had to prove to my friend that I was as good as him, if not better, at the more intellectual pursuits.

I, in fact, wasn't.

"Oh, I was not talking God and religion and stuff”, said Deshpande with an absolutely deadpan face. "I was talking of ghosts."

I stared at him and then burst out laughing.

"C'mon, not at our age. Get serious if you really want a debate."

"A debate, in the absence of supporting evidence is mere assertion isn't it?" said Deshpande, evoking a twinge of envy.

Why don't I think up such philosophical gems?

"Suppose," he added, "Just suppose I provide you with incontrovertible evidence that there is a ghost in the bungalow next door?

"Well, I'd be delighted to meet him", I replied flippantly suppressing a small niggle of doubt at the back of my mind.

Bravado won. "And my best wishes to his wife too!" I added.

I was out visiting Deshpande at Versova on a Sunday. I always visit friends on Sundays. It means a free lunch and invariably some delightful company. He is a former IAS officer who has now retired. We did college together; he brilliantly. I flopped, as my ever-loving parents expected I would. All that I had done in my years at college was to skip classes, see films and keep an eye on the more shapely among our female college mates.

"Well, let's have lunch." he said, changing the subject.

Now, that is something I always look forward to. That is what I call hard scientific evidence of how to lessen hunger and indulge the taste buds! Mrs. Deshpande is a good cook. An added bonus.

Lunch over, and I was just beginning to wonder if I could steal a small nap when he said, "C'mon let's go next door."

I got up, just a bit surprised. Apparently Deshpande had meant every word of what he'd said before lunch. We walked out by a side door. Dappled green leaves shone in the January afternoon, the sun coming in through the branches. The garden, as is always the case with each of Deshpande's possessions, was immaculate. We passed through the small wicket gate into the grounds of the ruin next door.

There was no door to speak of to the first room we entered. Dust, bricks, a broken skylight and a few pigeons. A roof that leaked. I could see runnels in the dust on the walls.

"It really is a ruin," I said.

"Yes. That is why he lives here" said Deshpande, rather eerily, I thought.

The place was full of cobwebs and shards of broken glass and the door to which I was being led was closed. Deshpande asked for help to pull the door open. It gave a threatening creak and stopped. We had to put considerable effort in getting it to open. It kept protesting all the way. The room was dim. There was a rickety old table. No chair. Nothing else. On the table stood an old Underwood typewriter. By the side of the typewriter lay a copy of the Evening News of India of December 11, 1984. My eyes were immediately riveted to the advertisement in the paper. It was a three column-inch display ad with a plain border. It read: "Wanted: HAUNTED HOUSE/BUNGALOW in Bombay city. If not then Suburbs. Please contact Box U 812-K, Evening News of India, Bombay 400 001"

I turned to Deshpande. "Where's your ghost?" I was still trying to show how brave I was. I suspected I wasn't succeeding.

"Don't bother to look for him," said Deshpande, "see what he has typed."

The single sheet of foolscap had been typed through in single space till the paper had nearly got over. The keys were overlaid with the dust of years. No human hands could have touched them. It was a letter to the Editor of the Evening News of India and went as follows :

Sir,

I am stunned and indignant to see the advertisement on page 6 of your newspaper of December 11, 1984. It asks for a haunted house or bungalow.

I am writing to suggest that this persecution of us ghosts stops forthwith. We will not tolerate it. It is worse than what the Jews suffered during the Diaspora! I don't think this kind of disastrous ecological imbalance has ever taken place in all of recorded history. Why can't you leave us alone?

But let me explain. I hope some sense will dawn on you humans if you hear my side of the story. During my human days my name was Feroze Adenwalla. I had been left a large bungalow by my ancestors in Tardeo opposite which the Bhatia hospital came later to be built. That is where I lived. We were close to the Agiary which is still there, on the way to Forjet Hill and had a lot of Parsis living, up on Cumballa Hill, near by. I died in 1948 and my property went to some unknown relations who came forward to claim it. I, in my present form did not like the set up and in my anxiety I continued to haunt the bungalow. Oddly enough it was a wonderful sojourn. Quite a bit by way of ghostly company. Lots of cobwebs and bats and a few rats and mice. I even got friendly with the ghost of a lady by the name of Rhoda Udwadia when she came to haunt it with others in 1950. I was not at all lonely.

Our favourite past time was to play darts with shards of broken glass and broken window panes. You humans have a rather long name for it: Poltergeism. Quite silly really. It is only us playing darts. We did no harm to anyone - not even to the mice and rats that lived with us. To save a small mouse, I once did frighten away a cat, but that was all.

Once my relations had stopped squabbling over the property they decided to sell off the place. Adenwalla Bungalow was pulled down and it gave way to a huge obscene looking skyscraper. We ghosts had no place to go till Corlay, a Jewish ghostly friend, suggested that we move in with him to a small neat cottage in Juhu on the outskirts of Bombay. We lived there in peace for fifteen years. It then got pulled down too. A hotel came up in its place.

I have since then been flitting from one place to another for the last fourteen years. Because of the depredations of you humans I have had no fixed abode - till recently. I have now moved into an abandoned structure in Versova. I will not say where. I am afraid your advertiser will try to grab the place. It is not the ideal place for a ghost like me. When I first came here there was an illegal liquor den here. I frightened the hooch men half to death and made them close up shop and go away.

I seem to have fairly decent neighbours - I will not name them. If I do your advertiser will put Versova and the name together and come to know where I live. Two and two make four - even in ghostly language. I allowed the man who lives next door to come here once and he saw this letter half typed. I am now afraid that he will go and tell some one about my living here and destroy my peace. You humans are pushing us out of even those few places that we still can go to.

We ghosts are model citizens of this nation. We use no air, water, fuel or food. We create no babies, garbage or pollution. Our morals and code of conduct are immutable: No back-stabbing; no corruption; no black money; no jobbery; no crookery; no thieving; no smuggling; no arms trade; no murders.

All we ask in return for being good ghostly citizens is to be allowed to haunt a few old houses - as few as one in one million will do - IN PEACE. So that we can practice our favourite hobby - playing darts.

Yours etc.,

Feroze Adenwalla 1880 1948

I looked at Deshpande. I could not believe that something so articulate could have been written - and by a ghost. "The whole thing seems rather wacky to me", I said.

"It did to me too, till I realised that it had been written by the ghost of a Parsi gentleman. ………. And till I saw a window pane smash." said Deshpande.

Just then a piece of glass from the skylight above broke right in front of my eyes and flew across the room to smash itself to smithereens against the wall behind me. We pelted out of that room and the ruin grateful to be in the sunshine and to see the garden again.

I later checked back.

Dredging up old memories I remember walking down Forjet Hill where my grand parents lived, past the Agiary, the Sassani Irani Restaurant, Lata Mangeshkar's tile roofed house near the Shankar Shett temple, to go to Jai Hind Cold Drink House at the corner of Nana Chowk for a delicious ice cream and jelly.

There really had been a bungalow named Adenwalla Bungalow opposite Bhatia Hospital at Tardeo. I remember the horripilated delight with which we discussed the ghosts in it each time we walked past it as children. I was just eight years old then.

I decided that the poor ghost of Feroze Adenwalla did, after all, deserve his peace. I have therefore kept both Mr Deshpande's address and that of the ruined bungalow in Versova a dead secret.