Witch At The Pond: Stories based on true stories

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I grew up in a cluster of four to five beautiful villages, amidst, once a thick forest. These villages can put some of the best of our city layouts to shame. Small hills one behind the other, lush green all over, thick woods covered the either side of the hills, spritely brooks gushed out at the foot of magnificent trees, torrential rain poured on the green pasture, and young sun rays warmed my back when I walked couple of miles to my school, every day. I was happy under the shades of huge trees, enchanted on the edge of the ponds as the sun set, and my heart was filled with thousand tender feelings when I walked in the moonlight, at times, in the forest - all alone.

This is an attempt to share with you, some of those that happened there, those wonderful experiences so that I could, through these stories, make you experience them. Many of you would have had something similar in your childhood too. It is the childhood itself, not the trees and the ponds, nevertheless, it is nice going through them again, however, with renewed freshness, as we experience ourselves through others much like some babies bring to our mind experiences of babies of our own. This is a collection of short stories based on my real life stories. Most of the stories are set in the backdrop described above, the village, the forest, countryside and community of Havyakas, a set of people who once held your passport to the gates of Gods. I have made the stories bit colourful by adding little fictitious details, changed names of people, changed names of places - but in essence, they are real incidents involving real people. Following are excerpts from couple of the stories.

Witch At The Pond

This is an incidence from my childhood that I have not been able to fit into any of the scientific frameworks of our times. Over last thirty years, I have narrated this story to my friends, relatives, professional colleagues, and even to total strangers. More I say it more is the disbelief. Many friends of mine, psychologist by Google search, suspected this to be a figment of my own hallucination, a creation of my own mind under stress of strong fear - as they claim it. But they are at loss to explain when this theory of hallucination fails to explain how two people could hallucinate exactly same thing for, this incident was witnessed by my cousin who is a participant in this mysterious incidence. Few sceptics who wanted to verify, heard this story from my cousin after hearing it from me. They were stunned, as most of them admitted later, by the striking exactness of the details of two separate accounts. Most of these people of scientific disposition leave their enquiry at this stage, leaving this as one of those inexplicable things of life. There are few of course, who think that two of us have jammed up to create some sensation, story for small fame.
Anyways here is the story

Down below, in the long hall, as it was called, somewhere on the middle of the floor, my youngest aunt, my cousin and me were doing school homework around not so sufficiently lit lantern and a kerosene lamp which puffed plume of smoke on to our face. In this otherwise dark hall, dim light of the lantern and that of the lamp, reflected softly on the books, geometry box, and notebooks scattered open, round the source of light. All of us, impatient to rid of the inevitable pain inflicted on us once or twice a week by the school; work postponed to the last minute - were silent writing, drawing, solving some useless stuff - with bent heads over the notebook, leaning on our elbows.

A persistent but irritating companion was hovering somewhere in the recess of darkness of that hall, a beetle of sorts, fly of intimidating size, much to the disgust of all of us, flew precariously over our heads, dangerously close to our ears, swooped in on the flame of the kerosene lamp and burned its wings, perhaps, and now hit by the lamp, fell piteously on its back. My aunt sighed relief of this irr