I love stories of the supernatural. They are fascinating, something that is beyond the immediate reality and they give birth to a deep sense of imagination. When you imagine something of that nature, it’s not just the presence you are focussing upon but everything else in the environment right to the air itself.
I have my doubts before claiming to have or not have any belief with the supernatural. I have come across experiences that remained unanswered for a long time but the answers eventually came in one form or another. The problem is those few, two of them, they may remain unanswered. Although they were not scary, threatening in nature or intent, they might be concluded as something of a supernatural presence.
There are people who have very strong beliefs in the subject, and claim to have experiences one would only imagine as being within the pages of a book or the sequences of a movie. There are several interesting ones, for me more as a story. I will tell one here.
There was a new receptionist at the office and everyone had positive feedback about her.
No one knows what led to the particular conversation or by whom that brought out the fact that she very strongly believed in the supernatural. But it spread, and one day when I had the time, I decided to ask her about it. The belief came from her village, by her talks of her own experiences she may have imagined things a bit, but her late maternal grandmother might have seen something that at least sounded a bit more believable.
Once there was a fruit seller in the village. Always a little irritated with his eyebrows almost always forming a frown. He had been there for many years, opening his fruit stall in the market area, spoke to very few people and spoke less.
He always had a decent variety of fruits every day. People were a bit tense around him, not due to some happening but rather the appearance. He was there every day, except the days when he wasn’t well and he almost never left the village.
There was a particular week, when he was not seen entirely. Many regulars passed by, always a little dismayed at his absence. It was thought that he might not be well, and a few other vendors from the market visited his home and found it empty, the door wasn’t locked, everything seemed fine.
“Maybe he rushed to see his unwell sister in the next village. Things might have become serious,” spoke one of them and it made sense and everyone was content with the assumption.
A month later, a potter in the village first mentioned a fruit appearing on his doorstep every morning. He thought the children were playing pranks, thus he collected the fruits and gave them back to them.
But there was a strange occurrence, every child who had eaten a fruit claimed to have seen the fruit seller in the late evening, passing by on the village road, he never looked at them but kept walking on. The villagers ignored it, but the fruits started appearing on other doorsteps as well and people started becoming worried. The potter, eager to break the rumour and feeling a little guilty on his behalf, ate the fruit, and that night he saw the fruit seller just as the children had mentioned, but unlike the scared children, the potter tried to call out for the fruit seller but he kept walking on his path, silent.
The potter rushed to the fruit seller and just as he was about to keep his hand on the fruit seller’s shoulder. The fruit seller turned and looked at the potter, the eyes showed no emotion, the potter noticed the absence of any movement, not even the one of breathing.
The fruit seller walked on as the potter stood frozen and then the potter walked away as well and disappeared.
“But how did people know this happened to the potter?” I asked
“A neighbour heard the potter calling out for the fruit seller and a fruit, a guava was found in his home with a bite mark,” she replied
I thought of it a little too presumptuous since they had filled in the rest of the story themselves. She said the mystery was never solved, the fruits were just ignored with time, collected and burnt away, she claimed to have seen them herself once. This was the shortest of the stories she told, maybe when I have the sufficient time, I would write the rest.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 