What if you drop off the edge of your bed one night, and instead of hitting the hard concrete floor, keep free-falling through a dark, scary tunnel until you land in an underworld, where the sweetest dreams from your childhood co-exist with some of your worst nightmares?
Spooky, isn't it? Well, the trip (in every sense of the word) had just begun for me. It was 11 'o' clock by my watch, when my bike was zooming off the highway down a dirt road. I was about 174 kilometers off the nearest NH and hadn't reached my destination yet.
"I'll take you there, but let me warn you- you are about to visit a place you wouldn't ever dream of visiting again." was my guide's terse warning over the phone when I had called him the day prior to the journey. He's a government-service employee at the nearest town and hence, could receive my call; the place I was headed to apparently has no cellular towers.
These words of his kept playing on in my mind as my bike growled into the heart of the forest. I finally shook off all thoughts of the consequences and looked around. The forest was as silent as the bottom of a well. I turned a corner and suddenly spotted a group of women with brass pots on their heads. I greeted them, and in a mischievous turn, honked my horn at them.
To my sheer astonishment, they scattered away like ravens on hearing the horn! They kept shrieking at the sight of me as if I were some unearthly being! Later, while we were riding off to his place, I narrated this incident to my guide. He gave a hearty laugh and said:
"Well, that's an improvement! Believe it or not, there was a time when these people used to be afraid of walking on pitch roads!"
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| Haunted places in Odisha: Everybody had disappeared on hearing the sound of the approaching bike This road has never been used by the villagers. Reason? They ate simply scared of it. |
It was overcast when I reached his place and as soon as I stepped inside his home, which was more of a glorified hut, the clouds opened up and rain came pelting down. With the dust and dirt washed away, the newly-laid roads started giving a pitch-black luster. It was amusing to me that these very roads were tricking me by mirages before sometime, and are now shining like jet-ribbons in the rain.
My host was now busy with a visitor who had called upon him to see if he can borrow some kerosene. The electricity supply was down, the lantern was up, and I was sitting inside the hut staring out of the window at the heavy downpour of rain, while slowly sipping from my cup some kind of hot, root-heavy drink that tasted neither of tea nor coffee, but of wood-dust roasted over slow flame.
During the course of a casual chat, the visitor asked me a strange question- "Tumar sahar ar luko ga naago saap ar mani dekhchanti je?" (Have you town-dwellers ever seen such a thing as- "naag-mani"?).
I nodded my head in the negative but I said to myself- "Oh, come on... naag-mani, eh? I agree that this drink tastes funny but I'm not high on this junk, okay? So let's get rid of the horse..."
Even before my thought had concluded, we had all become passive listeners to an animated narrator, who had started a shocking chain of conversation, replete with such gory details that at one point of time, I was about to yell- "STOP!"
But the air was cold, the room was dark, the rain was pouring still... the forces of nature were at their peak. He asked me if I would be interested to hear a tale. I wanted him to stop; all I could manage was to helplessly nod and lead him on. A loud thunder rumbled in the distance.
He continued-
"So, what you do is- you capture a banded krait alive, then thrash the living lights out of it till it's half dead (I was about to throw up at this juncture). You put this half-dead snake in an earthen pot that has been soaked in water for 48 hours. Cover the rim with an earthen lid and weigh it down with something heavy- a mortar/pestle will do fine.
Next, you place this pot on an open-fire. The snake's supposed to thrash about inside the pot for its life in about ten minutes but you are not to interfere in this "sacrifice". It will soon stop thrashing around so just let it get charred completely. Once done, you can open up the lid and start scraping the ashes.
You are most certain to find a shiny, effulgent object in the ashes- that's a naag-mani for you. The old saying goes that the possessor of this invaluable stone claims enough power to be the ruler of the universe."
I was listening intently, with wood-logs from the nearby fire-lit stove crackling away. The rains were lashing against the roof, the gray skies occasionally lighting up bright-pink from a giant flash of lightning.
And there I was- a rational, city-bred, well-educated and well-read guy from the urbane life, giving away to these tales of folklore. But then, rational thoughts had no place in a fantasy-driven world like this. It was a feeling impossible to describe- it's almost as if you have one foot sunk in reality and the other foot floating away towards a fantasy world... dragging the rest of your body along its stream.
A return from this place in this gale was impossible. My host realized this and was generous to offer me an over-night stay at his place. "Moreover", he added, "there's more where that story came from". With this bait thrown, he knew I had to bite it. Overnight stay it was.
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| Haunted places in Odisha: A candle-lit dinner (with me) to anyone who can tell me what's this picture all about. |
I woke up early the next morning. My host had refreshments ready and after a light breakfast, we started on a casual morning stroll. The sun was shining and the raindrops caught in the leaves were glowing like gems.
A few steps down the road, we could see a much elderly person walking towards us. My guy later told me that he was the oldest living person in the village. After a brief introduction, this old man points to this tree and says:
"We call it the "unaasi brukhsya", which translates to " the fruitless tree". They use the same phrase to describe infertile women here. This tree here has never bloomed one leaf. As per legend, you can find crows perching on it (only crows, mind you) and a few rats gnawing at its roots, but this tree hasn't fallen in years. If at all, it has gained height and casts a shadow even on a moonless night. "Were anybody to stand in the shadow of this tree that time, ..."
He didn't complete the sentence and I asked him no further.
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| Haunted places in Odisha: The fruitless tree: the foreboding of evil in these parts. |
These are swings now, but the story behind these structures isn't so jovial. These arches used to be hanging-frames for women and men (but predominantly women) who were suspected of sorcery. They were hanged with their toe-nails just about scraping the earth beneath.
If they were to stretch downwards even an inch to support the weight of their bodies on their toes, their necks would be snapped off their spines, and they would thrash about in the throes of an extremely prolonged and painful death. Many people preferred to use their toes in digging a hole beneath their feet to speed up the hanging.
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| Haunted places in Odisha: Witch-hunt and sorcery in Odisha |
It was pitch dark by now. Electricity loves playing peek-a-boo in these parts, and owing to the absolute silence that is cast in the absence of vehicles, crowds or television, I could hear sounds that I had thought to be extinct by now- toads croaking in the forests, owls hooting away, birds chirping in their nests, even hyenas giggling away in the distance. it was a surreal experience- something that I won't recommend, but won't altogether strike off as well.
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| Haunted places in Odisha |