SHE HAD A MOLE ON HER BREAST !
(A Ghost Story)



"You always have to be late Dr.Rawat. Don't you? That day, at Sundar's "Dance Nite" too, you were exactly seven minutes late. Anyway, I looked towards the entrance one last time as the curtain was going up. The lights were being dimmed and I could not clearly see the people who were entering. Suddenly I spotted a young man. He was wearing a Jodhpuri coat and had many necklaces around his neck. For an instant, I had a very odd feeling ... Going by his long limbs and powerful body, I thought some sort of prince was walking towards me.I looked back -- the hall was almost packed. The young man had the seat next to yours. I noticed, as he was sitting down, that it wasn't just his clothes that were odd, there was also this strange air of authority and impatience about him. Anyway, the dance started, and for a few moments everybody was absorbed in the lovely music and the chime of the anklets, and then you came in. The young man seemed a little annoyed as you sat down, maybe because of the disturbance."

Mani -- my assistant and friend -- was narrating the little incident in great detail.

"Your powers of observation are getting to be really good," I complimented her.

She ignored me and continued, a little excited, "Just listen, sometime later, as the performance was nearing the climax, I happened to glance his way. I was really taken aback, he was sitting there, mesmerized, looking at the stage with fiery passion. I was even more surprised when I looked towards him just as the show was ending -- the seat was empty, he'd left before the end!"

"Later, after dinner, when we were sitting gossiping on the lawn, Sundar said, 'Don't know why I am so passionate about dance. It's like there's nothing else in my world. Some melodies are so beautiful that I just have to hear them and I start dancing! You know this haveli I live in? There's this man who lives in one of the corner rooms, and he has an absolutely divine collection of records, I get restless the instant I hear them. He often plays his records till late in the night and I actually dance along in my room!"

"So who's this fortunate man?" I teased her.

"I don't know, I haven't actually seen him so far. His room is always locked in the daytime."

"Anyway, we decided we'd wait up, no matter how long it took, and get a look at the mysterious occupant. We stayed up talking till around midnight, and the room was still locked. Sundar made coffee, but that kept us alert for only about an hour. We kept waiting, but there was no music. It must have been about a quarter after one or so, when we heard someone coming up the stairs, dhap-dhap-dhap, ... we were rather startled. There was a pause, it seemed like the stranger had paused for a moment on the landing. Then we heard the footsteps again, they suddenly seemed to be very rapid, it sounded like the stranger was coming towards our room. We were staring, frozen, at the bolted door. We were absolutely petrified, even though there were two of us. Sundar didn't say anything, but I could see from her face that she was as scared as I was. The footsteps slowed down and slowly drew closer, and it seemed like the stranger had stopped right outside our door. We were like frozen idols, absolutely terrified, staring wide-eyed at the door. For a moment we didn't dare to breathe. We sat there, frozen, for five seconds ... ten ...fifteen ... half a minute ... a whole minute ...finally, even after fifteen minutes of absolute silence we could not make out whether the stranger was still standing outside or whether we had imagined it all. We hadn't said a word to each other the entire time. Then we started suddenly -- we heard the footsteps again, this time they grew fainter, and it seemed like the stranger was walking away. After a while, we heard a door being unlocked. Then we heard windows being thrown open. Sundar leapt towards the door and then turned and motioned at me to follow. I could see that the door and windows of the mystery room were open, but from where we stood, we could not make out who was inside. At that time we were too scared to go down the hallway and look. We didn't get much sleep after that."

"The next day I got a telegram saying that mother was sick, and I had to go to Bikaner immediately. It was nearly a month before I could go to Sundar's place again. The instant I entered her room, I saw a large portrait on her desk, of the young man who I had seen on the night of the dance show. He looked really handsome in the picture. He had on the same Jodhpuri coat and the pearl necklaces. I immediately asked Sundar, "Hey, how did this man's portrait get here?"

"Sundar seemed startled, she asked, 'You know this man? But that's impossible!'

'Impossible? Why? I saw him on the day of your performance.'

'Are you sure?'

'Of course I am sure! But why are you so surprised?'

'It can't be,' Sundar seemed to be talking to herself, almost. 'You must have seen somebody who looked like him. Anyway, forget about all that, tell me, how is your mother doing? What happened to her so suddenly?'

'She has high blood pressure. It suddenly got worse, anyway, she's fine now.'

After a few minutes of silence, I asked, 'You didn't tell me who this is?'

'Let's sit down some place quiet first, and eat something. I'll tell you all about it. It's a rather long story.'

"Sundar was sitting in across from me in the Nataraja Corner, telling me her story. 'This haveli that I live in, it belongs to an old thakur sahib. He'd had this small haveli specially built for the kunwar sahib, his son. That was his portrait you saw, the haveli was built for him so he could study here, you know what the educational facilities are like, out in the countryside.'

'So that's the story! That room in the corner must be the kunwar sahib's then. Music there, dancing here, waah! Quite a film story developing here. What fun!'

'Will you keep quiet? Let me finish first. There have been really weird things going on while you were away.'

'Of course! Otherwise why would that portrait...'

'Now I am not going to go on. If you want to hear the story, listen quietly.'

'Okay baba. I'll be quiet. Now go on.'

'This happened around three or four days after you left. I was practicing in my room, and suddenly I glanced out of the window. It seemed like there was somebody standing there. The next instant the young man was through the door and inside my room.'

'Who? The kunwar sahib?'

'Look, you're interrupting again!'

'Okay, Okay, go on.'

'I immediately thought -- this is the young man who lives in that room in the corner... It feels rather awkward, doesn't it? Asking somebody for something? Anyway, after five or six days, I managed to ask him - 'Can you lend me your records of dance music for a few days?' An odd sort of smile lit up his face for an instant, when I asked him that.'

'The next day, I got the records, and discovered the reason for that odd, desperate, smile as well. I discovered something I would never have dreamed possible. The next day, the old thakur sahib turned up unexpectedly for some work related to his old properties. He came by for a few hours. He told me this.'

"Sundar was silent for a while, and then she continued, 'Some twenty-five years ago, thakur sahib's eldest son died in an air crash. At the time he used to study here in Jaipur. Thakur sahib told me that his son had had a great fascination for music and painting. He'd often spend an entire day painting, and there'd be a music mehfil in his room through the night. As he said this, thakur sahib motioned towards the room in the corner. I was shocked, 'Then who lives in that room now?'

'Nobody,' thakur sahib replied, 'there's still some of his old stuff lying in that room, paintings, his gramophone, his records.' An immediate longing arose in me, to look inside the room, but I was afraid to ask.

'Sometime later, thakur sahib himself remarked, 'he had some really lovely dance records. Would you like to listen to them?' Thakur sahib must have remembered my passion for dance.

'It was time for him to leave. He found the key for me. I rushed to the room the moment he left. The room was pretty big. There was a diwan along one wall, with a few chairs near it. In one corner there was an easel with a large painting on it. There were lots of paintings on the walls as well. There were two large cupboards, one full of books, and the other full of small sculptures, brushes, tubes of paint and records. There was a gramophone on a table. There was a layer of dust on everything.'

"Sundar went silent, looking dreamily into the distance.

I asked, 'What was that painting?'

'Don't ask Mani, don't ask.'

'Why?'

'You're not going to believe this.'

'Arrey, you know I don't lightly dismiss ghost stories, now go on...'

'It was a nude.'

'A nude?'

'Yes.' She stopped for a few moments. Then she said softly, 'it was of me.'

'How could that be! You must be mistaken.'

'No Mani, it was me.'

"We paid the bill and returned to the haveli. It was half past seven by then, and beginning to get dark..

'Now show me the painting,' I demanded, the moment we were through the gate.

"We walked to the room in silence. Sundar flipped the light on and I spotted the painting on the easel and stopped, speechless. It was a dancing nude, startlingly lifelike. Face, body, limbs; all captured with the dynamic vitality of the dancer frozen on canvas.

'How can you say this is you? You can't see the whole face anyway. And there can always be a superficial resemblance between two people.' I noticed a scrawl at the bottom of the canvas -- Jaisingh, 1945. How could a painting made twenty-five years ago have Sundar in it?

'It's not just the face ... look at the fingers on the left hand, and -- ' Sundar broke off abruptly. I looked. The left hand in the painting had six fingers, just like Sundar's.

'What else? You were going to say something else weren't you,' I asked slowly.

'Forget it...' Sundar seemed suddenly shy.

'Go on, tell me!' I urged her.

"Sundar pointed to a large prominent mole on the dancer's left breast."





Mani finished her tale and asked, " So could this be a case of reincarnation? Is it possible that Sundar was the dancer in the painting?"

I could not disagree with Mani. In many of the purported cases of reincarnation that we know of, there is a recurrence of bodily characteristics and personality traits in the next life.

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