A Student’s Ghost At My Uncle’s Study

The unfulfilled desires of a person are many. An unmarried person who always thinks about attractive girls but died an untimely death before marrying a girl of his choice may turn into a ghost and loitering about the wedding venues. Similarly a college fresher who ends his life before completing his graduation course, may find himself in the premises of a seat of learning in the form of a ghost.

I think that this was the case of a student’s ghost who visited my uncle’s study regularly.  My maternal uncle Sharma was a practising lawyer. He had his office on the upstairs of a century old building. His office room might be better described as an attic, connected to the ground floor by the wooden stair-case. The house was noisy with the clients who talked with my uncle in muffled tones and the sounds of their footsteps on the wooden steps while entering and leaving my uncle’s office room. My uncle’s office was closed for the clients around 6 pm. 

  He used to teach Maths to his elder, younger sons and daughter who were studying tenth, ninth and eighth classes respectively. I too joined the class as I was a dullard in Maths.

  My uncle placed a high rise wooden chair in a corner of the room. He used to say that he reserved the chair for a ghost student, who was interested in Maths. But my cousins and I were skeptical about his claim. Of course we did not contradict his claim for fear of being given a good beating under the pretext of poor performance in the subject.

  At the commencement of the teaching at 7.15 sharp at night, the sound tuk, tuk was heard on the wooden stair-case. Shortly, the atmosphere turned uncanny. There was a screeching noise of the chair being moved a little. My uncle looked at the chair.,”Oh! You’ve come!’ He said, “ I think I can begin the lesson.”

  There was a broad grin of approval from the ghost student, of course according to my uncle’s perception. 

  Our class ended by 9 pm and my uncle said, “The class is over. You can go.”

  We heard the screeching sound of the wooden chair again; Then the noise of tuk, tuk was heard on the wooden staircase again.

  This process continued till we finished our college education.

  Later on, the student ghost ceased to appear. So my uncle also stopped placing a chair for the student ghost.

  I was grown up and on a Sunday morning I reminded my uncle about our pet student ghost, sipping over a cup of coffee. 

  My uncle became very old by then. He smiled through the wrinkles of his face. “Rao,”he said, “the ghost student was an intelligent student of Maths. But somehow he couldn’t make it to college, while he was alive. He might have met with an untimely death. His interest in Maths impelled him to attend our class.

  “But uncle,”I said, “Anand, Sudhakar, Girija and I failed to see the ghost student. But you saw him (the ghost) without fail. Moreover, why did he stop appearing to you as well?”

  “Rao!” my uncle clarified patiently. “The mental frequencies through which we and the spirits operate are entirely different. My mental frequencies and those of the ghost student’s are the same. So we see each other. Your mental frequencies did not match with those of the ghost student’s. That’s all.

  “The ghost student stopped appearing to me because he might have been busy with the learning of advanced Maths at some other place - either on this planet or at any other suitable astral planet or he might have been born again.”  

  I thought that all my doubts about life after death were cleared.