When A Spirit Threw Me Off My Bicycle

It happened about four decades ago when I lived at Namalagundu near Sitaphalmandi in Secunderabad. I had a quarrelsome neighbour at the next door who was in his middle fifties then. I was in my late twenties and just married. Since my neighbour was always ready to pick up a quarrel with me without any provocation I was not on speaking terms with him.

 One fine morning, he approached me with a broad grin on his face. “Brother”, he said,”I am feeling rather breathless and a nagging pain in my chest. If you lend me five hundred rupees I will consult a cardiologist. I’ll repay your debt as soon as possible.”

  I thought that it was not proper on my part to think about our old enmity. Only the previous evening he entered into an altercation with me about drawing water from the common well. After all he is a fellow human being in distress. So I made up my mind to help him.

  Five hundred rupees was a big amount then and my salary was very meagre in those days. But I was moved by his appeal. I asked him to give me some time. I rushed to my bank and drew the required amount out of my small savings. I returned home in no time. I knocked at my neighbour’s door. When he came out, I gave him the amount and wished him all the best. He thanked me profusely and left for the cardiologist with his wife.

  I prayed to God that he should get well soon.

  It was my habit to take a nap at noon. I was startled out of my sleep at the sound of women weeping at the next door. My wife and I rushed into my neighbour’s house. My quarrelsome neighbour lay dead on the floor, surrounded by his wife and other women weeping bitterly. The men assembled there were urging them to control themselves.

  Tears welled up in my eyes. I forgot all the insults meted out to me by my neighbour all these days for no fault of mine. My wife and I joined their relatives in consoling them.

  By evening the body was shifted to the crematorium at Namalagundu and consigned to flames according to Hindu rites. 

  I also waited there along with the others till the skull broke in the fires (kapala moksham) and returned home.

  I bathed, had my meal and started for my office at the Lower Tank Bund Road.

  My job at the office demanded working on the night shift on alternate weeks.

  After finishing my shift at 2 AM, I left for home on my ramshackle bicycle. I had to go through Lower Tank Bund Road, Kavadiguda, Chilakalaguda and Namalagundu finally.

  The chain of my old bicycle often came off while peddling. I had to get down and fix it at least four or five times during my travels. 

  My heart pounded against my chest as I neared the open crematorium. The pyre of my neighbour was burning. I got down from my bicycle and stood at a distance to the pyre. I prayed silently that my neighbour’s soul should rest in peace till his rebirth.

  I got onto my bicycle and began to pedal with a heavy mood. All of a sudden my bicycle shook. I lost my balance and fell down. At first I thought that I was feeling giddy. I got onto my bicycle and again there was a violent shake as a result of which I fell down once again. I sustained bleeding injuries. I did not dare to get onto my bicycle again. I pushed it home.

  I could not sleep that night properly. I had nightmares that night in which my neighbour laughed wildly and said “It is I who felled you from your bicycle. I can harm you though I have no physical body.”

  My wife was alarmed when I narrated to her what had happened to me. My friends and relatives advised me to stay at the office till day break during night shifts.

  After the first annual ceremony was performed for the well being of my neighbour’s soul

I ventured to go home after my night shift was over, crossing the crematorium. But nothing uncanny happened to me.

  I reasoned to myself that my neighbour’s bitter feelings about me had died by then and his soul was atoning for its past sins and preparing itself to take another birth. Hence it stopped troubling me.

 

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