A Song of Many Rivers by Ruskin Bond

Author:Ruskin Bond [Bond, Ruskin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Rupa & Co
Published: 2016-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

which, roughly translated, means—

Ghosts, spirits, goblins, sprites,

Away you fly, don’t come tonight,

Or with great Shiva you’ll have to fight!

Shiva, the Destroyer, is one of the three major Hindu deities. But the more we repeated the verse, the more uneasy we became, and when I got into bed (after carefully examining it for snakes), I couldn’t lie still, but kept twisting and turning and looking at the walls for moving shadows. Kamal attempted to raise our spirits by singing softly, but this only made the atmosphere more eerie. After a while we heard someone knocking at the door, and the voices of Anil and the maidservant. Getting up and opening the door, I found them looking pale and anxious. They, too, had succeeded in frightening themselves as a result of Anil’s mother’s stories.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Anil. ‘Wouldn’t you like to sleep in our part of the house? It might be safer. Melia will help us to carry the beds across!’

‘We’re quite all right,’ protested Kamal and I, refusing to admit we were nervous; but we were hustled along to the other side of the flat as though a band of ghosts was conspiring against us. Anil’s mother had been absent during all this activity but suddenly we heard her screaming from the direction of the room we had just left.

‘Rusty and Kamal have disappeared!’ she cried. ‘Their beds have gone, too!’

And then, when she came out on the verandah and saw us clashing about in our pyjamas, she gave another scream and collapsed on a cot.

After that, we didn’t allow Anil’s mother to tell us ghost stories at night.

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