Gif by Maylee Illustrations
I had already seen the number ‘13’ everywhere before what happened day before yesterday & the reason why I am not into “devil worship” is because I never wanted anyone to dominate me, I’m not here to do anyone’s dirty work be it the devil or for that matter even God. The devil is unlucky & he brings a lot of bad luck, he is thus associated with number 13 to connote inauspiciousness, God and the devil are two extreme opposing forces… like I said one is boring & megalomaniac and the other one’s too stupid, he is self destructive. Associating with the devil means you have to picture your life as a grim obituary or a graveyard with loads of morbidity & pain, you will see the darker murkier, gore grislier side of humanity, extreme “realism” and being holy simply means combating the evil in every possible manner, you will be forced to be a scapegoat in order to glorify God & his miracles - like the (next) book. One thing that the unlucky number or devil teaches us is - if there can be Bad luck then there can also be Good luck.
But here’s what I have to say to both of them, I WILL NEVER LET ANYONE CONTROL OR RUN/RUIN MY LIFE forget dominating, I’m no one’s hostage, I am in no one’s “team” I’m a separate entity altogether, you are forgetting that there are three major characters in the book - God, Me & the Devil… so if there is any fight it’s between all three of us, I’m bound by no vice nor virtue and I will never depend on anything - like faith nor will I let fear control the hell out of me. I never believe in the “invisible” I’ve always been an empiricist so no matter how many innuendos you send across, you won’t incur any reaction from me… all I would do is I G N O R E show up in my world and I’ll acknowledge your existence… A lot of innocent kids are losing their lives everyday and there are so many people who don’t even have money for basic medicines, most of us are going through a lot not due to the Pandemic but because of other people who are callous, irresponsible, insensitive, crass, greedy and vitriolic… there is lots of atrocity, pain & unfairness, looking at the current volatility of our dreary dystopian world, God should not even think about the book, it would be better if he’ll remain hidden… and the devil, has been of no use either.
Sorry I have a lot of young readers reading my blog including my cousin sister so I couldn’t get brutally honest before. The sad truth is, you are on your own and you are dealing with not only bad people but also Gods, Demons, Angels, Dead Souls & the Devil and here’s the worst part, as a human you are the weakest, your strength only lies in sticking together.
I didn’t want to stalk him cuz I would get panic attacks, I didn’t want to contact his horrible, immature, uncouth friends either, I didn’t want to look up for him on google to avoid seeing whoever he is currently fucking so at the end of the day, how did I find his address? Is it possible to locate anyone in the whole of Mumbai, that too someone who might be staying on rent? How did I? Without using google or contacts?
Here’s one more thing:
I once met a tarot card reader & she said something to my mom (I wouldn’t sit in darkness back then) “I can feel it, she has that thing, she’s a psychic and it invites all those you know unwanted entities… around her, you should always keep at least one light on, in our religion we use Diyas to ward off all these spirits, in her case she can attract all of them so even if you’ll keep a dim light on it would be better” Ever since I’ve renovated my room, it gets extremely dark at night cuz previously I had a frosted sliding door in the bathroom and I would keep the bathroom lights, plus my room was smaller (before we took the gallery space inside) so the light coming through that translucent frosted glass would get evenly distributed throughout the whole room, now the room has become bigger and I’ve changed the door, it’s completely opaque, I have taken a beautiful light coloured pine plywood and a matching golden latch and vintage gold handle etc. so I’m very happy with the door I’ve put together but every night post 2 am when all the dimmers automatically go off, the whispering starts… currently I think it’s some female who’s haunting my room, Lorraine from Ed & Lorraine (The Conjuring) has always reminded me of me; the only difference between us is that she is afraid and I’m not. But that’s just fiction I’m sure she too was used to it in real life… I know I have to sleep and I have bigger things to deal with like my convulsions and human apathy, not all spirits are harmful like human beings, some are lost & some even try to help you if they see you in distress.
I was saving this for the book, too bad God or his people didn’t deserve it, so here, no matter how flimsy it might sound, brace yourself:
I always hated Goa, I could sense it was full of crap without even realising that it’s been a home to junkies since the early 60’s… (I was too young to be aware of that) when I went there, the vibes were making me claustrophobic, my mother thought Goa was beautiful but I hated it… I was the only one who was feeling sick and uncomfortable there, it was dreary, dead, bleak, odious (the word fits better here) I shunned it, it was as if it was full of death and morbidity… it was stinking like a rotting corpse but only to my olfactive senses, it was like a disturbing dream - full of macabre and eerieness. I found it repulsive and I wanted to leave as soon as I got there, each and every road, every street had an untold story, every wall had skeletons, the soil, the sand were all hiding deeply buried secrets… it was gloomy, dull and baleful, in short it was lifeless and it had no light.
I had experienced something similar… when I was 12, I was exploring our newly purchased home, I remember telling my parents not to buy it ‘cuz the moment I stepped in… I got the same vibes. I won’t be narrating the interesting part for free, I’d rather publish it directly as an É-Paper. Anyway when I entered the house, it was obviously not in a good state, it had been vacant for 3-6 months, everything was covered in dust, it belonged to a dentist. I keenly went inside and while I was browsing all those dirty shelves (she had some novelty stuff over there… I still remember the wobbly teeth toy) I instantly felt those dark vibes, it was so grim and gloomy again, the walls always have a story, something hides inside the walls (especially when the house is possessed) it’s like when the physical self dies, the shadow still remains and lurks inside the walls; I felt like something was “dead” inside the house, every life matters and every event of death is sad, it’s when our world even if for a fraction of second, gets engulfed in darkness and takes away one person at a time… After we moved in, some aunty told my brother and his friends that you’ll should’ve never shifted there, that apartment is haunted… she wasn’t trying to scare him, she was damn serious and she was feeling bad for us, we had already started having those kind of experiences over there so we knew she was right. I had told my parents right from the beginning, I knew something was wrong, now comes the interesting part… it might sound fictitious almost like a Hollywood Movie but trust me it’s real:
I’m gonna cut through the chase and go super fast because I have all the details in the book and my hands are feeling very numb and weak right now, you know my issues.
We had a power cut so I went near the window to get some air, I was never afraid of darkness or anything, I was always very bold… I had started going to the bathroom all alone at the mere age of 3 even at night, in complete darkness, I was too small to reach the switchboard but I would always say, “I’m a big kid I can handle it, I need no assistance.” When the lights went out I went near the window to grab some air and I waited there at the windowsill, my mother was burning candles in the living room. I kept looking outside ‘cuz I was bored but when I turned around & glanced inside the passage I saw a young girl sitting in the kitchen, she was leaning against the washing machine and she was somewhere around my age ie. 12, I could immediately read her in my head, she was looking at someone standing in front of her, it was a black shadowy figure with fiery eyes (I’m writing about them in my next book, they are demons or jinns they say Humans are made up of soil, Angels are made out of light & Demons are made out of fire) she was a human spirit though cuz she had shape and form unlike the other dude. She wasn’t afraid of him, she was full of anger, it’s as if she was indignant… I knew something had gone horribly wrong there. I didn’t ponder upon it cuz I thought it was crazy and I never actually believed in ghosts not until a certain age, after having multitudes of experiences I can finally assert that they might exist, again I’ve used the word ‘might’. I can’t say for sure… We started having more paranormal occurrences there and I looked up for it online, there was a quiz which I took very spontaneously, I could already make out that our house was haunted from my answers. I then did a reading which was “only for entertainment” but I was shocked to see the results, it said, “There is a little girl haunting your house” - I was damn right about what I saw… it further added, “She is a poltergeist” - again it means an angry violent spirit (remember I had said she was looking very resentful and livid) and “She died due to meningitis” I didn’t bother telling anyone at home about the reading cuz I was afraid of my mother, I thought she would think I’m crazy… although I should have. After two days my brother came home from school and said his school bus driver passed away, he was quite young, in his 40s, so my mother asked the cause if his untimely demise and he said, “I don’t know I’ll ask tomorrow at school and let you know.” The next day he came home and stuttered, “They are saying, he died of err… meningitis” that term was completely new for him, he had never heard about that illness before. I’m not saying the little girl had anything to do with that cuz he was struggling with it since long but I can’t be sure about it either, maybe it was time for me to open up about that reading? I didn’t say a word… then something dreadful happened, my mother felt like someone was trying to strangle her in the kitchen by pulling her dupatta, she told us about that after we moved out of there. Next, she was in the shower and my brother was in the living room on the laptop, I was in the bedroom playing on my laptop (laptops were a new thing back then and they were cheaper than phones) and we suddenly heard a loud crash in the kitchen, we had installed a wall mounted cabinet to store snacks & stuff, it had hinged glass doors none of the hinges were rusted, the doors weren’t dangly, they were in fact very tight cuz we had renovated that place before moving in, my brother would always go there cuz he was a lot into junk food… my mother called me out from the shower and asked, “What happened? And where’s Zeeshan?” I said I have no idea but I think he is in the living room, I could hear his keyboard (I have the ears of a bat, my senses especially even ESP is very strong) He also shouted from the living room, “Did you hear that? What happened?” I leaned over to see what was wrong cuz it came from the kitchen and all I could say was, “There’s no door… I don’t know how it fell but the glass door has completely shattered… into fine powder” Luckily no one was around cuz it was so impactful that we couldn’t even see any glass pieces, when I went inside I saw all the mess right where she was sitting next to the washing machine.
We are all surrounded by ghosts and spirits even jinns or demons and angels + other aligning (powerful) forces, it’s just that some of us see or sense them and some don’t. Those who do are usually empaths and I’ve explained the scientific reason behind how “our senses work” in my next book. It has a far deeper meaning than what you can fathom from reading between the lines here.
Next, I’ll be talking about one more legend…
Lila which means ‘Midnight’ she was the first ever feminist the world has ever known, she was the first to ask, “Why is God a male and not a female? I mean the world would’ve been in better hands” and I completely agree with her.
All chauvinistic misogynists have given her a very bad reputation, they say she would cook and eat children…
… but it was actually Dracula who did that, after the death of his wife he was afraid of dying, he was hell bent on resurrecting her & preventing his own “end”… ‘cuz the obvious concept of death is always irrevocable, he would prey on virgins & suck their blood like a vampire (because they were considered more “youthful” unadulterated, pure and chaste) and he’d cook children to prevent ageing, it was never Lila who did that, she just questioned God about everything especially gender roles & masculine domains… I mean “Why would anyone claim It’s a man’s world? And if so, why should women continue to breed men?” All these question are actually mine, I’m not sure what she asked, all I know is she always fought for female rights; some people believe she’s still around…
That reminds me of my poem:
~ B L A C K ~
