“Oooo … Aaaa … Eeee …”

Mother’s fearful shriek, like the scalpel of an expert surgeon, pierced the silence of the night. She mumbled, “Sarvanash!” With eyes blind with tears, feet frozen, and body convulsing, she started chanting in a frenzy, “Hey Ma, Raksha Karo! Hey Ma, Raksha Karo! Hey Ma, Raksha Karo!

Durga Puja was over, Diwali was due in a few days. As usual, she had woken up well before daybreak. She had kissed her only child—a daughter yet to celebrate her first birthday, nestled her carefully between two pillows, and looked at the tiny bundle with tenderness till the girl was deep in sleep again. Her husband wouldn’t be home for some hours. A journalist, he used to go to the newspaper’s office after dinner and returned around eight the next morning. Meanwhile, mother would clean the single-room accommodation, cook meals, fill up two pitchers of water at the well, and place them at a corner. She wanted father to enjoy at least three hours of uninterrupted sleep before noon.

It was nearly impossible for the sub-editor of a Hindi newspaper to experience the luxury of a room with a broken roof of earthen tiles, share a latrine and a bathroom with the families of two other tenants, and have a watersource in the lower middleclass neighbourhood of Mithapur in Patna, especially when the monthly salary was received once in three or four months and the rent could never be paid on time.

For about a month, father had hunted for accommodation everywhere. His confidence had completely shattered when even a space below the stairs had been denied to him for want of three months’ rent in advance. Only god knows where would have my parents’ misery dumped them, had Bhawani Babu not come to their rescue in the nick of time. Bhawani Sahai, better known as Bhawani Babu, was the owner of the room in which my parents lived. His wife was a teacher in a government school. An Aryasamaji and an idealist, he wasn’t cut out for a full time job or business. He was impressed by my father’s interstate marriage, his pursuance of further education and respectable occupation as a journalist, and had been further bowled over by the presence of Vivekanand and Subhas Bose in the family tree of my mother. He never haggled for rent, and was soon treated like a father figure by her. She started calling his wife ‘Mataji’, and considered their twenty-something son Munnu as a brother.

Mother stood shellshocked on the door. On the other side lay a vermillion-smeared human skull, a red cloth, a bundle of leaves, some black grains, bhabhoot, flowers, oil, a diya, etc., etc. The tantrik obviously knew that among all residents, mother was the first to open the door every morning. Perhaps the tantrik had hoped that she, in a hurry to return to her daughter when it was still dark, would be too focused on fetching water from the well to care about the material placed on the floor. Her stepping on the black magic yantra was almost a certainty. However, mother had registered a silhouette of the objects through the corners of her eyes and confused it with a stray dog. Almost instantly she had realized her mistake and screamed in terror.

The flicker of the flame of the diya next to the skull had an ominous ring around it. Mother tried to control herself, but sensed that she was about to collapse in a moment. She held on to the jamb and looked around in despair. The two doors on the right were also marked with witchcraft articles, of course, without the skull. Ditto with the door on the left. Bhawani Babu lived in that room. The bolt disengaged, the door opened with a bang, and Bhawani Babu, trying to put his tahmed in order, emerged with tousled hair and sleepy eyes. He looked at mother with concern but didn’t ask anything. What had happened didn’t merit questioning. It was obvious and challenged the masculinity and principles of Bhawani Babu.

“Don’t worry, Beti, go inside and relax. I have played enough football in my youth, and know how to deal with this stupid skull!” Words spat out of his angry mouth.

Mother, as if in a trance, kept to her post. Bhawani Babu kicked the skull out of the porch and threw it in the nearby gutter with well directed nudges. Gathering the witchcraft stuff from all doors in a wick basket, he dumped that too in the gutter. Mother regained senses. Other residents had woken up, though the sun was yet to rise. Bhawani Babu started washing the porch. Mother tried to assist him, but Mataji insisted, “No, Beti! Don’t attempt that. Go inside and tend to your daughter.”

Mother narrated that incident to me several years ago. I had asked, “Did we face a major hardship after that?”

“No, Bhawani Babu saved us!” She had replied.

“And did he face any trouble?”

She thought for a while before responding, “He suffered. I can’t be definite that it all happened because he fell in the witchcraft trap, but he lost a leg in an accident. The poor guy had to walk with a stick for the rest of his life. Munnu was apprehended by the police in some case, about which I’m not sure. Actually, your father landed in Bombay with a new job within months, and we vacated that place for ever.

“Who had organized that jadu tona? Was that ever revealed?”

“Perhaps!” Mother’s eyes became clouded with fear and goosepimples appeared on her skin. She said hurriedly, “What’s the point in discussing such an old incident?”

You may ask, what’s the point behind my referring to that seventy-two years old incident today.

Well, as I write these lines, Durga Puja has passed and Diwali is awaited. And, today morning I have noticed a similar incident of witchcraft at a street crossing in the old locality of Bur Dubai in Dubai.

Unforfunately, I don’t have Bhawani Babu to jump to my rescue.