Thursday, April 5th 2012
Mechanical workshops can be very painstaking. You wait along as you repeat the same step at least a dozen times on the work-piece and still the precision gets muffed. I finished my cursory model early and went back for my evening slumber.
Come night and as usual I have my dinner roam around with my tower like friend, Khamba (6’4) and check out ‘ummmsome’ fruits that we never try to buy at KC*.
At night, after all my committed friends had returned, we planned what to do for the extended weekend. After much deliberation, we decided that this time we’d hire a car to Gokarna. The green grass, highlands and the misty seas* were the perfect seduction.
So we snuck out from the hostel on the pretext of taking food. At around 11:30 pm, we reach Syndicate Circle to get ourselves a Gypsy for Rs1500 a night (My roomie, Abhi is an ardent negotiator). We were in total five guys and two girls, Bisleri (she would drink nothing else hence the name) and Ranchi (well obvious reasons!!). Both the girls had used the ‘get in ten o’clock, sign and move out of the hostel to go to Campus store’ trick.
Friday, April 6th 2012
1:00 am-Seven friends, a gypsy, a pack of Maaza*and our beloved Bansal on the guitar, this was our perfect get away. The way to Gokarna as expected had a lot of bends and we did go rather slowly as none of us was an experienced driver. Just after we crossed Turtle Bay, came the road we were all eagerly waiting for- sea at one end and a lake at the other. After much demand by the self-proclaimed romantic, Raghu, we stopped for a while. Even though it was night, it was beautiful. I have always been awed by the vastness of the seas and somehow it gives me a really eerie feeling when I visit one at night. As he had finally got himself a straight road, Abhi was driving at around 90km/hr.
Me along with the five at the back were about to go to sleep when Abhi suddenly rammed the brakes. He was shaking badly. Bisleri, sitting beside him had no clue what had happened. Abhi finally spoke, ‘Guys, I think I killed someone. (His voice was still trembling). She was crossing the road, she suddenly came and I couldn’t brake in time… he almost broke down‘.
‘Where is she?’ I asked. He didn’t reply, he just got down and went to look under the car. When he came back, he told us there was no one there. We blamed it on the sugar rush* and asked Raghu to take the wheel. As we started to pull Abhi’s leg over his hallucinations, we heard a thump.
Raghu had collapsed on the wheel. In front of the wheel was a lady sitting on the bonnet, her dress was wheatish with shades of crimson. She had a pale face and her hands were at either side of the car with her long black hair as a parasol to them. She had an unexplainable pain in her eyes, and yet her face did not express any weariness. In fact it gleamed of sadism. Her laugh was now echoing in our ears; as we tried to fight the trance, she smiled and whispered something that sounded like ‘the next would die and the guilt shall plague you….’
Saturday April 7th 2012
6:00 am- I woke up to see a man dressed as police and my elder sister looking at me. I recognised the KMC student rooms. The officer asked me some questions. Apparently, there was an accident involving a truck that thankfully just clipped us (we were parked in the middle of the highway with no lights) but unfortunately rammed itself in a tree. The driver died on spot. We all were surprisingly and thankfully safe.
We all came back and none had clue about the previous day. We never went to NH 17 again. A while later, our cleaner told us after much trepidation that it is believed that the ghost of a lady roams the highway. Her daughter and husband were killed in an accident. He also added that the accident involved some drunk drivers. They were all college students who were going for their first night out at Turtle Bay. As they were high on adrenaline they tried to race the car on the highway and suddenly lost control. The lady’s family car crashed into a tree trying to avoid them. Not able to bear the tragic loss, she eventually chose to commit suicide by coming in front of a truck on the same highway. Since then there had been many sightings of a lady in blood stained clothes followed by an accident. The peculiar thing about the accident was that there would always be two vehicles involved and the one at fault never had fatalities. The locals later started to proclaim that the ghost believed that the guilt of a murder was a greater punishment than death itself.
*pun intended