“What did you say last night?” said Tavre.
Dhondu could not believe this providence. He spoke earnestly, the spark in his eyes glowing with the weight of expectations.
“Malaksaheb, my daughter is running very high fever. She will die if I don’t get money for her injection.”
“No no, before that, what did you say before that?”
Dhondu got the drift and implored, “Yes Malaksaheb, I will do anything for you. I am your loyal servant. It’s you who has fed me, nourished me and I owe my life to you.”
“Har…har…har…hmm, you are not as bad a bastard I always thought you to be. This afternoon we have the British entourage visiting and I shall be presenting to them the celebrations and festive mirth due this Makar Sankranti. In their presence I shall announce this year’s dare. Won’t you do it for me, Dhondya?” The smirk on Tavre’s face was not commensurate with the deceit in his speech.
Dhondu was scared. “What do you wish me to do, malak?” he inquired.
“You will get me Leelavati cha haar. In return, you shall get land, your wife will get some work and your daughter will be married to the sahukaar of the adjoining village.”
There was a pall of horror on Dhondu’s face. Trembling, he spoke, “Malak, no one has ever dared to set foot on that island. How can…” he was cut short.
“Hmm…so you will let your daughter die, Dhondya?”
“No no, I won’t let her die. I accept the challenge,” Dhondu said. “But Malak, what if I never return? What if I die?”
“In that case, I would have to find a new person to clean my shit,” snapped Tavre angrily. “You dog, I am giving you a chance to improve your life. That’s more than enough. Get me that necklace and you are free.” Tavre walked away.
That afternoon the announcement was duly made and within hours the entire congregation of dwellings in Tavre’s fiefdom had heard about the greatest dare of all time. This is what Rambhau Tavre spoke in his address:
“I am pleased to announce this year’s attraction. I call it ‘The greatest dare of all time’ (orchestrated applause). Tomorrow night is a full moon and exactly at midnight when the full moon shines the brightest, will the bravest of brave men swim upstream to the island alone in chilling cold water, walk through the jackfruit trees to the well, climb down the well and retrieve a toy wheel from the bottom of the well. He needs to come back alive to claim the prize. The toy wheel would be proof of accomplishment of the dare. Tomorrow morning the village team will deposit this wheel in that well.
“And now, let me announce the name of that brave man who has volunteered to risk his life for the grand booty. The lure of money can make lions out of wimps. We all know him, but did we know he was greedy? Ladies and Gentlemen, Dhondoba Tukaram Mhaske (there was no applause).”
It took five boats and 35 men just to put that cart wheel in the well and the dare dared just one man to fetch it! They set off in broad daylight, carrying swords and sticks. As soon as they landed the accumulated fear of yore descended upon their psyches. They stuck close to each other and moved towards the well shouting and chanting holy verses. In this formation they reached the well, threw the marker in and ran back to their boats. They were 35, they had boats, they had daylight, they had weapons but still they were mortally scared. Indeed, tonight was the night for the greatest dare of all time.
In that cowshed home of hers, Savitribai cried inconsolably.
“I won’t let you do this. This is madness. That man wants the necklace for himself and is tricking you into getting it by showing it as a dare. Please don’t leave us. What will I do if something happens to you?” The groans of the sick child seemed to justify her bereavement.
“Why are you talking like this?” shouted Dhondu. “You should be encouraging me, saying you have confidence I will return with that necklace.”
The vehement cries now gave way to anxious snobs and sniffles. She hugged Dhondu and did a puja. She smeared her sindoor on his forehead, and forced a smile defying the colossus of her inexorable miseries.
~~~
Exactly at midnight, Dhondu set out. The team accompanied him as far as the banks of the river. Then they left hurriedly; this was not a night to be outside. Dhondu sat down and meditated. He inhaled the cool air, held it as long as his inflated lungs could, then slowly exhaled. He did a small prayer and drank some water from the river. Then he stood up at the edge and looked upstream. As a dark lump outlined in the middle of the river, he saw the island. He thought he saw a moving light there but he decided to ignore it. There was still two miles of the river to be swum before that consideration could bother him. And there were more than just moving lights to overcome!
He dived into the river and began swimming. The water was cold and shivers had already set in. Swimming upstream was another challenge not because of the flow but for the obstructing debris. Before he left, Savitribai had given him a chain with a small Ganesha talisman. It had hung around her neck since she was born and they were inseparable. Now, it tossed around in the nightly waters of the Bhisa.
By the time Dhondu reached the island his bones were cold and muscles cramped. But more concerning was the manifestation of alarming fear. The moment he stepped on the island, a mournful wail arose from somewhere deep in the darkness. “Oh my god, what am I doing here?” he thought as the wail petered out with the sound of a dying siren. He stared at the pitch darkness of the jackfruit groves and shuddered. It was only the recurrent flash of his bedridden daughter that made him take his first step into the darkness. But all his equanimity and bravery evaporated when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
Dhondu had barely taken a few steps when a strange thought had besieged his calm. Strangely, he thought someone was following him. His heart was beating fast and his tread had become wobbly. In this supreme state of nervous anxiety, the hand had touched his shoulder.
“Who…who’s th…there?” Dhondu turned around and stammered, the words barely escaping his mouth. There was no one. Gasping, his eyes surveyed the dark monsters with hands (the jackfruit trees) which his frightened brain had conjured up. “I mean no harm,” he cried and pleaded to them. “I am a simple, poor ma…” Dhondu never finished his request. An owl, his eyes flashing like the devil made a screeching dash at him. Dhondu let out a terrifying scream and ran berserk in the darkness. He bolted wildly, stumbling over rocks, bumping into trees and bushes. Something came in his way and he tripped, crashing headlong to the ground. He picked himself up too scared to look behind and felt the ground around him. He felt something hard and round. His trembling fingers neatly traced the contours of a human skull. Suddenly, the skull spoke with a rasping voice, “Over there, to your right.” A man’s state of mind under such horrific order of occurrences can only be imagined and not described. That Dhondu’s heart still pumped life was indeed incredulous.
It’s difficult to even appreciate those reservoirs of mental sanity from which Dhondu Mhaske drew strength and eventually found the well. The moon shone brightly down its walls. It escaped his reason that the skull was only helping by giving directions. But how can a mortal man reason with a talking skull?
Now, the most frightening act of the dare presented itself to Dhondu in its terrifying impossibility. But wonder of wonders, such was the love for his wife and child that it drove this poor soul to descent into the well of horrors. The steps spiraled down into the pitch darkness of the well’s gaping mouth. Dhondu could see the reflection of the moon, as his iris adjusted to the dim milky illumination inside. Step by step, he climbed down the well holding its lichen-laden cold stone wall with his hands. He was only halfway down when he heard the sound he had dreaded the most—of ripples on the water. Something meant to come out of the water. Slowly, very slowly, a figure in the shape of a woman emerged from the water. She was carrying a glittering necklace in her hand. This was it. This was Leelavati cha haar.
Dhondu’s last vision was that of a woman nursing a sick child anxiously waiting for someone to r
eturn. His heart muscles froze and he fell into the water. Dead.
Savitribai stood at the door forlornly staring those expectant eyes into the night. She abandoned her post only to attend to the renewed pangs of suffering coming from her daughter. In the haveli, the bed creaked under the lofty weight of Tavre’s lust.
~~~
Like all sad stories, this unfortunate tale would have ended with the above lines; a heart wrenching account of human deceit, chicanery and hypocrisy. But the operative word there was ‘human’; the rules of the dead are very, very different. The greatest dare of all time had ended, but in its wake the greatest retribution of all time had begun. This is what happened.
From within the well rose a melancholic wail of a kind that no human had ever lent their ears to. It echoed and ricocheted in the well’s stone walls, swirling out in a crescendo and disseminating in the night to the deepest nooks, darkest crannies and the farthest reaches of the countryside. One by one, apparitions arose breaking the stillness of the water surface. They formed a wide circle, a formation of wraiths suspended in air. Then rose the dead body of Dhondu, sucked out from the water by an invisible force. His lifeless form levitated in the middle of this ghostly conclave. The gathering paused, as if thinking, discussing what to do with the body. Then suddenly Dhondu’s corpse vanished. The wraiths came out of the well and disappeared into the darkness. Only the moon bore witness to these unearthly proceedings.
What happened thereafter would best be described in the narrative of one of the local men talking to Major Hadley.
“When we woke up the next morning, we saw something horrifying. Tavresheth was hanging from the mango tree by the temple. He was completely naked, hands tied with a rope to a branch. What was peculiar was the invisible hand administering stinging slaps to his face. We tried to help him but that invisible force threw us back. He was slapped till his cheekbones showed. Then scores of birds emerged from nowhere and started pecking at his body mercilessly. Even sparrows! I have never seen a sparrow attack a human Majorsaheb; it was gruesome. Tavresheth cried and cried till a vulture tore his tongue out. Suddenly, the rope snapped and he fell heavily to the ground. It must have broken a few of his bones as we saw the pain on his face. He was then dragged through every lane and cart track in the village before being dumped in front of Dhondoba Mhaske’s house (the man who accepted the dare). We were beside ourselves with fear when we saw Dhondoba’s dead body neatly placed on the floor! His wife and child were thrashing their heads on the body. Some women went to control and comfort them. Just then we heard a huge commotion and shouts of “Fire, Fire!” When we followed the cries, we saw that the haveli was on fire. Within hours it was completely charred. Miraculously, Tavresheth’s family escaped unscathed.
We gave Dhondoba a ceremonious funeral and arranged for his widow and child to be taken care of after his death. As far as Tavresheth is concerned, he has lost his sanity. They are planning to send him to the tantric for curing his madness. Very, very sad occurrences saheb. What brings you here?”
Major Hadley frowned. “Ah, well I had come to meet Mr. Tavre to inform him of…err…some things,” he paused. “However, in light of the developments, I don’t think I would need to meet him.” He mounted his pony and rode off. The edict from the Lieutenant Governor asking Tavre to surrender with immediate effect all his land holdings for constructing an ammunitions factory was not required. The retribution was complete.
About the Author
Manish writes mostly fiction and "The Disappearance Of Tejas Sharma...and other hauntings" Ghost Stories from India is his first book.
His preferred genre is supernatural and ghost fiction, but he occasionally dabbles with non fiction as well.Born and brought up in East India, Manish is actually from the West, currently lives in the South and some say looks and talks more like a North Indian. This pan India persona flows into his writing as well and his stories are built on meticulous details of cultural and geographical settings of rural and urban India.
An Engineer MBA by certification, a Management Consultant by freak chance, his raison d’être has always been elsewhere - traveling, wildlife, writing, photography and quizzing. He lives in Mumbai with wife Pratima and son Viaan
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