Fear Factor

Last tuesday, I was travelling from Bangalore to Mysore by my car. It was a cool evening and the Mysore-Bangalore highway was great. Was I all alone? Not exactly! I remembered what I had told my friend a few days back - "Diamonds are a woman's best friend and for a man, its his iPod" :) Prem Joshua was playing sitar as only he could. Not many things in the world can be as blissful as music! In less than an hour I was almost near Maddur.

Suddenly, some weird song was being played from my ipod (which was almost scary!). I just stopped my car to the extreme left of the empty road, to change the song. On the other side of the road were a few dhabas. The song being played was "Spirit", by a group called "Atman", from the album "Buddha Bar 2". I just scrolled through a few songs and selected the song "Shiva Moon". I kept the ipod on the seat next to me, placed my left hand on the gear and turned my head to the right. Just two feet away from me was standing someone wearing white kurta pyjama. Even before my brain could receive the signals to decipher what I had seen, my spinal cord had given instructions and in no time, I was in the third gear. I somehow never turned back, my legs were still trembling and I was taking deep breaths to bring my rhythm back. I could see a few people now, my breathing was coming back to normalcy and I started analyzing as to what had actually happened.

I had parked my car in front of the dhaba, so it could have been some waiter who wanted to invite me to the dhaba. No! I have never seen any guy wearing kurta pyjama in any dhaba. I could not even see his face, as there was no light on the left side of the road. Above all, he did not seem to be "in motion". In the few milliseconds I saw that entity, there was no momentum - he was standing still. What else? He could have been some pimp who thought I was some potential customer. But, who would stand in such a lonely place waiting for a potential customer. And, he did not even call me as I sped off. I dont think that anyone with such a low business acumen can exist! Was he some thief trying to loot a poor software engineer? I dont know, he did not seem to have the urgency to accomplish his task. Or was he just some person crossing the road? Cant be! If he was crossing the road, he would be going in front of the car or behind the car. He would not be in the direction of the driver's seat! Or did he just stop by, curious to see the ipod? May be, but I had barely stopped for 20 seconds, so how could anyone appear next to me out of nowhere so fast? I can definitely say that its not an illusion, because I had seen it at an arms length and it could not have been my imagination! As many of you might be speculating by now, was it a ghost? I dont actually believe in ghosts and even if they exist, it does not make any sense for them to just appear in front of a person. After overburdening my left part of the brain for a couple of hours, I accepted the fact that I would never know what I had actually seen. No theory seemed correct, no logic made any sense - all I could conclude was the only real thing was the chill that went through my spine!