Dear Friends, Though this topic does not concern this group, or for that matter most of the groups more so on the Diwali day, yet I could not stop myself from intruding here. It all started when my daughter Tanaya, who is in Class X, came back home telling that her teacher had narrated a lots of ghost stories in the class. One of them the teacher told was related to IIT Kanpur. He said that he had gone for some kind of training there and had stayed at one of the Boy's hostel. It was summer and the hostels were vacant with a very few occupants, including some other trainees. There a young girl came to their room at nearly 10 PM. She seemed to be looking for someone else but stopped to exchange some pleasantries. The girl had pleasant manners and the conversation lengthened for some time and then she went way. She also mentioned her name. The next day, when the teacher, naturally enamoured by this girl tried to look for her, he came to know that a girl of exactly the same name and same features, had committed suicide a few years ago. This was enough for the teacher to get extremely shocked and take to bed. I certainly don't know how true the story is and how much true was the teacher while narrating the story. But I must say that the story send a chilling wave through my spine, no lesser than what effect it had upon Tanaya. I feel I am a logical person. This makes me believe in things that can be logically derived or proved or stated. I have never had any occasion in life when I had any kind of encounter or experience of any such super-natural entities (call them ghosts or whatever). But I must confess that I have been feeling frightened by their presumed existence since my childhood and it persists as much today. The reason I am not being able to get away this fear is that my so-called logical mind comes and says- "OK, you have not seen or experienced a ghost. But is it an ample proof of the non-existence of all such kinds of entities. They might as well be existing." I am sure the same kind of feeling might be passing through many of you. More so because it is related with the vital question of death. Ghosts are there because people die and are no more in physical existence. Hence, a logical conclusion- they might be in shapeless forms. It is this curiosity that makes me force this unwarranted topic upon the group members. A discussion or opinions or experience sharing (in the form of personal experience) would be highly rewarding, at least to me.
Amitabh Thakur IPS, Currently at IIM Lucknow # 94155-34526
