'A Ghost by the Fire...'

He tried to look down. Wasn't easy to fathom the height at which we were desperately trying to open the second bottle of whiskey from a stock of four safely stashed in a black backpack. "It's at least a 900 feet drop, in case you are planning to jump. I guarantee two things if you try. One, I will not even consider searching for your body. Two, in case your lady luck holds up and someone finds your body, I'm pretty sure that it won't be in an identifiable state. So, conclusion, Yes! It's a good suicide spot" I declared, trying to poke fun at him.

The response was a mixture of broken dialogues from a dozen Bollywood movies and it was confirmed beyond doubt that, 'Bandhe ko definitely chad gayi hai'. Ricky was a kind of guy who never focussed outside his high materialistic needs in life until he had one too many of his Glenlivet. The buffer zone of his alcoholic limit would be the description of his huge farm where he reared horses and trained his rotweilers. Any conversation involving nature, mysticism, mythology, philosophy and beyond, was a corroboration that he was past just being tipsy. And handling someone who had had one too many, on a trek with no human presence in at least a five-kilometre radius was a first for me.

"Hmmm... Please don't tell me that you have never felt an urge to fly..." Strike one. My watchman job had just got confirmed. "When surrounded by such beautiful landscape and lush green valleys, how can you not wonder about not getting infused with it, forever." Strike two. The watchman just doubled up as a baby sitter of a deluded child. "Eeh man, you might be thinking it's the whisky doing the talking. Trust me it's not, because I am just getting started..." Last and final strike. Time for the bartender to shut shop.

My large but feeble heart couldn't take any more strikes. I decided to call it a day for the both of us. I tucked a reluctant Ricky into his warm sleeping bag, tossed a few more twigs into the already burning campfire before slipping into a comfortable resting position. Had it been so easy to control someone after a few drinks, Las Vegas wouldn't be amongst the most desired places to be on Earth. I suddenly noticed Ricky unzipping his sleeping bag as he slowly sat up at an exact angle of ninety degrees. He held his hands in front of him, as if holding something and all of a sudden made a loud sound, "Vrooooom". His head was bowed down with his long hair carelessly falling all over his face.

The whole sequence felt like a scene from a horror movie. The faint light from the fire partially illuminating his face, the quiet of the night disturbed only by the flapping of bat wings, the sound of flowing water indicating a perennial water source in the surroundings and the sudden unexpected actions of a long haired idiot as if possessed by some ghost who had jumped off the cliff decades ago. The overall setting was perfect. The only two elements missing were, a flash of lightning with a loud crack of thunder and the untimely rain. That would make a perfect plot of a horror thriller. Except that, the idiot in question, had had a few extras nineties and was not in a conscious enough state to unzip his sleeping bag without cursing it ninety nine times. His final question to the zip before I interrupted him was, "Khul jaa bhai, tereko kis baat ki akhad hai...? Bol, warna ukhad dalunga tujhe..."

As he saw me make a move , he immediately floored the imaginary accelerator trying to get away from me. "Vroooooomm...." he started driving his imaginary sports car, even pausing his acceleration for gear shifts. "Wah...Precision, even in this state" I thought. 

I looked towards the stars twinkling at a distance in the night sky, hoping for a one-on-one divine interrogation with sole focus on a single simple question, "Why should it always be me?"  In the midst of my telepathic communication with God, I noticed our Ricky Schumacher, looking like a mermaid with half his body tucked in a blue sleeping bag, made a sharp right turn. He even mimicked the noise of the tyres screeching as his car steered right. I desperately looked skywards again, this time diversifying my questionnaire, asking my second question of the night. "God! Why?". He never replied but Ricky Schumacher did. "I think I feel the presence in this wilderness..." he said with his right hand pointing towards the fire.

"C'mon man... You look ghostly enough and I'm not in the mood to entertain another. Shut up and go to sleep" I said, irritated. After a good 13 kilometres trek, my patience had worn thin and my body was in desperate need of some sleep. But, as hard as that seemed, it was time for me to reluctantly agree that the contents of the once full bottle of Glenlivet, had lived up to its promise. It was going to be a long night. 

All of a sudden, Ricky intensified his look towards a couple of stones carefully arranged as temporary seats around the fire and with a broad smile said, "Please join me, its a little chilly with the wind  tonight...". I was aghast. The blue mermaid next to me had started conversing with an imaginary figure sitting next to the fire. Fear started creeping through my nerves. At that moment, it felt like I was the only sane person on God's green Earth who could confirm or deny the presence of a third living/heavenly being amongst us. "There's nothing there...it's all in his head" I repeatedly consoled myself. But, I was scared and confused to the extent that I couldn't tell my right hand from the left. By now, Ricky was even having lengthy conversations with his imaginary friend when I couldn't even see it's shadow in the dead of the night. "Wait, do ghosts leave shadows?" a question popped up in my mind. "Is someone actually there?" I wondered as I bit my nails in panic.

"For heaven's sake, go to sleep, bhai. You are killing me..." I begged, desperately repeating to myself that he was not in his senses and the idea of a ghost amongst us was a figment of his imagination. 

But, the mind works in mysterious ways. It refused to let go of the idea. Every micro detail around us was taken into account and was used to create a picture of a ghost based on all the horror movies I had watched in the past. I could feel a chill run down my spine as a cool breeze blew from the east. My brain had volunteered to search for every tiny detail hidden in its convolutions, about the idea of the existence of extra terrestrial beings amongst humans. Instantaneously, the back of my neck felt a lot colder than the rest of my body. My teeth automatically began to clatter. Though inside a thick sleeping bag, I could feel the chilly wind blowing beneath my feet. With every passing second, I started cursing myself for not learning any of the slokas or hymns from the countless religious texts. The idea of God, a supernatural force, being the 'Sankat hartha' became a reality all of a sudden and I started to believe that my renewed faith in the Almighty would save me from this invisible ghost.

While I battled to streamline my thoughts in the positive direction, negating and fighting its whims and fancies in the process, I couldn't help but hear the snores of the blue mermaid, who by now had parked his luxurious sports car in a garage and managed to fall asleep in its cozy seat. Well for him, the fire provided warmth, the exhaustion and fatigue from the trek, the much required fuel for sleep. But, my sleep had taken to its heels the moment Ricky invited his friend for a drink. It had run far beyond my reach and I was stuck with my imagination for the rest of the night. While my mind raced on boosters in all possible directions, Ricky's snores got louder by the hour. If I had to pick a night in my entire life to show me the extent of human imagination, then it had to be that night. It was finally in the wee hours of the morning, that I managed to get some shut eye, away from the scary world of gothic fiction.

The moment I was convinced that the ghosts had finally returned to their graves, the rays of the rising sun decided to gently kiss my cheeks and let me feel it's warmth and affection. As I was about to embrace the good natured amiability of the sunlight, I felt a hard kick on my butt. The pain numbed my senses for a second, but my ever enthusiastic brain was vigilant. It immediately directed my eyes towards the source of the attack. There stood Ricky, the ghost of my previous night, daring to wake me up with the question, "Babumoshai, sone ke liye pahad chada tha kya?'

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