#TeacupsfullGardenTales
As narrated by Kumkum Puri.
Narender was ‘Acting’ in Chulsa in 1982, we had moved to the Bara Bungalow. The boys and I moved to Narendras home in Darjeeling for their education. One afternoon while strolling the Mall Road, I happened to meet one of the Assistants from Chulsa, his wife was admitted to DDMA hospital. I went to call on her to ask how she was feeling and this is what she narrated.
The newly married couple was allotted the factory bungalow, where we were staying. One evening she sat alone in the drawing room reading a book and waiting for her husband to return. She felt the presence of a man in the room he was turning the pages of the newspaper. She put down the book, the rocking chair was moving. She was disturbed but did not take it seriously. Over the next few days more incidents took place.
Every evening she would take out a cup of sugar for her husband’s bed tea next morning, the sugar pot was kept in the bedroom which they would bolt at night. In the morning when the bed tea was served, the sugar pot was missing. She took the servants to task, only to find the sugar pot under a tree in the lawn. This happened for a few days. Just to prove his wife wrong, one evening her husband stacked up three buckets in the bathroom and kept the sugar pot in the bathroom. He bolted the bathroom door from the bedroom, next morning when he opened the bathroom door, the sugar pot was missing again, the three buckets were thrown around and there was not a sound at night. They found the sugar pot under the tree at the same spot.
It became worse, she could hear music being played in the drawing room, hear men talking. She was being treated for a nervous breakdown. After ten days she was discharged, the couple went back to the Bungalow, things had settled down. One evening she went to the Chulsa Factory and entered her husband’s office, she turned pale with fear. The pictures of the men haunting her were on the wall, she narrated the story to her husband and the Assistants. They dug up old records the last British occupant had died in the bungalow where they were living.
She got after her husband to quit tea, within a week of returning from the hospital, the Assistant Manager quit his job to go back to the city.
Narender, the kids and I stayed in that Bungalow for a year after they had left. But we didn’t see or feel a thing.