Searching for Ghosts

A conversation among friends about ghosts and haunted places stirred an old fascination. They laughed at my eagerness to see a ghost for once and my deep regret that I had never seen one anywhere.

How do I explain that I have been searching for ghosts since I was five years old. 

My masi had died and there was no explanation that made sense for where she had gone after she was dead. She was a person. How could she just be nothing because she was dead?

She is a star now, someone said. 

I told all my friends that now there was a new star in the sky. Oh! then my dadi would be a star too because she too is dead, chimed another. Oh, then there should be so many new stars we realized. No, it didn’t make sense. Maybe only some became stars.

What of the others?

They became ghosts.

Wow. Then we would feel them around, wouldn’t we? They were there in stories, but then not all stories were real. So if ghosts too were not real, where did she go?

Maybe she was born again as a baby somewhere. We may never meet her or know her if we do. But she’ll be there living a new life again; and that was the balm to my grieving heart.

Over the years even this logic seemed to grow feeble and week. But I still don’t want to accept that she had one life and now she was just ‘gone’. Only a memory and nothing else.

Logically I had to accept, there is nothing more to life than a short time on the planet as this identity. Then we also become memories. And there is nothing we can do about it but ensure that we just become longer, stronger, and better memories for those who remain.

And yet, I can’t help searching for those who are gone-in the sky, in the shadows, or in the eyes of strangers. 

And hoping that maybe, just maybe there is more to life.