The Memsahib's Armoire

This story was narrated by an octogenarian on a train journey that my family was taking on our yearly summer trip. We children looked so forward to these trips, it was the journey rather than the destination that was more enjoyable. We loved the world passing by the window, the scenario changing every ten minutes from rain-drenched villages to paddy fields swaying in the summer breeze, eating snacks that were sold by the vendors, meeting new people, and making acquaintances on the train, sharing food and stories.

On one such summer trip, our fellow traveler was this gentleman who was sharing the same train compartment with us. After the initial introductions and pleasantries, the elders started their usual discussions from present-day politics, the escalating living expenses, the places they visited, etc. while we children sometimes absentmindedly listened, while doing our own things. As the afternoon gave way to the sundown evening and night fell upon us suddenly and unannounced, we started getting ready for an early dinner and our night on the train.

The conversations amongst the co-travelers after traveling various topics garnished with humour, debates and discussions somehow steered towards mysterious incidents that happened during the 80 years of life journey travelled by the elderly gentleman. We children were in our bunk beds eagerly listening and enjoying his anecdotes, looking at our eager faces he asked us if we wanted to hear a story about a memsahib’s ghost and received a vehement “yes” not only from us youngsters but also by the elders.

The ambiance in the train was absolutely perfect for an eerie ghost story, the lights were dimmed, and it was pitch dark outside with occasional lights flickering in the distance. It happened long, long ago he started, India had just received its independence and the British had left for their homes. His father was serving in the Indian railways and the family had to shift from one town to another every two or three years. He was just a little boy of about 6 or 7 when his father was transferred to a far-away suburb town as station master of a small station. The railway workers were provided with living quarters near their workplaces. During that period all these quarters were built by the British for their personnel, when they left India they left behind their belongings, so these quarters were usually equipped with basic furniture, beds, tables, chairs, cupboards etc. When anybody was transferred his family just had to carry their utensils and personal belongings.

The family settled in their new home and surroundings soon, being a little boy in those days he was home tutored and spent his days exploring the surroundings, bringing home stray cats and dogs, and trying to climb trees to see chicks being fed in their nests. The new house as usual came with four- poster beds, a dining table and chairs, writing desks and the master bedroom had a beautiful fairly new wooden armoire. It was grand compared to the small living quarter, handcrafted with a beautiful Belgium glass mirror fitted on one side of the door of the cupboard. The little boy was enamoured by the armoire, and a large part of his time was spent in imagining ghosts and goblins living inside on the deep unreachable shelves of the cupboard or standing in front of the mirror making faces and trying to find out which was uglier, his elephant-like ears or his parrot beak-like nose. The other members in the family joked that in his previous life he must have been the owner of the armoire.

He slept in the master bedroom with his parents, the western practice of small children sleeping separately is not a custom in India. One night he suddenly was stark wide awake and though groggy and dazed with sleep was trying to fathom why he woke up; did he need to visit the loo? Was he thirsty or was it too hot? Then in the silence of the night he clearly heard footsteps coming down the road to the gate of his house. The footsteps were of a lady wearing high – heels and walking, Indian women in those days did not wear those kinds of shoes. He had seen foreign ladies wearing them and they made a distinctive sound tick- tock tick -tock, when the steel heels hit concrete ground. The footsteps came up to the gate, a few seconds of silence then it came closer and closer, someone walking through the front door and right into the room where he was sleeping, the tick- tock tick -tock, came up to the cupboard and then stopped. He screamed in fear waking up the whole household.

No one believed him in the beginning, saying it might be his vivid imagination or a nightmare. The visiting's started happening on a regular basis, and seeing the child frightened out of his wits, his parents stayed up nights to hear the footsteps for themselves, which they could not. To ward off negative energies, different gods were worshipped, godmen were invited to perform rituals to keep the child unharmed and safe, but nothing worked. The visitations carried on, as usual, slowly the child got used to the footsteps, because Memsahib did not harm or appear in any ghostly form in front of him. The occurrences stopped with the transfer of the child’s father to another town and another railway station.

After enquiring around, it was later found out that the last British occupant of the house was a young couple and the Memsahib had ordered the local carpenters to make the armoire for her. A couple of months later she succumbed to malaria and the Sahib had returned back to his homeland after burying his young wife in a nearby graveyard.

We in the train compartment listened in utter disbelieve and silence, the ghost of the Memsahib was so attached to her armoire that she came to have a look at it from her grave once in a while. But why was she audible only to the child? There was no logical explanation to this, maybe because he was still an innocent soul and so the world of the gone was more accessible to him than the adults or was there some other reason, like the elders said the armoire was his in another life, who knows? There was an eerie silence in the compartment after the story ended, minutes passed in utter silence with only the noise of the train thundering down on its tracks. Then a noise of heels touching metal surfaced, slowly it came closer and closer, tick- tock, tick tock, the children ducked under their covers and the elders were struck with temporary speech impairment.

Was the ghost of the Memsahib awakened by being remembered by her protégé? The footsteps came closer, passed the compartment and walked away. On investigation it was discovered that a fellow passenger wearing heels, needed to go to the washroom. Her footsteps were a perfect ending to the scary anecdote. Everyone sighed in relief, the elders embarrassed by showing their vulnerability explained that such coincidences do happen. This became the foundation of another story to be narrated later to some other fellow passenger on some other train trip.

Saswati Biswas Johri