The Strange Urdu Dictionary...!!!

I have experienced many strange occarances in my life but the episode of the strange Urdu dictionary is a singular one as it is not only weird but also extremely bizzare and crazily unbelieveble.

A cousin of mine used to write ghazals. His language and spellings not being correct most of the times, he often got them corrected by me. This, in turn inspired me to try my own hand at writing ghazals. One day I went to Universal Book Depot which is a renowned book dealers chain in the city and bought a brand new Urdu to English/Hindi pocket dictionary to learn new words which I could use in my ghazals. Often my elder sister would also consult it but for the majority of time it used to be with me only. I would keep consulting the dictionary for looking up various meanings, write a few verses and when sleepy, I would just slide the dictionary, the diary and the pen under my pillow and go to sleep. I would like to mention here that I napped twice a day apart from sleeping at night as well and as an old habit always went to sleep with any book I was reading under my pillow.

For the first three days everything was perfectly normal.

From precisely the 3rd day, I started getting recurrent dreams and visions. I saw a huge off whitish arched gateway set in green stoney grounds fresh after the recent rains - the type we have in rainy season in India - and just a few seconds later a small army of soldiers with harping spears in their hands and atop on horseback (around 30- 40 or maybe less men ) would come thundering in with a deafening noise and a mad rush. the army always appeared to be going to accomplish some vital feat and in great excitement and fury. Most of the soldiers held the reins of their horse in one hand while in the other they brandished the deadly looking spear.

After getting this dream I always woke up in some sort of tension and facination. I wanted to know what happened after the army went by but my dreams always began and stopped at precisely this point only.

It continued for 2 days; then the frequency of this dream suddenly reached an alrming pitch. I began seeing the same scene even without sleeping. I would merely close my eyes and see the thundering soldiers on horse back coming from the arched gate. In addition I also started seeing an elderly muslim poet wearing a brownish /whitish full length robe. His face was never clear to me but perhasps he had a long greyish beard too. He always appeared to be very sad.
Then another scene joined the list of visions; walls, white walls, yellowish white walls, high walls and all of them covered with huge urdu verses or words written boldly as we often see slogans written during election campaigns in India.

 And then a dream in which I saw a storm blowing away so hard that it uncoveres a grave. The grave has a groaning moaning man still alive even though several years have passed since he was buried there; he now starts rising from the grave and is calling out my name.
I was truely perplexed now and was sure that something was wrong. I told my mother and to my astonishment she told me she too had been dreaming again and again about an old muslim man.
We still didn't think the dictionary had anything to do with this.

That night I could not sleep. At midnight suddenly the dogs in the street just outside my house started barking madly, really, really madly...! For some reason I was very scared and uneasy. As I got up to to switch on the lights I saw a hazy figure of an old man - perhaps the same whom I had been seeing in the dreams and the visions- in the room. I screamed and he vanished.
We all were really shaken now.

I randomly, gave the dictionary to my cousin and surprisingly that night he too saw a hazy old man figure in his room and dogs barking madly outside his house.

However odd and stupid it might seem, we concluded there was something wrong with the dictionary. We didn't want to throw it away for fear of insulting whoever the old man was, so my cousin went and sold the dictionary to a junk seller and with that money he bought an insence stick and burnt it offering our appologies to however had been offended.
Since that day all those dreams and visions stopped abruptly.

All possible explanations for this incident seem downright crazy. How can a brand new book, a dictionary at that, can be infested with spirit or ghosts? I do know of stories and films featuring ghostly incidents related with books but you will agree those books are old or have some sort of bloody or tragic history. This surely. cannot apply on this dictionary as it was brand new; I had bought it myself and the book store is pretty reputed one that doesn't sell old or second hand books. In any case, the dictionary even looked like brand new therefore I am quite sure it did not come to me after being used by somebody.
Someone offered an explanation that Urdu is such a language that certain alphabets even if written differently can conjoin to give a different meaning, means, I may have, by mistake, written a word or something which could have invoked a spirit; this definitely, cannot be true because I do not know urdu; I can neither read it nor write it. My usage of the dictionary remained firmly limited to flicking pages randomely, glimpsing a familiar word in Hindi then discovering its meaning in English. Maybe whoever wrote the dictionary put it under a spell .......!
And why those particular images and visions? Who was the old man? Did the images mean something specific or were they trying to tell me something?

I believe I will never know.

My Previous Birth....!!!

Like every Indian child I too had studied about Rani of Jhansi in my school History books but had never given the topic any more second thoughts until one day I met a sage like person who told me that in my previous birth I was a queen in Jhansi ( note: a queen in jhansi not THE queen in Jhansi so it may and may not be Rani Laxmibai). He even made me have a peep in the past and I saw a fallen ruined fort in Jhansi ( almost all forts look alike... so it may and may not be the Jhansi fort.) and a Shivalya where the Rani worshipped. Please note that at that time I had never been to Jhansi or seen any fort and for next nearly 10 years or more I had no access to internet.
As is natural, I became totaly devoured by curiousity to know more and more about this subject but at a complete loss to know how to do it.

Many years later, on my first journey by train from Lko to Pune, I happened to pass Jhansi district and felt the rushing by scenery to be vividly familiar. The uneven grounds, the scattered big and small boulders, the upshooting of trees here and there was almost as if I knew the place well; the only thing that did not match was the greenery. Something inside me firmly told me it was greener and more vegetated...!!

I undertook many journeys through the same passage and it had became a sort of interesting passtime to watch out of window and see sevaral miles of Jhansi outskirts ( I don't know what that particular region is called but it extends several Kms before and after the main Jhansi Junction.) and find it to be somewhat mysteriously familiar. For inexplicable reasons I always thought this was the place where I had taken a flight with a handful of army on horseback.
The scantiness of the greenery still bothered me though.

Once we had to change trains at the Jhansi Junction and the changing time was 2 hrs so we decided to pop into the city and have a quick look at the Jhansi Fort, the secret idea behind it was obviously to find out if this previous birth story had any truth in it.

We took an auto rickshaw who rode up thin winding lanes through a poor city scape which I found somewhat indignating and surprisingly disgusting ( like, this can't be Jhansi, the Jhansi which I have always thought of was not like this...!) with S at my elbow asking again and again" Do you recognise something?"


Well, we reached the fort, a massive yellowish stone structure but to my dismay I did not feel or recognised anything. Nothing looked familiar to me as I had hoped it might.
We didn't have much time at our disposal so we didn't go in to any museam or even enter the mahal or somehting; we just went up the tower where there is hung a notice board saying this is the place where Rani sitting on her horse, jumped down with her baby tied on her back to make escape. Now anyone who has been to this spot in the fort will know that this particular tower is about 20 ft or something high and seems so frightening to imagine that a lady on horseback with a baby tied at her back could have jumped successfully down it and even survived the jump. Quite contrary to this feeling which I supposed to have got I looked doubtfully at the ground below and in my heart almost readily disbelieved it to be true. While retracing our steps back we saw a Shivalya too. The Shivalaya is a little insignificant part in the fort. I swear I had forgotten everything about seeing a Shivalaya in the fort in my visions...!
The visit was over and we returned back the same way we had come and I was throughly disappointed that I had found nothing. Merely finding a Shivalaya did not prove anything.

2-3 years passed by. I had entirely given up the idea that I would ever find out anything about this topic, the vision and the feelings all being figments of my imagination. Two days ago, I, by chance stumbled on a detailed research report on Jhansi ki Rani which made me suddenly sit up in amazement. The report had detailed many issues about the Rani along with dates and photographs.

The report says it has been found out that the folklore which says the Rani jumped from the tower to escape is totaly untrue; actually she escaped from a gateway in the fort. the picture of the gate was similar to the one I had seen in my visions.

The picture which depicted the supposed place of the last battle ground where Rani fought was the same sort of place which I had seen from the train window and found to be vivdly familair.( and even felt it to be the place where I had taken flight with my little army on horse back)

The date of the Rani's death was given as 18 June; mid June is about the time the North India usually experiences monsoon showers, means at the time she passed through this region, the place may have got a few rains already which accounted for it being green and sort of rain fresh in my vision and also for my diasappointment for seeing it scanitly green in the current date. I managed to see a few more photoes related to the Rani but familiarity is limited to only the 3 points mentioned above.

I am still trying my best to find out if there is any truth in the visions I recieved. Merely a bit of familiarity does not prove or confirm anything. For all I know, it all may still be nothing more than my imagination. Even if the previous birth as Rani is correct it could also mean I may be a person named Rani and not the Rani herself or maybe I were just a soldier in her army or a humble servant at the fort.

Well, whatever the case, even though I want to believe the rather fantastic tale that I was Rani of Jhansi in my previous birth, I cannot believe and will not believe as there is too little evidence in support of this. So for the meantime, I am going to leave it in the hands of time to prove me right...or...wrong...!