Tales from my Rocking Chair

By Nihal D Amerasekera

My creaky Edwardian rocking chair is my refuge from the trials of the day. When the day is done the wisdom of Rabindranath Tagore does enrich my soul:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments

By narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depth of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is led forward by thee

Into ever-widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Rabindranath Tagore

Through sheer circumstance I had a privileged childhood. This was enhanced by being an only child. I was a little emperor to my parents, wellat least some of the time. There was always a maid to look after me during my early childhood. The maids treated me with great affection and were ever willing to please me. My most frequent request was for bedtime stories which they seemed to have a plethora in store. Many were about kings and queens but a few were of demons and darkness which were a huge part of village life faraway from the bright city lights.I distinctly remember the fearsome figure of a demon called “Mahasona”. These fantasy folktales had an impact on my psyche. Like most kids of my generation I developed a fear of the night and ofdarkness.

My paternal uncle was a “PeryaDorai” in a tea estate in Neboda in the Kalutara district. It was called Geekiyanakanda Estate, an appropriately sublime and gorgeous name. This was the early 1950’s and we hadn’t given up our British way of life. He had a buttler and a retinue of servants. The food served was British through and through – 3 course meal starting with a soup and ending with a dessert. My uncle and aunt had no children. They were very fond of me. I well recall the “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” they gave me for my 12^th birthday. I was fascinated by  theThomas Hughes’  classic that revealed the jolly romps of students at Rugby School near Birmingham.

I remember well a visit to Neboda with my parents during my school holidays. They had the most beautiful estate bungalow built on to a hillside. The elegant house was surrounded by a lovely terraced garden that was immaculately maintained. There were fountains and a pond with fish and water lilies. The garden was a haven for bees and butterflies. I played table tennis with my uncle before dinner. In those days children were to be seen and not heard. After dinner we all sat in their spacious lounge. They all chatted away about local politics and family gossip. It was around ten O’clock when I began to yawn.  My aunt took me upstairs to the guestbedroom.It was such a huge space for a bedroom. She asked me if I was happy to sleep on my own as everyone else slept downstairs. I saw no problem there.

The room looked like a library with several cabinets full of books some of which wereleather bound and ancient having turned brown with age. The prose ranged from Shakespeare to Dickens and poetry from Chaucer to Wordsworth. A stack of magazines on a chair caught my eye.  I picked up “The Ceylon Causerie”. This was the “Hello” magazine of the day and contained the latest gossip of the great and the good in Ceylon. It also had a collection of wedding photos of the rich and famous with vivid and colourful descriptions of the attendees. Towards the end of the magazine were some fascinating stories, one by R.L Spittel on wild life and the other by SWRD Bandaranaike captioned “Mahahene Riri Yaka”. I read both those wildly diverse narratives with great interest.It waswell past midnight when I switched off the light.

Like most kids I always enjoyed unbroken sleep until dawn. Being rather tired I fell asleep swiftly. It may have been several hours later I felt a cold hand on my neck. I do not quite know if I was awake or still asleep. The fingers on my neck tightened very gradually and haltingly until breathing became intolerably difficult. It was a most frightening experience. I tried hard to open my eyes but I just couldn’t. When I felt I was on deaths door the tightness on my neck was suddenly released.  I could now open my eyes and saw the garden light through the window. All seemed quiet around me. For a 13 year-old this was a distressing episode. I plucked up some courage and switched on the bedside lamp. Being too shy to shout for my parents I bottled up my fear and emotions until the next morning. I wasn’t brave enough to mention this until several months had elapsed.

I am still unclear if this was a mere nightmare after reading SWRD Bandaranaike’s chilling tale or the work of a resident poltergeist who loved to surprise the unwary. Belief in the supernatural and paranormal is old as history itself. Spooky stories of  ghosts, spirits and of apparitions are in existence in every continent and in every country.These figures have been linked to religion and to death and afterlife. There is no real proof that they exist. It is easier to pooh-pooh the claims of its existence than to make a critical study. More work needs to be done to prove or disprove these stories. I have written to this blog of a similar encounter which I called “A Silent Guest”. Despite my experience I am still unclear if they were merely my mind playing tricks on me, an unwanted relic of those childhood stories of old.