People, culture and places always have interesting and intriguing elements to educate, entertain and sometimes petrify the masses. “Urban Legends” is one of such elements. I’m not going to impose boredom on you all by defining the term “Urban Legends”, you can google it later. What I am going to do is share an engaging anecdote from my childhood with you. Are you ready for the fun ahead? Guys!!! Hop on and allow me to take you back in time to Solapur.
The year was 2006 and I was studying in seventh grade. I was forced to take tuition (extra classes) by my mother (I wasn’t studying hard apparently). So, I along with some of my friends (Chuddy-buddies) used to attend extra classes at one of our school-teachers’ place. This teacher’s house was a bit far and I used to walk to her place. I didn’t have the luxury of owning a bicycle then (A tragedy for some other blog post). I usually had the company of my friends during this commute, but one day my friends decided to bunk the class and they didn’t turn up. So I had to go alone, which I did.
After our class, some of my other classmates started talking about ‘Haakmari’ (The name’s hilarious right?), one of them said, “She mimics the voice of a known person and calls your name thrice.” The other guy mentioned, “If you answer her call by opening the door, you die!” One of them then started talking about her appearance. He pointed out that, “The witch is dressed in black saree and has long white hair.” When I asked him how did he know about this, he told me that he had glanced at her from a window of his house, while she was busy knocking his neighbour’s door and we all kept looking at this guy. We all were startled and our eyes were about to pop out. ‘Haakmari’ now had penetrated our minds and brains using sheer fear and ill logic! And finally, one of them also suggested a remedy to keep the witch away. The remedy was simple. All we had to do was draw an ‘X’ on the door with anything that’s white in colour. A sigh of relief! ahh…
Now, after the fear-instilling discussion, I (alone) started walking towards home. I was absolutely carefree, bold, fearless as I walked the main street with a bunch of strangers all around me. I was smart as well, because I bought a big box of Chalk (with the pennies that I had saved with great difficulty for a plate of Pav-Bhaji) on my way back home. Now brace yourselves as the twist is about to reveal itself. I was absolutely fine till I finished walking over the main street, now that I had to turn right and cross two playgrounds with no lights (blame it on the load-shedding then) and nobody around; the angst of ‘Haakmari’ took over my courage and confidence. I waited for a few minutes (30 minutes to be precise) hoping either the power or somebody comes back around, to get me out of this tight spot, but alas! “You can do it!” my brain affirmed, but my mind negated “Stop being a fool!” I went ahead with the thought of my brain and I started crossing the playgrounds in pitch dark.
As I was walking home, alone, my thoughts on ‘Haakmari’ were busy marathoning. To be honest or to put it without beating around the bush, I was almost going to excrete my pants (I’m obliged to use sophisticated words), but the fact of not having any door around me to answer to ‘Haakmari’ is what made me reach home safely. It took me exactly 7 minutes (Bless the Bournvita Digital wrist watch) to cross those playgrounds and those 7 minutes have been the cruelest 7 minutes of my life! But, now when I look back, I realize that those 7 minutes actually helped me conquer my fear of darkness. (Enough of “those 7 minutes” let’s get back to ‘Haakmari) oops!
After reaching home, the first thing that I started doing was putting an ‘X’ (with multiple coatings) on all the doors and windows of our house with the chalks. I didn’t even leave out our toilet (washroom) door! The reason behind this was I had to protect the spot where I introspected (I still do) the most. My mother and my younger brother weren’t home, when I was busy saving our house from the clutches of ‘Haakmari’. When they returned home from the vegetable market, both of them were bewildered as they kept looking at all the ‘X’ marks I had put on all the doors and windows. My mother was worried and she asked, “Are you ok?” I then told her about the entire ‘Haakmari’ stuff and she laughed at me like anything. She assured me and my brother that there’s nothing such as “Haakmari’. I felt better after listening to her soothing words and I prayed that my mother’s right. But, life isn’t that simple, is it?
That night, my father was going to come home late, as he was travelling out of town for work. It was Friday night and I along with my mother and my younger brother was watching television (Friday night movie on Doordarshan). It was around 10:30 pm, somebody started knocking at our door! The person called out my name thrice (‘Haakmari’ style)! I started shaking; my younger brother started crying, because our beloved mother herself flipped 360 degrees on her words, “There’s no such thing as ‘Haakmari!” (Mothers…! They always do this! They say something to make you feel better and then the reality strikes)! We three, panicked, frightened, terrified and almost mummified looked at each other with no clue about what was needed to be done next. I still remember my mother signaling my brother and me to be absolutely quiet (I now remember the movie ‘A Quiet Place’ do watch it later). So now, we needed to do something and that something which I did was, taking a chair, placing it in front of the door, climbing on the chair and peeping from a tiny screw hole at the left most corner at the top (Our door didn’t have a peep-hole) of the door; only to find out the person knocking at the door was our neighbor! He had lost his keys and wanted a hammer to crack the lock. Couldn’t our neighbor just tell us that it’s him while he’s knocking at the door? He just knocked at the door and uttered my name thrice only to scare the hell out of all the three of us! No ‘Haakmari’ finally. Then, my dad got home and we told him the entire episode. He laughed it off! He also told us that when he was a kid, there was someone (something) called ‘Daambarman’ to terrorize the kids then (Another name to laugh at), but ‘Haakmari’ had already served her purpose and taught me some things.
So, what I learned as a kid; trust your instincts, conquer your fears, never answer the door without asking who it is at the door (Look from the peep-hole of the door, if there’s one) and “urban Legends” play a vital role in shaping one’s perspectives and personality.
(P.S: I haven’t revealed the names of my friends and classmates intentionally.)
Happy Halloween!
-Punit Nitin Kawathekar
Faculty, ELTIS