Haunted Poultry Farm

1990

It all started off with Satish. He wanted Anil, Anish and me to visit Tiptur to attend a wedding. We agreed if Satish would provide us with sufficient booze...

We took a passenger train (from Bangalore) which would stop at every little station. The 180km journey took some 4+ hours. Anyway we were in no hurry. There were plenty of hawkers selling every kind of food- banana, gauvas, jackfruit, churmari, idli-vade, dosa, tea & coffee, etc. etc. We had a wonderful time trying out literally everything available. We landed at Tiptur ...first visit for all of us except our host. We found a lodge and rented two rooms.

Indian wedding ceremonies start the day before evening ...engagement function and the wedding ceremony is the following day. Evening we headed to the wedding hall to find it empty. We were one day early! Wow! This is going to be a nice little vacation for us. Our next destination would be anybody's guess...

Satish took us to a place on the outskirts, an open air restaurant in a farm. Booze flowed freely and our conversation included Saddam Hussein, Middle East War, LTTE and at some point ghosts came into the picture. Satish told us a story about a ghost which has created havoc at a poultry farm. It seems the ghost would throw chicken at the farm house walls, left many dead birds and the farm was deserted now. People are scared to go near it. Anil and I wanted to check out the place and Satish agreed to it reluctantly while Anish opted out ...he said he doesn't wish to mess around with ghosts. We took a bike, Satish driving, Anil in the middle and I was at the back. The country dirt road took us away from human lives ...no houses, nobody to be seen, not even a stray dog.It was pitch dark. Finally we reached the damned place ...Satish pointed the bike's headlight towards the farm house, it was kind of spooky out there.. Then Satish pointed the light to a wall painted white with patches of brown scattered all over it ...that was supposed to be chicken blood. We never got off the bike as though the bike would protect us from any ghosts lurking around. We had hung around enough and decided to scoot before any of the ghosts woke up. Satish turned the bike around and paused for one last look. An idea flashed! I lifted the bikes rear part clear off the ground and these guys did not realize it. Satish engaged first gear, de-clutched and opened the throttle ...rear wheel is spinning but we are stationary. Believe me Satish and Anil panicked while I was smiling away. I managed to hold the bike up till my arms ached. I told them why the bike did not move. Satish and Anil were relieved. We had a good laugh and rode back to the farm restaurant...

We woke up late the following day. Satish took us to his village- Belagrahalli which he called Belgrade. Evening we had another wild session but this time it was in the lodge. Following day we attended the wedding ceremony and caught a passenger train heading to Bangalore. The train was pretty crowded, we could not find seats and we took two upper berths. Like our journey two days back, we kept calling every hawker who passed by and kept stuffing ourselves. However we found a very interesting topic for our conversation; what type of girl we wished for a wife and how we wished our married lives would be...

The fantasies remained fantasies. Same for all of us.

Looking back, we did have a wonderful time together.

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