THE HOLIDAY (ANIME) GHOST

Aglio e Olio, Frozen Hot Chocolate, and a packet of potato chips are the only things that comforts Jeena. She was twenty when she found a recipe for spaghetti aglio e olio while secretly browsing through a cookbook in her college library. It was her girlfriend’s idea to bunk the class and read magazines from the library. French was not something her girlfriend wanted to study. She used to say, ‘why should I learn je, te, vous, English is hard enough, I hate we are forced to study another language.’ Jeena found it funny and used to laugh at that. For Jeena, language was something she cherished. If she could, she would learn all the languages in the world.

Jeena makes a mugful of frozen hot chocolate and sits on the corner of her bed. The familiarity of the place aches her heart but also soothes her broken heart. It’s been 3 months, 8 days, and 2 hours since her boyfriend left. He was what she used to say as the nicest guy ever, but not nice enough. They lived in a fancy apartment, or that’s what she felt every day, staring at the vastness. It took her a few months to understand that the vastness was not a luxury but sheer emptiness. Jeena plates the spaghetti aglio e olio and put on the AC. The temperature is set on 16 degrees Celsius. Jeena likes the air to be frigid. She believes it helps her think and keeps the ghosts away. As a child, Jeena never believed in ghosts, but her ex-girlfriend firmly claimed that their apartment was haunted. On a hot Sunday afternoon in the middle of May, Jeena moved into her girlfriend’s apartment. The idea was to meet the ghost that her girlfriend wanted to befriend. Jeena takes a mouthful of pasta and looks around. The apartment eerily evokes memories of her ex-girlfriend’s apartment, making her wonder if she was drawn to this place because of her ex or if it was just a coincidence. The calendar on the wall is unchanged because Jeena yearns for the year to stay a little longer. When her boyfriend broke up two days before the New Year, Jeena felt her world fell apart and it was not because she loved him dearly but because she didn’t know how to function alone. When surrounded by emptiness Jeena feels her whole world slipping away, like the ground she stands turns slippery and every step she takes pulls her deep and deep into the ground. ‘I think I want to date you because I am lonely,’ she told him on their third date and they started dating. Jeena pulls a blanket over her and munches the potato chips, it’s salty and she feels thirsty. When she lived with her girlfriend, they had a routine to always keep a bottle of water for the ghost. Her girlfriend believed ghosts roam around in search of water and offering them water is the way to keep one safe.

Jeena jumps out from the couch and opens her fridge. There are two neon blue colours and two neon pink colour bottles of water. She empties three bottles of water into the sink and places the neon blue water bottle next to her. This was something both her exes would have called as madness but Jeena felt an ardent need to summon a ghost.

It was during the July monsoon, her ex-girlfriend suggested they summon a ghost because the ghost that haunted their house was from an anime. Jeena looked at her girlfriend with a puzzled expression. It was raining outside and Jeena made both of them coffee. The clock struck 7 and Jeena switched on the TV to watch her favourite Hindi serial. Her girlfriend hated it and Jeena thought it was her way to make her not watch TV. ‘I am telling you that characters from Naruto haunt our house’ Jeena continued to look at her with the utmost confusion. ‘I can feel it,’ was all her girlfriend said.

Jeena doesn’t remember when and why she started watching Hindi dramas, but she knows the exact minute she watched an anime. It was the first week after her breakup with her girlfriend. She was alone in the apartment and she felt like she could use the company of the anime ghosts. Jeena never summoned the ghost, maybe because her loneliness was not too brutal, but she did finish the entire season of Naruto.

The house smells of garlic and chocolate, and the smell comforts Jeena. She is not sure of her method of summoning, but she stays on the sofa with half a bottle of water, desperately hoping for a ghost to arrive. The times move rather slowly and Jeena drifts into sleep. Cold air gets colder, and the silence is too overwhelming that even in sleep Jeena feels uneasy.

She dreams of the ghost. She dreams of her ex-girlfriend. She dreams of her ex-boyfriend.

An hour or two pass, and Jeena wakes up to a deafening noise. Her half-eaten spaghetti and empty cup of hot chocolate still lie on the table, and the packet of potato chips is crushed under a pillow on the sofa. Jeena looks around, trying to find the source of the sound, but all she sees is the vast emptiness.

‘You called me?’, an unfamiliar voice startles Jeena.

‘What?’ Jeena looks around and sees nothing.

‘Me? You called me,’ this time the voice says it like a statement.

‘Am I dreaming?’ Jeena asks out loud.

‘The bottle,’ the voice says and Jeena looks at her water bottle, the cap is open and it’s empty. ‘Not enough water for me, so you called me.’

Jeena blinks. Everything is fuzzy. She cannot comprehend whether whatever this is real or a dream. ‘I could have just had the water,’ Jeena says unsure how to lead the conversation.

‘You must be curious, at least because this is how people call us,’ the voice says, and it sounds exhausted.

Jeena sits up on the sofa and adjusts herself into a comfortable position. Her sleep wears off, and she is hyperaware of the surroundings. ‘I can’t see you,’ she says and looks around, trying to see traces of the voice.

‘I don’t have a form,’ the voice says.

Jeena is silent for a minute. She wonders what would her ex-girlfriend do if found a ghost has been summoned. Would she be disappointed that the ghost is formless and is not a character from Naruto? Or will she find the whole thing fascinating? ‘I will never be able to see you?’ Jeena asks.

‘Maybe you can, if you want, I can possess anyone or I can take any form,’ the ghost replies.

‘Any form?’ Jeena asks. A thought crosses her mind, a thought she believes will pull her out of this state of numbness.

‘Yes,’ the ghost replies, and Jeena smiles. It is the first time she is smiling since her breakup or maybe even days before the breakup. Jeena never smiled. Probably the last time she smiled was when her ex-girlfriend said that the ghost of Sasuke was haunting them. Jeena laughed and laughed till her stomach ached. It was a memory she cherished and longed.

‘Can you?’ she hesitates for a second. ‘Can you take the form of any fictional character?’

‘Yes, people often ask that,’ the ghost replied, as if it’s the most common request. ‘During holidays people summon and since I can never take form of a living person, they ask for a fictional character, unless of course they are okay with me possessing someone.’

Jeena listens with a strange curiosity and asks, ‘should I need to show you a picture or something?’

‘I have been here for a while. I can recognise most ones unless it’s some niche, recent creation.’

Jeena takes a deep breath and says, ‘can you take the form of Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto?

‘One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.’

Jeena closes her eyes and keeps counting.

‘I think you can see me now,’ the voice says. Jeena opens her eyes and in front of her stands Sasuke Uchiha, almost real, too real that Jeena shudders. She collects herself and offers the ghost a chair to sit and a bowl of chips to eat. Jeena doesn’t know whether a ghost can eat, she doesn’t ask and the ghost just holds the bowl.

‘Do you have any questions or anything?’ the ghost asks.

Jeena shakes her head. ‘I just want to spend my holiday, not alone and… that’s it.’ She thought for a second of telling the ghost about her ex and how she wanted to create the scenario her ex kept imagining, it made her feel happy in a weird way. She cannot understand what that is but the idea of sitting in the living room with a ghost that resembles Sasuke will be a story she would cherish more than all her memories with her exes.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Jeena asks. The ghost nods and Jeena finds it surreal at the sight of Sasuke nodding. She smiles to herself and asks, ‘is it possible to summon you on every holiday?’

The ghost nods.

‘Not any random ghost but you.’

‘As long as you stay here or in this building, I can come whenever you summon.’

Jeena studies the expression on the ghost’s face. There isn’t much, but Jeena finds a tinge of something sad. Maybe it’s her wishful thinking or maybe the ghost is actually sad.

‘You always live here?’ Jeena asks.

‘Kind of. One might think ghosts can float away, but we are always anchored to a single place. It’s like something connects to the place where we are, but we will never know what.’ The ghost sounds a bit sad and maybe Jeena is not the only person who feels this overwhelming loneliness and that thought eerily comforts her.

‘I’ll be staying here. I don’t think I will be going anywhere,’ Jeena says.

‘Then it will be fine,’ the ghost says with the same expressionless face, but Jeena thinks she saw a smile or a trace of smile and that gives her hope for the first time in years.