Ghosts !?!

It was a normal enough saturday. Weekends for a Trilogy intern usually means something cool to do and today wasnt an exception. In fact today was the much-hyped Mentor-Interns football match. (By much-hyped I mean known to all mentors and interns and the HR incharges; Clearly I need to find myself a better PR guy :P) . Us interns were confident of a victory and were much encouraged by the customised football jerseys we had designed for ourselves with a totally awesome punchline "Thou shall kick butt". We were even more 'kicked' when we heard that atleast three mentors will not be able to make it and like true sportsmen we would play with the three man advantage and easily win the match. Well, thats what we thought...

In some desolate footer ground away from civilization the match was to begin. Many strategies were suggested until finally one of us decided "Just play somewhere". Brilliant. Ancelloti will die and turn in his grave. In any case that what was happened. More controversies ensued as the mentors demanded an intern to balance the teams and none of us were game. Finally Harsh was misinterpreted as he went to convey this message and was shortly chosen as the intern-traitor. (His game suggested otherwise but we would rather have had the three man advantage.) Finally all matters settled, the match began as the interns kept attacking and the mentors couldn't break past our strong defense (what did you expect with Pirlo defending ;) ). The ball was being lost in the midfield by both teams (or is it rather the ball was being won in the midfield by both teams?). Pirlo made some amazing (read decent) runs from defense upto the D beating upto 4 defenders at one time. So it was only a matter of time.And thus Pani dazzled and dribbled past an unsuspecting goalie and the first goal was scored. Hurrah! Interns in front. The rest of the half was uneventful but for a good save by the intern goalie Ankush.

Halftime. New ideas. New strategy was "Just play somewhere else". Tactically sound huh? In any case that was also what the mentors were doing... Without wasting much time on describing that which can but be best described decently dreary, lets just say that I was quick to score the intern's second goal after Pani took a neat free kick. Some mentors did complain of offside but professional players like us know how to beat the offside trap (which was a couple of defenders too tired to run back). So officially we were 2 goals ahead. And the audience were on their feet. All the 3 spectators that is.

Alas, the match did not end desirably as one of the sore mentors brought down his intern ostensibly trying to dribble the ball. Just kidding... Actually, Ankush just sprained his leg and developed a lump on his foot thus bringing the game to an early end. But the result was that the interns won. Clearly. And it was us who walked away with the bigger cups although the difference was but visible to a nanotechnologist. *hmph*

In all the sport enthusiasm I almost forgot the true reason I wanted to write this post. It all started at around 12 or 12:30 saturday night. Or rather sunday morning. Four of us were sitting in my room playing sweep when suddenly Abhinov walked in and said (Much of the conversations that took place happened in Hindi but for want of sufficient Hindi prowess and/or I believe I can manipulate it much better in English, it has all been translated into English without loss of information and more importantly interest) "Believe this or not, the bathroom adjacent our room is locked from the inside and no one is inside! Saundar just checked its locked from the inside " (Saundar is a caretaker of our guesthouse). Obviously this was too interesting to ignore and thus all of us ran out where the others had gathered to see Saundar climbing down the pipe 'cause it was the bathroom in the first floor. "Ghosts?" asked Abhinov.

Ghosts!?! Not quite... It turned out the lock in that room was loose and closed hard enough, seemed to lock itself. But then the whole experience got us thinking and some of us got a brilliant plan to frighten the others with the whole ghost idea.

So as we gathered outside the first floor common lounge area (I make it sound so palacial but its only a cubicle sized place with a couple of sofas and an opulent looking fan), Abhinov quipped "Arre yaar, do you guys know about the suicide that took place in this house ? Ramesh, our ex-caretaker told me about this the first day and realising that he was slightly psyching us out did not reveal more about the same ...". Initally I was unaware that this was but a clever performance but soon I too was told of the plan. And listen to this ... we actually decided to summon the ghost! With a custom made ouija board (a piece of paper with scribblings on it) and a candle, we decided to pretend to call a Holy Ghost !!!

But then something really strange happened. Four of us were touching the coin on the paper, chanting strange incantations which was something like "Holy Ghost roaming here and there come to us...are you here? " much to the chagrin of the more pious, when all of a sudden the candle went off. Before the abrupt interruption, we were probably only fooling around but with as darkness enveloped us (save the light from the television that someone was watching), an eerie silence permeated the air. As the light was switched on, someone suddenly noticed that the coin was no longer in the middle of the paper as it was before and instead had reached the part of the paper that read "YES". A look of squeamishness decorated our faces as quickly we enquired amongst each other whodunnit? Apparently noone! Acting brave we rubbished away any idea of anything supernatural...

We remained together watching tv for almost 2 more hours. Someone actually even burnt up that piece of paper and noone volunteered to touch the coin we used...

Hmmm.... Ghosts !?! Bah Humbug.