SUMMARY OF THE LESSON
This story was narrated to Ganesh by a young man, Mahendra. He was a junior supervisor in a firm. He used to supervise construction sites in factories, bridges, dams, and so on. Being a bachelor his needs were simple and he was able to adjust himself to all kinds of odd conditions.
Mahendra had a cook named, Iswaran who was quite attached to him. Mahendra would be up early in the morning and leave for work after breakfast, carrying some prepared food with him. After that Iswaran performed other household work. After lunch, he would read some popular Tamil thrillers. The descriptions that he narrated were greatly influenced by these very novels. When he was narrating even the smallest of incidents, he would try to work in suspense and surprise.
Once Iswaran told Mahendra a story of a mad tusker. He told him how the elephant was coming while kicking and flattening everything and uprooting the shrubs. This whole drama was being watched by Ishwaran from the rooftop. Then Iswaran grabbed a stick and whacked its third toenail on the quick. The beast looked stunned for a moment; then it shivered from head to foot—and collapsed.
Another day Iswaran told Mahendra that the entire factory area was once a burial ground and even now he came across a number of skulls and bones. Then Iswaran said that sometimes he had seen ghosts; especially a horrible ghost of a woman which appears off and on at midnight during the full moon. After listening to all such descriptions Mahendra was not able to sleep properly. After some days, one night when Mahendra was woken up from his sleep by a low moan close to his window, he could not resist himself from looking outside. He saw a ghost as described by Iswaran. Iswaran told Mahendra that he himself had seen that ghost as he had told him. Hearing this, Mahendra went to his office and submitted his resignation in order to leave that haunted place.
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