The Hungry Ghost
In the dusty banquet room of an old dark derelict building had gathered ghosts from all over the city for their Annual General Meeting. This was the most important night of the year for them. Tonight they would discuss urgent pressing matters, voice out their grievances over any issue they might have, and find solutions to their problems. The ghosts would be assigned new places to haunt, given tasks to fulfil, and the top performers of the past year would be given the reward of ascending to the Better Afterlife. New members would also be recruited and given internships under more experienced ghosts.
There were about more than seventy ghosts crowding the room and on the large banquet table sat the main Committee comprising of The Manager, The Supervisor, The Coordinator, and The Captain.
The Captain was an old, bearded, one-eyed ghost who had died decades ago and had qualified for ascension years back and several times since but had rejected it each time. He liked being on earth and he liked leading the ghosts here.
After most of the day’s agendas had been fulfilled he turned to the other ghosts and said, “Now, if anyone has any complaints they would like addressed, speak em out”.
Immediately a few voices went up. Some were worried about the rapid urbanization encroaching upon their habitat while some others were upset with the so-called paranormal investigators intruding upon their privacy. There were a few others with menial issues like some kid not showing any fear of them or they not getting enough time to establish their haunting which The Captain brushed aside with a wave of his bony hands and with a frown said, “Urbanization is a problem and it needs to be dealt with otherwise we’ll soon run out of spaces to live in”. He turned to The Coordinator and said, “Make a list of some top builders and engineers of the city and send a few of our people to their homes. Scare the shit out of them but be careful not to hurt them or their families”.
“Will do,” The Coordinator said.
The Captain then thought over the other problem.
“These paranormal investigators think they know a lot about us. They use these stupid gadgets like heat sensors and cameras to detect our presence and, I’m afraid, they are being successful in detecting us. And when they can’t they still claim to have detected us all the same. It’s bad for business, real bad”.
He slowly shook his head.
“What do you want us to do about them?” The supervisor asked.
“There’s nothing we can do about them,” The Captain replied, “We will have to do something about us. This world has changed, it’s become technologically advanced, and we will have to upgrade ourselves as well”. He sat back and spoke in a dreamy voice, “Oh I miss those days when we could just walk out of the cemetery and go into any house. Open a few doors and windows, drop some utensils and stuff, and people would be scared shitless. Now, people have these automatic doors and if we open them they think it’s because of a glitch in the software. Our stocks are indeed running very low and these guys – these paranormal investigators – are making things more difficult”.
“So what do we do? How do we upgrade ourselves?” Asked The Manager.
“We will have to set up an R&D department,” The Captain said, “We will have to discover newer techniques, find newer ways, to carry on our work. It’s imperative that we stay one step ahead of these people and let them do the catching up”.
“Good idea,” The Manager said, and the others agreed, “I’ll get down to setting up the R&D department immediately”.
“Do that,” The Captain nodded, he turned to the other ghosts in the room and said, Now, if there are no more matters to attend to, we can adjourn this meeting”.
“I have something that I want addressed,” a lanky young ghost raised his hand up, “there’s one thing that nobody has spoken about”.
“And what would that be?’ The Captain asked.
“What do we eat?” The young ghost said.
All the other ghosts turned towards him. Some even broke out laughing.
“I have been a ghost for six months now and for six months I have been starving,” the young ghost continued, “I see food lying around in places but I just can’t seem to pick them up and eat them. I want to know how I can get some food inside me”.
“We don’t need to eat,” The Captain said, “food is a bodily requirement and we don’t have bodies. We need a different nourishment and we feed ourselves through different means”.
“Like what?”
“Energy. The energy that this earth emits, the energy that’s around in the atmosphere, that’s what we need to sustain ourselves”.
“But I don’t want that,” the young ghost argued, “I want chicken and eggs and fish… I am hungry and your atmospheric energy isn’t good enough for me”.
“Oh, you non-vegetarians disgust me!” A middle-aged female ghost spoke up, “Why do you need animals to satiate yourselves? I was a vegan in my life and I can safely say that there’s nothing more healthy than a vegan diet”.
“Healthy you say?” The young ghost said, “Then why did you end up dead? You don’t look too old”.
“I… uh, I had problems,” the woman said, a tad sheepishly.
“So, your vegan diet didn’t do you much good,” he remarked.
“That’s not the point!” She sneered, “It’s not right to kill animals to fill your plate”.
“I agree,” another ghost said, “taking a life for food is reprehensible”.
“Hey look, don’t pass on judgments, okay?” The young ghost said, a little more aggressively than he intended, “You prefer vegan while I prefer poultry and meat. It’s our individual choices. Respect it”.
“What if you ascend to the Better Afterlife and then take rebirth as a chicken?” The woman asked.
“Then you’ll be reborn as a non-vegetarian and eat me,” the young ghost replied.
“Yuck! I’ll never do that!” She seemed like she was gonna puke, though that was not possible.
“Never do what? Be born as a non-vegetarian or eat me?” He was now enjoying himself.
“Either! I’ll not do either of those things!” The lady fumed.
“But if you’re reborn as a chicken then I’ll surely eat you. I’ll cook you nicely over a slow flame and then wash you down with wine”.
“Shut up!” The lady screamed, “Shut up, or I’ll kill you!”
“You’ll kill me? Are you serious?” The young ghost laughed, and suddenly every ghost in the room burst into a loud spell of unified laughter. Even The Captain couldn’t help himself from breaking into a little smile.
The lady, embarrassed and slighted, turned towards The Captain and yelled, “Banish this obnoxious man from our midst”.
“For what reason?” The Captain asked, “For Being a non-vegetarian?”
“For insulting me! For dragging me into these filthy hypothetical scenarios!”
“As far as I can recollect, it was you who went hypothetical first,” The Captain said, “You asked him what if he’s reborn as a chicken, didn’t you?”
“I did that to prove a point,” the lady said.
“And what point was that exactly?”
She did not answer and sat down with a defiant snort.
“Hey look, it’s okay,” the young ghost said, “I have no problems with her or with other vegans. But I’m not a vegan and neither can I sustain myself on whatever energy you guys feed on, so what about my issue? How do I eat the food I want to eat?”
“It’s a unique problem, alright,” The Captain thoughtfully said, “I have been a ghost for over forty years and never have I needed any mortal food neither has anyone else in this room. But if you, brother, need to eat what you used to eat when you were alive then, I think, we should as The Committee, find a way for you to do so”.
“Tell me something, Captain,’ the young ghost said, “have you indeed never in your forty years of death felt like eating your favourite meal even once?” He turned to the other ghosts in the room, “And what about the rest of you? Has no one ever had the craving to have their favourite dish?”
The room went silent for a minute before an old frail ghost said, “I have. Not once but many times I have craved a bowl of noodles and soup but I never said anything for the fear of being ridiculed. After all, us ghosts aren’t supposed to have food urges”.
“I have as well,” another ghost said, “even yesterday I had a great urge to eat pizza but, as always, I had to quietly suppress the urge because in our ghost world having a craving for food is somehow considered to be a taboo”.
“I have too,” said one more ghost, and then another and another, and soon almost every ghost in the room had confessed to their desires of food.
The Captain looked at his fellow committee members and then said, “Well, to be honest, I too at times have felt like eating some cereal. But it was so long ago that I last had it I’ve almost forgotten how it used to taste like…”
“I really want some pancakes,” said The Manager.
“I could easily finish a pot of Biryani,” The Coordinator said.
“And I can devour a whole gallon of milk and rice,” said the Supervisor, and as the others placed incredulous looks at him, he quickly added, “I had liver troubles for a long time before my death. Milk and rice was all I was allowed to eat”.
“Well Captain,” said the young ghost, “I guess, you’ll have to find a way for all of us to eat our favourite dishes”.
“It looks like I do,” The Captain grinned, “No problem, I’ll have a word with my superiors in the Better Afterlife and request them to provide us with a daily supply of food”.
“Just one more thing,” the young ghost said, “Please make sure that they also give us some vegan food separately. We don’t want Mrs. vegan here to starve, do we?”
He smiled at the lady who was still snorting at him and then left the room as the meeting got adjourned.
(c) 2020 Niladri Mitra
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