We the children had been asked to come over for a lunch feast on the river bank, on the other side. There were six or seven of us, me being the eldest, including cousins and some neighbors. It was winter, days were short. We had taken baths, gotten dressed and walked in the mild sun crossing the kilometre or so long bridge on the swollen river to the other bank. The fires had been lit, the cooking had started. Some of us helped chop tomatoes and coriander. Some of us went to the backyard of our host and uprooted some pineapple shrubs. The pineapples were then peeled and served on leaf plates with black salt as a pre lunch snack of sorts.
It was already afternoon by then. Soon the sun would set and it would get chilly. Someone lit a fire and the children sat around it and sang songs. Somehow the lunch was getting delayed further and further. Nobody knew why though. Either some spice would go amiss and someone had to be sent to the market to buy it. Somebody would spill the rice on the mud. Stuff like that. Totally random. But all working in tandem to keep us hungry longer. Soon the children got irate. Also we ran out of songs, silly games and gossip.
From time to time someone would come and tell us that it won't take much time now. It was almost done. There weren't many people anyway. Including the children, there would be about a couple more than a dozen. The river meandered by swiftly under the bridge. Someone suggested the children go and see the cabbage and tomato fields, just to pass the time. So we went to inspect the cabbage and tomato plants. It felt eerie. The host was a friend of our father. His house was the only house for miles around it seemed. Or may be the trees covered everything so well, it was difficult to figure if you were alone or there were houses nearby. But there was not much noise. Only a blanket of tremendous silence and solitude.
When we returned from our sojourn, the cooking had finally been concluded. We sat down in rows like a disciplined lot and ate rice and curried chicken with lots of potatoes off banana leaves. The curry had a strong flavour of coriander leaves. The flavour of the coriander mingled with the dry odor of winter and created a concoction that time cannot erase.
It was dark out by the time we finished eating. We began walking home. The water shimmered in the moonlight from atop the bridge, the children strayed and started leaning on the bannister to stare at it. They returned only after stern warnings. After we walked out from the bridge and started walking on the bank of the river, home wasn't that far away. I breathed some relief. But for something instinctive inside me, my feet won't let me slow down. I held the hands of the youngest kids in the group and asked the rest to stay together.
Then suddenly something really strange happened. I must have turned back to talk to someone or shout out to someone who was lagging behind. Suddenly a breeze got caught in my hair. I felt a cold gust on my face and when I opened my eyes, there was an old man whizzing past us on a cycle. Now it feels even comical. But then I froze. I am not sure if the others saw him or if it was just me. But his face was white, his teeth protruding. He said something to me while laughing, almost gaffawing. Probably something about the feast, or if I was afraid of getting home late, or simply just how I was doing. I don't really remember. I can't actually hold a memory that long, it has been decades. But I remember his eyes, so bright in that moonlight, so brazenly unafraid, that ghost.
My first impulse was to scream bloody hell and run. And that's what I did. I left all the hands I was holding and ran. Ran like I never would again with eyes closed. Thank goodness nobody fell into the river and everyone stayed on the road. I reached home sweating and panting with my cousins intact, only assuming that the neighbour's children reached their homes too. Realised the next afternoon that they did when all of them came out to play.