My Writings of The Past Years

Can A Ghost's Hand Light Up Hope? (Prose)

"A gruesome, gnarled hand catches the corner of your eye. You turn, just in time to see the same hand grabbing your shoulder, with lifeless strength. You get excited- not because of fear, but because of hope."

Is that possible?

Seeing it in a new light might add a new dimension to think upon.

Let us reel back to our daily experience. If there is black, there is white as well; if there is hot, there is cold as well. We find that nature has created almost everything in pairs of opposites.

So, if there is our horrifying, blob-on-a-stick ghost, there must be some awesome, well formed God as well.

This is what struck me when I came back after watching a horror movie, a few nights ago. Yeah, 'nights' - because that's when all the ghosts, ghouls and zombies become active, as the saying goes.

This thought, in such cases is not only comforting but also intriguing. Over the many years, when I could not pacify myself by saying that ghosts don't exist, I suddenly found new light in this very thought.

However, coming to the fact that I have never run into such an entity (luckily), I realise that meeting a God physically is just as unlikely. 'Unlikely' and not 'impossible' - because of many reasons.

First and foremost being my faith that ghosts don't exist. Secondly, even if I do run into a God or ghost, would he/she (or none of it) be recognisable by the current picture that is engraved in my mind? Thirdly, even if I recognise them, by some mystical intuition, will they be at par with my expectations, the ones that I have painted over the engravings?

Coming to think of it, maybe I have met both. You have met both too, provided that you consider a different set of criteria. In very simple and crude terms, we can assume that any good thought or experience is God and any bad thought or experience is ghost.

Like us, this set of criteria also possesses a 'but'. In the examples that I mentioned earlier, consider the 'hot and cold' one. Anything that may seem hot to us, may be cold to someone else. Even to us, it may appear cold after losing heat to the surroundings. So, how are we so sure that anything good is so for everyone or for every period of time?

The nature of nature itself is dynamic. Therefore, the nature of God and ghost is dynamic too. Maybe, aeons from now, when you see a beautiful, gnarled hand out of the corner of your eye, you may be filled with all sorts of hope and respect. So the answer to the title remains - Maybe!