My Childhood Journey.

1. The strange doll in the Garden

 Many like to possess a garden. A garden is a place where you can relax and be in touch with nature. I had the privilege of having one when I was a child. It was not a well organised one, with pretty pots here and there, but a wild one. It had a variety of overgrown shrubs and trees. In those days the plants that grew in the backyard were on their own to survive and no particular attention was given to them.

Everyday after coming from school I used to play in the garden. Most of the time I was on my own in exploring the plants. Since the garden spread across a large area, I used to get lost behind the wild bushes,observing the flowers and the leaves. The garden attracted all kinds of bees and insects. My favourite insect was the beetle which came in all vibrant colours. Me and my brother used to catch these tiny beetles and kept them in a glass bottle. Anyway after sometime we let it go. The beetle's seemed to move only on the green leaves.

During the rainy season, a small puddle formed at the centre of the garden. The dry leaves from the trees fell in the puddle. In the evening time, the floating of the leaves with the gentle breeze made the garden look enchanting.

My brother and his friends used to play cricket in the garden during summer vacation. One such evening when the small team of six members were playing , they accidently discovered a ragged doll. It was a very old one and it was missing an eye, because of which it looked quite scary. One boy said " it looks like a voodoo doll, let's throw it away" , the rest of the team agreed and were about to throw it when one fellow said " why don't we use this doll and play a prank on the smaller kids?", everyone gave it a mischievious thought and agreed . The team started to formulate some ghostly story pertaining to the doll and decided to hang the doll on to a tree using some rope. This will make the doll appear quite frightening.

Everything was planned. The cricket team went inside the house. The younger kids around the age of 7 or 8 were playing with some tiny plastic cooking utensils. They were about four of them.

One of the boy asked, "who wants to listen to a real ghost story", on hearing this the kids got excited. They formed a circle around the boy and started to listen with great enthusiasm. The boy started to narrate the story in a scary voice. It was about a lonely spirit that had entered a doll. Suddenly he asked in a loud voice, "Do you kids want to see the doll? , it's in our backyard only. If you are not afraid I can show it to all of you right now". The kids gave a gasp. They started to discuss amongst themselves.

One of the kids asked "what if the spirit catches us?"to which the boy replied "don't worry, they attack only in the midnight at 12 'o' clock when everything is dark and quite. Their power comes to play at that time alone".Somehow the kids got convinced and decided to accompany the boy's to see the mysterious doll.

All of them went to the backyard . The boy's were laughing to themselves as their idea was working out perfectly. On reaching the backyard the boy's were disappointed as the doll was missing . They looked at all the trees but the doll was nowhere to be found. The kids got bored and went inside.

"Who must have taken the doll  ?",asked one of the boys. All of them started to think very hard but couldn't arrive at any solution. Suddenly one of the boys yelled" what if really the doll is possessed ?"  , this question really shook everyone. All of them got pretty scared on hearing this.

It had already started to darken a bit for the day as the time was nearly 6:30pm. A rough wind brought a rumbling noise among the leaves of the huge trees.As the trees swayed , the backyard suddenly looked like a spirits hub to all the boys.The winds brought a kind of howling sound  from somewhere ."Let's go from here immediately", suggested one of the boys and all of them left in a hasty manner to their respective homes.

On the other hand my brother couldn't sleep that night as the incident bothered him a lot. As he was tossing and turning on the bed, his eyes fell on the same doll , sitting on top of his cupboard. He gave a loud scream.

Our mother woke up with a startle and asked, "what's the matter, why are you screaming ?". My brother was gasping for breath and pointed towards that doll. He said " that's a haunted doll , how did it get here ?"

For a minute my mother was confused, but later  she calmed him and replied "that doll is not haunted". " Since it looks scary your grandma uses it to chase the crows, that try to take the vadams that are kept for drying in our backyard".

"About a week ago she had lost it somewhere, yesterday only she found it hanging on the tree and brought it inside". "Now go to sleep", she said

On hearing this my brother got relieved, but his mind started to work on another prank to play on his friends.