An Encounter In Bombay

This incidence happened in the year 1975. My father, then unmarried, along with his family, used to live in the Mulund East suburb of Bombay, now Mumbai.

He used to have a friend and neighbor, Jadhav. Jadhav just got a job with a Pharma Company in Mulund West suburb, and had to daily cross the railway lines to get across the suburbs, and used a cycle for travelling to work.

One night, when Jadhav was returning home at around 1:15 am after completing his third shift, he encountered a strange thing. He saw a man standing in front of him on the railway tracks, accompanied with a cycle. This man was blocking the whole crossing by placing the cycle across the road of the crossing. Jadhav saw this man, but was unable to see his face since the man was facing away from Jadhav.

At first, Jadhav asked the man to leave his way, but there was no response. After a couple of requests, Jadhav started using abusive language to persuade the man to leave the tracks, but there was still no reply. Finally, Jadhav decided to get rid of that man using some physical force. Jadhav was pretty confident about himself since he had a good physique with a height of 5 feet 11 inches and a weight of 85kg, whereas the man confronting Jadhav seemed a physically weak guy of around 45 kgs, and was only somewhere around 5 feet 2 inches tall. Jadhav stepped ahead to grip the shoulder of the man, but when Jadhav touched him, the man suddenly turned around facing Jadhav.

Jadhav saw his face and felt that it seemed something different, his face was totally white and his eyes were so deep that they weren't visible. Before Jadhav could make any move, that man landed a tight slap on Jadhav's face. The slap was so hard that Jadhav fell five feet behind on the ground. It would have been a really difficult task for a man of that height and physique to overpower a huge guy like Jadhav. Jadhav somehow managed to get up immediately but found that the man, along with his cycle, were both missing.

Fear ran through Jadhav's mind as he realized that it wasn't human. Jadhav started running towards the railway platform, which was around 200 meters from the spot. Jadhav somehow reached the railway platform and then ran all the way to his house.

From that night, Jadhav suffered from high fever along with dystentry for one week. His family performed some Puja and Havan to rid him of this fever.

Today, Jadhav lives in Pune, India. Even after more than thirty years after that incident, Jadhav still remembers that night.

I still hear people saying that the railway tracks near the crossing are haunted, and some years back, a flyover bridge was constructed on the railway crossing.