Saturday 5 March 2016

my mother was possessed!



My Mother Was Possessed!

My mother was possessed by a devil spirit when she was 11 years old. She was coming home from school, at lunch time, and she squatter down behind some bushes to pee. Suddenly she saw a pig she got scared, making her vulnerable to being possessed. In Goa, there a myth that sometimes,  pigs with 20 piglets suddenly appearing and then, disappearing right before your eyes. You are not supposed to get scared, because if you do, the ghosts will possess you. Who wouldn’t get scared if a pig suddenly appears as you are taking a pee.

So my mum went home,(apparently possessed) and she happened to be on her period, at the time. Her menstruation continued for 2 months, continuously. My grandmother’s homeopathic  remedies, including trying to scare the blood away, by using very dirty , soot stained pieces of cloth as pads. The doctors could not cure her, and my mother kept withering away. She was in and out of consciousness during that time.

 My grandmother believing in both science and spiritualism consulted a doctor and the most powerful sorceress in the land. The doctor injected my mother with medicines, when the illness had climaxed, and said that if her fever did not break by the next morning, there would be no hope for her. The sorcerer, also, came the same night and did some ritual, which included splashing my other, face with some very stinky concoction of herbs, and putting a red hot sword under my mother’s bed. She said, that my mother had to battle the demon or parish that night. It was a fitful night as my mother battled for her life. My grandparents and the neighbours stayed up all night praying for God’s mercy and help.  By dawn she had overcome the demon of sickness and she awoke, fully conscious. 

The neighbours celebrated her return, by beating my mother with garlic leaves and questioning  her, about who she was, when she was born , the name of her parent, things like that. They then asked her to pray, to recite the” Our Father” and” Hail Mary”, to see if she accepted God. Or whether she would spew green puke at them and start levitating and making her neck twist 180 degrees! She was fine. And no one ever spoke about it again.

Soon after that incident, my grandfather allowed his niece to build a temporary structure on one of his properties and he provides her and her son with food and supplies, for the rest of his life. My mother says that his dead sister had possessed her, and blackmailed my grandfather into agreeing to support her widowed daughter and grandson, or she would take my mother’s soul to hell with her!  Later, after my grandfather’s demise, my mother kicked them out of the property, and no one has been possessed so far!

Interesting as it the story is to me ,I still have several questions about this that I don’t have the guts to ask my mother, because she will disinherit me!

One, do ghosts lurk around during the day? I thought they only come out at night? My mum was coming home from school, when she “met the pig”.

Two, was my great aunt waiting for the opportune time for my mother to pee at that particular spot and got a pass from Satan to possess my mother during the day, instead of night?  My mother would definitely not wonder so far from the house in the night to pee. How long did she wait for? Why would the ghost come as pigs, a snake would be more scary!

Three,  her continuous bleeding. I had that problem about 7 years ago. My period would not stop, and I remember thinking of my mother’s possession, and wondered if I should go to the priest for an exorcism or the gynecologist. I opted for the latter, and thought if that did not work; I would go to the priest. My gynecologist prescribed some hormone tablets and I was fine. did the doctors not know about this in 1946? Why was she not hospitalised and put on blood transfusion or something? Or were her parents so poor that they could not afford to take her to the doctor? It was a period when India was going through a major famine.

Four, if it did happen, how come no one recalls the story it today. I mean, would my mother not be stigmatised by the fact that she was possessed by the devil? Wouldn't the villagers have created myths around her? I have never met anyone, even her peer in the many travels to Goa, who spoke about my mother being possessed. People love to gossip, it’s amazing that this is not one of the legends!

Or, did the ghost threaten everyone in the village to be silent or else she would possess everyone who spoke about it?

Five, or did my grandparents just make up that story out of shame, for not taking her to the hospital, thinking it was hopeless and that she would die Instead, she survived miraculously.

Six, was it the doctor’s medicine that cured her, or was it the sorcerer’s magic?!!!!
What is the actual story here? I wonder.



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