Hiding Spot

See,

one of these is poison, and one brings cursing luck.

Take one and you'll spout feathers, the other run amok.

One's said to cause the scurvy, but one might make me rich.

The trouble that I'm facing is

I'm not sure which is which

you've crossed over to Spoot.

Stay tuned.

My grandmother had bad knees,

which may be the only reason I survived childhood.

Always a close thing.

We have a routine, a pattern.

First, she catches me doing the bad stuff,

lighting her Bible on fire with a magnifying glass, dumping her syrup on the ground to watch the ants, forgetting that I locked my little brother in the attic.

Next, she narrows her eyes.

She surveys the catastrophe.

Then,

like in a western, she snatches up something to beat me with: a spatula, extension cord, whatever's handy, gets to swinging.

I run, lickety, split from the rain of blows.

And if I'm lucky, very, very lucky, I sprint, leap, dive, tuck, roll straight underneath the dining room table, safe.

Just in time.

And as Granny rages, there I sit, Boy, come out from under there.

Uh-uh.

Her bad knees won't let her bend down and snatch me up.

Boy, you hear me?

I already got snacks and a pile of bookstash to wait out the storms while the world outside the table shakes.

Boy!

I got to love this time alone.

Encyclopedia Brown.

The Chronicles of Narnia, vanilla wafers, you asking for it now.

But I know better.

Because no matter how loud she sputters, no matter how towering the rage, the danger will end at 3 p.m.

on the dot, not 2.55, not 3.10, at 3 p.m.

exactly.

Why?

Because on ABC Detroit Channel 7, that's what time General Hospital comes on.

And in Granny time,

General Hospital time is sacred time.

All debts forgiven, all slates wiped clean.

Just don't you disturb her and don't get in the way of her stories.

Crawl out from under the table,

bring Granny something cold to drink and get back to doing bad stuff.

And so many years later, it strikes me that right now in my world,

In your world as well, a storm rages.

The world shakes.

And it's right there, right there.

And I find myself scared, fearful, reaching for a box of vanilla wafers in the Chronicles of Narnia.

For some peace,

some respite.

And I'm hoping that soon,

Once the panic, the terror has passed, I will crawl out from under this table

and get back to doing bad things

Spook starts

now

You see,

there are many different types of hiding spaces.

Now, we're going to take you to India to meet Rashi.

Rashi is a teenager and she lives in Mumbai.

She's just graduated and wants to throw a party to celebrate.

Naturally, Rashi has just one small problem:

spooked.

One day,

all of his cousins we have gathered at this Mumbai house and we are planning to do this amazing huge party that we have never had before in our household.

We just had our major results in school.

Some of us are growing up and going to college.

So we plan to get some booze, of course.

Then we have to buy some paper hats and some decoration.

So me being the eldest child in the family, I decide that I should be contributing more money, but I had no money.

So my mom's in the kitchen and I go to her and I very sweetly start to wash the utensils.

So she knows that I've come there to ask her for something.

She stops me and she's like, just tell me what you want already.

Don't try to act sweet.

I look into her eyes and I'm like, Mom, please can you give me some more money?

Because we are planning a party.

And then there was silence for about 20 seconds.

She just smiled and she said,

Okay, fine, but have you had your breakfast?

And in my head, I'm like, she's changing the topic.

I know I'm not getting money for that party.

I used to have chocolate cereal for breakfast.

So I walk to the cabinet in the other dining area,

take out the box,

and while I'm pouring the cereal out,

there's a whole lot of cash that just falls out on the table:

5 rupees, 10 rupees, 50 rupees.

In my head, I'm like, hmm, I have no idea where this money's come from,

but now I don't need to ask my mother, which was so great

my mother comes to me in the evening she said the 200 rupees that you took what are you gonna buy from it

I go like oh

so it was you who put that money in that box in the first place

she said no it's magic it can appear from anywhere in the house

If you ever find money again in the house, you have to tell me.

You cannot just steal it without telling me.

I suddenly realized that, oh, my mother hides money around the house.

And when I think about it, my dad is a spendthrift, so it actually made sense that my mom hid money around the house.

The party was a blast.

And I remember the next morning, none of us were sober enough to go home.

One night, I was waiting for my parents to come back from this doctor's appointment.

My parents had regularly started going to the doctors because my mother started feeling sick.

She constantly had pain and aches.

I was standing in the balcony

and I saw the car approach and I just ran downstairs to greet my mom.

And I see her come out of the car and she has this,

you know, expression about her that she's going to cry.

She runs up the stairs, goes to the bed, lies down

and she just puts her head between her hands and she bursts out crying.

Never in my life my mother had cried like that.

Not even when she lost her best friend.

So I kept asking her, what happened?

What happened?

Why are you crying?

And she just looked at me and she said, I'm gonna lose all my hair.

My mom had this luscious long hair which went right down to her knees.

And she loved her hair so much.

I asked her if there's something wrong or why it would happen.

And in between her sobs and crying,

she just somehow told me, I have cancer.

I couldn't speak for the next, I think, 30-40 minutes.

My head just straight away went to what would happen if we lose our mom.

So, after my mother's diagnosis for the next two years,

we had to regularly visit the hospital, and each treatment was quite expensive.

So, it was getting difficult for us money-wise.

She started teaching us different things as a family.

She would give us instructions on how to take care of the garden,

what who likes to eat,

how do you go about a set routine, how do you not spend too much.

Initially, I thought my mother was teaching us those things because she couldn't do them herself.

But eventually, I realized that maybe she was trying to teach us the ways of life because she knew she's not going to live with us for very long.

On the 31st of August, we were at home.

My mom felt just fine.

She was doing good.

But towards the evening, later on, she started to feel sick.

She suddenly started to have a lot of pain in her back.

She started to feel breathless.

and I think a couple of hours later in the morning at four o'clock

she just went silent.

We just knew that my mother had gone.

She was no more with us.

The next few months were

very difficult.

For every small thing, we used to miss our mother a lot.

None of us knew how to cook properly.

We couldn't find our clothes in place.

There was no routine in the house, everything was chaotic.

And financially, we did not have enough.

I was very depressed.

So, my grandma, she gives me this metal bangle, which is like a bracelet,

and she puts it on my left hand.

And I'm thinking, okay, maybe,

you know, it's for good luck, or maybe it's to calm me down.

Somewhere there's this belief that if you wear something metal, it keeps you calm and protected.

So I just put it on and I never took it off.

Obviously, we couldn't tend to ourselves, so forget about tending to the garden or the plants.

This particular plant, it started to die eventually.

It was one of our very favorite plants.

It was a money plant that climbed all the way up to my window grille in my bedroom and almost covered half of it.

It had nice, beautiful, round leaves,

but it suddenly started to wilt.

After a week,

it was completely dead.

We try everything we know and we can to save it.

Make another cutting from it, prune it, grow another plant from it.

Nothing works.

It almost felt like the plants knew that my mom was not around to take care of them anymore, that she was gone.

After almost a year after my mom passed away, I was sitting in my living room and my dad comes to me and says,

Why do you keep waking up at 3 a.m.?

And I immediately looked at him, confused, and I said, I've not, I was not up at 3 a.m.

What happened?

And he said, I woke up to get some water and I passed by your room and I saw that you were sitting in your bed.

I was like, oh, maybe I would have just woken up randomly.

After two, three days, my grandmom told me the same thing.

She said, you do wake up at 3 a.m.

Why do you keep sitting in your bed?

Is something wrong?

The first thing that went into my head was:

maybe I'm still not used to the fact that my mother is not around anymore.

Maybe I'm depressed, and maybe my brain is making me do things.

Sometimes people also go into sleepwalking problems because of stress and all of that.

So we went to the doctor.

The doctor said that it could be just just stress, and I don't think there's something serious that you need to worry about.

But

if you think you're waking up at the same time, and if your family is saying it's the same time, put an alarm clock just to see how you respond to it.

You will know if you've been sleepwalking.

So we come back, and my father puts an alarm clock for I think 3:15 a.m.

and

I just dozed off to sleep.

Next thing I remember is

the alarm clock started ringing.

So I wake up

and

I realize that I'm sitting up

and I'm staring at that plant.

The plant that was already dead in my window.

I'm thinking, oh, I have been actually sitting up and doing this.

But also,

what are these little green things things coming out of the plant?

There are three new branches that are sprouting out.

It had small leaves.

It was almost as if it was a fresh new plant.

I was just plain confused.

Because the same plant had been dead for almost an year.

It was impossible to revive.

So in my head I'm thinking,

you know, maybe I'm just imagining it.

And I went back to sleep.

The next night I go to sleep

and then once again I wake up at 3 a.m.

I'm sitting up and I'm staring at that plant.

The plant had grown a little more.

One of its branches had actually coiled around the grill.

It's almost like it's coming alive right in front of me at that moment.

And this goes on for about 20 days.

In the span of 20 days, it came back to life.

And there's no bloody explanation for it.

I remember thinking that maybe this is something supernatural.

Maybe there is some sort of energies passing or something that has remained of my mother, which she has come to tell us through the plant.

A couple of times the thought did cross my head, but I never took it seriously.

One night,

I go to sleep on my usual time.

In the middle of the night, I remember feeling

a soft touch on my head,

like somebody caressing my hair,

somebody massaging my eyes,

and

the touch is very, very peculiar because

it's just like my mom's.

She would usually massage our eyes, massage our heads before waking us up.

And that touch is so strong

that I open my eyes

and I look to the right side of my bed

and I see my mom standing there.

She's wearing a sari and she's wearing her hair in a braid, a long braid.

She just looks like she's there in person,

alive.

She's smiling and

I'm confused.

I want to ask her out aloud,

Mom, if it's you and if you've come back,

but I can't get myself to speak.

She's not saying anything, she's just pointing at me

and she's pointing towards the other room where my father's asleep.

I get down from the bed

and I follow her to that room.

I enter the room

and I see my father sleeping very peacefully

and my mother standing there

and she just constantly is pointing at the bed.

I'm looking at the bed

and the very next thing I remember

is I wake up.

I'm in my bed, and I see my father, my grandmother, and a couple of other family members sitting in my room looking at me.

Something is probably wrong because I'm also feeling very heavy, I'm exhausted, I have a body ache.

My family has this weird expression on their face, and

I realize that I have woken up almost five hours later than I would usually wake up at.

So I instantly ask my father what's happening

and the first thing he asks me is do you remember anything?

And I tell him no

and I also tell him that I'm extremely tired.

Then my father tells me, he says,

do you remember seeing a lot of money?

I instantly ask him, I said, what do you mean by a lot of money?

Then my grandmom says,

Do you remember waking up last night?

I think you woke up.

Didn't you?

Think hard.

I said, No, of course I don't remember.

At this point, I sort of snapped at them and I said, Can you guys just please tell me what's happening?

Because it's really irritating me.

And that's when my father says,

You woke up in the night, you came to my room

and

you first lifted me,

you put me on the floor

and you pulled the mattress off the bed.

And I'm wondering, how are you picking that mattress up?

Because it's very heavy.

At this point, I'm legit thinking that my family is just, you know, they're just joking around with me.

I said, maybe I was sleepwalking, maybe I was doing something out in my sleep.

He said the moment you lifted that mattress, it was so scary to look at and we did not have the courage to come and touch you.

We called out your name a couple of times, but you did not respond.

And then my father says, underneath the mattress, there were four compartments.

One of the compartments had a secret locker that none of us knew about.

No one in our family knew that these lockers existed.

You opened the locker and then you pulled out these plastic bags with a lot of cash and jewelry.

And you pulled them out one by one.

You just took everything out

and you just put it on the floor.

And then you closed the compartment.

and you put the mattress back

and then you went back to your room

My family is scared.

They sound like they don't know who I am or who I was last night.

And while my father is saying this, my grandmom comes from behind.

She takes me to the room,

and I see there on the floor

five or six big clothes bags with jewelry in them,

wards of 50 rupees, 100 rupees.

I have never seen this amount of cash or jewelry before in my life.

I was so pissed at my own family.

You know, it almost felt like my family wanted to prove that I'm mentally unstable, that I've gone mad.

I straight off told my father,

if this is a joke, it's a very cruel joke to pull on anybody.

And my dad said, listen,

you're my daughter, and I have no reason to put you through this.

We found the jewelry that I thought had gotten stolen.

The jewelry that was there was stolen long ago, even before I was born.

And we found it at a time when we actually needed this cash.

And then he tells me that my grandmom was due for a surgery.

She had a hole in her heart, and she was due for a surgery for which we really needed money fast.

After being angry, I felt that sense of relief.

Like something was lifted off my shoulder and it just, everything just made sense.

It almost felt like my mom was still trying to protect us from the afterlife by trying to keep the plants alive, by trying to make sure that we had enough money to get us by in our rainy days when we actually needed it the most.

Maybe it was my mother coming to see us for one last time and ensuring our well-being.

My grandmom's treatment was started.

I was already in college, so I had a huge college fee to pay.

All of that was paid off.

My brother's tuition fee was paid off.

Some of the jewelry we still have for my brother's

would-be wife.

And

after about a week, I went to the seaside and I sat there for some time trying to recollect everything that had happened.

That metal bangle was still in my hand

and

whenever I looked at the bangle or that bracelet, it reminded me that it was given to me right

on on the next day of my mother's passing.

And I wanted to move on in life and I was ready to let go.

I put the bangle in the water, saying this to my mother,

if it was you who had come back,

I hope I've done whatever it is that you wanted me to do.

I've fulfilled your last wish.

And I love you more than anything else in this world.

As I let go of that bangle,

I saw it disappear and then slowly sink into the water.

Thank you, Rashi, for sharing your story with the spoot.

We are so glad you and your family are in a much better place now.

Rashi is a DJ for Big FM, one of India's largest radio networks.

You can check her out on BigFMIndia.com.

That story was scouted by Idiki Amatu, original score by Lauren Newsom, it was produced by Eric Yanez.

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My name is from Washington.

And I've mentioned here that I've been struggling my best through a very physically active form of hot yoga the past few months.

I am the worst student in every class,

but I try my best.

Flopping, sweating, straining next to the beautiful people.

There's lots of words and terminology tossed about I don't understand.

At the end of each and every class, the final pose is to lie on your back and to relax, to be still.

Shavasana.

And I don't do well

lying still.

I feel like with my performance, I don't really deserve to just rest.

So as everyone lies there,

I try to get a few final poses in and one day my teacher asks if I know what Shavasana is supposed to teach.

No.

Shavasana, she says, means corpse pose.

It is a sacred pose.

A practice that allows you to prepare for your final breaths.

What?

That's scary to me.

Prepare for my final breath.

She sees me recoil and she laughs.

Do you want to fight that which is sure to come or do you wish to embrace it?

Put down your burden.

And since she said it, I've tried to be still then in Shabasana.

To actually envision my final breaths.

And I found that

instead instead of bringing fear,

it's given me a type of joy, a type of gratitude, a type of hope.

I've discovered, much to my surprise, that I don't want to fight the shadow.

Since I know full well how this will end,

if I'm very, very lucky, I want to smile at the shadow's embrace.

That's the work of living.

And it puts in the front of mind that while I can still hold the candle, my job is to raise it high to let it shine as brightly as it may.

Yes,

it will fall in time.

That will come.

But at this hour,

right now,

my promise

is to never, ever,

never, never, never, ever, never, ever,

never

turn out

the lights.