The Last Gaslight

It was the summer of 1982 when my grandfather, a retired railway engineer, invited us to his ancestral home in the foothills of the Himalayas. The village of Kalapani was a sleepy hamlet, its few hundred inhabitants living among the dense deodar forests that clung to the slopes. My father, then a young captain in the army, had taken leave to visit his ailing grandmother. The journey from the military cantonment to Kalapani was arduous, a day-long train ride followed by a six-mile trek through the woods. By the time he reached the village outskirts, the sun had dipped below the ridgeline, casting long, tangled shadows across the path. The air was thick with the scent of pine and damp earth, and a chill that had nothing to do with the altitude seeped into his bones.

The village had no electricity; the only illumination came from gas lamps spaced about two hundred yards apart along the narrow lane that wound through the houses. My father had traversed this route many times as a child, but tonight it felt alien. The familiar landmarks—the old banyan tree, the crumbling well—seemed to have shifted, as if the forest itself was holding its breath. He quickened his pace, his military boots crunching on the gravel, the only sound breaking the oppressive silence. The last gas lamp before his grandparents’ house stood at the bend where the lane opened into a small clearing. As he approached, he noticed a figure standing under the lamp, a woman in a white sari, her back to him. She appeared to be waiting for someone. My father, ever the cautious officer, slowed down, his hand instinctively going to the flashlight he carried.

From a distance of twenty feet, he called out, ‘Are you alright, Maaji? Do you need help?’ The woman did not turn. She remained perfectly still, her sari billowing gently despite the still air. My father took a few steps closer, the light from the lamp casting a sickly yellow glow on the scene. He noticed then that the woman’s feet were not touching the ground—she hovered inches above the dirt, a faint mist curling around her ankles. A cold dread, unlike any he had felt in training or combat, seized his chest. He had heard stories of restless spirits in these mountains, but he had always dismissed them as superstition. Yet here, in the dim light, his rationality crumbled.

The woman began to hum a tune, a lullaby his grandmother used to sing to him as a child. The melody was sweet, but it carried a mournful note that made his skin crawl. Without thinking, he took a step back, and the humming stopped. Slowly, the woman began to turn. My father’s instincts screamed at him to run, but his legs felt rooted to the ground. When she finally faced him, he saw that her face was obscured by a cascade of black hair, but through the strands, he could make out a pale, featureless visage—no eyes, no nose, no mouth. The humming resumed, but now it seemed to come from all around him, as if the forest itself was echoing the sound.

Summoning every ounce of his training, my father forced his legs to move. He turned and ran, not looking back, the gas lamps blurring past as he sprinted toward the safety of his grandparents’ house. The humming followed him, growing louder, until he burst through the wooden gate and slammed it shut behind him. He leaned against the door, gasping, his heart pounding in his ears. When he looked up, he saw his grandmother standing at the veranda, a lantern in her hand. Her face was calm, but her eyes held a knowing sadness. ‘You saw her,’ she said quietly. It was not a question. My father nodded, unable to speak. His grandmother sighed and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘She appears to those who are about to die, or to those who have been marked. She comes for the lost ones.’

That night, my father slept with a lamp burning beside his bed. He never spoke of the incident again, except to my mother in a rare moment of vulnerability. He told her that he had seen the last gaslight, and the thing that waited beneath it. He said he had learned that fear was not an enemy to be conquered, but a shadow that sometimes walked beside you. When I was a child, I listened to this story with wide eyes, but I never truly understood until the day I received a letter from the village postman, saying that my grandmother had passed. Among her belongings, they found a photograph of a woman in a white sari, taken decades ago, and on the back, written in her shaky hand: ‘For the one who walks alone, the lamp still burns.’