The Lathe of the Waning Moon

In 2009, I was a final-year student at a small engineering college in Nagpur, living in a rented flat with my parents near the old Ganesh temple. It started with small things—our radio would turn on by itself at 3 AM, tuned to static that seemed to hum with a low, rhythmic pulse. Then the mirrors in our house began to frost over from the inside, even in the hot April nights. My mother swore she saw a figure standing in the hallway, a tall, gaunt shape with arms that swayed like reeds in a current, but when she blinked, it was gone.

My father, a practical man, blamed faulty wiring and the humidity. But our neighbour, an old widow named Mrs. Deshmukh, whispered to my mother that our troubles were not natural. She spoke of a ‘lathe’—not a carpenter’s tool, but a ritual object used by a tantrik, a spindle to spin curses and bind them to a family. She pointed to a crescent moon visible through our living room window: ‘When that moon wanes, the lathe turns faster. They are grinding your peace into dust.’

One Thursday, a man visited us. He was introduced by a temple priest, a distant relative of my father’s. His name was Gopal Shastri, but he wore a saffron robe and had a khadga—a ritual sword—tucked into his waist. He claimed to be an exorcist, a ‘moksha-char’ who could sever the threads of the curse. He inspected our flat, muttering mantras, and stopped at the puja room where my mother kept a small brass idol of Lord Ganesha. He pointed to a tiny, almost invisible scratch on the idol’s trunk. ‘The curse is anchored here,’ he said. ‘But the real anchor is in the earth beneath your bedroom floor.’

My father was skeptical, but my mother pleaded. For five days, this Gopal Shastri performed rituals. He drew a complex mandala in white and red powders on the floor of the main hall and placed a small wooden lathe—the kind used to shape wooden beads—at its center. He wound a thread around the spindle, chanting verses that seemed to twist the air itself. At night, I heard the lathe creaking, though no one touched it. The sound was like an old wooden wheel turning, and with each turn, the air grew colder. The static on the radio became clearer, and once, I swear I heard a voice, thin and distant, calling my name.

On the fifth night, Gopal Shastri announced the climax. He told us to stand in a circle around the mandala as he set fire to a bundle of dried herbs. The smoke spiraled upward, and the lathe suddenly spun fast, so fast that it blurred. The thread snapped with a sharp crack, and the idol of Ganesha toppled over. At that moment, the lights flickered, and the temperature dropped so sharply that we could see our breath. Gopal Shastri stood motionless, his eyes closed. He spoke in a voice that was not his own, but a harsh, gravelly whisper: ‘The spindle is broken, but the lathe still turns. The waning moon will return. For six generations, the debt must be paid.’

Then he collapsed. We rushed to him, and when he woke, he claimed not to remember what he had said. He told us the curse was lifted, and indeed, the strange occurrences stopped. The radio stayed silent, the mirrors remained clear, and the doorbell rang only when someone pressed it. We thanked him, paid him, and he left, taking the lathe and the broken idol with him.

But that night, as the moon rose, I noticed it was not full. It was a waning crescent, just like the one in our window. And from the direction of the old Ganesh temple, I heard a faint, rhythmic creaking—like a wooden lathe turning slowly, turning forever, waiting for the next waning moon.