The mystery of the disappearing food...

Back when my sisters and I were studying in school my mom experienced a series of very surreal and bizarre incidents involving what she thought was a haunting. 

It all started with food vanishing from kitchen tops, even though they used to be covered. My mom attributed these first incidents to a few cats that were living in the vicinity. This belief was reinforced when she caught a cat red handed at the act of stealing food from her reserves. But try as she might, she could not see any way by which food was disappearing even when covered. I mean, cats could not eat food and then put the lid back again to cover their tracks could they? 

Consequently she started keeping the food inside the fridge so as to thwart any attempts by cats at gaining access to the food. A few days passed peacefully and Amma had all but forgotten the incidents. She now truly believed that cats were the reason for the food crisis at our house.

Then it started again. Food started disappearing from inside the fridge... and she would not even know of this until she opened a dabba to heat the food for us during lunch or dinner time. This was coz the vessel which contained the food would not seem to be touched in any way. It would be inside the fridge just as she had kept it the previous night... but the dabba itself would be empty!!! There was no sign of entry or any proof on it being handled by a human being. To her,  it was the real sign of some unearthly presence. 

"Maybe it is the Athma of a poor soul who died of hunger" she would tell us.

This really freaked her out and after this happened a few more times I noticed that she started praying a lot more. She became a lot more pious. She was convinced that this was a haunting. She even started keeping food outside the fridge for the "poor soul". After this food began disappearing from both inside and outside the fridge. Evidently, the neighbourhood cats were having a gala time. Try as he might even my dad could not drill sense into her.

My sister finally got through and convinced her that it was all quite impossible and that there had to be some rational explanation to this. She convinced Amma to sit up with her the next night to finally see what was going on.  

So the next night my mom and sister hid at a corner of the kitchen strategically placed to observe what was happening. My mom was obviously in an excited state of mind. Around the twilight hours, they heard the door creaking open. The creak was so faint that they wouldn't know it unless they listened carefully. They heard the muffled sounds feet. The perpetuator opened the fridge and took out one of the vessels with a quick sleight of his hand and started hogging the food. 

With not a moment to loose, my mom and sister moved in to apprehend the thief - the one who had my mom at her wits end for the last couple of weeks... They pounced on him and overpowered him in a swift motion. He did not even let out a scream or shout... rather he could not...

My mouth was full of the stolen chicken!!!

:-)