Shweta Taneja | Shweta Taneja

November 22, 2016October 28, 2016

The media on my latest novel on Manipal

I’m always both excited and panicked when a new novel is launched. It’s out there, with a lovely cover, and you don’t know if it’ll do good or sink in, if readers would enjoy it or frown while reading. It’s panicky, but then what’s an author’s life without it? Sharing a quick listing of all the lovely interviews, reviews How to Steal a Ghost @ Manipal, an ebook which got published with Juggernaut has received so far. It also stayed in Top of the Charts within the app! Yay!

INTERVIEWS

“A young student turns into a paranormal investigator to impress her boyfriend.” – Best subhead found at Asian Age along with a rather lazy, old photo of mine.

Continue reading “The media on my latest novel on Manipal”

November 18, 2016September 8, 2016

Go green to counter pollution

Eight plants that can help you counter pollution, improve the air quality in your home and office, and breathe better

Most of us try to block outdoor pollution by closing doors and windows and by using air conditioners and air purifiers. But a simpler solution would be to opt for a few plants, says Anand Sankar, co-founder of Springfinity, a start-up that sells garden kits for urban apartments.

“The quality of air is one of the biggest problems we face in our times, and the simplest solution is to invite nature back into our homes,” says Sankar, who is based in Gurgaon, near Delhi.

But that’s not the only reason you should grow plants around you, in offices and homes. A growing body of research points to mental, physical and even performance benefits from doing so. “Plants and flowers are programmed into our DNA,” says Sangram Jagtap, vice-president, Indian Nurserymen Association. “The sight of plants and flowers makes us feel calm and relaxed,” says Jagtap, who runs a nursery in Pune.

Improves work performance

A Stanford University, US, study published in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences journal in May found that mental illness in urban cities can be reduced by 90 minutes of exposure to nature every day. The brain scans of participants who walked for 90 minutes amid trees and shrubs showed reduced activity in an area associated with risk of mental illness.

A Harvard University study, published in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal in October, found that people who worked in well-ventilated offices, with below-average levels of indoor pollutants and carbon dioxide, have higher cognitive functioning scores—and, therefore, better reasoning power, attention span and memory. The study looked at the impact of ventilation, chemicals and carbon dioxide—that make indoor air quality poor—on cognitive function in employees.

“We spend 90% of our time indoors, yet indoor environmental quality and its impact on health and productivity are often an afterthought,” writes Joseph Allen, director, Healthy Buildings Programme, Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment, US, and lead author of the study, in a press release by Harvard. “These results suggest that even modest improvements to indoor environmental quality may have a profound impact on the performance of workers.”

Harmful volatile compounds released from furniture, painted surfaces and everyday cleaning products make the quality of indoor air pretty problematic. “Air-conditioned spaces can contribute to sick-building syndrome, leading to problems like headache, nausea, sore and itchy eyes, and even loss of concentration. All of this can be treated with just a few plants around the office,” says Seema Singh, chief clinical nutritionist at the Fortis Flt Lt Rajan Dhall Hospital in Vasant Kunj, Delhi. Once office spaces breathe free, employees can concentrate better. “You perform better and get better results if you have nature around,” says Anirudh Garg, chief executive officer at the Institute of Urban Farming and Sustainability in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, which encourages urban residents to grow their own food. “Your memory performance and attention span increase, and you tend to have better interpersonal skills and more compassion for fellow workers,” he adds.

Makes you fitter

Plants influence not just mental health but physical health too. “Indoor plants decrease the incidence of dry skin, colds, sore throat and dry cough,” says Suvarna Pathak, dietitian coordinator at the Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital in Mumbai. An avid gardener, she grows tulsi (holy basil), ajwain (carom seeds), coriander and wheatgrass in her kitchen garden and rose, jasmine and money plant in her balcony. “They maintain blood pressure, eliminate stress and skin irritation, flush out toxins from the air and improve your lung capacity with a personal oxygen supply,” she says.

Click here for enlarge

MONEY PLANT

A plant that can be grown in discarded bottles and looks pretty as a picture in hanging pots, on bathroom sills and kitchen windows, the money plant feeds voraciously on pollutants. “Money plant sucks up formaldehyde and other building pollutants and absorbs benzene, an air pollutant found in car exhausts that can cause dizziness, drowsiness and headaches,” says Seema Singh. The plant grows well in the shade.

SPIDER PLANT

One of the cheapest plants to grow at home, the spider plant has thin and narrow leaves that fall limp on all sides, making it look like an inverted spider. “It counters air pollutants like benzene, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide and xylene,” says Sangram Jagtap. The plant is easy to grow in a pot, and can also be suspended from a window; it looks pretty and adds moisture to the atmosphere. “It does not require much sunlight, so it can be grown in your drawing room,” says Suvarna Pathak.

Read the complete article at livemint.com

November 15, 2016October 28, 2016

How much should I ask for a freelance assignment?

Writing is a tough profession and a lot of authors get by with getting freelance gigs on the side to pay for their writing time. I’ve freelanced almost all my life, negotiating with corporations, adjusting to different work ethics, chasing payments, waiting for payments and getting them.

Freelancing is a tough, competitive, variable market where you can get paid as little as Rs 500 for content for a website to as much as Rs 10,000 for a magazine article. Writers often approach me with a question on how much they should ask for an assignment they’ve been offered. Which is why this post. Here are five ways to determine what you should ask for. Best of luck!

STEP 1: What’s the monthly salary you want?

Forget the thought of what companies are paying or what other freelancers are getting. Have some faith in yourself and find a sweet spot you want to reach per month. Believe me, all the rest usually falls into place. What would you like to earn? Think up of a monthly amount. This amount could be either what you want to lead a good life or what you’d get if this was a full-time position. But this amount will make you satisfied and happy. Generally, my suggestion would be to keep it a littler higher than what you’ll fetch in a full-time position since freelancers don’t make a regular income and you won’t get paid leaves or medical insurance. But don’t make it double either. That’s just getting greedy. For example, say you think that your monthly salary should be Rs 1,00,000. That’s 1,00,000 for 20 working days if this was a fulltime gig. Which shortens to Rs 5,000 a day.

STEP 2: How much time will I take?

To know how much to ask for, you need to know how many hours and how many days the assignment is going to take you. Continue reading “How much should I ask for a freelance assignment?”

November 11, 2016October 27, 2016

Seven quick and nutritious breakfast fixes

Looking for a recipe of a perfect breakfast? Most traditional Indian meals, like poha, upma and idli, are high in starch and calories, which is great if you need a shot of energy— but what you also need is a healthy dose of protein to keep you going for the day. Choose what Madhuri Ruia, founder of Integym, Mumbai, and a Mint columnist calls “first-class proteins”. “Egg white, paneer, chicken or fish ensures balance in blood sugar and insulin levels,” she says. And when it comes to carbohydrates, adds Ruia, “opt for grains like oats, muesli, nachni (finger millet), bajra rotior multigrain roti, which give you energy but keep you feeling full for longer”.

The body needs essential nutrients like calcium, iron and vitamin B, as well as protein and fibre in the morning, says Shikha Sharma, founder and managing director of Nutri-Health, a Delhi-based wellness clinic. She says an ideal breakfast should be split into three parts: “One-third should be carbohydrates, another third should be filled with proteins and the remaining portion should be fruits and vegetables.”

It is also good to add variety to your plate. “It’s like exercise. If you keep doing the same set of exercises again and again, your body stops responding,” says Mumbai-based sports nutritionist Deepshikha Agarwal. A variation will ensure you don’t get bored—and that you consume different types of vitamins and minerals.

Agarwal suggests choosing between idli-sambhar with fruit, milk with cornflakes, vegetable poha, pancake with a milkshake, or a vegetable omelette with a bran muffin and orange juice.

7 RECIPES THAT ARE EASY TO MAKE

Continue reading “Seven quick and nutritious breakfast fixes”

November 8, 2016October 28, 2016

A new begging scam on the streets of Bangalore

A few weeks ago, I’d just come out of my gym in RT Nagar when a couple with a child, looking vaguely from somewhere rural approached me. Both of them spoke on how they’d come to Bangalore on train from somewhere in Bihar, called on a job by a contractor had cheated them. Now they were without money and couldn’t go back home. It was late evening and they begged me to give them some money to buy a train ticket for home. They rightly guessed that I spoke Hindi and spoke to me in the same language to emphasis their alieness to this land. At that time, vulnerable and tired, I half fell for it. Deciding not to give money, I took them over to a biryani place nearby and got them some biryani packed for dinner.

AsI bought the biryani, I was pretty sure the Rs 150 I was spending on them was scammed off me, but the polite me didn’t know how to say no. The reason I knew it was a scam was because I vaguely remember the same thing happening in Delhi, when I used to live there more than a decade ago. Also the cashier in that biryani restaurant looked like he’d seen that guy before. There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. Anyway, I paid up and left, feeling vaguely scammed and hoping I see them again so I could confront them.

The same scam was repeated before me, TWICE at the Trinity Circle today. There were two families I saw. A couple with a child, usually 3-7 years of age trailing behind. One of the families was standing a bit off the other and the other had already stopped a lady who give out Rs 100 to the couple in front of me and my friend. We didn’t stop her at that moment.

Continue reading “A new begging scam on the streets of Bangalore”

November 4, 2016July 25, 2016

Your smartphone is a memory machine

Here are some apps to help you remember everything—from billion-dollar ideas to baby-diaper changes

Constantly juggling meeting schedules, travel dates and hotel stays on business tours, Mumbai-based Rajesh Nambiar, a business-to-business tour operator, was beginning to lose track— so he started looking for a solution.

“All my time was being spent in checking my flights, informing clients and vendors on when I will be in their city and coordinating,” says the 42-year-old, who travels as frequently as eight times a month, both domestically and internationally, on tours, as well as for negotiations and business meetings. That’s when he came across WorldMate (freemium on iOS, Android and Windows phone), a travel app that automatically creates an itinerary after you feed it your flight and hotel details. All Nambiar had to do was forward his travel and hotel bookings to WorldMate’s email ID and get a chronological itinerary for the whole year.

“Now if someone asks me when I’m reaching Dubai, I just check my WorldMate and tell them. I can also access what time I’m travelling, where I’m staying, the address of the hotel, the PNR of my flight and other details one tends to forget, all with a single click,” he says, adding that he liked using apps for schedule reminders so much that he has synced his personal and office calendar with WorldMate updates using Google Calendar (free on Android and iOS). “The Google Calendar app has replaced the need for a personal secretary for me. All I have to do is open it and I know my meeting times, travel time, dates and all the things I have to do in a day,” he says. It gives him the feeling of having a few hours extra each day.

Something similar happened to Bengaluru-based Nimisha Bhadauria Shivam, a mother of two, who wanted to organize her life. She decided to use Feed Baby Pro (Rs.100 on Android, free on iOS), an app that tells her when it’s time to change her child’s diapers, feed her, track her weight and growth. “When my first child was born five years ago, I did the same thing in a diary, which was much more cumbersome. An app makes it simpler,” says the 37-year-old, adding that she has also installed Water Drink Reminder (freemium on Android), an app to remind her to drink water regularly. “My friends make fun of me, but with two children to manage, it’s hard to remember to do things for yourself,” she says. The self-confessed app addict also uses Google Calendar for bills and payment reminders and has recently been looking for a good money-tracking app. “It’s less stressful if you know what all is needed to be done in a day,” she adds.

Mumbai-based author Samit Basu likes to key his “billion-dollar book ideas” into his phone or laptop. He uses Evernote (free on iOS, Android, Windows phone and Web). “I just add in random ideas, article links, research points and reviews to my Evernote, which then syncs this information to all my devices,” he says. Every few months, he scans all his ideas to see which ones he would like to turn into a book. Except that he cannot decipher his own notes sometimes. “Now I’m waiting for a reminder app that will explain to me what I meant when I wrote the billion-dollar idea a few months ago and hopefully can also write the book,” he says with a smile.

While Basu waits, we have listed some apps for you to remember the things you need to do.

Multitasking on the go

Make checklists, add tasks and sync them across all devices, all with simple gestures of swipe and click. You can set alarms to tasks, share tasks and lists, choose to get time- or location-based reminders, set recurring tasks, attach notes or attachments to your tasks, even add a to-do by sending an email. You can print, export or share your lists and add in sound recordings or photos. There are many apps that offer these features. Choose from Any.do (Any.do), Wunderlist (Wunderlist.com), Todoist (Todoist.com) or Evernote (Evernote.com), most of which have apps for iOS, Android, Windows phone, Kindle Fire and the Web. The smartphone apps are free to download, with optional in-app, or additional feature, purchases.

Remember the toothbrush

Packing for a trip can be stressful—you will invariably forget something as important as a toothbrush. PackPoint (freemium on Android and iOS) makes an automatic checklist after you tell it where you’re going, and why. You can share this list with fellow travellers and help them out too. Apps like Tripcase (free on Android and iOS), Tripit (freemium on Android and iOS) and WorldMate make your itinerary automatically once you forward your hotel, flight, car rental and restaurant confirmation emails to them. You can view the itinerary, tweak it or even save it offline.

Never forget the pill

Take the stress out of daily medication with Medisafe (freemium on Android and iOS), which not only reminds you when you have to take medicines but also tells you which one to take when, and sends you a reminder if your parent or child has missed theirs. You can also track blood pressure, weight and other parameters and get reminders when you need to buy new medicines. Lady Pill Reminder (free on Android) can remind you to take birth-control pills. Install Aqualert (free on Android) or WaterMinder (free on iOS) to remind you to drink water. Then there are Clue (free on Android and iOS) and Glow (free on Android and iOS), which can keep track of menstrual cycles.

November 1, 2016September 28, 2018

Deal with post Diwali blues by donating

Hope you had a fantastic Diwali. Now add more lights to it by donating. The best way to feel good about yourself is to bring in light into someone else’s. It lifts your spirits up and makes you feel thankful for what you already have.

With this Diwali’s wishes, I wanted to share a few of my favourite places to donate to. Donate to one of these causes, write back to me and I’ll send you a signed-copy of any of my books. In case of How to Steal a Ghost @Manipal, it would have to be an ecopy with a personal email 🙂

Donate. Now. Believe me, you’ll feel great.

Independent Media

Citizenmatters: They are a team of passionate journalists and a long list of voluntary bloggers who want to do good, reveal inefficiencies in the system and make their city beautiful, warm and welcome. I would recommend this one if you’re based in Bangalore. Donate here.

The Wire: A team of fantastic journalists who are coming up with in-depth insight into current politics, culture and our society. Right now, they’re better than any mainstream media. Find here how they’re funded and donate.

Education

Donate A Book: This is a library crowdsourcing platform through which you can help build a library in a school. The initiative is run by Pratham Books, one of the more innovative children books publishing house and is fabulous. For a book in a child’s hand opens a new world. It allows the child to dream, to think of new possibilities, to know that a different future is possible for her. Give some kids stars, by donating here.

Kalap Trust: Kids of a remote village in Utharakhand are looking for people to sponsor their additional education. This genuine work is done by a friend of mine. Sponsor a child here.

(images courtesy Kalap)

Know other NGOs doing great work? Comment below and I’ll add them on in a future blog. Till then, keep donating!

October 28, 2016July 25, 2016

Revisit your digital past with these photo memory apps

Do you remember what you did last summer? Now you can relive your past, one photograph at a time, with these apps

Take a deep breath and try to recollect what you did last year—which flower you photographed, how a mundane Saturday became beautiful because you sighted a sparrow, or that dessert you ate at the restaurant whose name you don’t recall. Now you can relive your past, one photograph at a time, with these apps.

TIMEHOP

Timehop.com

Free on iTunes and Google Play

Delve into digital nostalgia with Timehop, which shows you what you were doing this day, exactly a year ago. Once you’ve downloaded the app and connected it to your social networks, Timehop plods through your past photos, status updates, tweets, check-ins and posts. Every morning, you wake up to a new photograph or memory from a year ago that you can also share on your social networks.

Windows Phone users can also try the Time Travel ! app, which is the same, though not so sleekly designed.

COLLECT

Thelenslab.com

Rs.133 on iTunes

Collect is about recording one moment every day. So you feed it one photo of yourself, your children, your garden, pet, anything really, daily. You can have multiple folders, but can only upload one photo per folder. The app allows you to include a detailed note along with the photograph and save it with tags. You can import a photo from your camera roll or take it from within the app. A month later, it creates an automatic, hi-resolution collage of those 30 days, one that you can share with friends and family.

Automatic backup to iCloud is available, but costs Rs.190 extra.

MEMOIR

Yourmemoir.com

Free on iTunes

Memoir displays your earlier photos when you revisit the same place or meet the same friend. It almost seems serendipitous, though it uses the data you have collected through your smartphone—when you click a photo, check in at a restaurant or update your social network. Once you’ve downloaded it, you connect Memoir to your phone and social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare and Dropbox, and then let it do its job.

Memoir tracks the photos on your phone, connected social networks, status updates as well as location check-ins and then notifies you about these old memories on the basis of where you are, what you’re doing or who you’re with. If you’re having adosa, for example, it might tell you the last time you had one, and who you were with at that time. Or show photos of the same hotel you were at years ago, or the people you were with. You can annotate the old memories by adding new ones—like adding a new photograph with a note.

FLASHGAP

Flashgap.com

Free on Google Play and iTunes

Attending a party and want to see it from every angle? Ask your friends to download Flashgap. Once everyone has created a profile, you can create a shared photo album in which you can all upload photographs using the app. No one will be able to see, modify or delete the uploaded photos while the party is on. As soon as you take a photograph, it will show in the app for 3 seconds before disappearing. All this “evidence” becomes visible in the app at noon the following day, when you’re probably dealing with the hangover of the night before. Once the shared album is available, you and your friends can chat about the evening, relive the moments, laugh out loud at all the unfiltered visual documentary you’ve collected, comment on photographs, even delete the ones you don’t like.

GOOGLE PHOTOS

Photos.google.com

Free on Google Play, iTunes and Web

In August, Google Photos rolled out a walk-down-memory-lane feature. Now it’s reached a phase where it automatically feeds you enhanced photographs, collages from the past, and videos of a day from your past. All the images come as cards within the Google Photos app and list the people and places you’ve visited. You can choose to share through email or on social network, or show it to the person next to you.

ON THIS DAY

Facebook.com/onthisday

Free on Facebook

Built by Facebook, On This Day sends notifications to your Facebook timeline about what you were up to on a specific day, a year or a few years ago. Memories include posts, other posts you’re tagged in, major life events or when you became friends with someone on Facebook.

Had a break-up and don’t want to see the memories with your ex? You can control that by going to the app page. Click on Preferences, choose the Edit option next to the People tag and enter the name of the person whose memory you don’t want to see. The app also lets you filter by date—which days you don’t want to be reminded of and which ones you wouldn’t mind.

MOMENTS

Momentsapp.com

Free on Android and iTunes

Imagine, you and your friends go for a brunch and each of you ends up clicking a lot of pictures through the day, with multiple devices and smartphones. At the end of the day, when you go home, you want the pictures that your friends have clicked of you on their smartphones. Instead of asking them individually, you can download and install Moments.

This app automatically groups your photos with the people who are in them, either by event or day. So, for example, if you went to a wedding and all of you clicked pictures, Moments will make a Wedding folder for you to share, suggesting the friends you should share it with. All you need to do is add some photos the app might have missed and send those to your friends. It will work the same way for your friends too. Once you see all the photos taken by everyone, you can tap on the ones you want to save on your phone. Your friends need to have the app to be able to share and download too.

complete article at livemint.com

October 21, 2016July 25, 2016

Free ways to automate your posts

Tired of updating your social media accounts individually? These apps will do the work for you

You wake up in the morning with a tweet-worthy topic. But it’s still early and no one will be checking their Twitter accounts for a few hours. So your spectacular construction of 140 characters could get lost in inane tweets of sentiments equalling: “I’m up, world!” or “Off to the loo”. You worry about it, rushing to office, trying to hold on to your sentence construction for a few more hours. And after you post it on Twitter, you worry about reposting it on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media accounts. Before you know it, half the day has gone by.

Fret not. Here’s a collection of apps that can do the menial work for you. Just sit back, think up brilliantly constructed posts and schedule them at the right time to showcase to your audience.

IFTTT

Free on iOS, Android and Web

Ifttt.com/products

Short for IF This Then That, IFTTT offers a delightful range of possibilities for those who want to create connections between their social media accounts, connected devices, gadgets, smart-home devices, even cars. For example, if Curiosity Rover, US space agency Nasa’s Mars mission Twitter account (@MarsCuriosity), posts a photo, you can automate your app to send an email to your astronomy group. Or if you post a tweet about milk, you can set up an action-reaction trigger to send a notification to your spouse’s smartwatch and remind him/her to get milk.

The possibilities are endless, for IFTTT offers a whopping 306 types of online accounts to work with: Message your roommate when you reach a grocery store; save your favourite tweets on Evernote, or share Facebook status updates on Tumblr and LinkedIn. Even post videos you like on YouTube or your blog. These action-reaction relationships are called Recipes in the IFTTT world. You can create your own recipe of action-reaction or use what others have created.

Our favourite is the one IFTTT recently put up on its blog—it automatically updates your Twitter profile image whenever you post a new Facebook profile picture. In case a person wants different profile photos on Twitter and Facebook, s/he can simply choose to not use this Recipe.

HOOTSUITE

Free for up to three social media accounts; $8.99 (around Rs.600) a month for more accounts; available on Android, iOS and Web

www.hootsuite.com

Be it for an individual, a start-up or a company, Hootsuite automates social media, making it easy to share photographs or posts across multiple social media accounts. It shortens links and photos using the ow.ly service and gives you a preview of your post across all social media. You can schedule multiple posts, and set the time and day when you want a post to be released.

Hootsuite also allows you to see feeds of multiple accounts in the same window and reply to comments or tweets. You can also track a particular hashtag, and reply or comment on it, from within this app. No more toggling between Twitter and Facebook to see who’s saying what in response to your post. The Analytics tab shows which tweets are getting the maximum clicks.

Hootsuite has launched Hootlet (www.hootlet.com), a plug-in for the Chrome browser, to share links, photos and geo-location tags from your browser to your social media accounts seamlessly.

BUFFER

Free for up to 10 scheduled posts; plans of $10 a month for more posts; available on iOS, Android and Web

www.buffer.com

This is the app to use if you want to schedule posts tailored to a particular audience. You can select which social media account you want your post released on, be it an image, a video or an animated GIF. You can also schedule certain posts to repeat weekly or monthly.

Buffer allows you to choose from 50,000-plus royalty-free images to post on your social media, or create collages of exactly the right size for a Facebook profile or cover photo, add watermarks and post an image. In addition, Buffer has a Chrome browser extension that makes it easy to read and share links, funnelling them through your Buffer account so they can be posted online at the right time. Currently, Buffer works for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.

TWEETDECK

Free on Web

Tweetdeck.twitter.com

For active Twitter users, TweetDeck might be an efficient way of going about things. A smart social automation app, which began as a start-up and was acquired by Twitter, TweetDeck lets you join and track multiple Twitter accounts from the same window. You can organize tweets according to topics, interests, conversations or real-time events or hashtags. You can track any account and actively see the tweets of that account. You can see your own notifications, the activities of other Twitter users, the messages you get in all the connected accounts, the retweets, what’s trending, collections (lists of Twitter accounts that you would like to follow), as well as mentions of your account. If it’s a start-up’s account, TweetDeck gives access to team members without forcing them to share passwords.

ZAPIER

Free for 100 tasks a month. Plans start at $20 a month

www.zapier.com

With Zapier, you can create a connection between two sites and ask it to act automatically, pushing your content from one place to another. The app automates tasks within a particular network (reposting the photograph you posted on your Facebook timeline on a Facebook Page) or between different ones.

Complete article at livemint.com

October 18, 2016September 28, 2018

Are ghosts real?

Are ghosts real? As an author interested in the paranormal and supernatural, this is the question I get asked a lot. Do I believe in ghosts? Have I experienced any? Do I think ghosts exist around us? I’ve had a few experiences which defy logic. And I’m okay with them, because you cannot find a logical or scientific answer to everything. Continuing the blog series of real life ghost stories, here are four more tales.

Mystery man in Patna

When she was little, a friend of mine moved to a new home in the outskirts of Patna. It was pretty much undeveloped then and the kitchen window overlooked a farm. Everything was great except her mom noticed a man sitting outside in the farm, when she cooked. He looked like a farmer and stared at her, silently. She called out. No response. She ignored and continued cooking. Every afternoon, he was there, for five odd hours, staring in through the kitchen window as her mother made food. In the beginning, she was freaked, but later on her mother got used to the situation and ignored the man. “He remained there, sitting outside in the overlooking farm, staring, for five hours, for two years,” she said. “We assumed he was a peaceful ghost and let him be.” Two years later, he vanished just as mysteriously as he’d appeared.

Woman in white in Manali

A long time ago, as a teen, I’d gone to a camp from my school. We camped in a valley near Manali. It was a beautiful clear night, the sky was laden with stars. We’d finished dinner. It was late and we sat on a ledge away from the camps, chatting.

About 30 meters behind the ledge, I saw a figure in white. At first I thought it was girl, but there was something weird about the figure. It was hazy and gliding towards us. Not walking. I blinked and asked others if they saw the same thing as me. The figure shimmered in the starlight almost like she had a torch under the white ensemble. And kept gliding towards us. All of us were now looking at the figure, wondering what it was. We tried to fit a lot of logics, but nothing worked. The figure vanished a few minutes later. Till now I don’t know what it was.

Click here for more real life ghost stories

The fat lady in Haridwar

This story comes to me from my grandmother who recently passed away. By retelling her tale, I hope to immortalize a part of her. She’d heard it from her brother, who’d heard it from the rickshaw driver who experienced this. One day this rickshaw driver gave a ride to a really fat lady who wanted to go to Har-ki-paudi, the popular holy ghat on the banks of Ganga. Surprisingly, though she was really fat, the driver peddled the rickshaw as if it was empty. She felt weightless. They reached the ghat, the lady stepped down and asked him to wait. “I’ll be back in 15 minutes after a quick dip in Ganga.” She gave him a handkerchief tied up into a pouch. The driver waited for the lady. He waited an hour, a few hours and begun to worry. Had she drowned? He went to the ghat and found her clothes, floating in the water, without any woman inside them. He finally remembered the little handkerchief that she had given him and opened it. The kerchief had precious emeralds and rubies and diamonds inside it. He went back to the same road he had picked her up from and inquired about the lady. Finally he found out that she was a rich lady and had died in an ashram with a wish to take a dip in the Ganga on her lips. A year before she’d met the rickshaw driver. He’d been rewarded with money because he’d helped with her last wish.

Backtracking woman on the Lonavala road

“It’s a true story,” stresses my friend from Mumbai, who called up to understand exactly what he’d seen. Early morning, as he was returning with his two friends from Lonavala back to Mumbai, they saw a woman. “We were driving slow as we wanted to enjoy the early morning scenery on that road. The woman from afar looked like a beggar, really tall, thin and lanky.” The weird thing was, she was walking backwards. They were driving slow, at 40km/hour, and passed her and saw her disappear into their rearview mirror. “Maybe she was drugged or a nutcase,” he says, “else why walk backwards?” Though they were tempted to, they didn’t dare turn around and see who the person was upclose.

Read a real-incidents inspired ghost tale based in Manipal

Have any paranormal incidents to share? Put in a comment below. I would love to hear your experiences.

INTERVIEWS

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7 RECIPES THAT ARE EASY TO MAKE

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Independent Media

Education

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Do you remember what you did last summer? Now you can relive your past, one photograph at a time, with these apps

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Tired of updating your social media accounts individually? These apps will do the work for you

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Mystery man in Patna

Woman in white in Manali

The fat lady in Haridwar

Backtracking woman on the Lonavala road

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