Bhoot Bacchha (The Devil Child) - a form of Chhalava (Chalava)

A Personal Encounter by Maahi (Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh)

This event happened with the most bully guys of my college. I was a student of Babu Benarsi Das Lucknow. My college was in a bit distant area Chinhat after the last stop of city bus either we had to walk for 2 kms or take auto. 

Few kilometers far from our college there was a town known as Barabanki - this place is mostly dominated by jungle and villages. 

 

This incident happened in the winter season when five of my friends Guddu, Pankaj, Chandel, Bittu and Manoj went to a marriage of one friend in Barabanki on two bikes. Manoj, Guddu and Pankaj were on one bike while Chandel and Bittu on the other.

They decided to take a shortcut to Barabanki as it was almost evening at that time and they went to a Pagdaandi (a small pathway) in between the farms, after about half a kilometer when they reached near a Pulliya (small bridge), they found a little child playing around but no one was around him; it was the exact time of sunset as it was winter evening it was early. Guddu shouted a couple of times to check if there was somebody accompanying the child. Suddenly a very old man came out from a near by forest and said that he is the father of that child and they were about to go. He had a bicycle; he held the child and started riding the bicycle while carrying the child in such a way that the face of the child was facing my friends, who decided to follow that man for some extent to provide him light of the bike to help.

After 5 minutes the eyes of the child were so still and holding the focus of my friends. Guddu told me that around 15 minutes, he saw that the child had a mischievous smile; he felt odd as it was very strange for such a small child to smile in that way but he was spell bounded, somewhat hypnotized by that baby. Suddenly the  man took the opposite route and moved on towards the deep jungle; my friends followed him for the next twenty minutes. Then there came a place where the lane became so narrow that only one bike could have passed at a time. At that time when the bikes crossed each other and Chandel's eye contact with that child was broken, he suddenly realized the reality as the dense forest was about to begin around him and when he noticed that the baby's legs were a bit more long then usual and he was smiling viciously.

He shouted "Guddu saale ruk ja..." (Guddu, stop you idiot). Guddu also came back to his senses. As I had already told that they were bully kind of boys, Guddu had a pistol in his pocket; he quickly took it out and fired, but to their amusement the man rode the bicycle at such an amazing speed that they practically were out of sight within a flash. When we told this incident to our security guard, who was local, he told us that it was a well known specter called as Chalawa (Chhalawa), pronounced as Ch-Huh-Laava. This kind of ghost, often belonging to a small child (who dies tragically within the womb, or off a small age) or a mesmerizing woman is known to lure victims into deep forests, confusing and exhausting them till they finally give up and collapse. Once done, it may pounce on the victims, and may ultimately kill them. 

I think we were truly lucky to have escaped from such a horror incident. 

(Note: You can contact the author on mohit_pandey084@yahoo.com)