JALA PISHACH - WATER SPIRIT

The Water Spirit or Jala Pishach

Today I am going to narrate about an incident which happened to my grandfather when he was 16. Most of the people in our caste make a living by jobs related to temple activities.  So my grandfather also used to work in the temple.  During festival season he used to go to temples in distant places to earn some extra money.  

Once he went for such a festival, came back after a week and started his normal chores. It is mandatory to be clean before entering the temple premises. So my grandfather used to take bath in a pond near to the temple before sunrise. My great grandfather, my grandfathers father also used to work in the same temple so they used to go to the pond together. My granddad being young used to dive into water and have a great time. His father used to finish his bath and go to temple early and let his son play in the water for a while. But that day he got worried as my granddad did not come to temple even after 2 hours. 

Tensed my great grandfather asked one of his friends to go and fetch my granddad, when the friend went near to the pond he saw my grandfather floating in the water but his eyes were open and was enjoying what he was doing. The friend tried his level best to convince my grandfather to get out of the water but he would deny all the time. In the end the friend got frustrated and called couple more of guys and plunged into the water. But to their surprise my grandfather dived in and did not come out for almost 5 min. everybody thought he had drowned but after a while he came out of water.  Then they struggled very hard to pull him out. Once out of water my grandfather started talking in a different voice and started abusing everybody.  Later his father came, pacified him and took him home.

Once at home he kept on insisting that he is not clean and wants to go to the pond and take a bath. But his father convonced him and made him sleep. Even though he was worried by the sudden change in his boy’s attitude but ignored it at that point of time. My granddad slept the whole day and woke up in the evening when his father came home from work. At that time he looked normal and had supper with the rest of the family. Everybody slept after supper but my great grandfather, and when he was about to sleep he heard a noise from the nearby room. What he saw baffled him, my grandfather had got out from his bed and was walking towards the front door as if in trance. His eyes were closed and he walked straight towards the well near to our house. And climbed on to the fence and was about to jump, seeing this father came running and caught him at the last minute, took him back to home.

These things continued for a week’s time the whole family was worried as my grandfathers health was also deteriorating. After learning about these happenings,  priest of the temple called upon an astrologer to find out what was wrong with my grandfather. The person came and saw my grandfather and in an instant understood that he was possessed by a Jala pishach or water spirit.  Jala pishach are spirits of people who die accidentally in water.  That’s why people who are possessed by water spirit have high tendency to be near water all the time and that’s what had happened to my grandfather. Then he did some calculations and said that he was possessed by the spirit when he went for that festival. Later my grandfather also confirmed that he had felt some one tried to drown him when he took bath in the pond where he had gone but had luckily escaped.

 The Astrologer gave him a very powerful prayer ( a shloka ) of god Vishnu known as “”sudarshana mantram ““ and asked him to recite twice every day for 30 days. Which he did promptly and was freed from the evil effects of the entity. He lived a very happy life after that and had 5 kids, one of them my mother.  After narrating this story to me he wrote down the powerful hymn and gave it to me, saying I should have it as I am the eldest of his grand children. Thank you for taking time and reading my story and I hope you liked it. I would love to hear your comments and feedback. Cheers.