An Indian Siren - Brittany Fernandes

Most children growing up are told a variety of stories with varying significance, from recollections of the parents’ childhood to reasons not to misbehave. Some children are even read bed time stories. My parents, however, favored the to the point bed time rituals which consisted mainly of tucking my siblings and me into our respective beds or crib (depending on our age), a kiss on our forehead, wish us sweet dreams, and after reassuring us no monsters would emerge from the depths of the shadows they would close the respective bedroom door.

On rare occasions, the tradition was broken. On one particular evening when my mother deemed my sister and me old enough to decipher fact from fiction, we were granted the opportunity to hear a couple stories which she was told when she had been around our age. Besides recounting memorable moments from the many sleepovers she would have with her cousins, my mother told us a story which I now consider a rough equivalent of the Sirens from The Odyssey but in India.



The story is said to have taken place near the less urbanized parts of India near the coastal region in the south. Near a small grouping of villages, if a traveler had to gain access to an airport there was one in the area but reach the airport they would need to take a long, solitary road. As was customary in the area through folklore, the inhabitants of the villages advised any traveler who was in need of the airport never to make the journey after the sun set because that was when cursed spirits were said to find bodies of the able and willing to exact revenge on those who had done them wrong.

Due to the solitary nature of the road, there were always skeptics who insisted that they paid good money for their airplane ticket since the airport wasn’t serviced by any planes except those owned privately. One young man was particularly insistent one evening when he needed to reach the airport. Every village inhabitant, even from the surrounding villages, that he asked were hesitant since the sun would set in an hour or two and the drive itself was sometimes an hour and a half but after a good deal of money left the young man’s hand he procured a driver.

The driver was an older man past fifty years of age and once they entered the man’s small car, he turned to the back seat to hand his passenger two wads of ear wax. At the perplexed expression on the young man’s face, the older man explained that of the spirits that were said to roam the road to the airport at this time there was one that was consistently noted by those who stubbornly insisted on driving, like them, especially if they were men. The spirit was said to be that of a deceased older woman who from afar appeared harmless and in need for a ride. Upon closer inspections, the woman had indescribable beauty and wore a long nightgown which wasn’t considered normal especially at the dead of night on such a solitary road. If let into the vehicle, without anything in one’s ears to block sound, it was said that she would shriek loudly but the shriek was said to be other worldly that if heard the victim would fall into a slumber from which they’d never return.

However, the young man did not pay heed to the necessity of the wax and on such a solitary road the silence made him foolish of his error. A couple miles ahead he saw a woman standing near the roadside in need of a ride and so he signaled to the driver to pull over and render assistance. Disregarding the reverberations in his left ear, he finally was able to motion for the car to stop. The driver leaned over to unlock the right rear seat door and inside she drifted. Which should have been an immediate indication of the young man’s error but he was too captivated by the woman’s beauty. Her lips began to move and almost unaware, the young man noticed his left ear did not have the wax in properly but instead of fixing it, he allowed it to get increasingly loose until he could hear her voice. It wasn’t until she knew he could properly hear her that she immediately began to shriek. Due to the driver’s proper insertion of his wax ear plugs, he did not take notice of the young man’s lifeless frame until they reached the airport.

The woman is said to have been a scorned bride whose husband neither loved nor cared for her and as a result her form of retribution is expunging men similar to her now deceased husband.