Undertoad • Oct 13, 2005 10:18 am
This is Gopal Haldar. He normally looks like this:
As a young one, he was a runt - he suffered malnutrition to the point where he had a hormonal imbalance. As a result, he's 1.21 meters (four feet) tall and weighs 24 kilograms (52 pounds).
Neighbors said he was "born to play a ghost", and so he decided to take to the role. He makes himself up with soot and becomes a stage performer. From the full story which will expire soon:
"I see it as acting," said Haldar, adding that while he roams from village to village scaring the daylights out of people, his wife and son work in the fields.
"I have no regrets. Sometimes I enjoy it," he said of his spooky profession.
He mainly does his shows during the festive seasons and earns 40 to 50 rupees (about a dollar) a time, said his wife Malati, adding resignedly, "But he is addicted to smoking hemp and spends all his money on this habit."
Lighting up a hemp cigarette in front of his wife, Haldar acknowledged his love of the herb.
"(But) when I indulge myself in smoking hemp and playing chess, I wonder if I am a real ghost or a human being," he said philosophically.
