( This is the concluding part of the story that began here)

One night, as I sat there, at about midnight two men came along, From their dresses, they appeared to be Fakirs of some sort and, as they came near, I realized that I had seen the men before. These were Tantriks that lived somewhere in the area and, these ones, in particular, had claimed that they could rid the people of the Ghost, if the people let them perform certain rites at the haunted place.

“Let’s do it quickly Ramu,” the taller man said.

Ramu, the short, thick guy seemed in no hurry, “No one is going to come here at this time of the night… we have scared them enough.”

“We have, but who knows some one might get the urge to be brave, or some stranger passing by sees us and spills the beans.”

Ramu was not concerned in the least. “If someone comes by, we can always scare him. It will be better and we can get more out of people tomorrow.”

“This greed will cause your downfall. We get enough already… and these people have been nice to us always, why do we have to dupe them, we cannot use the money anyways, we have to live like fakirs and that’s our destiny.”

“You can live like this. I am going to make some money and live better off in some other town. These people are foolish and what if we make a little money of them. Not that we are hurting anyone, or robbing anyone, or killing anyone. Most of the people that will pay us tomorrow have earned their money through dubious means; it’s the same if we take it from them.”

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I have to begin by saying that I was very skeptical about the Twenty- Twenty format of cricket. And with Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly – all seniors players for the Indian cricket team – opting out of the Twenty -Twenty format, my belief about the frivolousness of this new format of the game was further strengthened.

But now, with about a week into the Twenty20 world cup, I stand corrected. Not only is this format more interesting and fast paced, but it also takes up less time of the spectator.  In the fast paced world of today this is a really good thing.

This move of introducing the Twenty20 form of cricket should help in popularizing the game in  countries like the USA where it is still relatively unknown.

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