The Ghost in Our Pooja Room: How My Family Worships a Guardian Spirit

In my ancestral village, our sacred space—the Gosai Ghar or pooja room—defied conventional religious imagery. There were no framed pictures of gods and goddesses, no deity calendars, no marble idols, and no ornate temple structures. Instead, the room held raised, rounded earthen forms known as pindas, which stood quiet, unadorned, and powerfully still.

A Childhood of Mysterious Worship

As a child, I only recognized one pinda as Shitala because it wore sindoor. Beside it stood a structure shaped like a mazar, carefully draped in a satin chadar. In one corner sat a lone, uncovered pinda marked only with a black tila.

"Don't speak loudly," my grandmother would whisper. "He is Ranga Dhari. He will wake up."

"Is he a ghost?" I once asked.

"Yes," she replied simply. "We worship him."

This idea unsettled my young mind. A ghost in a Brahmin household? A mazar inside a pooja room? These elements didn't fit the neat religious categories I was learning about outside our village.

Villages Don't Follow Neat Categories

Rural India operates on different principles. The mazar-like structure, I later discovered, belonged to Pir Baba—a local saint believed to protect our family. Faith in places like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh has always been layered, with Hindu homes often incorporating traces of Sufi reverence without conflict. Here, protection matters more than religious labels.

And Ranga Dhari? He wasn't a ghost in the frightening sense, but rather a guardian spirit—a wandering soul brought home by our forefathers, according to my grandmother. He protected our cattle, crops, and land. During Durga Puja, offerings were made not only to the goddess but separately to him and Pir Baba, each with distinct domains.

Rules and Rituals of the Guardian Spirit

There were specific rules governing Ranga Dhari's worship:

Married daughters were forbidden from eating his prasad
My grandmother warned my married bua: "He will follow you"
If he followed someone, it meant trouble—Ranga Dhari in his elements could unsettle families

The belief was straightforward: he belonged to our land and lineage. His protection—and his temper—were tied specifically to our house. Ranga Dhari was never considered evil, only unpredictable and somewhat mischievous.

Guardian and Troublemaker

When illness struck our cattle, crops failed, or disputes entered the household, the elders would enter the Gosai Ghar and stand before his bare pinda. They would fold their hands and implore him to "set things right." He was both guardian and troublemaker—capable of protection and disturbance.

My grandmother once recounted a particularly difficult period when misfortunes piled up relentlessly. Finally, my great-grandfather stepped outside the pooja room and, in rare anger, shouted toward the pinda: "If you do not fix this, Ranga Dhari, I will throw you out of this house!"

This wasn't blasphemy but familiarity—the kind reserved for someone considered family. Remarkably, things began changing afterward, as if the ghost had understood and silently started fixing matters.

A Spirit Exclusive to Our Family

I've searched for Ranga Dhari online but found nothing about him. He appears to be exclusive to my parental family. This realization makes me wonder about the diversity of faith within my religion—how a lost soul was embraced through belief, given a respectable place in our home, and transformed into a protective entity, contrary to generally accepted notions about ghosts.

Understanding Layered Faith

As a child, I couldn't comprehend why our sacred space contained both a goddess and a ghost, a pinda and a mazar. With maturity came understanding: what stood in that quiet room wasn't contradiction but inheritance—a layered faith shaped by: