The Sharmas of Allahabad
Folk stories from the Pitr (Angry) tradition — original tales, analysis, and storytelling history
The Sharmas of Allahabad
The Sharma family of Allahabad — now Prayagraj — had been prosperous for as long as anyone could remember. Land, shops, respect in the community. The kind of family that other families measured themselves against. Pandit Raghunath Sharma was the patriarch in the 1960s, a man who owned two shops in the civil lines area and whose word carried weight in the mohalla.
When Pandit Raghunath died in 1971, the family split. His two sons — Mohan and Suresh — fought over the property. The fight was vicious, the kind that turns brothers into strangers. Suresh, the younger, lost. He received nothing. He moved to Varanasi with his wife and two children, and within a year, he was dead. Heart failure, the doctor said. He was thirty-four.
Mohan, the elder, kept everything. He did not perform Shraddha for Suresh. He did not go to Gaya. He did not even attend the funeral. As far as Mohan was concerned, Suresh had ceased to exist the day the property was divided.
For the first five years, nothing happened. Mohan's shops thrived. His eldest son was accepted into an engineering college. The family bought more land. It seemed like the universe had ratified Mohan's choice.
Then the pattern began. Mohan's eldest son — the engineer — failed his final exams. Not because he wasn't smart, but because he fell ill the night before, a sudden fever that broke by morning but left him unable to think clearly. He repeated the year. Failed again. Dropped out. Started a business. The business failed. Started another. That failed too.
Mohan's second son married well but could not have children. Three years, four doctors, no diagnosis. His wife was healthy. He was healthy. Nothing was wrong. But nothing happened.
By the 1990s, the pattern was undeniable. Every venture started by a Sharma male collapsed. Every opportunity arrived damaged. The land Mohan had fought for depreciated. One shop burned down. The other was lost in a legal dispute that seemed to materialize from nowhere.
Mohan's wife — the only one who remembered what had been done to Suresh — finally spoke. She told her son to go to Gaya. To perform the Pitr Tarpan that should have been done decades ago. To offer Pind Daan for Suresh and ask forgiveness.
The son went. The ritual was performed by the pandits at Vishnupad Temple. Whether you believe in the supernatural or not, what happened next is documented by the family: within a year, the childless second son's wife became pregnant. Within two years, the eldest son's new business survived its first year — the first Sharma venture to do so in twenty years.
The family still goes to Gaya every year. They perform Shraddha for Suresh by name. And in the Sharma household, the lesson is taught to every child: you do not abandon the dead. The dead do not forget.
What Is Pitr (Angry)?
A Pitr (पितृ) is an ancestor spirit — the soul of a deceased family member who exists in Pitru Loka (the realm of ancestors) and whose well-being depends on the ritual offerings (Shraddha, Tarpan) performed by their living descendants. When these rites are performed correctly and regularly, the Pitr is content and blesses the family with prosperity, fertility, and protection. When the rites are neglected, performed incorrectly, or when the ancestor died under traumatic or unjust circumstances, the Pitr becomes angry — and the consequences cascade through generations.