SHE is one woman you could call a witch without the risk of getting hurled with abuses or stones. On the contrary she will only smile and acknowledge the ‘compliment’. This is just as well, for she has been nurturing her witch-image since so long that to call her a witch only authenticates and sanctifies her preternatural persona.

This self-claimed witch is Ipsita Roy Chakravati, daughter of a high-ranking bureaucrat, and wife of a senior officer in the Railways, she has enjoyed all the trappings the high echelons beget, including a good education in India and abroad. However she prefers to live by all the esoteric rituals and mores of necromancy. Therefore, Ipsita has no age. She explains that being a witch, she does not follow any chronological time pattern. The number of her husband’s posh official bungalow in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, is uncannily number 13. Dark brooding shades and colours drape the interiors of the house.

The rooms are stocked with exotic objet d’art, old furniture, queer lamp-shades. The walls have Ipsita’s oil-paintings, depicting gothic palaces and myths. The passage ways and stairs look spooky. But the lady who walks into the room is not an old broom-straddling, hooked-nosed hag with a penchant for young children’s blood. The lady is a calm, mellow, courteous and yes a perfectly ‘normal’ woman in every sense of the word. But just as she casts the old fairy-tale notion of the witch out of the window, one realises she still holds many old orthodox beliefs associated with the witches close to her chest. For example, the idea that she is born with extraordinary powers.

Her power, she says, is the power of every wiccan (or witch), which is to have the ability to bend circumstances, events and even fate. "Yes I have paranormal powers or extra-normal powers," she asserts. She claims that she can help people by directing energy transmissions and that some people are healed just by her close proximity. Her claims have won her a rich clientele that includes Bollywood actresses, bureaucrats, politicians, socialites etc. Her much-acclaimed autobiographical book Beloved Witch, published last year, chronicles her miracles on those who came to her for help. And people have flocked to her in droves and with myriad of requests." Some people ask me how to win back their husbands or boyfriends, many want me to help them look younger, while there are others who urge me to cast a spell on their enemies," she says. And according to her, she has helped scores of people. In her book, she documents the case of a famous but ageing Bollywood actress who requested her to restore her youthful look. Ipsita has not named the actress but a striking resemblance to Rekha and her age-defying beauty had the rumours going that it was Rekha indeed.

Her clientele is elitist but Ipsita avers she takes up the case of anyone with a genuine problem. Does she practise black-magic too? "What makes you think I don’t?" She counter questions and laughs enigmatically.

Ipsita describes the working of the supernatural as the ‘X-factor’: "Something which cannot be explained by the known laws of science." She says she treats here patients by surrounding him (or her) with her witch’s wherewithal — the fabled wand, crystal balls, rock-quartz, background music of howling werewolves etc. The atmosphere is spooky and tailor-made to conjure up all the mythical Vampires of Transylvania, but Ipsita asserts witchcraft is a natural therapy as it works with natural elements. It was decades ago in Montreal, Canada, when Ipsita began her quest to become a wiccan (an old English word for witch). She joined the Society for the Study of Ancient Cultures and Civilisations along with a bunch of similarly inspired women. They would meet in a chalet in the Laurentian mountains studying fusty manuscripts which, Ipsita claims, had untold secrets and mysteries. Year of honing her skills finally paid off when she was officially initiated a witch by the Spanish head of the Society. Back in India, Ipsita evoked a mixed response when she declared herself a witch. But for all her fancy clientele and claims to the paranormal, the rationalists are far from impressed. They dub her a charlatan and a hoax. They insist that Ipsita is exploiting the superstitious beliefs of the gullible to serve her own ends. "She has a false illusion about herself and her so-called powers," says Sanal Edamaruku, President of The Rationalist Association of India.

On her part, Ipsita maintains her powers are not only genuine but that her image as a witch has helped women who were condemned as witches in rural India. Ipsita hails from Bengal where instances of women persecution on charges of witchcraft often take the form of torture and even murder. She says that she has worked for such condemned women and given them courage to stand up to their tormentors. "I tell them if you are a dayain (witch), so am I. These women are ostracised by their society and I work to uplift them", she says.

Ipsita is grieved that the vice of witch-hunting that plagued Europe centuries ago is still being practised in certain pockets of rural India. "Between the 11th and the 17 century, when witch persecution was at its height, 8 million women were killed in Europe alone", she says.

Though Ipsita believes she has paranormal powers, she has a more broad-based definition of a witch. "Every strong woman has the attributes of a witch. The women who were persecuted in Europe and elsewhere were strong, progressive women who stood for the individual as against the system," she says. Ipsita, however, had the sceptics at her once again when she lost the Lok Sabha elections in 1998 as a Congress candidate from Hoogly, West Bengal. The critics questioned her powers again but Ipsita said she did not want an immediate victory.

"Yes I could have used my powers to win had I wanted but my gameplan is bigger. If I had won I would not be able to spread my wiccan influence over other districts as I am doing now," she says.

Face-saving or the ominous augury of a genuine witch? Time will tell.