Love and the Dark Night

PART TWO, FIVE

My body stiffened. My neck felt a slow warm rush. I turned my face. A girl was standing, barely ten years old. Shaven head. Her mouth was forming words but they came out in faint whispers. Reaching my head closer to her my ears captured: Do not trust your own blood.

Are you Damasque, I whispered back, but she gradually faded into the air.

Dear Damasque

Let me first ask about your identity. I just get these mails from you without knowing who you are. Yesterday you were at Gyan Manch watching the play. But if you were really there, I think it would have been nice if you had come up and introduced yourself.

As I write this, it is already past seven and the light of the day is fast moving. In your first letter you said you wanted to meet me, but had not mentioned the place. You seem to be very near, yet far away; far away yet near. My point of saying this is time is fleeting.

 You see, it is the same case with a government. If issues are not looked after at the right moment the issues tend to become larger. It’s like a wound not treated at the right time. Then what happens? The wound festers. It enlarges. Puss accumulates. Pain becomes a nagging headache. And it prevents the day to day activity of life. Problems heap up, and by the time they are met, there are so many of them raising their ugly heads that the government is at a loss which one to first look into.

So, the first thing is to be transparent to each other. Thus let me know about yourself, where you are from and then we’ll sort the matter out.

Rudi

I read and edited the composed mail; then I hit send.

*

My eyes fell on the scene outside the window. The two buildings that had squeezed closer and had narrowed the strip of the flyover, now stretched away from each other as if my sent mail held the sides of the two buildings and forced them away from each other. Yes, that was that. Did I feel elated? But that I had done something significant, moved one step ahead. Besides that, it didn’t matter anything. Now I would have to wait for the reply, but hoped till it didn’t arrive, I would not have to get anxious.

I made an omlette and had it with three slices of bread and sipped tea while sitting by the window. Very soon I fished out the diary where I had composed some poems. Counting…twenty-three of them. I brought the laptop to the bedroom and leaning my back on a cushion against the head side of the bed, I gradually typed the poems. After about an hour, I took a walk around the side of the bed. Counting the number of steps from one side to the other I nearly took around nine walks with sixteen steps per walk. That came to one hundred and forty-four steps. In a normal case when you are walking on the road, these number of steps is significantly less, but when you walk in a room you realize the great number of times you have walked. The walk turns to a stroll. Saunter and finally plod. The heaviness was entering my veins, so I stretched my arms, swinging them and turning my neck this way and that. Then I settled myself on the bed once again to continue typing. It was past ten when I called up Hermen and Shasht. I put the line into conference. “Listen,” I told them, “the last time we spoke about putting our poems into book form was ten days ago. Let’s meet up today.” We decided to meet in the evening.

I reached my centre at two-thirty in the afternoon. A packet stood on the second table, packet of extra books. Umm, must be from Nigel, yes it was, his ICSE English Paper I and II. The glass cupboard wasn’t cleaned the way it should have been and so thinking about the extra work my driver had of late and thus not being able to extract time for cleaning, I set about removing the dust. When I had finished with the desks and the two tables and reached my hand toward the photo frames, the first one took a three hundred sixty circle. Did that happen because I had been keeping myself moving about? I stopped, sat down and looked all around. everything seemed fit and fine. Just that my mind is playing tricks. I reached for the jug and while filling the glass with water, the tiny bubbles formed had gathered together around the brim. And it was then that I saw something. A child’s face at the bottom of the glass. It looked clear but where the bubbles were formed, they were coming out of her mouth. Tiny bubbles sailing up, floating up to the surface of the water and before bursting, jigging from one side to the other. The face had its eyes closed, her hair was floating up from the head. Brown hair. In gradual step the hair shortened till they reached the scalp and vanished. When this happened, a woman appeared next to the little girl. Her mother? The two faces had some similarity in that their noses were small and sharp, the chin of a moderate size and the cheek bones a wee bit jutting out.

But were my thoughts running at a fast pace? Slow your slow activity, Rudi, it will aid you in moving with the rhythm of your mind. Consequently, if your thoughts are fast-paced, doing a quick activity like jogging will keep the tempo going. Consequently again, if you realize your thoughts are running and you need to slow yourself, you need to inhale and exhale slowly and deeply and then do slow-movement work. And right now my mind was tuned to a moderate speed, and I found doing a bit of dusting would naturally help me.

Ah ha, that’s a good feeling. You are your own boss. There is no one to supervise over you; you are not answerable to anyone else but yourself. I had taught in a school for several years, and I did enjoy teaching the children. I had observed that when you are interacting with young minds, they take in everything you teach them, at least in most cases. Their tender minds are far more receptive. They listen to you with undivided attention. And if you can modulate your voice as the context demands, you should be convinced that you have won their hearts.

But my several years of teaching lead me to a saturation point. I found I had shaped young minds and poured the right amount of water and filtered the suitable streams of sunlight far too long. And very soon I began to experience insensitivity. Hence I discontinued and started my own humble institute where I now teach creative writing. As I moved the feather duster over the glass of the photo frame which contained the letter from Indira Gandhi, a shadow reflected and vanished. I turned. All was clear behind me.

“Rudi,” someone said.

I looked to my left, and then to my right. “Very strange.” I turned around.

Unmindfully I connected my cell to sss. And there it was.

I’m here, Rudi

The heaviness began to set in.

I pictured her brown hair and those brown eyes. She looked at me with the same quietness which lingered behind every word in her e-mails.

“Who are you?” I asked her in my mind.

After around thirty seconds a mail arrived.

It’s too early to say, Rudi. But you know me. Let’s just say we need to meet up.

“Where,” I again asked her in my mind and waited for several seconds.

You know the South Park Street Cemetery? Outside its gate is the tomb of Henry Derozio. Over there. Will tell you soon. But now your friend Firdaus is about to enter. So c u.

No sooner did I complete reading her last sentence when a knock sounded. The door opened and Firdaus stood there.

I simply stared at the door and at my friend at the same time. How could Damasque know? A mind reader?

Firdaus stood at the half-open door.

“What?” He gestured with his right arm half raised, lifting his eyebrows simultaneously.    “WHAT HAPPENED?” he asked me again.

I jolted out from my trance.

“Oh I’m fine.” Then “Tra-la-la-la,” and I took my voice up and down the scale at D-Major. “See?”

“You seem alright, buddy” and he gave me a friendly punch. He sniffed around like a nosey private eye. “Alcoholic beverage around,” he added in a mysterious tone.

“What? You’ve gone out of your head, pal”

And then I concentrated deep into my head.

“Is this your doing?” I asked

“No,” Damasque gave a short laugh. “But if the juice of the raw guava fruit can produce such a smell, then people might as well change their alcoholic brand to Guava Beer.” And she gave another laugh. “Anyway, happy tea-time.” And my mind cleared. 

I looked at Firdaus and smiled. Whenever he is round, we cannot do anything but compel ourselves to have chai. Even if we directly don’t tell each other, we somehow find our legs taking us to the chai shop across my institute. So we crossed the road. As he ordered for two clay cups of the brown beverage, I just couldn’t remove the recent conversation with Damasque.

I sent a text to my four students for the first one-hour class.

As soon as u reach d centre, give a misd call, & I’l b with u in a jiffy.

I found Firdaus’ face turned towards me.

“I’m planning to go to London,” he said.

“What for, and that too so suddenly?”

“There’s this lady there, a middle-aged lady, who can feel the vibrations of the electro-magnetic field and go from the earthly dimension to the one beyond.” He stopped.

I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Yes. You have to tell her what your problem is, and she will rest her hand on your palm and concentrating, she will get her feedback.”

“What nonsense?” And I laughed. “Now it’s my turn to ask, ARE YOU OKAY?” and I laughed again. “And, by the way,” I looked at him challengingly, “what deep s**t are you in that you need the service of a freak?”

“No, I’m not. But I’m deciding to do a documentary on psychic powers.”

“Oh, I see.”

Then I asked myself, “Are you in deep s**t, Rudii?

While Firdaus gave rambling explanation about the other world, my ringtone sounded and stopped.

“My students have arrived,” I checked the missed call.

“See you tomorrow, perhaps,” and Firdaus left.

I went across to the centre and gave my students a creative writing prompt on the high-school students’ farewell where the prefect has been told to say something about the school and he gives a speech on the dark secret he knows about the principal. 

Documentary on psychic powers. Didn't Firdaus say that? 

I rushed out. Firdaus' figure turned the corner ahead and I rushed ahead. He needs to be followed.