“This  is  your  story”    

“You’ve  come  early”,  said  Omega  snapping  his  book  shut.  He  got  up  from  the  bench  as  the  brisk  morning  wind  blew  on  his  face.  “Have  I?”  asked  Alpha,  seating  himself  on  the  bench.  Omega  smiled,  but  his  eyes  had  grown  weak  with  helplessness.  Alpha  sensed  something  out  of  place,  so  he  looked  keenly  at  Omega,  observing  every  movement.  Omega  turned  and  swiftly  began  walking  enamalong  the  footpath.  Alpha  continued  sitting.  Sensing  that,  Omega  insisted  “Why  wait,  let’s  go  ahead”.  Alpha  stood  up  surprised  and  followed  him,  struggling  to  catch  up  with  his  pace.  They  walked  along  the  busy  gullies  and  crying  crowds.  They  finally  reached.      Omega  turned  and  said  with  his  smile,  “This  was  where  I  first  met  her”  he  paused  and  looked  at  a  wall.  “This  was  also  the  place  where  I  proposed  to  her”.  Alpha  looked  around  where  he  stood.  In  front  of  him  lay  a  white  washed  wall  with  lush  green  creepers  on  it.  The  creepers  had  tiny  flowers  sprinkled  on  it  in  myriad  of  colors  ranging  from  pure  white  to  crimson  red  to  deep  violet.  To  one  side  was  an  unkept  barren  land  with  wild  bushes  and  one  tamarind  tree.  On  the  other  side  was  an  abandoned  building  whose  hollow  interiors  were  visible  because  its  windows  were  broken.    “This  place  makes  me  so  quiet.  When  I  met  her,  words  felt  the  rankest  of  superfluities.  When  we  met,  we  just  knew  what  we  had  to  say.  So  we  didn’t  say  it  and  just  sat,  looking  into  each  other  eyes”,  said  Omega  seating  himself  on  the  parapet  built  in  front  of  the  building  looking  at  Alpha.  Alpha  was  still  trying  to  imbibe  the  atmosphere  of  the  place.  “Well,  it  is  ironic.  When  we  both  came  here,  neither  she  nor  I  spoke.  But  the  only  time  we  did  speak,  it  was  only  to  tell  her  I  loved  her  no  more”.  Listening  to  this,  Alpha  turned  his  gaze  down  to  Omega  who  was  looking  at  the  mud  on  his  shoe.  Alpha  slid  his  hand  into  his  jacket.      “No,  let’s  not  rush.  That  has  its  time.”  Omega  called  out  pointing  at  the  hand  in  the  jacket.  Alpha,  who  was  picking  out  his  water  bottle,  slid  it  back  into  his  jacket  before  he  could  even  bring  it  out.  Alpha  said  in  his  low  voice,  “My  sister  was  dear  to  me.  She  told  me  she  loved  you.  After  I  got  to  know  you,  I  felt  she  would  be  happy  with  you.  I  was  willing  to  give  her  to  you.  But  you  changed  your  mind.  But  instead  of  telling  her  you…”      “Stop  it  there.  I  had  my  reasons  to  do  what  I  did.  Yes  I  made  mistakes.  But  that  was  no  reason  for  her  to  leave  me.  I  loved  her.  I  still  do.  She  left  me  then,”  said  Omega  sharply.  He  had  lost  his  smile  and  he  stood  up.  Alpha  looked  at  him,  straight  in  the  eye.  He  then  turned  his  gaze  to  the  building  on  his  right.  He  looked  at  the  emptiness  inside.  “So  that’s  where  it  is  going  to  happen?”  asked  Omega  looking  into  the  building.  “Do  you  think  so?”  asked  Alpha.  Omega  put  on  his  smile  again  and  turned  to  the  building.  Alpha  followed  him  as  he  jumped  into  a  window  and  got  into  the  building.      They  stood  inside  a  large  empty  shell  of  brown  and  black  metal.  The  glasses  of  almost  all  the  windows  were  shattered.  The  metal  roof  was  high  above,  looming  

around  them  like  a  brown  rusted  sky.  As  they  walked,  their  footsteps  echoed  deeply  in  the  hollow  space  around  them.      “Your  sister  tried  to  get  back  to  me  even  when  I  did  not  want  her  to.  I  was  deep  in  my  own  problems  then.  It  was  bad  time  for  me.  I  had  no  time  for  her.  I  told  her  that.  But  she  was  reluctant  to  listen,”  Omega  proclaimed.  “She  was  sad.  Very  Sad.  That  is  all  I  know,”  said  Alpha  walking  along.    Omega  stopped  walking  and  turned  back  to  look  around.  “So  where  are  we  doing  it?”    “Doing  what?”  asked  Alpha.  Omega  heaved  a  heavy  breath.  “Stop  this  nonsense.  I  know  how  you  want  it  with  your  appreciation  for  aesthetics.  You  want  it  all  like  a  great  story.  You  would  have  built  some  intricate  scheme  to  make  this  all  look  like  a  movie,”  he  said  looking  around.  “Hmmm…”  said  Alpha  startled  by  the  response  and  looked  around  too.  It  slowly  turned  amusing.  He  randomly  picked  an  object  at  a  distance.  He  fixed  his  gaze  at  a  metal  staircase  at  a  dark  corner  that  led  to  a  platform,  about  ten  feet  above  the  dusty  floor  they  were  on.      Omega  said  “Just  like  your  sister”  and  stared  at  the  platform  above.  “I  knew  you  like  things  to  be  dramatic.”  Omega  moved  towards  the  staircase  and  Alpha  followed  thinking  about  what  he  said.  As  they  walked  he  asked  Omega  casually  “Do  you  like  playing  along  my  scheme?”  Omega  did  not  reply.  They  reached  the  staircase  and  a  period  of  looming  silence  prevailed.  Omega  walked  up  the  staircase  and  said  “Your  sister  no  longer  loved  me  when  we  met  the  last  time.  She  was  angry.  I  had  not  seen  her  that  way  ever.”  Alpha  listened  carefully.      “I  had  to  talk  to  her  as  I  wanted  to  get  back  my  things.  In  the  blur  of  love  I  legally  registered  some  of  my  possessions  onto  her  name.  I  needed  them  back  to  settle  the  problems  I  was  going  through.  But  she  did  not  listen,”  said  Omega  as  they  reached  the  platform.  The  two  stood  on  the  dusty  metal  platform.  “When  did  you  talk?”  asked  Alpha  blankly.  He  did  not  know  about  this  event.  “Oh,  you  know  when,”  said  Omega.  “When?”  asked  Alpha.  His  hand  was  shaking  now.  His  heart  steadily  picked  up  speed.  He  sensed  something  dubious.  Omega  sighed  a  deep  breath  and  said,  “When  we  met  at  the  bridge”  twitching  his  shoulders.  “You  were  at  the  bridge?”  asked  Alpha,  now  his  eardrums  moved  with  the  pulse  of  his  heart  and  his  neck  grew  stiff.  “Of  course  I  was  at  the  bridge,”  said  Omega  and  quickly  said  blurted  “I  do  not  want  to  speak  about  that.  Do  you  really  want  to  hear  what  you  already  know?”  Omega  said  chuckling.    Alpha  held  himself  with  grit  and  shot  out  all  his  anguish  in  a  moment.  He  said,  “Yes”.  The  statement  hit  Omega  like  dynamite.  His  smile  collapsed  and  his  eyes  lay  dead  gazing  into  a  void.  After  sometime,  Alpha  spoke,  breaking  the  silence.  “My  sister  committed  suicide.  She  jumped  off  the  bridge  into  the  river.  What  else  do  you  know?”  Omega  stayed  quiet.  Alpha  moved  swiftly  towards  Omega  and  said  holding  his  collar  “Why  did  she  kill  herself?”  Omega  struggled  in  Alpha’s  hold.  “Why  would  she?  Don’t  act  like  a  fool.  She  never  wanted  to  kill  herself,”  Omega  spoke  ferociously.        Alpha  left  him  and  receded.  He  asked  lowly,  “What  happened  at  the  bridge?”  A  fulfilled  wind  blew  through  the  hollow  interiors  raising  the  dust.  Omega  turned  

and  moved  towards  the  railing  of  the  platform’s  end.  “What  happened  at  the  bridge?”  Alpha  burst  out  screaming.  Omega  impulsively  broke  out,  “What  do  you  want?  She  started  yelling  at  me  and  I  got  terribly  pissed  and  I  pushed  her  off  and  Lord,  why  do  ask  me  to  tell  you  the  same  thing  again  and  again  and…”  Omega  continued  his  blabber.    A  caustic  pain  rose  through  Alpha’s  chest.  All  he  heard  was  the  pounding  of  his  heart.  His  mind  flashed  images  of  his  dear  sister.  But  in  front  of  him  lay  the  man  who  he  realized  killed  her.  The  wind  picked  up  pace,  and  more  dust  was  raised  into  the  air.  Omega  stared  at  the  floor  underneath  and  said    “I  have  hated  myself  for  all  that  I  did.”  Minutes  of  strained  silence  prevailed.      Suddenly  Omega  heard  Alpha  chuckle  from  behind  him.  Omega  raised  his  head.  “Ignorance  is  sometimes  intolerable.  Its  makes  one  desperate  to  educate  the  other.”  Omega  looked  straight  contemplating  ,  listening  to  the  voice  behind  him  in  utter  surprise.  “You  didn’t  know  I  pushed  her,”  said  Omega  stuttering.      Omega  turned  at  once.  As  he  flung  his  shoulder  to  the  other  side,  a  hand  pushed  his  other  shoulder  with  force  and  he  lost  his  stance.  He  slipped  on  the  dusty  floor  and  just  as  his  body  sank,  the  railing  pressed  his  waist,  pivoting  his  body  down  the  platform.  Just  as  his  body  moved  to  throw  itself  ten  feet  down,  with  the  fulcrum  at  the  railing,  two  hands  held  either  sides  of  his  collar,  keeping  him  a  hold  away  from  death.  He  squealed  like  a  cat.  Alpha,  holding  Omega’s  collar,  said,  “Shh…  don’t  shout.  I  had  no  plan  to  do  anything,  but  you  got  me  here  and  ensured  it  happened.  I  came  to  tell  you  it  was  not  your  fault.    I  thought  she  ended  herself.”  Omega  looked  at  Alpha’s  jacket.  “And  you  thought  I  had  a  gun  in  my  jacket.  It’s  a  stupid  bottle,”  Alpha  screamed  shuddering  the  hanging  body.    Omega  shut  his  eyes  in  fear.  Alpha  tightened  the  clasp  of  the  collar.  His  arms  held  the  falling  body  steadily.  “Open  your  eyes”.  Omega  opened  them.  “Now  you  tell  me.  You  got  me  to  do  all  this.”  Alpha  whispered.  He  took  a  deep  breath  and  his  body  relaxed.  The  dusty  wind  steadily  halted.  He  continued  to  speak.  “I  didn’t  know  you  killed  her.  You  told  me.  I  was  only  an  intermediary,  an  excuse.  You  got  me  to  this  place.  You  wanted  to  die.  You  gave  me  the  reason.  You  got  yourself  to  the  edge,  in  every  sense  of  the  word.  You  ensured  all  this  happens.”      He  looked  into  Omega’s  eyes.  Omega’s  eyes  expressed  their  natural  state  of  surrender.  Words  were  too  crude  for  those  moments,  so  they  both  smiled.  Alpha  looked  down  the  platform  towards  the  floor  deep  down.  Alpha,  holding  Omega,  took  a  sniff,  looked  back  and  asked  him,  “Now,  tell  me,  what  should  I  do?  This  is  your  story.”                    

ECLIPSE  

PART  I  

Vishwanath  sat  down  on  his  bamboo  chair  and  opened  the  day’s  newspaper.  He  moved  to  support  his  back  and  held  the  newspaper  in  front.  He  struggled  to  read  the  words  but  the  headlines  were  clear  enough.  “Dakshayini,  where  are  my  reading  glasses?”  he  shouted  out  to  his  wife.  “Hmm…  they  were  on  that  book  you  were  reading  last  night”,  she  shouted  out  from  the  kitchen.  “Here,  take  mine”  came  his  mother  Lakshmi,  who  offered  her  spectacles.  It  was  a  known  fact  in  their  relative  circles  that  Lakshmi  had  incredible  eyesight,  while  all  her  five  siblings  had  almost  gone  blind  by  that  age  of  seventy  or  so.  “Thanks  Amma”,  said  Vishwanath  wearing  the  glasses.  He  glanced  through  the  front  page,  opened  the  newspaper  and  a  sudden  loud  bang.  Dakshayini  as  usual  dropped  a  steel  utensil  to  the  floor.  “Amma  please…”  moaned  her  twelve  year  old  son,  Bharath.  Bharath  was  intently  performing  his  morning  prayers,  which  was  a  rare  scene  in  children  of  his  age,  or  generally  anybody  in  an  urban  to  semi-­‐urban  livelihood.  “I  cant  do  anything  okay.  You  sit  in  the  middle  of  the  house  and  expect  silence?”  said  Dakshayini  forcefully.  Bharath  ignored  the  comment  and  continued  chanting  his  mantra  softly.  

Vishwanath  continued  reading  the  paper,  in  spite  of  the  ruckus  in  the  house.  He  was  use  to  it  for  sure.  Bharath  started  reciting  a  hymn  loudly  and  Vishwanath  softly  murmured  it  with  him  from  behind  his  newspaper.  Lakshmi  sat  on  a  stool  to  the  side  reading  a  red  colored  book  of  a  great  saint.  Bharath  was  concluding  his  prayers  that  Vishwanath  shouted  out,  ”Dakshayini,  milk  for  me”.  Bharath  shook  his  head  in  helplessness.  Too  much  noise,  he  thought,  Can’t  the  milk  wait  until  I  complete.  “I’ll  give  you,”  said  Lakshmi  getting  up  and  rushing  to  the  kitchen.    Bharath  got  up,  completing  his  prayer,  and  said  “You  all  love  noise  know”  as  he  poured  the  water  he  used  for  the  prayers  into  the  tulsi  plant  at  the  doorstep.  Vishwanath  smiled  behind  his  newspaper  and  picked  up  a  pen  from  the  stand  beside  him  to  do  the  crossword  of  the  day.  Dakshayini  came  it  to  the  living  room  rubbing  her  damp  hands  to  her  saree,  “Kishore  has  been  admitted  to  the  ICU.  The  cancer  has  spread  to  the  lungs.  Doctors  are  doubtful  whether  he  can  survive”.  Vishwanath  put  his  paper  down  and  blankly  nodded  staring  at  Bharath  who  was  drying  his  hair  with  a  pink  towel.  

Vishwanath  had  his  bath  and  got  ready  to  go  to  work.  He  put  his  laptop  into  his  bag  and  walked  out  of  the  house.  “Tell  Dakshayini  I  will  not  come  for  lunch,  Amma,  and  tell  Bharath  to  finish  his  homework”,  he  told  his  mother  leaving.  Bharath  finished  his  math  homework  with  a  calculator.  Just  when  he  wanted  to  watch  TV,  the  power  went  off.  He  had  no  idea  what  he  could  do  now.  So  he  blankly  sat  beside  his  room’s  window  staring,  thinking.  He  had  some  big  questions  to  be  answered.  He  tried  remembering  what  he  thought  about  earlier.    

One  question  that  tormented  him  was  whether  all  the  prayer  that  he  did  in  the  morning  had  a  meaning.  It  was  not  whether  there  was  God  or  not.  The  question  was  whether  that  big  man  up  there  affected  him.  Everybody  around  him  said  he  

did.  When  asked  how  they  would  simply  smirk  in  helplessness.  It  was  disgusting  for  him.  All  that  he  saw  as  esoteric  and  religious  around  him,  made  no  rational  sense.  But  the  prayer  in  the  morning  was  nice.  It  gave  him  a  sense  of  satisfaction,  and  surely  a  good  image  in  relative  circles.  But  Truth  is  not  limited  to  the  nice  and  the  liked.  He  needed  an  answer.  He  was  desperate.    

His  thoughts  continuously  tried  crystallizing  to  direct  onto  an  answer,  but  all  crystallization  was  rough,  never  concrete.  As  he  tried  to  do  so,  suddenly  “Bharath,  are  you  hungry?”  shouted  his  mother.  “Not  hungry”  he  shouted  back.  He  got  up  from  his  chair  and  walked  into  the  living  room  in  which  sat  Lakshmi  with  the  Panchangam  or  the  book  that  tells  the  movement  of  planets  on  an  hourly  basis  for  that  year.  He  sat  beside  her  and  asked  “Lakshmi  (he  called  her  by  name,  but  not  out  of  disrespect),  does  the  Panchangam  tell  the  future?”    

Lakshmi  removed  her  spectacles  and  said  closing  the  book,  “Not  exactly  Bharath,  but  if  you  know  how  to  interpret  it,  you  can  tell  the  trend  of  events.”  “Trend  meaning?”  asked  Bharath.  “See,  I  may  say  you  will  win  today.  But  I  can’t  say  whether  you  will  win  a  cricket  match  or  a  chess  match.  It  only  tells  the  nature  and  intensity  of  the  event,  not  the  exact  event.”  Bharath  kind  of  understood  that.  “What  is  the  reason?”  he  asked  sharpening  his  gaze  at  her.  “Bharath,  these  things,  like  astrology,  prayer,  ritual,  do  not  follow  the  logic  we  both  understand  with  our  minds.  This  needs  logic  of  a  different  nature.  We  don’t  know  that  logic,  and  I  don’t  think  any  of  us  can.  So  lets  just  derive  the  benefit  we  can  from  tool  given  to  us  and  not  ask  how  they  made  the  tool.  Okay?”  she  answered  with  a  scholarly  attitude.  This  explanation  did  not  fit  into  Bharath’s  way  of  thinking.  He  was  more  or  less  use  to  such  misfits  now.  His  questions  were  directed  at  how  the  science  works,  and  not  how  one  could  churn  benefit  out  of  it.  But  he  still  trusted  what  she  said.  It  all  still  was  not  mumbo-­‐jumbo.  It  did  work  in  his  mind.  

“So  how  is  my  day  going  to  be?”  he  asked  leaning  forward  towards  the  book.  Lakshmi  gave  a  bright  smile  and  said,  “Let’s  see”.  She  opened  the  book,  opened  a  folded  sheet  in  it  with  Bharath’s  and  his  parent’s  horoscopes.  She  put  the  page  in  front  of  her  eyes  in  one  hand  and  ran  her  hand  around  the  chart  in  the  book  on  her  lap.  Lakshmi  saw  for  sometime  and  suddenly  her  expression  started  changing.  “What’s  today’s  date?”  she  asked  without  lifting  her  head.  Bharath  ran  to  the  newspaper,  checked  and  called  it  out  to  her.  She  nodded  and  continued  checking.  “Hmmmm…”  she  said  removing  her  spectacles.  “Today  is  a  lunar  eclipse,  and  the  eclipse  is  occurring  in  your  star.  So  if  you  are  exposed  to  the  eclipse,  it  may  or  may  not  have  effects  on  you,  but  it  will  have  tremendous  effect  on  you  father,  Bharath.  Such  a  positioning  of  planets  would  have  adverse  affects  on  your  father.  If  the  eclipse  affects  you,  it  will  indirectly  affect  him,  as  the  aspects  in  your  chart  that  symbolize  your  father  are  not  in  a  good  shape  today”.  She  lifted  her  head  helplessly  looking  at  his  face.  She  turned  the  pages  of  the  book  to  check  her  notes  at  the  back  of  the  book.  She  abruptly  continued.  “And  the  effect  may  be  so  big,  my  son,  he  may  die.  This  is  the  worst  positioning  I  have  seen  in  years.  This  has  clear  indications  of  a  father’s  death  in  your  chart.  You  being  exposed  to  the  lunar  eclipse  will  make  it  certain.  This  is  no  joke  Bharath.  Take  it  seriously.”    

Lakshmi  was  almost  shivering  now.  Bharath  had  never  seen  her  like  this  before.  He  was  drawn  by  her  intensity,  and  the  certainty  she  spoke  with  showed  all  she  said  was  no  joke.  It  was  serious  business.  Surely  serious  as  it  dealt  with  one’s  life.  His  father’s  life.  Her  son’s  life.    

 

It  was  time  for  the  sun  to  set.  The  sky  started  turning  bright  white  from  blue.  It  was  time  for  Bharath’s  evening  prayers.  Bharath  had  a  shower  and  sat  for  his  prayers.  The  sky  had  got  closer  to  grey  now.  His  grandmother  also  sat  beside  him  as  he  continued  with  the  prayers.  He  looked  at  the  sky  from  the  window  beside.  As  he  faced  north,  the  sunrays  passed  through  window  onto  his  head  at  this  time.  But  the  sky  turned  dark  grey  and  the  sun  was  nowhere  to  be  seen.  As  he  proceeded  chanting  his  hymns,  there  was  a  sudden  shuddering  of  thunder.    His  grandmother  got  up  suddenly.  He  thought  it  was  to  remove  the  clothes  hung  outside  to  dry.  He  continued  but  his  mind  did  not  remain  stable.  It  kept  flying  away  with  thoughts.  He  could  not  figure  out  the  reason.  Another  thunder  and  it  started  raining.  It  was  dark  now.  The  house  was  gloomy  as  the  lights  were  off.  He  ardently  tried  to  complete  his  prayers  without  letting  his  mind  fly  away  in  thoughts  but  it  was  randomly  jumping  around  like  a  drunken  monkey  that  stepped  on  fire.  The  rain  became  violent  now.  Bharath  finished  his  prayers.  He  got  up  and  went  outside  to  pour  water  into  the  plants.  Just  before  he  could  step  out  of  the  house,  something  pulled  him  back.    

He  figured  out  what  was  tinkering  in  his  mind.  His  father’s  death.  If  he  got  out  of  the  house,  his  father  would  be  dead.  This  got  him  afraid.  But  the  remedy  was  simple.  Don’t  go  out  of  the  house.  Then  why  was  the  mind  worried?  He  didn’t  know.  Bharath  left  his  thoughts  there  and  walked  back,  without  stepping  out  of  the  house.  

He  sat  on  a  stool  and  waited  for  his  mind  to  settle  down.  Just  then  a  cry  was  heard  from  the  street.  “Bharath!”  shouted  somebody.    He  looked  up  startled.  “It’s  me,  Nanna,  Help!”  Bharath  got  up  with  start.  He  went  up  till  the  door  and  stood  on  his  toes  to  see  till  the  end  of  the  road.  “Bharath!”  cried  out  his  father  who  was  down  in  the  water  till  his  shoulders.  “I’m  in  the  manhole,  help!”  Bharath  was  scared  now.  What  should  he  do?  He  has  to  go  get  his  father  out  of  the  manhole.  Or  else,  his  father’s  going  to  fall  into  the  manhole  and  die.  Simple  problem.  Adrenaline  rushed  through  body.  But  his  heart  felt  heavy.  Something  was  not  in  place.  The  hormone  over  took  his  thought  and  he  lifted  his  leg  to  put  it  out  of  the  house.  

The  same  old  force  pulled  him  back.  His  heart  suddenly  lightened.  He  got  the  dilemma.  His  father  is  in  the  manhole.  If  he  does  not  go  to  save  him,  death  is  certain.  The  rain  was  torrential  now.  His  father  again  screamed.  But  if  he  did  step,  what  his  grandmother  told  will  happen.  Due  to  him  being  exposed  to  the  ongoing  lunar  eclipse,  his  father  will  be  affected,  and  thus  he  will  die.  If  he  remains  at  home,  father’s  dead  for  obvious  reasons.  If  he  goes  out,  his  father’s  dead  for  supernatural  reasons.  This  hit  him  hard.  And  from  this  conflict  emerged  

a  cold-­‐hearted  person,  inside  the  house,  who  would  put  ideals  to  a  test,  at  the  cost  of  a  life.  He  would  step  out  to  save  his  father.  If  he  did,  and  did  save  his  father’s  life,  all  that  occult  stuff  he  was  surrounded  by  at  home  was  bullshit.  It  was  a  test  to  the  question  he  was  haunted  by.  The  truth  in  all  religion  and  related  practices  that  worked  with  the  same  assumption  of  a  God  Almighty  influencing  us  all  was  at  the  crossroads.  

A  determined  Bharath  put  his  foot  outside  his  house  and  ran  out.  His  heart  was  beating  louder  than  the  chatter  of  raindrops  around  him.  He  ran  straight  to  his  father  barefoot  and  his  clothes  were  already  soaked.  He  reached  his  father  who  was  bleeding  near  his  chin,  pulled  him  up  and  dragged  him  home.  He  reached  the  doorstep  and  his  father  was  lying  there  motionless.  Bharath,  remembering  his  first-­‐aid,  gave  Vishwanath  a  hard  kick  in  his  diaphragm,  and  with  a  start  he  woke  up,  coughing,  wounded,  but  fully  alive.  

 

Lakshmi  walks  to  the  door  murmuring,  “Bharath,  Kishore  uncle  just  passed  away.  He  had  a  major…”  and  she  saw  Vishwanath  on  the  doorstep.  Before  Bharath  knew  it,  she  called  Dakshayini,  she  called  the  neighbors,  they  called  the  doctor,  and  in  twenty  minutes  Vishwanath  lay  on  his  bamboo  chair,  with  a  bandaged  chin  and  twenty  others  around  him.  Bharath  stood  at  the  side,  involved  with  himself,  in  spite  of  all  the  chaos  around  him.  He  got  an  answer.  His  father  was  very  much  alive.  What  his  grandmother  told  did  not  come  true.  All  that  was  esoteric  had  lost  its  credibility.  His  face  developed  a  slight  smile.  This  event  concluded  a  number  of  things:  his  prayer  was  a  waste  of  time,  Panchangam  was  a  waste  of  paper,  and  astrology  was  just  a  play  of  words  and  who  the  hell  needed  a  God  who  didn’t  matter.  It  was  crystal  clear.  What  he  saw,  what  could  be  tested,  comprehended,  understood  is  what  exists.  Anything  else  is  not  real.  Thus  all  that  was  supra  mundane  was  not  true.  Maybe  in  parts  it  was.  But  the  basic  assumptions  of  religion  did  not  fit  into  this  framework.  Thus,  religion  was  flawed.  Finally,  why  create  an  entity  called  God  that  does  not  matter  to  any  of  us  in  any  true  sense.  Just  an  inconsequential  assumption.  

 Just  as  he  stopped  thinking,  as  he  got  his  mind  set  right,  he  looked  up  to  see  his  mother  beside  Vishwanath  and  suddenly  caught  onto  what  she  said:  “Thank  God,  it  was  only  a  chin  that  is  bruised”.    

A  wave  of  disinterest  and  disgust  ran  through  Bharath.  He  shouted  out  “Why  do  you  get  that  god  fellow  in  the  middle?”  

 

 

PART  II  

It  was  the  same  old  bamboo  chair  with  Vishwanath  in  it.  Only  that  Vishwanath  

was  twenty  years  older  and  beside  him  sat  Dakshayini,  holding  his  hand.  Lakshmi  was  no  more  and  about  ten  people  slowly  moved  around  the  house.  Vishwanath  was  seriously  ill  and  at  an  age  of  about  seventy,  the  body  cannot  take  that  much  pain.  And  that  caused  complications,  and  caused  ulcers  in  his  stomach.  They  later  burst  and  he  was  hospitalized.  The  doctors  said  at  that  age  they  cannot  do  anything  and  left  it.  So  they  brought  Vishwanath  back  home  and  everybody  was  just  waiting  for  him  to  pass  away.    

 A  thirty-­‐two  year  old  Bharath  sat  beside  the  door  staring  outside.  A  neighbor  came  jogging  in  and  gave  a  piece  of  sweet  to  Dakshayini,  telling  her  to  give  it  to  Vishwanath,  as  it  was  prasad  from  a  temple.  Seeing  this,  Bharath  breathed  out  heavily  in  helplessness.  If  god  really  was  sensible,  why  would  he  send  sweet  that  would  worsen  the  condition  in  his  stomach,  he  thought.  Bharath  got  up  and  walked  into  the  living  room.  “Bharath”  moaned  Vishwanath,  struggling  to  speak  loudly.  Bharath  at  once  moved  to  him  and  sat  on  a  stool  beside  him.  

Vishwanath  took  a  heavy  breath,  clasped  Bharath’s  hands  in  his  and  said,  “There  is  something  I  have  hidden  from  you  all  your  life  Bharath.  Only  your  mother  and  I  know  this.  Nobody  else  knows  this.  There  is  no  point  telling  this  to  you  now,  but  you  needed  to  know  the  truth.”  A  tear  trickled  down  Vishwanath’s  cheek.  “What  is  it  Nanna?”  asked  Bharath  humbly.  Dakshayini  clasped  Vishwanath’s  shoulder  and  asked,  “Does  he  need  to  know?”  softly.  Vishwanath  closed  his  eyes  shut  and  nodded.  

He  swallowed  some  air  and  said,  ”You  are  not  our  son,  Bharath.  You  are  the  son  of  my  friend  who  had  an  illegitimate  child  with  a  woman  he  loved.  He  gave  that  boy  to  us  as  your  mother  and  I  did  not  have  children  for  a  long  time.  I’m  sorry  I  didn’t  tell  you  this  earlier.  Forgive  me  for  this.  I’m  sorry  Bharath”.  Vishwanath  clasped  Bharath’s  hand  harder  and  tightened  his  closed  eyes  revealing  the  tears  filled  in  his  eyes.  “Why  are  you  so  disturbed,  Nanna?  You  are  more  a  father  to  me  than  anybody  else  could  have  been.  It  doesn’t  matter  who  gave  birth  to  me  Nanna,  it  was  you  who  guided  me  and  protected  me  all  my  life.  You  are  my  father.”  Said  Bharath.  It  did  not  disturb  Bharath  a  bit.  Vishwanath  had  given  him  everything  but  a  sperm.  But  curiosity  caught  up  in  his  mind.  “Who  is  my  fath…sorry…  biological  father  then?”  Vishwanath  whispered  the  name.    

Suddenly,  Bharath  froze.  He  was  shocked.  The  problem  was  not  that  somebody  else  was  his  father;  it  was  what  that  person  implicated.  All  that  he  strongly  believed  throughout  his  life  was  not  making  sense  now.  All  that  he  vehemently  opposed  was  now  in  a  new  light.  It  all  seemed  to  be  real.  All  his  thoughts  against  the  esoteric  were  shattered  by  just  that  one  revelation.  That  which  he  thought  as  a  lie  had  passed  the  Test.  The  Test  he  performed  twenty  years  back.  The  results  were  exactly  as  his  grandmother  predicted.  Bharath’s  eyes  turned  keen  and  a  single  tear  fell  right  down  his  face.  He  stared  blankly  at  the  wall  in  front.  A  flood  had  just  cleared  all  the  assumptions  he  made  about  the  universe.  His  ideals  had  just  crumbled  into  a  void.  From  those  ruins  emerged  a  new,  strikingly  different  understanding  of  the  universe.  He  got  up  and  stood  at  the  doorstep  of  his  house,  staring  out,  looking,  and  thinking,  with  a  crystallized  understanding.  No  answer,  but  a  path  had  opened.  All  he  knew  now  was  that  he  was  Kishore’s  son.  

CRUMBLING  KRUMMER    

“My  limbs  were  weak,  my  throat  was  dry,  and  my  eye  ached  as  I  struggled  to  complete  the  code.  The  screen  in  front  was  so  bright  that  my  eyes  were  turning  red.  At  four  in  the  morning,  I  was  the  only  one  working  in  my  room.  But  hard  work  does  pay  off,  my  friend.  I  completed  the  code.  And  I  call  it  Krummer…”  continued  David  Krum  bragging  about  the  new  chess  program  he  made.  He  must  have  told  it  to  at  least  twenty  people,  and  by  this  time  he  knew  the  lines  by  heart,  knew  how  a  person  would  react  when  he  told  a  particular  sentence  and  he  did  this  with  matching  movements  of  his  spectacles  on  and  off  his  eyes,  and  scholarly  motion  of  his  hands.      In  no  time  the  whole  university  knew  about  Krummer.  It  was  an  incredible  program  and  all  the  people  who  tried  to  win  against  it,  lost  miserably.  David  himself  could  never  win  against  it.  He  was  ready  to  literally  sell  it  to  the  Computer  Science  department.  So  with  utter  confidence  and  slight  drunkenness  he  proclaimed  on  the  notice  board  of  the  university:  “The  one  who  wins  against  Krummer  will  get  all  the  money  I  receive  when  I  sell  it  to  the  Computer  Science  Department,  but  if  one  looses,  he  will  have  to  pay  the  same  amount  the  department  pays  me.”  And  the  money  David  spoke  of  was  no  small  amount.  It  was  equivalent  to  a  tuition  waver.      Nobody  rose  to  meet  his  challenge  for  about  a  week  and  then  three  came  up.  One  was  a  former  chess  champion  who  lost  a  very  close  game.  The  second  was  the  head  of  the  Mathematics  Department.  She  lost  a  miserably.  The  third  was  somebody  nobody  heard  of  in  the  university.  Some  knew  his  first  name  was  Mark.  Nobody  knew  his  second.  He  heard  of  the  Krummer  challenge  (that’s  what  everybody  called  it)  when  he  was  in  the  restroom  and  two  others  were  talking  about  it.  He  knew  what  was  on  stake  but  he  really  didn’t  care.    Mark  thought  he  was  too  clever  for  university.  He  attended  classes  just  to  keep  his  attendance  at  a  bare  minimum.  He  completed  assignments  the  day  he  got  them,  mailed  it  to  the  professor,  with  comments  on  the  assignment,  and  went  out  bike  riding  at  night.  He  always  got  a  B  at  his  examinations,  and  was  happy  with  that.  He  knew  what  he  wanted  in  life  and  worked  for  that.  The  rest  of  time  was  spent  with  a  bottle  of  coke  and  his  motorbike.    David  heard  Mark’s  challenge  and  told  him  to  get  ready  for  the  game  in  a  week  at  seven  in  the  morning.    Time  passed  like  a  good  night’s  sleep  and  it  was  the  day  for  the  game.  Mark  was  told  to  come  to  the  red  bench  (reserved  for  senior  citizens)  in  the  park  behind  the  library.  Mark  got  up  at  seven  o’clock,  went  to  the  bathroom,  brushed  his  teeth  and  washed  his  face.  He  came  out  of  his  room  and  walked  down  the  aisle  to  the  hostel  door.  He  came  out  of  the  hostel,  wearing  his  blue-­‐striped  pajamas  and  light  blue  t-­‐shirt.  Barefoot,  he  walked  on  the  cold  stone  footpath.  With  the  morning’s  small  chill  embracing  his  body,  he  stretched  and  yawned.  He  jogged  lightly  to  his  destination  and  reached  the  park.  He  could  see  a  group  of  about  fifty  people  on  the  other  side  of  the  park.  He  jogged  till  there,  and  as  he  reached  there  

he  heard  people  whispering  several  questions  asking  essentially  the  same  two  things,  why  he  didn’t  come  on  time  and  whether  he  prepared  for  the  challenge.    Mark  smiled  brightly  without  uttering  a  word,  as  he  did  not  do  both.  He  came  late  and  unprepared.  But  in  what  sense  was  he  unprepared  he  thought,  as  he  walked  to  the  red  bench  on  which  David  was  seated  with  a  laptop  on  his  lap.  Mark  was  unprepared  in  the  sense  that  he  played  his  last  game  of  chess  about  a  year  back.  But  surely  he  did  have  strategy.  A  strategy  no  one  could  have  perceived.  As  he  seated  himself  on  the  seat  and  viewed  the  swarm  of  people  coming  closer  around  him,  he  thought  through  his  strategy.    David  smiling  gave  Mark,  who  too  was  smiling,  the  laptop  with  a  virtual  chessboard  on  it.  David  sat  back  as  if  he  were  watching  a  movie.  David  gestured  to  Mark  that  he  could  start  playing.  Mark  shrugged,  cracked  his  knuckles  and  played  his  first  move.  Suddenly  a  couple  of  people  around  cracked  into  laughter.  He  moved  the  pawn  in  front  of  the  right  rook  one  step  forward.  This  is  the  classic  example  for  a  bad  chess  opener.  After  computer  played  a  move,  he  moved  the  same  pawn  he  moved  one  step  forward.  Another  foolish  move.  Move  after  move,  he  played  foolish  moves.      David  Krum’s  smile  turned  larger  with  every  move,  but  Krummer  was  in  turmoil.  Krummer  was  built  to  play  against  the  best  of  moves.  But  not  the  worst.  It  didn’t  understand  what  Mark  was  doing  and  with  every  other  bad  move,  it  steadily  lost  track  of  the  game.  It  was  never  built  to  understand  the  worst  move.  Mark  turned  Krummer’s  greatest  strength  into  its  weakness.      And  after  about  twenty  minutes  it  gave  up,  its  code  could  no  more  understand  Mark’s  stupidity.  An  unusual  pop-­‐up  came.  David’s  extremely  wide  smile  suddenly  fell  blank.  The  crowd  had  turning  heads.  Mark  sat  back  in  the  way  David  sat  back  earlier.    A  girl  just  behind  Mark  tweeted  “Mark  wins  against  Krummer!”                                      

That…    ...off  of  the  staircase  and  just  as  he  reached  his  hand  to  the  door  nob,  the  shrill  rumble  of  the  daily  machinery  sighed  out.  The  power  was  out.  He  rolled  the  nob  with  his  sweaty  hands  and  flung  the  door  forward.  He  stepped  into  his  house  and  pushed  the  door  behind  his  back.  It  closed  by  disturbing  the  silence  boldly  for  a  moment.  He  approached  his  bed,  dropped  his  bag  by  it  and  breathed  out  deeply.  As  he  breathed  the  brisk  cold  air,  he  looked  around.  He  seated  himself  softly  on  the  bed.  The  dark  room  only  had  white  beams  of  streetlight  streaking  through  the  room,  giving  the  room  just  enough  illumination  to  distinguish  things.  The  bed  sheet  warped  by  the  press  of  his  bottom.        He  was  not  finding  him  anywhere  around.  Just  then  a  slight  rumble  of  a  plastic  container  emerged  into  the  air.  He  looked  right  at  the  direction  of  the  sound.  He  found  himself  staring  at  the  vague  image  of  a  closed  bathroom  door.      A  strained  silence  prevailed,  which  was  only  broken  by  the  slight  sound  of  footsteps  approaching  the  bathroom  door.  “You  there?”  he  called  out.  The  silence  continued  without  a  sign  of  loosening  up.  He  leaned  toward  the  door,  just  in  case  he  could  perceive  anything  else.  The  silence  relaxed  for  just  a  moment,  felt  by  the  most  attentive  of  moments.  He  twitched  his  shoulder  to  lift  his  hand  to  knock,  that  a  voice  inside  called  out  “Yah…  I’m  here.”    He  dropped  his  hand  in  conclusion  and  turned  his  back  to  the  bathroom  door.  “What  are  you  doing  in  there?”  he  asked  moving  toward  his  bag.  A  moment  of  uneasy  quiet  prevailed.  “The  door  is  stuck.”    He  went  into  a  wry  laughter.  “How  did  you  manage  that?”  he  asked  with  a  glee  smile  on  his  face,  crouching  by  his  bag  on  the  floor.  He  searched  for  the  slider  of  his  zip  in  the  dark.  After  finally  finding  the  slider  he  realized  there  was  no  answer  to  his  question.  “Why  aren’t  you  talking?”  he  called  out  unzipping  the  bag.  “I’m  not  feeling  good”  was  heard  after  a  perceived  moment  of  hesitation.      “What  happened  now?”  he  asked.  He  waited  for  the  answer,  as  he  got  accustomed  to  the  delay.  He  picked  out  his  laptop  from  the  bag  and  placed  it  on  the  warped  bed  sheet.  There  was  no  sign  of  an  answer  now.  He  looked  up  sternly  to  the  bathroom  door  and  as  he  walked  up  to  it  he  said,  “What  is  wrong?”  louder  than  normal.  Instantly  there  was  a  reply.  “I’m  unwell.  Just  attending  to  my  self”.    “Cold  or  something?”  he  asked  observing  the  different  texture  the  voice  had  taken  to.  “Yah”,  after  the  usual  momentary  delay.    He  got  unto  the  bed  and  clutched  his  laptop.  Holding  the  laptop  in  mid-­‐air,  he  pushed  himself  back  to  the  back  of  his  bed.  His  bottom  pulled  the  bed  sheet  back,  removing  it  out  of  the  fold  it  was  tucked  into.      As  he  switched  on  his  laptop,  he  bent  back  to  the  bag  to  grab  the  charger.  He  connected  the  chord  to  the  laptop  and  felt  for  the  plug  as  he  looked  through  his  books.  As  he  ran  his  fingers  in  the  dark  along  the  chord,  he  reached  the  end  

connected  to  the  laptop.  In  frustration,  he  ran  his  fingers  in  the  opposite  direction  and  finally  reached  the  plug.  He  held  it  and  pushed  it  into  the  socket.    Just  under  the  socket  on  the  ground  was  a  bright  white  light.  The  light  shone  directly  upwards  aiming  at  him.  He  reached  out  to  it  and  unturned  it.  It  was  a  phone.  He  brought  it  close  to  him  and  saw  that  a  video  was  being  recorded.  He  instinctively  stopped  the  video  recording  and  went  to  see  the  media  files  to  watch  the  video.  “Your  phone  was  on  the  ground,”  he  shouted.  “Hmmm…”      He  played  the  video  but  in  front  of  him  lay  the  image  of  only  the  roof  obstructed  in  the  frame  by  only  the  side  of  the  bed.  As  he  paid  attention  to  the  video  to  spot  any  changes,  a  silence  settled.  In  the  looming  quiet  he  heard  soft  sounds  from  the  mobile.  It  was  the  audio  of  the  video.  He  tried  increasing  the  volume,  but  it  was  at  its  maximum.  He  looked  around  for  a  moment  and  then  bent  toward  the  side  to  reach  out  to  the  inside  of  his  bag.  He  hunted  for  his  earphones  and  finally  picked  them  out.  A  gushing  sound  of  water  was  heard  from  the  bathroom.      “Your  fine  now?”  he  called  out.  “Kind  of”    He  plugged  the  jack  of  the  earphones,  lodged  them  into  his  ears  and  tried  listening.  He  heard  unclear  murmurs  but  the  voices  were  clearly  distinct.  Two  different  voices.  “Your  complete  conversation  is  recorded  on  your  phone.  Whom  are  you  talking  to?”  he  shouted  casually.  He  continued  listening  a  in  a  moment,  as  he  heard,  he  grew  stiff.    A  sudden  shudder  of  a  hollow  plastic  cup  hitting  tiled  ground  was  heard  from  the  bathroom.  The  occasional  silence  regained  its  place.  He  looked  into  a  void.  “Whom  were  you  talking  to?”  he  asked  again  plainly.  No  answer  came  out.  With  a  moment  a  hesitation  he  said  louder,  “Did  that  fellow  come  home?”  dislodging  his  earphones.    There  was  silence  and  silence  only.  He  looked  straight  into  the  semi-­‐dark  looking  blankly  at  the  silhouettes  emerging  as  he  stared.  He  breathed  deeply  and  asked  sternly  “Did  you  call  that  fellow  home?”  There  was  a  slow  shivering  of  leaves  heard.    He  waited  for  a  reply  but  none  came.  He  knew  there  would  not  be  a  reply.  “That  fellow  tried  to  bash  you  up  in  the  morning.  You  know  the  reason.  That  fellow  simply  apologizes  and  you  both  shake  hands.  And  in  no  time  you  both  party  at  home.  You  know  I  hate  this,”  he  roared.    He  wasn’t  expecting  an  answer.  He  respected  the  fact  there  wasn’t  a  counter  explanation.  Just  then  he  remembered  something  strange.  As  he  stared  into  the  lessening  darkness,  he  called  out  “You  said  the  door  was  stuck”.  A  slight  sound  of  a  crawling  door  bolt  was  followed  by  “Yah…it  is”.    He  shook  his  head  in  denial  and  continued  working  on  his  laptop.  As  he  worked  he  looked  around  in  the  light  of  the  laptop  screen  for  a  book  he  needed.  He  lifted  the  laptop  with  his  left  hand  and  looked  around  his  lap  if  there  was  anything.  His  

book  was  in  his  bag.  He  sighed  in  frustration  and  sagged  his  bottom  to  his  right  pulling  the  bed  sheet  with  his  movement  towards  his  bag  by  the  bed.      He  held  his  laptop  in  his  left  hand  and  threw  his  right  one  down  the  bed.  He  moved  it  to  and  fro  until  it  reached  his  bag  in  the  dark.  He  grappled  for  the  opening  and  his  bag  tilted  and  it  stumbled  away  a  little.  He  hummed  a  cartoonish  tune  of  despair  and  stretched  his  hand  toward  the  bag  into  its  opening.  The  laptop  was  lifted  right  above  his  head  now.  He  sagged  his  back  to  the  edge  of  the  bed  to  reach  out  to  the  book  that  he  figured  was  in  the  depths  of  the  bag  in  the  dark.    He  looked  into  the  dark  room,  only  indulging  in  the  hazy  sensation  of  touch.  The  heavy  laptop  was  now  tilting  his  upheld  hand  towards  the  right,  straining  his  shoulder.  He  pushed  himself  a  moment  longer  and  finally  grasped  the  book.  He  just  wished  it  were  the  right  book.  He  lifted  his  hand  in  the  bag  into  the  little  space  in  it,  off  a  firm  ground.    And  in  no  time  did  his  elbow  twitch  to  gain  support  and  his  body  tumbled  down  the  bed  to  balance.  His  laptop  with  his  hand  flung  like  an  arc  and  the  weight  of  it  made  him  to  leave  the  laptop.  As  a  final  instinctive  hope,  his  left  hand  held  onto  the  loose  bed  sheet,  which  got  pulled  out  like  the  flowing  beauty  of  the  night.  In  utter  silence  his  right  shoulder  thud  the  ground,  giving  a  moment  of  hatching  pain  in  the  middle  of  his  ribs.  His  laptop  clung  to  ground  facing  the  bed  on  the  old  carpet  floor.    His  eyes  were  shut  all  through  and  all  he  felt  was  the  hard  ground  and  the  bundled  up  bed  sheet  over  him  held  by  his  hand.  He  released  a  painful  breath  and  simultaneously  opened  his  eyes.  In  front  of  him  was  the  bright  screen  of  his  laptop,  whose  light  pierced  through  the  darkness  towards  the  underneath  of  the  bed.      He  elbowed  the  ground  with  his  right  hand.  The  smooth  bed  sheet  ruffled  down  to  his  left  and  he  was  terrified.  In  front  of  him  lay  a  face  with  wide-­‐open  eyes,  eyes  filled  with  relieved  hope  but  an  iota  fatal  fear.  The  white  light  of  the  laptop  illuminated  his  face,  with  cloth  tied  up  against  his  mouth  and  a  bruise  near  his  left  eye.      With  brute  force  he  nudged  his  hand  into  the  face’s  mouth  and  struggled  to  pull  out  rolled  cloth.  He  finally  pulled  out  the  gobbled  piece  of  damp  cloth  and  it  followed  a  deep  breathe  through  the  mouth.  “You’re  fine?”  he  asked.  “Yah…”  was  the  reply  in  a  gasping  voice.  “Why  didn’t  you  tell…or…mm  mm…    at  least  indicate  you  were  underneath?”  he  asked  in  hushed  but  caring  voice.  The  sudden  struggle  of  limbs  made  him  see  four  limbs  tied  to  the  four  legs  of  the  bed,  down  in  the  dark  of  the  under-­‐bed.  Suddenly,  memory  struck  him.    “I  thought  you  were  in  the  bathroom  but  your  mouth  was…”  he  said,  as  he  grappled  to  approach  the  bed’s  foot  to  untie,  with  an  inquisitive  stare.  After  a  rugged  cough  an  answer  came  out.  “No…that  fellow  is  in  there.”    He  froze.  There  was  a  sudden  crackling  sound  of  glass  on  ground,  and  it  resounded  in  the  empty  space.  He  lifted  himself  with  a  start  and  pushed  himself  

off  the  carpeted  floor  with  all  his  fours  towards  the  bathroom  door  passing  through  the  streaks  of  white  streetlight  in  the  dark  room.  He  heard  a  grappling  sound  from  the  bathroom  and  he  pushed  violently  against  the  door.  It  was  locked.  He  took  a  few  steps  backward  and  there  was  a  flicker  of  the  light  bulb.  He  rammed  into  the  door,  unhinging  the  bolt  off  the  wood  and  flinging  the  door  open.  The  power  cam  back  and  the  light  shone  again.  After  a  momentary  dazzle  of  light,  he  saw  a  body  ultimately  slipping  out  of  the  ventilator  up  near  the  roof,  whose  glass  panes  were  removed.  He  rushed  toward  it,  placed  his  leg  on  the  blue  ceramic  commode  and  pushed  himself  up  to  reach,  jumping  up  high  as  he  extended  his  hand  to  grab  that…                                                                                

ARTICLE  1    

I've  always  suffered  from  an  inferiority  complex.

Not  from  a  mundane  aspect  like  power  in  a  group  of  people  or  a  person  or  a  petty  little  thing.  And  I  am  not  sad  because  what  I  am  inferior  to  what  deserves  to  be  superior.  She  surely  is  a  beauty.  She  is  so  intricate  that  man  has  always  looked  at  her  for  help,  both  for  raw  material  and  inspiration.  Material,  she  has  lots,  and  best,  she  does  not  ask  anything  in  return  for  what  we  ask.  Inspiration,  she  has  inspired  the  most  inspirational-­‐  artist,  poets,  musicians,  and  many  others.  But  the  only  problem  is  she  is  covered  with  a  cloak.  A  cloak  I  call  ignorance.  Our  species  is  surely  a  bunch  of  ignorance  lovers.  At  least  most  of  them.  We  like  to  the  leave  the  cloak  on  her  (we're  lazy).  But  a  handful  was  daring  enough  to  try  to  expose  her  and  try  to  remove  the  dark  cloak  and  show  her  true  pure  self.  The  process  of  removing  her  cloak  I  call  science.  And  the  beautiful  maiden  is  Nature.

Science  is  simple  and  has  a  single  point  agenda-­‐  "drive  out  ignorance".  The  rest  my  friend  is  simple.  All  you  have  to  do  is  look.

Nature  is  pouring  out  at  your  feet.  From  the  microorganisms  under  your  feet  to  the  Darkness  of  the  Cosmos,  all  these  are  a  part  of  a  single  entity-­‐  Nature.  And  we  are  lucky  she  follows  certain  guidelines.  But  sometimes  the  guidelines  are  too  large  and  govern  the  majestic  drifts  of  Galaxies.  And  sometimes  too  small  and  govern  the  extremely  jarred  movement  of  electrons.  And  we  try  to  uncover  these  guidelines  and  we  give  the  method  an  unneeded  stylish  name-­‐Physics.

All  of  nature's  aspects  interact  with  each  other.  All  of  its  elements  interact.  Sometimes  violently,  while  sometimes  constructively.  These  interactions  are  seen  and  recorded  into  a  

study  called  Chemistry.  Now  an  amalgamation  of  these  guidelines  with  the  interactions  of  elements  has  produced  a  feat  never  before  seen  in  the  universe.  The  most  beautiful  creation  Nature  has  made,  with  the  most  detailed  processes.  It  has  surely  taken  time  (lots  of  time)  but  patience  surely  pays  off.  The  creation  was  Life.  With  her  own  mysterious  and  still  unknown  reasons,  Nature  has  given  life  something;  something  nothing  else  has  in  the  universe  -­‐  Freedom.  Freedom  to  live,  to  grow,  to  feel,  and  to  make  choices.  And  the  reason  and  the  way  it  came  into  existence  with  the  processes  it  performs  is  what  Biology  is  all  about.  It  is  simply  the  search  for  How  &  Why  life  came  to  be  and  What  life  does  and  Can  do.

So  what  you  suppose  to  do?

Get  up,  run  out  and  start  looking.  Be  curious,  ask,  discuss  and  most  importantly-­‐  feel  the  harmony  of  Nature  and  nurture  it,  protect  it.  Because  it  has  beautifully  crafted  itself  with  the  most  beautiful  of  methods  and  most  intricate  of  details.  And  I  am  sure  after  experiencing  the  magnificence  she  has  attained  and  still  the  exquisite  attention  she  has  held  for  petty  little  things  like  us,  it  is  simple  why  I  suffer  an  inferiority  complex  from  Nature.

     ARTICLE  2    A  2004  Company  founded  in  a  Harvard  dorm  room  is  presently  the  largest  billion-­‐dollar  company  on  earth.  What  made  it  click?  An  extremely  petty  weakness  of  man:  insecurity.  A  constantly  lingering  question  in  our  minds:  "what  will  others  think?”  And  Facebook  gives  answers  to  that.  Its  mass  appeal  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  tells  you  what  your  "friends"  think  about  you.  Nostradamus  prophesied  about  a  web,  which  would  cover  the  earth  by  the  end  of  the  20th  century.  And  surely  the  time  has  come.  The  social  networking  bug  has  spun  a  web  into  almost  all  our  lives  and  penetrates  into  almost  every  aspect  of  our  world  in  whatever  magnitude.  Though  I  have  spoken  a  little  blatantly  about  networking  sites,  I  will  now  the  neutral  stance  and  talk  of  two  observations  I  have  had  about  them.    The  first  is  a  tremendous  advantage,  which  is  the  rate  at  which  information  is  

communicated.  I  am  talking  about  spreading  a  piece  of  information  to  a  huge  population  extremely  fast.  I  am  talking  about  words  like  viral  marketing,  which  are  employed  by  films  like  The  Dark  Knight  Rises  or  Inception.  The  best  example  is  the  song  we  here  every  where  these  days:  "Why  this  Kolaveri  di?”  A  silly  Tanglish  song  is  presently  racing  to  become  the  most  watched  YouTube  video.  But  how  did  this  happen?  It  is  due  to  these  portals  like  Facebook,  which  makes  everybody  into  what  Malcolm  Gladwell  in  his  book  Tipping  point  calls  a  Connector.  Connectors  are  people  with  large  number  of  acquaintances.  Gladwell  wrote  this  book  before  the  surge  of  social  networking  sites  when  only  a  handful  of  people  had  large  number  of  acquaintances.  But  with  such  a  website,  everybody  has  at  least  a  hundred  people  in  their  "friend's  list"  and  thus  makes  everybody  a  connector.  Social  epidemics  spread  wildly  in  such  sites  as  once  you  share  information,  100  people  know  it,  and  if  it  is  nice,  all  the  other  100  share  it  with  their  100  friends.  I  one  block  of  sharing,  10100  got  to  know  about  that  piece  of  information.  So  the  first  point  is  the  advantage  social  networking  sites  give  us  in  the  spread  of  data  in  the  public.  The  second  is  a  much  more  dangerous  issue  we  have  in  hand.  I  heard  a  joke  in  which  a  man  claims  he  is  on  Facebook  all  night  because  he  puts  a  textbook  on  his  face  and  sleeps.  But  I  think  we  are  slowly  nearing  such  a  situation  where  we  do  not  greet  when  we  see  each  other  but  openly  shout  out  wishes  on  Facebook  statuses.  We  put  a  book  on  our  faces  leading  life  ignoring  each  other's  presence.  A  report  a  few  weeks  a  report  back  suggests  that  a  large  proportion  of  divorces  are  occurring  due  to  people  being  suspicious  of  what  their  spouse  does  on  networking  sites.  The  problem  is  can  be  stated  in  a  much  more  clear  form:  sites  that  should  be  opening  our  worlds  are  slowly  weakening  our  interactions  with  human  beings.  We  are  slowly  entering  an  age  where  we  have  digital  self  and  respond  only  to  that.  A  recent  Hindi  film  "Mujhse  Fraaandship  Karoge?"    is  a  film  about  to  people  who  fall  in  love  on  a  social  networking  site  and  each  of  them  discovers  that  who  they  fell  in  love  with  actually  is  not  as  good  looking  and  as  they  claim  to  be  on  the  website.  The  virtual  self  they  created  is  the  picture  the  world  see  of  them.  This  can  be  extremely  dangerous  as  the  intrinsic  behaviors  of  human  beings  and  the  details  of  their  relationships  are  slowly  lost.  The  beauty  of  a  human  interaction  is  killed  and  we  end  up  icing  in  a  small  burrow  with  extremely  minimal  information  about  a  huge  number  of  people.  So  the  second  and  an  extremely  dangerous  situation  we  are  heading  to,  is  the  adoption  of  a  virtual  self  of  a  social  networking  site,  which  will  destroy  the  joy  of  a  natural  inter-­‐personal  interaction.    Akshar  7/2011                      

Occult  Deciphered    

   

 Prologue  William  Strauss  stood  in  front  of  one  man  with  a  gun  pointing  at  the  former.  Strauss,  charged  with  murder,  was  on  the  execution  ground.  The  full  moon  light  illumined  both  the  men's  faces  and  a  dozen  men  a  few  feet  away  were  looking  on  the  execution.  "What  has  he  been  up  to?”  one  of  the  onlookers  asked  another  "He  believes  he  has  some  supernatural  powers,  he  thinks  he  is  some  Messiah.  Claimed  the  murder  was  a  sacrifice  to  make  God  come  down  to  earth."    The  onlookers  stared  waiting  and  a  man  asked  Strauss  if  he  had  any  last  wishes.  Strauss  replied,  "Something  terrible  awaits  you  men,  great  peril  in  a  spark  of  fire,  but  the  Lords  will  always  bow  down  to  Him  one  day,  which  is  soon  to  come.  I,  the  messenger,  do  not  wait  for  death  in  your  hands  as  it  is  written  only  in  His.  And  remember,  great  peril  lies  in  a  spark  of  fire."    The  man  received  his  nod  and  he  positioned  his  finger  on  the  trigger.  He  added  weight  on  the  trigger,  ounce  on  ounce,  it  reached  the  breaking  point  and  just  a  moment  before  the  bullet  left  the  barrel,  Strauss  shouted  "Now"  and  the    Gunman  was  ablaze  with  terrible  flames  feeding  on  his  bloody  flesh.  Couple  of  onlookers  fainted  and  everyone  was  awestruck  by  what  happened  seconds  earlier  and  they  found  Strauss  had  disappeared  into  thin  air.      I  David  Letterman  looked  out  side  his  window,  staring  at  the  fast  moving  cars  and  trucks  from  his  room  on  the  14th  floor.  Retired  as  a  Sergeant  from  the  U.S.  Navy,  he  studied  Psychology  and  Martial  Arts  in  his  Bachelor  Studies  at  Oxford  and  Forensic  Sciences  in  his  Masters  at  Harvard.  He  was  never  interested  in  research  but  the  only  reasons  for  him  being  drawn  to  such  subjects  were  his  interest  in  investigation.  His  interest  in  crime  stories  and  their  solutions  came  as  a  young  boy  when  he  read  stories  of  Agatha  Christie  &  Arthur  Canon  Doyle.  He  was  now  professionally  a  detective  but  he  even  earned  money  by  giving  tuitions  to  children  in  sciences.  He  had  no  thirst  for  splendid  wealth  and  wanted  a  simple  but  comfortable  life.    He  walked  away  from  the  window  and  went  into  the  kitchen  and  made  some  Coffee  for  himself  and  came  out  and  sat  on  this  couch.  He  was  sipping  the  coffee,  watching  random  shows  on  his  Television  that  his  phone  started  to  ring.  He  picked  it  up  and  he  heard  a  lady's  voice.  "Mr.  Fredrick  wants  you  in  his  office  in  an  hour  sir";  she  said  and  hung  up  the  phone.  David  thought  for  a  minute  whether  he  had  to  go  and  then  slowly  got  up  and  left.      II  Tom  Sterling,  a  voracious  reader,  was  reading  a  book  when  he  got  a  text  from  an  

unknown  number:  "Thou  will  reach  Him".    Sterling  brushed  it  off  thinking  of  it  as  one  of  the  Personality  Empowerment  programs  by  the  Local  Churches.    Sterling's  flat  was  in  a  building  with  no  walls  but  only  glass  panes  that  people  could  have  a  complete  view  of  Central  Park  for  their  homes.  He  heard  a  sudden  banging  on  his  wooden  door.  He  opened  the  door  and  no  one  was  there.  Sterling  sat  back  on  his  couch.  He  kept  reading  the  book  and  suddenly  in  front  of  him  laid  William  Strauss.  "Very  well  then,  it's  time  for  some  revenge  -­‐  Movimento,”  said  William.  Sterling's  couch  flung  back,  hit  the  glass  panes  and  fell  down  onto  the  ground  with  the  cracked  glass  from  144  feet.          III  Fredrick  was  an  important  officer  in  NYPD,  but  David  did  not  know  his  exact  rank  but  he  was  quiet  a  senior  officer.  David  reached  Fredrick's  office  and  while  he  was  entering  the  building  Fredrick  was  leaving.  "Fred",  David  called  out.  "Come  with  me,  I  have  to  talk  to  you”  said  Fred  walking  hurriedly  to  his  Land  Rover.  David  and  Fred  got  in.  Fred  started  driving  and  said  "Remember  Strauss,  the  madman  who  killed  a  fifteen  year  old  kid  last  week,  he  escaped  from  the  execution  grounds  and  used  his  'powers'  and  burnt  down  the  executioner.  An  hour  back  Tom  Sterling,  head  of  Sterling  Industries,  was  found  dead.  He  fell  from  his  flat  on  the  15th  floor  onto  the  road.  Strauss  left  a  message  that  he  did  it  and  that  there  was  more  to  come.  Forensics  say  his  body  contains  no  evidence  of  contact  with  any  person  for  about  10  hours  before  his  death  and  he  only  thing  he  touched  minutes  before  his  death  was  a  cell  phone  and  the  book  found  with  his  body  on  the  road.  This  man  is  bloody  driving  me  nuts".    The  two  men  reached  the  crime  scene.  The  road  was  blocked  and  the  outline  of  the  body  was  on  the  ground  as  the  body  was  removed  earlier.  David  looked  up  and  he  saw  a  tall  building  with  a  flawless  sheet  of  glass  but  a  single  obstruction  due  to  a  patch  of  broken  and  cracked  glass.  "Is  that  his  House?"  asked  David.      "Yup"  answered  Fredrick.    They  both  went  up  to  the  Sterling's  flat.  The  flat  was  partially  empty,  as  Sterling  had  just  shifted  into  that  house  a  week  back.  The  two  searched  the  whole  house  for  any  clues  but  everything  seemed  normal.  David  started  examining  the  floor.  He  suddenly  called  out  "Hey  Fred,  Take  a  look  at  this."  Fred  came  and  they  saw  two  parallel  lines  of  scratches  engraved  in  the  wooden  flooring.  They  started  it  the  middle  of  the  room  and  went  up  till  the  shattered  wall  edge.      "Could  be  the  couch  was  dragged.  The  base  could  have  scratched  the  ground  and  made  these  lines."  said  David.    "No  fingerprints  on  the  couch  man"  replied  Fredrick  in  denial.    He  looked  at  his  watch  and  he  saw  that  the  seconds  needle  was  stuck.  It  kept  vibrating  in  its  position  and  occasionally  moved  forwards  or  backwards.  He  asked  Fred  the  time  and  it  was  fifteen  past  six.  He  had  to  hurry,  he  was  getting  

late  for  his  tuition  class.      IV  David  was  teaching  a  14-­‐year-­‐old  kid  about  Magnetism.  "Magnetic  fields  are  the  regions  magnets  have  their  affect,”  said  David  "The  earth  has  its  own  field,  everything  in  the  field  is  attracted  toward  the  North  or  South  Pole  of  earth  and  that  is  how  Compasses  work.  High  magnetic  fields  can  spoil  devices  like  computers,  television  or  even  watches  like  mine  now………."  and  David  suddenly  paused.  He  stood  up  with  a  start  and  told  the  kid  his  class  was  up.  The  partially  asleep  child  got  up  and  went  out.    David  gave  a  call  to  Fred  and  told  him  to  come  to  Sterling's  Flat.      V  Fred  entered  the  flat  and  saw  David  continuously  searching  for  something.  "Why  did  you  call  me?"  asked  Fred.      "I  figured  it  out,  the  couch  flung  out  due  to  a  magnet  somewhere.  This  Mag  Field  detector  is  roaring  with  signals  but  I'm  not  able  to  locate  the  source,”  said  David.  Fred  understood  nothing.    David  slowly  bent  towards  the  ground  and  a  small  nickel  coin  fell  on  the  floor  slipping  out  of  his  pocket.  The  coin  moved  a  little  forward  and  suddenly  took  an  instant  turn  to  a  side  and  accelerated  towards  a  point  and  stopped  suddenly  there.  David  took  the  field  detector  close  to  the  coin  and  the  field  was  unbelievably  high  and  the  signals  were  literally  screaming.    David  immediately  ran  out  of  the  flat,  took  the  staircase  to  the  lower  floor  and  rang  the  bell  of  another  flat.  Fred  followed  and  came  beside  him  and  asked,  "What's  wrong?”    "I  need  to  get  into  this  Flat  now,  right  above  this  Flat  is  Sterling's."  said  David.      He  rang  the  bell  twice,  then  another  time  and  out  of  irritation,  Fred  kicked  the  door  and  it  flung  open.  David  smiled  and  in  front  of  them  laid  a  feat  of  engineering.  Two  parallel  rails  on  the  roof  holding  a  large  Nickel  cylinder  with  bare  wire  wrapped  around  it.  David  took  a  chair  nearby  and  examined  the  mechanism.  He  pushed  the  cylinder  and  the  cylinder  moved  along  the  rails.  The  two  ends  of  the  bare  wire  were  connected  to  a  switch  on  the  wall.    David  pulled  out  a  coin  out  of  his  pocket  and  asked  Fred  to  turn  press  the  switch  of  the  mechanism.  As  soon  as  he  switched  it  on,  the  coin  flung  into  the  air  and  got  stuck  onto  the  cylinder.    "Beauty",  David  exclaimed.            VI  

It  was  pouring  in  New  York  and  the  storm  showed  no  sign  of  retrieval.  Alicia  Harrison  was  continually  trying  for  a  taxi  but  she  was  not  able  to  find  one.  She  crossed  one  block  and  at  last  found  one  taxi  parked  a  few  feet  away.    She  sat  inside  and  the  driver  started  driving.    The  windows  were  up  and  driver  felt  strange.  Alicia  then  got  a  text:  "Thou  shall  attain  peace".  Before  she  could  register  what  it  said,  she  looked  up  and  she  skipped  a  heartbeat.  In  front  of  her  lay  William  Strauss.  "Strauss,  Your  dead."    "Am  I?"    "Your  a  Butcher?"  said  Alicia  crying.    "Aren't  you?  It's  time  we  end  this  pitiful  conversation-­‐  Soffochi."    Alicia  was  worried  for  a  moment  that  it  was  a  harmful  spell  but  there  was  no  affect.  She  smiled  but  suddenly  exaggerating  pain  appeared  in  her  chest  and  her  vision  blurred.  She  coughed  vigorously.  She  saw  a  hand  waving  goodbye  at  her  and  her  dead  corpse  fell  along  the  back  seat  of  the  moving  taxi.      VII  "What  the  hell  are  you  up  to?"  asked  Fred.    "I'll  explain,”  said  David  "  This  large  Cylinder  is  an  Electromagnet.  When  we  press  the  switch,  it  turns  into  a  magnet.  These  rails  allow  the  cylinder  front  and  back  along  the  roof.  Now  when  the  Magnet  or  the  Cylinder  is  at  the  end  of  the  rails,  away  from  the  window,  right  above  it  is  Sterling's  couch.  Sterling's  couch  has  a  base  made  of  Iron.  When  the  magnet  is  switched  on,  the  Magnet  just  a  foot  below  attracts  the  Iron,  across  the  flooring.  When  the  magnet  is  moved  along  the  rails  towards  the  window,  the  Couch  a  feet  above  is  attracted  by  it  and  too  moves  towards  the  magnet's  position  below  and  thus  towards  the  window.  When  we  move  the  electromagnet  extremely  fast,  the  couch  above  too  moves  towards  the  window  very  fast  and  even  when  the  Electromagnet  is  stopped  on  the  rails,  the  couch  above  cracks  the  glass  and  falls  down  due  to  its  inertia.  When  Sterling  was  on  the  couch,  someone  was  downstairs  pushing  this  extremely  strong  magnet.  No  great  magic,  just  simple  science"  said  David,  smiling.    "Thank  god  you  attended  your  science  classes,”  said  Fredrick  laughing.  Fred's  phone  rang  and  he  picked  it  up.  "Shit,  A  corpse  of  a  lady  found  in  a  taxi,”  Fred  shouted  after  a  few  seconds  of  conversation  on  the  phone.        VIII  David  and  Fred  reach  the  Taxi  and  in  it  lay  a  corpse  of  a  middle-­‐aged  lady.  "How  did  she  die?”  asked  David.  "No  idea"  said  Fred.  "An  onlooker  said  two  got  down  from  the  taxi  and  left  behind  the  dead  corpse."    

Fred  examined  the  Car  and  he  slowly  recognized  a  pungent  small  prevailing  in  the  car.  He  called  out  to  David.  David  came  and  smelt  the  whole  car  like  a  dog  searching  for  food  and  the  onlookers  laughed  their  guts  out  to  what  David  was  doing.  He  atlas  found  the  source-­‐  the  air  conditioning  vents.      A  lady  came  to  Fred  from  the  Forensic  Department.  "Forensics  say  the  victim  died  of  suffocation."  she  said.      "Get  me  litmus  paper  from  the  Forensics"  David  asked  the  lady  hurriedly.  She  ran  and  got  two  strips  of  paper-­‐  one  blue  &  one  red.  He  took  both  of  them  and  placed  them  in  front  of  the  A/C  vents.  He,  Fred  &  the  lady  looked  at  the  strips  of  paper  closely.  The  Red  paper  stayed  the  same  but  in  a  few  seconds,  the  blue  papers  edge  slowly  turned  red.  After  a  minute  or  so,  half  the  strip  was  red,  identical  to  the  other  strip  of  paper.    The  lady  exclaimed,  "It  is  acidic  up  there".    "Clever  Girl"  said  David.    "I  have  no  idea  what  is  happening  up  here.  Explain  please,”  Fred  said  desperately  to  David.    "These  litmus  paper  turn  Blue  from  Red  if  they  are  in  contact  with  anything  Alkaline  but  turn  Red  from  Blue  if  they  are  touching  something  acidic."  said  the  lady    "So  we  have  something  acidic  around  the  vents,”  said  David.    "Check  the  cooler  could  be  releasing  acidic  fumes.  That  could  have  killed  the  victim,”  said  Fredrick.  "And  the  victim's  name  is  umm…  Alicia  Harrison",  he  continued.      A  man  went  under  the  car  and  one  the  Cooler.  David  went  down  and  took  a  couple  of  Blue  Litmus  with  him  and  put  them  on  the  inside  of  the  cooler  and  the  dozen  of  strips  turned  Red.    David  came  out  and  dust  dusting  his  hand,  "The  whole  bloody  cooler  is  acidic".      The  lady  moved  near  the  corpse  and  saw  a  cellphone  fallen  under  a  seat.  She  picked  it  up  and  checked  the  messages.  The  latest  text  said:    "Thou  shall  attain  peace".  She  showed  it  to  Fred.    "That  madman  did  it,”  said  Fred  showing  the  text  on  the  phone  to  David.  "We  found  such  voodoo  sentences  even  on  Sterling's  phone  in  his  flat".    David  shouted,  "Track  the  caller".    "No  use  out  of  it,  the  two  phones  have  been  destroyed  and  do  not  exist  and…  you  lady,  who  are  you?"  said  Fred.  

 "Amanda  Stewart,  sir"  said  the  lady.    "Fred,  that  guy  will  text  the  other  victim  too.  Do  we  have  information  about  the  other  two  destroyed  phones?"    "Yes”-­‐answered  Amanda.    "Get  to  know  where  they  war  bought"  ordered  David.  Amanda  went  running  to  a  caravan.      "David,  if  Strauss  too  was  in  the  car,  he  too  was  exposed  to  the  acidic  fumes.  He  couldn't  have  worn  a  mask  or  else  the  lady  would  never  get  in.  How  could  Strauss  survive?"  asked  Fredrick.    "Umm………  I  don't  know,”  replied  David.    Amanda  came  rushing  and  said,  "The  two  phones  were  bought  by  the  two  different  men  in  two  different  shops,  and  both  are  not  related  in  any  way  possible."    "Give  a  call  to  one  the  contacts,”  said  Fred.    Amanda  dialed  the  number  and  gave  it  to  Fredrick.    Fredrick  kept  waiting  for  the  man  to  pick  up  the  phone  and  at  last  he  did:  "Hello"  said  a  shrill  voice.    "Hello  sir,  we  are  calling  from  NYPD  and  we  wanted  to  enquire  about  a  cellphone  you  bought  three  weeks  back  at  store  two  blocks  away  from  your  house."    "Oh  yes,  I  lost  that  phone.  Went  to  get  some  groceries  and  lost  it  at  the  router  while  I  was  billing."    "When  did  this  happen  sir?”    "Last  Week"    "Thank  you  sir"    David  said,  "bet  this  is  the  same  story  with  the  other  guy"  and  it  was.    Amanda  said  "If  both  of  them  lost  their  phone  in  the  same  grocery  store  on  the  same  day,  we  should  check  their  CCTV  Tapes."      IX  Amanda,  David  &  Fred  left  to  the  grocery  store.  They  entered  the  store  and  went  to  the  manager  of  the  store.  The  manager,  a  dark  &  huge  man  with  a  bloated  

voice,  said,  "  How  can  I  help  you  people?"      "We  need  to  look  at  your  CCTV  Tapes,”  said  David.    "Sorry  sir,  but  their  confidential"  said  the  man  nodding  his  head,  side  to  side.    "Please  sir,  its  an  issue  of  security"  said  Fred    "Sorry"  he  said  again  nodding.    Amanda  got  frustrated  and  pulled  out  her  gun  pointing  it  at  the  manager's  head.  "You  show  us  the  tapes  or  I  pull  the  trigger"    The  manager  said  with  a  cracking  and  shivering  voice,  “We  can't  say  no  to  a  lady  right?”  The  three  men  in  the  room  were  awestruck  seeing  Amanda  Stewart's  response.    The  manager  took  the  trio  to  a  dark  room.  The  room  was  filled  with  cartons  of  CD's  and  Floppy's  with  one  small  1970's  Television  set  in  the  middle  and  five  chairs.    They  ran  through  the  tapes  with  people  continuously  moving  on  the  screen  and  in  the  they  saw,  there  were  three  items  stolen  from  the  shop  without  billing  and  the  manager  tried  to  hide  his  face  when  such  a  thin  happened.  Fred  kept  sniggering  looking  at  the  kinds  of  people  but  David  &  Amanda  were  continuously  looking  at  the  screen  searching  for  any  cellphone  burglary.    After  ten  minutes  of  investigating  the  Tapes  they  caught  it  they  found  a  young  kid  pickpocketing  a  man's  cellphone  while  the  latter  was  at  the  counter.  In  the  next  five  minutes  they  found  two  such  burglaries  by  the  same  young  kid  with  different  people  as  victims.    Fred  slowly  got  interested  in  the  process  after  looking  at  the  kid's  face.  It  was  extremely  familiar.  It  was  a  boy's  face.  He  had  seen  it  earlier.  He  was  continually  struggling  to  remember  and  thence  got  it.  It  was  the  boy  who  was  killed  by  Strauss  a  week  back.      "David,  its  the  same  guy  Strauss  killed  last  week."  shouted  out  Fred.    "We  have  to  go  and  meet  his  parents,”  said  Amanda.      X  Amanda  got  out  of  the  car  waiting  for  Fred  &  David  to  get  down.  The  three  went  up  to  a  small  house  and  David  rang  the  bell.    A  middle-­‐aged  woman  came  out.    "We're  from  the  Police  ma'am  and  we  are  here  to  talk  about  your  son."  

 She  took  the  three  inside  and  seated  them  in  the  hall  while  she  called  her  husband.    "Sir,  we  just  wanted  to  know  whether  your  son  had  any  affiliation  to  William  Strauss?"  asked  Fred.    "No,  why  would  a  man  like  his  own  murderer?”  answered  the  husband.    "Sorry  sir,  but  it  looks  like  your  son  was  close  to  Strauss  before  his  death".    "Yes,  he  was"  said  a  voice  from  the  background.  It  was  the  voice  of  the  kid's  brother,  Thomas.    "What?"  said  the  wife.    "Dan  was  close  to  Strauss  for  about  2-­‐3  weeks  before  he  died.  Dan  used  to  him  in  his  house  two  streets  away."  said  Thomas    "Take  us  to  his  house"  said  David  getting  up.      XI  Amanda,  Fred  &  David  waited  outside  the  Strauss'  house  for  30  seconds  that  Fred  broke  the  lock  and  went  into  the  house  out  of  frustration.  All  of  them  searched  for  some  clues  on  what  Strauss  was  going  to  do  next.    Fred  entered  the  basement  of  the  house.  After  a  little  observation,  it  was  clear  it  was  a  laboratory.  He  called  David  and  they  two  searched  the  explored  the  basement  while  Amanda  was  upstairs  in  the  house.    David  kept  looking  and  he  found  designs  of  the  mechanism  he  saw  in  the  flat  below  Sterling's.  The  designs  were  so  intricately  designed  that  it  felt  like  Strauss  was  a  Genius.  While  David  was  busy  understanding  the  designs  and  prototypes,  Fredrick  was  getting  a  familiar  odor.  He  followed  it  and  his  guesses  were  right.  It  was  the  smell  of  the  acid  in  the  taxi.  The  source  of  the  smell  was  from  a  small  flask  labeled:  Hydrofluoric  acid  (HF).    "Hey  David,  this  man  used  Hydrofluoric  acid  in  the  taxi  cooler"  said  Fredrick.    David  did  not  respond.  He  kept  looking  at  a  design  made  by  Strauss.  It  was  a  gun,  which  could  deceive  even  the  best  ammunition  expert.  The  most  intricate  of  machines  David  had  seen,  it  was  an  engineering  marvel.  "We  need  this  guy  in  our  military  research  centers  man"  said  David  to  Fred  and  the  latter  sniggered.  Just  then  Amanda  came  running  down  into  the  basement  and  said,  “I  found  the  other  victim's  number,  it  was  there  in  Strauss’  diary".    "Track  the  number  immediately"  cried  Fred.    

They  came  out  of  the  house.  The  three  were  waiting  in  the  car  for  conformation  about  number's  location.    Amanda  got  a  call  and  she  said,  "Five  blocks  away,  fast".    Fred  started  the  car  and  accelerated.  They  were  there  in  three  minutes.  The  three  got  down  and  searched  but  there  was  no  a  trace  of  Strauss  or  anything  strange.        XII  John  Hathaway  was  waiting  for  his  car  to  come.  He  stood  on  the  pavement  and  kept  waiting.  After  about  ten  minutes  he  got  tired  standing  and  went  and  sat  a  bench  a  few  feet  away.  Beside  him  was  a  man  reading  the  newspaper.  Once  that  man  put  down  the  newspaper,  John  gasped  heavily.      "Strauss"  he  said.    "Yes,  that's  me,”  said  Strauss.    "Heard  you  escaped  your  execution.  Very  Impressive  Indeed."    "Sure  it  is"    "Why  are  you  here?  You  cannot  try  any  of  your  pagan  shit  around  here"    "Not  going  to,  simply  going  to  shoot  you"  said  Strauss  and  removed  a  gun.    Just  then  Fredrick  spotted  the  gun  and  ran  there  to  the  bench.  Strauss  looked  at  Fredrick  running  towards  him.  He  got  up  with  a  start,  grabbed  John's  collar  and  they  both  started  running.  David  &  Amanda  followed  Fred.    The  five  ran  and  reached  a  deserted  dead  end.  Strauss  left  John's  collar.  Strauss  charged  onto  Fred  and  both  of  them  had  a  fierce  duel  with  punches  and  kicks  and  blocks.  Fred  at  last  punched  Strauss  in  the  stomach  and  he  fell  groveling  on  the  ground.  The  gun  in  his  hand  fell  onto  the  ground  and  Fred  picked  in  up.  He  aimed  it  at  Strauss  and  shouted,  "You  move  an  inch  and  I'll  pull  the  trigger".  Strauss  happily  got  up  said,  "Try  me".  Strauss  took  out  another  gun  and  shot  Amanda.  She  died  instantly    David's  heart  skipped  a  beat.  David  was  shocked  by  Strauss'  reaction.  Such  courage,  he  had  never  seen.  He  slowly  looked  at  Fred's  gun  and  he  understood  why  he  was  not  scared  about  his  death.    "Fred  don't  shoot,”  shouted  David.    "Have  you  gone  nuts?  He  just  killed  that  damn  girl,”  cried  Fred  furiously  gripping  his  extremely  hard.  

 Strauss  got  upend  aimed  the  gun  not  Fredrick.    "Fredrick,  do  not  shoot"    "That  guy  will  bloody  kill  me"    Strauss  aimed  precisely  onto  Fred's  Torso.    "Fred,  Shoot  yourself  on  the  forehead"    "What?"    "Fred,  Trust  me,  Shoot  yourself  on  the  forehead"    Strauss  came  a  step  closer.    Fred  heard  every  single  heartbeat  like  a  drumbeat.  He  did  not  know  what  to  do.  He  clasped  the  gun  hard.  He  heard  David  shouting  in  the  background  but  nothing  got  registered.  Fred  was  I  turmoil.  Then  he  did  it.    Fred  took  a  leap  of  faith.    He  aimed  the  gun  on  his  temple  and  with  a  sudden  push  of  the  finger  on  the  trigger,  a  gunshot  was  heard  and  Fred  shut  his  eyes  tightly.    Fred  opened  his  eyes  slowly  and  he  was  assured  he  was  alive.  In  front  of  him  laid  the  dead  body  of  William  Strauss.        XIII  Fredrick  &  David  were  in  the  car  driving  to  David's  apartment  with  mixed  emotions.  They  had  lost  friend  they  made  just  an  hour  ago.  They  had  killed  a  murderer  who  escaped  a  week  back.  John  Hathaway  was  sent  safely  back  home.    On  the  way,  David  read  the  personal  diary  of  Strauss  and  he  understood  why  Strauss  was  committing  such  crimes.  David  explained  that  the  gun  Fred  was  using  to  shoot  Strauss  minutes  before  a  remarkable.  It  was  gun  designed  to  kill  the  shooter.  David  said  he  saw  its  design  in  Strauss'  house  and  readily  recognized  it  when  he  saw  it  in  Fred's  hand  due  to  its  bulky  appearance.  It  was  a  gun  where  bullets  did  not  come  out  of  the  barrel  but  out  of  the  back  of  the  gun.  When  it  is  shot,  it  kills  the  shooter.        Fred  and  David  came  unto  the  house  and  they  sat  down  and  David  started  telling  them  about  why  William  Strauss  indulged  in  such  practices.    "Fred's  parents  held  a  cotton  mill  which  was  illegally  taken  over  by  Sterling  Industries.  Tom  Sterling,  John  Hathaway  &  Alicia  Harrison,  headed  Sterling  

Industries.  This  takeover  of  the  mill  put  Strauss'  family  on  the  roads  and  both  the  parents  died  out  of  poverty.  Strauss  had  a  terrible  grudge  against  the  three  who  destroyed  his  family  and  wanted  to  destroy  them.  Strauss  was  put  in  orphanage  and  he  grew  to  be  a  Teacher  of  Sciences  in  High  School.  There  he  met  Dan.  Dan  was  quiet  a  notorious  yet  gullible  kid.  He  easily  fell  in  for  Strauss,  and  he  instructed  Dan  to  steal  three  cellphones  and  intern  he  would  give  him  five  grand.  After  stealing  the  phones,  one  day  Dan  comes  to  Strauss  and  says  he  is  going  to  the  police  to  complain  about  what  Strauss  is  doing.  He  gets  furious  and  kills  Dan.  He  then  arranges  the  dead  body  and  the  room  in  a  way  that  it  looks  like  a  sacrifice,  you  know,  with  dim  lighting  of  candles  and  pagan  stars  and  symbols.  He  thought  the  occult  could  make  him  escape,  but  the  police  didn't  care  a  damn.  They  arrested  him.  Now  we  know  the  rest  of  the  story  from  he  execution  ground  to  his  death."  explained  David.    "But  we  do  not  know  two  things  in  this  tale.  First,  how  did  the  executioner  burn  by  himself  with  Strauss  disappearance  from  the  execution  grounds?  And  Second,  how  did  Strauss  survive  the  acidic  fumes  in  the  taxi?"  asked  Fredrick    "The  second  has  been  solved.  Strauss  took  Calcium  Gluconate,  which  is  the  anti-­‐dote.  Post-­‐mortem  reports  showed  large  intakes  of  Calcium  Gluconate  pills  in  the  last  few  days".    "But  the  burning  and  disappearance  during  the  execution?"    "No  Idea".      Epilogue  A  week  later  David  was  filling  gas  into  his  car  and  some  of  it  fell  onto  the  ground.  He  moved  the  car  in  front  and  he  looked  back  and  the  place  where  he  spilt  Gasoline  was  aflame.  He  stopped  the  car  and  went  to  put  off  the  flame.  He  looked  around  why  it  happened  and  he  figured  out  that  the  sparks  of  the  cigarette  of  the  driver  who  came  after  him  fell  on  the  liquid  when  he  dusted  the  cigarette  outside  his  window,  above  the  liquid  and  set  it  on  fire.    He  understood  what  happened  there  and  suddenly,  like  stroke  of  enlightenment,  he  understood  what  happened  on  the  execution  fields.  He  immediately  gave  a  call  to  Fredrick.      "Fred,  mail  me  the  post-­‐mortem  reports  of  the  burnt  executioner  now,  immediately"  said  David.    David  went  home,  printed  out  the  reports  and  analyzed  them  and  spoke  to  some  other  people  for  one  hour  and  without  a  word  and  then  said  "Bingo".    He  gave  a  call  to  Fredrick.  "The  executioner  did  not  die  due  to  any  higher  power.  His  reports  say  his  skin  had  traces  of  Jet  Fuel.  His  bathing  soap  was  injected  with  Jet  Fuel.  Strauss  could  have  bribed  the  janitor  to  do  this.  The  doctors  in  the  jail  tested  this  a  few  days  back  when  one  of  the  officers  said  the  soap  smelled  bad.  

The  executioner's  body  was  covered  with  this  ultra-­‐flammable  liquid  when  he  came  to  the  execution  grounds  and  the  slight  spark  of  the  gun  before  the  bullet  is  fired  near  the  chest  is  enough  to  ignite  the  liquid  on  the  skin  of  body."    "My  God,  William  Strauss  should  be  the  Minister  of  Defense,  but  umm……….  how  did  he  disappear?"  asked  Fred.    "A  burning  man  a  few  feet  away  from  you  is  an  adequate  distraction  for  anybody  to  escape",  said  David.    “So,  he  used  high  school  science  and  called  it  the  occult,”  said  Fred.    “Yup”  answered  David  “The  Occult  is  simply  Science  not  Understood  &  Deciphered”.        

By,  Akshar  

31/8/11  5:12  p.m.  

                         RELATIVITY    Once there was a boy who was little too curious he always dreamt of making a car who's speed was Super-luminous He worked all day, and he slept all night; and finally made a car, that goes faster than the speed of light. He got in the car, But with him got in three more entities; Distance sat beside him,

Mass and Time behind. He started moving, and in a couple of minutes, he reached half the speed of light, and he knew he was crossing speed limits. Distance patted him, and pointed to the outside, He looked to his right, and he saw a strange sight. Everything he saw, was three-fourth its size, A sleeping six footer, looked around a 5 in size. He looked at the distance calculator, and it said he travelled 1 million miles, but his friend gives a call and says, "You just travelled 0.87 million miles" He looked at his stopwatch, and saw he spent an hour on deck, but Time tells him, "around m70 minutes is what you sat on deck" He looked out, and saw the days passed by faster, he literally saw the flowers bloom, as time outside the car was faster. He then started accelerating, but his speed was changing slowly every time, he went from 1.7 to 1.8 million m/s in a second, but from 1.8 to 1.9 took much longer. He looked back and saw Mass had suddenly bloated, he was 1 tonne first, now he was 1.15 The car he sat on first weighed 30 times a tonne But now it became was 34.64 and the couldn't run

He was too tired so he got down and thought for a while and figured it out with a frown: "Light's speed is the universe's speed limit, Nature won't allow me to reach it "If I move close to the speed of light, I would suffer a terrible fright "1 meter outside becomes shorter from my perspective so even though I felt I moved a lot i moved less to be less productive "Time is slow in the fast car and much fast outside the car I felt a short time in the car but my friend calculated a larger time of me in the car. "Speed is distance by time, distance decreases and time increases thus high speeds never are as big as we think they are "coz my momentum is always constant, i became heavier, as i went faster so i could not go faster. "Even if you did reach light speed, your mass would be infinite So you would simply blast" "Nature makes the trio behind me its speed breakers, forget crossing the speed of light, As in the end you would become firecrackers."    

 IMAGINED  REALITY  

 "I  never  believed  in  ghosts,  but  I  was  haunted  by  one  almost  all  my  life"  he  thought.  He  was  going  through  incredible  pain.  His  body  wriggled  around  like  a  dying  dog.  But  he  knew,  he  wasn't  going  to  die.  A  few  thousand  volts  passing  through  a  human  being’s  body  could  affect  the  nervous  system  but  nothing  else.  The  two  diodes  fitted  into  his  body,  one  into  his  left  heel,  and  the  other  dropped  into  his  mouth  burnt  the  tender  tissues  around  them.  With  his  limbs  tied  up  with  thick  leather  straps  he  could  not  shake  around  with  ease.  His  shoulders  could  not  bear  the  contractions  of  muscles  around.  He  felt  like  piranhas  were  eating  away  the  flesh  under  his  skin.  His  eyes  were  closed  but  it  was  not  black  behind  his  eyelids  but  deep  orange  due  to  the  blindingly  bright  light  right  above  his  face.  His  bones  felt  as  if  they  were  being  stretched  from  both  ends.  His  body  was  completely  paralyzed,  but  worse,  his  mind  was  completely  conscious  to  experience  every  ounce  of  pain  and  suffering  inflicted  on  the  body.    With  no  way  to  express  the  pain  he  was  suffering,  he  let  out  his  anguish  as  a  single  teardrop  trickling  down  his  cheek.  He  contended  himself,  as  all  of  this  would  result  in  a  life,  closer  to  reality.        A  few  hours  ago…    "Why  does  he  call  us  at  one  in  the  morning?"  asked  William  Herschel.      “You  left  free  the  criminal  I  caught  at  9  pm,”  answered  David  Strauss.  David  Strauss  Jn.  was  a  tall  man  of  slim  figure.  David  was  grown  under  the  shadow  of  his  influential  father,  and  this  continuously  pinched  him  deep  within-­‐  everybody  called  him  the  son  of  David  Strauss  Sr.  But  the  only  person  who  did  not  point  back  to  his  lavish  and  influential  background  was  William  Herschel.  Because  of  this,  he  very  easily  built  acquaintance  with  David  and  as  he  continuously  entertained  David’s  ego,  the  two  stayed  friends.      David  and  William  entered  the  room  of  their  chief.  Both  knew  that  each  other’s  hearts  were  beating  incredibly  fast  as  they  were  sure  they  would  be  fired  that  early  morning.  People  generally  never  spoke  to  William.  William  never  interacted  with  anybody  but  David  and  David  generally  did  all  the  talking.  "  You  have  been  incredibly  reckless  today  David.  We  have  been  trying  to  catch  that  thief  for  the  last  six  months  and  you  let  him  go"  said  their  chief.    Both  the  men  were  preparing  themselves  for  the  next  sentence.  "Nothing  can  be  done  now,  so  I  am  setting  you  on  another  assignment.  Sir  Rutherford  psychiatric  center  on  Notting  Island  has  the  assignment  ready  for  you  and  are  not  willing  to  tell  it  to  the  department  and  want  you  to  know  it  directly.  So  don’t  waste  my  time.  Off  you  go,  your  ship  will  be  ready  at  10-­‐tomorrow  morning.  "    David's  heart  lightened.  As  he  was  about  to  leave  the  office,  he  stepped  back  and  asked  the  chief  "  Sir,  who  else  is  on  the  project?"  "You  alone"    "Can  I  take  William  with  me  sir"  he  asked  pleading.    The  chief  gave  a  vague  expression  and  he  simply  nodded  looking  straight  at  David.    The  next  morning,  David,  and  with  him  William  got  into  the  ship.  David  had  a  very  

wrong  feeling  about  the  whole  context.  Nature  looked  supportive:  standing  on  the  deck,  the  dark  blue  waters  were  slowly  turning  turbulent.  The  clouds  a  little  away  were  deep  grey  in  color  and  were  slowly  approaching.  As  his  thoughts  were  slowly  collecting  and  as  he  understood  what  was  wrong,  William  patted  him  on  his  back  and  broke  his  thought  process.    The  two  got  down  from  the  ship  and  before  them  reached  the  dark  clouds.  Holding  their  caps  and  coats,  William  and  David  sat  in  a  car  and  rode  to  the  psychiatric  center.      He  walked  down  the  pathway  and  knocked  on  a  huge  wooden  door.  As  the  door  opened,  it  made  a  screeching  noise  of  metal-­‐over-­‐metal  and  there  was  an  old  man  in  white  apron  with  deep  red  bloodstains  on  it.  “How  can  I  help  you,  sir?”  asked  the  man.  William  hesitantly  took  a  back  step  holding  David’s  shoulder.  “I  am  David  Strauss,  sir,  from  the  London  Police,”  said  David  extending  his  hand.  “Ah  yes…  we  were  just  expecting  you”.  The  man  took  out  a  large  syringe  and  stabbed  into  the  extended  arm.  He  forcibly  pushed  the  piston  and  a  wave  of  pain  rushed  through  David’s  vein  with  him  falling  flat  on  the  floor.    David  got  up  with  a  blurred  vision,  tied  to  a  bed  with  thick  leather  straps.  He  was  incredibly  drained  and  could  not  even  speak.  The  man  who  welcomed  him  at  the  doorstep  said  “I  know  you  have  questions,  son,  but  wait  until  you  listen”  As  he  cleaned  bloodstains  off  his  instruments,  he  said,  “You  suffer  from  schizophrenia,  son.  In  layman’s  terms,  you  cannot  tell  the  difference  between  what  is  reality  and  what  is  in  your  mind.  You  have  started  imagining  people,  son.  Next  comes  paralysis.  I  got  to  know  about  you  through  your  chief,  son.  He  said  you  were  talking  about  a  colleague  who  was  never  on  their  records”.  David  vigorously  shook  his  head  with  tightly  closed  eyes,  as  he  could  not  speak.  He  knew  what  the  man  was  talking  about.  “Your  chief  could  not  afford  this.  You  lost  a  criminal  last  night  and  almost  two,  last  month.  This  interaction  with  an  imagination  is  no  different  from  that  of  reality  for  you,  son.  Actually,  it  is  as  true  as  are  looking  at  me  right”  David  stalled  his  shaking  and  tears  rolled  down  his  cheek  as  he  accepted  the  truth  with  difficulty.  “Your  upbringing  continuously  lowered  you  self-­‐esteem  due  to  your  father  and  your  mind  needed  a  let  go.  You  needed  something  that  would  simply  praise  you  and  not  your  father.  So  your  mind  made  an  imaginary  character,  son.  We  need  to  treat  you  with  this  son.  It  is  going  to  be  painful.  I’m  Sorry.”  ended  the  man  smiling.  David  with  opened  his  mouth  and  blew  a  tiring  gush  of  air  from  his  mouth  and  the  old  man  figured  out  it  was  “Who?”    The  old  man  opened  a  file  on  a  table  beside  and  he  read  out  the  name.  It  was  what  David  expected.  It  was  painful  but  he  had  to  accept  it.  It  was  not  that  that  man  was  not  there  or  was  dead.  It  was  worse,  he  had  never  been.  It  was  William  Herschel.      A  few  hours  later…    

THE ETERNAL CYCLE

In the vast mouth of the sky, Mighty Chak gargling water; Spits out to the basin of the earth, To give it a watery wet cover. The drops are racing, Against one another; But all put together, Can destroy a tall tower. They come so fast, That they unevenly split; So far not realizing, They are just Chak’s spit. They collide against the barren ground, Splashing away the loose mud; But that one drop has the capability, To infuse life into a lifeless bud. Children are dancing in glee, But the cattle are about to flee; And the graceful peacock, Is swaying under the elegant tree. But then, clouds move out, And the sun resumes his shine; All he brings is happiness, He knows it is no crime. From the trees, the dew drops drip down, Slowly, steadily, still getting slower; But a beam of light streaks through it, To give us crystal clear color. Seven of them merge, To project pure white; Now split by a drizzle, To give an exquisite sight. A painting in the sky, Amidst the canvas of clouds; Shadows the dominating sun, Creating a smile from a frown. But the wind sweeps away, Blowing everything up and down; And there goes the rainbow, To turn smiles back to frowns. The sun dominates again, From days to weeks around; It makes everything cry in pain, Happiness is lost, nowhere can it be found.

Poor helpless little drops, While nourishing the bud; Are pulled up by the fiery fierce sun, From the barren ground, and loose mud. They rise higher and higher, Become light as air; Back to their heavenly prison, A goblet at Chak’s chair. The water tries not to enter, The mighty rain god’s mouth; They all try to escape, Attempting to get out. But the wise lord knew, That the world would perish, die; If he did sympathize, With the drops pitiful cry. All the water went into the mouth, Of the giant god Chak; And whirl pooled as he gargled, The drops only crave to escape the dark. THE DROPS COULD DO NOTHING, EVEN AFTER THEIR MIGHTY TACKLE; BUT LATER DID THEY REALIZE, THIS WAS NOTHING BUT, THE WATER CYCLE.

BY shiv AKSHAR CLASS VIII

March 30, 2010

           

THE  LEARNING  BRAIN  My  limbs  were  weak,  my  throat  was  dry,  and  my  eye  ached  as  I  struggled  to  hack  in  the  database  of  the  Brain.  My  veins  on  my  hands  were  protruding  out  and  my  eyes  were  as  red  as  blood.  The  bright  light  of  the  screen  in  front  of  me  blinded  me  of  any  thing  a  little  darker  than  it.  I  had  a  huge  burden  on  my  shoulders.  As  I  type  violently,  smashing  the  keys  on  the  age-­‐old  keyboard,  I  remembered  the  days  my  father  was  building  the  Brain:    I  was  about  thirteen  when  my  father,  Robert  Wiener,  was  working  to  build  the  Brain.  The  Brain  is  nothing  but  a  replica  of  the  Human  brain.  It  remembers,  processes,  understands,  interprets,  executes  and  learns.  My  father,  after  almost  a  lifetime  of  work,  built  it.  The  Brain  was  licensed  to  run  almost  all  systems  in  the  United  States.  It  controlled  traffic  movement,  amount  of  electricity  reach  your  

house,  the  winner  of  a  judicial  case,  and  in  sometime  it  even  chose  our  president.  It  was  incredible.      By  the  time  I  was  twenty,  almost  all  countries  had  their  own  mini-­‐Brains  and  United  Nations  set  up  a  Brain  the  controlled  all  the  other  mini-­‐Brains-­‐  The  Brain.  Everybody  preferred  to  call  it  as  the  Brain  and  the  rest  as  mini-­‐Brains.  The  Brain  solved  problems  between  countries  and  slowly  the  concept  of  division  of  the  world  into  countries  faded  away  and  the  world  became  into  one  unified  landmass,  planet  earth.  All  of  earth  was  like  utopia.  Everybody  earned  245.89  corlots  a  day  (corlots  was  the  universal  currency  introduced  on  earth.  1  corlot  was  about  54  dollars).  All  of  the  population  was  having  a  party.  Only  a  group  of  hundred  enthusiasts  maintained  all  the  brains  and  they  were  paid  hundred  corlots  more.  Everybody  loved  the  brain,  and  I  became  famous  as  the  son  of  the  creator  of  the  Brain.  Nobody  on  earth  needed  to  work.  The  Brain  ran  everything.    It  slowly  exploited  resources  and  distributed  it  equally  amongst  all.    Before  my  father  passed  away,  he  wrote  a  small  document  a  placed  it  in  his  safety  locker.  The  safety  locker  was  programed  to  open  on  a  specific  date  and  the  day  it  opened  my  father  told  me  to  read  it  and  follow  its  instructions.  He  passed  away  a  month  later.  After  a  short  period  of  sadness  I  continued  enjoying  my  life  like  the  rest.  Then,  on  23rd  of  June,  six  years  later,  the  safety  locker  opened.    I  opened  the  file  present  in  it  and  pulled  out  the  document.  It  was  hand  written  (something  unusual  nowadays)  and  read  so:    “Dear  Son,  This  is  a  warning.  Mankind  is  going  to  be  in  grave  danger.  The  Brain  is  programmed  to  grow  intelligent  with  the  day.  It  learns.  It  is  not  perfect,  but  it  soon  will  be.  And  I  had  not  thought  of  it  earlier  but  I  soon  figured  out  (may  be  in  a  couple  of  weeks  from  this  day),  it  no  more  needs  human  beings  to  survive.  It  can  design  its  own  machines  to  maintain  itself.  It  does  not  need  the  crew  of  hundred  maintaining  it.  Humans  are  a  waste  of  resources  for  it.  And  it  will  dispose  you  all  like  junk.  This  has  to  stop.  The  Brain  is  a  danger  I  had  not  foreseen.  I  am  feeling  ashamed  of  myself  that  I  built  it.  I  am  sorry.  Now  you  have  to  stop  it.  The  procedure  to  hack  into  the  brain  is  provided  behind  this  sheet.  You  will  be  thinking,  how  you  should  kill  it.  Remember,  it  is  self-­‐protective.  You  cannot  physically  break  it.  You  have  to  hack  into  it  from  your  computer  and  the  only  way  to  kill  it  is  to  confuse  it.  I  did  not  build  it  with  the  logic  of  understanding  the  Liar’s  Paradox.  Use  this  as  your  weapon.    Love,  You  Father.”    I  turned  to  the  back  of  the  page  and  read  the  instruction.  I  sat  on  my  computer  and  started  trying  to  hack  into  the  mainframe  of  the  Brain.  It  was  not  exactly  as  my  father  told  me.  They  improved  the  algorithm  a  little  bit,  but  I  found  my  way  around.  After  a  couple  of  hours  of  strenuous  typing  and  thinking,  I  had  finally  hacked  into  the  Brain.  I  was  time  to  confuse  the  Brain.  I  recollected  the  liar’s  paradox:  

 If  I  say,  “I  am  a  liar”  that  means  every  thing  I  say  is  a  lie  including  the  statement  “I  am  a  Liar”.  Thus  it  means  it  is  a  lie  that  I  am  a  liar.  That  means  I  am  honest.  So  starting  from  being  a  liar,  logically  I  have  deduced  I  am  honest.  That  is  a  contradiction.  The  Brain  cannot  understand  such  contradictions  and  so  it  will  overload  and  crash.    I  scrolled  through  the  code  of  the  Brain.  It  was  one  of  the  most  elegant  codes  I  had  seen.  I  was  searching  for  the  command  “All  assertions  true”  which  in  lay  man’s  terms  means  “Everything  I  say  is  true”.  I  found  the  line  and  did  the  simple  thing  that  was  needed:  I  changed  the  “true”  to  “false”.  This  meant  all  it  said  was  false.  The  brain  is  a  Liar.  It  was  the  liar’s  paradox.    I  held  my  breath  and  with  all  courage,  pressed  enter.  Suddenly  the  whole  place  became  dark.  Everybody  started  howling.  I  knew  it  happened,  the  Brain  was  dead.  In  all  the  darkness  around  me,  I  knew  a  new  era  started,  the  End  of  the  Age  of  Machine  and  the  Dawn  of  the  Era  of  Man.        

 HOW  HAVE  ADVANCES  IN  SCIENCE  AND  TECHNOLOGY  CHANGED  

OUR  PERSPECTIVES  ABOUT  LIFE?      What  is  a  perspective?  Oxford  dictionary  calls  it  “A  particular  attitude  toward  or  way  of  regarding  something  or  a  point  of  view”.  The  way  we  experience  and  interact  with  events  or  objects  is  directly  dictated  by  the  perspective  we  have  on  it.  Perspectives  on  objects  or  sounds  or  places  or  even  memories  are  highly  personal.  When  I  hear  the  word  “apple”  what  I  is  remember  the  company.  That  is  my  perspective.  But  my  grandmother  would  remember  an  apple  pie.  That  is  her  perspective  on  the  word  “apple”.    Perspectives  on  things  evolve  with  time  and  situations  the  person  is  present  in.  I  use  to  think  that  the  two  thousand  rupees  worth  Parker  pen  my  father  gifted  me  on  my  10th  birthday  was  the  most  important  thing  I  possessed.  I  had  a  perspective  that  the  pen  was  very  precious.  But  now  I  don’t  find  it  any  better  than  a  forty-­‐rupee  pen  I  find  in  any  stationary  shop.  My  perspective  of  the  pen  from  being  an  incredibly  precious  thing  had  evolved  into  something  that  is  not  so  precious.  All  the  things  we  associate  with  have  a  certain  perspective  associated  with  them.  “Everyone  sees  drama  from  his  own  perspective”  said  Jean-­‐Marie  Le  Pen.  Macbeth  for  me  is  a  straightforward  tragedy  but  my  father  sees  it  as  story  of  philosophy.  “Everything  we  see  is  a  perspective,  not  the  truth.”  (Marcus  Aurelius).  Most  of  our  knowledge  is  blinded  due  to  

perspectives  as  we  associate  things  with  emotions  and  if  we  associate  things  with  unpleasant  emotions,  even  the  best  of  music  will  be  noise  for  us.  If  we  were  raised  with  no  knowledge  of  a  devise  called  a  calculator  and  cubed  345.756  on  paper,  when  approached  with  a  calculator,  I  will  think  of  it  as  the  best  device  man  ever  created.  But  if  I  grew  up  in  a  place  where  I  see  all  kinds  of  calculators  all  around  me,  I  would  never  think  of  it  as  being  something  earth-­‐shatteringly  important.  Now  we  can  clearly  see  the  perspectives  we  develop  are  highly  affected  by  our  upbringing  and  environment.      The  question  I  am  trying  to  answer  is  whether  science  and  technology  has  affected  our  lives  and  if  it  has,  how  has  it  affected  our  lives.  Being  a  modern  civilization,  we  are  interacting  with  Science  and  technology.  Before  we  move  on,  we  have  to  understand  the  difference  between  Science  and  Technology.  Science  is  simply  a  rule  the  universe  follows  and  Technology  is  the  possible  way  of  exploiting  the  rule  to  use  it  for  human  wellbeing.  Both  of  these  have  an  incredible  effect  on  any  human  being  as  they  satisfy  two  human  instincts:  Learning  of  any  kind  makes  man  joyful.  If  it  does  not,  there  is  something  wrong  with  the  man  or  the  way  knowledge  is  imparted.  Thus,  any  scientific  development  makes  anybody  naturally  excited  as  they  have  got  to  know  something.  The  second  instinct  that  is  satisfied  by  Technology  is  the  want  for  a  human  to  become  better.  “Technology  does  not  drive  change  -­‐  it  is  change.”  It  allows  man  to  be  in  a  better  state  today  than  he  was  yesterday.  It  satisfies  a  deep-­‐longing  Charles  Darwin  called  “Evolution”.  That  is  the  reason  you  see  hoards  of  people  running  to  an  Apple  Store  when  a  new  iPad  or  iPhone  is  released  as  they  think  that  with  that  device,  there  life  will  be  more  exciting  than  it  was  until  then.  Thus  the  history  of  Human  Evolution  is  nothing  but  the  history  of  Technological  Changes  in  the  world.    Science  and  Technology  are  so  ingrained  in  our  DNA  that  they  drastically  affect  us.  And  thus  our  Perspectives  change  with  changes  in  the  sphere  of  the  two.  We  may  not  have  observed  it,  as  it  is  vividly  seen  only  after  decades  of  time  have  passed  by.  If  I  asked  my  friends  about  the  change  in  perspective  they  had  due  to  changes  in  Science  or  Technology,  they  will  not  give  a  very  insightful  answer  as  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  in  ten  thousand  years  of  Human  development  is  like  the  size  of  a  spec  of  dust  compared  to  the  size  of  a  city.  If  we  have  to  enumerate  the  changes  in  Science  and  Technology  seen  in  the  last  century  or  so,  we  can  clearly  see  the  evolution  of  Perspective  in  

society.    A  Radical  Shift  in  the  way  we  understand  the  universe  occurred  with  the  publishing  of  the  “Theory  of  Special  Relativity”  in  1905.  A  deduction  of  the  theory  accounts  to  the  legendary  formula  E=mc2  which  essentially  tells  that  mass  can  be  converted  to  tremendously  high  amount  of  energy  and  vice  versa.  The  fact  that  mass  and  energy  are  one  and  the  same  thing  was  a  simple  physical  reality,  but  this  struck  a  cord  in  the  minds  of  philosophers  and  this  was  used  as  an  evidence  to  prove  the  beauty  of  being  human.  “1  gram  of  the  human  body  can  run  the  city  of  Chicago  for  two  days”  said  Swami  Yogananda  and  continued  to  tell  the  beauty  of  being  human.  So  here  we  see  the  perspective  of  a  physicist  on  the  mass-­‐energy  equivalence  theorem  that  which  is  simply  about  something  that  can  enable  the  generation  of  nuclear  energy,  while  in  the  perspective  of  a  spiritual  master,  it  is  a  way  of  telling  people  why  it  is  so  great  to  be  human.  Einstein  himself  brought  a  change  in  the  perspectives  Germans  had  about  Jews.  “The  Jew  has  always  been  a  people  with  definite  racial  characteristics  and  never  a  religion”  said  Adolf  Hitler  in  his  anti-­‐Jew  propaganda  and  turned  the  German  society  against  them.  But  Einstein,  who  was  the  pride  of  Germany  for  obvious  reasons,  fled  to  America  and  claimed  citizenship  there.  These  events  made  the  Germans  question  their  racial  behavior  and  change  their  perspective.    A  couple  of  decades  later  the  first  thoughts  about  robots  in  the  1920’s  were  about  they  helping  in  domestic  work.  That  was  the  perspective  every  one  held  when  they  heard  the  word  “robot”.  But  now  it  is  about  replication  functions  of  the  human  brain  and  to  replicate  human  behavior.  This  shift  is  due  to  advances  in  circuitry  and  figuring  out  algorithms  that  can  replicate  human  intelligence.    Fast-­‐forward  to  1946  and  the  US  army  built  the  ENIAC,  a  computer  as  big  as  a  building  to  store  data  of  all  the  files  the  US  army  had  or  to  find  the  10th  root  of  pi.  That  was  the  perspective  everybody  held  about  computers  for  almost  the  next  20-­‐30  years  until  the  advent  of  Personal  Computers  which  could  be  used  by  amateurs  to  write  simple  pieces  of  code  or  to  store  and  compute  household  expenses.  The  perspective  that  the  computer  is  a  device  used  for  complex  mathematical  and  logical  processes  is  now  that  of  a  personal  device  to  help  us  do  small  and  sundry  works.    Until  the  advent  of  the  Internet,  communication  between  two  men  in  

two  corners  of  the  world  was  an  incredibly  tough  task,  but  now  we  can  send  a  message  on  Facebook  to  anyone  in  any  part  of  the  world  in  seconds.    Connectivity  in  Rural  Regions  was  a  problem  in  India  even  ten  years  back  but  the  latest  census  shows  half  of  India  carries  a  mobile  phone  in  its  pocket.  This  is  the  outcome  of  mass,  low  cost  affordable  mobile  phone  production  and  spread  of  connectivity  in  India.    Behavioral  patterns  seen  in  different  generations  show  how  perspectives  on  different  things  have  changed:  My  grandmother  still  has  the  protective  plastic  cover  on  her  age-­‐old  radio  as  she  lived  in  a  time  when  a  radio  was  a  milestone  in  technology.  I  cannot  even  imagine  myself  listening  to  the  radio,  as  it  is  obsolete  in  front  of  a  television.  My  father  is  still  proud  of  his  Masters  degree  in  Computer  Applications,  as  he  was  a  part  of  the  second  batch  in  India  to  get  it.  In  his  perspective  it  is  an  important  achievement  but  now  every  second  person  has  an  MCA  degree.  That  is  the  perspective  I  have  about  the  degree.  This  change  is  due  to  the  rapid  production  of  computers  that  happened  due  to  advancement  in  technology.  My  twenty  year  old  cousin  will  check  in  the  dictionary  for  the  meaning  of  a  word  but  I  would  simply  “Google  it  up”.    It  is  clear  that  changing  trends  in  Science  and  Technology  clearly  affect  almost  all  things  in  our  lives.  And  as  situations  in  life  change  the  perspectives  with  which  we  look  at  things,  they  too  change.    Advances  in  Science  and  Technology  have  affected  our  manual  labor  and  intellectual  standards,  our  linguistic  patterns  and  behavioral  instincts,  our  engineering  possibilities  and  social  taboos,  our  anger  control  and  frustration  levels,  and  finally  even  our  body  health  and  lifespans.      I  am  not  trying  to  tackle  the  question  whether  advances  in  Science  and  Technology  had  a  positive  or  negative  impact  on  the  perspectives  we  have  about  the  world  but  to  answer  whether  they  did  impact  our  lives  or  not.  The  only  proper  conclusion  that  I  can  give  is  this:  Changes  in  Science  and  Advances  in  Technology  is  the  way  we  experience  life  different.          

HAPPINESS    Reflect  upon  the  following  quote:  “Happiness  is  like  a  butterfly,  the  more  you  chase  it  the  more  it  eludes  you.  Once  you  turn  your  attention  to  other  things,  it  comes  and  quietly  sits  on  your  shoulder”    What  is  happiness?  Webster’s  Dictionary  calls  it  “a  state  of  well-­‐being  and  contentment”.  Oxford  Dictionary  calls  it  “feeling  or  showing  pleasure  or  contentment”.  Now  both  these  definitions  use  the  word  “contentment”.  What  is  contentment?  Fulfillment  of  expectations  you  put  for  yourself  and  the  world.  So  if  we  fulfill  our  expectations,  we  attain  a  state  of  in  our  body  and  mind  of  happiness.  Before  we  plunge  into  the  logic  of  the  problem,  we  have  to  understand  the  difference  between  being  pleasurable  and  being  pleasant.  Pleasure  is  highly  affected  by  your  habitat.  If  you’re  outsides  and  insides  are  conducive,  and  you’re  happy,  its  pleasure.  It  is  conditional.  It  is  not  pure  happiness.  But  if  you  are  happy  with  yourself,  irrespective  of  your  outsides  and  insides,  you  are  pleasant.  It  is  unconditional.    So  the  expectations  we  put  for  the  world  and  ourselves  are  the  only  things  that  effect  how  happy  we  are.  So  lets  define  expectations.  Expectations  are  essentially  the  way  you  would  like  yourself  and  the  world  to  work.  Expectations  are  highly  affected  by  our  upbringing  and  backgrounds.  The  standards  we  put  up  for  ourselves  are  what  we  identify  ourselves  with.  “I  have  to  graduate  from  Harvard”  this  is  what  I  expect  from  my  self;  slowly,  I  identify  with  that.  I  start  thinking  I  am  eligible  to  get  admitted  into  Harvard,  whether  I  am  or  not.  Then,  I  start  thinking  I  have  to  be  nothing  less  than  a  Harvard  graduate.  This  is  a  “character”  I  built  for  myself  (with  an  element  of  it  yearning  to  become  a  Harvard  graduate).  This  is  what  sets  the  expectations  I  build  for  myself.  And  finally  your  state  of  happiness  is  affected  by  whether  you  fulfill  the  expectations  your  character  has  put  forth  (whether  I  get  into  Harvard).  I  expect  myself  to  complete  this  article.  When  I  complete  it,  I  will  be  happy,  as  I  have  matched  up  to  my  expectations.  Next  I  build  another  expectation  of  Kavita  ma’am  liking  my  article.  What  if  she  does  not  like  it,  I  will  be  sad.  After  this  I  will  surely  put  forth  another  expectation  in  my  mind.  So  life  is  a  continuous  array  of  expectations,  which  we  sequentially  fulfill,  and  their  results  essentially  affect  our  state  of  happiness.      But  what  if  I  simply  drop  off  my  expectations.  I  have  no  expectations  from  the  world  and  myself.  What  now?  You  will  live  in  utter  happiness.  Till  now,  the  button  for  your  happiness  was  in  the  hands  of  the  result  of  the  day’s  stock  market  or  the  reaction  of  your  wife  or  your  boss’s  impression  about  you.  It  always  ran  around  the  expectation  you  put  for  yourself  and  the  world  that  you  have  to  make  good  money,  your  wife  should  love  you  and  your  boss  should  respect  you.  But  what  if  you  don’t  care  whether  you  earn  money,  or  your  wife  hates  you,  or  your  boss  scolds  you  all  day  long;  you  will  simply  live  an  ecstatic  life.  The  world  cannot  affect  you.  “For  men  may  come  and  men  may  go,  but  I  go  on  for  ever”(Alfred  Lord  Tennyson).  It  does  not  matter  to  you  how  the  outside  world  is,  as  you  have  not  put  expectations  on  it.  You  will  do  what  your  

conscience  tells  you  to  do.  It  does  not  mean  you  don’t  work  for  what  you  expect.  You  will  work.    But  even  after  that,  if  nothing  works  out,  you  will  stay  unaffected.  Your  state  of  happiness  is  not  at  stake.  Whether  something  works  or  does  not  work,  it  is  for  nature  to  decide.  If  it  does  well  or  does  not  do  well,  you  will  never  really  pay  attention.  Only  if  you  expect  something  from  it  will  you  be  affected  by  it.  “All  these  activities  should  be  performed  without  any  expectation  of  result.  They  should  be  performed  as  a  matter  of  duty,  O  son  of  Partha.  That  is  my  final  opinion,”  (Krishna  in  the  Bhagavad  Gita  (18th  chapter,  6th  verse))    Not  putting  expectations  on  the  outside  world  is  one  thing.  But  not  expecting  anything  from  yourself  is  in  essence  the  rejection  of  your  character.  Our  Character  is  a  set  of  values  you  set  for  yourself  and  you  expect  yourself  to  act  accordingly.  We  have  to  clearly  understand  the  difference  between  “You”  and  “Your  character”.  “You”  are  the  living  entity  distilled  from  all  identifications  and  expectations.  You  are  just  what  you  are,  no  identity  and  nothing  to  live  up  to.  Identifications  and  expectations  forced  upon  “you”  is  your  character.  As  you  grow  older  you  identify  more  with  your  character  than  yourself,  as  it  is  more  convenient.  “You”  may  not  be  capable  of  getting  into  Harvard  but  your  character  is  crafted  such  that  it  is.    Your  character  is  essentially  a  glorious  (Harvard  Graduate)  pseudo-­‐self  you  create  for  yourself  to  generally  feel  happy  about.  But  we  have  to  face  it.  We  are  not  are  character.  We  are  simply  what  we  are  transient,  changeable  living  things.  When  we  accept  how  small  we  are,  we  drop  off  all  burdens  on  our  shoulders  (character  &  identity)  and  can  walk  freely  on  the  path  of  life  without  any  hassles.  So,  once  you  drop  off  your  character,  you  will  simply  live  not  as  a  great  glorious  past  you  had  or  as  a  beautiful  future  that  you  will  be,  but  as  a  humble  living  thing  in  this  immense  cosmos  in  the  present.  Happiness  is  a  natural  state  of  being.  We  were  never  born  sad.  We  become  sad.  So  once  we  shrug  off  all  expectations,  personal  and  societal,  you  will  be  simply  happy  as  nothing  can  make  you  sad.    Now  how  is  having  expectations  related  to  chasing  happiness.  In  essence,  they  are  actually  the  same.  The  way  we  chase  happiness  is  by  continuously  hoping  our  expectations  are  fulfilled.  Our  characters  put  up  expectations  and  the  process  of  trying  to  fulfill  the  expectation  is  the  same  as  chasing  happiness.  We  put  up  expectations  as  we  think  that  is  the  only  way  we  can  remain  happy.  Expectations  are  the  mundane  manifestations  of  the  deep  want  for  happiness  are  life  longs  for.  All  we  have  to  do  is  to  work  with  every  ounce  of  energy  we  have  to  get  what  we  want,  but  if  we  don’t  get  it,  we  should  simply  walk  away  without  any  difficulty,  as  we  have  no  expectation  on  the  result.  “Things  won  are  done,  joy's  soul  lies  in  the  doing”(William  Shakespeare).      An  argument  may  arise  against  what  I  just  said.  What  is  wrong  in  someone  keeping  himself  happy  by  expecting  results?  Why  should  he  drop-­‐off  expectations,  which  in  practice  is  going  against  your  character  (and  thus  is  terribly  difficult)?  And  the  reason  is  simple.  Because  everyday  is  not  a  Sunday.  There  is  no  guarantee  in  nature  that  what  you  expect  happens.  But  you  will  surely  be  happy  when  you  do  not  expect  anything  from  anything,  including  yourself.  

 This  is  what  the  first  quote  tells  us:  As  long  as  we  do  things  and  wish  to  be  happy  due  to  the  results  they  produce,  we  chase  happiness  in  the  excuse  of  fulfilling  expectations,  you  will  stay  happy  temporarily,  keeping  you  pleasurable  (“Happiness  is  like  a  butterfly,  the  more  you  chase  it,  the  more  it  eludes  you”).  Once  you  stop  having  expectations  on  your  work  and  simply  do  stuff  for  the  fun  of  it,  happiness  will  just  happen  (“Once  you  turn  your  attention  to  other  things,  it  comes  and  quietly  sits  on  your  shoulder”).  Once  you  stop  running  around,  stay  satisfied  with  all  you  have  as  a  humbled  being,  happiness  would  blossom  by  itself,  as  you  have  nothing  that  “triggers”  your  happiness,  no  expectations  on  yourself  or  the  world  to  be  fulfilled.  You  are  unconditionally  happy.      

 FEAR      I  

 He  was  terribly  scared.  It  was  dark  in  the  cell  and  the  only  source  of  light  were  the  gleaming  rays  of  golden  light  which  were  penetrating  the  bars  of  the  cell  and  were  falling  on  Carl  Togo’s  feet  from  a  light  bulb  on  the  upper  floor.  He  kept  looking  at  his  feet  but  all  he  could  see  were  red  marks  of  week’s  old  whippings  and  clots  of  ruptures  of  fights  with  other  prisoners.  As  he  kept  whiling  away  his  time  an  officer  came  near  his  room  and  shouted  in  a  foreign  language.  Togo  did  not  respond.  The  officer  entered  and  lifted  his  baton  and  just  a  moment  before  the  baton  touched  his  flesh  and  penetrated  to  his  flesh  and  broke  the  bones  of  his  fore-­‐arm,  he  gets  up  and  sees  in  front  of  him  a  dark  grey  wall  with  a  framed  portrait  of  Adolf  Hitler  and  a  Red  smeared  on  the  its  cracked  glass.    Nobody  knew  about  his  Past,  as  nobody  wanted  to  know,  except  one  man.  Togo  always  feared  that  man.    He  gets  up  and  completes  his  chores  and  leaves  to  his  workplace.  It  was  a  heavy  machinery  production  unit,  which  produced  Industrial  Steel.  He  had  relatively  a  less  physical  job  but  it  was  by  all  means  a  rugged  job-­‐  continuous  supervision  on  people  needs  tremendous  patience  that  Togo  lacked.  He  was  always  on  his  toes  and  kept  moving  around  the  7-­‐acre  factory.  It  took  him  about  3  hours  to  get  to  know  what  the  condition  of  machines  in  the  factory,  but  more  than  data  on  machines,  it  was  hard  for  Togo  to  understand  people.  He  lacked  the  most  basic  of  communication  skills.  And  this  prevented  him  from  associations  with  people.  He  had  but  one  friend,  more  a  shadow  than  a  friend;  his  name  was  John  Cusack  or  “Jock”.  He  was  no  gifted  man  with  special  abilities  but  his  “friendship”  with  Togo  gave  him  enough  professional  leverage.  He  was  on  a  solid  idea  of  living  of  Togo’s  name  and  Togo  had  no  issues  with  it  as  he  did  have  to  an  extra  sweat  to  help  Jock.      One  night  after  almost  all  the  workmen  left  the  plant,  Jock  came  up  to  Togo  and  asked  him  if  he  would  come  with  him  for  a  walk.  They  went  walking  until  Togo’s  

house  and  Togo  went  home  leaving  Jock  to  walk  alone.  After  a  couple  of  hours  Jock  comes  to  Togo’s  home  with  a  deep  bruise  on  the  leg.  Togo  takes  him  into  his  bedroom  and  aids  his  wound  with  some  anti-­‐septic  and  clothe.      Jock  rested  on  the  bed  and  his  glance  fell  on  the  portrait  hung  affront.  His  heart  skipped  a  beat  and  he  immediately  questioned,  “Were  you  involved  in  the  war?”    An  unusual  silence  prevailed  in  the  room.      “Were  you  involved  in  the  war,  Togo?”    “Yes,  I  was”    “What  happened  Carl?”  asked  Jock  sternly.    “It  was  the  winter  of  1943.  I  worked  for  the  Nazi  forces  as  I  was  of  German  origin.  I  had  no  affiliation  to  Germany  or  its  politics,  or  even  world  politics.  I  was  stationed  in  France  and  I  fell  in  love  with  a  women  their.  We  lived  together  for  about  a  year.    One  day  after  I  came  back  from  work  from  my  camp  and  saw  my  house  floor  drenched  with  the  blood  of  my  lady.    I  collapsed  onto  my  knees  and  held  the  women’s  body  in  my  hands  weeping.  I  looked  up  onto  a  portrait  hung  in  front  of  me  and  I,  in  a  moment  understood  everything.  That  woman  in  my  hands  was  Jew  and  that  was  the  entire  mistake  she  made.  I  went  up  to  Hitler’s  portrait  and  flung  my  hand  on  to  the  glass  and  cracked  it.  I  smeared  the  woman’s  blood  in  anger  on  the  glass.  This  is  that  portrait  and  every  day  I  look  at  I  am  reminded  how  one  man’s  personal  agenda  murdered  almost  a  complete  race  on  Earth.  After  I  left  my  home  after  the  incident,  I  went  to  my  camp  and  in  desperation  and  anger  shot  a  person.  Unfortunately,  the  person  I  shot  was  an  Allied  soldier  who  had  just  entered  the  camp.  Just  a  few  minutes  away  were  Allied  troops  marching  to  invade  the  camp.  The  troops  saw  me  shoot  him  and  arrested  me.  I  was  sent  to  jail  and  that  phase  of  my  life  was  the  worst.  I  had  almost  a  broken  bone  every  week  but  I  everyday  was  accused  of  crimes  I  had  just  then  turned  against.  I  was  there  in  Britain  in  Jail  for  two  years  and  then  escaped  and  fled  to  America.  The  Police  department  has  been  searching  for  me  for  the  last  seven  years.  I  changed  my  identity,  and  ever  since,  I  have  lived  here,  in  this  room,  working  in  that  factory.  Nobody  knows  about  the  crime  I  had  done  and  my  crime  was  not  documented  like  several  others  in  those  years.  But  one  onlooker  in  the  Allies  saw  me  clearly  and  he  is  the  only  one  who  knows  who  I  am  and  he  is  who  I  fear.  If  he  did  not  look  at  me,  I  would  have  nothing  to  fear.”    

   II  

   “You  free?”  asked  a  man  knocking  on  the  door.    “Sure,  come  in,”  answered  Bill  Jones.  

 “Got  work  for  you,  got  to  source  some  material  for  are  weapon  production”  said  the  man  who  entered  the  room.    “Sure,  Chief”  said  Bill  and  the  man  left.    Bill  stared  out  of  the  window  and  kept  remembering  his  days  in  the  Allied  forces.  The  war  had  ended  on  his  side  but  a  great  distress  remained  in  his  memory,  his  brother’s  death.  In  front  of  him,  a  Nazi  soldier  shot  him  dead  and  he  went  running  to  hi  and  pinned  down  the  murder  and  arrested  him.  He  knew  that  the  murderer  was  in  jail  and  he  later  escaped  but  he  vividly  remembered  his  face.  Fear  of  his  fate  and  destiny  slowly  clouded  his  thoughts,  but  work  was  the  only  sunshine  to  clear  his  fear  and  anger.    Bill  got  up  and  looked  at  his  watch-­‐  twenty  past  three-­‐  and  rushed  down  to  his  secretary  and  told  her  to  make  a  list  of  all  the  Iron  &  Steel  plants  in  and  around  New  York.    After  an  hour  of  analysis  on  the  list  he  finalized  on  Alfred  Clark  &  Co.    Bill  leaves  to  that  factory  and  goes  to  the  director  there.    He  tells  the  reason  he  was  here  and  the  director  assigns  a  person  to  show  him  the  place.  As  that  person  enters  the  room  images  of  his  dead  brother  jump  up  to  his  mind  and  he  goes  and  holds  that  man’s  collar  with  force.    “Who  are  you?”  asked  Bill.    “Who  are  you?”  asked  Togo.  “Were  you  involved  in  the  war?”    “No”      Bill  left  his  collar  and  Togo  told  Bill  to  follow  him.    After  an  hour,  he  Togo  completed  telling  Bill  what  he  needed  to  know  and  Bill  walked  to  the  director  and  asked  him  that  the  Police  Department  will  need  a  representative  in  their  office  from  the  factories  side.    The  director  thought  for  some  time  and  assigned  Togo.    Togo  accepted.      

 III  

 Togo  knew  that  the  person  he  faced  today  knew  him  during  the  war,  but  did  not  understand  why  he  was  so  aggressive.  

 He  got  up  and  he  left  for  the  police  station.    His  new  workplace  was  a  larger  building  next  to  the  police  station,  which  took  care  of  all  the  administrative  functions  of  the  Police  in  the  state.    He  climbed  up  the  stairs.      He  went  up  to  Bill’s  room  and  Bill  greeted  him.        

         IV    

Bill  kept  staring  at  Togo  and  he  kept  growing  suspicious  about  him.  Bill  slowly  recollected  on  detail  of  the  incident  in  the  French  camp-­‐it  was  raining  then  and  that   man   slipped   on   a   puddle   of   water   and   fell   on   a   large   rock   and   he   was  wounded  deeply  near  his  stomach.  Such  a  deep  wound  must  have  been  stitched  and   suddenly   Bill   knew   how   to   confirm   if   Togo   was   the   man   who   killed   his  brother.  If  Togo  had  a  scar  on  his  stomach  he  is  the  murderer.    Weeks  passed  by  and  Bill’s  suspicion  against  Togo  slowly  reduced.          

V    

Togo  kept  staying  away  from  Bill’s  eyes,  as  he  knew  that  Bill  was  there  when  he  was  in  the  camp  as  he  continuously  asked  him  if  he  was  stationed  in  France  and  if  he  saw  some  one  dead  in  his  life  or  if  he  loved  his  brothers.  But  the  reason  for  such  a  strong  suspicion  was  not  clear.    He  walked  out  of  his  room  and  he  saw  it  was  raining  outside.  He  stood  near  the  window  and  saw  a  tree  get  uprooted  by  the  wind  and  suddenly  fell  on  Bills  room.    Togo  went  running  their  and  he  saw  Bills  leg  under  a  branch.  He  lifted  the  branch  up  and  saw  a  deep  bruise  on  Bill’s  leg.  The  first  aid  kit  was  too  far  from  the  place  so  he  removed  his  shirt  and  tied  it  to  Bill’s  leg  for  temporary  stoppage  of  blood  flow.  

   VI    

Bill  kept  moaning  in  pain  and  he  was  sure  that  Togo  could  not  have  killed  his  brother,  as  he  was  too  considerate  about  people  around  him.  But  Togo  removed  his  shirt  and  Bill  was  shocked  to  see  the  scar  on  his  abdomen  and  his  opinions  about  Togo  disappeared  and  incredible  rage  filled  Bill.    

   VII    

Bill  was  taken  to  the  hospital  and  Togo  sat  beside  him.  Bill  was  asleep  but  Togo  kept  getting  negative  vibes  when  he  sat  next  to  him.  Togo  looked  at  Bill’s  leg  and  he  knew  that  Bill  had  no  grudge  against  him.  Suddenly,  looking  at  Bill’s  leg,  Togo  remembered  Jock.  He  wanted  to  meet  him.  He  went  to  the  office  downstairs  and  gave  him  a  call  Jock  said  he  would  be  there  in  ten  minutes.      

     

VIII    Bill  slowly  opened  his  eyes  and  he  saw  Togo  in  front,  talking  to  another  person.  He  could  not  see  Togo  clearly,  but  recognized  him  due  to  his  body  structure.  Bill’s  eyes  burn  furiously  and  he  reaches  for  his  gun.  He  had  no  idea  about  his  action’s  consequences.  He  aimed  at  Togo  stomach  as  his  head  could  not  move  any  higher  as  he  was  tired,  to  aim  his  head.  One  man  fell  to  the  floor  but  Bill’s  vision  prevented  him  from  recognizing  who  died.    

   IX    

Togo  was  shocked.  As  Jock  and  he  spoke  to  each  other  the  former’s  pen  fell  down.  As  he  bent  down  to  pick  it  up,  he  heard  a  bullet  shot  and  Jock  fell  to  the  floor  with  blood  oozing  out  of  his  neck.  Togo  looked  up  and  saw  Bill  with  a  gun.  People  crowded  around,  none  doing  anything.  After  an  hour  Police  officers  came  asked  people  about  what  happened  and  took  Bill  into  arrest  and  Jock’s  body  to  the  cemetery.      

     X    

Togo  looked  out  his  window  in  his  home  and  knew  that  he  had  nothing  else  to  worry  about  as  the  only  proof  of  his  involvement  in  the  war  was  behind  bars  and  the  only  person  who  knew  his  past  was  in  a  place  from  he  cannot  tell  anybody  about  the  crime  his  “friend”  had  indulged  in.    

Carl  Togo  was  there  as  a  free  person  with  nothing  to  carry  from  the  past  filled  with  no  guilt  or  fear  but  only  a  sour  memory  of  two  of  his  associates’  dead  corpses-­‐  one  he  needed  &  the  other  who  needed  him-­‐  and  he  was  ready  to  face  the  world,  without  any  FEAR.      

     

By  Akshar;  August  5,  2011.