And then there was.. Dr Khargharia

My rendezvous with the paranormal has always been limited to the confines of my rich and often wild imagination. Let it appeal to the judgmental critique that I am not a lonesome day dreamer. In this age of measured, careful, syncopated emotions, this imagination is simply, my instant trip to the land of vicarious thrill, a minor detour, in our otherwise drab lives of algorithmic precision and repeatability. But today was special for two different reasons. Today this algorithm branched into the Kafkaesque territory and I came face to face with my vivid imaginations of the paranormal. Today was also special because I had been pronounced a doctor of philosophy and the story begins where these two reasons meet atop the majestic Mt Lemon. I and four friends drove up to the heights of the Mt Lemmon to celebrate my brand-new achievement. The night had already set into a somber note and a grand moon illuminated the mountains in a queer sort of way… they appeared strangely alive in their century old sedentary life-style. By then, we had already driven quite high up when we spotted at a brilliant vantage point in the cradle of the mountains while the faint city lights flickered away at a distance. We hopped out of the car, and took a moonlit walk towards a mammoth rock. We suddenly heard a faint repetitive laughter bordering on the hysterical. That was a little strange because the empty parking lot clearly suggested that we had no human company that night. We stopped, walked on and stopped again. The sound of the laughter grew incessantly stronger now and in the back drop we then heard a mumble of words – in English …perhaps, a very familiar voice. A thousand thoughts arose in our tumultuous minds, while we tried to fathom the possibilities of what our journey would reveal that night. We shuddered at those thoughts and yet marched on, relishing every moment of an agonizing fear that had no precedence in our lives thus far. Suddenly, I thought, I heard someone scream …yes in English… clear English…..’I am a doctor’…while the laughter at the backdrop grew incessantly shrill. It was the voice of a woman or perhaps two….distinctly two. We heard it again, this time louder…’I am a doctor’. Who is she? What does she mean? What are her circumstances? This is not Wordsworth’s Solitary Reaper, but evokes the same questions about her past, her joys and her sorrows, her losses and her gains, her successes and her failures. Can we help? We suddenly found asking each other this question as if we just woke up from a spell. We rushed close to the source of the sound with our hearts racing fast. We searched and searched and we could find no faces while the voices lingered on. Were we still in the world of imaginary thrill? We had it captured on video. It could not possibly be, because all five of us heard the laughter and the words – bold and distinct. Perhaps tonight we did have our first encounter with the paranormal, at least a great idea to romance with. But alas! just as every good thing has to come to an end, this momentary thrill now meets its sad demise as I sign-off as that faceless voice engulfed in the omnipresent darkness of that Mt Lemon night.

Book Review: The Collector by John Fowles

Read in July 2008, San Jose, CA

I picked up this book from the San Jose Public Library. ‘The Collector’ is the first book I am reading by John Fowles. Although I own his ‘The French Lieutenant's Woman’ I never got to reading it. After having read this book I will never be able to catch butterflies or keep a caged bird. This book has been a journey through the minds of both the collector Frederick/Caliban and his beautiful collection – La Boh`eme Miranda. Frederick collects variegated butterflies and the story unfolds as he makes a new addition to his collection – Miranda, a human, as alive, as beautiful and as free spirited as his beautiful butterflies. The fascinating attribute of this book is that although Frederick is the soul-less devil that kidnaps and imprisons Miranda in the dark basement of his cottage, in a strange way he appears noble, generous, morally upright even. He is an intensely passionate individual, and a man of action. At the end, I am left with a feeling of sympathy for Frederick in spite of his almost diabolical selfishness. Miranda’s free spirit, juxtaposed against the confines of a dark basement, brilliantly flashes in the form of the silent philosophical discourses she has with her diary night after night. Miranda's numerous attempts at escaping from this almost fool proof arrangement that Frederick has put forth, makes me keep going back to my sixth grade chapter in Hindi literature – how the timid deer stages his most vehement fight for survival against none other than the mighty lion when he knows he cannot run any faster to escape. The deer will never win, but it makes me wonder, did it occur to him at death, if not through life, that he had such unfathomable courage as to fight a lion? Did he ever realize what he was capable of?

Miranda was very lonely, captivated in Frederick’s prison, with her loved ones – her family, G.C., her friends at LadyMont so far away. Frederick too was lonely in his own way. There was no one in the whole wide world that cared a damn if he lived or died. Miranda at least had her thoughts to keep company, fiery conversations with G.C. about the New People, art, sex, music and politics. Frederick had nothing, absolutely nothing but his collections. He really was, as Miranda would put it, a vast emptiness curved in a human shape. If I were to weigh their relative loneliness I wouldn't be able to say for sure, which was more tragic. At least they both had hope. Miranda waiting for the day she is free and Frederick waiting for the day he finds in Miranda, the woman whose company he desired.

At the end, I find my heart weeping for Miranda as much as for Frederick. Perhaps the book’s writing style, of first person singular, first used by Frederick and then by Miranda, had a role to play in accentuating that, as if they both were narrating their part of the story to an objective reader.