by Anmol Batra
“I understand,” replies Arjun with a sad face.
“However, I do have a few more lessons for you. The next lesson is about changing the size of your spirit.” smiles Howrang.
For a second Arjun feels excited, but then a question flashes into his head. “We can’t touch anything physically, so how can a change in size be of any help to us?” Asks Arjun curiously.
Howrang chuckles and then replies, “Look at the grass all around you. You can clearly see the clean green grass with a few insects when you look carefully. However, the grass has insects far smaller than the human eye can perceive.”
“The world around us has micro-organisms which we can never see as humans, but as a soul we can. For looking at such small creatures, you need to reduce the size of your non-existent self-image which you maintain a size equal to that of a human being. Once you are down to the size of an ant, you will be able to see things as an ant sees them,” Howrang continues.
“And how will growing larger be of any help to me?” Asks Arjun.
“It’s good you asked me that,” says Diachi. “Do you ever wonder why telescopes have huge lenses on their fronts?” He asks.
“I don’t know… something to do with capturing bigger images… I believe,” Arjun replies doubtfully.
“Well, you are partially right. It’s rather more like a highly-detailed photograph. And just like a big telescope; if you outgrow your size, as big as a mountain or rather as big as the Earth, you can look into the vast corners of the universe without travelling that far,” replies Diachi.
“Hmmm… I understand,” says Arjun.
“Being a Time Guard is more about knowledge and awareness; much more than an ordinary human being. Gradually you will realise how knowledge and time become your strong companions when shouldering responsibilities,” comments Diachi.
“So how shall we start?” Arjun smiles at Diachi.
“First, practise what I have already taught you and then we shall proceed,” suggests Diachi
“I can practise at home. Can’t we continue with this as of now?” Pleads Arjun.
Though Diachi doesn’t like Arjun deferring his practice, he eventually agrees to the next lesson, with Arjun continuing to insist, like a child.
“Alright then! Let’s head to Lajpat Nagar Market,” orders Diachi, and turns around.
“Please wait!” Requests Arjun.
“If we are going that far, maybe I should leave my body back home,” says Arjun.
“Hmmm…” murmurs Diachi. “Good that you remember yesterday’s learnings.”
Arjun returns to Swati’s residence, leaves his body, and flies to Mehrauli Archaeological Park. Seeing him up in the sky, Diachi joins him in mid-air.
“Follow me!” Instructs Diachi.
Arjun starts chasing the ghost through the air and soon they arrive in the busy market of Lajpat Nagar, a long street with traffic jams on both sides of the road. Both walk across the street into a narrow lane encroached by shopkeepers, leaving no room for vehicles to cross. Hangers wrapped in winter wear anchored from thick metal frames which occupied most of the lane
Arjun feels uncomfortable as most of the crowd pass right through him, but Howrang walks seamlessly through the swarm of women. Arjun continues to follow him and soon both reach the outside of a cosmetic shop.
Women wearing red and white bangles carrying shopping bags, giggle outside the shop. Howrang walks right through them, unlike Arjun who prefers to go around them like a normal human being, avoiding a shoulder rub.
A small outlet with a decorated roof and walls covered with racks mounted on three sides of the shop. The shop hosts a wooden counter in the middle, with a stack of flat boxes racked on each other, placed along the short edge of the counter. The roof has three white bulbs concealed in the roof itself, right above the counter.
Two men, one in his 50s with grey hair and a young teenager, sit on the other side of the counter, watching movie on a small television mounted on a shelf.
Diachi climbs the counter close to an empty coffee mug. He signals Arjun to do the same and Arjun follows through.
“Look into my eyes Arjun,” asks Diachi in a calm voice.
Arjun could guess what Diachi was going to do next, but he is just not sure what they are doing in the cosmetic shop. Arjun avoids questioning Diachi and gazes deep into his eyes, which reflect the image of glass-covered cabinets mounted on walls. Within a fraction of second, the eyes and face of Howrang start receding backwards and Arjun can barely see him.
As Howrang disappears, Arjun looks around and can see a long white floor, running to the end of the horizon, with multiple sun-like objects aligned across the bright sky. At the far end in one direction, the mesmerised Arjun can just make out a tall, red building with a ceramic finish.
Arjun hovers a little up in the sky and in the middle of all this, he sees Diachi standing at a distance.
Arjun goes closer to Diachi and questions him. “Where are we?”
“In a cosmetic shop,” replies Diachi.
Arjun looks around again but his view reveals nothing new. Arjun flies towards the building and Howrang accompanies him. On his way, he finds bricks that are bigger than him, made of white, semi-transparent glass and scattered on the white desert in the middle of nowhere.
Though curious, Arjun decides to inspect the building first. He flies closer to the red building’s top and discovers a huge cavity in the roof ,with a white shiny finish on the inside making it look like a giant ceramic well fixed to the ground; the structure seems to spread across half a kilometre or more. He reaches the rim of the standing well and looks inside it.
After a minute of inspection, Arjun looks back at Diachi. “Ok, this red building is a coffee mug.”
“Absolutely right, and what did you think about the white bricks you saw on your way?” Asks Diachi.
“I don’t know…sugar cubes?” Replies Arjun doubtfully.
“Those are sugar crystals. In the real human world, they are a few millimetres in size,” says Diachi.
“So technically, you are millimetre tall as of now.”
As Arjun and Howrang wait on the edge, a giant house fly with pure black eyes enters the ceramic well, but a second later a huge human hand with an ink stain on the index finger flies down from the sky gripping the ceramic well from the outside with its thumb and fingers. The fly shivers and abruptly rushes outside.
Diachi flies down from the edge and lands on the white ground. Arjun follows him.
“Step closer to those sugar cubes and try to increase your size compared to them”. Try and cultivate the same feeling that you did when you first stopped time,” says Diachi, beaming at Arjun.
Arjun steps closer to the sugar crystals and stares at them. An hour passes by and the white horizon and the white sun remain motionless in the sky. Arjun can’t increase the size by even a fraction.
Howrang steps closer to Arjun.
“I can’t!” Yells Arjun, looking at the white crystals.
Though Diachi never showed hostility, he wasn’t happy with Arjun’s progress. After a few minutes of effort, he asks Arjun to look into his eyes and he then increases Arjun and his own sizes to a few centimetres each.
The white desert had now transformed itself into a wide bridge and now Arjun could clearly see the entire shop and the two men standing along the counter.
Two beautiful women in their early 20s enter the shop and the elderly man turns the TV volume down. One of them requests Oud and few seconds later the counter is crowded with tall glass bottles filled with oil and stopped with ball pin-shaped glass corks.
“Maybe I should practise this at home,” suggests Arjun, restless after too many failures.
Distracted and mesmerized with the surroundings, Arjun moves his head in all directions. Unhappy, Diachi remains calm and then replies.
“Alright, but I have another assignment for you,” says Diachi
Diachi points his finger at one of the oil bottles with
saffron-coloured oil. “Enter the bottle from its neck and smell it. Come back and tell me how exactly you felt,” says Diachi.
“Arjun swiftly flies up into the sky and enters the half-filled glass bottle. He reaches the level of the oil and tries to smell it but can’t. He looks outside through the glass searching for Diachi, but to his surprise he is nowhere to be seen
A clicking sound, and the mouth of the bottle is now closed. Arjun feels a little concerned. Keeping his hands forward, he tries to crawl through the glass wall.
A weird sensation, and Arjun is shocked to find that his hands don’t pass through the glass wall. Stunned and disturbed, Arjun tries to barge through but fails to penetrate the wall even by a fraction.
Arjun takes a minute to think and he then tries to get at the bottom of the oil, only to realise that the base of the bottle is also made of glass. After struggling for a while, he sits down on the base of the glass.
After a minute, he hears a voice from nowhere. “Arjun, don’t lose hope!”
It doesn’t take long for Arjun to guess that it was Howrang who just spoke to him.
“Why did you put me in here?” Asks Arjun
“For your own good,” replies Diachi
“You never told me that we can’t walk through glass,” frets Arjun.
“Well, I told you. You can’t smell, and you still went on to feel the fragrance. Why?” Asks Diachi
“Ok! I get your point,” replies Arjun in a despairing tone. “But what now?”
“Nothing much. Pray for a new customer to step in, request for Oud and then you will be out. Or else you will lose your physical self by the end of the day,” warns Diachi.
“That doesn’t sound good,” grunts Arjun angrily.
“Take your time Arjun; you have close to four hours,” says Diachi.
A minute of silence. Unable to hear Howrang anymore, he questions with a loud voice. “Any hints?”
In silence, Arjun could hear the sound of the commentary from the TV but Howrang was nowhere to be heard.
Arjun spends an hour trying to recall Diachi’s teachings. Sometimes, he tries impulsively and sometimes he sits down at the bottom of the glass bottle to think again.
From the bottle he can see the magnified clock which read 2 PM. Tired, Arjun looks around and can see sugar crystals still lying on the white counter.
With strong determination, he starts gazing at them. After trying for thirty minutes, Arjun can see the glass wall receding. He looks down and to his surprise, the pond of saffron oil has now transformed into a huge lake.
Arjun smiles cheerfully, knowing that he has reduced his size. Overwhelmed, he flies happily upwards in a spiral but ends up hitting the cork with his head.
Despite the thud, his head isn’t hurt, but the crash shatters his happiness. Arjun disappointedly stares at the glass cork blocking the mouth of the bottle. After contemplating for a minute, he carefully observes the rim which has minor slits clogged with oil, one third the size of his own head.
Arjun smiles and he further reduces his size to a fraction of the slit. He then glides through the slit only to get stuck at another narrow opening. Arjun attempts another size reduction and achieves it more swiftly than before. A second later, he manages to fly out of the slit, exiting the rim of the bottle. With joy, he flies up high in the cosmetic shop and then turns around to look at the bottle again.
“Arjun” A voice from behind grabs his attention.
Arjun flips around only to find Diachi suspended in mid-air, ten times his size. Arjun smiles blissfully, the eternal happiness he felt when he had come first in a drawing competition back in school.
Diachi beams back at Arjun happily and says, “Great job Arjun, but the test is not over yet. You have a long way home. You still need to get back to normal size.”
Arjun quickly gets back to his normal size and flies up in the sky. Diachi accompanies him. Arjun smiles, looking at the building tops and the tiny cars running on the edges of a mosaic.
“Go home Arjun! And I’ll see you tomorrow again at 10,” instructs Howrang and glides upwards, overtaking Arjun in mid-air.
◆◆◆
Chapter 30
A Stranger With a Compass
3rd January 2013 10:00 AM Tungnath Village, Uttarakhand.
The clouds barely let any sunlight scatter over the hill. A thick white haze eclipses the sun and shines through with a bright silver lining. On the entrance of the abandoned Tungnath Village, Zaffar finds a few local men clearing off the snow from the cemented path, and another few installing solar panels above multiple cottages. A man who has climbed up a movable ladder is installing electric wires that run along the mountain. Another fellow is busy with a Theodolite, looking through its eyepiece.
Zaffar expected no one to be there but to his surprise, the locals seemed to be preparing for something. He looks around in all directions as he walks further uphill, trying to interpret what is happening.
Zaffar walks a few steps uphill. Behind his back, a giant vulture flies towards him. The Bird grips his hiking bag by its nylon rope and tries to pull it up. Zaffar buckles and grips the bag. He turns his head and tries to look up, but all he can see is a set of giant wings. The vulture tries to pull the bag more strongly. It digs one of its claws into Zaffar’s, shoulder leaving a slight wound. Zaffar tightly grips his bag and shakes his shoulders with full force.
The vulture further loses grip on the strap and eventually leaves it. Next, he takes flight uphill, leaving Zaffar with his bag.
Ferocious Zaffar, pulls out a poison dart strapped to his lower left arm. He swiftly takes aim, but a man suddenly grabs his right hand by the wrist.
“Relax brother! That poor bird doesn’t mean any harm to you,” utters Rahul while holding Zaffar by his arm, hoping to pacify him.
Zaffar looks back at Rahul. He feels like burying him in the snow but holds back, considering the fact that he is surrounded by so many people.
“I think he might have smelled meat or eggs in your bag, which is why he attacked,” continues Rahul humbly.
Zaffar shuffles a bit, adjusting his bag. “There is no meat in this bag,” he replies rudely.
Rahul observes Zaffar’s wound. He sympathises. “Okay! We have asked a local guy to set up a tea stall uphill, until the time we start work over here. He will start in another hour. You can have some tea and snacks in that cottage if you want,” replies Rahul in a friendly voice, pointing a finger towards one of the cottages.
“Thanks for the advice,” grunts Zaffar. Next, he takes a step uphill towards the temple.
“Hey!” Shouts Rahul
Zaffar turns around to look back at him.
“I think this...” continues Rahul as he picks up the sundial from snow. “…golden compass belongs to you. Is it brass?”
“No!” Replies Zaffar, snatching the compass from Rahul’s hand.
Zaffar takes another hour to reach Chandrashilla. At the top of the mountain he finds a four-foot tall temple-like structure with its entrance facing the sunset. The temple hosts a flat stone placed on the tip of its conical roof. Zaffar pulls out the hourglass and mounts the sundial over its pillars. Next, he places the combination over the flat stone. The sand inside the hourglass starts to glow and the stone below it turns purple. The folded triangle over the sundial beams upwards and the magnetic needle underneath the glass starts spinning.
Next, he hears a high-frequency sound, and all the clouds above the mountain take the shape of concentric circles in the sky, with the mountain top at its centre.
The strange phenomena also grabs Rahul’s attention as he works a few meters downhill near the village. “How come the clouds have parted so swiftly?” He Wonders.
4th January 2013 1:30 AM Ambala Cantonment, India.
In the third-AC coach of the Amritsar-Dehradun express, a middle-aged man wearing a Turban enters with a printed ticket in one hand and a trolley bag in other.
“34... 34… 34...” he murmurs, looking at smal
l numbers mounted above different seats, while walking across the corridor. After walking a few steps down the train, he finally reaches a cabin with the number ‘34’ near the window.
He slips down the trolley handle and slides the bag underneath his seat. Next, he tears apart the brown-coloured paper bag wrapped over the bedsheets and swiftly spreads it over his sleeper berth. After a minute of preparation, he stands on his seat stretching his back, and yawns.
Suddenly, his attention is grabbed by the hands of a man sleeping on the middle birth above his head, tightly clutching his blanket. Wrapped up like a cocoon, Zaffar is sweating and breathing heavily.
Deep inside his own mind, Zaffar is absorbed in a dream world. At the Chandrashilla, he stands alongside himself.
His lookalike smiles, looking at the sundial mounted over the hourglass. The sky was covered with clouds, bearing a slight tinge of purple.
“Congratulations Zaffar! We have achieved a great milestone in our life’s objective. It’s not far off from here,” he says, the glowing sand in the hourglass leaving a shine on his face.
“Next, we need the black morsel?” Asks Zaffar, looking into his eyes.
“Before we start looking for the black morsel, we need to build an atoot,” replies Zaffar’s lookalike.
“What’s atoot?” Asks Zaffar.
“Atoot in Hindi means the unbreakable. It’s an armour that will protect you from the guardians of the afterlife. You felt a shockwave when the second hourglass was placed at the exact opposite side of the Earth. That was merely a small outcome or rather a confirmation,”
“What confirmation?” Asks Zaffar.
“That the second pole of the hourglass warren has been deployed. The poles have crafted the conduit across the earth, passing through its core. They are immovable now. No force on earth can break this conduit.”