“You can tell me,” she winked.
Zoya smiled, getting the allusion to last night’s conversation.
“Have you ever thought that we might all be born in this world to fulfill a particular unique destiny?”
“Ppfffftt…” Nancy almost choked on her coffee from the hilarity of this statement. The coffee spurted out of her mouth and splashed on to her off-white polo shirt. She quickly grabbed a napkin from next to her plate and started dabbing at the stains.
“No, I am serious,” Zoya insisted, reaching out to hand her some more napkins from her side of the table.
“Jake says some weird ass shit like that sometimes. Me, I couldn’t really care less. But if he believes in something, I sure as hell wanna support him. What’s gotten into you though?”
“No, nothing,” Zoya mumbled, almost inaudibly. “It’s just something that I have been thinking about lately… and… something someone said has me wondering if I am different from other people. Different, not by chance, but for a reason.”
“You’re talking yourself in circles there, chica. Of course, you’re different. We all are. And the reason I am different is ‘cos of those ‘shrooms.” Nancy smirked.
“Shrooms? You don’t mean, magic mushrooms, I hope?” Zoya said, her eyes widening with concern.
“’Course not. C’mon we’ll be late for class,” said Nancy mischievously as she yanked on Zoya’s arm.
Together they walked outside into the bright fall morning. It was a bit nippy. Zoya involuntarily slipped her hands into the pockets of her beige, fall jacket. There was a crumpled paper inside the right pocket. She pulled it out. It was the same little hand-scribbled note she had discovered in the library. She opened it up fondly, remembering the moment she was inspired to apply for the student exchange program in London. The paper had a sketch of a ballerina in one corner and across the middle were the words…
Wait, what happened to the words? “Where there is a will there is a way”?
Zoya flipped the paper over and scanned the other side. Nothing there but some more doodles. The words that were written there before had completely disappeared.
I could swear I saw the words! Zoya thought, starting to doubt her sanity. In her panic she scanned the paper over and over again. Still nothing.
“Hey, slowcoach, you comin’?” hollered Nancy, who was trotting along about twenty metres ahead.
But Zoya could barely respond. She nodded her head softly, her heart in a flutter as she stepped forward to join her roommate. Her life was starting to get a lot weirder than she had anticipated.
CHAPTER seven
As promised, Nirmala was waiting for Alejandro in the lobby of his Dwarka hotel at 8AM sharp. She was wearing a pair of black dusty jeans and an emerald blue top with gorgeous, hand-woven floral patterns. Her shoulder-length hair was tied in a neat pony-tail with some unruly strands caressing her temple. She flicked them aside with her left hand to make eye contact with Alejandro and extended her right for a handshake.
“Good morning. Ready; for the trip?” she asked with a smile.
“Ready as ever. I heard it will be a bumpy one.”
“Hah! You heard that right, I’m afraid. But if you survived the scuba yesterday, I am sure you will be just fine.”
“Oh yes, don’t remind me. I didn’t tell you, but I get sea sick.”
“Is that so? What a surprise! I thought Mexico is all about the beautiful beaches and water sports.”
“Yes, it is.” He laughed. “But it is much more than that. And I am not from the coast. I have inland blood. My ancestors—”
“Were Mayan. They lived in the rain forest and grew corn. I know,” Nirmala interrupted, her face lighting up with a coy smile.
“Looks like someone did her background check on me!”
At this, they both started laughing.
“We’ve got to get going. Otherwise, we’ll not make it to Rajkot before the University closes for the day,” Nirmala finally said when she was done laughing.
“You’re right. The car, is it here?”
“Yes, it’s outside,” said Nirmala as she headed for the door with Alejandro right behind.
Sure enough, there was a white ambassador car waiting outside the hotel with an ‘Archaeological Survey of India’ label painted on its side. On seeing them approach the vehicle, a white-uniformed chauffer got out of the car and opened the door.
“Good morning, sir, ma’am, I am Raju, your driver,” he said politely.
“Thank you, Raju,” said Nirmala as she climbed into the car. Alejandro followed.
Raju closed the door, got into the driver’s seat and started the car. Alejandro was excited to be off on their road trip to the research institute in Rajkot. Here he would finally meet the renowned professor, archaeologist and Sanskrit scholar Dr. Sinha, who might be able to help him piece together the puzzle that the ancients of the world had left behind as clues for modern day humanity.
The road out of Dwarka was dusty and riddled with potholes. The narrow street was lined with little shops displaying their colorful goods and artifacts. The scorching sun outside was beating down on the tinted windows of their car with so much force that the air conditioning inside was struggling to keep up.
In the distance Alejandro saw an open field or some kind of playground where a few local boys wearing nothing but skimpy shorts were kicking around a large melon, their legs covered to the knees with mud and grime. It seemed like some kind of a rustic soccer match. On Nirmala’s side of the road were a few local tea-stands that doubled as motels for the tired truck drivers and travellers. The shops were busy. A few young boys were running around with kettles in hand ready to fill the customers’ terracotta tea-cups with a fresh dose of scalding hot chai-tea.
Nirmala studied Alejandro carefully as he stared out the window, taking in the surroundings with awe. She was not used to having foreign visitors in this part of the country, and it seemed like Alejandro wasn’t used to visiting these parts of the world much either. What she did not know was in fact, this was his debut voyage to India. A perilous journey of discovery that he had undertaken with trepidation, guided only by his relentless pursuit of the truth behind the mysteries of ancient civilizations.
“You never really told me what brought you to India. I know it’s Dwarka, but why suddenly these ruins? They have nothing to do with your research about the Mayans,” Nirmala asked after several minutes of observation.
“That is a long story. But we have time, right?”
“About five hours, yes, perhaps more with traffic.”
“Good. That should be plenty. You have heard about the calendar of the Maya people, yes?”
“Of course. The one that supposedly predicted the end of the world on 21st December 2012. Yet, here we are!” Nirmala teased. “I’m just joking, I don’t mean any disrespect,” she added.
“Here we are indeed. So, does that tell you something about this calendar then?”
“That it was out of whack?”
“Maybe or perhaps we are interpreting it wrong. No? You don’t think?”
“Definitely plausible.”
“Exactly. In my studies of the Maya people, I have found that they were a highly advanced and skilled race with the ability to predict cosmic events with frightening accuracy. Why then this error, I thought. In my search to find answers I started looking for clues in other ancient civilizations from roughly the same time periods and prior; the Egyptians, the Indians, the Chinese. Then one day, while poring through some Indian history, I discovered that ancient India had a system of chronicling time in the form of segments, or ‘Yugas’ as you call it. Am I right?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“When I researched these so-called Yugas, I found Dr. Sinha’s documentary on Dwarka, where he talks about how the sinking of this now submerged ancient city marked the end of the last major Yuga, The Dwapara Yuga, and the beginning—”
“Of Kali,” Nirmala chimed in enthusiastically.
“Yes, Kali Yuga. And that is when I contacted your team to learn more about this mystery city that ended a cosmic era. I believe that the ancients of the world had an elevated consciousness and a superior pulse on the universal rhythm. Something that modern man has lost the ability to demonstrate. I am trying to piece together the Mayan understanding of the cosmic rhythm from the clues left behind by your forefathers, the Hindus. I believe that several ancient civilizations may have deciphered the code of the Universe, independently of one another and understanding one will help us understand another and so on. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely. So, you think that—” Nirmala was cut-short in mid-sentence when the car came to a screeching halt with a sudden jerk. In front of them was what looked like a police picket with several cop cars and motorcycles parked at random angles. About half a dozen uniformed policemen were waving the car to a halt as a couple of motorcycles advanced towards their car and pulled up right next to the window. A moustached policeman with a pot belly, descended the first motorcycle and leaned his head through the driver’s window and spoke to Raju in Gujarati. Raju scrambled to pull out some documentation from the glove compartment and provided it to the officer for inspection.
Alejandro started to feel a wave of panic overcome him.
“What is going on?” he whispered to Nirmala who looked visibly flustered.
“I am not sure. But it’s best not to divulge what we’re up to. Let me take it from here.”
In a few minutes, another policeman peeked in through the passenger window and spoke to Nirmala. Her Gujarati was not great, and she struggled to respond.
“You speak English?” she tentatively asked after a couple of questions.
“Yes, I can. Who is this man?”
“He is a tourist from Mexico sir.”
“Tourist? In Dwarka? In Government vehicle?” The officer sounded incredulous.
“Yes, sir. He is a very reputed scholar in Mexico and here to give a lecture about the Chichen Itza at the Archaeological Survey of India’s office in Rajkot. While he’s here, the institute sent me to give him a tour of the local sights.”
“Okay. Follow us to the station.”
“No problem, sir.” Nirmala quickly turned to Raju and gave him some hurried instructions in Hindi.
Alejandro sat frozen in his seat, sweating profusely.
“He does not believe us,” he said to Nirmala in a hushed tone.
“I know.”
“He is planning to kidnap us.”
At this, Nirmala’s eyes went wide with surprise. “Likely, but how could you know for sure?”
“Intuition,” Alejandro lied. He had read his thoughts.
The police officer mounted his motorcycle and waved at Raju, indicating that they follow him. Raju obediently started the vehicle, turned around and followed. Two other police cars tailed the convoy as it inched forward through the busy streets of Dwarka.
Alejandro knew that they were in trouble. He could think of a few ways to escape but he was in a dilemma. It would mean that he would have to leave Nirmala behind. They would surely question her and uncover the truth of their mission. The political machine guiding these officers would then seek to silence her research. She would disappear without a trace just like some of her predecessors, the ones she had mentioned last night over the phone. Alejandro couldn’t let that happen. In the short time that he had gotten to know her, he had developed a strange attachment for this inquisitive and affable lady, and of course, the research was an invaluable treasure that they could not afford to lose sight of. He needed to think of a second plan, one that would save them both as well as their research. His brain started working furiously on a possible solution.
CHAPTER eight
Chris Wright looked directly at Bobo, the rhesus macaque, and imagined a banana inside a drawer, communicating the image directly to its brain.
“Nothing yet,” he said to his colleague, Sam, who had his eyes glued to the computer monitor in the control room.
“Give it two more minutes,” he continued.
Again, he imagined the banana and its location. For five seconds it felt like nothing would happen, with Bobo staring eagerly in Chris’s direction, expecting a toy. But then the computer screen in front of Sam snapped into life and produced an image.
“What is that thing?” Sam wondered out loud peering intently into his screen.
“It’s a banana,” responded his fellow graduate student, Julio, who was also studying the image with keen interest.
“Really?”
“Yep. It’s how he sees it. The banana. It looks like that because he is seeing it inside the drawer.”
“Looks like a shoe to me.”
“A shoe? What are you, a clown? I have never seen a shoe like that except at the circus,” Julio joked.
“Shh!” Chris said through his microphone, bringing a finger to his lips, motioning them to stop talking.
Bobo was moving. He averted his eyes from Chris’s and started scanning the room frantically, as if searching for something specific. Then he spotted the chest of drawers in the corner of the room and started advancing towards it, slowly but deliberately. Once in front of it, he pulled open the top-drawer and discovered the hidden banana.
A smile lit up Chris’s handsome face. His experiment was working. Soon enough, Bobo had seized the banana, and was inspecting it with caution.
“Eat,” said Chris, wordlessly again.
Sure enough, in a couple of seconds, Bobo was peeling the banana ready to munch into the delicious treat.
The screen in front of Sam and Julio did not record any image pursuant to the latest command. This was expected of course, since the nanoparticle array microelectrode had attached to Bobo’s optical nerve. It only transmitted the visual signals received from the monkey’s brain and nothing else. The ‘eat’ command did not induce a visual response, so there was no signal coming from the optical nerve. Fair enough. Chris removed his headphones and microphone and walked out of the room, leaving Bobo alone with his banana. He had accomplished his task for today.
Chris left his lab at around eight thirty that evening, locking up behind himself, since he was the last to leave. Usually, his lab was much more occupied at that hour, but being the Friday before a long-weekend, everyone had left early. Gathering his favorite blue jumper, fall jacket and trusty black felt hat, Chris walked out of the building and into the light drizzle outside.
“London has the gloomiest weather,” he grumbled to himself as his mind drifted fancifully to the sunny autumns, wine orchards and vibrant colours of his Bay area hometown. His phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Chris, it’s Wolfgang.”
“Ah, Dr. Müller, what’s news?”
“Where are you now?”
“Just left the lab. On my way home,” said Chris, as he felt suddenly wistful.
At last, his years of post-doctoral work at Oxford University were starting to bear fruit. Upon finishing his PhD at Stanford, Chris’s family expected him to find a job and stay in California. Breaking the news of moving to London, UK to his mom had been one of the hardest things he ever had to do. But this was all for a greater purpose. The world had got to be saved.
“I don’t have many minutes. My office was compromised. I am at my home temporarily. Did it work? Your experiment? It works?” Dr. Müller hastily enquired.
“Compromised? Oh, lord! Yes, yes indeed. It worked with a visual impulse. We can do it. We can plant an object in the field of view of a macaque. Explains why it works with humans. Now I have to try without having the actual object in the room at all…”
“What object vas it you try?” Dr. Müller’s German accent thickened with his excitement.
“Um, a banana…”
“Ah, ok, did you used a control?”
“No, not this time. I was just setting up today, but of course, tomorrow that’s the plan.”
“Und the distance?”
“
Between me and the monkey?”
“Of course.”
“About ten metres.”
“Good start, but we need to try more distance. Und change the objects. Use a control. Record the signal from the electrodes. Keep it up. Time is limited. I must leave now. Vill call later.” And with that, he hung up.
The conversation filled Chris’s heart with a confusing rush of ambivalence mingled with a determined sense of purpose. His journey, ever since he had found out about his special mental abilities had not been easy. From the day Dr. Müller convinced him to join his fellow Hekameses on a mission to save the world from possible Armageddon, he knew that his path would be riddled with obstacles.
Not being able to share his secrets with his immediate family had not made things any easier. His widowed mother and older brother had spent sleepless nights worrying about him during his long absences. His excuse had always been research, and indeed it was in most cases. And the cause he is fighting for, well that entails a lot of research as well. So, if anything, it was nothing more than a white lie to explain away his absences by alluding to research.
CHAPTER Nine
Zoya was having an excellent day at karate class. She was in full form today. Each duel had surpassed her expectation. Her kicks and punches were landing with utmost precision. Before her opponents even had the chance to see her next move coming, they were sprawled on the floor, the ground slipping away from beneath their feet.
“Very good, Zoya. Change partners now, come quick, everybody.” Mathew sensei gave his hurried instructions.
Zoya found herself duelling now with James, a tall grad student with broad shoulders and a stern bearded face. He looked like a formidable opponent. But Zoya always thought that karate was a curious art. It was not about size. It was about dexterity and flexibility; about dealing the blow at the right time and right place, about channelling the ‘ki’ and using your opponents ‘ki’ right against him, about constant vigilance and the like. She had mastered this art like none other of her age. Before anyone could wink, her opponent would be on the floor. Not many wanted to duel her, and the ones that did were at least blackbelts of higher dans. She felt ready for this challenge.
The Coming of Kalki Page 4