by Abhishek Roy
This had become a ritual for him. Every evening, he would splay them out on his desk and study them, trying to make sense out of the words. However, out of all the scrolls, his favourite was the one that was 800 years old. It spoke to him about the courtyard of God and how it led to immortality. But it surely didn’t describe the key, leading to the courtyard, as something extravagant. The verse described it as something that lies in plain view and allows one to see the most familiar image.
He sat wondering what the most familiar image might be except God’s himself. It might be of his family or maybe...himself.
The old man shook his head and smiled inwardly. He had grown old and his mind surely wasn’t capable of thinking with the same vigour as in his youth.
He got up and walked over to the table where the water was getting heated. He cleaned the porcelain cup that was kept beside it and poured some hot water into it. After mixing some Sencha green tea in the hot water and stirring it until the water was green, the man bowed and drank the refreshing tea.
While the heat of the tea coursed through his body, he heard the footsteps of a customer walk in. He looked out and heard him ask something.
“I am coming.” called out the old man in Japanese.
***
Kapittel 4
Mathias’s story — How it all began on the same day
HUNTINGDON HOME FOR BOYS, ORPHANAGE, HOUNSLOW, LONDON
March 6, 2017, Monday, 0700 hours GMT
My eyes shot open and the first thing I saw was Ram Shanbhag’s face looking down at me. He was shaking me violently and flashing my eyes with his Maglite. Like all the children in the institute of Huntingdon Home for Boys, Orphanage, Hounslow, London, he was also an orphan and my closest friend.
Unlike me who had been abandoned by my parents, his dad had gone missing during a Himalayan expedition. It must have been traumatic for the seven-year-old Ram, having never known his mother who died in labour. His mother was of North European origin and that explained his bright green eyes which shone bright at times in the midst of his otherwise South Indian features and complexion.
His dad, a migrated Indian from the state of Karnataka in India, was a theoretical physicist who worked in Cambridge University. Although it was only a blurry memory in Ram’s mind, he remembered something distinctly. He remembered his father speaking something about unusual weather in north India and disturbance in some kind of a chronoscale.
I pictured him sitting by the windowsill and pondering, with a faraway look in his eyes, about what the chronoscale might be.
I shook myself back from these thoughts and came back to the present. I lifted myself up and sat on the bed cross-legged. Out of irritation I batted Ram’s hand away groggily and his Maglite went flying across the room and landed with a series of thuds and rolled away.
Ram cried, “You bloody fool! For your kind information this is my father’s Maglite which I showed you yesterday and you just managed to break it into a million pieces.”
“I am sorry dude. I did not intend to do that.’ I said apologetically, ‘And it can never break into a million pieces.”
“Whatever”, said Ram with a frown on his face. “Now, hurry up! Don’t think you would like missing the math exam.”
“Oh no I wouldn’t. I would kill myself if I did so.”
“And I would not like to lose my best friend. So get up and get ready fast. You have not got much time left,” Ram pushed me.
Ram has been my roommate and my confidant from when I was seven, a few years after I came to the institute. Since I cannot remember anything about my life before coming to the institute (except faint blurry images of my parents), I can safely conclude that I have known Ram like a brother from a really tender age.
Ram is of a modest height of 5 feet 8” at the age of seventeen. However he is three inches shorter than me as I am 5’11’’. He has scraggly black hair that always falls over his eyes and is not at all athletic. He is half a year older than me and so cares for me like an elder brother. He is very considerate about my feelings and tries to protect me whenever he gets the chance, though I am much stronger than he is. He is an encyclopedia of mythology, as he loves all kinds of myths and legends unlike me who loves math and fabricating gadgets.
I jumped out of the bed and started doing my ablutions really fast for I knew that if I did not reach my class in exactly five minutes after the bell rang, I would have to spend three hours after school doing the janitor’s work.
While bathing I looked at my locket. It was the same one in my dream. Only now it felt much lighter on my neck. In the dream however, the locket was weighing down on my little neck probably because I was a small kid at that time. I stared at the blue gem embedded in the rectangular end of the locket that had been pulsating in my dream. I caressed it with my fingers, as it was the only reminder of my parents in my possession.
However when the droplets of water from the shower fell on the locket, the gem encrusted in it started to pulsate just as it was pulsating in my dream with the same incandescent luminosity. It was pulsating for nearly fifteen seconds until it stopped just as abruptly as it had started.
As I stood in the shower transfixed, staring at it, I could have sworn that I saw the faces of my parents on it. They were looking at me with the same longing in their eyes. I cupped the locket in my hand and brought it close to my face so that I could see them clearly.
” Take care sweetie, for we will be back, “ I heard my mother say.
I was flummoxed and instinctively let go of the locket. It fell from my hand and dangled loosely from my neck. For a second or too I did not move for this was too much for me to comprehend. It was surely a hallucination but it seemed utterly realistic.
While doing so I caught a glimpse of the small clock that I had kept on top of the pot and realized that I had only six minutes left. I decided to forget about it for the time being and immediately turned the knob of the shower causing it to stop, grabbed the towel and started drying my hair.
After getting ready, I came out of the toilet and realized that Ram was gone already. I grabbed my knapsack and gave a cursory glance to my old Casio digital watch that told me the time was 8:56. My eyes opened wide as I could hear the faint sound of the bell ringing. “Oh, crap!”, I whispered under my breath. The teachers were remarkably punctual about time. 9’o clock for them means 9’o clock sharp.
My mind went into overdrive and immediately started analyzing the time I would take to get to the school. Reaching the base of the dormitory would take me two minutes, crossing the playground would cost me around four minutes and climbing up the stairs to the fifth floor would take another two minutes. In total, it would take me eight minutes to reach my class whereas I had only four minutes left. I pushed open my window and saw the small box-like power house lying fourteen to sixteen feet below my window and eleven feet away from the dorm. I knew I had to do it to gain time. I walked back to the door, turned and took a deep breath. I started to run as fast as I could with the heavy knapsack. I took long strides and as soon as I reached two and a half feet away from my window I put my right leg on the windowsill and threw the knapsack out, letting it drag my body further and adding to my momentum as I also jumped.
For a single second it appeared to me as if time proper had slowed down. The sensation was beautiful. The stiff morning breeze buffeted my hair and it felt cold against my cheek. My bag felt unusually light on my shoulders as if it had defied gravity. I sailed through the air and suddenly the world in front of my eyes stared shooting upwards as I began falling down. I looked down in midair and saw that I had covered the whole of the eleven feet and was about to land on the hard concrete roof. I braced myself for the impact and landed on the roof with a soft thud and immediately performed a safety roll. After rolling on my shoulders I ran a few more steps and jumped again from the roof of the eight feet high powerhouse and performed a somersault in midair. I landed on the ground on all fours to cushion myself and immediately bolted towards
the playground.
The whole campus was rectangular in shape. The dormitory took up a large space in the southern end of the campus. The dormitory was traditional. A simple and cuboidal residential building that was painted white all over. There was an open corridor overlooking the playground and garden. Along this corridor were lined the doors to each individual 12x12 rooms.
The playground was a large, barren field of red soil, enclosed by a cyclone fence extending along the perimeter. It had two gates, one in the north and one in the south.
At the moment, I was headed for the main building that occupied the northern section of the campus. It was more or less similar to the dorm building but more spacious and contained many more rooms. Some were allotted to classes while some to laboratories and the staff. I loved working in the labs, especially the Computer ones, and spent most of my time in those fashioning gadgets.
I was jogging towards the southern gate that was fortunately open. On reaching the gate I jumped down the four steps, stopped and looked at my watch. I still had two minutes and forty seconds left. I started running again, only this time it was much faster.
The world around me turned into a blur. It seemed as if everybody had stopped doing their work and had completely frozen to a standstill. I was running pretty fast with the heavy bag slung on my shoulders. I desperately wanted to reach class in time. It was the last day and I could imagine the degree to which our school would get dirty after the dispersal bell rang.
By the time I reached the northern end of the playground it was 8:59 and 42 seconds that meant that I only had 18 seconds left. Without missing a beat I sprinted towards the colossal school building that loomed right in front of me, blocking the sun like a beast which I had to conquer. I burst through the doors leading into the building and rushed to the flight of stairs. The staircase was empty as everybody must already have reached their classes.
I climbed the stairs as fast as I could, skipping two stairs at a time.
8:59, 50 seconds
I reached the second floor…………
8:59, 53 seconds
The third floor whizzed past………
8:59, 56 seconds
The fourth floor, at last!
8:59, 58 seconds
Seven steps left………
8:59, 59 seconds...I could hear the class clock starting the gong!
Three steps left
The gong sounded the first stroke.
I flung open the door and burst into the classroom. The clock struck the hour. It was 9:00:00.
Most of my classmates were pretty nervous about the math paper and were probably making plans of copying from their nearest friend. The way I entered the classroom stunned them and they looked at me with eyes as big and round as ping pong balls. Even Ram was looking at me in the same manner.
Having lost all words I stood on the threshold, panting, trying to gulp in as much air as possible. I was not really exhausted. In fact there was not a bead of sweat on my forehead but I have had asthma from childhood. It was triggered whenever I was in stress or due to some allergen. However, this was a kind of asthma that didn’t affect my stamina. This was a good thing about me that often earned me praises.
I finally found some words and spat them out,
“May I come in Ma’am?”
“Yes,” said the invigilator, Mrs. Dawson. She was a senior teacher at the orphanage in her mid-forties. She has been the closest person I had resembling a parent. She has known me from a very tender age and has always been very fond of me. When she learned about my affinity towards physics, she took me under her wing, introduced me to the Science teachers and gave me all resources necessary to amplify my interest. I have been grateful to have her as my teacher.
“Yes you may, Mathias,” said Mrs. Dawson.
I entered the classroom and weaved through the many desks and came to my own desk on which was emblazoned — ROLL #19. I dumped my bag on the floor near my desk and sat down, waiting for the question paper to come to me. I controlled my breathing quietly, sitting straight. As the element of surprise got worn away, all the students got their eyes back to their original shapes and resumed their conspiratorial whispers.
***
“Urrgh!” I muttered while sitting on my study table in the afternoon.
“It’s just….impossible. I don’t know why am I not getting this right,” I said while looking at the problem feeling vexed.
Brachistochrone-Problem:
Find the shape of the curve down which a bead sliding from rest and accelerated by gravity will slip (without friction) from one point to another in the least time.
“This is the Brachistochrone problem. I know the concept behind it and also know that the curve is a cycloid but am unable to write the correct mathematical proof for it today. I am just so annoyed. Do you think I am going the wrong way?”
I paused for a moment or two as I had started feeling tightness in my chest again. I decided to calm down but didn’t get any reply.
“Ram, I asked you a question,” I said and got a reply in the form of static produced when tuning through radio stations.
I turned back and saw Ram sitting cross-legged on the bed. He was however busy meddling with his radio and wore a grim expression, totally engrossed.
“You are again tampering with the radio, aren’t you? “I said, between heavy breaths.
“Hmmm,” Ram came to me with his radio and helped me with my inhaler. Generally, I am unable to handle the inhaler properly and help myself when I am in the middle of such spasms. It is then that Ram helps me out.
“I have told you numerous times that you are not going to get any profitable information from that radio of yours. I do not mean to insult you but that is mere junk which even I cannot fix.”
He looked up at me and I understood that I had messed up. If looks could kill then at that moment I would have perished instantly.
“Well, I am surely offended. I have never told you anything about that locket of yours have I? Just as your locket signifies your hidden love for your parents so does this radio for my father.” With that he resumed his work with even more determination.
I too turned away from him and looked at the equation again. He was like my brother and the last thing I wanted to do was to antagonize him. Just as I had started concentrating on my math problem again, the static cut off abruptly and was replaced by a muffled voice.
I tried to speak but Ram waved me down impatiently.
The muffled voice became clearer and clearer until we could make out distinctly what the anonymous person on the other end was saying.
“SOS...SOS....SOS .....Whoe....ver is receiv....ing this message, I am Chan...dra Shanbhag. I am......a scientist and go...t lost in the Himalayas. My coordi nates are 30.97542,79.458572. I.....am inside a temple. I cant g....oo anywhere for I am injured. Please send h.....elp as soon as possible....” the message ended in static.
There was a long break of silence. We stared at each other with gaping mouths. Ram was certain that the voice on the radio was surely his father’s though it did not make sense.
Suddenly a smile took form on Ram’s face. He looked down towards the radio and without moving his neck he said with suppressed excitement in his voice,
“I am not an orphan.”
“Are you thinking about going to the Himalayas?”
He looked up at me with the same grim look on and said,
“I am going to go to India!”
“What do you hope to find there?”
He looked at me intensely. With pursed lips and a faraway look in his eyes, he was suddenly looking much older than his 17 years.
“I have a feeling that is what my father would have wanted me to do.” He promptly got up and walked purposefully to the cupboard and started taking mental notes of what he should pack.
I watched him in silence for a while till he got his laptop open. I assumed that he was buying tickets for his flight to India. I went in and asked him.
“What are you doing?”
He turned and on seeing me, resumed his work with a grimace.
“Well......what are you doing?”
“I am sure you can see for yourself,” He said.
“How expensive are they?”
“None of your business.”
I controlled my emotions with great difficulty.
“Ram, if you need my help.....”
“I will not need your help. Not now, not later. I do not want you to hack into the systems as you are wanting to do.,” he snapped. He normally became very temperamental when it came to hacking which I was very good at.
“But how can you afford to buy tickets to India? The only hope is for me to hack into the systems and try to issue a ticket at a discounted rate!” I said out loud.
“I know that you are trying to help Mathias, but you know I do not approve of hacking!”
As I turned my back on him, I heard a large growl. Unlike of Ram, I thought. I had to stop on my tracks however as that was followed by a large explosion which seemed to be just behind me.
I hurried to the window, only to find the power station in flames. I could barely make out the silhouettes of four large and hefty men. Two walked casually across the playground towards the main building while the other pair headed for the dormitory.
“What is it?” Ram shouted.
“Four men. We are under attack,” I replied slowly, my brain racing to find solutions.
“Four men? What men?” Ram was totally flabbergasted.
I turned to face him. “I don’t know. Whoever they are, they cannot be friendly. They blew up the power station!”
Suddenly, there was loud knock on the door. “Mathias! Open the door, quickly!” I rushed to the door and opened it. Mrs. McCarthy, the matron was standing there staring and hyperventilating. “Pack your bags and go meet Mrs. Dawson. She wants to....” the matron was interrupted by a series of loud gunshots and breaking glass. She seemed petrified and unable to move.