Mysterious Affair at Thina Island

When sighted the rustic arch shaped bridge that connects the infamous Thina Island with the outer world, I stopped my bike for a few seconds hesitated. My comfortable travel ends here, I thought. Now I have to travel through the forest like terrains of the isolated Thina Island.

The Island was encircled with foul smelling dirty waters of the nearby backwater. The only connection between the Thina and outer world is the aforementioned bridge and it swayed in a dangerous way making some horrible echoing sounds as my bike climbed through the slippery surface of it.

A small cut road opened before me as I passed the bridge and with an agitated heart I turned the accelerator to ride my bike over the ups and downs of the broken path.

With my staring eyes I found myself inside a forest and the calmness of which was broken by the chirping of crickets in equal intervals. Three things my senses caught as queer were:

- A smell of blood mixed with the stinking odour of decayed dead body, which I took as coming from the centuries old huge dark trees

- The feeling of the presence of some unnatural things, though I had no clue on where this feeling was coming from

- The feeling that I had been keenly observed by some one, but I had no evidence to prove it

I drove further through the broken path of the isolated island searching for my hermit like friend. A writer himself, my friend had told me the way to reach his settling place and he had showed me a drawn map of the island. As he had told me, the Island is inhabited only by a strange race of fishermen, who have very different physical figures with dark complexion and powerful limbs and absolutely huge stature.

Following his hand drawn map, I reached a seemingly endless curve at the road. I saw something white moving at the end of the road in front. Within the next moment, it vanished. I stopped my bike. With some made up courage, I carefully drove my bike slowly and as I turned the curve of the road, I saw what scared me. It was a white goat with long beard. Surprised by the sound of the bike engine, it stopped grazing and stared at my eyes with no fear. With a relief I moved forward looking for my friend. ‘What thing on earth makes him to choose such a queer place for living?’ I asked myself.

Finally, a tiled old fashioned house was sighted at a distance. I was amazed seeing no other houses in the neighborhood. The house was in an absolute decayed condition. I stopped my bike in front of the small door of the surrounding outer wall of the house, which too was decayed and degenerated. As I stepped inside the compound of the house by pushing open the door of the outer wall, at the exact moment, my friend too appeared in front of the house by opening a cave like ancient door. He greeted me with glittering eyes and his usual cheerful manners.

We entered his room and I noticed him carefully locking the door. We talked about his new stories, and the films that he saw in recent times. Our conversation went on with no particular aim and I was not conscious about the passing time. When I felt that it was too late, I made up my mind to go. As a claustrophobic, I became suspicious about the locked door. I sensed something strange creeping inside the room and I frequently felt the presence of some unnatural things there.

“Am I being suffocated by something alien?” I asked in my mind.

I asked him, “You are staying here alone. Have you ever been encountered with the things that we call in stories with the name ghosts or superhuman?”

Hearing an unexpected question, he slowly raised his head and changing his look to the floor he said in a careless manner, “ha… something, sometimes, not frequently”.

“What?” I startled.

He cleared, “I usually feel something beats me while I am sleeping or writing my stories”.

I was mum and was staggering with no words. I noticed that he was not looking at me.

Suddenly, I heard some sharp thudding sound from the closed window at the left side of the room. I stared at the window and there was nothing. I looked at him and it was clear from his unchanged looks that he was unaware of such a sound. But, as far as I was concerned, not hearing such a sound inside that room was impossible.

While I was looking for a possible reason to prove this sound phenomenon, my friend raised his head and looking at me with twinkling eyes he said, “Have you seen an old mango tree there in front of the house? It was happened there!”

“What happened there?” I asked without a breath.

“The murder of that beautiful pregnant girl. It was nothing, happened a few years ago!” he said.

I startled. I saw a strange and queer smile at my friend’s face. With no further explanation I said, “I have to go, it is very late now”

“Want to go now? Spend a little bit more time,” he said.

“No! It is already late now,” I said trying to conceal my trembling sound.

“Okey!” he stood up and I hurried to open the bolts of the locked door with my shaky hands.

He helped me to open the door and after collecting my cap I stepped outside. When I turned back to say him goodbye expecting his usual twinkling eyes, I saw his eyes were covered then with a pair of glowing specks.

With no word, I ran through the open courtyard of the house. There was raining outside till a few minutes ago, I thought as I felt wetness on the ground. I jumped outside of the surrounding wall opening the locked small door. I was relieved seeing my sincere bike outside. I hurried to unlock the handle and my tension was not lessened till I started the engine by kicking the starter several times.

After driving a few meters away, I stopped my bike and looked back to see some eerie air escaping through the opened chimney of the house in the backdrop of an intense light.

NB: 1. The post is roughly based on a real life incident
2. I believe that the reported encounters with ghosts and inhuman things are manipulated by the human emotion called ‘fear’.
3. You can read the verse form of this same incident here in my Little Lyrics blog. I think the lyrics version is more interesting.

The Adventure of Alva and Jagan Jugg

It was the festival time. To contribute to the charm of the festive spirit, she decided to do something creative, and what looked the most appealing to her was the idea of staging a play. Next day, I found her with full enthusiasm saying me, “brother, so this is the matter. Last night I got the theme of a drama. If we stage it, people would definitely receive us with full applauds.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“This is the story of two friends. One is called Alva and the other one is his close mate Jagan Jugg. The story deals with some adventures that the twosome had involved,” she explained.

“Ok, liked the theme, but tell me this, who is Alva and who dons Jagan Jugg?” I inquired.

“Oh…what is in it...It is as simple as that. I will do the role of Alva and you will be Jagan Jugg,” she didn’t give me her face while allotting the roles.

I felt what she offered me was the smallest pie. So I said an excuse, “What people will think? You are a girl, and how can you do the role of a male character and that of Alva?”

“Just think this; people know that we are kids, so there is nothing if I do the role of a male character. No one is even going to identify the fact that I am a girl,” she was very practical.

I had no answer and she added, “but we have to start the rehearsal now itself;  the most important thing is that both the characters of Alva and Jagan Jugg are very much complicated and complex in nature. So to stage the characters, both of us have to involve fully in the rehearsal. In my opinion, from now onwards, both of us have to act, behave and speak to everyone as if we are in reality the respective characters of our play until we stage it in the next week.”

Now I had no option, and it was done. I called her Alva and she called me Jagan Jugg and we wore only the attires of the characters. In those costumes and specifically designed behavioral patterns, even ourselves could not have identified each other. It was a total transformation.

With full liveliness and zeal, Alva went on with the other matters required for the staging of the play like costumes, other artistes, time schedule, properties and PRO works. Being a person, who was worried with a good quantity of stage fright, Jagan Jugg was becoming more and more nervous as the days passed and the staging day getting closer. To escape from such a mentally disturbing situation, Jagan Jugg decided to run away from the location and to come back only after the scheduled date.

Though at first he didn’t notice the absence of Jagan Jugg, Alva soon identified that his close mate was missing. Holding all the preparations, Alva started an operation to trap his friend who went missing.

Alva went to so many places like, beaches, religious places, streets, parks, hotels, and any other spots where, Jagan Jugg could have hidden himself. At last, Alva reached a Gamblers’ Den where a group of people were smoking and playing cards. Standing at the doorstep, Alva loudly asked,

“Is there anyone called Jagan Jugg among you people?”

No one replied.

Alva put one more step ahead to found him inside the den. He again called out the same question,

“Is there anyone named Jagan Jugg in your group?”

This time, Alva noticed a stir in the gang. Somebody said loudly,

“Escape Jagan Jugg… run!”

A person from the group suddenly stood up and hurried towards the door in an attempt to escape. Alva thought once, ‘if some one responds to the name ‘Jagan Jugg’, he could only be the owner of the name’. Alva didn’t make any delay to catch the running man with both his hands. This time, Alva was sure about the capture of Jagan Jugg. Meanwhile, the trapped Jagan Jugg was thinking about the incredible incognitos that both of them had been practicing.

The whole incident was my sister’s dream. When I saw her in one of the fine mornings of our childhood days, she was struggling with her memory to recollect the names of each characters of her dream. Though she found the names successfully, she had failed to see whether they had staged the drama during that weekend to enrich the festival season.

The Young Hypnotist

Do you possess the commanding power upon your friends that you wish to have? Have you often felt your opinions being neglected when they are the most essential? Have you ever disturbed with stage fright? Are you shy? Do you have unfulfilled wishes? Have you ever failed to make friendship with any particular girl that you wished to do?...To all of my sage-like friend’s questions, I kept on answering YES…and absolutely I was feeling very much embarrassed for my answers being only positive.

You people don’t feel worried thinking that these are the questions I faced yesterday or the last fortnight. This is a part of an incident, which is a contemporary to the ‘Tale of the Popy boy’, ‘My first love’ and ‘Letter to Jonnie Walker’, happened when I was doing my initial years of my college days.

When my friend completed his questionnaire, he looked at my eyes deeply and said, ‘If you want solutions to all these problems, I can help you’. I asked ‘how’ and he answered,

“Look at my eyes, and say what you see there, can you see a special grace there?” I looked and looked and found that I was becoming smaller in front of my friend’s infinitesimally big corneas. He informed me that I too can become the owner of such powerful eyes only if I rent the hypnotism learning texts from him, which he purchased from a local publisher by post after seeing a classified at the unnoticed corner of a newspaper.

It was such a time that I had not much control over money; however I decided to follow his instructions and manage the small amount, which was big then, and to leap towards becoming a complete man. I got from him the first three texts when I paid him the first installment. I carefully read the first few pages, which suggested me to think positive and to be a listener rather than a speaker. It also suggested to keep our eyelids a little wider while talking or being confronted by another one so that you will look more attractive and dominant. There were some more initial tips, but as these two struck my mind, thinking about my arrogant friends and the girl in My First love I decided to follow them at once.

I had to wake up in the early morning to practice the lessons, I had to do some breathing exercises to increase the mental capacity and I had to constantly look on a fixed point for a long time to increase the eye power. Seeing me waking up at ‘my’ irregular times in the morning, my parents wondered about the miraculous changes happened to me. When I moved to another place for practicing the breathing exercises, my father confronted me with questioning mode and at him I could not have used my hypnotic powers.

I purchased the second two texts by giving my friend another installment. Though, it listed only a few more things apart from the repetition of tips in the first lessons, the new texts had expressed its confidence in me for attaining the goal of becoming a complete man. With weariness, I decided to follow these instructions as well. In my class room I planned to check the hypnotic power first at my lady lecturer, who shared the same family name of mine though we were not relatives. While she took her lessons I looked at her with a wider eyes, but unconsciously my mouth too was a little bit open. When she happened too see me looking at her with opened mouth and wider eyes just like a kid, she could not control laughing. Her laugh was enough to turn the entire class room into uncontrollable laughter, though no one could understand the reason.

On another occasion, claiming that I could hypnotise him, I said my class mate to look at my eyes. ‘You are going to sleep without hassles, sleep, sleep, sleep’, I gave him hypnotic suggestions hopefully. He blinked his eyes thrice just like the way our former actresses had done during the black and white times. ‘Close your eyes, you are going to sleep,’ I said. Gazing at my eyes, he said with a mocking smile, ‘yes I have slept, and now tell me?’ Despite of my constant practices and sleepless early mornings, I had been feeling that I failed completely in becoming a successful hypnotist.

Next time when my sage-like friend saw me, he asked about my improvements. Watching my pathetic face expression, he asked me to look at his eyes carefully. I obeyed and after gazing at my eyes some time, he changed his looks and said without facing me as a clear hint of fraudulence,

“I can’t look at your eyes, they are so powerful, so graceful’, after testing my eyes two more times, he reported the same thing.

I feel that he was silently begging me for the last installment of payment. But what I could read from my sage-like friend’s deceitful eyes was another thing, “what happened to me happened to you also”.

Left, Right...Left, Right!

The Memorable Birthday Wish time.

A student of visual journalism sharing the class space with seven others to make a total of eight. Since we were visual journalism students, we had a special subject to study, the history of cinema. We got a superb teacher, Louis Mathew, who in every aspect was an appropriate one to take classes on cinema. The historic film persons like Orson Welles of the Citizen Kane, whom he introduced to us through his memorable lectures and charming film slides were truly inspiring.

One day on a class time, he hurled towards us a seemingly aimless question after telling a parable. The parable and question somehow went like this:

“Look, here is a man traveling on a cycle and on the opposite side there is another one travelling on a car. They collide each other but nothing happens except that both of them find themselves with a broken tooth each... “

What a situation, we wondered.

“…Look, so this is the situation. Both of the accident-victims have the same loss. There is no difference in that. But here is a variation in the situation. Let me make all of you a part of this story. You are the judge and you have a thousand rupees exactly to share between both of the victims,” he explained the story.

Glancing over a row of opened mouths, Louis continued, “I want an answer from you all; how will you share the money between the cyclist and the one with the car. Will you share it fifty-fifty or will you give someone a little more than what you give the other one?” he looked at everyone of us over the specs one by one inquiringly.

I had no doubt, and at once I said, “Why doubt? It is fifty-fifty, it does not look like big problem, because justice cannot be biased.” I cleared my view point.

But to my amazement, every other one of the class unanimously opined that they would give more money to the cyclist.

“Why?” I wondered.

To my embarrassment, Louis said, “If I was the judge, I would have given more money to the cycle rider.”

I felt isolated and glanced at every one to find at least one supporter among them.

Louis consoled me, “don’t worry friend, you are not wrong, but you are right”.

Dear blogger friends, I insist each of you to make your view point before reading henceforth.

I asked him, “Sir what you mean?”

He explained, “I mean what I said, when you answered that you would share the money fifty-fifty, it was not a wrong answer. You said your opinion from your view point and motivated by your own thinking, that’s why I said, you were not wrong, but you were RIGHT. You are politically biased to the right wing.”

Pin drop silence.

“In such a situation, I will give more money to the cyclist. Because I know that a five hundred rupee note is not equivalent to both the poor cyclist and the car owner. A person who knows this difference is LEFT and I am LEFT’, Louis explained.

“This does not mean that you are wrong. Both of us are right. The only difference is that you are RIGHT and I am LEFT.”

Now I understood, and was deeply consoled by his explanation. I know that my ideology is at some points slanting towards the right wing policies. Not in politics, but in every aspect of social life, that is my view point, I am a believer of the right wing ideology.

But, what was your answer?