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?

Riding at 9 PM

This is for the first time that I am finding myself staring on a white blank word document without knowing what to write for my web log. I am so sure that, this time I have no college stories, no school time adventures and not even any dreams to display for my blogger friends. Though there may be some travel adventures, like the one in which I found myself on a cycle rickshaw in Amritsar or the train journey that I made with two beautiful girls or meeting with a world famous musician like Dyana Dafova, right now, I have no comedy strips which will make my blogger friends laughing or make them curious at the least.

On a night time, after 9 pm at a rough guess, I was riding my sincere bike with my friend at my back through the royal paths; in the last year. We were heading to his settlement so that I could drop him there and another short stretch would have taken me to my room.

“This shadow trees are the contributions of the pre-independent royal reign”, he said pointing to the huge trees those were standing on both sides of the road.

“I know, I have heard it, and many more of their contributions are still surviving despite of the passing of time,’ I said approvingly.

“But today’s democracy concentrated only on destroying what the previous ruling system had achieved”, he said in a pathetic tone.

“Not only that, but as you know…...” my talk was broken abruptly due to some hard ear-piercing sound and “hey what’s that buddy?” was the only exclamation delivered from my opened mouth.

We saw not less than three racer bikes overtaking us in a typhoon-like speed making our 40 per hour a mere pedestrian walk. I could only see like a lightning a boy with lengthy straightened hair who rode his bike on the back of the row. After darting like aimless arrows from a bow, the racers took a U-turn from a point at a few metres in front of us and we saw the whole herd of these wild beings driving opposite us through the second lane of the road. As I had to pay attention to the road in front of me and the clutch, brakes and the gears were the most important for me while driving; I could not see what these fellows were doing. But my friend was watching them all the time as he was free while sitting on the back and he was preparing to yell an ‘Ayyo’ (Gosh!) at any time by putting both his hands on his head. And it happened, what I heard was a sharp thudding sound in a queue just like some steel plates arranged one by one on top tumbling down at a tap. These all happened within a few seconds.

My friend, who was portrayed in the Mystery Girl in my Lyrics blog, persuaded me to turn back and go to see what happened. I took the same U-turn and reached the accident spot. On reaching there, we saw the bike on the road in a collapsed manner and the boy with long hair lying down on the centre of the road with some blood drops around him. His friend was standing near him as if nothing has happened, who asked him to stand up to check whether any serious injuries are there. With opened and blinkless eyes stared at me, this boy attempted to obey his friend’s command, but in vain. I just stood where I stopped my bike in a helpless way, but my friend hurried towards him and offered his hand along with the other boy. Suddenly a car came, possibly of the racers’ team leader and they asked the other boy to take him into the car. My friend and the other racer boy with the help of a few more racers who had just returned took the victim into the car. The car left aiming the hospital.

On return, my friend said in a sympathetic tone, “it seems that he is stuck internally, even though no external injuries are seen”. I was speechless.

A few weeks later, when I was narrating the whole incident to one of my friends, he informed me that there was the news in the dailies that a boy was killed at this spot a few weeks before during a racing accident.

“What had put the yesterday’s big undivided families into bitter grief hardly lets even a drop of tear in the today’s nuclear family”, was what my friend who witnessed the accident said hearing the news.