INTRODUCTION
The twelve episodes in this series belong to a genre of writing I have never attempted before: stories. The starting point for every one of them is either a person or an event which has taken shape in my mind over a period of time; some of them, even over a year or more. The starting points were more or less static. But, in time, they moved and morphed, in the sub-conscious stratum of my mind, into coherent courses of events, at times aided by my conscious efforts, into the genre one calls stories, some of them short, some long, and some neither. I should admit that, in every one of them an element or two of reality have insidiously crept in, to a greater or lesser degree, despite my wariness to ward off such infiltration. In hindsight, however, I let them rest, as they were like sprinklings of salt and pepper. To intensify the dramatic impact, I took a deliberate decision to narrate them in the first person, understandably, as all the episodes took shape within my mind. As such, the narrators in all the episodes are different manifestations of the same person.
More important, however, is the theme, the common thread, that runs through all the episodes: the supernatural element in reality. That is the moving force which created the stories.
I have always believed that what you perceived in what you experienced, is born from what you believed. But, in spite of that strong belief, I have observed equally strong currents running contrary to perceptions based on belief. Those currents emerge as counterpoints, largely rationally inexplicable in their nature. From time to time, such currents have emerged on their own in my life, despite my deliberate attempts to ignore them, because they run contrary to what I strongly believe that there is no conscious macro-point, or a controlling cosmic-consciousness, in all things that happen in our lives. Such counterpoints should, at least, lead me to think that perhaps supernatural forces do exist. I am not referring to God alone, a concept which is still controversial, and perhaps will continue to be controversial until the end of mankind, but to other forces that are generated by our thoughts and actions, forces manifesting themselves as rationally unexplainable experiences at appropriate points in time, as counterpoints, to interact with reality, to give rise to what one may call Natural Justice, a kind of balancing act of natural forces. Such forces have been called in common terminology luck, ghost, God, dark force, anti-matter, and black hole. One may object to my clubbing the supernatural with the scientifically “verifiable facts”, but such a divisive definition appears to me to be, at this point in time, arbitrary and unscientific. Protagonists of para-psychology have done extensive and intensive researches in the paranormal area of occurrences and have come up with an impressive array of “conclusions”, some verifiable and some not. But such is the case with scientific researches also, leading to radical revisions of “conclusions”. The line which separates the natural from the preternatural, the occult from the scientific, is a thin veil, often permitting both osmosis and reverse-osmosis. I think, if we develop appropriate tools to research the preternatural areas, the conclusions could merit as much validity and respect as the scientific conclusions.
Having said all that, I sincerely request you to put them all on the back burner of your mind, relax, and read the episodes to enjoy them as pure stories, which they are, primarily.
If these episodes are available for you to read, I owe my gratitude completely to Shreekumar Varma, poet, playwright, novelist, journalist, and teacher. In fact, I would not have written them at all, had he not identified my capacity for creative writing. Until then, my creative writing had consisted of a few short plays for the stage for specific occasions, which I had also directed; and I had written a few scripts for the small screen and directed them for telecast. But they were written under duress, with the wrong end of a shot-gun resting on my temple, and without any conviction that I could write creatively. It was the confidence Shreekumar infused in me that made me believe I could be creative at any age and made me enjoy writing every one of the twelve episodes in this collection.
A.V. Dhanushkodi, April 23, 2010
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