The Other Side(47)

“The baby has grown well and I am sure there will be no problems after the delivery,” the doctor had assured them as he admitted her for a cesarean.

Sanath checked his watch nervously as he looked at the red light glowing outside the operation theatre. “It's been well over a couple of hours,” he thought. “I guess I'll get the news any moment now!” he said to himself. The light went off even as he was looking at it and the O.T. door opened slowly. A nurse walked out of the room and beckoned him to come close.

“The doctor is calling you inside the O.T.,” she whispered. Sanath's nervousness increased. “God, please let it be good news,” he prayed.

The doctor was waiting for him in the anteroom. Sanath tried to read the expression on her face but the inscrutable eyes looking at him above the surgical mask gave nothing away.

“Doc, is Shalini okay?”

“Oh yes, Sanath, she is… she is fine!”

“Have I become a father?”

“I… I believe so.”

“That is great! Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Well Sanath,” the doctor hesitated. “It's a bit difficult to explain. In twenty years of obstetrics, I have seen nothing like this.” She made up her mind and spoke again. “I can't explain this one. You have to see it for yourself.”

She held his elbow and guided him to the next room. Sanath followed, feeling the nervousness creep in again.

“Your child,” she pointed at the creature beside an unconscious Shalini on the cot.

Sanath stood staring stunned into silence by the thing that was looking back at him through expressionless large black eyes. The baby was huge by human standards. It had a bear-like face and its shriveled brown skin was covered in a blanket of grey hair.



“You see, the strangeness of my case is that now I no longer fear the invisible, I'm terrified by reality.”

¯ Jean Lorrain





The Mystery Lake


The mist lifted gradually and the mysterious water body appeared before his spellbound eyes. The pearl shaped lake was partially frozen and appeared pendant-like from the distance. There wasn't a blade of grass visible on its shores and most of it consisted of black rocks interspersed with snow. Magnificent ice covered peaks formed a spectacular but formidable background in the distant horizon. He tried to breathe but the rarefied air was so chilled that every breath was an effort. The bone chilling temperature increased exponentially as the wind assaulted his body, making him shiver like a leaf in the wind as the sky darkened overhead.

Ravi trembled in his sleep and searched for his comfortable eiderdown with half-open eyes. He could not find it; and that woke him up fully. He realised that the quilt had fallen off from the bed. He retrieved it, acknowledging the fact that he had been dreaming again. The same mysterious mountains, the partially frozen lake, the dipping temperature and the nerve chilling cold which appeared almost realistic had been haunting him at regular intervals. The place in his dreams seemed familiar yet he was sure that he had never visited such a place in his life or even caught a glimpse of a similar photograph anywhere. Then why did it appear in his dreams again and again? His sleep benumbed mind refused to think beyond that and he went back to sleep.

The image of the frozen lake persisted in his mind for the next few days and the more he thought about it, the nagging ache at the back of his head worsened but if he tried not to think about it, then too the curiosity was hard to resist. Ravi decided to find out if such a place actually existed or was it a creation of his resourceful mind! He wondered how to go about it and then suddenly he had a brainwave while sitting on the table in the study room. He decided to run an image search on Google and booted the computer. Running an image search for 'mountain lakes,' Ravi smiled at his own idea. The search threw up about a million images and he scanned the pages one by one. He stared at the screen till his eyes hurt but he could not find an image that resembled the one in his recurrent dreams.

He then changed the key words to 'frozen lakes' and repeated the entire exercise but the result was the same. He could not find a similar image to what had been plaguing his brain. He then tried 'Himalayan lakes' but the search bore no fruit. He sighed and followed it up with a groan as he rubbed his eyes vigorously.

'What is the first word that comes to mind when I look at the image?' he asked himself. “Hmmm, I can't say… it is such a mystery, this image,” he mouthed. And then suddenly he gasped and clicked his fingers together. Yes, that was the word. The image was strange and the lake was a mystery to him, one that he needed to get to the bottom of. So, for the last attempt, he entered 'mystery lakes' and waited as the page reloaded. The last image on page two of the search results looked somewhat like the lake that appeared in his dreams.