The legends of Khazak

I think, I read about TLOK by OVV in India Today or some other obscure magazine some time in college first year around 1999-2000. My hunt for this book started then. No library had this book. I went to bharathidasan univ library, the library next to the bata showroom, REC library, asked mom to try in OFT library and BHEL training centre library. I even tried Higginbotham’s next to teppakulam and devaki second hand book stall (which gobbled up my Rs 100 deposit when I didn’t take a book after I returned one) in the china kadai veedhi which is around the vicinity of those precious stone jewelers. They had not even heard about this book. At last, yes’ day I was forced to go to our library to pick up “TG” by Cox and Goldratt. As usual, I ended up going to the fiction side and was pleasantly surprised to see this book right up in the front (after almost a decade).

I put aside “The Goal” and settled on the bed with TLOK. I have always loved Kerala, WB and Kashmir. Those were my dream places and I used to fantasize that the gals out there were nubile fairies. Somehow both Kerala and WB are now infested with you know what and Kashmir with the obvious. It was “TCO Joy” that brought the stark reality of WB as against the rosy and divine picture I had painted in my mind of it being Swami Vivekanda-Sivananda’s religious abode. I always believed that these were the places where practitioners of kundalini yoga lived and could do anything and everything with their mind power.

Gakrith dragged me to the parlour after classes and I started reading this around 5 pm. I kind of slept of with this book in between, thanks to going outside and was just reading this book sprawled on the bed whenever I woke up. It was different from all that I had read all these days. I am fascinated with ghosts and haunted places as with other spiritual beings. I was wondering, how lucky, I was to have the job I had had. In city there are so many ways of earning one’s livelihood. But in the villages, what hardships people have to put up with to earn their daily bread. It was a Piscean who made me wonder about this. She asked me, if you didn’t have any salaried job, if you had no education, how will you earn your living? For every answer I gave, she added another constraint and asked, how I will still pay for the food I eat. At times, I was wondering, which world is he in? Where will women do the things that he has described? At times, I was struck with this magical surrealism in the way he had weaved the story. About lice having rebirth. God! Lice of all creatures? IIMK teaches students to walk on fire. My first preference was K, but I ended up in B.

I was glad with the way; he had described how Muslims and Hindus lived together peacefully at least to an extent. My zodiac says, I will have thulukiyar friends. In fact my childhood pal is Nazreen with whom, I had climbed up the water tank in 5th standard and was punished so much for that by school teachers and condemned by the principals of 3 schools. My down floor neighbor was again a kind bhai uncle and ever since I remember, we used to buy tomatoes from thakkali bhai, though he sold other veggies as well. I was amused with the rules that K laid and but fine, I though, different people have different perceptions. I was surprised to see my previous roomie who was a dentist spew such venom about Muslims in general, coz she had seen one affluent Muslim class mate of hers sleeping with poor medical students from north east who didn’t have money for their educational expenses.

Back to the book, I was surprised to see such intimacy between teachers and students. The last time, I remember feeling at home with teacher was Sukumaran sir in my 5th standard. He used to correct papers while we sat around him and played. He used to call me OFT or BHEL as we played Kho Kho. He used to be considerate with Nazreen since she had lost her father. Teachers after that were distant in some way or the other. Probably coz after that you were no longer an innocent kid. You got trapped in the scheming ways of the world. The teacher gazing in amazement on the miracle, the first blood flowers of womanhood! Hmmm… well… the novel was like a slow and languorous movie.

I should have finished the novel before 12 am at least. I don’t know when I started sleeping. I woke up around 1:30 am and then started preparing for the next day’s classes till around 3:30 till the current went off. In the morning, I woke up just at 8:30 am. Classes start at 8:30 with faint memories of this strange dream. I was a Muslim woman or probably I was not. I saw those grey minarets in twilight in my dream. I was going through those tunnels in my own house to reach one room to another. I don’t know why, but I think, I saw someone pregnant in my dream. Someone was chasing me, probably police and I was hopping from minaret to minaret till I jumped far below to a 2 storied building that had a small swimming pool inside. I could remember everything faintly, but nothing comes out now. I need to get started with this stupidity, sleep and attend ppts and work out problems and work on resume. God and after all this?