And So, I Brought Her Dandelions

The coffee pot was steaming. The buns are being toasted in the oven, and the silverware is shining, ready to be filled with hot food for breakfast. Nitara was dressing Kyra for school, doing her ponies and tying them with pretty blue ribbons. Warm sunlight streamed in through the high glass windows, the fresh morning breeze inviting a workman like me to a crisp, exciting day ahead. The world was unmindfully spinning out just another day. Everything was overly perfect, immaculate, sublime. To the point of perfection where a man begins to slip into the eerie realm of unease…

Is it really happening? Is it not? Am I in a surreal state of bliss? What if I wake up point-blank to a mundane, gloomy morning, in stark contrast to this happy day? I’ll get into depression, I’m sure. What if cats were actually dogs and dogs were wolves, what if roses were dandelions and dandelions really were snakes? Well, I’d have to find out! The uneasiness grows every creeping day, day after night, and crouches on me like a hideous monster, ready to pounce. Today it became suffocating all of a sudden. Am I actually living my dream life or is this all a careless game of dice, played by someone beyond my control? Is my Nitara that much of a perfectionist? Is my Kyra the perfect child a father could ever dream of? Am I the perfect husband, father, and researcher at my establishment? Is the utter peace & quietness really in equilibrium with the buzzing chaos and entropy driving the entirety of the universe in dispersion? I dare not delve into my crazy thoughts! Or should I?

“Ravi? Ravi! Off you go, daydreamer. Kyra’s going to be late for school.” Nitara bends down and touches my forehead. “Your lunch and briefcase are in the car. You should be there too, else the day’s going to fall apart,” she gives a little mocking laugh.

There, there, she is, chiding me for my tiniest of mistakes, alerting me to going off schedule. Off the trained brain track, taught to perceive what’s real and all other possibilities as a dream. Now’s wake-up time. Is there a Nitara, a Kyra, or only a bleak, black world sulking post-war and post-apocalypse? What if dandelions were really snakes? What if my beautiful wife is a hollow projection of my mind? I rush to the car, open the door in a blurry daze, and take out the flowers. The north wind disperses a few mellow pollens. They slip away into oblivion. I feel a chill. Nonetheless, bracing myself, I steer myself towards her for the moment of truth.

“Here you go!” I hand them over to her. Expectant.

She takes them in silence. She doesn’t shriek, doesn’t throw them away, doesn’t disappear into darkness. Caressing the bunch, she smiles a little and turns away,

“I am going to find a vase.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. All of this is real. The love, acceptance, and warmth. The feeling is liberating, like a trapped soul finally breathing in the sweet liquor of truth. I head back towards the car.

Crash!

Terrified at the sound, I rush back inside the house, loosening my tie and bounding up three stairs at a time. The sound had come from the attic, where I am sure Nitara had gone to find a vase. Had my pregnant wife fallen? Oh, what have I done? In my frenzy, I had forgotten to ask Kyra to wait in the car. I see her waving a blue kerchief at me from the garden, beckoning me to drive her to school. She was unaware of the urgency at hand. I rush upstairs, burst open the door rusting with age, and barge into the dank, dark dampness. There, in the loneliness, lay a snake swaying in its lair. Beyond the attic window, in the garden, a blue kerchief sways frantically in the ominous wind sweeping through the weeping land. Black tar and slime are asll that I can see of the wasted land. The nimbus hanging so low and heavy, it looks like a cloud burst is imminent. Where the heck was Nitara? Where was Kyra?

***

Heavens know how long I had been sitting clamped to my bed, all through the days and nights. I know of none. It appears to be a single continuum. How I snapped at the snakes and dragged myself back to my bedroom, I have no idea. Sometimes I heard whispers, fleeting shadows. But all was a haze. My worst fears had become true. I was indeed the lone man sent by my team to one of the real alternate earths that was a projection of our very world. The shadow planet where I have been destined to come study its elementary details has made me a shadow survivor myself. Alive in the real blue world sometimes, but jerked back to the shocking mundaneness of a barren, desolate post-apocalyptic world in this alternate earth, in sudden bursts. All the while, I realize I am living a dual life. Why did I agree back then? If only I had known its grave twisted mysteries and their consequences…

I remember everything now, crystal clear. It amazes me how I sometimes reinforce control over my brain. Most of the time, I am in a hazy realm in this desolate alternate world. I forget my mission, my real world. The shadow planet can take over your senses in eerie ways, show you visions, and make you believe you live in them. It’s during those phases that your intuition says you’re not in the real, but you cannot decode and break the barrier. The thoughts are fleeting and so illusory, you’ll think you’d gone insane and then flick… forget! You seem to be living a perfectly normal and happy life. But then, a tiny glitch catches your attention out of the blue. Until then, these happy phases seem to be clouding longer and longer, coming over in large phases when the surreal phase takes over. It’s during these phases that I believe I’m living in the real world. The spells are usually broken sharply by even the tiniest glitch that seems to appear from nowhere. A disappearing fly, a spark in the plug, a word in a book, Nitara’s mocking smile… it can be anything, just anything at all.

Truth is – I had known all of this would happen, all along. I had known I’d be knocked out of reality. My team had prepared me and provided me with extensive training for eight long years. Eight years since I had met my family. I’d missed my child growing up. I’d missed giving Nitara the dandelions she deserved. Until they weren’t there anymore. Just a fact in a newspaper that turned my world meaningless. Now, there was no going back to them after my mission was completed. But that’s what kept me tied to my mission at all – I could delve into the past on this shadow planet. What the past would be, I had no idea.

When I went into one of those dream-like states and returned, I felt elated in the initial days. I could not remember why I was so happy in a wasteland. Gradually, over a few phases, I realised I had gotten back my Nitara and Kyra from the past. Just the way my life used to be. No worries, no mission. Just a plain researcher. This was the evidence I needed. All the statistics to carry back to earth for proof of the alternate shadow worlds. But it tricked me every time. I had used a specialized program to record Kyra’s singsong voices. It was also meant to capture dated videos of Nitara’s cooking and painting. Every time I knew in the back of my mind that my mission was to record these. Why would they ever be of any use? I could never decipher during any of those phases. I just had to. But every time before the phase break, they would die. Every single time. The alternate earth followed different routes, but the outcome was the same. And when the tragedy struck, I would not be there. Never. Just like back during the training days in the real world, when I was not there for them on that fatal day. I realised I was stuck here for eternity. My free pass to going back home to the real world, jerk out of my dual state of mind, was delivering this proof. I realised I would never be able to collect that proof. The visionary world destroyed all my artefacts, regardless of how strong a program I implemented or how much I tweaked the algorithm to capture the manifests. It would not let me show that it’s really lurking out there. Not any bizarre fantasies, not just a hypothesis. Anyone entering the program after extensive training could live in this alternate reality. It would save the day for many desperate people. But now, it kept slipping away from my grasp. It seemed this shadow world had a consciousness of its own. It would not let anyone enter it knowingly. And it would not let me move out of it. Not that I was interested in the bleak real world anymore. But then, a single acceptance is better than a thousand heartbreaks. Then the idea struck me like a bolt from the blue.

***

What if I were terminated before them in the alternate earth? What if I changed my past rather than allowing circumstances to do so? What would happen? Will the chain break? I introduced a new feature in my program. Misadventure and its consequences. I had to go on this painfully risky trek with my colleagues, to which my wife wouldn’t approve. I would go, nonetheless. I just hoped my brain would catch on. I would let myself plummet into nothingness and see where I wake up next. To death or another life, or the real world if it will accept me. If I wake up at all, that is! Reality should finally be mutually exclusive. It seems I am slipping into a daze again.

***

I wake up to whispers and a concerned face bending over me.

“You had a fall and a subsequent brain concussion. Do you know you were recovering in the hospital while we had our newborn?”

       
It takes me some time to realise that the shape and voice were Nitara’s. I am overwhelmed. Overcome with guilt and shame at the same time. What had I made my wife go through while I was an irresponsible slumberer yet again! I had to see the baby now. This baby was never meant to be. I cannot remember anything like this before. This must be real. My head hurts so bad.

Kyra comes barging into the room and hurls herself with her tiny hands around my neck.

“Papa, papa! You’re finally awake! What made you barge into the attic and bang yourself on the door? The terrible crash… we thought we’d lost you!! Why did you smash the vase and crush the dandelions, Papa? Ma was so scared… but she never lost hope. You know, she keeps awake all night by her baby brother Biom and weeps by your side. Promise me, Papa, you’ll never go overboard again?” Her dark hazelnut eyes look questioningly into mine.

When had my Kyra grown so strong and independent? Biom seems a tiny piece of cotton, so tender and vulnerable. Nitara looks up with tired eyes and manages a weak smile. She needs rest. Oh, what have I done? The doctor had repeatedly warned me of carefulness during my brain therapy sessions. Any gaps, or else I would collapse into a vegetative state of mind. Too much and then there’d be no coming back to consciousness. A state of relapse, about which I have no memory. Why was I so unmindful? Ah, I feel a tickle behind my right ear. A bee buzzing in the wind is causing a lot of chaos. I must have a look at it. Go on a walk. A trip perhaps? What trip? I could afford no more fallacies on my side. Nitara, you have me. I sigh deeply, taking my wife’s feeble hands in my own. Such warm, beautiful hands that spawn a hundred tasks into a discipline every day. That binds us into a family. This is a person I cannot let go of, ever. The buzzing behind my ear deepens. But this time, I remember.

The doorbell rings. I go fetch the letter from the mailman. It’s a letter from my friends. They are going on a trekking expedition. They know I can’t change the future. But they don’t know, I can change the past. I can tweak an alternate life to stay back. Be home to my family. Biom is a strange truth that never existed before. Therefore, this must be the real. This is not a hollow shadow world. This is the real world with a sick me. I am just sick. Biom is a reality that collapsed the possibility of a shadow planet into the real one. I will stay. I will last. So will my family. This will become the real world. This is my eternity. I steel myself against a phase break. No doubting this life, no more idle slumbers. No more getting sick, either.

And so, I brought her dandelions. Nitara looked up at me, smiling widely, her eyes a glimmering ocean of happiness. But beyond that calm ocean, what was that elusive glint?

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