The Shadows of Thought

A short story by Rajesh Kurup

Worli, Mumbai. Present day.

The retreating southwest monsoon brought with it gusts of moist winds, the distinctive damp smell of the Arabian Sea, an unfair mixture of joy and pain, and fables from afar. At Abhishek Motwani’s 56th-floor swanky apartment at Worli, the winds didn’t come in softly; they rushed in and broke window shutters, scattered the papers, and threw down the books from the shelf(1).

The business magnate’s mini library came tumbling down. His law books – now on the floor – jostled for space with Shakespeare, Shelley and Byron, along with numerous pieces of art. But the heavy set of Encyclopaedia Britannica, gathering dust after being relegated as ‘showpieces’, managed to hold their positions on the rack.

There was another soul in the room – a fan-tailed goldfish kept in an aquarium near the window sill.

She had the graceful movements of a ballet dancer. To a trained eye, her rhythmic gestures resembled a chassé, pirouette, adagio, grand jete, or the elegant arabesque(2), and her stage, the entire aquarium. Her eyes were pretty too, and as expressive as that of a Bharatanatyam danseuse. On a normal day, she used to roll her mesmerising eyes to perform alokita(3), saachi, pralokita, ullokita, anuvritta, and at times sama(4).

His daughter had planned to name the fish and had even come up with a number of suggestions. Her favourite one was Goldie, but he opposed, stating it was too common a name. “Cliché,” he dismissed it mockingly.

In turn, he had a couple of suggestions, such as Flambo (short for flamboyance), Yodha (a mix of Star Wars character Yoda or Yodha, a Hindi word for warrior), Bubbles, and of course, Nemo. They never arrived at a consensus.

As the wind abated and its howling reduced to a mild hiss, in tandem the rumbling of the waves softened to a mild whisper, but tranquillity failed to sweep in. The chaos, unlike mist, thawed much more slowly, with its overhang still being felt in the apartment.

Today, the goldfish was not seen swimming around in the aquarium.

Perhaps, she was hiding behind the aerator, the aesthetically-placed driftwood, or might have stashed herself among the pebbles or between the Amazon plants.

As Abhishek started picking up the books from the floor and began stacking them back on the shelves, the paperback edition of ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne caught his eye. Dropping the heavy books to the floor, as if in a trance, Abhishek closed his eyes, opened a page in the book, and placed his finger on a line.

He never believed in bibliomancy(5), but still, opening his eyes, he read the line aloud: “The only reason why people do not have what they want is because they are thinking more about what they don’t want than what they do want".

The book on the law of attraction stated that what you thought and wished was what you manifested. However, the underlying message – which many other experts on the topic said – was that negative thoughts manifested faster.

Simply put, it meant ‘negative thoughts could lead to defeatist outcomes’.

Keeping ‘The Secret’ aside, he looked for the goldfish again. She was still missing. Maybe this had something to do with the weather, he reasoned. Or was there something bigger at play? Maybe a bad thought, or worse, a bad action?

He reflected on the day’s events. It was a successful day. First, the businessman had closed a large contract, and later in the day he succeeded in bedding one of his staff, the most beautiful of them all, who had been ignoring his advances for a while. A senior manager in the accounts department, she had been on his radar for some time.

She was completely indifferent, not in her work, but in her ‘loyalty’ to the boss. No amount of cajoling, promises of higher pays, career advancements, flexible timings or out-of-turn bonuses offer could change her mind. He even tried the time-tested ‘dismissal’ threat, but to no avail.

However, a financial ‘misappropriation’ – deliberately inserted into the accounts at Abhishek’s behest – did the trick. She consented when faced with threats of arrests, probable prison time and the eternal scar of shame, albeit with bitter dissent.

Lying next to the accountant, he bragged about the bomb he spent on her. What he meant was the money and effort for fudging the books to frame her, while she thought he was talking about the elaborate arrangement for the opulent repast and expensive suite room.

To Abhishek, that was an achievement, and he gloated over it. But was the universe complicit with him in this?

This wasn’t the only time the goldfish did a Houdini(6). Abhishek remembers another day vividly, when the fish had performed its disappearing act. It was a bright summer day, the day his wife moved back to her parents’ place, taking their 10-year-old daughter with them.

The couple used to have constant fights, as the missus had the habit of accusing her man of an extramarital affair. He wasn’t sure which one she was referring to, and his slate was not clean either.

The fights were never physical, but that day it rained punches and kicks. All hell broke loose when she ended the screaming match with a tight slap. The commotion attracted the neighbours first, then the building’s security, and later the cops. She stormed out of the house that evening. A ‘blessing’, his lawyers said, as squatting would have made it difficult to evict her from the premises. The divorce proceedings would also be easier, they had said, while moving petitions for the child’s custodial right.

The fish also went into ‘hiding’ the day he drove his vehicle recklessly under the influence of alcohol. It was after a night of pub-hopping across the city, downing cocktails, some of which he had never heard of before.

On the way back, closer to dawn, his car hit a couple of joggers – probably a man and a woman – on the Worli Sea Face. They were flung high into the air. One landed on the footpath, the other fell on the car’s bonnet, sprawled across the windshield, drew a spider’s web on the glass and broke the wiper, before tumbling to a side. He didn’t stop the vehicle to help the victims, nor did he report the accident to the cops, but fled from the scene.

There could have been many more instances when the fish played hide ’n seek and no one noticed.

Despite having been a libertine(7) and an atheist, Abhishek had enrolled the services of a Vaastu astrologer earlier to assess the negativities in the house. The acharya, who initiated a consultation process to harmonise the property with natural energies, was of the opinion that negative energies were higher in the cities.

“Have you noticed that there are no stars in the city skies, whether it is Mumbai or London?” the acharya asked, hinting at the ‘negativities’ in metros.

“Also, homes in high-rises are prone to Vaastu dosha,” the acharya pointed out during one of his paid visits.

Abhishek knew the scientific reason for the lack of stars in city skies was due to skyglow (8). Also, Vaastu astrologers generally consider lower floors “more auspicious” as the natural flow of prana or energy was much higher due to their proximity to groundwater compared with the top floors.

Acharya also drew his attention to the ‘doshas’ in the apartment. “There are evil forces lurking behind every shadow, every corner, and they are like the Raktabija(9) asura. You wound one and many take birth from the single drop of blood spilled.”

To Abhishek, a completely different image cropped up. He visualised a demon housing another one in his belly, and the second one hiding another one and so on. To him a demon was like the Matryoshka doll, the Russian nesting doll, which hides many wooden dolls decreasing in size, sans their pleasant faces and colourful attire.

The goldfish had come home as a pet. On his visit, a Feng Shui expert supported keeping the fish at home as it was considered a symbol of prosperity, wealth, and good fortune. “Goldfish attract positive energy and promote harmony because their movement is thought to stimulate the flow of chi (energy),” was his advice.

Today, the goldfish’s absence raised the question: Was there a reason for it to disappear?

It could be the climate, it could be the overall negativity in the house, or perhaps Abhishek’s evil thoughts and actions might have invited negative energies.

‘First things first’, Abhishek said aloud, as rather than reasons, he wanted to find the missing fish. After all, where does it disappear?

In frustration, he switched off the aerator, took off the aquarium’s lid that resembled a thatched roof, and started looking for the fish. The first attempt yielded no results.?

Another search was initiated; he plunged his hands into the water. Then, removed the large driftwood, later the pebbles and the Amazon plants, unwittingly clouding the water with dirt and sand that had sedimented earlier. Still, no luck.

Much like a chemistry student conducting a titration test, he repeated the process again and again but arrived at the same result: disappointment.

‘Where could the fish disappear?’ he thought.

Overcome by frustration and anger, Abhishek lifted the heavy fish tank using all his might and then dropped it on to the floor. The glass shattered with a clattering sound, water splashed across the walls and the furniture, the marbles bounced and rolled across the room, and the aerator continued making the whirring noise. The drifting wood broke into pieces as it floated along the floor with the silver trail the aquarium's water began to make.

As the chaos subsided, he searched again for the fish, expecting to see it writhing in pain.

The goldfish was nowhere to be found.

Footnotes

1. Inspired by the poem ‘Wind’ by Tamil poet Subramania Bharati

2. Chassé, pirouette, adagio, grand jete and arabesque are movements by a ballet dancer

3. Alokita, saachi, pralokita, ullokita and anuvritta are types of eye movements in Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance form

4. Sama: eyes kept still without any movement (Bharatanatyam)

5. Bibliomancy: The practice of randomly opening a sacred book and interpreting the first passage that catches the eye as a form of divine guidance or prophecy

6. Famous escapologist Harry Houdini

7. Libertine: someone who leads an immoral life but can also imply a person who is now seeking a different, perhaps more spiritual, way of living

8. Skyglow is a phenomenon when city lights disrupt the night sky, making it difficult to see stars

9. Raktabija, a demon in the Hindu mythology, whose blood spilled onto the ground would create many more asuras. This made him nearly invincible in battle as his every single wound would lead to the birth of countless new demons

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