Misc. 96: My hallucinating mother and the non-Himalayan yogi!

 

“He came two weeks ago” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“You know, he”

“I see, how?”

“by plane – I think it was a twin engined aircraft”

Since she was an Airforce widow, she knew a thing (“not sure about two”) about aircraft!

“just as well he didn’t land on our roof top or it would have come crashing down”

I agreed. “would have been disastrous ; well, what did he do?”

“He circled overhead twice and went away”

“Oh”

“God only protected us”

I could not but agree again. “But where did he come from?”

“I’ve been telling you – that person, next door. He is always targeting me”

I gathered he took off from the compound next door with an intent of landing on the roof of my mother’s room 10 m away.

It was a wonder these shenanigans went completely unnoticed by everybody in the household except my mother.

Again, this didn’t surprise me since most Christian houses sport this rather witty wall text:

Oh, come on – the head of the house is both silent and unseen ! He can’t have much control, right? May be like Christ, this guy is also largely unseen, except by my mother.

Another thing that came to my mind was a Tamil novel I had read aeons ago, in which if my memory serves me right invisible characters fairly abounded.

The literati would have no trouble recognizing that I am talking about M. Varadharasanar’s மண் குடிசை .

Every day my mother would unwittingly regale me with implausible stories of the invisible man next door and his nefarious activities. “Once he was accompanied by his wife who was wearing a colourful saree. Both of them brandished revolvers and pointed at my mother; she started singing Sunday School choruses and they failed to fire!”

“It turned out the lady is a little soft and so  most of the time, the chap came alone. Last night again, he came and marked all the cells. My mother’s cell is marked Prisoner No.1”

This has been going on for over a year with several colourful variations. According to my mother “All because she ventured to share the gospel with them ” and they did not like it. For good measure she added that it is possible that their brains are a little addled.

Excuse me !

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