Morning breathes

We sit by the side of a stream; you and I

Feet dipped in water

Playfully, tenderly

I take your hand in mine

And hook my fingers in yours

And ask

Which of these fingers are yours, my heart

And which are mine

You look at me, dawn on your face

None of them, my darling, you say

They are all yours

***

Do you know what a twisted mind actually looks like? I didn’t. I do now.

I also know what is meant by obsession.

And I know the shapes and colours of meanness.

I know a lot of things now that I didn’t know earlier.

Also, I have acquired tremendous mental powers. I have an eidetic, almost magical memory. Mind reading is easy. Telekinesis is child’s play. Telepathy is a piece of cake. What is extra sensory perception to you is sensory perception to me. As you can observe, I am not using my mouth in talking to you. My words are being communicated to you from my mind to yours, directly.

And it is all because of my well-developed seventh sense.

Come nearer, ladies and gentlemen. I will tell you all about the wonder drug in these bottles that I carry with me planet to planet, offering it free of cost to any and all humans or humanoids.

Seventh sense? What is seventh sense?

How do I explain it to you? How do you explain colour to the congenitally blind? What words or signals would you use?

Consider. Is the mind aware of itself?

No, that does not make the subject clear. I will try again. Can a person be fully aware of the inner workings of his mind?

No, this is still vague. I will try again.

There are a multitude of consciousnesses (is there such a word?) in a human being. These consciousnesses (again that word) usually work independent of each other. Is it possible to coalesce them? To make them fully aware of each other? It is. That is the work of the seventh sense. The seventh sense can be said to be a sense to sense all the senses. A sense… Oh! What’s the use? I cannot find the right words. Let me approach it from another angle.

Of course, you know what the sixth sense is and how it works. Seventh sense is yet another advancement in the level of awareness - of oneself and ones surroundings. You have heard of Dr. Darnel haven’t you? Darnel discovered the hormone that stimulates the sixth sense. Darnel and I were both working on the project together. In fact, the discovery of the sixth sense hormone was more my efforts than his but somehow Darnel managed to hog the limelight. Damn Darnel. Damn hi

No need to panic, folks. I am fine now even though it took me a long time to recover from the backlash of hate (hate against myself, for I am Darnel in many respects). These backlashes are new to me no longer. They are one of the effects of the seventh sense.

Seventh sense. Awareness. Is there such a thing as too much of it?

When Darnel stole the credit for the sixth sense hormone from me, I worked on. Forgetting family, forgetting humanity, forgetting life – I spoke of obsession earlier – I worked on and I discovered the seventh sense hormone. I tested it on myself. I got awareness. I got awareness in spades – awareness much superior, intense and expansive to that of any ordinary man.

As an aside, let me tell you that I often wonder about the next level of awareness. What would happen if there is an eighth sense? What would it sense? Perhaps that elusive something called the soul?

Enough. Let us come back to the seventh sense.

Seventh sense, as I expressed earlier, involves awareness – internal and external. As an example of external awareness brought by the seventh sense, consider this. When you look at a tree you see certain shapes and colors. When you touch different parts of it, you feel the different textures. You take these sensations, these outward expressions of an object and give it a name: tree. But when I observe a tree with my seventh sense, I perceive the treeness of the tree. More than this I cannot explain.

There are several examples of the internal awareness that the seventh sense brings – awareness of the creation of thoughts, awareness of the activities of the brain. Imagine an invisible complicated honey-comb structure with invisible cells – cells upon cells, cells beside cells, cells connected to cells, cells within cells – twisted, straight, of all invisible shapes and invisible sizes. Invisible yourself, you move along invisible pathways through all the invisible cells at the same time. And you watch – you watch with invisible eyes, different types of invisible actions, reactions and interactions going on around you, within you, on numerous levels of perception. You watch invisible impulses coming in and invisible responses going out. You hear with invisible ears, the inaudible beats of the alpha rhythm. You feel intangible fingers groping for intangible talents to use in formatting response to stimuli. You see immaterial hands rummage through immaterial memories, select some memory at random, replay it, replace it, select another one ---

Do you know what it feels like to have regrets? You do? Imagine regrets a thousand times more in quantity and a thousand times more intense and acute. No, you cannot do it.

And now here is one last thing I want to tell you about the seventh sense. In my subsequent researches, I discovered that a person who is human – the word “human” taken with all its implied universal values – can rise to dizzying heights of awareness, can become super human, without actually suffering the way I am suffering under the burden of the seventh sense.

As soon as I found this out about the seventh sense hormone, I prepared a huge quantity of the hormone, packed it in bottles and made it my mission to take it to different planets where humans live and offer it to anyone who would dare to use it.

Anyone among you who wants to imbibe the seventh sense hormone, please step forward.

THE END

A fairy godmother’s work is never done, is it?

No. The time to propose marriage has not come yet. I know you are nineteen and most boys your age are already married. I also know you love Elian and she loves you. That is good. But you have yet to gain her respect, and she yours. And a relationship lasts longest when respect is mixed with love.

If you want to look at a couple that shares love and respect, just look at your grandmother and grandfather. Look how happy they are. Even now, at this age, they are out there in the garden cavorting like two small children.

Come here dear boy, and sit by the fire beside me. I will tell you the story of the time when your grandfather first proposed to your grandmother. About fifty five years ago it was, when your grandmother was sixteen. My! How time flies!

Looking at you always reminds me of your grandmother in her youth. You looked so much like her before you had this growth of hair on your face. Even your mannerisms resemble hers – the way you move your hands while you talk; the way you are now squatting on the rug, your face shining in the firelight.

Don’t be impatient. I am coming to the story.

I know you have heard the love story of your grandparents from the storytellers but how could they know what I know?

I was with your grandmother when she was born. I was with her when her mother died and her father married another woman. I was with her when she grew up into a beautiful woman. I was the one who gave her the glass shoes and I was with her when she first refused Prince Charming’s marriage proposal.

I have heard and read all versions of the Cinderella story. On one end are the ones where she is nothing but a passive doormat of a victim and on the other end are the ones where she is such a vengeful person that as soon as she marries Charming, she has her stepmother and stepsisters put to horrendous death.

None of the versions are true. None of the versions portray Cinderella’s strengths, her intelligence, her liveliness, her individuality.

Did any storyteller ever tell you that Cinderella once scared the daylights out of her stepmother by putting a mouse in the cookie jar?

Did you know that Cinderella’s stepsisters were not always bad? Most of the times, they behaved badly under the influence of their mother. Now, their mother was evil, pure and simple. Did you know that once, when Cinderella fell ill and ran a high fever, her stepsisters sat by the side of her bed all night applying cold towels to her brow until the fever broke.

Do the storytellers relate that incident?

Do you remember your great aunts? Cinderella helped them marry well and they lived quite a happy life, particularly after the death of their mother.

There you go, being impatient again. This is one trait in which you resemble your grandfather and not your grandmother.

The story I want to tell you begins at the point when Cindy passed the test of the glass shoe and that charming prince called Prince Charming proposed marriage to her.

What did she do?

"I will marry you, but you will have to pass a test too," she said.

Did the storytellers write about it?

This is what happened:

The entourage of Prince Charming was shocked. A common girl like Cinderella wanting to test their prince! What audacity!

But that is where they were mistaken. My Cindy was not a common girl. And the prince knew this, and was proud of the fact, and with a smile, agreed to be tested. You look surprised. You don’t know much about your grandfather, do you? Again it is the fault of those storytellers. They make him appear so one dimensional.

Now then, where was I? Ah, yes. So then Cindy went to an old trunk, opened it and pulled out an old and tattered pair of boots. She carried the boots to the Prince and said: "I will marry you if these boots fit you."

The courtiers gave another gasp of utter shock and dismay. No one saw the look of recognition on Prince Charming’s face when he saw the old boots.

And now, I am sure you want to know the story behind the old pair of boots. Of course I know that story. Didn’t I tell you I know a lot about Cinderella’s life?

The story is quite simply told.

As you know, Cinderella's stepmother used to send her out on all sorts of tiring errands. These errands often took her through a farm and in the course of these errands, she became friends with the family that lived on the farm.

The family consisted of just three members, the farmer, his wife, and their son, who was about two years old. They were a kind and hearty family, and Cindy always liked to stop at the farm and chat with the farmer's wife. She had grown quite fond of the little boy, too.

One day, she and the farmer's wife were sitting on the grass by the fence and chatting. The little boy was playing close by. Absorbed in their conversation, they didn't notice the boy slip out of the fence and wander out on the dirt road that went by the farm.

It happened that just at that moment, a carriage came down that road, drawn by four horses in full gallop. The driver of the carriage gave a shout even as he pulled on his reins. Cindy and the farmer's wife raised their heads and looked and screamed. The little boy was directly in the path of the carriage and the carriage was coming on so fast that there was no way for the driver to stop it before it hit the boy.

The boy's mother fainted with shock. So, Cindy was the only one who saw what happened next. Almost like a miracle, a young man, dressed like a shepherd, leaped out of the bushes at the side of the road, swept the little boy in his arms and rolled to safety on the other side of the road. The driver of the carriage, seeing that the boy was safe, simply kept going without even slowing down.

Cinderella ran to the roadside. The boy was standing there, crying with shock, and there was no sign of the young shepherd who had saved him, except for a pair of old boots that had dropped off his feet during the rescue operation. Not knowing why, Cindy had brought the boots home and had hidden them in her trunk.

It was these boots that she had brought out to test the prince.

Good for Charming that the boots fit nicely.

And so, they have been living happily ever after.

So take my advice. Propose marriage to Elian only when the boots fit.