VORTAL

Walakum 2 da VORTAL Archive

2005-10-13T00:00:00.000+05:30

In the immortal words of Shri Gabbar Singh, founder of the daku nation: "Bahut yaad aaney lagta hain..."

If you've just learned about the chillin'-thrillin' new fantasy novel being written online by Ashok Banker, author of the Ramayana series, you've come to the right place.

Kyonki, this is the official (and only) VORTAL Archive, maintained by Ashok himself. (Yo, people!)

Here, you'll find all the previous episodes of VORTAL ishtart-2-phinish.

Use the Episode Directory on the sidebar (on right side, men, wherefore you're looking upstairs and downstairs?), to navigate through the serial so far.

When you're done, use the link at the bottom to jump to the current Episode which will always be on the main web page. Remember, this is just the Archive.

And if you like what you read, don't forget to leave a Comment.

Because as long as you keep liking, and commenting, I'll keep writing.

Hokay? Now, enough bakwas-bhaji!

Clock's ticking.

So start clicking.

Oh, and before you start, don't forget to read the VORTAL Promo Script below. U C, v haf no budget to produce the spot, so we have to print the script. And U haf to read it. Or else.

Gabbar Singh: "Thakur, yeh haath mujhe de de!"
Thakur: "Kabhi nahin!"
Gabbar Singh: "Thakur, yeh haath mujhe de de!"
Thakur: "Nahi, kutey, kameeney!"
Gabbar Singh: "Bahut jaan hain inn haathon mein...!"
(Raises swords, cuts off hands. Hands fall to ground, spewing movie blood, rolling and writhing. Thakur falls to ground, stumps spewing more movie blood, rolling and writhing. His kurta pajama gets dusty. Costume department tries to change them, director abuses them and chases them out of shot.)
(Gabbar picks up cut-off fake hands, and caresses them lovingly, eyes bulging with longing.)
Gabbar: "Ab mein chaar-chaar haathon se VORTAL padh saktaa hun!"
Thakur: "Nahi!"
(Thakur's scream and Gabbar's laugh fill the wadi. Fade out to black.)
(Fade in VORTAL logo with tagline, etc.)
(This Promo was sponsored by your mouse-click finger. Thank you for reading! Now, stop wasting time and start reading the real ishtory, bondhu!)

1.1 V R Family

2005-10-12T23:59:00.000+05:30

The door of the flat opened slowly, revealing only darkness. The five shadowy figures standing in the doorway stepped forward slowly, hesitantly.

One of them did something with a gadget on the wall and with blinding suddenness, every light in the place came on at once.

"That's much better," said Sarla Vatsal, smiling at her husband. At 43, she was still beautiful and elegant. In fact, Virendra Vatsal thought as he walked back to her side, she seemed to grow more attractive as she matured.

Perhaps the fact that she had maintained her figure so well, even after three children, and had a fine sense of grooming and immaculate taste in dressing also made a difference.

Looking at her right now, he thought idly that even Dilip De would envy him!

Mikey, a precocious 12, and currently going through a Yankee phase, groaned and slipped on his Ray-Bans. "Dad, next time you try to blind us, give us some warning, please?"

His short stature was accentuated by his wide girth; too many hours of sitting before computer and television screens had made him softer and heavier than his parents would have liked. But even putting on weight was a kind of rebellion for Mikey; and despite his excess(ive) bulk, he still looked cute, especially when he tried to look mean with his mohawk punk haircut and multiple earrings on the left ear.

"Shut up, Mikey," snapped his older brother Vaibhav. "And don't wear your sunglasses indoors. It's bad luck."

Vaibhav was as lean and tall as his younger brother was short and fat. He had his father's dark good looks and masculine intensity. At 17, he was already starting to fit into the intense 'hero' slot. Except that he was much more laid back than his looks suggested: Vaibhav was the quintessential 'chalta hai' guy.

"That's only for hats, stupid," Mikey retorted.

Their older sister Viveka sighed. "Will you two stop fighting for once. This is important, okay. Try to focus." Her Indian dressing-she was in a khadi churidhar kurta that showed off her slim but full figure beautifully-was deceptive. She was more foreign-savvy than either of her brothers.

A graduate of Michigan State and diploma-holder from Columbia State University, New York, Viveka was the consummate NRI returning to her roots. And like all NRIs come home, she was far more ethnic and desi in her tastes and language than either of the boys, with an international outlook. A young Shabana Azmi could have played her in a film version of her life!

Looking at his family, Virendra Vatsal felt his chest swell with pride. He had worked hard to climb to the position he was in today, and his family made him feel it was worth every midnight deadline and overnight office stay over.

Overwork had added deep circles beneath his eyes and brought his severe eyebrows closer together in an intense stare; but these only made him look more ruggedly attractive, in a way that his wife Sarla described as "Bachchan+Tommy Lee Jones+Al Pacino = mature hunk!"

Now, he put an arm around his wife, squeezed tight and gestured casually at the brightly-lit flat.

"So?" he said softly, almost romantically. "What do you think?"

Raising his voice, he repeated the question loud enough for everybody to hear. "What do you all think? Is it home?"

The five of them looked around the flat.

They walked through the corridor, looked into each of the five bedrooms, the spacious attached toilets with gold-trimmed porcelain fittings and kingsize bathtubs.

The balconies, every one of which had a great view of the ocean and half the city's coastline from Juhu on the right all the way to Cuffe Parade on the left.

The furniture which was almost all wooden and designed in that Scandinavian way that looks elegant but is functional too.

The electrical fittings designed to meet the needs of a millennium Net-connected family: designer lighting with computerized settings.

The gizmos in each bedroom: 34" colour TVs with cable, DVD players, 1200-watt stereo systems with hidden speakers, PCs with cable modems, and every other gadget an urban Indian family could possibly desire.

When they met back in the huge living room (35 by 42 feet, with a sea-facing glass enclosed verandah at the far end), they all looked a little dazed. Except for Virendra Vatsal, who had spent the last 11 months getting the apartment custom-interior-designed and fitted in complete secrecy, and was now as nervous as a first-time applicant for an H1B US Visa.

"I thought you just bought an empty flat," Sarla Vatsal said, staring at her husband.

"Yeah, dad," Vaibhav said. "You didn't tell us you were getting it all done up and furnished and all."

"I thought he was up to something," Viveka said smugly, smiling at her father. "I told you guys he was up to something. That's why he wouldn't let us come and even see the building till now!"

Mikey chewed his gum and adjusted his Ray-Bans and lounged on a beanbag sofa and looked around for the remote to the 54" Thomson TV. He found it but decided against it after a warning look from his alert mother. He shrugged and switched on his Discman instead: The scratchy, tinny sound of Bon Jovi's "It's My Life" escaping from his headphones was audible to everyone.

"So?" Vir Vatsal asked for the tenth time in as many minutes.

"Say something! I spent 11 months and almost every rupee of our savings to put this place together. Was it worth it or not?"

Sarla frowned at him: "Every rupee? You said you wouldn't touch the Grindlays account."

"You know what?" Vaibhav said slowly, turning around as if trying to absorb the essence of the whole flat from where he stood. "I think it's the coolest place I've ever seen in my entire life." He added: "Not just homes. The coolest place. Period."

"I don't know about cool," Viveka said, arms crossed over her khadi kurta, frowning intently. "I think it's way beyond cool. I'd go for awesome. What say, mom?"

Vir Vatsal, grinning with relief at his children's comments, looked anxiously at his wife.

Sarla Vatsal frowned in a way that was exactly like her daughter Viveka. She tilted her head to one side, exactly like her son Vaibhav often did when thinking. And she pretended to chew her lower lip, the way her youngest son Mikey always did when concentrating.

And then she raised both her hands, the silk saree's pallu draped over the left, and brought her palms together with force. Producing a sound that echoed like a bullet through the flat. And then repeating it over and over again with increasing frequency and impact.

Her older children joined her in the standing ovation.

Sarla Vatsal gestured to her husband between rounds of applause.

"Author! Author!" she said, the way an audience does after viewing a great play or concert.

Vir Vatsal, the author of the performance in question, grinned with relief.

When they stopped clapping, they all came and hugged and kissed him warmly.

"Dad, it's phenomenal," Vaibhav said. "It's really amazing. You're maha cool!"

"Great work," Viveka said, planting a lipstick mark on his left cheek. "Now this is what I call great design sense."

Sarla Vatsal pinched his right cheek and punched his muscular shoulder. "You rascal, Vir," she said. "I can understand keeping it a secret from the children. But how could you not tell me what you were up to? For eleven months? I was beginning to think you were having an affair!"

He looked at her solemnly. "I was."

She blinked.

"I was having an affair with you," he explained. "But I was married to this flat!"

They all laughed at that.

Vaibhav said, "Hey, where did Mikey disappear to?"

They looked around. Their youngest brother was nowhere to be seen.

Vir laughed. "I think I can guess where he is."

He led them down the corridor to the bedroom with the black door and the skull-and-crossbones sign with the words "Enter At Your Own Risk" painted in bleeding red paint. He opened the door and went in. They all followed him.

There was Mikey. At his new PC, already on the Net, surfing through an MP3 site for clips of the latest Billboard hits.

"Hey, dad," he called out without looking back at them. "This cable modem is okay. But can't it go any faster?"

Vir Vatsal looked at his wife and grinned. "He likes it too," he said. "That makes it official!"

And that was how the Vatsals got a new home.

And would probably have lived happily ever after.

But then the e-mail came.

1.2 Mikey

2005-10-12T23:58:00.000+05:30

So you see? It all started pretty cool. Like, we had this great new house, Dad's IT firm's share price was in the stratosphere, Viveka had just got accepted by MIT, Vaibhav had a new girlfriend even though he hadn't told mom and dad about it yet, and I had these terrific new toys to fool around with. Life was "Smooth," like Rob Thomas says.

The first couple of months were really wow. We were planning to go to Florida in the Diwali vacations, like, you know, do Disney World and trash the place. Have a blast, basically. I hadn't made any new friends in the new building, and maybe that's why I started spending more time on the Net. Wouldn't you, if you had such a cool new PC and cable modem? Vhy prefers watching Hindi movies with his gf, but he's a moron, even if he's my bro.

Besides, I didn't need friends. I had all the friends I needed on the Net. There was Sally in New Jersey, Zac and Par in Sweden, Stu in Alaska... a whole bunch of great people. ICQ was my life.

I don't even remember who first forwarded the e-mail to me. Was it Joe in Wichita? Or Evvy in Frankfurt? I don't know.

All I know is that I was at this really great Shockwave-enabled horror movie site that showed you a haunted house and let you go through the rooms and all kinds of stuff. And while I was logged on, the 'You have new mail' thing began flashing so I checked it out.

And there it was: A chain letter. Except that this one was different. I knew it even then, at the start. And I should have done what I always did-dragged it to the commode icon and dropped it in the loo. But I didn't. Maybe it was the title in the subject line that got me. Or the fact that I was looking at that haunted house site and listening to Uriah Heep's "Fallen Angel." Whatever.

But I made the fatal mistake of reading that e-mail. And I was basically hooked, even though I didn't realize it at that time.

-----------------------------------
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: WARNING: DO NOT VISIT THIS SITE
Date: 28 Jul 00 16:49:14 CDT
From: NetWizard243
To: mikeyvats@rediffmail.com

>>>>>Hi, friend. Please pass this message on to as many people as you can. This is
>>>>>a matter of life and death okay. This is not a joke. It's serious stuff, guys. If

>>>>>you ever come across a link to this site, don't repeat _DON'T_ click on it. It
>>>>>will take you to a website that is not normal. I mean, it's not even really a
>>>>>website. It's some kind of weird crap. Maybe it's black magic. I don't know.
>>>>>But do not visit it, or type it into your URL address bar or click on any link that takes
>>>>>you there. It's really bad karma. Trust me.

>>>>>http://vvv.vvv.net

1.3 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:57:00.000+05:30

Looking back now, I guess I feel guilty. As Mikey's older brother, I should have been looking out for him. Sure, we fight all the time, and I hate his choice in music and movies and stuff, and he hates my choices. But we're still brothers, after all. And I should have seen it happening and stopped it.

Mikey has a tendency to get carried away. That's his nature. But this time, it wasn't wholly his fault. I see that now. Although at the time, I blamed it all on him, the truth is there was something supernatural about that e-mail. Even now, when I look at it, it has a weird kind of draw.

Like, even though it's shouting out don't visit that site, what you really feel like doing is do visit the site. You know. Like the little warning on DVDs and LDs that says "Contains full frontal nudity, simulated sex and profanity. Not suitable for children."

Which red-blooded teenager can resist renting that movie?!

And telling a nerd like Mikey don't do something is like challenging him.

So naturally, the first thing he did after reading that e-mail, without even thinking for a second about it, was to click on that link and go straight to the site.

Even then, the whole thing might have stopped right there and then. If it wasn't for Ruchi. That's my gf. My parents were out of the house, they had tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar that night, and Ruchi came over to watch a DVD with me. And there was this really hot scene in the movie, and I got a little carried away too, I guess.

And when I tried to put my hand on her... Well, you should see her, and you'll know why I got carried away in the first place.

Ruchi constantly gets teased in college for her looks. All the guys call her, "Twinkle Khanna plus."

The first part is because she does sort of resemble Twinkle: those wide, slightly sad eyes and slightly hooked nose and clean-cut Punj features. As for the 'plus,' that refers to a certain part of her anatomy. To be precise, as Thomson and
Thompson say in Tintin comics, the precise part on which I had my hands at the time, precisely. Excuse me if I'm drooling while I do a mental replay of the scene! I'm only thinking about her 'plus' points!

But hang on; let her tell you how it happened. Precisely.

1.4 Ruchi

2005-10-12T23:56:00.000+05:30

Hi, I'm Ruchi. I don't know why I'm here, but I'm a part of it, so it makes sense. Sort of. I think. Actually, nothing makes sense about this whole scene at all. But it happened. I know. I was there.

I have this problem with my parents. They're really conservative. You know how it is: Indian girl isn't supposed to go out with a guy until she's married. It sounds 18th century, but a lot more parents are like that than you'd think. Wearing jeans and a tight top to college is one thing. Wearing a guy on your arm to a date is something else altogether.

So, actually, what happened was that I was still refusing to let Vhy (that's what everyone calls Vaibhav, BTW) intro me to his parents. Because, basically, once they knew, maybe they might want to talk to my parents. And that would have been The End. Phillum Samapt.

But somehow I let him talk me into going to his house that evening, while his parents were out seeing some play or whatnot. I had heard so much about the new house for the last two months, I was maha-curious. So I thought, okay, just pop in, see a movie, eat some home-delivery, and vamoose.

Actually, it started that way. He called me when his parents were leaving and I came over. He showed me the flat. It was stupen. Amaz. Phenom. No words. Like a movie set. After I finished ogling, he took me to his bedroom. Put on the DVD. And we started watching Eyes Wide Shut.

Now, I'm not one of those kind of girls, okay. I haven't let Vhy go much beyond kissing me even. Actually. And for the first part of the movie, while we drank fresh limes and sat on his really comfy sofa (his bedroom is massive), all was well. It was the whole "Hum tum ek kamre mein bandh ho" scene from Bobby and it was cute, sexy and very exciting.

Then the hot stuff started. I'm talking about that orgy scene. If you've seen it...well, if you see it in a group in a theatre, it's nothing much, actually. But when you're alone in your bf's bedroom, alone in the flat (or so we thought) and the AC's on, and you're maha-relaxed. And you're ogling Tom Cruise's back-he has a really sexy back, and his buns... Stop me!

So then Vhy started nuzzling, okay. Then he was kissing, okay. Hand on my thigh. Okay. Really close to me, close enough to feel his heart going thud-thud. Okay.

But then he started getting carried away. And so did I. I'll admit it frankly. I got carried away too.

Don't ask how far, okay. This isn't a Shobha De novel.

But pretty carried away.

Like at one point I remember, he was whispering in my ear: "Don't worry, don't worry, Ruch, I've got Durex."

That was his mistake. And my saving grace.

The fact that he didn't say 'condom' or 'contraceptive' or whatever. He said 'Durex.' And the image of those ads where all these foreign couples are doing it-on the kitchen table, the bed, the sofa, with that dan-dan-dan music going in the background.

Just his saying the name made me remember my father switching the channel when the ad came on, and how embarrassed my mom looked. It made me remember my parents.

And that broke the spell. And that's when I shoved him away, got up, adjusted my blouse, and stormed out of the room. And walked straight out the front door.

Except that it wasn't actually the front door. I was like new in this flat, and more over-heated than day before yesterday's pizza, and I just went through the first door at the end of the corridor, thinking it was the way out.

It was his kid brother's bedroom. Vhy had told me he was out for the evening, everybody was supposed to be out. But he was right there. Sitting at his PC.

And something totally weird was going on. Actually.

2.1 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:55:00.000+05:30

Actually.

That's like Ruch's favourite catchword. She uses it like my daadi--bless her soul--used to use 'Hai Raam' or Americans use variations of J.C.'s name. Actually, this, Actually, that.

Sometimes, when we're having a bit of a tussle over something, I can get really irritated by her using that word. But this time, she was totally justified.

I was coming out of my room, heading for the front door--because obviously I thought that's the way she had fled--when I heard her gasp behind me. I turned, and saw her standing there, at the door to Mikey's bedroom, looking in. She had this expression on her face, I don't know how to describe it.

It was like she had seen a T-Rex lumbering toward her.

She backed away, all the way to the wall of the corridor, banged her head against the wall, just a bit, not really hard. And stopped dead.

"Ruch?" I said, going to her. "Look, I just got carried way, okay. You don't have to go just because--"

I still hadn't caught on to what was going on. But then she turned and grabbed my hand so tight, I knew at once something was off.

"Vaibhav," she gasped, saying it the way she does when she's really upset, or emotional. "Your brother...he just...I mean, actually...actually..."

I stared at her, then at the door to Mikey's bedroom. It was still ajar. I looked at Ruchi again. "Actually what?"

She opened and closed her mouth, like a fish in a bowl. "He...actually...actually..."

See what I mean about the 'actuallys'? They can totally get on your nerves!

I patted her shoulder, comforting her. Then went to Mikey's door and pushed it open slowly. I looked in.

There was Mikey's comp, the monitor displaying the usual dozen-odd browser pages, email clients, direct messaging clients, etc. Probably chatting with fifty different people at the same time, using fifty different handles himself! That was Mikey. The room smelled of stale pizza, spilled cola, and the usual group of Mikey smells. Except for something else. A strange, pungent odour that I couldn't quite place.

I poked my head all the way into the room and looked around. "Hey, bro? You here?" I was hoping he had been sitting securely in his room all this while. It was one thing to watch Eyes Wide Shut with my gf in the privacy of my room, behind closed doors. And quite another to have my kid brother sneaking around, listening at keyholes--or worse, looking in. Shudder. Or Yucks! as Ruchi would say.

But Mikey wasn't like that. He wasn't into things like eavesdropping and peeping through keyholes. Nah. He was glued to his comp, and if he'd gotten up for a minute, it was probably to answer some unavoidable call of nature, or to fetch the next pizza or can of cola. Right now he was probably in the loo.

For a second, out the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the image on his monitor change, as if a screensaver had come on, and I glanced back it. But it was the same as before--more or less, I guess. No screensaver, just a bunch of browser pages and chat thingies.

I turned back to Ruchi. She was staring goggle-eyed at me.

"He's not here," I said. "Probably in the loo." Or in the kitchen, getting himself another can.

She put a hand to her mouth. "He was sitting at his comp when I looked in, Vhy. Sitting there. Actually." She said it once more, just in case I hadn't got it the first time round: "Actually!"

"Yeah, I know," I said, more than a little irritated now. I was still flushed from our little, ahem, grope-fest. "He probably stepped out just now."

"No!" she almost shouted. "I mean just now, just this minute. He was sitting there. And then he wasn't!"

I stared at her. "He wasn't?"

She nodded so vigorously, I thought her head might fall off. She started to add something, then thought better of it for some reason, but I clearly saw her lips move to form the first syllable of, what else, "Actu--."

There was a sound behind me. I turned and looked into Mikey's room. He was sitting there at his desk, typing away at his keyboard feverishly, tapping and clicking on his mouse like a net-nerd in the heat of an online auction for Re 1 air tickets. I frowned. He looked like he hadn't moved for hours.

"Hey, Mikey?" I said, puzzled.

"Yeah," he said after the usual long Mikey pause to allow time for my words to penetrate through his thick fog of net-nerdiness.

"Where were you just now? Like a moment ago?"

"Here," he said shortly. That's Mikey, my bro, man of few words. Few spoken words.

"No, I mean, when you got up and left your comp just now, where were you? In the loo?" He couldn't have been out of the room, obviously, because Ruchi and I were standing right here. "Or the balcony?" Though that sounded stupid the minute I said it--why would Mikey go to the balcony?

He turned slightly, just enough so I could see his partial profile. In the light of the monitor he looked a bit less chubby than usual--probably the angle or the light. "Never got up. Never went anyplace. Sitting right here for the past hour and a half." He paused. "Since the pizza arrived." He added after a moment: "Get the door, will you? And get a life."

I shut Mikey's bedroom door slowly. When it clicked softly, Ruchi flinched.

I turned and stared at her. I was starting to understand why she was so freaked.

"Ruchi....When I looked into the room just now...Mikey...He wasn't there just a minute ago, right? He wasn't sitting at his desk, right?"

She shook her head. What had she said when I found her in the passage? "Just now, just this minute. He was sitting there. And then he wasn't!"

And now he was sitting there again. As if he'd never gotten up at all--and he even said he hadn't gotten up. And I didn't see why he would be lying--or how he could be lying. I was standing right here when he re-appeared again at his comp, after all. I would have seen or heard something if he had come from the bathroom and sat down at his desk.

Which left only one explanation: Mikey had disappeared from his chair, then reappeared moments later.

Actually.

2.2 Ruchi

2005-10-12T23:54:00.000+05:30

Actually, that wasn't the whole story. After we went back to Vhy's room and sat and talked about it for a bit--and I mean, talked, okay, no hanky panky stuff--I told him to stop and rewind.

"Which part?" he asked, puzzled.

"The part when you looked into Mikey's room and saw his comp. What was on his monitor?"

He shrugged. "The usual thingies. Net stuff."

I shook my head. "I saw something else. Actually."

He frowned, with a trace of irritation. "Like what?"

I shivered. "I don't know. Some kind of interface. It was all black, with white lettering and red letting, but it wasn't like the usual html page, you know what I mean? It was like, I don't know, a video playing."

He turned to look at the door of his room, thinking. "Maybe it was a video. He plays a lot of heavy metal and punk rock videos while chatting, some of those are really whacked stuff."

"Maybe," I said reluctantly, "but I think this was something else. I saw a word, big letters, Portal, I think...no, with a V. Yes, actually, V."

"Vortal?" he asked, crinkling his forehead the way he does when he's getting one of his migraines.

"Yeah! Actually! Vortal, that was it. What is that anyway?"

He rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, massaging it. "It's like a vertically integrated portal..." he shook his head. "And when you saw this Vortal thingie...where was Mikey?"

I remembered and shuddered again. "That was when I saw him...you know."

"Disappear?"

I nodded, swallowing. Suddenly I realized my throat was parched. "He was there when I looked in, and I was just going to say I was sorry for barging in like that, and then, he just...vanished...actually...and that's when I was left looking at monitor and saw that word."

"Vortal," he said, tonelessly. After a moment, he said, "Was it like, a very dark screen, blinking very fast, almost like a hypnotic rhythm...?"

"Exactly! You saw it?"

He shook his head, rubbing his face. "I don't know. I thought I saw something when I was looking around his room, but when I turned back..." He sighed. "Listen to us. This is crazy. It's impossible. I mean, we couldn't have seen what we saw. Mikey couldn't have vanished and then reappeared like that. There must be some kind of logical explanation."

"Yeah? Like what?" I sounded angrier than I meant to, but it was so like Vhy to just brush me off. If he hadn't seen Mikey not in his chair and then back in his chair again, we probably wouldn't even be having this conversation, and that realization bugged the hell out of me.

He looked up at me like he was angry and sad both at once. He saw that I was bugged and backed off. "I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."

We talked some more, and then, I saw the time and had to vanish myself. I was coming out of his room, and he stopped me and took hold of me and kissed me, real tender-like, and said, "Sorry I got carried away before."

When he's nice like that, and gentle, it really makes me melt, like icecream on a hot sunny afternoon. So I kissed him back. And he kissed me back again. And before I knew it, we were like, melting together. Never heard the front door opening, footsteps, nothing.

The next thing we know, someone was clearing her throat like, so loudly, she sounded she was gargling Wocadine--I know, because I had to gargle that horrid iodine-tasting stuff when I had a bad throat last summer and it was like yuckville.

Vhy and I broke it off right away, and looked around, wiping our mouths guiltily.

His older sis, Viveka, was standing there, one hand on her hip and looking with raised eyebrows at us. "Hi, guys," she said. "Having fun?"

She sounded p'd off.

I left Vhy to make the lame excuses. And left. Haven't been back since.

2.3 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:53:00.000+05:30

I heard Vhy coming in to the kitchen, and saw him looking around hesitantly. I was making pancakes--flapjacks as Steve used to call them back in NYC--and the place was full of the smell of roasting dough and maple syrup.

The maid was at the far end, rolling more atta with a belan.

I glanced around. "Hey."

"Hey," he said, not very enthu.

I turned a flapjack over. Nice and golden brown, just the way I liked them. I waited for Vhy to get his nerve up.

"Viv," he said. "About last evening..."

"Say no more," I said without turning around. "It's our secret."

He heaved a sigh of relief. "That's great. I was worried that, you know, you'd get all high and mighty and moralistic like you always do. And last night, you weren't really in a mood to talk."

He was right. After I caught him and Ruchi making out in the passage--in the passageway of all places!--I was sort of curt with him, told him I had something urgent to see to, and we'd talk about it tomorrow. This was tomorrow.

I finished the flapjack, dumped it on a plate, and turned to look at him. A strand of hair had slipped out of my hair-band and it fell down over my face. I pulled it behind my ear and waved the dripping spatula at him. He backed off a step.

"Don't get me started, okay?" I said, waving the spatula for emphasis. "You're seventeen. Too young to be bringing girls into the house when Dad and Mom are out. Definitely too young to be getting upto adult-like mischief in your bedroom!"

"Come on," he said, embarrassed to be discussing this with me in front of the maid. Not that Shanti-bai, our Marathi maid, ever understood anything we said, she barely spoke Hindi let alone Angrezi. "You make it sound like I sneak a different girl into the house every day of the week! Ruchi's my steady gf. And we were just watching a movie, that's all."

I looked at him with with squinty eyes, trying to give him the Arnold. "Yeah, sure, and Eyes Wide Shut is a Disney animated film."

He grinned. "Can I help it if she has a thing for Tom Cruise's buns?"

I started to smile at that. Then smelled my next batch of flapjacks starting to get over done and flipped them over quickly.

"Okay," I said over my shoulder. "So I won't be running to Dad or Mom to deliver a full confession about your extra-curricular activities. But the next time you want to bring your gf over and make like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, do us all a favor, ask them for permission, okay?"

Vaibhav pretended to look confused. "Ask Tom and Nicole for permission?"

I swatted him lightly on the shoulder with the spatula. "Ask Mom and Dad, you nut. Now, get the hell out of here before you make me set the place on fire."

He didn't leave. He waited a moment while I finished the batch and put them onto the plate the maid held out.

"Sab ko bolna ke naashta tayaar hai," I said to the maid, speaking slowly and carefully to make sure she understood. I think she followed the general gist at least.

Vhy said, "You know, it's great your Hindi sounds so desi even now, after seven years in the US of A. Not like those pseuds who go to New Jersey for a week and come back sounding like third-generation Indian Americans."

I glanced at him again. "What's on your mind?"

He shrugged. "Nothing, really."

"Come on. I know you, little bro. Something's bothering you. If it's about the grope-fest last night...relax." I made a gesture like I was zipping my lips. "My lips are sealed with Cellotape--no, with Fevicol!"

When that didn't even get a teensy smile out of him, I knew something was wrong. He shook his head. "It's something else...It's about Mikey."

I frowned. "What about Mikey?"

While I was talking, I opened the fridge and took out the butter dish. "Isko bhi rakhna table pe," I said to the maid. Vhy waited until the maid had left the kitchen before going on.

"Ruchi and I," he said. "We saw something last night in his room. Something really weird going on."

I shrugged. "Like what?"

He hesitated. "This is going to sound wierd."

"Try me."

He was silent for a minute or two. That told me more than anything else. Vhy had always been able to tell me anything. Well, almost anything. But somehow, I didn't think this was some girl-boy thing he was talking about.

After a long pause, he launched into an explanation of what he and Ruchi had seen. I got the impression he was leaving out some stuff--probably the shenanigans he and she were upto just before she went out of his room--but soon I was caught up in his narration and trying to understand what he was saying.

"So let me get this straight," I said when he'd finished. "Ruchi saw Mikey sitting at his comp. Then he disappeared in front of her eyes. And then you saw the empty chair, and then saw him come back. Out of thin air. Right?"

He nodded unhappily. "I'm telling you, Viv, it sounds weird, I know. But something happened there."

I sighed and wiped my hands down the front of my Italian-style red-and-white checked apron, leaning back against the granite platform. It was warm from the heat of the stove. "What happened? He was kidnapped by aliens and then they dumped him back because he was too expensive to feed?"

"I don't know. But Ruchi and I both saw something else. First there was this thing happening with his computer monitor, like darkness coming out and enveloping him. Deleting him out of existence. That's what she saw. All I saw was just something black throbbing like a trance-rhythm light sequencer. And the word 'Vortal'."

"Vortal," I repeated.

"Yeah, that's like a--"

"I know what a vortal is."

I was silent for a minute or two, looking at him, thinking. I could see from the way he was looking at me, that he thought that I thought that he was pulling some kind of elaborate prank on me.

"I'm not joking, Viv. I'm serious. Mikey disappeared for five whole minutes last night."

"Vhy, will you listen to yourself? How crazy this sounds?"

He sighed. "I know, sis. Ruchi called me and we talked this morning. Neither of us got much sleep last night. And we both agreed that we hadn't just imagined it or anything. It really happened."

I shook my head, unable to decide whether Vhy was pulling my leg or suffering from some kind of delusion. Somehow, despite how crazy his story sounded, I didn't think either applied in this case. "Look, bro, I know you're a good kid. But you're making me wonder if maybe the two of you were doing more than just watching a movie last night in your room."

Vaibhav looked confused--and slightly guilty too. "What do you mean?"

"You know. Maybe sharing a toke, or a joint, or something?" I almost regretted the words when I said them, but they were out before I knew it.

Vaibhav looked offended now. "Drugs? You think we were stoned?"

I shrugged. "Come on, Vhy. Indian kids these days..."

Vaibhav looked like he was about to deliver a little speech on Indian kids versus American kids. But he visibly controlled himself.

"No drugs," he said stiffly. "And no alcohol. Or pills. Or intravenous shots or anything. Ruchi and I are 100 percent clean, okay? For God's sake, you're my big sister, you should know I hate that crap."

"Okay, okay," I said, backing off. "Don't get all upset. I was just asking."

"And I answered. No drugs. I saw what I saw. And so did Ruchi."

I chewed my lip. "I don't know what to say then, Vhy. I guess you saw something, but maybe you made a mistake or something. I mean, people don't just vanish into thin air."

Vhy shook his head. "Come on, Viv. If you don't believe me, say so. But we saw it. It happened. I don't know how or why. I just know it did."

We were both silent again for another long moment, then a voice called from the living room. It was Mom, calling us for breakfast. The maid returned, carrying the empty platter. "Memsaab kehti hai bahut achcha banaya hai. Amriki roti aur chahiye," she said.

I turned back to the stove. "Vhy, I have to do breakfast, okay? We'll talk about this later."

I didn't turn back to look at him, but I sensed after a moment that he had left. I felt relieved as well as ashamed. Relieved because I really hadn't known how to react to such a story. Ashamed, because obviously Vhy believed that story, and I didn't know whether that was a good thing or a worse thing.

So I did the only thing I could under the circumstances: I made more flapjacks. And then I joined my family for breakfast.

2.4 Vir

2005-10-12T23:52:00.000+05:30

Halfway through breakfast, I realized that something was wrong with my family.

On the surface, things seemed fine.

Viveka was in and out of the kitchen, trying to show the new maid how to make American-style flapjacks. She had developed this urge to cook since she'd come back from New York. It was part of the whole rediscovery of her ethnic roots she was going through, along with dressing Indian and wearing a nose ring and talking in Hindi a lot.

I had to admit I quite liked the cooking part at least. Viveka was a natural born chef, able to turn out a masterpiece the first time she tried out a recipe. If I didn't praise her openly, it was because I had learned the hard way that in these post-millennial times, some women considered it an insult to be called a great cook. As in "just a great cook, is that all you think I am?"

So when Viveka offered me another Amriki chapatti--I mean, pancake!--I pretended to think for a moment, then said, "Why not."

She served me the flapjack, watched me smear a knifeful of butter over it, then add maple syrup too--I liked the combination of sweet and salty. I cut a piece with my knife, speared it with my fork and was about to raise it to my mouth, when I noticed her still standing there, watching.

"What?" I said, frowning. That was when I realized that Sarla, my wife, was also watching me. Both women had similar expressions on their faces. Like mother, like daughter.

I put the fork down on the plate. "Whose birthday did I forget?"

Vaibhav rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Dad, tube-light!"

I couldn't think of anything I'd done to warrant the Garuda-eye stares. "I give up," I said at last. "What's my crime, m'lord?" I corrected myself: "M'ladies?"

Viveka and Sarla exchanged a glance. It was one of those typical women's looks that openly express disdain for the male of the species--these guys!

"Vir," Sarla said softly. "At least for politeness sake, say something about the flapjacks."

"It's okay, mum," Viveka said with extra-sweetness. "If he doesn't like them, I can understand."

I raised my eyebrows. "Is that what this is about? My not praising her flapjacks to the skies? God, you women! I'll never understand you. The last time I praised your cooking, Sarla, you gave me a half-hour lecture about how demeaning it was to a women to be called a great cook."

Sarla's eyes flashed angrily. "You made a statement to the effect that I belonged in the kitchen! Did you expect me to touch your feet for that, patidev?"

I raised my hands, giving up. "Bas! Full stop. Let's not get into that all over again." I looked up at Viveka, taking her hand in mine. "Bete, Viv. These are the best goddamn flapjacks I've ever had in my entire life!"

Viveka smiled. It was a giant, ear-to-ear banana smile, the way she used to smile when she was a toddler and I used to pick her up and threw her up to the skies. Even after all these years, it made my heart glow.

"He called them goddamn flapjacks," Vhy said teasingly from the other end of the table. "So don't mistake it for a compliment, Viv."

Viv ignored her brother. "Have some more, dad!" She started to shovel two more jacks onto my plate.

"Viveka," her mother admonished. "You'll make your father fat! Bad enough I have to fight to keep Mikey's intake down."

"But he loves them, Ma!" Still, Viveka put the jacks back on the platter. I grinned with mock frustration.

"Women," I remarked deliberately. "Can't figure them out, can't do without their figures!"

"Relax, Viv," Vhy said as he put his fork down. "Mikey'll be here in a sec. And he'll polish off the lot. In fact, make sure you have another truckload ready for him! You know how he loves breakfast."

"And lunch. And dinner. And snack-times. And midnight snacks. Etc, etc, etc."

She glanced at Vhy, and I saw a look pass between them. Something odd. I also noticed that Vaibhav hadn't finished his pancake, and that even his attempts at breakfast-table banter seemed a little forced today, almost as if he was trying hard to cover up the fact that he didn't feel like bantering.

Viveka broke the eye-lock between herself and her younger brother, and called to Shanti-bai to bring the last stack out.

Mikey appeared just then. Whistling. That wasn't unusual in itself. But he was also neatly dressed in a shirt and trousers--an actual pair of trousers. I put down his knife and fork and stared at my youngest child. I hadn't even known that Mikey possessed anything but jeans and hard rock T-shirts!

"Hi, everyone," Mikey said cheerfully. He took a seat and looked around the breakfast table. "So how's everyone this morning? I mean, is it a great day or what?"

Pin drop silence followed. Sarla Vatsal was in the act of pouring tea for herself and Viv. Viveka had sat down to sample her own cooking. Vhy had been trying to get a coffee stain out of Page 314 of the Harry Potter novel he had been pretending to reread while making his forced banter. He was staring at Mikey like he had seen a ghost.

Mikey rubbed his hands together, smiling as if he hadn't noticed anything amiss. "Flapjacks for breakfast? Smells great, Viv."

Viveka managed to stutter out a response: "Help yourself, Mikey."

He nodded and reached for the platter. At that point, I started to relax. Very well, so perhaps Mikey wasn't his usual grouchy self. So he was dressed unusually neat for a change. Perhaps he had actually discovered how to use a hairbrush at last. And perhaps he had misplaced his trademark Sony Discman and the latest hard-rock CD.

But he was about to eat like a 'healthy baby'. And that was normal for Mikey.

We all watched as Mikey took a knife and cut himself a slice of a flapjack from the platter. He slid the piece onto his own plate, picked it up with his fork, and ate it.

"Hey," he said to Viveka. "This is great stuff. You really are a woman of diverse talents, sis!"

Viveka blinked and stopped chewing her mouthful of flapjack. I saw her cast a glance at Vaibhav. She looked almost scared, but that couldn't be. I must have misread her look. Why would she look scared of Mikey?

Mikey put down his fork, picked up his glass of milk and drank it down without a pause. He dabbed his mouth with a napkin and smiled at everyone again.

"Okay, that's it for me," he said. "Busy day. Going over to the library to check out some new books. See you guys later, okay? Bysie-bye, family. Love y'all."

And as all of us watched with silent stupefaction, he picked up his tote bag and was out of the door.

I was the first to find my voice.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," I said, addressing myself in the general direction of my wife. "But did that young person bear a passing resemblance to our son, Mahesh Vatsal, aka Mikey?"

Then, before anyone could respond, I shook my head and answered my own rhetorical question. "Nahi, bhai, I must be mistaken. He hardly ate breakfast. He finished a full glass of milk. He's washed, groomed, and dressed like a normal 12-year old boy. He was friendly and cheerful and polite to everyone. And he said he was going to the library, to borrow books!"

I looked around at my family. "That's not our son Mikey. It's just somebody who happens to look like him!"

I grinned as I said it, meaning it as a joke of course. But the look of utter horror that came over Vaibhav and Viveka's faces looked almost real. As if they took what I said dead seriously.

3.1 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:51:00.000+05:30

After breakfast, I had to rush to college. We were having a meeting of the Class Reps for Malhar, our annual inter-college festival. I was Drama and Literature CR for my class, and I had to be there. I caught Viv's eye as I left the house, and she looked away. I knew she was as confused as I was, but hopefully she was starting to take me seriously.

Let's face it. That guy at the breakfast table this morning? He wasn't Mikey. Not my brother, Mahesh Virendra Vatsal. He was someone else. Have you seen that old sci-fi horror film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Go check it out. Better still; check out the remake, it's pretty neat. And there's a sequel to the remake, called Body Snatchers, starring that really cute babe who co-starred with Michael J. Fox in For Love or Money. Which, by the way, was the film that was cogged by apna desi filmwallahs and remade as Yes Boss starring Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla...

As usual, I'm totally off the point. Films have that effect on me.

I thought about Mikey all day. Ruchi and I kept looking at each other in Psycho that morning, and in English Lit, and even in History. Well, actually, I dozed off in History. Making up for the restless night I had after seeing that weird crap last evening. Besides, Babur and Humayun had waited three hundred years for Vaibhav Vatsal to learn all about them, so they could wait a while longer.

Anyways.

After classes, Ruchi and I met in the canteen. Because of the transport strike, there was only Marie biscuits and those really awful teacakes with the tutti-frutti--I hate tutti-frutti, don't you--but we didn't mind, because we weren't that hungry. There was a song playing from the new Hrithik Roshan movie, Fiza, on the canteenwalah's music system.

After Sampat the canteenwalah had made his usual caustic comment about an unpaid bill and I had done my usual ignoring, and we were sitting at a table with steaming cups of chai and a plateful of Marie Biscuits in front of us, Ruchi looked at me and said,

"Snatched."

I blinked at her. "Kya?"

"Snatched," she said again. "Like in the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

I grinned. "That's what I love about you. The fact that you're as much a movie buff as I am. I was thinking about that exact same movie all morning. The part where the alien plants grab the humans when they're sleeping, and duplicate them in these kind of vegetable pods."

She was nodding enthusiastically. "And as the pods develop, the humans are sucked dry of life. Until finally the pods become exact replicas of the people and take their places."

We grinned. I put my hand over her hand. Actually, I wanted to do more than just that, but the last time I got caught doing more and when the supervisor asked me what I thought I was doing, I wisecracked, "Practicals!" and it got me a two-week suspension, which was killing, because it meant two weeks without seeing Ruch every morning, so I've learned to curb it a bit.

She frowned and pulled her hand away. She did it real smooth-like, but I knew it was her way of telling me to back off, this was not the time or place to get cosy. I sighed and put my hand on a Marie biscuit instead. She did the same.

"But that can't be what happened to your brother," she said, dipping a Marie in tea and bringing it out soppy and steaming. "He couldn't have been 'snatched'."

"Why not?" I asked, biting the bait--and the Marie.

"Because there's no pod."

I thought about that. She had a point.

"Okay, so what about The Puppet Master? Remember that one, with Donald Sutherland? Maybe he got this alien parasite attached to the nexus of his spinal cord and brain?"

She grimaced. "That was yucky. Actually. But yuckier than that was the rip off with the slug-like thing that takes over a cop who goes on a killing spree. What was that called?"

"Maniac Cop," I said at once.

She slapped my hand. "Come on! That was another series, about a cop who dies and then becomes a crazy zombie who goes on a killing spree. I'm talking about the one with the alien slug that attaches itself to the back of the cop and then makes him go on a killing spree."

"Same difference," I said, dipping my Marie again into my chai. When I pulled the biscuit out again, it was gone, like it had been dissolved by the spraying blood of the aliens in the Alien quadrology.

"You dipped three times," she said smugly. "I told you a thousand times, never dip more than two times."

"This is important," I said, getting up. "We should go research this." I gestured to her, mouthing the lyrics of the song playing in the background: "Aaja mahiya."

"Research what?" she asked, puzzled. "How many times you can dip Marie biscuits in chai before they dissolve?"

"No, Michelle-Pfeifer-with-brown-eyes-and-an-attitude. I mean, this alien movie stuff. We should go do some serious research, to help us figure out what's happening to Mikey." I added after a moment, hopefully, "If anything's happening to Mikey. Come on, let's go."

Getting up, she stuffed another Marie biscuit in her mouth, and around the crumbling flakes, said, "Where? To the college library?"

I gave her a withering look. "No, yaar. To our library."

She frowned. Then understanding dawned on her. I always like it when understanding dawns on Ruch. Her face sort of blushes just the way the eastern sky blushes with the coming dawn in a George Romero horror film at the end, while the end credits roll. Really romantic like. It makes me wonder if the blush stops at her neck or continues all over.

Note to self: Check if Ruchi's blushes continue below the neck, and if so, then, how far exactly are we talking about here.

"Oh," she said. "That library." We were walking through the quadrangle now, the shouts and yells of the college basketball team echoing off the ancient stone walls.

"Yup. This is important stuff. Got to research it thoroughly."

She cocked an eyebrow at me, linking her arm in mine as we exitted the college. "Yeah, right. And I bet I know which direction your research would like to go."

I tried to look innocent. "Which way do you mean?"

She gestured at her open collar. "Down this way."

I flapped my hands at her. "Lawksadaisy, woman! You have a doity mind. Kinna you think of anything but that allatime? Yousa be obsessed with it!"

She giggled. I was imitating five different actors in five different Oscar-winning performances, and it thrilled me that she could probably name each and every one of them. Ah, but that was why I adored Ruch so much. That, and her 'plus points', of course.

Note to self: Figure out if I adore Ruchi more for her knowledge of movie trivia, or for her 'plus points'. Addendum to note: Research thoroughly before reaching conclusion.

"So where are are we heading actually?" she said as we came out on Mahapalika Marg. There was a morcha passing by, heading towards the Esplanade Court down the road--it was only a small one, the traffic jam was barely a kilometre long. Luckily for us, it was on the other side of the road.

I shrugged. "Sterling? Regal? New Empire?"

She thought for a moment. "Liberty. The box seats in the back of the dress circle..."

"...have the most privacy. Okay. Liberty it is." I opened the door of a black-and-yellow taxi waiting on the curb, and gestured with a flourish. "Enter the dragon."

She paused before getting in, placing a hand on my shoulder. For a moment, the mischief left her pretty face and she looked into my eyes with a genuinely anxious look.

"Vhy," she said. "Something weird is going on with your bro, isn't it?"

I sighed, then nodded. "Yeah. And I haven't a clue what to do about it."

She frowned. "Then why are we going to see a movie? Shouldn't we go talk to your mom or something?"

"That's why we're going to do research."

She smiled weakly. "As if."

I looked at her squarely. "You have a better idea?"

She shook her head, then suddenly pecked me on the cheek.

"No kissing until researchers are in the library, lady," I said mock-sternly. "First rule of research."

Then I got in the taxi with her and we departed for the hallowed halls of researchdom. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should have been trying to figure out what was wrong with Mikey--if anything was wrong. Instead, I was copping out and going to a movie hall, to spend the afternoon making out--ahem, researching--with my gf.

But the truth was, I didn't know what else to do at the time, yaar. I was a little creeped out, and I didn't want to admit it, and so I was doing the only thing possible--'avoidance avoidance mechanism' as we say in Psycho class.

It worked pretty well too.

Until later that day, when something else happened, and things got really scary.

3.2 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:50:00.000+05:30

I didn't really think much of the breakfast show. Or whatever you call Mikey's behavior that morning. True, it seemed very odd that he should suddenly turn over a new leaf. But stranger things have been known to happen.

After I mulled over it, I felt that Vhy was just over-reacting. I know how tough it can be with same-sex siblings. I'd just read a Ph.D. thesis about it by a friend at New York State. Susan Ing, a Vietnamese student I'd met while doing my post-grad diploma course in Film Production at Columbia, NY. Of all the places possible, we'd met at an all-night showing of Miyazake films. She was the closest thing to a best friend I had besides Steve.

But then Steve was much more than just a best friend.

Speaking of which. Steve had e-mailed his animated short film to me the previous night. I got his sms telling me he'd sent it, just before the interval of M:i-2 during that big shootout in the research lab. The minute I got it, I apologized to my movie companions--two old school friends I hadn't seen in ages--ducked out of M:i-2 and came home early, just in time to catch Vhy making out with his well-endowed gf in the passage of our house.

But when I tried to run the file on my comp, it wouldn't open. I thought the file might have got corrupted or something, so I'd MSNed Steve telling him I was online and to resend it to me via MSN Messenger right now. But by then, he was neck deep in some rush job animating a sugarfree chocobits cereal logo for an ad agency--literally while the creative director of the agency sat beside him, chewing his nails anxiously because the presentation was the next morning--and wasn't even logged on, which of course I didn't know until the next day, because after 2 a.m. I crashed out.

Today, when I got to my comp after finishing some chores that couldn't wait, it was late afternoon. I found his emails saying he was resending it in a different format, just in case. But there was something wrong again. Try as I might, I just couldn't get the file attachment to open.

It was frustrating as hell. Steve had been working for ages on this short film, and had talked my ear off about it, both while I was in New York and after I came back to Bombay/Mumbai, and I knew the final result just had to be way cool. But I'm no comp whiz like Mikey, I can just about use the dumb machine to get my work done, is all.

I would have asked Dad for help. As the head of a software firm, he knows everything there is to know about comps. But he had left for office eons ago. Mom was working on her weekly opinion column when I knocked and then peeped in her room.

From the tapes she was forwarding and rewinding and watching, I figured it was something to do with cola advertising. Mom gets all worked up about social issues, and I can't say I blame her. I was still trying to come to terms with how much India had changed in the seven years I'd been abroad, studying. Going by all the McDonald's and Coke ads and Domino's Pizza, it was almost like being in NY, NY again. Except for the garbage on the streets!

Mom was sweet enough not to mind my intrusion into her work-time. "Try Mikey's comp," she suggested. "Your father said he keeps upgrading it so much that it's probably equivalent to some sort of a supercomputer by now. I'm sure his PC would be able to open your problem file. Besides, from what you're saying, it's probably a patch you don't have--and Mikey will have every patch ever invented, I'd think."

Why hadn't I thought of that. "Great idea! Thanks, mom," I said. And went into Mikey's bedroom. His computer was already on--I doubt he ever puts it off--and in a few seconds, I was accessing my mail again. It was almost scary how fast and smooth his machine was, even when compared to my P-III. I felt a delicious thrill when I saw the icon of Steve's file.

Crossing my fingers and sending up a silent prayer to Goddess Saraswati as I waited. I double-clicked the file icon when it appeared and...

Bingo!

The animated short began to play almost instantly. The sound was so loud it blew me away at first. I turned it down frantically, then relaxed and turned it up a bit again. Only Mom was home, and in her bedroom with the door closed and her TV on, she probably couldn't hear a thing. Still, I took a second to shut Mikey's bedroom door.

For the next fourteen minutes and twenty-three seconds, I was mesmerized. The instant the film finished, I replayed it. And then again. And again. I must have gone through it some half a dozen times before I finally forced myself to pause the program and get up from Mikey's chair.

I paced up and down for several minutes, excited out of my skull. I decided to call Steve right away and tell him how much I loved the film, how much I loved him, and what a great talent he had. I mean, this was what he and I had spent hours talking about back at Columbia: Animation film that was like the Brothers Quay on ganja but with the solid plotting, cyberpunk craziness and adultness of the best shonen anime. I can't even begin to describe it actually. You would just have to see it to know how totally brilliant it was.

It was one thing to talk about it; but he'd actually done it! Let the folks at Disney, Pixar or DreamWorks see this and eat their hearts out: Even Dinosaur with its $80 million budget looked like an assembly line product compared to some of the techniques Steve had innovated here. And he'd done it alone--taking four years and a shoestring budget. I was certain if he took this to someone like Steve Jobs or David Geffen, he'd instantly be offered a multi-million dollar contract--and he'd probably refuse it! That was Steve, the maverick genius. And my guy. I felt proud and happy for him.

I sat down at Mikey's comp again, closing down the movie program and clicking on the SeeMail icon. That would connect me directly to Steve's laptop and WAP phone. Wherever he was, he'd get the message, open up his laptop and be able to video-talk with me. It was the next best thing to catching the next flight out, which was what I really wanted to do.

Something odd happened with Mikey's monitor at that point.

It went completely blank for a second.

Not just blank, black.

Like someone had put the lights out inside.

And then these words appeared on the screen, glowing like monster eyes in a horror movie:

Do you wish to enter the Vortal?

3.3 Sarla

2005-10-12T23:49:00.000+05:30

People think that being a celebrity columnist is all about attending parties and socializing. That's probably the way it is for most columnists, I agree. But for me, it's about stating a point of view that hasn't been expressed before. Making people aware of a new aspect of an important social issue. That's why I write the columns.

I was supposed to be reading the proofs of my new book, but I had to finish my weekly column first. I know the paper it appears in is a Page 3 rag, but it also happens to be the largest circulated rag in the city, and if I could subvert it to present the other side of the story, well, why not? At least that's what I told myself each week when my deadline loomed near and I wondered why I'd ever agreed to work to a deadline for a column in a newspaper which spent more column inches covering parties and fashion than real news.

When Viveka knocked at my door that afternoon, I was still trying to find the Pepsi ad that had sparked off the idea in the first place. You probably know the one I mean: the one in which Shah Rukh Khan takes a sly dig at a Hrithik Roshan lookalike. There was a rumor that Hrithik Roshan was starring in a Coke ad featuring a grossly overweight SRK lookalike, as a rejoinder to the Pepsi ad. I didn't know whether or not that was true, but the issue raised some interesting questions about celebrity models and advertising ethics and it was just the right kind of balance between the 'in the news, in your face' topics that BT liked to cover and which gave me some scope to take the Page 3 types down a peg or two.

In fact, Viveka peeped in just when I'd found the right tape and was fast-forwarding on cue, searching for the ad. I never resented the demands of my kids on my time; it wasn't because I thought I was a 'mother first, last and always' but because my kids were also my best friends.

She said she had a problem opening a file attachment on her comp and wondered if I could help out. I smiled at her. The only thing that interests me about computers is the fact that they make it a lot easier to write and revise text. As far as I'm concerned, they're just over-sized word processors.

"Try Mikey's comp," I suggested. "Your father said he keeps upgrading it so much that it's probably equivalent to some sort of a supercomputer by now. I'm sure his PC would be able to open your problem file." From what she'd described about her problem, it sounded like an upgrade problem, I told her, and Mikey's computer would definitely have the upgrade--or if it didn't, then nobody else's would.

She said that was an excellent idea and left. I forgot about her instantly. By then, my deadline was looming. I'd already got a polite but anxious email from the sub who coordinated the page, asking if I could send it in a bit early because they had a whole lot of pictures of some beer baron's new yacht to lay out and needed to figure out how to fit my column on the same page.

I winced when I read that email: rubbing shoulders with a beer baron's new yacht (and several new girlfriends, I'm sure) was not my idea of journalistic integrity, not even on newsprint, but I reminded myself of the lakhs of readers who would read my "brilliantly presented arguments" and maybe think for a few seconds before buying their next heavily sugared MNC cola drink.

(The quote is from Vir, who made my day when he praised a column I'd written last month on the pros and cons of American movies doing so well in India. Every once in a while, he says something like that which makes me think it wasn't such a bad idea marrying him.)

After viewing the Pepsi commercial a couple of times, my thoughts fell into place. I only had to touch the keyboard, and my thoughts flowed from my mind down to my fingers and appeared as words on the PC screen.

About an hour later, the column was written, revised and re-revised. I logged on to e-mail it, and downloaded my new mail.

There were several new e-mails from my publishers, editors, friends in India and abroad, and of course, the junk mail--"Have Viagra delivered directly to your mailbox!"--that always irritates me hugely. Besides the fact that penile enlargements are not high on my list of priorities!

When I first saw Mikey's e-mail, I almost mistook it for spam--that's the correct term for electronic junk mail I'm told. Then I saw his name in the Sender column and relaxed. I clicked on the email heading, thinking it was so like Mikey to email me instead of talking.

This is the mail that opened up.

Mikey's E-mail

To: sarlavats@rediffmail.com
From: mikeyvats@rediffmail.com
Subject: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: WARNING: DO NOT VISIT THIS SITE
Date: 29 Jul 00 11:18:05 CDT

>>>> This is the website you've been looking for:

>>>> http://vvv.vvv.net

3.4 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:48:00.000+05:30

Do you wish to enter the Vortal?

I stared at the question on the screen. It looked like one of Mikey's hacker things. Some kind of security program he had installed to prevent anyone else from accessing his private files. Maybe I had accidentally clicked on something I shouldn't have clicked on.

I know how touchy hacker wannabes can be: I've known my share of them back in the States. So when that weird black screen and the question came up, my first impulse was to just walk away. No point wasting my time trying to crack this or whatever it was. I could have gone to my own comp and SeeMailed Steve from there just as well.

But Steve's film was in this comp. The file. And I didn't want to lose that. So I decided to just tap a few keys and see if I could get past the security screen. Maybe if I pressed Escape? In my somewhat limited knowledge of computers and their glitches, that was one that almost always worked, so...

So I pressed the button.

And the screen changed instantly. But instead of the program quitting, as it should have, the screen went black again.

Then another line came on. This one said:

Are you willing to pay the Price?

I sighed. I hated this hacker crap. I tapped the button again, several times, then I tried holding down Alt-Control and hit Delete. That should definitely Quit the program.

Instead, the screen went black again for a moment, and then another line appeared:

For the duration of your visit, your soul will be forfeit to the Webmaster. If you agree, proceed.

This time, I actually stopped and took my hands off the keyboard.

I mean, there was something weird about this whole charade. Even if it was one of Mikey's hacker programs, what sort of question was that? "Your soul will be forfeit". I didn't like the sound of that. This may sound a bit strange, coming from a States-returned Michigan U grad with a post-grad diploma from Columbia U, NY, but I happen to be spiritually self-aware. Not religious, mind you, but definitely spiritual...And the idea of forfeiting my soul, even if it was only a figure of speech, didn't appeal to me.

I decided to stop right there. Forget the file. I would go call Steve from my comp and when Mikey got home that evening I'd ask him to retrieve the file.

But as I turned to go, I thought I heard a voice whisper: "Viv."

It was Steve's voice. I was sure of it. I turned back and stared at the screen. But it still showed only that last creepy statement.

I frowned, trying to understand what was going on. The only logical thought that occurred to me was that somehow I had connected to SeeMail and Steve was already online, talking to me. But because of this weird glitch on Mikey's comp, I couldn't see him.

As if on cue, he spoke again. "Viv?" he said. "Did you see it?"

"Steve!" I said. It was him then. Damn this hacker program. Then I had an idea. Maybe if I just pressed the SeeMail button again, it would make this stupid Vortal thingie go away and...

Without thinking, I reached out and pressed the SeeMail button on Mikey's computer keyboard.

And the screen changed. Snap.

And my whole life changed with it.

4.1 Sarla

2005-10-12T23:47:00.000+05:30

I puzzled over Mikey's e-mail. What website had I been looking for? I didn't recall asking him to recommend any website to me. In any case, I felt he spent far too much time surfing the Net. Even buying a complete set of all four Harry Potter novels didn't seem to have awakened his interest in reading.

But perhaps it was something he'd come across in his travels through cyberspace and thought it might be of some interest to me. Probably a literature website? Or a writer's resource? I doubted that. Mikey wasn't really the sort to even spend a moment on anything that didn't interest him. Let alone to recommend it to someone else. And there was something about that email, and that link that...well, I don't know what I felt exactly, but it didn't feel right, somehow.

My cursor hovered over the link, and I was tempted to click on it. If only to see what it was that Mikey thought I would find so interesting.

But just then, another e-mail from my publishers came into my Inbox. It was the Executive Editor and CEO, David, urging me to finish going through the proofs of my book and courier them back to Krishan, my desk editor, so that they could meet their tight production schedule.

I took his advice. Logging off at once, I turned to the large stack of typeset pages and began poring over them, pencil in hand. As always happens, I gave it my full concentration and everything else ceased to exist for the duration.

When I looked up again, more than two hours had elapsed. Someone was knocking on the door.

I called out to the person to come in. It was Mala, our new housemaid-cum-cook.

"Memsaab, khana lagaa doon?"

I looked at my watch. Was it really past 1 o' clock already? There were still about seventy pages or so left to check, so I decided to break for lunch and finish them in the afternoon.

"Theek hai," I told her. "Viveka-didi ko bhi bolna lunch will be served in fifteen minutes."

She went out and I took a minute to freshen up. She was waiting when I came out of the bathroom.

"Viveka didi not there," she said.

I frowned. I clearly remembered Viveka saying she was home all day today. Something to do with watching Steve's film.

I walked down the corridor to her bedroom. Empty. Then I saw her computer screen with its unusual animated screensaver--she'd designed it herself--and remembered. She was probably still in Mikey's room, using his PC to read that problem file.

Mikey's room door was locked. I knocked on it softly. We always knock before entering in our house. That's the kind of family we are--respect one another's privacy.

There was no response. Not even a "One sec, mom, be with you in a minute".

I waited a few moments longer, thinking that she might be in the bathroom or on the phone.

Then I knocked again.

When there was no reply this time, I assumed that she was absorbed in something--Viveka has inherited my intense concentration, just like Mikey, while Vaibhav has Vir's more easygoing multi-tasking nature. I called out, "Viveka, bete, lunch is ready. Come before it gets cold."

And I started to walk away.

I had barely gone down the corridor when I heard the sound of the door opening. It made a bit of noise, as if she had to fumble with the latch a couple of times before getting it open. Which was odd, because all the latches work so smoothly and perfectly--Vir takes his time but always makes sure he gets the job done first class.

I turned back, and saw a head peeping out from around the door. Her hair was so wild and dishevelled, it took me a minute to realize that it was Viveka looking out. What had she done to her hair? It had looked fine when she popped into my room earlier.

"Bete, lunch is ready."

She started so violently, I got a shock. For a second, when her head snapped towards me, I thought of some wild animal. Like a predator about to attack. I frowned. What was up with her today?

"Were you able to open that file on Mikey's comp, bete?" I asked.

She stared at me fiercely, with an expression I'd never seen on her face before. "What's wrong, Viveka? Why do you look so-"

I stopped. She had opened the door a few inches further, and I could see a little more of her now. Her shoulder and part of one leg. She was wearing some dress I'd never seen her in before. I couldn't even begin to describe it, but it certainly wasn't the jeans and tee shirt she had been wearing just a couple of hours ago.

And her hair wasn't just dishevelled, it was tangled, wild, as if it hadn't been combed in days, and as I looked intently at it, I could see that there were actually things caught in it. Was that a fragment of a dried leaf? How could it be? She had been in Mikey's room all this while, hadn't she? What was going on?

"Viveka?" I said, unsure now.

She kept on staring at me with that same fierce, intense expression. Her eyes flicked briefly to look this way then that, as if she was trying to...what? Understand where she was? That was what it looked like, but that made no sense whatsoever. She was home, after all.

She continued to look at me with that same predatory expression.

And for some bizarre reason, I began to feel afraid, very afraid. Of my own daughter.

4.2 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:46:00.000+05:30

I felt a strange sense of disorientation. The way you feel when you're travelsick.

Or when you've been on the roller coaster one time too many and have just gotten off and are standing on steady ground at last, your head reeling, your blood roaring in your ears, and your eyes blurry and unable to focus clearly. I wear contacts, and sometimes, if I spend too much time at the comp, things become blurry and I have to stop and stare into the distance for a while before my eye-muscles relax again.

But this was different from anything else I'd ever felt before.

It was like I was standing still and rushing forward at an incredible speed, both at once. Like being on the world's fastest escalator ride, moving so fast that the world around me was a blinding haze of light and color.

This weird sensation lasted just a few seconds. I was forced to shut my eyes and for a moment I thought I was going to puke.

And then it passed.

And the world returned to normal. Or so I thought.

I opened my eyes slowly, my ears still ringing from the after-effect of that...Whatever the hell it was.

And what I saw shocked me speechless.

I felt myself starting to panic, breathing faster and shallower, hyper-ventilating. I turned to look this way then that, trying to convince myself that this was not real, that I was still in Mikey's bedroom. That this was some kind of bizarre hallucination.

I turned around and then around again, trying to accept the evidence of my senses. To believe that what I was seeing was real. How could I be sitting in Mikey's bedroom one minute, and then be here the next minute? In this...place...wherever it was, whatever it was?

I closed my eyes and opened them again. Shook my head, looked up and down again, tried to breathe slower, calm myself.

But nothing changed. I didn't go back to Mikey's bedroom, to my house. I was still here. In this place.

It was impossible. Yet it had happened. That disorienting sensation, that feeling of flying through space, of being taken. Apprently, it was all real.

It was as if something great force had picked me up physically and flung me through a doorway into another world.

A world where Bombay, Mumbai, the world as I knew it, was no more.

And another world had replaced it. A nightmare world.

4.4 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:45:00.001+05:30

I forced myself to breathe normally, to avoid hyper-ventilating as I tend to do when faced with a crisis. I closed my eyes for a moment, covering my face with my hands, trying to re-boot my consciousness, to start again to understand my situation.

This is what came to me:

One moment, I was sitting before my brother Mikey's computer back home in Bombay, India. The next moment, I was in a world that was like no place I'd seen before.

No, that's not quite right. I had seen this place before. It was Pali Hill, the Westward side, with a view of the sea and Carter Road. Or what should have been Pali Hill and Carter Road. It looked totally different, but geographically it was the same place. I realized that now, with my eyes closed.

Slowly, my breathing a little calmer now, I uncovered my face and looked around again.

Yes, I saw it now. This wasn't just Pali Hill. It was the exact same spot where our building stood. It was just that the whole region had changed so drastically, it had seemed like another world at first.

Instead of the mass of buildings and roads and all the other stuff that make up our civilized Bandra suburb, the Beverly Hills of India as some people call it, there was only devastation.

The shells of ruined structures lay scattered all around, for miles in either direction. They were the shells of buildings and houses, but not the kind that we have in the real Bombay. These were strange, squat constructions, none more than a single floor.

Even knocked down, burned down, destroyed, I could tell that they were not modern housing, not even the modern village housing. These were the kind of stone-pile and wooden cottages that existed in medieval times in India. Before even the Moghul era. And even then, they were not like the typical medieval Indian houses I had seen in history books or museum recreations. There was something essentially different about them, but not being an anthropology or architecture grad, I couldn't tell right away what that difference was.

But where was the Bombay I knew? It was as if it had never existed!

The tall skyscrapers, the arcing flyovers, the endless causeways, they were all gone.

Instead, fires billowed everywhere, obscuring the landscape with clouds of dark, evil-smelling smoke. The ground was blasted and pit-holed, like a war zone. Large craters pockmarked the land at intervals of a few dozen metres, as if there had been artillery shelling or aerial bombing.

Even the sea, the beautiful Arabian Sea that I had a view of from my bedroom window at home, was horribly changed. It was discoloured and covered with a scummy layer, like a stagnant pool in a gutter.

A slow wind groaned and whistled through the ruins of the structure I was standing in, stinking of odours I couldn't recognize. It made me gag with revulsion.

Carried on this stinking wind were the sounds of people screaming, gunfire, explosions, and God knows what else.

What was this place? How had I got here? The last thing I remembered was that bizarre screen on Mikey's PC, asking me those strange questions. Something about a portal. No, not portal. Vortal. Surely entering that command hadn't brought me here? How could a computer programme transport me to...to wherever the hell I was.

One thing I knew for certain: I wasn't dreaming or imagining this. It was vividly, terribly real.

I looked around at my immediate surroundings, searching for something, anything that could help me make sense of what had happened.

I seemed to be standing in the debris of a house. A simple structure, just four brick walls and a thatched roof. More a shanty than a proper house. But from the ruins scattered everywhere, it seemed that this was the kind of house everyone lived in. The splintered and heat-fused fragments of various household items lay in the debris around me--remnants of cooking utensils, clothes, wooden furniture. Simple, crude things, at the level of what you might expect to find in a Indian tribal village maybe, not a 21st century Indian metropolis.

A sound from afar distracted me for a moment. I walked to the Eastern side of the plot. I looked out in the direction that should have shown me a view of Khar-Danda on the left, old Khar and Bandra in front and Linking Road-Turner Road-Hill Road on the right.

Instead, what I saw blew my mind.

4.3 Sarla

2005-10-12T23:45:00.000+05:30

How could I be terrified of my own daughter? My 'biggest baby' as I used to call her. My sweetest, most well-behaved, obedient, but intelligent and independent child of all.

I tried to get a hold of myself. There was surely some logical explanation for her strange appearance and behaviour.

"Viveka?" I said again, still feeling unnerved by the strange way she was staring at me.

I took a step forward, intending to go to her, to touch her forehead. Fever was the first thought that came to my mind. She did look feverish. Almost animal-like with that intense, vulpine look on her face. A hungry look.

But for some reason, I couldn't walk all the way to her. My feet just stopped. It was fear, I know now. Despite the evidence of my eyes, my other senses were already screaming to me that this was not Viveka, this was not my daughter standing there before me. This was someone else... someone dangerous. My instincts knew the truth at once.

But my conscious, rational mind couldn't accept what my instincts were telling me. How could it?

"Bete?" I said yet again, trying to connect with her. If she would only speak, just once. If I could just hear her voice.

She parted her lips. Finally, I thought with a faint sense of relief.

But instead of speaking, she howled.

Really howled, the way a lioness or some other predatory creature howls. Baring her teeth. And what teeth they were--yellowed and filthy as if she hadn't cleaned them in weeks. Her open mouth was like a dark maw of some animal's snout. I felt the blood drain out of my head. Those teeth, those eyes...the way she howled made my skin creep with horror.

"Viveka?" I cried out. "What is it? What's happened to you?"

I forced myself to move again, to go towards her, to comfort her and hug her. Help her. I was her mother after all. And something terrible had happened to her somehow, even in the safety of our own house.

The instant I moved, she broke off that awful, soul-scraping howl.

And she leaped right at me. Her hands reaching out like claws, mouth bared like a vixen pouncing on her prey.

5.1 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:44:00.000+05:30

I had nothing to compare it to, except maybe Hollywood war movies. Like the opening battle between the Roman army and the Germanic barbarians in Gladiator. Or the war sequences in Braveheart. Except that the detailing and costuming was more like, maybe, Moghul-e-Azam...no, no, not the moghul era, before that...Like Asoka. Sort of. Except that this was no movie scene or set.

Two armies were massed facing each other. On the far left, a huge horde were ranged in ragged lines. This one was massive, tens of thousands of men. From my vantage point, they were as small as bugs. And I could see them massed for miles to the North, perhaps all the way to Andheri, or what would have been Andheri in my world.

This huge army was advancing slowly but steadily on foot toward the South. Or South Bombay, as it would have been called in our world.

Less than a mile away was the other army, if you could call it that. A ragged group of opposition that looked pitiful in comparison to the approaching horde. There couldn't have been more than ten thousand people in this army.

I shivered as I realized I was watching a massacre about to happen.

Who were these groups? The North Mumbai army seemed to be the aggressors, the South Mumbai one the defenders. That much was obvious.

But I was too far away to make out details of the actual people down there, let alone identify them. The smoke-filled air and dark, overcast sky also made it difficult to see clearly.

But I thought I saw men as well as women in the two armies. And from the dull reflections, it seemed they were armed with metal weapons, perhaps swords and axes and knives, things like that. Not guns and modern weaponry.

As I watched, the North Mumbai army halted suddenly. Figures riding horses rode before the massed soldiers, obviously giving orders. From the way they arranged themselves in a long frontline facing their destination, I could tell they were preparing for the first assault.

Absorbed in watching this incredible tableau, I took a step back and stumbled over something. A jagged metal object rushed at my face and neck, threatening to injure me dangerously.

Luckily, I caught myself on a broken brick wall, centimetres from the jagged edge. God alone knew what would happen if I injured myself in this world.

I glanced down to see what had tripped me.

It was a shoe. A Nike CrossTrainer, black with two white racing stripes on the sides, curling up in that trademark Nike tickmark style.

The sheer incongruity of the sight made me stare at it. Somehow, I didn't think there were such things as Nike shoes in this world. Or Fountain Pepsi. Or Lays Onion Cream. Or McDonald's. Or any of the normal, consumer culture of our technologically advanced civilization. That's why the shoe was so obviously out of place.

But there was something else about it that caught my attention. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. In the distance, the faint sound of roaring began. The leaders of the North Mumbai army were pepping up their forces for the attack.

I bent down and picked up the shoe. It was almost mint-new, in perfect condition. Which it couldn't have been had it lain here long. Which meant it hadn't been here long.

And it was the exact same design and about the same size as the black Nike Crosstrainers that my younger brother Mikey always wore.

5.2 Vir

2005-10-12T23:43:00.000+05:30

I was in the middle of a 'rap session' when the emergency call came.

'Rap session' is what we call our brainstorming meetings at Virtual Reality Systems Inc. We had this giant contract to develop operational software for a chain of US amusement parks owned by a Hollywood entertainment major, and it was taking up many more hundreds of manhours and grey hairs than I'd expected. Whenever we were stuck on a problem, we didn't just sit around and bang our heads against the walls--we called a 'rap session' and banged our heads against each other!

Since the average age of our staff is 23, these 'rap sessions' are often similar to a Friday night get-together of coeds at a pub. There's always music playing, food and non-alcoholic beverages floating around, plenty of caramel popcorn, pool and snooker balls clicking together at the four full-size tables, a basketball bouncing off one of the two backboards--one at either end of the office, giant TVs playing DVD movies, other screens showing the current cricket ODI or Olympics or KBC or whatever show people want to watch at that particular time, and general mayhem and madness.

As I said, it's a lot like a teenage pub hangout, but without the alcohol. And amazing as it sounds, we do get a lot of productive work done this way. Except when one of our projects turn out to have more glitches than glitter. Those rare times (sigh) when that happens, we just add an 'e' to the word 'rap' and you can imagine what those sessions are like.

But this wasn't one of those times. This was a total victory. My Hrithik Roshan team--our workteams named themselves after their favourite celebs, however unlikely--had come up with a set of applications that delivered everything we'd promised our clients, and then some. It was a zinger of a winner, and the mood in the office was celebratory. Half a dozen of the Hrithiks were desperately trying to convince me to relax the office rule on no-alcohol during office hours. Their argument was that since the staff at VR works in shifts, the office is working around the clock.

"So, like, Vir, that means it's always office hours," said Sajal, a bright young programmer who had dropped out of LSE to come back to India to ride the new IT boom.

"Which means, yaar, that there's never a time when alcohol is allowed here," grumbled Geethan, a wiz designer who hadn't even gone to college yet but intended to do so after earning her first crore.

I winked at them. "You got it!" Raised my mug of chai and said, "But you can get high on thiamine too, you know. You should try it sometime."

They were speaking ominously of a mutiny when my cellphone rang. I glanced at it: one of our home numbers. It was our new maid, and she seemed hysterical. I had to hold the phone away from my ear, she was talking that loudly.

I left the main office area and went into my cabin. We have an open-door policy at VR, and my cabin is actually just a glass cube, but I shut the door to get as much insulation from the hubbub outside as possible and tried to get the maid to calm down.

Finally, I understood what she was trying to tell me.

"Kya?" I understood what she was saying but I couldn't believe it.

She repeated it, obviously in tears now.

"Theek hain," I said. "I'm leaving right now."

I left the cabin, speaking the word 'Anant' into my cellphone. I shook my head at the various people who tried to stop and speak to me. As the phone auto-dialled the number, I scanned the offic and found Shoma, my COO. I beckoned to her. She came over smiling, but saw instantly from the look on my face that something was wrong.

"Family emergency," I said. It was all she needed. She nodded and walked me to the exit. Anant came on the line as I punched the button for the nearest lift. Shoma walked over and pressed the buttons for the other two lifts as well. For the first time in two years since I'd moved into this new office I wished it wasn't on the 37th floor of the smartest new downtown office complex. It's only in a crisis that you realize what big barriers space and time can be.

My brother's voice was friendly and relaxed as always. For all I knew, he was in the middle of a delicate surgery procedure right now, but he sounded like he was sitting by a pool with a pinacolda in his hand. That's the kind of calm and nerve it takes to become one of the country's best neurosurgeons.

"Vir, hi," he said.

"Anant, Sarla's been injured. She's being brought by ambulance to Hinduja ASAP. Are you there?"

His response was instant and unruffled. "Right here, just out of surgery. Where are you?"

"I'm just leaving office, on my way. Can you--?" I didn't have to finish the question.

"I'll make sure she gets the best attention immediately. What exactly happened?"

I paused, aware of Shoma standing by, watching me with concern on her face. "Anant, I don't know for sure. She's unconscious and I only spoke to the maid. Apparently, Sarla was able to call the ambulance before she lost consciousness and the neighbour is waiting downstairs to direct the medics up as soon as it arrives."

The lift came just then and mercifully it was empty. Shoma gestured, asking me silently if I needed her to come along. I shook my head and gestured to her to go back inside, hold the fort while I was gone. She gave me a thumbs up sign for good luck as the lift doors slid shut. I'm blessed to have a great staff.

As I rode down, my mind raced through what the panicked maid had told me on the phone. She must have been mistaken somehow--but she had repeated herself thrice or more. Each time she had said the same thing.

That Viveka had attacked Sarla and wounded her badly before running out of the house.

But it just didn't make any sense.

Why would my daughter attack her own mother?

5.3 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:42:00.000+05:30

Like, by the time I reached the hospital, I learned from a nurse that Mom was out of the operation theatre and back in a private room. She was still under the effect of the anaesthetic and nobody but Dad had been allowed to go in and see her. But Anant-tau was in the waiting room and he looked calm.

Then again, Anant-tau always looks calm. He could have played the Michael Douglas character in Coma, maybe even the Hugh Grant character in Extreme Measures, or the maha cool Anthony Hopkins playing Dr Hannibal Lecter in the under-production movie Hannibal, but as usual I'm ranting on about movies galore. What can I say: It helps me chill, and I really needed to chill at a time like this.

I had got the news about Mom's condition hours after it happened. That's because I spent the afternoon watching a phillum with Ruchi that neither of us really paid much attention to, and after that we just did TP, had a bite, wandered around, the usual stuff. It was only when I came home in the evening that I got the news from our maid Mala, who was still shuddering from the memory. I got goosebumps when she came to the part where she found Mom...I don't even want to repeat it right now, okay? I was feeling lousy as it is for not being there, not coming home sooner...I knew it wasn't my fault, then why did I still feel so guilty, damnit?

I took a moment to breathe, trying to calm myself down. For the first time ever, I wished I had listened to Viv's constant yammering about how yoga helps you control your senses, breathing, vagaira, vagaira...After I was sure I could have a conversation without falling apart, I moved forward again, heading down the corridor and entering the glass-walled waiting room.

Anant-tau was talking to Mikey and Mrs Mudgal. Mrs Mudgal is our neighbour; she's a bit of a gossip and I can't stand the way she yaks to Mom for ages about celebs. Mom says that it's because she's from a middle-class background and she's embarrassed by her son suddenly becoming famous, but it's a hell of a strange way to show it.

They saw me and Anant-tau nodded, calling me over.

"Vaibhav-bete," he said, putting his arm around me and squeezing, "there's nothing to worry about. Your mom is out of danger. She's anaesthetized, so you can't see her for a while. When you do, you'll be a little taken aback at the sight of the stitches, but really, the bandage looks more scary than the wound, and she'll be fine within a month or two."

"A month or two?" I was shocked. "Is it that bad?"

He smiled, but his eyes had that same look that Dad's have when he's dealing with a crisis: strong but also hard. "She'll be home within a week, but yes, the cuts will take a few more weeks to heal completely."

Mrs Mudgal had her hand to her chest, and a hankie clutched in the other hand looked damp. She looked up at me and moaned, "Vaibhav-bete, you should thank God she's all right. When your bai called me, she was so frantic, I knew something terrible had happened, and when I came into your house and saw Sarla-ji lying there, I thought she was..."

She covered her mouth as if trying to block her own words, then continued, "So much blood. And those cuts! Hai Raam."

I glanced at Mikey. He was quiet.

"You okay?" I asked him.

He shrugged as if to say: As okay as can be expected under the circumstances, big brother. The gesture was so Mikey-like, I almost thought for a moment that it was him, my kid brother.

But I knew better.

Anant-tau excused himself for a moment to go speak to someone.

I asked Mikey if he'd go get Mrs Mudgal some coffee from the vending machine down the hallway. The old Mikey, the real Mikey, would have looked at me like I was nuts and turned the volume on his Discman even higher. But this Mikey nodded and went without a word of protest. Proof.

I checked to make sure nobody else was within earshot, then turned to Mrs Mudgal.

"Aunty," I said gently. "Aunty, did you see what happened?"

She shook her head, sniffling a bit into the hankie. I felt sorry for her. She was, like, an old chicken, this was like a shock for her. Major. Watching her struggle to control herself actually made me feel more determined to keep my emotions in check.

"Nahi, bete. Your servant rang my bell. I was on the telephone. I couldn't follow her babbling, so I came to see. I saw your mother lying there on the floor in the passage, next to the telephone. She was concious still, and she said she had already called an ambulance, and she was to be taken to Hinduja Hospital because your tau is a surgeon here. Bas, that's all I know."

I wanted to shake her, to scream at her, 'what do you mean that's all, you must have seen something else? Come on, tell me every last detail!' Like Russell Crowe interrogating a suspect in LA Confidential.

Instead, I said gently, "When I reached home, the other neighbours said that they saw my sister, Viveka, running down the stairs some time before the ambulance came. Did you see her too?"

"Nahi, bete, I didn't even know who had attacked your mother till the servant told me. I thought it was these gangs who go around to houses in the afternoon and stab the housewife and rob the house. But when I asked your mother, she wouldn't say who hurt her. And then she lost consciousness."

"Did you see Viveka, my sister?" I paused after he said it, not wanting to say too much. Although I had already heard the whole story from the maid when I came home from college.

Mrs Mudgal shook her head at first. Then she paused and looked at me through her old-fashioned horn-rimmed glass spectacles.

"Pata nahin, bete, who that person was. But just before the maid rang the bell, in fact just as the bell started ringing, I was sitting in my hall and looking out the window. You know my window faces the downslope of Pali Hill, that empty plot behind our building which is under court dispute for some FSI problem?"

I nodded, willing her to get to the point quickly. I didn't want the duplicate Mikey to return and hear this conversation. I didn't know how much I could trust the guy.

Mrs Mudgal went on:

"So I was talking to one journalist--you know how they are always calling to ask me to comment on Ravi's success, no? I was talking to her on the phone and I was looking out of the window at the empty plot. And I saw someone, I think it was a woman, jump over our building wall into that plot, then run like a madperson across the plot and jump over the other wall on that side. After that, I couldn't see where she went, and the doorbell was ringing."

She looked at me, a strange expression in her eyes. I could see that Mrs Mudgal was trying just as hard as I was to make sense of this bizarre incident.

"That could not have been Viveka, no, bete? Why would she be running away like that? And those walls! How could she jump those walls?! They must be at least eight-ten feet high!"

I was about to say something when Mikey returned.

"Coffee, ma'am," he said maha-politely, offering her the steaming plastic cup. She took it thankfully. Mikey offered one to me too.

I hesitated, then took it. I could always dump it in a trashcan after pretending to take a sip or two. I didn't want him to suspect that I suspected him.

I didn't want to continue the conversation in front of the duplicate Mikey. So I just said, "Mrs Mudgal, aunty, I don't know how to thank you for taking so much trouble to help my mummy at a time like that. I really appreciate it, aunty."

She flapped a hand at me admonishingly, embarrassed but pleased. "Arre, don't say that. It was my duty, bete. What sort of neighbour doesn't help at a time like this?"

Silently, I thought to himself: And what sort of daughter attacks her own mother and injures her enough to put her in hospital, then leaps over ten-foot walls to escape like a runaway criminal?

Definitely not my sister, Viveka. Not the Viveka I knew.

5.4 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:41:00.000+05:30

I was still holding Mikey's shoe in my hand when a sound startled me. I realized I'd been hearing it for several seconds but had assumed it was from the battlefield below. Now, I recognized it for what it was.

It was the sound of a horse's hooves, galloping. It grew louder, the rider approaching in my direction. The smoky air and the distant sounds from the battlefield below made it difficult to tell from which direction the person was coming.

I looked around frantically for a place to hide. I couldn't be sure that the person would be friendly. After all, I was in the middle of some bizarre war zone that only resembled the world I knew in its geographical details. I had no way of knowing who this rider might be.

The broken wall by which I'd found the shoe was around three feet high. There was a pit in the ground beside it, probably caused by the same thing that had destroyed the house itself. I jumped down into this pit and crouched low. Now, I was almost completely concealed by the wall on one side. But if anyone came around the other side and looked down, they would definitely see me. I couldn't help it; there wasn't enough time to search for a better hiding place. Hopefully, the rider was just passing by.

The sound of the horse grew louder and finally the rider came into view. The same wall which protected me from the rider's sight also blocked my view, so I had to rely on my ears for information. To my dismay, I realized the horse was slowing down, not riding on.

The sound of the hooves slowed to a trot, the horse snickering lightly as the rider reined it in. When I was around 10, I had taken riding lessons. Dad had made me and my brothers members of The Amateur Riders Club. I still remembered the three of us riding together at Mahalaxmi Racecourse at dawn, the rich smell of dew-wettened grass in the air, and the sound of the ocean across the Hajiali Causeway clearly audible in the absence of traffic. It made me long to be back at home, in my own world again.

The horse snickered again, and now it was so close I could smell it. Then the sound of its hooves stopped completely. I thought I heard a voice pitched low, as if the rider was speaking to himself or herself, or perhaps to the horse. My brother Vhy, a movie maniac, would probably have commented wryly that it was probably Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer!

I stifled a giggle at the thought, and at Vhy's obsession with movies. I missed him right now. I wished I had listened to him when he had tried to tell me about Mikey disappearing. Was that just this morning? I could still taste the flapjacks I had cooked for breakfast.

Then the sound of the horse moving came to me again, growing louder as it picked up speed. It was galloping again, and this time the sound was definitely moving away, growing softer. As it faded completely, I heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Climbing out of the pit, I grabbed the broken wall for support. As I pulled myself back up to level ground again, a voice spoke behind me:

"Keep your hands out where I can see them. Reach for a weapon and I will put this arrow through your heart before you can blink. I can put three arrows through a bird before it hits the ground, from three hundred yards, so don't think you can move faster than me."

The voice was a man's. And it spoke in Hindi, but not the shudh Hindi of North India like my parents spoke. This was a strange mixture of Hindi, English, Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi and whatnot. It was like the Bambaiya Hindi they speak in HIndi movies.

I understood it well enough to obey. I raised my hands, just like I had seen people do in the movies.

"Good. Now turn around. Slowly, very slowly. Sudden moves are bad for your health."

Trembling from a sudden wave of heart-stopping fear, I turned slowly to face my captor. Turning seemed to take forever.

When I saw the man who was pointing a crossbow at me, I cried out in shock.

6.1 Vir

2005-10-12T23:30:00.000+05:30

When I came out of Sarla's hospital room, Vhy was waiting for me. I put my arm around him and hugged him tightly. I could smell Pantene shampoo on his hair, the same brand I used, and Chiclets on his breath. When I released him, I saw his eyes were wet and shiny. He was only 17 after all and he had never experienced a death or major illness in our immediate family--thank God. This was probably very hard for him.

"Bete," I said gently. "Don't worry, she's going to be fine."

"Papa," he said. He was the only one who preferred to call me Papa, not Dad. Somehow, I liked it. I had always called my father Papa till the day he died, and he had called his father the same.

"Papa," he said again, and I could see him swallowing hard, as if making a major effort to speak. "There's something we need to talk about."

"Bete, it's late now. Why don't you go home and get some sleep. I'm going to be here until your Jogi-mama and Sundri-mami arrive. They're already on the flight from Delhi. You can come in the morning on your way to college, your mother should be conscious by then. We can talk after you see her."

"No, Papa, it's important. We have to talk right now."

I looked at him curiously. Vhy was the dreamer, the most carefree and happy-go-lucky of my three kids. Viveka was the sensible, motivated one. Mikey was the eccentric, rebellious one. Vhy usually became passionate only about movies. He was a junior Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg and Wachowski Brothers, all rolled into one. He had seen The Matrix 73 times in less than two months, maybe another two dozen times since then. It was his Bible.

With a tinge of concern, I said, "Bete, what is it? Some problem?"

He looked around. Then, without pointing directly at them, he indicated Mikey and Mrs Mudgal, still seated in the waiting area by the nurse's desk. His voice was low and urgent as if he didn't want his voice to carry down the dead-silent hospital corridor.

"Papa, it's Mikey."

"What about Mikey, bete?"

He hesitated for a moment. "He's changed."

I frowned. "What do you mean, changed?"

"I mean, it's like..." he stopped, then started up again, "it's like he's not Mikey anymore. Not ourMikey. Like he's someone else."

My cellphone vibrated in my pocket. I'd put it on silent to avoid being disturbed while in the hospital, but Ananth had told me he would be calling me after he spoke to another couple of specialists about another minor operation Sarla might need.

I was reached for it, when Vaibhav caught my hand and looked at me with a look of curious desperation. "Papa, listen to me. I'm telling you, Mikey, our Mikey, he's gone. That guy sitting over there, he's someone else. Our Mikey's been Switched."

"Switched," I repeated tonelessly, not sure how to react to this extraordinary accusation. "You mean..."

"I mean, he's been replaced. And a duplicate put in his place. That duplicate."

I looked at Mikey, talking quietly, soberly with Mrs Mudgal. I had seen him calm her down earlier, when she had started to get upset again. He had handled phone calls for me, helped pass on messages to and from the doctors and nurses, got us all snacks and coffee when we needed it...he was behaving so well, I had meant to take him aside later and give him a little hug, to show him how proud I was of how well he was standing up to this crisis.

"Vaibhav, bete, I don't understand what you're trying to say."

He looked frustrated. "It's the computer."

I stared at him blankly. "The computer?" What did a computer have to do with anything?

He went on, growing more agitated as he continued talking in a hoarse whisper, still desperate not to be heard by his own brother. "Yes, Mikey's comp. The other night, I was with--"

He stopped and rubbed his forehead, pinching the skin tightly the way he did when he got upset sometimes. "He was in his room, logged on to some kind of weird internet site. Then he disappeared. Vanished from his chair."

I blinked. "You were sitting in Mikey's room and you were both browsing some internet site, and then he disappeared?"

"No, I wasn't there. He was alone in his room. And he just disappeared. Vanished. Poof. Like in a movie."

"I don't understand. If you weren't with him, if he was alone in his room, how could you see him disappear? Did he tell you this? He must have been pulling your leg, bete."

He looked down for a moment, exasperated. Even as a little boy, Vhy had never blown up or lost his temper right away, he tended to turn his anger inwards. He was doing that now, I could see, struggling with his frustration. I wanted to help him, but didn't know how. The cellphone in my pocket stopped vibrating. Whoever it was, it must have been urgent, or they wouldn't have let it ring that long.

Vhy looked up at me again. "The door was open. Someone looked in and saw him sitting there. Then I looked in and he wasn't there, he was gone. Then I turned my back for a second, just a second, and poof, he was back in his chair again. I'm not making this up, papa. It really happened. Just last night! And today, all this is going on."

I tried not to sigh visibly. I didn't know how to deal with this...whatever it was. I tried to be as patient as possible. "Who someone?"

He stared at me incomprehendingly.

"Vhy, you said Someone looked in and saw him sitting there. I'm asking you, who someone?"

He looked away again, this time I thought I saw a flash of what looked like embarrassment cross his face. What was he embarrassed about? The fact that he was talking gibberish when his mother was in a serious condition in the ICU? I had never known Vaibhav to behave like this before, but he was definitely not himself!

"It doesn't matter who, papa," he said. "The point is, Mikey was Switched somehow. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. I saw it happen. He vanished, then ten minutes later, he was back. But like the way he is now, changed completely. Not the real Mikey. I told Viveka about it, but she didn't believe me. Now, it's happened to her too. The maid told me Viveka was in Mikey's room when Maa went to speak to her, just before the attack took place. Viveka must have been using Mikey's comp for some reason, and the same thing that happened to Mikey happened to her too. She's not the real Viveka anymore. She's been Switched too."

I stared at him. Long and hard. I hadn't seen Vhy so intense and anxious since the night he'd had a high fever before his ICSE Maths finals, a year and a half ago.

"Vaibhav," I said, puzzled. "What are you talking about? What is this whole story for? Why are you telling me all these things? And now? This is the place, or the time? Come, on bete, get a hold of yourself. Your mother needs us to pull together, to stay in control. I'm depending on you, and you're telling me all these stories!"

He sighed with typical adolescent exasperation. I wondered for a moment--just a fleeting moment--if he was on drugs or something. But I dismissed the thought instantly: I knew my children too well. Still, something was definitely wrong with Vaibhav, and the only other thing I could think of was that the sudden shock of what had happened had affected him somehow. Maybe...just maybe...I shouldn't have given him so much freedom, allowed him to watch so many movies without restriction.

"Papa," he said with a tone of desperation. "You've got to believe me. Both Mikey and Viveka have been Switched. They're not our Mikey and Viveka anymore. That's why Maa was attacked. By the other Viveka."

I was trying to think of what to say in response to that when, to my relief, I saw the lift at the far end of the corridor open and Ananth emerged. He was looking at his cellphone, and then he looked up as he came down the corridor and when he saw me, he shut his cellphone.

He was frowning when he came up."Vir, I was calling you just now, but there was no answer."

"Sorry, Ananth, Vaibhav just needed to talk to me for a moment," I said apologetically, trying not to sound irritated with Vhy.

Ananth nodded at Vaibhav perfunctorily. "Hello, Vaibhav." He looked at me, "Vir, I have to go home and get some sleep. Major surgery tomorrow and it can't be postponed. I've checked with Dr Patel again. He's keeping a constant watch on her, so there's nothing to worry about. I need you to just chat with him for a moment to discuss the plastic surgery I suggested earlier. If you do it within the first 72 hours, it's best. That way, there'll be virtually no visible scars."

I nodded. "Sure. You're going up again? Then I'll come with you."

I looked at Vhy. "Vaibhav, bete. We're all tired. I need to speak to Dr Patel about your Maa having another minor operation. Take my suggestion, go home, eat something--I told the maid to keep dinner ready. And get a good night's sleep. You're tired. It'll do you good. Sleep well. And we'll talk in the morning, okay?"

He looked at me with an expression that was part-puppy dog who had been kicked, and part-Forrest Gump. He seemed about to say something, then glanced at his tau, standing next to us, waiting impatiently, and just nodded. I thought of saying something else to him, but I couldn't think of anything. His extraordinary story had left me completely wordless.

Then, he just turned and walked away, not in the direction of the lift which would take him downstairs to the hospital lobby, but the other direction. He walked past the waiting room, and I saw Mikey look up and call out to him. But Vaibhav just walked past, ignoring Mikey completely, and went through the door marked Exit. He was taking the staircase. And we were on the 14th floor.

"Vir?" Ananth said. "Can we go now? Patel's waiting for you before he goes on his rounds."

I thought of going after Vaibhav, of sitting down with him and trying to figure out what was troubling him so much that he had to make up such elaborate stories. Was it the classic attention-seeking device? Or perhaps it wasn't an attempt to get attention at all, perhaps he had seen something unusual, but his overactive movie-filled imagination had interpreted it as much more than what it was.

But I couldn't deal with it right now. There were more important things to be done. And I still had to figure out what to do about Viveka--Where was she? What had happened to her? Why had she attacked her mother? I was worried sick about her. I was still trying to come to terms with what had happened, struggling to deal with it one thing at a time. I just didn't have the mental space to deal with Vhy's bizarre story.

"Okay," I said to Ananth. "Let's go talk to Dr Patel."

6.2 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:29:00.000+05:30

The crossbow in the man's hand wavered slightly as I cried out. I thought he was going to shoot me in reflex and my body tensed at the thought of that metal bolt piercing my flesh.

He cursed in the same pidgin Hindi, using a Marathi and a Gujarati swear word combined.

"Girl, control yourself. You almost tasted the steel of my bow just now."

I raised my arms again, anxious not to anger him. "I'm sorry. I just, I was just, I mean, I couldn't help it. When I saw your face..."

He frowned suspiciously, keeping the crossbow aimed at my chest. "What about my face? What's wrong with it?"

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. How do you tell a man from another world, an alternate Bombay as this obviously was, that he's the spitting image of a Hindi film star in our world? That too, a very major megastar. Right down to the last bicep in his muscular arms and the lean hard line of his jaw. I almost expected him to start dancing that familiar step, the one where Hrithik presses his hands outwards and jerks his body, and sing, "Ek pal ka jeena..." Because that's who he was: the spitting image of Bollywood's current badshah, Hrithik Roshan.

"Don't play games with me, girl," he snarled. "I've had a very nasty day. And it's going to get far worse, thanks to your pardesi associates down there."

He jerked his head in the direction of the battlefield below. Indicating the larger forces coming from the North. I stole a quick glance. The army was still massed in lines stretching as far as I could see in this dusky light. They were clearly waiting...but for what? Then I remembered a scene I'd seen in some film--don't ask me which, okay, I'm not a movie cyclopaedia like Vhy--where the larger army waits for the smaller force to surrender. Some American Civil war saga.

As I glanced down, I saw a horse rider bearing a white flag riding from the ranks of the South army towards the North army. He looked very small and forlorn, but there was no mistaking that white flag--he was a herald, seeking to offer terms of surrender. I hoped his offer was accepted: I couldn't imagine what it would be like if that great North army actually attacked the measly South one.

Then I realized what this duplicate Hrithik Roshan had just said in his pidgin Bambaiya bhasha.

"Wait a sec," I said. "You think I'm with those people down there? No way! I'm on my own here. I'm not even from this world."

"Not from this world," he repeated slowly. "You speak oddly, girl. Which area of the North are you from?"

"I just told you, I'm not from the North or the South. I'm from elsewhere. Besides, you're the one who speaks oddly. What sort of language is that anyway?"

He looked as if I had just insulted his mother. "This is Tapori. The language of my land."

He used his free arm to indicate our surroundings. "You Northerners come here, invade our land, destroy our homes, and now you insult my language too. Tapori is the greatest language in the seven islands. It is the language in which all the great epics were composed." He sneered like the second, tough-guy Hrithik in Kaho Na Pyaar Hain, the one who takes revenge on the bad guys for killing the first, nice-sweetboy Hrithik before the interval. "But what would you know about such things, a common barbarian like you!"

Barbarian, me? If he hadn't had a crossbow in his hand, I would have picked up a rock and slugged him. I settled for putting a hand on my hip, and pointed a finger at him. "Tapori? Is that what you call it? Well, at least you picked a good name. It's tapori Hindi, that's for sure."

He looked at me up and down. As my initial shock at being caught and then at recognizing his famous face wore off slightly, I began to feel afraid again. I was in a strange, hostile land, captured by an armed man who regarded me as an enemy. I had no idea what he might do to me.

"Turn around," he commanded.

I did as he asked, feeling his eyes move over my body as intimately as a hand on bare skin. Suddenly, I felt almost naked in the cut-off jean shorts. Why the hell wasn't I dressed in something less revealing than these flimsy shorts? That was simple: I was supposed to be working on my PC at home, not transported against my will to a strange world and taken prisoner by an armed stranger with a crossbow.

"You wear strange garb too," he said. "I have never seen a Northerner in such garments before. Is it your custom to be as unclad as a common whore? Or perhaps that is your profession?"

I wanted to slap him for saying that. But he was too far away. And it would have been pointless. Besides, he was right. Even in the USA, I hadn't dressed like this out of doors. It was only because I was working alone in the privacy of my own bedroom that I'd slipped into these shorts and the tee shirt to be more comfortable: I should have stuck to a decent Indian churidhar-kurta as usual.

He peered at my cut-offs in a way that made me hold my breath with anxious anticipation. I relaxed only slightly when I realized he was trying to read the designer label.

"Pepe," I said, trying to help. "And the tee shirt's from Columbia, New York. I did a post-grad course in film making there, after passing out of Michigan U."

He tried to repeat the unfamiliar words. When he tried to say "Pepe", it came out sounding like the Punjabi "Papey". I couldn't help laughing.

His face darkened with anger. The crossbow rose an inch higher, pointing at my throat. I stopped laughing.

"Silence, girl! We'll soon see how you laugh when I take you back to my commanders for questioning. We know how to deal with pardesi spies like you."

I held up my hands appeasingly. "Look, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to make fun of you. It's just that this whole situation is so bizarre."

He put his free hand to his mouth and whistled three loud, sharp tones. Instantly, a horse came riding back out of the smoky dimness. It came within three yards of him and stopped, waiting.

"Wow," I said in English. "That's one hell of a neat trick. You really have that horse trained beautifully."

"Girl," he said curtly. "Stop your barbarian chatter, and get on the horse. I would make you run, but it is too far, and I must be back before the battle commences. Move now!"

"Achcha, baba, I'm getting on," I said, using Bambaiya Hindi again--or Tapori, as he called it with such pathetic pride. "But if you're going to order me around, at least use my name. I'm Viveka. Everybody calls me Viv for short."

"Viveka," he said, looking at me suspiciously as if revealing my name might be some new trick on my part.

"And you are?"

It didn't really matter what his name was, but I couldn't resist asking. I had to know if he had the same name as his filmi counterpart back in our world. If he was the spitting image of a Hindi film superstar in my world, maybe his name was similar too. It would help me figure out how similar or dissimilar things were between the two worlds.

It was eeirily similar. Not the exact same name, but close enough to send a shiver up my spine.

"Rikit," he said gruffly. "Rikit Raushan, son of Ranesh Raushan of Mahim Island. Now, get on that horse before I put a bolt through your unclad leg."

6.3 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:28:00.000+05:30

I reached home feeling frustrated and angry with myself. I should have made Dad listen to me somehow. But he was so worried about Maa. And there were things to be done at the hospital. I didn't blame him for not believing me--for looking at me like I was some attention-deficit South Mumbai rich delinquent, even though at the time I was so mad as hell, I had felt like shouting and kicking the walls while going down the hospital stairs. No, it wasn't Dad's fault at all, from any point of view.

Besides, I knew how freaked-out my story sounded: "Dad, Mikey and Viveka were sucked into some kind of internet vortal and came out as different people."

But it was the truth. I knew it. Ruchi knew it too. We had seen what we had seen. There had to be a way to convince Dad. Before something else happened.

The maid was still in a state of shock. She was trembling when she opened the door and her eyes looked like she had been crying nonstop. I felt really bad for her. She must have got the shock of her life, seeing Viveka attack Maa like that. Just the thought of it made me feel like someone had shoved a fistful of ice down the front of my jeans. Your sister attacking your mom, slashing her badly enough to put her in hospital. Badly enough to need an emergency operation and plastic surgery.

I tried to control my own feelings and stayed calm long enough to give the maid the night off. She almost sobbed with relief, saying "Thank you, baba, thank you, hah? Mein kal subah-subah aati hun," and was out the door in, like, ten minutes. I wondered if she would be back in the morning, then realized I was too tired to deal with one more thing right now.

Then I collapsed on a couch in the living room and zombied-out totally. Like, I lay there for an hour or maybe a year, totally blank. Too much had happened too fast. Was it just yesterday that Ruchi and I were sitting in my bedroom watching Eyes Wide Shut? Just last night that we saw Mikey disappear at his comp? Then saw him reappear again out of thin air? It seemed like another lifetime.

When I came to my senses again, I got the scare of my life.

Mikey was standing there beside the couch, looking down at me with this really really wierd expression on his face.

It shouldn't have scared me. After all, hey, this was my younger brother, good ole Mikey Hard Rock maniac. Pizza-lover extraordinaire, tech nerd and net junkie, lone wolf and social outlaw.

Except that it wasn't really him. This was the other Mikey. The one who had come back through the Vortal. Just like Viveka had this morning. The duplicate Mikey.

And if the duplicate Viveka had been vicious enough to put my mom in the hospital, then what might this duplicate Mikey do to me?

He grinned just then, as if reading my thoughts and leaned closer. Close enough to bite.

6.4 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:27:00.000+05:30

You don't argue with a strange ruffian pointing a loaded weapon at you. Even if he does look like Hrithik Roshan in Kaho Na Pyaar Hain. I did as he told me, went to the horse, lifted my leg, put my foot in the stirrup and was about to get on when a suddenly a sound burst out.

It was the sound of a man screaming. And it was coming from below, from the wadi on the east side of Pali Hill.

Both Rikit Raushan--that name was just too weirdly similar--and I turned to look. The two armies were massed below, facing one another, the Northern one still outnumbering the Southern by at least five times as far as I could tell.

The screaming was coming from the man with a white flag I had seen earlier. When I had last seen him, he was riding toward the Northern army, evidently bringing an offer of peace.

It seemed the Northerners didn't care much for his offer. Because he was riding back now in the direction of the South, minus one arm. The arm, still holding the pole with the white flag, lay on the ground several metres behind him, the white cloth splashed with bloodstains that were visible even from here.

Rikit Raushan sucked in his breath as he came up beside me, watching the drama unfold.

"Barbarians," he said. "Attacking an unarmed man bearing a flag of truce. I told the General not to waste time parlaying with them."

We watched the armless rider, clutching his severed arm to try and staunch the blood gushing from it, staining the rump of his horse and leaving a dark scarlet trail on the ground as he rode. He hadn't reached even halfway back to his own lines when a javelin came whistling through the air behind him, arcing high in an Olympian trajectory. It struck him squarely between the shoulderblades, driving his face down into the mane of his horse.

His horse rode even faster. The momentum jostled him out of the saddle and he hung sideways, hanging from one stirrup. He must have been dead before he reached safety.

Rikit Raushan bristled with rage beside me. "Cowards!" he yelled. "Let's see how you fare against a man bearing steel!"

He unsheathed a sword and raised it in the air. For a moment, I thought he would charge down the hillside and take on that army single-handedly. Now he reminded me of yet another Hindi film. I had recently seen Fiza--my mom had dragged me along to keep her company since my dad never saw Hindi films--and it was eerie to see the same jutting jaw, the biceps rippling with tension, the light-coloured eyes burning with fury. The real Hritik Roshan had only been acting in that film, but his counterpart in this world was demonstrating real passion, real emotion.

It took a great effort on his part to not go charging down the hillside, but I saw him control himself and turn away. Seeing that display of self-control gave me a glimmer of hope. I used the moment to try to appeal to his better sense.

"Listen," I said, trying to sound as sincere as possible--or as sincere as anyone can sound when speaking in pidgin Bambaiya Tapori bhasha. "You must believe me. I am not a spy. I don't even know why you people are fighting. I'm here by mistake, and all I want is to find my brother and go home again. I have nothing to do with this war of your's."

He wasn't listening. Below, the Northern army was sounding trumpets and preparing their first assault, even before the murdered peace-rider had reached the Southern lines.

Even I was silenced for a moment as the entire Northern army gave out one mighty roar and charged forward in a massive charge. It was an awesome sight, even seen from a kilometre away on top of this hill, and I couldn't even imagine what it must be like to actually face those charging hordes. I shuddered. What sort of hellish place had I come to?

"They attack without a parley," he said beside me, his voice choked with anger. "They butcher our peace-rider. And they mean to leave us no quarter."

He turned to me, his sword still in his hand. "The Northern barbarians. They outnumber us six to one and will not stop until our homelands are awash in the blood of our innocent women and children. By killing the bearer of the white flag they have announced that they will take no prisoners."

He put the point of the sword to my throat, eyes blazing. They were the exact same shade and tint as that of his counterpart back in my world. "Then why should we?"

7.1 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:25:00.000+05:30

The sight of Mikey, the fake Mikey, bending over me while I slept, grinning down at me in the darkness, was scarier than any nightmare.

I almost fell off the couch, clutching at the corner of the coffee table to keep my balance. My heart yammered like the soundtrack in a bad horror film.

The duplicate Mikey backed away at once, until he was standing in the shadows by the wall unit.

That was worse, 'cause now I couldn't see his face clearly. And he just stood there silently. Like a ghost in the darkness. Like one of those two lions in that movie that Bill Goldman wrote based on a true story he came across while on a holiday to Africa with his wife. The Ghost and The Darkness. I felt the hairs on the back of my hand standing on end with anticipation. It felt like something was about to happen; something really bad.

I felt like screaming and running from the house. Like getting away from this spooky guy who used to be my kid brother. But I remembered Maa lying unconscious in a bundle of bandages in that ICU bed, and Viveka who had suddenly turned into a vicious animalistic creature, attacking Mom, leaving her hurt badly enough to need operations and ICUs, and then leaping over a 12-foot wall like Jack Nicholson in Wolf.

I forced myself to calm down. I took three deep breaths like Van Damme takes in one of his martial arts action movies before he starts his main climax fight, and, getting up from the couch, I walked over to the light switches, forcing myself to move slowly.

Mikey should have blinked when I switched the lights on. Instead he just stood there, staring directly at me. It took me a moment to adjust to the brightness even though I'd been prepared for it, and I reminded myself once again that this person standing there was not my brother. Hell, he might not even be like us normal people.

While my rods and cones did their thing, he moved towards me. I felt he didn't even move like the old Mikey. The differences were subtle enough that Dad and Maa and Viveka hadn't noticed them at breakfast this morning, but knowing what I knew, everything he did screamed 'phony' to me. Or, as Ruch would have put it, 'Snatcher'.

My head was woozy and my eyes felt gritty. I must have fallen asleep without realizing it. I glanced at the wall clock and was shocked at how long I'd slept, and at the fact that Dad wasn't home yet. But the fake Mikey was still standing there, and I was still more than a little bit spooked at the sight of him staring at me like a scientist at a lab specimen.

"What?" I said challengingly, the way I would have said it to a guy who was rubbernecking Ruchi a bit too interestedly at a movie hall. "What?"

He shook his head, looking away. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I was just seeing if you were fast asleep or just resting."

I didn't believe him. I was sure he had been trying to do much more than just see if I was awake. Much worse.

"I'm awake now," I said. "What's hassling you?

He was silent for a moment. I lost my patience. "Come on, dude," I said. "Speak up. What's your glitch?"

"Vaibhav," the duplicate Mikey said. "I need to talk to you. About what happened this morning."

There was another shred of proof: The real Mikey would never have said something like that. He'd have come directly to the point, sub-vocally muttering whatever he had to say, throwing in a lot of hardrock lingo. He would have said something like: "Vhy, man, I need to open a channel with youse. Can we, like, connect?"

I walked to the living room toilet and slid the door open. I left it open as I went in and splashed water on my face. It gave me a few seconds more to come completely awake.

"About what?" I said, towelling my face.

He had walked over to the open door while I was washing my face. I could feel him watching me even with my face buried in the towel. "Everything," he said. "Maa and Viveka. What happened this morning."

The mention of the attack turned my face hot, as if the water I'd just splashed had been burning hot, not thanda-thanda nal ka paani.

"What about it?" I said cautiously, coming out of the bathroom and glancing either way quickly. I didn't know what his game was, but I made sure to keep a safe distance from him, just in case he was leading upto a reprisal of Viveka's attack. Correction: The duplicate Viveka's attack.

"It's my fault," he said.

I blinked at him. Like Govinda in one of his corny comedies, wagging his eyelashes with exaggerated surprise. Except that my surprise was genuine.

"It all happened because of me," he went on. "I'm responsible for it all, Vaibhav. I caused the whole thing to happen. By opening that stupid Vortal."

7.2 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:24:00.000+05:30

Rikit Raushan's sword was at my throat.

I could see the naked hatred in his eyes and feel the pinprick of the sword bite into my flesh. He had placed it at a point just beside my artery. I could feel it pulsing against the cold steel of the blade. One flick of his wrist and I would be as good as dead--I doubted there were any hospitals in this world, or doctors on call. The image of the poor peace-rider's life-blood pumping out from his severed stump flashed in my mind, and I swallowed involuntarily. The sword bit deeper into my skin.

"Please," I said softly, because even speaking made the swordpoint seem closer. "You have to believe me. I'm not from this place at all. I'm from another world altogether."

I said it in Hindi. Not the 'tapori' he spoke but decent North Indian Hindi like my father and mother spoke. The word 'world' came out as 'desh', which was close enough.

"So," he said with a tone of bitter triumph. "You admit you're a pardesi, Northern spy!"

"No!" I said. As loudly as I could manage with a sword pressed to my throat. "I'm not from the North. I'm from right here." I tried to gesture with my hand. "This was my house. I mean, the place where my house used to stand."

He grimaced disbelievingly. "You're a poor liar, spy. The only house that stood here was a lookout point for our fauj. That's why the Northerners blasted it with their cannons before this invasion. And your own lying tongue betrays you. Only a Northerner would speak your bastardised version of shudh Tapori."

"It's your 'tapori' bhaasha that's bastardized," I said angrily. "I'm speaking shudh Hindi."

He laughed and shifted the sword from left hand to right in one smooth motion. The man was obviously an expert warrior and horseman, besides his uncanny resemblance to the hottest superstar in Hindi films. But right now, he viewed me only as a vamp.

"Enough banter," he said. "I am needed back at my camp to report on the positions of your Northern army. I have no time to waste on your foolish lies."

"So you're the spy," I told him. "And the coward who's so eager to murder an unarmed woman."

That shook him. I saw his eyes grow wider and angrier. The swordpoint pressed harder against me, piercing my skin. I felt blood trickling down the front of my tee shirt and shut my own eyes instinctively.

Instead of the stabbing pain I expected, I felt the sword withdrawing. When I opened my eyes again, I saw him sheathing it and turning toward the horse. He pulled a coiled rope off the saddle and came back.

"Come on," he said brusquely. "We'll see if you talk as boldly when you're being questioned by my lieutenants."

He briskly tied my hands behind my back and pushed me toward the horse. Putting my foot into the stirrup, he shoved me up. Then he got on behind me, clutching the reins with one hand and pressing me forward with the other hand. His hand brushing my bare thigh made me feel naked and vulnerable, but there was little point in complaining. I was lucky to be alive.

He urged the horse forward and we began to ride, steadily increasing speed.

We rode a path down the side of Pali Hill, heading toward what would have been Carter Road in my world. Behind and to our left, the sound of the battle rose as the two warring armies clashed with a terrible roar of voices and weapons.

7.3 Vir

2005-10-12T23:23:00.000+05:30

Anant was silent as we rode up in the lift together. He and I were about as close as brothers can be who haven't spent much time together in the last several years. Although neither of us ever spoke about it aloud, a few years ago, we had had an intense disagreement over the will of our late father and after a short but intense legal wrangle, things had never been the same. Unlike with divorced couples, things had never gone really bitter or nasty, but as my American clients like to put it, we still had 'issues'.

Still, we weren't American, and we weren't 'divorced'. We were Indian, emotional, and family after all, and even though we hadn't spoken for well over a year when I called Anant earlier today, I always knew that if and when, God forbid, there was a medical emergency, each of us would come through for the other.

But that didn't make everything hunky-dory again. As Viveka used to say when she was a baby and our only child at the time, we were 'not okey-dokey' with one another. Far from it. Things had been said, and lawyers had said other, worse things, and the final settlement had been motivated more by a desire to 'get it over with' without spilling more 'blood', metaphorically speaking. And now, as we were alone together for the first time since I had entered the hospital, I sensed that distance between Anant and me, that yawning chasm between our hearts, even though we stood in a hospital lift barely six feet wide and twelve feet long.

I felt a pang of sadness, both for the stupid, pointless, legal inheritance fight that had shoved us so far apart, as well as for the all-trusting innocence of my children during those tender infant years. It had taken them a while to understand why 'Anant-tau' didn't come over as often anymore, nor we go over to his house as often, and why they rarely saw their cousins any longer.

As Sarla and I always agreed, when you bring children into the world, you make a silent pact with them: to make the world as cosy and comfortable a place as possible, and to love everyone and keep hate as far away as possible, for as long as possible. Sometimes, it wasn't long enough, or far enough. And when those negative emotions touched your children, it hurt a lot more than a fall from a bicycle.

I must have passed a hand across my face, or showed my state of mind for just a moment, because Anant glanced up at me sharply. I glanced at him and our eyes met briefly. Something passed between us, and I knew that he knew what I was thinking, and he glanced down quickly, and I knew that he was thinking and feeling much the same as I was.

For a moment, foolishly, that classic scene from Hindi movies flashed through my head: The estranged brothers embrace, clap one another on the back, and cry out what fools they were for ever having fought in the first place. Old-time veteran Pran Bhalla, with his sneering smirk, would have played one of the brothers--or the father? Vhy could probably reel off the names of a hundred films containing variants of that scene, but he wasn't here now. Anant was here and yet he was a million miles away.

Anant looked up again at me, and seemed to come to a decision. Suddenly, he stepped forward, raising his hand--just the way he would if he were about to embrace me. Hope blazed in my heart.

Then the lift doors opened and a nurse bickering with a wardboy entered brusquely, and the moment was broken, like dropped glass full of water. Anant moved his arm to let the ward boy and the nurse passed--she greeted him respectfully, he was the head of surgery here--and we stepped out onto yet another polished hospital floor. Dr Patel was waiting for us in the corridor itself and he came up the moment he saw Anant. I glanced at my brother, but the moment had passed, and we were back to playing the roles we all play in this world, acting no less than old-time veteran Pran Bhalla in all those vintage films.

Dr Patel was a relatively young doctor, thin, tall, balding, and with heavily lidded droopy eyes. He spoke quietly and quickly to Anant as I waited, then both of them turned and glanced at me. I didn't like the expression on their faces, almost identical.

I went forward. Anant made a perfunctory introduction which only worsened my anxiety.

To my relief, Dr Patel sensed my tension, and came straight to the point. "Mr Vatsal. Your wife is in a coma."

"A coma?" I stared at him. "What do you mean, a coma?"

He glanced at Anant, who nodded briefly. Patel went on. "Do you know what is toxic shock, Mr Vatsal?"

"Please call me Vir," I said. "No. I don't know, what is toxic shock?"

He started to explain, launching into what threatened to be an elaborate technical discussion. Anant saw my growing impatience and broke in curtly. "Basically, Vir," Anant said. "She has toxins in her system, and that's keeping her unconscious."

"Toxins?" I said, not understanding still.

"Poison," Dr Patel said simply, proving he could speak English as well as technicalspeak. "The poison is very powerful, and it seems to have been on the weapon that was used upon her."

"Poison?" I had asked, unable to believe what they were saying. "Weapon? But--" I stopped, not sure what to say. "How could she be poisoned? Isn't there some antidote you can give her?"

Anant nodded. "It's of unknown origin, Vir. We thought it might be snake venom at first, but the profile doesn't seem to correspond to anything in our databas. We're still running some tests, Vir. The moment we find what it is, we'll contact Haffkine and get them to work developing an antidote."

Suddenly, I wanted very much to sit down. Anant sensed this and steered the discussion to an empty conference room nearby. The room smelled enticingly of coffee, and I asked him if he could ask someone to get me a cup. Dr Patel popped out to take care of it. Anant leaned across the table, looking at me.

"Vir, you have to understand, we're doing everything we can to source the toxin, but if there's anything you can tell us that could help--it would really make things much easier." He corrected himself. "It might make things easier."

I stared at him. "What can I tell you? I don't know anything about poisons or toxins."

"I mean, when Viveka attacked her, could she have used something from the house? Some kind of compound she had mixed herself?"

The questions made no sense. Compound? Mixed herself? "Anant, this is Viveka we're talking about. She knows nothing about chemistry. She couldn't have made a toxin or something...I don't even know yet what happened in the house. Maybe someone else attacked Sarla and kidnapped Viveka...I mean, the police are still supposedly trying to investigate the incident."

"So you have no idea what kind of poison Viveka or the attacker might have used? Nothing exotic that anyone mentioned? One of the other kids maybe?"

I resisted the urge to raise my voice. "Anant, what are you talking about? My kids know nothing about poisons!" I tried to change the direction this was going, it was making my stomach queasy. "Why is it so difficult to identify this poison?"

He shrugged. "The database says its of 'unknown origin'."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that scientifically, it's prepared from a base venom or toxin, either vegetable or animal, or a combination of both, that isn't found in any known species of flora or fauna in the database."

"And how complete is the hospital's database?"

His mouth twitched in a kind of half-smile. "It's not the hospital's database. It's an international one, maintained by an association of medical research instituitions across the world. They have no record of any such toxin."

I took a moment to digest that. "So what are you saying exactly? That they don't know which animal's venom or plant's juice this poison was made from?"

He nodded slowly. "Exactly. As per the database, it wasn't made from any plant or animal known to science." He shrugged. "Not in our world at least."

7.4 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:22:00.000+05:30

Ruchi and I had a codeword for times when we got hyper, a mantra that was guaranteed to calm us down in any crisis. I used that mantra now. Coldshower, I told myself, then repeated it over and over again, imagining an ice cold cascade of water on my head and face and shoulders, coldshowever, coldshower, coldshower...

I stared suspiciously at the duplicate Mikey. "What the hell are you talking about?" I said, harsher than an older brother should speak. Then again, one of the qualities of an older brother--or older sister--is that at times you get cheesed off with your younger sibs.

He sounded really genuine. But I wasn't fooled that easily. He was probably playing some kind of a mindgame, using psychological warfare to attack me. I glanced at the telephone. It was behind him, out of my reach. But my bedroom door was closer to me than to him, the first door down the passageway. If I jumped up from the sofa, ran inside and locked myself in, then called for help...Police, help, my duplicate younger brother is attacking me! Send lots of paunchy hawaldars with dandas, quick! Yeah, sure, that was a great idea.

I was still trying to figure out the best thing to do when he spoke again. Of all the things I might have expected him to do--attack me, zap me, send me into hyper-space with a flick of his wristwatch--he did the one thing I wasn't prepared for. He said, gently,

"Bhayya."

I stared at him.

"Bhayya," he said again. "I know you know that I'm not Mikey."

I sat up suddenly, knocking my head on the corner of the sofa and not caring. "What?"

He held up his hands placatingly. "You're right. I'm not."

"I'm what? You're not?" I said stupidly. Then tried to rephrase myself. "What do you mean?"

He gestured at the passageway, in the direction of his bedroom. "You and your gf, you saw me last night, when I arrived here."

"Arrived here?" I suddenly thought of this image from a sci-fi movie, called The Arrival starring Charlie Sheen, where the hero suspects that aliens have landed and are infilterating our cities and changing the climate of our planet to make it more hospitable to them. In the climax of the film, the hero finally finds and enters the alien spaceship, and he sees how the aliens use a machine to disguise themselves as us. In the movie, the aliens have these weird feet which point backwards and are double-hinged.

Suddenly, I wanted to check Mikey's feet, to see if they're were double-jointed and pointing backwards. Instead, I said, "What do you mean, you're not Mikey? Arrived here from where?"

He took a step forward. "Don't get hyper, Vhy. I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking I'm some kind of evil twin or duplicate. But I'm not. I'm just Mahesh, your brother. I'll never do anything to harm you."

"You just said you're not Mikey."

"I'm not. I'm Mahesh. Back in my world, you guys never called me Mikey. It was always Mahesh. Except you....you used to call me Maheevey, sometimes."

"Maheevey?" I said, puzzled.

"Yeah, like the song in that Hrithik Roshan film...you know..." he hummed a bit of the tune, tunelessly. Mikey never could hold a tune, couldn't even hum a simple ten second ad jingle. It sounded like a dog gargling with Listerine, then swallowing the Listerine. "Aaja maheevey," he said at last, seeing that I might not have appreciated his non-talent for musical rendition.

"Oh," I said. "That Maheevey."

"Yeah," he said, taking another couple of steps. "So I'm Mahesh, not Mikey, okay? Now I have to talk to you. I need your help."

I blinked at him. "You need my help? For what?"

"To close the Vortal. It's out of control, Vaibhav, bhayya. You have to help me close it. Before someone else comes through. Someone more dangerous."

I stared at Mikey, or Mahesh, or Maheevey, or whoever the hell this guy was, who looked like my brother, talked like my brother (almost) but sure as hell wasn't my brother. And yet he still called me "bhayya" in that same plaintive tone, just like Mikey used to call me when we were younger and he was really in need of my help.

I focussed on the last thing he had said.

"What Vortal?" I remembered the thingie that had flashed on his monitor screen, which Ruchi had read before it changed. She had said something about a Vortal too. Very specifically with a V. Not portal, Vortal.

"The one that I used to come here, to your world. Bhayya, it's out of control. It was only supposed to bring me here, and that was it. But I don't know how, Viveka went through it too. And now someone else came through in her place, because of the Balance. And that person who came through, she's the one who attacked Mom. And now she's out there somewhere. On the loose. We have to get her back through the Vortal and bring back Viveka. Our Viveka. You have to help me."

"I do?" I asked again, stupidly. Then realized how stupid that sounded. "I mean, Mikey...Mahesh...whoever you are...I haven't a clue what you're talking about. I mean, I know something happened with your comp last night, and Ruchi and I saw you vanish from your seat and then reappear a moment later, and she said she saw the word Vortal on your monitor screen. But I don't know what you're talking about, about you going through, and Viveka going through, and this other person--the bai and Mrs Mudgal said it was Viveka, or looked like her. Just like you look like Mikey but you say yourself you're not Mikey, you're Mahesh. So I'm a little confused. No, actually I'm totally confused. Actually. Shit, I'm getting Ruchi's disease. Actually. So, what the fricking hell are you talking about, Mahesh-Mikey-whoever? What is this Vortal and how is it making all this weird crap happen?"

My face was burning now, like I had a 102-degree fever. My throat was as dry as a roll of cottonwool. I could feel my blood pulsing in my temples, the way one of the X-men could feel every tiny physiological and psychological of another person in her own body. I felt as if I was the body-snatcher here, not Mikey. Which of the X-men was she, anyway? The one with that empathic power who could leech the power out of any of her superhero friends--or enemies? I was so freaked I couldn't even remember, even though I had seen the DVD again just night before last.

"So you better explain right here, right now," I said, "just what the hell you're talking about. And while you're doing it, stop calling me Vaibhav, okay? I mean, why the hell do you keep calling me Vaibhav instead of Vhy? Nobody calls me Vaibhav. Except Dad when he's mad at me. If you're pretending to be Mikey, at least get that much right! And my gf's name is Ruchi. You missed that one too."

He nodded, then hung his head, looking sheepish. "I know. But Vaibhav is what I call my big brother back home." He paused, looking away. "At least, that's what I called him before...before I lost them all."

I stared at him, wondering how he could look so normal when he was obviously so whacko. I wondered if the duplicate Viveka had seemed this normal just before she attacked and almost killed Maa. But what was this crap he was laying on me? Maybe it was some kind of mind game to get me to drop my guard. High hopes.

"I'll explain," he said, seeing the look on my face. "It was all my fault. I started the whole thing when I created that damn thing. I didn't know it would turn out to be this powerful. Or that I would lose control of it all. All I wanted was to get my family back. And it was the only way I knew how. You understand me, Vaibhav. I mean, Vhy. You know how much I'm into computers and tech. It's the only way I knew to get them back. To get you all back again."

I raised a hand to point a finger at him. I don't know what scared me more--the fact that I was alone in the house with the duplicate Mikey when he was making some kind of move on me, or the fact that my hand was shaking.

"You better start making sense," I said. "Or I'm going to call the police and have you arrested for impersonating my brother. What did you do with the real Mikey? How did you get into his body? How did you get into our world?"

He looked at me with an expression of pain so genuine, I almost felt sorry for him.

"Don't you get it yet?" he said. "I am your brother. I'm Mahesh. Mikey. Whatever you want to call me. I'm just not the Mikey you know."

"Yeah, sure," I said, "And I'm actually Tom Cruise but I'm wearing a latex mask like the ones they use in the m:i movies."

"No, no, no," he said. "I mean, for real. I'm your brother. But from another world. An alternate world that's very similar to this one in most ways. Except..."

"Except...?" I asked, rolling my hand to indicate he should keep the projector running, the audience was waiting.

"Except that in my world, all of you guys died in a car accident and I was left alone. And that's why I created the Vortal. Because if I couldn't get you back, then I wanted to be with you again. So I slipped into this world and replaced your Mikey."

I stared at him. "Wow. That's some story." The sarcasm was so heavy in my voice, I could have applied on a slice of toast, with a knife. "Now pull the other leg too, it's so much shorter, I'm walking with a limp."

He cried out, "I'm telling the truth! You've got to believe me, bhayya! I was only trying to get back to you guys, to have you as my family again. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. But something went wrong. Viveka went through the Vortal too, and someone else came in her place. And now the Vortal is open and I can't close it. I don't know how to close it. And I'm scared that lots of other people are going and coming through it, all the time. And some of them are really bad people. And things are going to get really really scary if we don't shut down the Vortal right now and I don't know who else to turn to, because Viveka's gone, and Maa's in hospital and Dad's dealing with that, and..."

He staggered, overwhelmed by his emotion. And then, he actually lurched and started to keel over.

Without thinking about it, I moved forward and caught hold of him. I helped him over to the couch and put his legs up. He lay there breathing heavily for a moment, and I remembered the time I had carried him once, when he was really small, maybe a year old, maybe less, and he had had a bad cold and cough and fever, and I had been so worried--I was just a kid then too--and I remember picking him up and cuddling him and saying, "Don't worry, everything's going to be fine, it'll all be fine..." the way I had seen Maa do.

He opened his eyes and looked up at me. Tears rolled out from their corners and trickled down his cheek and over his nose, falling to the couch, wetting the upholstery.

"Bhayya, you have to believe me. I'm telling the truth," he said.

I was silent for a long moment, staring at him. Remembering all the things one remembers when one has been a brother for all of one's life, the fights, the arguments, the hugs, the kisses, the homework-helpouts, the cricket, the cycling, the bandaids and tincture of iodine, the falls and the tumbles, the video game marathons and the movie marathons, the Horlicks and the Bournvita, the cola and orange Rasna, the onion cream wafers and the french fries...

Finally I said, "I do."

He stared at me wordlessly. Tears still filled his eyes.

"I believe you," I said.

And, as JaishreeKrishna is my witness, I did. I believed him. Every incredible word of his incredible story.

8.1 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:21:00.000+05:30

We had ridden for a short distance when I became aware of the unnatural silence. All the earlier sounds of gunfire, shouts, screams, explosions, horses, had died down. Only the foul sea wind remained, blowing with a force born of freedom that it could never have in a Bombay packed with skyscrapers and buildings.

The silence was more ominous than those terrible sounds.

I guessed that the hill intervening between us and the battlefield was deadening the sounds of the battle. But even so, we should have heard something, anything.

Unless...My mind had to struggle to complete the chilling thought. Unless the attacking army had met with almost no resistance and the battle was over as suddenly as it had begun. I had read about such things happening before during a course in martial history I'd taken at Michigan State to earn extra credits for that semester.

In the face of vastly superior forces, either an army loses heart at once and turns tail. Or they fight with a fierceness born of desperation, either winning bravely or being cut down to the last man. If I'm not mistaken, it was General Clausewitz who said that in his classic manual on military history, Clausewitz On War--or then again, maybe it was Bill Gates during the Microsoft break-up! I'm not trying to be flippant, but 21st century corporate wars weren't very different from medieval age infantry battles, except that in business it was the balance sheets that turned bloody red, not the battleground.

There was no way of knowing which of the two had happened on the other side of the hill. But the first possibility seemed more likely. The Northern army had seemed far superior in numbers and battle-lust to the Southern forces.

Rikit Raushan's hand still stayed on my bare thigh. I was uncomfortably conscious of it, as well as of his close physical presence. I could smell him and it wasn't a very pleasant smell. But then, I suppose, in a world torn apart by war and the complete breakdown of civilization, they probably didn't have the luxury of bathing daily.

And there was something powerfully masculine about him that wasn't entirely repulsive or unattractive. In fact, in many ways he was more attractive in real life than Hrithik Roshan was on the screen in my world. More raw and manly somehow.

I berated myself for letting such thoughts pass through my mind. And to think that when I was a schoolgirl I had once tossed a Mills & Boons out of a BEST bus window, just to prove to my classmate that I thought romance fantasies were trash. It was the raw violence around me that was making me think such thoughts. It's a survival mechanism. Violence arouses the senses, makes one more fully aware of one's life-energies, awakening the chakras.

That and the fact that this man was so closely pressed to my back, I could feel every contour, every muscle of his body. There's something primeval about being on a horse with a person of the opposite sex. Something powerfully animalistic and arousing--not that I was aroused by this brutish lout, mind you. But the circumstances were such that I couldn't help being aware of his physical intimacy.

Suddenly, I felt him tense. The hand on my thigh tightened, and with one expert twitch of the reins, he brought the horse to an abrupt halt.

The moment the horse stopped I heard it too.

The pounding sound of other horses. Many horses. Behind us.

He turned the horse smartly, looking back in the direction we had come.

After a moment, the sound rose to a crescendo. And they burst into view above us on the peak of the hill.

Soldiers. Dozens of them. Armed and on horseback.

They paused at the top of Pali Hill and I saw one of them point with his lance at us and call out to a man behind who was dressed in shining armour.

Behind me, Rikit spat a name that sounded like a curse.

"Khanna!"

The man in armour gestured at us, and the troupe of horseback soldiers started downhill towards us. They were less than a kilometre away and would catch us within minutes. From their drawn swords and lances, there was no doubt about their hostile intentions.

I felt a cold wave lap at my throat, filling the tiny cut with a tingling icyness.

My captor turned his horse around until it was headed South again, and we began to ride faster, trying to outrace the soldiers following us.

8.2 Vir

2005-10-12T23:20:00.000+05:30

I stared at Anant, unable to comprehend--or to accept--what he was saying. "If the poison in her system didn't come from our world, then..." I trailed off, unable to complete the thought. "Anant, what exactly are you saying?"

He sighed and glanced at Dr Patel. "Vir, the fact is we don't know what we're dealing with here. That's why we were hoping you could help us understand what this substance could be, or why she might have used it on Sarla."

"She? You mean Viveka? But what does she know about poisons? And besides, why--" I shook my head. "No, it's ridiculous. Viveka wouldn't try to kill her mother! There's some huge misunderstanding here."

Both doctors exchanged glances again. Dr Patel said, gruffly, "Mr Vatsal, until we know what the nature of the toxin is, we can't proceed with any course of treatment."

I picked up the styrofoam cup of coffee he had brought me. It was scalding hot, and burned my tongue. I didn't care. "So you know it's poison, but not what kind of poison. And so you can't treat her until you find out what poison it is? And in the meanwhile, what happens to her?"

They looked at each other. I could see that if not for my brother being such a respected and senior surgeon, they wouldn't have even had this conversation with me. Why do so many Indian doctors have this superior attitude to non-medical personnel? What do they think, that medical training makes them more capable of understanding human problems than us?

I passed a hand across my face, pinching my forehead. I was distraught and needed to calm down. There was nothing to be gained by getting upset with the very doctors who were responsible for keeping Sarla alive right now. Besides, Anant wouldn't hold anything back from me--not under these circumstances.

"We'll do everything we can, Mr Vatsal," said Dr Patel. "But until we identify the toxin, I'm afraid there's not very much we can do."

Anant nodded in agreement. "It's imperative we find out the nature of the poison used. And quickly."

They talked a little more about Sarla's other injuries. I resisted the urge to grimace or shudder at Dr Patel's descriptions of her lacerations--"extremely invasive, almost lethal. And the trauma caused could easily have resulted in your wife's--"

Anant saw my face and stopped the other doctor's monologue by touching his wrist gently. Turning to me, Anant said quietly: "Look, Vir. Let's be honest. It's difficult to solve the problem without knowing what really happened. Do you know if Viveka might have had some kind of plant in her room? Belladonna maybe? Or if she was interested in vegetable toxins? As part of some college project or something?"

I shook my head, bewildered. "Anant, this is Viveka we're talking about. She's not an expert in poisons. She doesn't own a knife, doesn't have knowledge of deadly poisons. She's deciding whether to go to MIT or set up her own animation production house here. You know her, for God's sake. She's never done a violent thing in her life!"

I went on, knowing I was saying more than I should but desperately needing to make some sense out of this whole nightmare. "I don't even know for sure if it was Viveka who did this to Sarla. Maybe the maid was mistaken. Maybe Sarla was mistaken. How could Viveka do this? Why would she? I just don't understand any of this, Anant. It doesn't make any sense at all."

Anant was silent. Dr Patel looked at the floor wordlessly. None of them knew what else to say. I knew they both were thinking that I was still in denial, that I wasn't even willing to accept that my daughter had attacked and nearly killed her own mother, and that as long as I refused to accept that basic fact, I would be no use to them or to Sarla.

After a few minutes, the meeting broke up and I came out of the conference room, trying to think what was the best thing to do next.

"Mr Vatsal?"

I looked up at the sound of the soft yet commanding voice. The man standing before me was dressed in a Mumbai Police uniform. An Assistant Commissioner of Police, I saw from his name-badge. There was another uniformed officer behind him, and two hawaldars.

"ACP Bhandarkar," he said offering his hand. I shook it and nodded.

"I'm here," he said, "to know if you wish to register a complaint against the woman who attacked your wife.

8.3 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:19:00.000+05:30

"I believe you," I said to Mahesh. "God knows why, but I do. Because it's the only thing that makes sense."

He sat up slowly on the couch, wiping his tear-streaked cheeks with the corner of his Iron Maiden tee shirt sleeve. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone. I just wanted my family back, that's all. I was going crazy without you. I guess I never realized how much I took you all for granted until you were gone, and then--"

"Hold on," I said gently. "Slow down. Explain it all to me from the beginning. Act as if I'm the retard younger brother, not you, okay?"

He smiled a little at that. "Okay," he said.

It didn't take long. Basically, the plot was as simple as a Hollywood action B-movie: Mahesh Vatsal lived in an alternate world far more technologically advanced than our own, yet identical in many other ways. So, for example, he had exactly the same family as the Vatsals in this world, my world. And he was just as tech-nerdy as our Mikey over here. And as indifferent to everyone else, his head glued 24/7 to his comp, which, from what he described, was like a desktop version of a Cray supercomputer compared to our measly PII, which was the current standard.

But then, one day, everything changed. We all went on a trip to Shirdi. He dropped out at the last minute, making some excuse, but really only wanting to wriggle out of any journey that would take him away from his precious comp. He had a little argument with Dad before they left, but in the end, he got his way, because both Mom and Dad felt that he had to understand it for himself rather than be forced to do something against his will. That was the way they were, in my world as well as Mahesh's world.

They were all killed in a really ugly smash-up with two trucks, between Nashik and Shirdi. Dad, Mom, Viveka, and Vaibhav...my counterpart in that world.

After that, everything changed for Mahesh. He realized how much he missed his family, how much he loved them. And he always blamed himself for not going with them that day, for arguing with dad, for making them late. Like anyone in his position, who is spared while his whole family dies, he was stricken with guilt. Our uncle Anant, the surgeon, took care of him, and there was no problem of money, so Mahesh asked that they keep the house for the time being, and Anant-tau agreed easily. Mahesh stayed with Anant-tau, but spent most of his hours in his old place, working on his comp, except that this time he wasn't hacking into US congressional websites, or fooling around with defense portals.

He was programming a gateway between alternate realities.

He explained the quantum physics behind the whole concept, but most of it went way over my head. But basically, it seemed that this was a legitimate scientific possibility even in our world: it was theoretically possible that alternate worlds existed, parallel universes identical to our own in every way, but with only a few things changed. Or even completely different versions of our world.

But to turn that theory into reality, it had taken more than Mahesh Vatsal's comp genius. It had taken the help of an anonymous person he met in a high-tech chatroom one night, soon after his family's death in the Nashik car crash. A person whom he knew only by his internet handle: The Webmaster.

"Didn't you try asking his name?" I said. "I mean, didn't you wonder why this guy would share so much info with you? I mean, this isn't a crack code for some FPS game, we're talking major scientific breakthrough here, right? Didn't you ever get curious as to why he was helping you instead of working for the US government and winning the Nobel Prize for Science?"

He shrugged. "Maybe he was working for the US gov. Maybe he is a Nobel Prize Winner. All I know is, he was telling me what I needed to know. Like a helpdesk that helped you crack your code problems. And I didn't really care about anything else at the time." He looked down. "Bhai, you don't understand, I really couldn't live with you guys gone. I was thinking suicide every second minute. When I first heard from The Webmaster, it was like God himself reached out and told me there was still hope."

I was silent, trying to think of my little brother--or his counterpart in an alternate world--sitting alone at his comp, with all of his family gone suddenly. I had no idea how that felt, but even now, with Mom in the ICU, Viveka gone, I could feel the gut-wrenching shock that comes when those familiar, beloved people are just taken away from you, even temporarily. The permanence of death...for once, I couldn't even think of a movie reference that would express it eloquently enough. Nothing short of a Bergman film.

"And so you created the Vortal," I said, finishing Mahesh's story. "And went through it, coming into our world. And flipping Mikey from here back into your world."

He nodded, looking at me to see my reaction.

I sighed. "But bro, by doing that, you caused an awful mess, didn't you? I mean, I understand now what your plan must have been. You thought you would replace your counterpart in this reality, and that way you would have your family back almost the way they were before--because you said that we're almost exactly like our counterparts in your world, right? But in doing so, you threw poor Mikey into your lonely world, leaving him without his family. And somehow, that Vortal thingie of your's switched Viveka with someone else, some not very nice alternate version of her, and now Mom's in hospital in ICU and everything's all messed up again."

He looked miserable. "I know. I didn't mean for it to work out this way. That's why I came to you, to tell you the truth."

"So now what?"

"Now..." he sucked in a long deep breath. "Now, I need your help. To make it all right again."

"How do we do that?"

He hesitated. Then said, "You have to come with me through the Vortal. Back to my world."

8.4 Vir

2005-10-12T23:18:00.000+05:30

I didn't know what to say to the cop at first. He remained standing, waiting for my answer. It was obvious that he was more than a little hostile. I couldn't understand why, but over the years I've come to understand that a certain breed of policeman considers all citizens guilty until proved innocent--even if they haven't actually been accused of a crime.

I'd read an article recently about ACP Bhandarkar and how he was as tough on ordinary citizens as on criminals. Because, in his view, the two were often one and the same, especially with the proliferation of white-collar and tech crimes.

I resisted my impulse to tell him to get out of here and leave me alone and said, "ACP Bhandarkar, I never called the police. What made you come here?"

He nodded as if this was a perfectly reasonable question. "Mr Vatsal, sir, in our line of work we see all kinds of strange situations. Husbands murdering wives, wives murdering husbands, even parents killing their children, in-laws attacking daughters-in-law...Yahan Mumbai sheher mein kuchh bhi hota hai, kabhi bhi. There is no guarantee."

"I see," I said, not seeing at all. "But that doesn't answer my question."

"The answer to your question, sir, is that your neighbour called us. The lady was very concerned for your wife's health. And as the ACP in charge of the area, it was my duty to investigate further."

I didn't know whether to feel angry with Mrs Mudgal--I assumed she was the "neighbour" he was talking about--or to tell the ACP to go to hell. I settled for irony.

"I didn't realize that the ACP of Pali Hill area investigates every chotta-motta complaint from a second-hand party," I said, letting just a little bit of sarcasm show.

He smiled coldly at my comment. He looked like a hard man, and from what I'd read of him in the papers, he seemed to be a very good cop.

"This is not a chotta-motta complaint, sir," he said calmly, unruffled by my sarcasm. "This is a very serious police matter. Even if you do not wish to cooperate with us, we will still go ahead with the case on our own initiative. Hum issey cognizable offense samaj sakte hain. But since you are a very respected citizen and the problem originated in your own family, I thought you might wish to give us some help in the matter."

I frowned. Now he was going over my head. I had obviously missed some important part of this conversation.

"How can a little incident like this be a very serious police matter?" I asked. "It's true my wife is badly injured, but the attack--"

He cut me off.

"We are not here to talk about your wife, Mr Vatsal. I am talking about the three other men that your daughter attacked and killed today after she left your house."

9.1 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:17:00.000+05:30

We were riding flat out. Rikit was coaxing every ounce of speed from the stallion. I used my knowledge of riding to try and help him, leaning as far forward as possible, my head almost touching the mane, my knees pressed in and bent as far as they'd go. But from the thundering hooves behind us, I could tell that they were going to catch us soon.

There were too many of them, and we were two on one horse. Where were we heading anyway? Mahim? That was too far. We would be caught before we reached Bandstand. Or the place that would have been Bandstand in my world.

Then Rikit turned the head of the horse, laying the reins on the left side to let the horse know the direction he wanted to go. The stallion, beautifully maintained and trained, took the cue and changed direction without easing. And I saw where we were going now.

The coastline of Carter Road was much the same as in my world. A rock-strewn shoreline overgrown with wild vegetation. A path had been cut out of this vegetation and covered with pebbles and mud to make a rough road for horses and carts. The countless wheel-tracks and hoofprints testified to its frequent use. This was where we were riding, along this seaside pathway, hemmed in by the sea to our right.

But about fifty-odd metres inland, to the left of the horse highway, was a thicket. A wild overgrown infestation of trees growing huddled together. This covered the entire surface of Pali Hill except for the top and some patches which had been cleared away. From down here, I couldn't see how far the thicket extended, but if my knowledge of pre-urbanized Bombay was correct, it probably went in patches all the way upto Colaba, the extreme Southern tip of the island city. A dense natural wilderness of mangroves on the seaside, and assorted marshy forest thickets further inland.

And if I remembered correctly, even in my world, this overgrowth had been home to a wide variety of natural fauna until as recently as the mid-20th century. Leopards, wolves, packs of wild dogs, and the legendary snakes of Bandra. Even today, in the new millennium, it wasn't uncommon for Pali Hill residents to find the occasional snake in their compound, and the larger beasts still lived in the region of Borivili National Park, further North but an extension of the same ecology.

Rikit was taking us into the heart of the thicket. In a last desperate bid to escape our pursuers. I felt a cold thrill of fear and excitement travel through my body as I understood his plan, and I bent further, helping him coax one final burst of speed from the stallion. It was either attempt to hide in the thicket or be killed by our Northern pursuers.

9.2 Vir

2005-10-12T23:16:00.000+05:30

I stood up to face ACP Bhandarkar. A vein in my temple was throbbing painfully, and I knew that the adrenalin rush I had felt earlier had worn off at last. Like a bad coffee-hangover, it had left me with a residual bitterness under my tongue and a sense of coming down from a high too fast.

It didn't make it any easier to absorb the shocking news the ACP had just given me.

"Three men?" I repeated. "What three men?"

Bhandarkar motioned to the officer standing beside us. The man came forward, nodding curtly to me.

"Joshi, Mr Vatsal wishes to know the details of the murders," Bhandarkar said in Marathi. "Tyaala sanga detail." To me he said curtly in English: "Inspector Joshi is officer in charge of the case. I am supervising officer."

Joshi nodded and referred to a notepad from his pocket. "The suspect went into a country liquor bar on Ambedkar Road, in Khar-Danda. The manager of the bar saw her and was surprised because usually such decent girls do not come inside. He went to tell her nicely that she should leave. She became abusive and demanded thara."

"'Thara'?" I said, incredulous. "She demanded 'thara'?"

Joshi looked up briefly. "That was exact word she used, 'thara'. Mahanje country liquor, gentleman."

I nodded. Bhandarkar was watching me like a kite-hawk circling a Parsi tower of silence.

Joshi went on. "Manager gave her bottle of Government Country Liquor, Orange Flavour. She drank it very fast. Some men sitting next to her began to pass comments. Again, Manager told her she should leave. She said--"

Joshi paused, glanced at Bhandarkar, then at me, then back at Bhandarkar again. The ACP shook his head very slightly, and I understood that he was telling him to leave out the exact language Viveka had used.

"She abused again," Joshi continued. "And still Manager decided to leave matter alone. Suspect then proceeded to consume one full bottle and another half bottle of Government Country Liquor."

I interrupted him this time. "What is that like? Is it the same as one and a half bottle of whisky? Or like beer? Or what?"

Again, Joshi glanced at Bhandarkar. Bhandarkar answered: "It is stronger than beer, Mr Vatsal, but not as strong as Scotch Whisky, which you must be used to. Take one and a half of country as around one half-bottle of Scotch Whisky, neat."

I was silent. I tried to imagine Viveka drinking the equivalent of half a bottle of whisky. It was impossible. She had never enjoyed anything stronger than beer. That too, only on rare occasions. I couldn't imagine her sitting in a country liquor bar at Danda, drinking a full bottle.

Joshi decided to cut straight to the chase then, perhaps sensing my disbelief. "After some time, she began dancing and removing her articles of clothing. When she removed her top and her bosom was fully uncovered, manager objected very strongly--"

"No," I said sharply, my voice louder than I'd intended. A nurse at the nurse's station down the corridor looked up at my voice. I struggled to keep my voice down: "That's not possible. My daughter would never do something like that."

Bhandarkar sighed and removed his uniform cap. His head was balding in the typical pattern of male-pattern baldness. He brushed the thin crown of hair around his scalp with his hand gently, as if massaging his head.

"Mr Vatsal," he said with patience so exaggerated it was worse than outright irritation, "please try to understand, we are only reporting the facts to you. As I was saying earlier, in our line of work we see many strange things people do. Maybe your daughter--."

I held up my hand. "All right," I said. "I get your point. Let's finish the recap then. What happened after that?"

Joshi glanced briefly at Bhandarkar, who put his cap back on and nodded to his junior officer to go on.

Joshi flipped some pages over. "Suspect got involved in a fight with the Manager and two employees. She attacked them with a short knife and injured two very seriously. The Manager died on the spot from a severe neck wound. The two employees were declared dead on arrival at Bhabha Municipal Hospital." He shut his notebook. "Suspect escaped and is currently absconding, lapatta."

In the silence that followed, Bhandarkar said: "There were at least ten or twelve witnesses to the incident, Mr Vatsal. One of them was an odd-job man who washes cars in your building society. He was the one who identified your daughter. Later, when we received the telephone complaint from your neighbour, she gave us a photograph of the suspect."

He gestured to Joshi who took out a squarish snapshot and showed it to me. It was a polaroid picture of Mrs Mudgal's son, the classical-turned-pop singer, with Viveka, taken several months ago when she had designed the cover for his first pop album. How ironic life can be sometimes: you do a favour for a neighbour, a childhood friend, and some time later, the same neighbour reports you to the police!

"If you could provide us with more recent and suitable pictures, it would be helpful," Bhandarkar said.

I was surprised to feel tears in my eyes. I hadn't been aware that they were welling up until my eyes were full.

"I'm sorry," I said in a voice that betrayed my emotion. "I can't help you at all in any way. Whatever your evidence, your witnesses, I don't believe these things were done by my daughter. There must be some mistake. My daughter can't behave like this."

And even though I knew how absurd that sounded in the face of the evidence, I sincerely believed it. Viveka would never do such horrible things. Not my Viveka.

9.3 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:13:00.000+05:30

They took several minutes to find us. Either Rikit was better at this Rambo-Predator stuff than they were, or they were scared of entering the forest. I soon learned that it was neither of these two reasons. The Northern soldiers were hampered by their heavy armour and weapons. Javelins, spears and battle armour are good for a charging force on a battlefied. In a dense forest, they're as cumbersome as a rhinocerous in a supermarket.

To make matters worse, they hadn't got off their horses. Probably because the heavy armour made walking too difficult. One of the horses was limping badly. And the handful of foot-soldiers who were walking were cursing so loudly that we heard them a good five minutes before they came into the clearing.

There were at least ten of them in this group. There seemed to be no attempt to fan out through the thicket to find us, as they did in most jungle-action movies. Maybe they figured it couldn't be that hard to catch a single rider. They were wrong.

My first shot hit the helmet of the man in front. I was aiming for the face-window, whatever that thingie is called in an armour suit, which the Northern soldier had conveniently opened up to improve his own field of vision. I aimed for it, but I missed. I expected the bolt to bounce off the armour with a clang. Instead, to my surprise and shock, it crunched right through the metal plate and penetrated his skull. Blood spurted from the open face-window and he pitched forward.

Even though I had aimed and shot deliberately at that man, it was still a huge jolt to see him actually suffer violent harm because of my actions. I stifled back a startled gasp of horror as the man tumbled off his horse to fall in a crash of armour, scaring both his own mount and the other horses nearby into rearing up and nearly unseating their surprised riders.

I didn't have time to see what Rikit's reaction was to this hard evidence that I was clearly not a Northern spy or soldier. He was too busy firing his own arrows, and unlike me, he had no compunctions about taking lives.

His first shot struck a soldier in the neck, gouting blood, and sent him pinwheeling backwards. He had picked good positions for both of us, and in the semi-darkness of the thicket, they couldn't tell where the bolts were coming from. The first four or five men went down without knowing what hit them. At least three of them were Rikit's victims, but I'm almost ashamed to admit that two were mine. After the shock of the first strike, I missed two bolts but my fourth struck a Northerner in the midriff and his scream joined those of his dying or wounded companions.

Then Rikit deliberately shot one of their horses in the rump, something I'd never have done. It was one thing to shoot armed soldiers--and even that made me sick to the stomach--but I couldn't have made myself harm an innocent animal, even to save my life.

The horse reared, throwing the rider off like a sack of potatoes. He crashed back into a tree and fell to the ground in a heap of twisted metal, his leg tangled in the stirrups. The horse charged blindly through the trees, maddened by pain, dragging its unseated rider who screamed as he was pounded about like a rag doll, and its panic caused the rest of the horses to stampede as well--which was probably Rikit's goal in the first place. I saw at least two more soldiers knocked off their mounts and trampled over in the stampede, and then all of a sudden it was all over. Those Northerners still unhurt dragged their wounded companions away with curses and frantic shouts that made it clear they thought they had been ambushed by a force of several Southerners. Those who remained lay still, gurgling or coughing out the last of their life-blood.

One of the fallen men was screaming with pain. A horse had ridden over him, leaving him maimed and too broken-up to walk or even crawl away. He was on his stomach, crying curses at his comrades for leaving him behind. Rikit walked out into the clearing, drew his sword and impaled the man without a second's hesitation. I turned my face away, too late.

A moment later, I was sick, bending over and puking my guts out.

Believe me, however glamorous and exciting it looks in the movies, real life violence is sickening and scary as hell. Nothing else affects you quite the same way. I knew I would never be same person again for the rest of my life, would never forget the look of stunned shock on that first soldier's face as my crossbow bolt penetrated his helmet and entered his skull.

When I finished throwing up, Rikit was standing beside me, holding a horse by the reins. He had managed to stop one of the fleeing horses and calm it down.

"Come," he said, less harshly than he had spoken to me before the fight. "We must keep moving. We may not be as lucky the next time."

I shook my head. I couldn't go on. Couldn't muster the strength to stand, walk, breathe, live. I had taken lives. The thought of simply going on with my life was impossible to my traumatized brain.

"I believe you now," he said to me, lifting me bodily to my feet. "You are not a Northerner. Now come with me, ride. Or stay here and die."

After a moment and a sip of water from his canteen, I did as he said. I had no other choice.

9.4 Vir

2005-10-12T23:12:00.000+05:30

I took a few moments in the hospital bathroom to get a hold of myself. As I finished wiping my face with a paper towel, I looked at my reflection in the large mirror. I looked haggard and weary, ten years older than I'd looked the previous morning when I had shaved in my bathroom mirror at home, before Viveka's pancake breakfast. I felt twenty years older.

When I came out, ACP Bhandarkar was talking brusquely on his cellphone, while Inspector Joshi gave orders to a constable--from the last bit which I overheard, he was placing the hawaldar on guard outside the ICU, for Sarla's protection. I hadn't asked for that, but I could see no reason to object. Joshi glanced at me as the hawaldar walked away. He glanced at the ACP who finished his cell conversation and snapped his mobile shut.

"Good news," Bhandarkar said. "We have found your daughter. She is in Khar area only. We are going there now."

He began walking towards the lift, speaking quickly in Marathi to Joshi, who listened and nodded, then took out his own cell and made a call, passing on his superior's orders.

I followed both the policemen into the lift.

"ACP Bhandarkar," I said. "I will cooperate with you on this matter. But first, I want you to assure me that if this suspect is in fact my daughter Viveka--and mind you, I am not saying she is, I am only saying if she is in fact Viveka--then in that case, she must be taken into custody peacefully, without any use of violent force. You must assure me of this."

He listened without saying a word. The lift stopped twice, once to let a pair of wardboys get on with a linen trolley, the second time to let a nurse off on another floor.

"Secondly," I went on. "The knife that she used is tainted with some kind of poison. My wife is dying from that same poison. The doctors need a sample to try and produce an antidote to save my wife. You must try and retrieve that weapon. It is possible that they can use it to get the antidote made by Haffkine Institute. It's a question of my wife's life or death."

My voice cracked on that last sentence just as the lift doors opened to reveal the lobby. We stepped out and the ACP paused a moment.

He turned slightly towards me. "Mr Vatsal, I have much sympathy for your situation. I have a daughter and a son also, and I can understand what you are going through. But I cannot make any promises. This is a police matter. There is no question of your putting conditions on us."

Joshi went out the hospital lobby door, which opened automatically, and gestured to the police car waiting a little distance away to come closer. It came right up to the edge of the curb and Joshi opened the back door for the ACP.

"I understand, ACP," I said, forcing myself to appear calm and sensible, rather than the bundle of ragged nerves I felt like. "But try to see my point of view also. Something very unusual has happened here. This is not some ordinary crime. My daughter is not a killer or a--"

Bhandarkar's cell rang again. He glanced at the screen and looked at me sharply. "Mr Vatsal, maybe it is better if you do not come with us only. Let us do our job and investigate the whole matter thoroughly."

I stared at him blankly. "But my daughter--my wife--."

He patted me quickly on the shoulder. "I am sorry. Better you stay out of our way now and let us take whatever action necessary. I have received word your daughter has just attacked and killed one more innocent man. She is now labelled as a known violent criminal and we must proceed accordingly against her."

And before I could say another word or react, he walked out of the lobby and got into the waiting police car.

10.1 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:11:00.000+05:30

As we headed for the thicket, I heard angry shouts from behind us. The Northern soldiers had understood what we were doing and they didn't like the plan.

As if to confirm this, Rikit spoke in my ear. "Let's see if your Northern brothers dare to follow us in here," he said.

"Damnit," I cried out above the sound of the pounding hooves. "I told you before, I'm not a Northerner!"

He didn't say anything in response to that. We reached the edge of the thicket a second later, and were instantly enveloped by close-growing trees that almost shut out the dim daylight. Rikit steered his horse expertly through the trees, clicking his tongue in the universal language of horse-riders. When the trees grew too close together, he stopped and dismounted.

"We must walk from this point on," he said, speaking very softly. "There is too much danger of the horse breaking a leg in a snake-hole or rabbit-hole."

He indicated the leaf-strewn ground of the thicket. I wondered what would happen if one of us happened to step into a leaf-covered snake-hole. I didn't stop to think about it. My whole sanity rested on not thinking too much about my situation, just surviving from moment to moment.

The forest--once inside, it was nothing less than a forest to my city-bred senses--was still and silent. There was a faint background of unfamiliar sounds, crickets calling, birds chirping, insects buzzing and clicking. There was no sound nor sight of the larger predators that I knew were probably around somewhere.

I glanced fearfully up at the trees. Ever since I was a little girl, I had always been scared of sitting under a tree for fear that a leopard would descend, grab me in its jaws and pull me up, to be eaten at leisure, limb by limb. Back in the US, it was cougars and mountain cats that I'd been uneasy about, during my couple of reluctant treks through the Catskills and sole visit to Yellowstone.

The forest floor was knotted with tree roots, dried leaves and the mulchy vegetation that you never see Hollywood movie stars having to deal with. Or even Hindi film stars in unrealistic films like Ram Gopal Varma's Jungle. Which my brother Vhy had appropriately renamed Bungle. Right now, that was the movie I felt I was in, so intensely were my nerves on edge.

I stepped carefully, trying not to trip over anything. It was difficult going with my hands tied behind my back, and the back of my neck prickled with tension. I expected at any moment to feel an arrow or spear shaft bury itself in my back. The tension was killing.

Finally, Rikit stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. By this time, our progress through the dense foliage had taken a small toll: the shoulder of my tee shirt had been ripped away by a low-hanging branch and my face, neck and arms were covered with tiny scratches from tree trunks and branches. When he caught my bare shoulder, his hand felt oddly comforting on my skin.

It made me wonder for a moment what would have happened if those Northern soldiers had been the first ones to find me, instead of Rikit. Something passed through him as well, and I saw the look in his eyes change briefly, then he snatched his hand away from my bared shoulder.

"Here," he said gruffly, indicating the little clearing where we'd stopped.

"What happens here?" I asked, keeping my voice low. While I wasn't happy about doing as he ordered, neither was I too keen to find out if the Northerners would treat me better than this film ishtar lookalike. Especially after the way they had dealt with the Southern army's peace herald.

"Here I shall make a stand and fight off your brothers." He was reaching into his saddlepack, removing the crossbow and a quiver of bolts. I saw that he had a second crossbow and he took this out too, laying them both carefully on the ground.

I hissed angrily: "They're not my brothers, damnit, how many times do I say it?" I was growing tired of these stupid accusations and of defending myself against them.

He ignored me and busied himself cutting off a length of vine from a banyan tree, then using it to do something that looked vaguely familiar even to my urban eyes. After a moment, it became obvious what he was trying to do: He was laying traps.

I glanced back in the direction we'd come from. The sounds of horses and soldiers shouting had died down once we'd entered the thicket. I guessed that they had stopped to regroup and decide how best to proceed next. But it was only a matter of time before they caught up with us, and when they did, well, he was only one man against thirty or forty. Even Hritik Roshan couldn't beat those odds and this guy was only a duplicate!

"Let me help," I said.

He looked up at me suspiciously. "If you try to scream and warn your people, I will slit your throat without hesitation," he said.

I dropped to my knees beside him. "Listen to me, Rikit. I'm going to say this one last time. I am not a Northerner. Right now, I'm with you, and for that alone I'm sure those men will kill me if they get hold of me. So why don't you give me a break here and let me help. You're hopelessly outnumbered anyway. Maybe if I lend a hand, we might be able to even the odds a little."

He scowled. I could see he didn't like the situation. I admired him for even attempting to make a stand in such circumstances. But he and I both knew that he was as good as dead once those soldiers caught up with him, jungle or no jungle. He scanned my face closely, as if seeking any sign of deception. Finally, he nodded shortly.

"All right," he said, gritting his teeth. "I must be a fool for it, but I am going to trust you."

He pulled out a knife, turned me around, and cut through my ropes in one quick jab.

When I turned around to him, rubbing my sore wrists to get the circulation back, he was pointing the knife at me. "If you are lying, then you will be the first to die."

I didn't try to argue. I understood him somewhat better now than when we'd first met. He was a soldier on a losing side, waging a hopeless doomed war against a far greater force, and right now he was alone, cut off from his own forces, and with only a peculiar stranger to count on for some much-needed assistance. I almost felt bad for him. If I'd been in his position, who knows, maybe I might have not bothered to even take me as a prisoner...

Bending down, he picked up the two crossbows. "You can load these for me. That way, I can keep shooting and buy us some time."

I smiled. "I can do better than that."

I took one of the crossbows, primed it and slid in a bolt. "I can shoot these. I took archery in my sophomore year at Michigan State. We used crossbows as well as the traditional recurves. I'm a fairly decent shot." I hefted the crossbow, pointing it in the direction we'd come from. "I can help you fight off those Northerners chasing us."

He looked at me incredulously. "You would do that?"

I shrugged. "Why not? It looks like my life's on the line too right now. You're not a woman's first or best choice, and I don't know what Suzanne would say about this, but I figure I would rather take my chances with you than those people out there."

He looked hugely relieved, almost pleased. I could see he was trying hard to revise his earlier opinion of me. Then suddenly, he frowned. "Who is this Suzanne?"

10.2 Vir

2005-10-12T23:10:00.000+05:30

I followed ACP Bhandarkar's police car and the accompanying jeep through the streets and bylanes of Bandra. Even at this hour, there was still the usual night-traffic on the streets, and long lines of cars parked outside the young-hangouts like Club IX and Toto's, with valet drivers leaning on them and waiting for their tips after closing.

After the news of Viveka attacking the men at the country liquor bar, I expected that we would drive to Danda. But the police driver turned left at the Ambedkar Road statue, driving uphill towards Union Park instead. As I followed close behind, a BMW came down from Pali Hill and shot past at full speed. Music was pulsing so loudly inside that even through its dark-tinted windows, I could feel the vibration of the bass as it passed me by. I knew that car well. It belonged to film star Sunjay Dutt, no doubt sitting in the front passenger seat, beside the driver, as he always did.

We turned right just before Candy's Snack Bar, into one of the narrow bylanes of Union Park. Past the official residence of the Maharashtra CM, Dev Anand's Ketnav preview theatre, and then the police vehicles slowed as they approached the end of the narrow lane, stopping on the right side behind the police jeep and wireless van that were already parked there.

There was a playschool there that I knew well. Apparently, that was their destination. As I applied the parking brake and got out of my Accord, I saw Bhandarkar and Joshi get out of their car. The ACP quickly barked orders at his junior officer, while another police officer came from the gate of the playschool and saluted him. The wireless radio squawked inside the van, speaking in the code of Mumbai cops. The ACP's back was to me as I approached, but Joshi saw me coming and said something to his boss.

"ACP," I said.

He turned to glance at me with the look of a man who wakes from a deep afternoon sleep and opens his front door only to find a sanitary pad saleswoman standing outside.

"Mr Vatsal," he said softly. "I told you, this is a police operation. You have no business being here."

"You have to let me talk to her," I said earnestly. "I'm her father. There's still a chance she might listen to me. I'm sure I can prevent her from committing more violence."

Joshi had turned away to speak to the other officer and now he turned back, waiting to say something to the ACP again. Bhandarkar glanced at him and I saw a questioning look pass between them. Joshi whispered something quietly in the ACP's ear, too softly for me to catch, and then Bhandarkar's face darkened as he thought for a moment. Finally, to my immense surprise--and relief--he nodded brusquely at me.

"Very well," Bhandarkar replied. "I will give you five minutes to try and talk her into giving herself up. But please remember, we cannot be held responsible for your own safety once you go inside. She has already killed four men and injured three others."

I looked at the converted garage that housed the main building of the little playschool. I knew it well, because my children had gone to this very playschool. Viveka herself had studied there. I couldn't believe that anything bad could happen to me and her in this place.

"She's my daughter," I said to the ACP. "She won't hurt me."

10.3 Viveka

2005-10-12T23:09:00.000+05:30

10.4 Vhy

2005-10-12T23:08:00.000+05:30

"Hey, wait a minute," I said. "What are you doing?"

The question was on the screen. The very sight of it made me sick to the belly with fear.

Do you wish to enter the Vortal?

"Hey, man, you can't be serious. This thing--"

Mahesh clicked the mouse. And the next question appeared.

Are you willing to pay the Price?

"Mahesh, listen to me. Put that thing off. For God's sake!" I was really freaking out now. Can you blame me? After all, the last two times this thing had been 'opened', it had swapped my brother for his duplicate from another world, and the second time it had brought a duplicate of my older sister Viveka who was savage enough to attack our mom and put her in the ICU in a serious condition. And god alone knew where it had flipped my real sis Viveka, into which unknown alternate world?

Ignoring my protests, Mahesh clicked something again and the screen changed once more.

"This is the only way, Vaibhav. Trust me."

"The only way to do what?" I said. "To buy a one-way ticket to hell? No thank you, man!"

For the duration of your visit, your soul will be forfeit to the Webmaster of the Vortal. If you agree, proceed.

Mahesh turned to look at me, holding out his hand. "Give me your hand."

I shook my head.

"Vaibhav, listen to me. This is the only way to set things right. We have to use the Vortal."

"Okay," I said, speaking slowly but thinking fast. "You go through then. And send Mikey back here. Because, you said earlier, that this Balance thingie has to be maintained, right? So for every person who goes through, one has to come back here. Correct?"

"Yeah, yeah, but--"

"So you go back and send Mikey here. What's the problem with that?"

He shook his head. "Then how will we fix things? How will we switch Viveka back with her her duplicate?"

I didn't know what to say to that. He saw my face and went on. "Look, bhaiya, trust me. The only way is for you to go through the Vortal with me. We go to where Mikey is, to my world. And then, with Mikey and me working together, we can figure out a way to fix this problem."

I frowned. "So, like, you mean two heads are better than one?"

He nodded. "My two heads. I mean--"

"Yeah, I get it." He was the whiz who'd started this whole thing in the first place--aided by that mysterious creep 'The Webmaster' whoever the hell that was. What he said made sense. If one Mahesh/Mikey could start this whole mess, surely two Mahesh/Mikeys could fix it? Except for one thing...

"But what about the Balance?" I asked. "If both of us go over there, won't that bring Mikey and my duplicate back here?"

He looked away for a moment. "You have no duplicate in my world, bhai," he said quietly.

I almost hit myself. How idiotic could I be? "Of course," I said, just as quietly. My counterpart in Mahesh's world was dead, in the same car accident that had killed the rest of us years ago, everyone except for him, Mahesh. "But even then, won't the Balance rule still apply?"

He nodded. "Yes. Two people will get flipped into our world."

"Which two people?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. It's random. Usually it's your counterpart, if you have one. If not, then I guess it just picks up anyone and throws them through."

I looked around, trying to imagine two people coming through from Mahesh's advanced high-tech world into our world, into our house. What if they were like the duplicate Viveka who had attacked Mom? "But--"

He touched my arm pleadingly. "Please, bhai. You have to believe me. It's the only way."

I thought about it for a few more moments. Frustrated, I had to agree with him in the end. I had no other plan. At least he had some idea about how to fix this whole mess. My best bet was to go along with his plan and hope for the best.

Even so, I felt like I was taking the last conscious decision of my life. I sent up a silent prayer, praying that my family would be safe and together and happy again soon.

Then I took his hand. "Okay. Then let's do it."

He clicked the mouse.

And we went through the Vortal.

11.1 Vir

2005-10-12T23:00:00.000+05:30

The Higher KG classroom of the playschool was dark and deserted. Joshi had reported to Bhandarkar in my presence that Viveka had been seen running up this street and then climbing over the gate of this compound. At that point, Joshi had ordered the policemen pursuing her to watch the exits to make sure she didn't escape and wait for us to arrive. They hadn't seen her leave.

I spoke softly, keeping my voice pitched low to avoid startling her. "Viveka? It's me, papa."

The stillness of the room was eeiry. I had visited this same room so many times when my children had studied here. Viveka had been the first, of course, as my eldest, and I still remembered how I would arrive to pick her up and often find her bent over her ABC book, writing painstakingly.

"Daddy, I don't want to go home. I'm still writing," she would say, even though she had finished her work for that day. She loved school. I wondered if that was why she had come back here in this moment of crisis: seeking out a familiar, safe place with so many warm and comforting associations.

But then, I remembered, this wasn't my Viveka. It couldn't be... or could it? I still wasn't sure what had happened in the house, or why Viveka had attacked Sarla, but I knew that there was something more going on here than met the eye. And yet, this old, familiar setting made it hard for me not to feel a powerful tug of paternal love. My little Viveka, a murderer?

"Viveka?" I repeated softly, moving carefully between the rows of tiny chairs and desks. "Bete, there's no reason to be afraid. I'm here to help you. Come out, talk to me. Let's try to work this out together."

In the faint streetlight bleeding in from the window behind me, I thought I glimpsed a bulkier shadow over by the blackboard. I turned to face it, then crouched down, squinting in an effort to penetrate the darkness.

"Viveka? It's me, papa, bete. Kuchh to bolo. Say something."

A low growl was the only response. But it made me feel strangely better. She was there. I could almost see her now, huddled there in the corner to the left of the blackboard.

I moved as close as I dared to, then sat on a tiny desk. It was hard to believe that this creature crouching in the dark corner, this wanted murderer of four men, my daughter, had once sat at one of these little tables too, writing her alphabet earnestly.

"Viveka? Bete, apne papa se baat to karo. At least talk to me."

I could smell her now. The acrid odour of blood and booze hung around her like a feverish cloud. She was making a low, strange sound that I couldn't understand. It took me several more moments to realize that it wasn't growling as I had thought at first: It was crying. Viveka was crying.

I moved forward, raising my hands to embrace her, soothe her, comfort her. "Bete, I know how you must be feeling--."

She moved faster than I had ever expected. Before I could do more than raise my arm, she had leaped on me. I crashed backwards, sending little wooden desks and chairs tumbling, scraping my neck on a corner, falling with a heavy impact on my back, the breath knocked out of me.

In the half-light I saw her crouched above me, straddling my chest. She had a blade in her hand - I had a fraction of a second to wonder in sudden fear if it was the same poisoned knife with which she had slashed Sarla - and then it was at my throat. Even in the dimness, I could see the flash of her bared teeth and her eyes shining like an animal's.

"The name is Anusuya, Southerner. Princess Anusuya," she snarled.

11.2 Viveka

2005-10-12T22:59:00.000+05:30

We rode for almost an hour, staying within the safety of the thicket, riding slowly and staying as quiet as possible. Several times, we heard sounds of horses and riders, distant guns booming, men yelling and arguing.

I was still shaken by my first encounter with violent death. I couldn't believe I had just taken human life...lives, actually.

Rikit seemed to understand my problem, or maybe he was just staying quiet to avoid us being caught. A couple of times I caught him staring at me curiously, and I realized this other-world half-savage was more intelligent and sensitive than I'd thought at first. I appreciated the way he had been gentle but firm with me after the fight in the clearing.

He looked away when our eyes met, but when he spoke next, his voice wasn't half as harsh as it had been when we first met, when he mistook me for a Northern spy.

"The Northerners have overrun our army," he said quietly. "Otherwise they would not have been able to pursue us this far."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means we have lost the war," he said shortly.

I wasn't sure how to react. Still disoriented from the fight in the clearing, it was taking all my energy just to stay on the horse and keep my wits about me. But I couldn't understand the peculiar politics of this alternate Bombay. If the Northerners had won, what implications did it have for me? The realization that I had just killed Northern soldiers hit me like a fist in my chest.

I stopped riding. He reined in and looked at me irritably. "We must keep moving."

"Why? What's the point of going anywhere if the North has won? Sooner or later, they'll catch us, won't they?"

"I intend to fight to the end. For honour's sake."

"Screw honour!" I said, shocked at how loudly I blurted out the words. I made an effort to control my voice. "I'm not a part of your war. I don't want to die in this godforsaken place."

He looked around sharply. "Foolish girl, we have no choice. If the Northerners take you prisoner, you will face a fate far worse than death."

I laughed. "That old cliche? There is no fate worse than death, Rikit."

His horse whinnied. Rikit sat up sharply, ignoring me. His eyes darted this way then that, nostrils flaring.

"Quickly," he hissed. "Get on your horse and--"

Before he could say another word, an arrow whistled out of nowhere and struck him with a muffled thump. He grunted, fell off his horse and lay still. His horse whinnied and flicked its ears, startled.

Suddenly, armed horsemen rode out of the trees from all sides, surrounding us. I instinctively started to reach for my crossbow, then decided against it. They were more likely to shoot me down if I was armed.

I got off my horse, raising my hands in the universal gesture of surrender. At least, I hoped that they understood it was a gesture of surrender.

In minutes, we were surrounded, disarmed, and dismounted. The Northern soldiers picked up Rikit and roughly lashed his hands behind his back, forcing him to his knees.

I could see the arrow sticking out of his shoulder and the blood wetting his garment. He was still alive and conscious, his intense eyes glaring fiercely at his enemies. Even though I had only known him a short while, we had stood and fought together, and some connection between us made me feel a pang of concern. Apparently, it was what they called a 'flesh wound' in the movies, and in this world, a soldier like he was probably used to recieving any number of such wounds and still fighting on.

The soldiers who had surrounded me took my weapons away but stopped and stared at me. My heart sank. I had seen this kind of scene dozens of times in movies before: that didn't make it any easier to be a part of it myself.

Suddenly, that old cliche Rikit had mentioned, 'a fate worse than death', really did seem worse than death after all. Too late, I wished I had reached for the crossbow. It was better to die fighting than to be ravaged by these brutes.

But none of them moved forward or touched me. After several moments, I saw even Rikit turn his head to see what was going on. He was gritting his teeth against the pain but no sound escaped his lips. He looked curiously at the soldiers standing in a ring about me, staring as if hypnotized.

Finally, one of them broke the spell by speaking in a gruff, awe-struck voice.

"Tis the princess," he said. "She has returned from the dead."

11.3 Vhy

2005-10-12T22:58:00.000+05:30

I had expected something scary to happen when I went through the Vortal. Some really cool special effects, like in the scene in sci-fi movies where the hero or heroes go through a time warp or black hole or something. Which was that really cool American TV series they showed on Hallmark a while back? Sliders. Man, that was a cool series, about these three friends who accidently invent a device which can transport them to parallel worlds.

But all that happened was I felt like I had a teensy sensation of disorientation, and then click everything was the same. That was it. Really low-budget sfx, yaar.

I looked around. I was still there, standing by Mahesh, holding his hand. He was still at his desk, looking at the monitor. Even the screen hadn't changed yet.

I blinked and let go of Mahesh's hand. "It didn't work. We didn't go through the Vortal."

He pointed to the computer screen. "We're here. We crossed over."

As he pointed at it, I realized that the message on the computer screen had changed. It now said: 'Welcome to The Vortal.'

I looked around, unable to accept it. "Everything looks the same. This looks exactly like my brother Mikey's bedroom." And it did. It even had the same hard rock posters and techno gadgetry my brother always loved to play with: some of the gadgets looked a bit more sleek and streamlined but it wasn't enough for me to tell if it was really different. Movies are more my forte, not tech.

When he didn't say anything for a minute, I looked at him. He was watching me with a strange sad expression. "That's because Mikey and I are the same person, Vaibhav. We may be from parallel universes, but the differences between our personalities are just superficial. At heart, we're the exact same person."

He smiled wistfully. "I'm still your brother, sort of."

"Okay," I said, accepting it reluctantly. "So we've crossed through the Vortal into your world. This is the alternate reality where you came from. Now what do we do next?"

He shrugged. "I'm not really sure. I needed to access my own comp to see if I could reprogram the Vortal. It'll take some time. Do you want anything to eat? We could order burgers and colas. You do like burgers and colas, don't you?"

I looked at him, surprised. "Are you crazy? My mother's in hospital, serious. My sister and my brother have vanished. According to what you told me just a while back, a crazy duplicate of my sister Viveka is running amuck in my world, killing people. And you want to order home delivery?!"

He looked disappointed. "I just thought you might be hungry. This could take a while, you know."

"Things are getting pretty despo back in my world, in case you hadn't noticed, bro. How long exactly is this going to take?"

He rubbed the skin on the sides of his eyes. It was a gesture even Mikey, my Mikey, had, a variation of the thing my dady and I tended to when we were tense (we pinch the skin in the center of the forehead, Mikey being 'different' in everything he did, rubbed the delicate skin at the sides of his eyes, you know where older people get pouches and wrinkles--his doing that reminded me so much of him, well, of my real brother Mikey, that it hurt. I wanted my brother back. And instead I was trapped in some techno-geek's hacker nightmare.

"Everything's gonna be cool, Vhy. Just chill."

It took me a second to realize that he hadn't said that. The words had come from behind me, from the direction of the bedroom door. I turned and couldn't believe what I was seeing.

It was Mikey, my real brother Mikey, and he was at the door to the bedroom, looking hale and hearty and as pudgy as ever.

He flicked his hair off his forehead and winked at me. "Hi, Vhy. How's it hanging, bro? Looks like you got conned by my counterpart too, huh? This guy's a real filmi-type villain. Look how he tricked you into going through the Vortal too. Now, we're all in deep trouble."

And he took a huge bite from what looked like a double burger with extra cheese and chomped on it merrily.

11.4 Vhy (contd.)

2005-10-12T22:57:00.000+05:30

"Mikey," I said. "Are you okay? When you disappeared through the comp, I was so freaked out, I didn't know what to do! Even Ruchi was majorly panicked."

Mikey came over, his eyes twinkling mischeviously, chewing on his burger. "Ruchi?" he said. "She's the hot babe with whom you were watching Eyes Wide Shut in your bedroom, right?"

I knew now that this was the real Mikey. Nobody else could have known that little detail. I smiled with relief. It was only after I lost my brother that I realized how much I loved him.

"It's great to have you back," I said, hugging him tight, my throat suddenly thick.

"Hey," he said. "Don't get all mushy on me, okay? Besides, I'm not back. Neither of us are back. We're still stuck here. In his world."

He pointed at his duplicate. Mahesh was watching our brotherly reunion with a clear look of jealousy on his face. He tried to clear his face when we looked at him, but wasn't quick enough. Something was definitely wrong with that boy, no matter how decently he spoke or behaved. I could feel sympathy for him, but I also knew that somehow, our death in his world had affected him at some deep emotional-psychological level. This kid seriously needed some Good Will Hunting style therapy a la Robin Williams-Matt Damon.

I looked back at my brother, my real brother. "Mikey," I said. "What did you mean just now? When you said he tricked me into coming through the Vortal?"

"That's what he did, bro! That's what this is all about. He created the whole Vortal just to bring all of us from our world into his world. He goofed up with Viveka, and she landed up in some other alternate world. And he hasn't been able to get Dad and Mum here yet. But he got me. And now he's got you too."

I looked at Mahesh. He wasn't denying any of this.

"Is that true?" I asked him. "You said you brought me here to fix this mess."

"Fix it?" Mikey said through a mouthful of burger and cheese. "He created this mess in the first place. Ask him, Vhy!"

Mahesh looked at me sullenly and shrugged. "I told Vhy all about this. I missed my family, I couldn't go on without them. I wanted them back, I wanted you all back. It was the only way. I told you the truth."

I looked at him then turned back to Mikey. "He did actually tell me all that already. That's the only reason why I decided to trust him. Come on, Mikey, imagine how you would feel if you lost all of us. Besides, the guy's trying to set things right now."

Mikey snorted. "Yeah, like hell he is. He couldn't tell his ass from a Vortal if someone gave him printed instructions!"

Mahesh started to rise from his chair, his face turning red. "I created the Vortal!"

Mikey shook his head, pointing with the remains of the burger in his fist. "No, bro-wannabe. You wrote a software code that opened an online interface that enabled access to the Vortal. Major difference. Besides, you were even given most of the code by some unknown dude named 'Webmaster'. Like, you were spoon-fed every step of the way!"

Mahesh shook his head angrily. "It still took you to complete the link! You're as much a part of this as I am!"

I held up my hands, warding off both my identical brothers. "Hold on a second here, guys. I'm still trying to play catch-up and my field of specialty is movies, not IT, so give me a break, okay? Now, both of you, back off a little. Yelling and fighting won't help us out of this situation. The first thing both you hotheads need to do is calm down."

I looked at both of them, giving them a moment. Finally, they nodded reluctantly, glaring at each other. Mikey tore the last piece of burger from the paper wrapping--I think he managed to tear off a bit of paper too, but didn't seem to notice--and tossed the remains in the waste paper basket by the door.

I took a deep breath, calming myself as well.

"Now," I said slowly, "what did Mahesh mean when he said that you, Mikey, were a part of this too?"

Mikey shrugged, avoiding my eyes. "I provided the final link."

"What?"

He explained. Apparently, when Mahesh completed the interface that would open the Vortal, he needed one last thing--a connection with someone or something from another parallel world. Our's, to be precise, since he wanted to tap into our versions of his family and bring them over to his world. So he used the Vortal to communicate with Mikey, our Mikey, in our world.

I stared at both of them in turn. "This is possible? You can send emails over the Net to alternate worlds?"

Mikey grinned wryly. "You can send people too, in case you hadn't noticed, bro. But yeah, basically, the theory is sound. There's even been a few books written about it. Shelved under Quantum Theory. It all follows from Einstein's basic work on the Theory of General Relativity. And if you read Hawking and throw in String Theory as well--"

I put my finger to the underside of my other hand's palm. "Time out. I don't want to stand around here discussing tech all day. What I want to know is, were you a part of this too?"

Mikey sighed. "Yeah."

I looked at Mahesh. He sat with arms folded across his chest, looking vindicated. "I told you," he said smugly.

"Okay," I said, "So now what are you two going to do about it?"

Mahesh shrugged. "I told you that too, I'm willing to do what I have to to set things right."

Mikey snorted.

Mahesh bristled. "What?"

Mikey said, "Like you could find your way to your own toilet without a GPRS system."

"Hold on," I warned. "No more bickering." I thought for a second. "If you're both brilliant tech guys, then two of you should be twice as brainy as one. What if you put your talents together instead of arguing, and found a way to get us out of this mess?"

They looked at one another for a long moment. Neither of them said it aloud, but it was obvious: I had just hit upon the perfect solution.

"Okay, then," I said, enjoying playing big brother again. "Get to work, you bondhus. Use your energies to save Mom and get Viveka back to our world, and the two of us back there as well. Come on, move your butts! Start typing on the comp...or something!"

And for a wonder, they did.

12.1 Vir

2005-10-12T22:56:00.000+05:30

I looked at the woman holding the knife to my chest and despite my fear and shock, I sensed that she was telling the truth. Her voice and manner left no room for doubt, they were direct and honest, without hesitation or insincerity.

"Anusuya?" I said.

"Are you deaf, Southerner? You heard me the first time."

She spoke a curious dialect, like Bambaiya Hindi. The kind of bhasha we call 'tapori' bhasha in aamchi Mumbai, the pidgin mixture of Hindi-Angrezi-Urdu-Marathi that you hear actors like Sunjay Dutt mouth onscreen in Bollywood movies.

I didn't know why she was calling me a Southerner. But one thing was obvious. She wasn't my daughter Viveka anymore.

I could see from the animalistic shine in her eyes and the snarling mouth and poison-tipped dagger poised to cut my throat that she could kill me or maim me as easily as she had the other men, strangers that had made the mistake of thinking her to be just another 21st century young woman. This person before me in the darkened nursery school classroom was not a child of our time. She was a fighter, a person accustomed to killing for survival or for need.

The police were right about her and I was wrong. Viveka had lost her mind. She had turned into someone else altogether, not my daughter Viveka. Somehow, she had fallen under some kind of hallucinogenic delusion that made her into this warrior-princess from another time, a barbaric person from a savage era. I don't know whether it was drugs that had altered her consciousness, or something else. But the change was total, brutally shocking, unmistakable. This was not my Viveka.

And even as I realized it, I also realized what a fool I had been. Coming in here, thinking I could talk sense into her.

And now my foolish mistake was going to cost me my life. And Sarla's life too. Because if I couldn't return to the hospital with any news about the poison that was slowly killing my wife, who would save her?

These thoughts flashed through my head in the space of maybe three seconds.

Then the mad beast holding me down on the floor of the kindergarten class lowered her head to my face, her breath stinking. And stunned me with the last question on earth I expected her to ask.

"Now, tell me why you are disguised as my father," she said. "By what evil magic did you copy his face and his voice so perfectly?"

12.2 Viveka

2005-10-12T22:55:00.000+05:30

They separated us.

I didn't see where they took Rikit but I felt a stab of terror when I couldn't see him anymore. For the few hours I had been trapped in this alternate world, he had been the only human being I had come close to. In a surprisingly short time, we had fought, insulted each other, escaped danger together, and even fought enemies side by side. He probably didn't care a damn about what happened to me, but I felt like a rock climber whose climbing partner had cut the rope that bound them together and was left dangling alone on a precipice.

I swallowed and forced myself to breathe: Stay cool, Viveka. You've got this far, you'll figure out a way to survive whatever they throw at you next.

The soldiers took me out of the thicket. We came out near the seashore again, and I saw that Rikit and I had ridden almost to the end of Bandra. Without the patch of reclaimed land named Bandra Reclamation in my world, the seafront here ended abruptly in a rock-and-sand strewn beach frothing with foamy waves. Across a narrow strait of water lay Mahim Island, ablaze with a hundred fires. Plumes of smoke rose up into the air, marking the massacre of Rikit's people.

I felt a stab of anger and pain strike me. If what he had said was true, and I had seen the ragged remains of the Southern Army with my own eyes, then those plumes of smoke masked terrible acts of brutality and reaving, only a a mile or so from where I stood. I suddenly shuddred and thanked the Devas that in my world at least, humankind no longer indulged in such brutal occupations as wars. And then I remembered the Gulf war, and Bosnia, and Rwanda, and suddenly I was depressed. Perhaps I was too quick to compare: perhaps this was the fate of all human worlds. Perhaps--but then again, perhaps not.

I forced myself to stand straighter, refusing to bow down to my own crushing sense of despair and loneliness. I focussed on the things that gave me strength: my love for my family, their love for me, my love for Steve, my passion for my work, the sheer joy of creating something that had not existed before, even if it was only pixels on a computer monitor. Slowly, by degrees, I found my center once again.

A man was silhouetted against the shore, staring across the strait. He was the same man I had seen earlier, the one in the shiny armour whom Rikit had called 'Khanna' with such contempt. He was obviously some high-ranking leader in the Northern army. He had clean-cut Punjabi looks and was a giant of a man, well over six feet tall and built like Sunil Shetty.

He looked at me with an expression that made me want to glance down to check that I was still fully clothed. All men tend to undress women with their eyes; this man made me feel like he was ripping my clothes to shreds and stripping me naked.

He gestured dismissively to the soldiers. They left us at once. This was a man who was used to being obeyed instantly.

He came up to me and looked closely at my face. "Interesting," he said. "Very interesting. You really do resemble the princess."

He spoke a far better type of Hindi than the 'Tapori' bhasha that Rikit had used. I guessed that this was the Northerner dialect. It wasn't very different from the 'shudh' Hindi my dadi had spoken, God bless her departed soul. And that we spoke around the house sometimes, when we were feeling more desi and in need of cleansing the American influence from our tongues.

My throat was parched dry. "I'd like some water, if it isn't too much trouble."

He looked amused when I spoke. "The same voice too. But your speech leaves much to be desired. Do you expect anyone to believe you if you cannot even imitate the princess' speech?"

"I'm not trying to imitate anyone. I just want a glass of water to drink."

"A glass? What is this thing, a glass?"

I flared up. "Water. Drink. Is that so hard to understand?"

He laughed. "Spirited too. Just like the princess. The Southerners have trained you badly. But you have a certain natural similarity to her former royal highness. Yes, I can see why my soldiers were so awed by you. You could easily pass for the late princess Anusuya, as long as you do not open your mouth."

He gestured to the soldiers standing a few metres behind us. They took me with them to a line of tents being pitched by dark-skinned muscled men. They looked at me hungrily as I passed by, pausing briefly in their work, and I glimpsed the chains on their legs. They were slaves!

The soldiers took me to a tent with a rich, purple and black facade. The inside was already laid out with carpets and baithak-style seating arrangements. It was probably Khanna's personal tent.

An ageing manservant poured water for me to drink in a long copper goblet. He then indicated a brass basin where I washed my hands and face in the faintly scented water, getting off some of the grime and grit of this uncivilized world.

Khanna came in while I was wiping my face with a soft handcloth. He gestured to the servant to leave the tent, and even the two soldiers standing guard went outside and dropped the overhang, enclosing us in a strangely luxurious island in the midst of the war.

Khanna was watching me with a casual lustfulness that made me uneasy.

"Look," I said to him. "I don't know anything about any princess. My name is Viveka Vatsal and I'm just an ordinary citizen. I'm neither Northern nor Southern. I'm not a part of this war."

He grinned. "On the contrary, young deceiver. You are very much a part. You and your accomplice killed my soldiers in an attempt to infilterate our lines. But even your ingenious disguise has not succeeded in duping me."

"You don't understand, I'm not--."

His voice cut harshly through my attempt to explain. "Enough! The penalty for spying is instant execution. But I will leave your fate to the king to decide."

He reached out and caught hold of my hair with a fist. "And until he arrives, we shall see if the rest of your body resembles the princess as closely as your face."

He grasped my kurta, feeling the unfamiliar texture between thumb and forefinger. "The princess Anusuya had a peculiar birthmark on her right hip, I'm told. It shall be interesting to see if your Southern accomplices have been able to replicate it too. Let us start by disrobing you and seeing if you indeed resemble her in that respect as well."

And with one savage yank, he ripped my kurta from my chest.

12.3 Vhy

2005-10-12T22:54:00.000+05:30

Both Mahesh and Mikey were working furiously on the comp, arguing, bandying verbal insults, but somehow managing to get something done. I sat down for a moment, covering my face with my hands and prayed silently that they could do what Mahesh said: reverse the effects of the Vortal on our family.

The waste paper bin lay at my feet, by the edge of the bedroom door. Inside it lay the greasy cheese-sticky paper wrapper that had contained Mikey's burger. The burger he had been eating when Mahesh and I came to this world through the Vortal.

As I sat there, looking at that wrapper, something stirred in my mind.

I'm not a tech kind of person, like Mikey or my Dad. My thing is more creative, lateral-thinking, drawing on the right side of the brain kinda stuff. I probably couldn't have understood the whole science behind this Vortal thing even if both Mikey and Mahesh had sat and explained it to me in child-clear language for an hour and a half. In that sense, I'm a real Dustin Hoffman/Rainman.

But there was one thing that I had understood clearly about the Vortal concept. That there were infinite alternate worlds, some similar to our's, others totally different. You could pass from your world to any other world, using the Vortal. But each time you did so, someone from that world had to come back into your world, in exchange. What had Mahesh called it? The Balance? That sounded like a good way of describing it. There was a natural balance to be maintained. So for every person who went through, another came back.

But earlier, when Mahesh and I came through, Mikey hadn't gone back to our world. Nor had any person gone back in my place, to Balance our coming here.

I looked at that burger wrapper and this thought grew and grew in my mind, until it carommed off the interior of my brain and threatened to burst free like a bullet ricochetting in my skull.

I glanced up and saw that both my 'brothers' were still pounding away, clicking and otherwise furiously engaged in a tech argument like Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in Armageddon.

I stood and moved until I was in direct eye view of Mikey, but not as easily visible to Mahesh. Then I waited until Mikey glanced up in my direction, which wasn't for several moments, 'cause Mikey can get pretty damn obsessive and self-centred at such times. But he did glance up occasionally, rolling his eyes at something Mahesh said, and shaking his head vehemently. And at that moment, I frantically swished my hands in the air and caught his attention.

I beckoned him to come to the door, and used the classic finger on the lips gesture to indicate that he shouldn't say anything to Mahesh.

It took him a moment, and I had to repeat all my actions twice, but he got the message. After another brief debate on code and code-bugs, whatever that meant, he shoved his chair back, stood up and said, "I need an effing cold drink before I can deal with this crap again," and came towards me.

I said nonchelantly, "I could use one too. What about you, Mahesh?"

Mahesh didn't even bother to look around as he said sullenly, "I'm fine, thanks. I'll keep working. You guys go ahead."

I went out of the bedroom with Mikey, slowly, carefully, shutting the door behind me. I put my arm around him and tugged him back--he was already on his way to the kitchen to get the cold drink. "What?" he said irritably. "What?"

"Mikey, listen. Something's wierd here." I told him about the Balance and how Mahesh and I had violated it by coming through to this world without two people going back in our place.

He frowned. "Maybe he just flipped any two other people over randomly through the Vortal, to keep the Balance. What's the big deal?"

"The big deal is that it doesn't make sense. The only way we can get things back to normal is by undoing what we've already done, not disrupting things further, right? So how can we just go flipping people back randomly through the Vortal? Think about it, Mikey, it doesn't make sense."

He shrugged, still not getting it. "So what's your point?"

"So what if Mahesh, your counterpart in there, was lying to me. What if he can control who goes through the Vortal, and when and where to. What if he actually has more control of the software than we think he does?"

He raised his eyebrows, his pudgy cheek quivering. "Yeah, so?"

"So he could be playing us. He could be lying to us to get us here, with some ulterior motive."

"What ulterior motive? He's nuts, we already know that." Suddenly, his eyes widened. "Oh, crap."

I turned back to see Mahesh standing at the open bedroom door, staring sullenly at me. "I thought you said you believed me, Vaibhav. You told me you believed me."

"Mahesh," I said, "listen. I do believe you. But I'm just trying to understand something."

"There's nothing to understand," he said quietly. "Even if I explain the whole thing to you from the start, you wouldn't understand. Not now. Because you've chosen your side, and if you're not with us, you're against us."

I blinked at him. "Mahesh, what are you talking about?"

His lip curled in a sneer. "What did you think? That I'm just a teenage nerd who accidentally stumbled upon this whiz thing? No way! I created the Vortal, you fools! And I did it so that I could shape worlds to be the way they ought to be. Not messed up like they get when some imaginary God in an imaginary heaven manipulates lives and emotions as if we're just dolls to be played with. I'm going to give some order and meaning to life. And that's all thanks to Him. He taught me how to use my own natural talent to do this. He knows stuff you guys couldn't even begin to understand. He's God now. God of the Vortal. And the Vortal controls everything. Whatever you do, you can't win. You can't beat Him."

I was silent for a long heart-stopping moment, stunned by this extraordinary speech from my normally man-of-few-words bro. Then I remembered: he wasn't my bro. Not really. My bro was standing right here beside me. And he looked as stunned as I probably did, staring at his duplicate.

"Mahesh," I said very carefully, not wanting to set him off again. "Who is this He you're talking about?"

He smiled bitterly, a sad, angry, frustrated smile. It was the smile of a spoilt teen who would rather do something dangerous than deny his own selfish wants, of a brilliant young man unhinged by the sudden brutal loss of his entire family, of a young tech genius who had evidently been seduced by some mysterious older person who was mentoring him like Michael Douglas mentoring Charlie Sheen in Wall Street without realizing that he was being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.

"The Webmaster," he said.

And then he raised a tiny gizmo, some kind of remote control, and pressed it. I saw the flash of an infra-red light blink once, activating something on his comp.

And then I was hurtling through the Vortal again, to God alone knew where.

12.4 Viveka

2005-10-12T22:53:00.000+05:30

It was my bra that saved me. Thank God for modern technology, underwire frames and desi modesty.

I didn't scream when he tore my kurta off. I should have. But he did it so suddenly, I didn't have time to react. We civilized people aren't used to such things happening.

In one violent movement, he ripped the kurta off and tossed it aside. His eyes glinted like hard diamonds. Like the eyes of a cobra in sunlight. His teeth bared beneath the bushy moustache were yellowed and flecked with tobacco-paan.

He had grasped my left shoulder with one brutally strong fist, and with the other hand he had begun to reach for my salwar.

Then he paused, frowning, and stared at my chest.

"What manner of garment is this?" he asked, his voice thick with lust.

I didn't have to look down to know he was talking about my brassiere. Obviously, in this alternate world, bras hadn't been invented yet. He had expected me to be bare-breasted beneath the kurta, and was puzzled by the unfamiliar garment. That moment of confusion and lustful male curiosity was what saved me really. Imagine that: saved by a bra!

He took his right hand off the waistband of my salwar, and raised it to my bra. However unusual the garment was, it was only an impediment to him right now. In another second, he would grab the front of the bra and pull it off roughly. And being a front-opening bra, it would snap open without any resistance. And then I would be in serious trouble.

I made my move in that split second, knowing it was the only chance I was going to get.

Did I mention I've taken martial arts lessons? I can't have, because I haven't. But while living with Steve, my American boyfriend, I used to watch him doing his tai chi exercises every morning. And out of sheer curiosity, I began to pick up a few things from him.

One of those 'things' was a move called Wind Through Trees. I executed it now, hardening the flat of my hand into a knife-life edge. And thrusting it directly at Khanna's adam's apple as hard as I could manage.

The result was gratifying.

I felt the fleshy impact of my hand smashing into his throat. And he instantly let go my shoulder and staggered back, both hands clutching his throat.

He rasped hoarsely, eyes wide with shock at the unexpected move, and tried to speak but no words came from his bruised larynx.

That was when I picked up the brass candle-stand and hit him on the head with it, hard.

He went down like a ton of bricks.

And I turned and ran.