“Annie, Annie”.
Annie heard someone calling out her name.
“Is that you Hannah.”
“Yes.”
“Where were you?” On seeing her again, in her imaginations, Annie jumped out of joy but within a flash she turned red.
“Why you came now? I don’t want to…..wait a second. What’s on your forehead?”
“I met with an accident”.
Hannah then shared about her incident. How she managed to get kidnapped while she went in search of Annie.
Then Siyad came into picture.
“We are coming in search of you, Annie. You live somewhere in India. “It is surrounded by mountains”.
“Really? You are coming Hannah?”
“We will reach within a day. You just climb on top of the tallest mountain or on top of the tallest tree in your land. So that I can hunt you down easily. Which one do you prefer?”
“Mountain.”
“Okay then mountain it is.” It was dark around them. They were floating in the sky. May be because Hannah is travelling between the clouds.
“Hannah, after finding me, will you stay with me forever?”
Annie asked with expectations but Hannah remained silent.
“My mother.”
“You can bring her along.”
Again she turned silent.
“What? What’s wrong?” We can be best friends forever.” Annie offered with pride.
“I need to be in my world”.
“You only said that you hated everything in there and you want to live peacefully with me.” Hannah wanted to speak about Siyad. But couldn’t, Annie had noticed it.
“You prefer Siyad over me. Just because he is a man.”
Hannah was not able to reveal the depth of intimacy she had for Siyad. Still Hannah said
“I love him and I belong to him Annie.” Once I meet you I will return back with him.”
Annie felt rejected, insulted, betrayed.
Parents die, friends die, and relationships die.
And all these bonding are not just made up of sexual affections.
When Hannah said, she preferred Siyad more than her. All these years Hannah was lonely. After she lost her father and whenever her mother fells ill. When others mocked at her. It was Annie, who supported her. Now that she found a new kind of love, it’s like Hannah eloping from her own heart.
Hannah took all these troubles to meet Annie. “But for what?”
Annie couldn’t accept a simple fact.
‘Hannah had fallen for siyad.’
Annie stepped out of Hannah’s thoughts.
The day had broken in.
Annie sat on the wooden window. Looked around her.
As she saw the clouded sky and wilted flowers. She felt remorse.
Habba stepped into her daughter’s room.
“Annie, time to have a change in your life.”
She looked down
“Find a man for your life.”
She looked up.
“May be then you can understand Hannah too.”
“How did you….?” She looked bewildered.
“Last night Easwar stayed in your thoughts and saw your Hannah. We too now believe in you just like Easwar. Even if Hannah is in your imagination. It is asking you to move on.
You are no longer a kid but a beautiful blossom. Find your mate and see the other part of your life.” Her father explained.
She watched the clouded sky parting away for the rays of lights to penetrate in.
Freshness of air could be felt. Flowers slowly stood up, and spring started to step in casually. Annie is definitely feeling happy, after all her Hannah is coming for her.
“But once she steps into my world and sees me, Hannah will leave everything behind her. And stay with me forever. I am sure about it.” Annie smiled at her new thoughts.
It was like a little girl getting adamant on buying a new pet or a new dress or a new bicycle.
Annie imagined happiness with Hannah.
Thoughts of roaming around in there big land with Hannah had definitely made her pleased. All these years Hannah lived in solitude. Now in her company things would be definitely change to happiness.
____________
“It will take 6 hr.’s journey to reach the valley of flowers, if you are planning to trek.” There guide Anshuman said.
On reaching their destination, the company had started their trekking through the hillsides of Uttarakhand.
Syrene felt low. After the flight, a big walk among the trees was not her cup of tea.
“Why can’t we wheel to that part honey?” Syrene kept pestering Siyad.
“No Syrene. We are scanning for the tallest Mountain in and around the valley. So walking would be the best option.”
“Then why can’t we Airlift there?”
Anshuman, a native Indian boy who is somewhere around his late 20’s really looked puzzled.
“Madamji no airplane, fly there?” He managed to satisfy Syrene’s complaint.
“Syrene, girl you just stay back in this motel. We will be back soon.” Adam suggested.
“No way.” Syrene made her intentions clear.
Anshuman knew the places well. He carried most of the baggages on his back.
“Sirji, most of the valley had started to cover by snow. So what are you searching for?” He got curious
“Anushuman is there any place where lavender blossoms?’’ It took few minutes for him to answer.
“You mean blue or purple coloured flowers?’’
“Yes.”
“Of course yes. But it’s snowing and it would be impossible for us to locate them.”
“Are there tribes living in these part of the forest?” Hannah asked.
“Yes few.”
“You know about the Triba community who lives on tree top?”
“Huh!” Anshuman stopped and eyed her.
“Tree top means on the branches of the trees, like tree houses.”
“I meant inside the bark of the trees.”
“What?” Anshumah really got cranky.
“Haha...you are crazy. How can people live inside trees? Are you talking about fairy land, where people lived inside flowers? My God you are a ‘Nut’ Hannah.”
Syrene took the opportunity well. “It’s okay for you to be crazy but you have dragged two men into your craziness too. And these fools had actually fallen for it” she mocked Adam and Siyad.
“Syrene please control your words”. Siyad begged.
“Why are you stopping me Siyad? Somebody should put senses into her bloody imagination. For god’s sake you travelled to this part of the world just to satisfy for her madness. Why Siyad? Why? You knew that she was inside a mental asylum. “
Before she could complete the sentence Siyad covered her mouth with his hand. Syrene really felt insulted especially when he did that in front of Hannah. She pushed him away and shivered in anger.
“Enough is enough. It’s time for you to pick between me and her.”
“Syrene Calm down”. Siyad orderly said.
They have travelled nearly 10km’s inside the forest. Just few more steps then there lies their destination.
“No way. I am going back” She turned back and started to walk.
Siyad tried to stop her
“Why should I stop? You have been after her, for the last few days. Day and night. You won’t even pick up my calls. You met her yesterday and I am your childhood mate. Our parents had agreed for our marriage too”.
This actually came as a shock to Hannah.
“But that was between our parents? I never… thought” Siyad tried hard. “Then what about the hugs and kisses we had. The night we spent.”
Syrene was using all her powers to get him back to her.
“It’s not your fault that if you get attracted to a cheesy slut like her.” This time Siyad gave a tight slap on her cheeks.
That is it. That’s what Syrene expected she started running back through the woods.
“Madamji wild bears are there.” Ansuman shouted.
A helpless Siyad then went after her. It was getting dark. Siyad managed to grab Syrene. He then apologized to her a thousand times.
“Let us complete the journey, then we will settle.”
“What to settle Siyad? It is done. You are mine. If things go other way around. I will kill myself.”
Siyad could say no more. He even felt ashamed to get a look at Hannah. Adam just turned towards Hannah and there, she is missing. Hannah had disappeared into shadows of that forest.
“Hannah, where are you?’’
Hannah could hear Siyad’s panicked voice inside her head. She could even feel his raised heart beats as she moved along the sides of the trees.
Uttarakhand is also famous for its ferocious reptiles and other wild animals. The darkness had made it hard for her to slide through the fallen branches and the uneven shrubs that margined the ground below.
Her skin got bruised and it bled, still she kept on moving.
“I am the intruder. Syrene needs him more than I and I could survive with Annie.” Hannanh said to herself.
One might consider this decision as childish, but seeing Siyad going out of control had actually made Hannah flee from their in such a manner.
“The elite class may get attracted to inferior females like her. They may play along their whims and fantasies with them. And when the time comes for the serious knot, no Cinderella is going to get saved by a prince charming, unless you live in a fairy tale.“
Hannah tried to resist her prince Siyad, in every possible ways she could.
Now the mission is to find Annie.
She removed her silver chain, so that no chance should be given to Siyad to get back to her.
“But what about my mother? Annie can help.” Hannah tried to pacify herself.
In her emotional urge, all Hannah could think was to get away from Siyad and his love.
“Why such an instinct? Why one should fear love?” Hannah could not face rejections from Siyad. She could not tolerate the loss of another man from her life.
After all her dad was her entire world. Then in the darkness, she felt as if she stepped on a cold object.
Within seconds she felt a bite on her left shin. Minutes later she found it hard to walk, numbness came creeping on her.
On the cold forest floor, she lied like a sleeping beauty. The last thing sheet flashed into her memory was “Annie”.
______
“Easwar, I need help. Please come to me”. Annie kept on wishing.
“Easwar my Hannah is in danger. I need to find her. Please help.” Annie laid still on her bed and her eyes swamped with tears.
“Earwar……Earwar.” Madly she searched for him inside her brain.
“How does this telepathy works? I need his helpnow.”
In her imagination she moved around a forest. The nature around her turned black. It started to rain with thunder storms.
“Oh not again.” Easwar appear in her thoughts.
“Now what happened?” Your tantrums are going to create a mess in our land. So calm down dear.”
Even if he was in his dream she grabbed him tightly so that he might not escape from her sight.
“We need to find Hannah, she is in danger.”
Easwar remained silent. Then he said calmly.
“It is impossible.”
“Impossible? She is somewhere around me. She came to our world, our land.”
“Annie…. Listen to me it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“She is not from our world. She belongs to another world.”
“Another world means?”
“She may not be even real.”
“How can you say that?”
“When Hannah explains about her life, does it resemble ours Annie? The plants, animals and even the ways of their living. Does it match?”
“Birds, plants, flowers, animals all are there but….”
“Yes that but….. That is the difference. Tell me the place to which Hannah belong.”
“She said as Seattle some United states…. like that.”
“And in which part of the world is this land?”
“She showed me a spherical structure and called it as a globe. Globe just like our rocks. Perfect spheres.”
“So it’s on a globe she belongs.”
“No no….. On earth. She called that sphere as Earth and sometimes it as globe. On the globe one could see the land as well as the places covered with water. Then she mentioned about continents. For me it’s like a dream world. For her the other way around. When I talk about our glowing flowers, fruits. She looked amazed. As if she had never experienced such things in her land before.”
“Do you know what we call our world?”
“Orbeon”
“What is the shape of our world?”
“It’s a straight line”.
“Hmm. So you know that Hannah can be your imagination?”
“May be.”
Easwar sat near her and said
“Pease concentrate, I will show you something?”
Easwar let her enter into his thoughts. In his thoughts Annie started seeing their world.
Orbeon is not straight, it is a bit curved planet.
More or like a crescent moon. It is a planet which lies many light years away from earth and its Solar System.
Orbeon, used to be a big spherical planet like all other regular planets seen in the galaxy. Our planet had originated many billion years ahead of planet earth.
In the beginning we too were like the people of earth, arrogant and ignorant.
In the due course of time we too had developed technologies, nuclear weapons and other political cruelties among as.
Then an unannounced war got declared in our land. Most of planet thus got destructed under our own reckless nuclear rivalry.
After this bloody deed only, we realized the futility of our doings. Now within a near end we too will vanish along with our planet.
So before its happening, our scientist have conducted many space expeditions to many viable proximate planets lying to our universe.
Few of our astronauts had returned from planet earth with a positive note.
According to them, our life could be supported by this planet. At that time of our visit on Earth, people like us had evolved up to level of primates means apes there.
Then for many years’ people of Orbeon concentrated on this planet.
We breed our genes into the apes in order advance the evolutionary process happening in there. And thus the present human species seen in their got evolved.
Not only with apes but with many other plants and animals too, our people had did the same.
We thought of continuing our life in this planet Earth even after Orbeon gets extinct forever.
We then used Earth’s bio magnetic fields for monitoring our research work.
Upon time most of Orbeon gradually turned abortive and dark. Now as you can see, life is restricted to this part of our planet alone.
Annie you are able to get connected to her telepathically. May be because we modified them and e your mind reading abilities are helping you to reach out to her.
Humans are only evolving. They too are inherent with our mind reading and communicating capabilities.
Remember… after all we have infused our genetic DNA in them.
Then what happened was a kind of irony.
During their evolution they started to consider us as their ‘GOD’.
A God is a mythical person with many supernatural abilities. Something like a wish granting machine to them.
A kind of super redeemer who acts a bit partial to the human kinds alone and not to his other creations such as birds, plants or fishes.
Some of their forefathers who happened to remember our visits on planet earth, simply carved our statues on stones and depicted us on their wall paintings as gods with multiple heads, legs, hands and so on.
They then started worshipping as their deities.
Anyway this ignorance gradually got changed into superstitions and many other morbid believes.
They grouped themselves into different thoughts.
These humans forgot the fact that the food, land, water, air and even the emotions they share are same or common.
Since they have started to communicate with different expressions and languages, understanding things became a lot more complicated than ours.
Humans never considered themselves as equals, they categorized themselves into castes and sub castes.
They enjoyed happiness in terms of wealth. In our world all these things are considered primitive and stupid.”
Easwar smiled.
“Look, here we don’t give much importance to emotions. We balance our life with nature. If you drift away from our nature, we won’t last for another thousands years. Soon we will end up as a memory.”
Annie remained silence.
“So Hannah is from a different planet?”
“Yes. Orbeon and Earth are two different planets belonging to a parallel universe.
Exactly a six millions light year’s above planet earth we lie, as ordinary celestial object or may be a star for Hannah.”
“Millions of years ago, before we left Earth, we taught them the art of telepathy through meditation.
So that whenever the earthlings need us, for their mental support, they just have to look up into heavens.
For us ‘heavens’ means just up ‘sky.’
If they can meditate and cogitate their problems.
Telepathically they gets connected to us. Just like me getting connected to you even if my presence is not with you now.
We people of ‘Orbeon’ thought of helping them from such distances.
Earlier earth people used to get connected with us like this.
With simple life styles and controlled emotions when one concentrate and turns their mental wave length with us we gets connected automatically. In simple terms our mind waves will meet through telepathically.
They call it as prayer and we call it as meditation.
Many information’s from our land thus got transmitted to them. Using this knowledge they developed many arts, science and philosophies.
But what to do? There humans as they got evolved, they made their lives more complicated and miserable.
They are still depending on primitive techniques like satellites and technologies for communication.
When people and every being in their nature could easily get connected through their thoughts these earthlings are simply depending on plastics and metals for their survival.”
“Easwar, I can grasp only very little. So let me make it simple to you. Can I meet my Hannah?”
“It is impossible, in the real world Body teleportation. We actually lost it.”
“But few things from her world actually came to me. How is that possible?”
“Actually there is not much difference between a living and non-living thing. All these things are made up of matter.
Matter could be felt in real world with its weight, volume and density due to gravity and other forces. But in the subatomic level, these laws get denied even in the real world, so that the particles could move faster than anything from one planet to other. If things are in a non-living form they could get moved easily.
“Which means?”
“If she is not a living thing. Then you can meet her.”
Annie now remained in silence.
“When they die, they can travel as minerals without memories, means lifeless soul. Then she can come to you. But her memories would remain in her world itself. You can construct her image back, with your mind power, then you can breathe her memories back into her. If you wish.
Or you can give her a new life, a new beginning. You can give her a rebirth in this world.
You can bring her soul here and make her reborn as your shadow.”
“It would be like a toy, which I tune to my need, isn’t it?”
“What else can you expect from her?”
“Easwar, last time heard Hannah’s voice, it was like a distress call. If she dies in there, it is better that she remain in my world as my shadow.”
“Haha…. It is called salvation according to the earth people.”
“Salvation?”
“If humans have lived there lives abiding our laws on earth, then we have promised them the path of salvation. “
“Our Laws means?”
“Our laws means, humans are to lead a simple life on earth by balancing their emotions within themselves and with the nature around them.
Then we have promised salvation to them.
Which means, after their death on earth they will be taken to our world forever as our shadows.
And in our world they could re-live as any memories they wish for.
Ha-ha one might call it as heaven.”
Annie sat foundering. Easwer continued his philosophy
“Annie you know something?”
“What?”
“We promised only this much to humans, but they added hell and lot more other religious stuffs into it.
What could be something natural thus gained a supernatural entity.”
Easwar now remained silent.
“Let her come to me then. Let her leave all her worries behind and come and be with me.”
“Do you think that, it will make her happy? Especially without Siyad in it.”
“Why will a man be so much important to her?”
Easwar only smiled at her, because he only knew how things are stirring on in planet Earth.
People are ready to live together but only for on short duration. If feelings such as body desires or lust or sexual urges are not there, then these humans are not even ready to breed and produce there next generation. So in a land where hormones control human brain, how can someone go beyond it and reach for heights in terms of mental peace or salvation? How can Hannah leave Siyad for Annie? How can Hannah stay happy with Annie, when she breathe the memories of Siyad into her? Humans always gets possessed with something which they don’t get in their life, fame, love, lust ….. Such desires never end.
Easwar thought.
“Being in the company of a human, Annie you too have got into their emotions and you suffer for no reason. And with you, what remains in this world also suffers. Time to take a decision. If you demand your Hannah would come to our world as your shadow. You decide. “
Easwar then spiritually brought her on top of a hill and asked herself to concentrate on her thoughts.
“Think hard and meditate, you can guide your Hannah to our world or else leave her back there.” Easwar then disappeared from her thoughts.
Annie’s spirit stood at the top of the hill.
She saw thunderstorms approaching her. She then saw a skinny house in front of her.
Standing on top of the hill as if it was waiting for her.
Annie slowly opened the doors and stepped in. Inside it was an empty space. When she stepped inside, she felt as if she is floating in the outer space. It took some time to remain balanced inside that room. The doors behind her got closed. Then pure darkness crept in.
Annie felt as if she is among galaxies. Star dusts, clouds ….. Visions of a different universe came into her eyesight.
“Don’t worry Annie, It’s a gateway to another dimension. You just remain focused. Communicate to your Hannah. Call her to your side.” voice of Easwar echoed into her ears.
