I'm breaking through
I'm bending spoons
I'm keeping flowers in full bloom
I'm looking for answers from the great beyond

- “The Great Beyond", REM.

It was one of those minutely flabbergasting moments—I was listening to REM and picked on the "bending spoons" bit just hours after I'd registered for a psychokinesis workshop. Maybe it's to do with the fact that lyrics are more discernible when they're being whispered into your ears by a pair of earphones rather than playing in the background when you’re tinkering around your room.

It was curiosity that drove me to the workshop. Over a telephonic conversation, the woman conducting the workshop made it seem like bending spoons was just an elementary part of the workshop. "We'll be bending spoons in two hours?" my friend asked her in disbelief. To which she replied in a generic- intellectual -hogwashy manner:  the spoons would just be a tangible evidence of it all; of the power of intent and what you can do with your mind.

I hadn't questioned the idea too much so the workshop didn't disappoint or cause me to marvel. All of us bent spoons, all seven of us there, but not by looking at it as I'd imagined. After a visualization exercise, in a manner akin to Reiki, we channeled energy to our palms and the spoon went all hot and soft and bent to the touch. The psychic conducting the workshop invoked Uri Geller, who's rather famous for psychokinetic feats on television. Apparently, electromagnetic devices get jumbled up around him and he has never been able to wear a watch.

We went home in two hours, so much for a psychic quickie. And I'm supposed to practice moving compass needles now.

I did this myself. So I should be believing in it. I did feel the spoon warm up and become malleable— I think it was self hypnosis. So if I could do this in a quasi skeptical, quasi wonder-eyed state, no wonder Ram could lift and break the heavy Shiva Dhanush during Sita's swayamvar.  It was all “psychokinesis” I suppose, achieved with years of mind control and meditation and exercises in concentration.

I just wish these experiences would come to me without instructors who appear to be psychic fanatics and insist that “their” method is the way to nirvana (in this case, the Silva method). I think I’m close to having had my share of psycho psychics. But I’m not close to any answers yet.

Kafka’s Bubble

I was waiting outside a very busy vet’sclinic this evening for what seemed like hours. This was my third visit and I knew about the endless waiting hours and the patiencewith which the husband-wife duo answered every query—even bizarre ones like(overheard), “ Which flavour of ice cream is the healthiest for my fourmonth Lhasa Apso?” [ Aside: Vets are now included in my list of marriage material men. I just wish they were richer. ]

I’d carried an assortment of toys to keep Kafka busy but shefound better things to do. So I played with the rubber balls instead, trying tofit them into plastic rings and then poke them out and start again. The waiting area is a grilled veranda,beyond which is the parking space of the neighbouring building. When rubber andplastic ceased to amuse me, I found myself within watchmen— two of whom were most definitely drunk. About all theoverhearing that I’m confessing about, a very respectable source convinced methat that’s the stuff writers are made of. They have to observe and listen and have relatively passive lives themselves. So I’m not ashamed of it anymore; I almost always come away knowing the precise travelplans of the couple on the next table when I'm out dining.

So, one of the watchmen had finished his shift but he seemed to have misplaced the keys to the cabin he usually slept in. He refused to sleep on theterrace because he claimed that he’d seen ghosts and djinns there on numerous occasions. Thedescriptions were wonderful and innovative. He seemed to have seen only women and he even described their shoes with vivid detailing. Hisaudience supplemented the narration with experiences and factual inputs. “Woh baat toh karte hain, par unki bhasha alag hoti hain.”  When his rambling gotincoherent, the relatively sober one was visibly annoyed. There ensued aheated debate on bhoots and aatmas and andhvishwas. Between thethree of them, they’d invoked everything from television serials to the Qur'an.

With nointention of being condescending, I couldn’t help but laugh at some of this. Boredwith debate, the relatively sober one enquired about Kafka. Shedidn't seem to have a broken limb  and she looked tandarust according to him. I deliberated on theexplanation and thought I’d give it a shot. “Pseudo pregnancy …jhoota pregnancy…jhootagarbh...” I explainedthat my 11-month baby girl thinks she is pregnant and that her hormones arepreparing her for nursing a litter. He responded with the most genuine,wide-eyed look that a forty-year-old man could possibly wear.

Ghosts for me andcomplicated medical diagnoses for him spelled the same thing—the fear of the  unexplained. He was laughing, of course.

The Dream

I have a dream catcher hung above my bed; one that belongs to a Philipino tribe. But last night’s reverie wasn’t a series of symbol-ridden abstractions a la David Lynch. I remember it so vividly that I didn’t need a mesh of feathers and woven threads to hold it for me.

Earlier yesterday, I was talking about Alice in Wonderland with a colleague and I think that had something to do with the bizarre place I found myself in. I was arrested for suffering from Mistaken Identity. As I was being taken to the Cell, I saw a reasonably attractive man fixing his bike (Ah, that’s me).

Anyway, so when I was about to enter the place, I was told it’s a horrid and cramped space with strange people. Ofcourse this was by an unstrange person, someone quite expected to have such   a clinical opinion. It was a small room with a bar at the centre. Wonderfully quaint, woody and lit with yellow bulbs. There were a lot of people seated and standing around the oaken table, all ageless. My Bike Man was also in a corner, fiddling with a lomography camera but I suppose I was playing hard to get and so I didn’t really pay him any attention.

What transpired next is the reason I remember this when I woke up. One of the men seated on the floor around the bar looks at me, not to size me up but to give me a primer to the place and says, “ Since we don’t know who we are, the least we can do is have some fun.” I think I was pretty struck by the profundity of that line to remember what transpired next. So what followed was more or less like a regular dream- a sequence of hotch-potch scenes that I can only vaguely recollect. I do remember tearing up pictures that the Lomo produced.

But I don’t remember leaving the place.