| dallikanchi |
Posted
on 05-Apr-03 05:15 PM
This is fiction, but there might have been cases similar to what I am narrating. So here goes:
I lay on my bed consciously trying to fall asleep for almost three hours. No luck. There was something that prevented me from dozing off; the environment was unnatural for me, I had concluded. I kept pondering as to what caused this discomfortl. Then suddenly, I abruptly got off my bed, turned on the computer, opened winamp, and put on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
That was the only "song" that I downloaded off of Napster--the only piece I could fall asleep to-- and so, once it played completely from beginning to end, it would start all over again. Ol' Ludwig Van never bored me; Moonlight Sonata cleared my conscience and seemed to take me to a not-so distant past, which, because of its fuzziness, I wanted to know more about. My roommate found my sleeping habits rather peculiar. But what really stupefied her was that every night I talked in my sleep, I repeated the same thing over and over, that "Raj is only taking care of Dolly". Who Raj was, I had no idea of. Just to pacify my already-frightened roommate, however, I decided to visit a psychologist. The shrink was able to delve deep into my consciousness, and, although I wasn't truly made cognizant of my past, I at least was able to go toe to toe with my quirks and idiosyncrasies.
From what I found out, I had been abducted at the age of 12 by a man deemed a family friend by my parents: my father's rich Kathmandu buddy, known for making risky maneuvers-- a vanguard, if you prefer. He was fond of me, and I of him, because he had this air of aristocracy in him that I found alluring. He would bring me all sorts of goodies from Kathmandu, which, since I am a poor man's daughter, were a novelty. Given this enigmatic flair about my "uncle", there is no reason in my mind why I wouldn't have acquiesced to his plea of me going to Kathmandu with him. Thus it so happened that I traveled with this man to kathmandu.
His business was based in Thamel. He took me to a building, his workplace rather, and directed me to a room, which, as as I was told, was all for me. He wanted me to think of him as a father-figure from then on, and that I should never think of running away, and to treat all visitor with utmost respect. Suddenly I found myself a part of Thamel's illicit underground den, a place that almost every Kathmanduite was familiar with, albeit superficially. The vistors there came for fulfilling their deep hidden sexual fantasies. I now distinctly remember Ludwig Van's Moonlight Sonata playing in the background when I was first brought into this world filled with depravity.
And that was all I wanted to know. I had heard enough. How I escaped this hellhole, and how I was later united with my parents is something I haven't tried to figure out. And I don't want to. I had suffered an indelible trauma that would always haunt me, both consciously and unconsciously. But, from thence, I didn't need Beethoven to take me to sleep; and my head never felt so light. I let myself drift away. And it felt good........
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