INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the jungle. I guess this is not the way you are used to waking up every day. A cosy bed with neatly arranged blankets and a nice large
Now have you ever heard of chaos theory? Well if you haven’t, never mind. But the thing is chaos theory is all about finding patterns in random elements. Your work is exactly to find a pattern among the random assortment of objects and things surrounding you. As the theory states, a small butterfly can cause a hurricane by the flapping of its wings. And that’s what you are exactly seeking –a small butterfly which might lead you out of here.
And remember God never plays dice and neither do I. Nothing in this room not even a single pin has been left to chance.
Now this room has everything to help you get out of here –the only thing is that you’ll have to find the way amidst all this chaos. Do not fear for I know finding the way amidst chaos is arduous –who else would know better than someone who has spent his last three years of his life seeking for patterns among chaos. Hence I will help you get out of here. I will talk to you, guide you and mentor you through this diary. Treat this diary as a secret Bible. Be patient and read on through my ramblings, for they have as much to do with helping you in getting out of here. And before you begin I have a small advice for you-
Always look for answers in patterns.
Oh ya I forgot to introduce myself. I am just a blind mouse who once led a carefree and a happy life just like you guys. And then came the fateful day and everything changed. Funny how a single day can turn your lives upside down and bring crashing to the ground all your dreams and aspirations. Ah there I go rambling again –let me stop here. So well let me repeat it – you have four hours before this place blows up and everything you require to get out of this room is within this room. And I’ll help. You seek them through this diary but before I begin let me tell a story –a story of four blind mice. A story which is central to the chaos around you.
THE FIRST BLIND MICE
To think back that seven years before even my life was also carefree and happy like all those teens out there - completely unperturbed about tomorrow and basking in the glory of today .In fact in those days life had given me much more than my fair share. Born to a upper middle class family in Trichy, I was blessed with wonderful parents and a fine intellect . I did my schooling in Campion – one of the finest schools in Trichy. School days were a bliss – all play, little studies, lots of fun and ya somehow always managing to end up at the top of the class. It was as though lady luck was showering her blessings on me . And after school, I gained entry into College of engineering, Guindy –a prestigious Engineering institution.
If life seemed happy in school it became happier in college. All I remember is dozens and dozens of movies, late night parties, bashes and ya plenty of gals. And after wasting away all my time in college I still somehow managed to gain entry into Indian Institute of Management,
The time I spent with her was the happiest time of my life. In IIM, I spent every spare moment I could sneak out with her . And given the daunting and back breaking work the institute demanded, I did manage to find a lot of free time to spend with her. Somehow we both managed to clear our courses in sharp contrast to the ominous predictions of our professors who had forecast a total washout for both of us. And both landed up plum jobs with Proctor and Gamble – a multinational consulting firm . And would you believe it - we both were posted in the same city, Chennai. Soon after college we both got married and settled down in Chennai. We both quit our jobs on the same day. I began a start-up company and she decided to focus on her first love- writing i.e. the first love before I came into her life lol .At that time it seemed that I had it all - an IIM degree as a life long guarantee, a nice start-up at your feet and a perfect partner .It was a perfect Indian dream – things couldn’t get much better. But the thing about dreams is that they have the habit of collapsing when you least expected it. And mine wasn’t any different, for it disappeared without a trace on that fateful day leaving my life in a wreck and making me the first of the blind mice.
THE SECOND BLIND MICE
The beautiful days we spent together- the fights, the reconcilements, the frosty looks, the embraces and the kisses. She was so special that I can’t just miss a day. She was a bold, sweet and silly gal. A missed call and she would go nuts if I didn’t call back. And messages –they were to be immediately replied or else a huge fight will ensue that evening. And the thousand and other things which might result in a fight –forgetting the good morning wish, forgetting the farewell kiss before leaving, forgetting to compliment her on her cooking etc. and it may sound strange but it was this silly innocent traits of her that appealed to me the most.
And she loved springing surprises. Everyday I used to find “I love you” messages in the unlikeliest places waiting to surprise me –in my shoes , in my shirt pockets, in purse and one day I even found one neatly wrapped around a coca –cola bottle in the fridge. And she kept coming up with new places everyday.
And the whole week she used to plan out what to do during the weekend- some weekends she would insist on switching off all lights and dining in the candle light. And man! How she used to glow in the ambience of the night. Then suddenly she would insist on role playing – we played just about everything from Julius Caesar to Barrack Hussein Obama. And the fun we used to have. And some weeks she insisted on singing and dancing late in the nights and a thousand other things. No two days with her was the same. Each day was a different experience ,a different thrill.
And pirates –she was crazy about them. One of her favourite tricks was to leave messages in a bottle. She had specially bought a whole set of old wine bottles for it and I often used to find messages inside them. And the messages used to be about everything –love poems, silly rhymes, songs, mild teasing and even sometimes scolding for something I had messed up.
She was someone who lived love to the full. And I knew I must be damn lucky that she had chosen me over a thousand suitors. I was completely undeserving for her and still it was this wreck she chose out of all those flashing knights in IIM-C. I think even fate was jealous that I had won her. Which is why fate snatched her cruelly out of my hands on that fateful day making her the second blind mice..
THE THIRD BLIND MICE
He joined the Chennai PD in 2001.And from day one it was clear that he was destined for greater things. Two years into the force, he was transferred to the Quick Reaction Team especially constituted to tackle emergency situations in the backdrop of the surge in terror attacks across the country making him the youngest member of the team.
June 12 2004 - his team was involved in a routine training exercise when they came under heavy firing by Maoists .Completely taken off the guard , all his team mates went down like a pack of cards .He was left the lone man standing .He quickly realised that the Maoists were after the weapons stored in the shed nearby and realised that none of them would be spared if he didn’t stop them .The assailants realising that only one man was left standing, dropped their guard and started moving in closer and that was their mistake. For with complete control he started squeezing out shots with perfect accuracy and his assailants went down one by one. He managed to hold back the Maoists till reinforcements arrived thereby saving the cache from falling into their hands. He became an overnight hero.
The media was crazy about him. During the whole of next week there was not a single daily newspaper which did not have at least one article on him. The media started digging up all they could know about him and started publishing it. There were articles on his schooling (topper of his class) , on his college life, sycophantic reports from his professors (best student, really a gem you know and blah blah ). A newspaper even had an article about his strange fantasy for photographs. Sick! Give me a break . Someone becomes a hero and he doesn’t bathe for a day even that is news for the media. Heaven help us .
From then on there was no turning back for him. Within the next two years he was involved in a dozen encounters and emerged from each one of them smelling of laurels and was paraded around by the media as a proud possession .Last year he was awarded the presidential medal of honour and he was being egged by his seniors to take up the public service exams. His destiny seemed clear – UPSC exams the next year, two years of training, years of yeoman service and finally the commissioner of the city .But destiny can come crashing down in a day - as it happened to him on the fateful day making him the third blind mice.
THE FOURTH BLIND MICE
His life was getting worse day by day. One year before everything had seemed perfect. He had a job which paid six figures, a nice company flat and a company car at his disposal and to top it all he had recently married. Life then seemed beautiful. He and his wife were then just beginning to know and discover each other. She used to wait till he came home even though some days he was really late. Then they both had a candlelight dinner after which they talked about all those mysterious stuff couples talk about late into nights. And every weekend they used to go to the beach and spend hours there looking into each others face, leaving silence to do all the talking. And then recession struck and all of a sudden he found himself without a job .And worse he found he had a mounting debt and his banker who had acted like a saint till now had suddenly turned into a demon determined to suck anything he could out of him. And worst he found his wife no longer loved him. Things started rapidly falling apart. She started complaining about anything and everything. Things which she had once found cute and idiosyncratic were now suddenly annoying and horrible for her. Quarrels and fights became the order of the day. And one fine day she stomped off to her parent’s house after a big fight. Of course not before taking away with her whatever she could lay her hands on. He thought that was the end of her and was relieved that the worst part of it was over even though he still had to confront the worse part. Her departure brought about some new found energy in him and he started searching for a job with renewed vigour. His efforts paid off and he got a call for an interview. Things seemed to fall in place finally and that’s when the thunderbolt struck . It came in the form of a divorce notice. Now a divorce notice is a queer thing –its like asking a man whether he would prefer suicide or murder as his cause of death. One knows he has been condemned when he gets such a notice. And still he fights it tooth and nail even though he knows it can have only one outcome just as sure as the sun will rise in the east next day –that he will end up a loser. He still fights it to salvage whatever he could . After all there’s a difference between losing a match by two runs and losing it by a three hundred and two . Now winning a divorce suit which literally translates for a man as keeping his losses to a minimum requires a lawyer and a lawyer requires fees. Now our guy was bankrupt and hence he couldn’t afford even a decent lawyer which meant he had to fend for himself in court which actually means he ended as one big loser at the end of the day. His wife not only managed to rob him completely but even managed for a hefty settlement which he had to pay her every year. He completely drowned. That was when he took that ultimate step on that fateful day but little did the fourth mice know of fate’s plans that day.
THE BEGINING
It all began today .September 24 2006 to be more precise .Even today I look at it I cant make any sense out of it .It seems like a cruel game played by fate with the only intention of separating me from my beloved and leave me in unforgiving agony .The day keeps coming in my nightmares even today haunting me, agonising me, driving me mad, Why? Why? Why? .Its been seven years but I still remember each and every moment of that day as though it was only yesterday. It was supposed to be a great day for both of us- she had just found a publisher for one of her stories. We were planning to celebrate all through that day. I remember the alarm dint go off on that day –the only day the alarm failed in our 4 yrs of married life. Hence our plans were delayed by an hour .We set out of the house at
I also learnt that the bullet after piercing through her heart had sliced through the neck of her assailant rendering him a cripple for life. It seemed that he was actually a former techie who had taken the extreme step because of being severely cash strapped. If that day did some good to someone, it was for him –because the judge was moved by the sight of him and got sick of the avaricious nature of his ex-wife that he threw her divorce case out. He must be the first guy in the history of the world to actually win a divorce case without spending a penny.
The cop – that day marked the end of his illustrious career. His fall to disgrace was imminent. He was shown no pity for he had just broken a golden rule of the police – never kill a hostage especially if it’s a woman.
He found himself in the centre of an enquiry commission which after hours of deliberation concluded that he was no longer fit for active duty and moved him out of QRT to traffic duty. Last I heard of him was that he had ended up as a drunkard and had been dismissed from active service.
And from that day a thousand questions haunt me to this day. How would have been my life had the alarm rung promptly? Or if the atm machine had worked properly? Or if the cop had been someone else? Or if the mob hadn’t rung at that moment? A thousand small things and my wife will not have died if even one of them hadn’t happened, and still I couldn’t comprehend how all of them coincided perfectly to take her away from me. That was the day I started searching for answers among randomness. That was the day I began an insomniac.
The day spared no one. The day before we were just normal ppl leading normal lives. And that day we became four blind mice caught in a fiery storm .We became pawns in a cruel game of fate. That day was the beginning.
THE SEARCH
From that day I started seeking patterns among chaos. I knew I would not find peace till I comprehended the events of that day. I started searching for answers everywhere –in every discipline. And then on this day two years ago, I stumbled upon cryptography and found what I was looking for. Finally a way of deciphering the patterns among randomness. I realised that if at all I found answers I was seeking in chaos, it will be only through the codes and ciphers of cryptography. And thus I started delving deeply into it. And I came to a single realisation – it is in cryptography that fate has hidden its secret, and that it’ll be here where I’ll find peace.
Which brings me to the question which must now be gnawing at your mind? “Why are you doing this to us ?” Hey hey why am I doing this to you? Well simply because I had searched for answers for too long and it was time to experiment my revelations so far. Now I talk again like a madman aint it? Let me put it this way. What happened on that day was chaos which fate planned to the tiniest detail, each one leading to the other, creating a ripple effect thereby changing an ordinary day into a chaos. What I am trying to do is the reverse. Now unless you find your way out of here within four hours, it will cause a chaos. So now I am keenly interested to know how your fate reacts to avert this chaos. How it uses the tiniest of details in this room to get you out of here. I hope in this process I might learn finally the secret behind fate. And if I can’t, well I guess there’ll always be another three to experiment with.
END
well i guess ill stop here .after this it was only techincal stuff to help the teams which if i post will ensure u guys will go into a deep slumber if you havent already .so adios for now :)
