PROLOGUE
A mysterious blinding light. A weird reverberating sound. He is floating in the air as if he were a helium balloon. It must be a dream. 'Or am I hallucinating?' He pinches his cheeks but feels no sensation. Every part of his body has gone numb. ‘Son Eric!’ He is distracted by a feminine voice, an elderly woman’s trembling voice, as cold as ice cubes.
‘Who is there?’ he panics. Hovering over a cluster of multi-storied buildings, he turns back but nobody is there. Below, he sees the sparse traffic of early morning Ahmedabad. He is suddenly afraid of height.
The same icy voice echoes again, ‘Eric!’
‘Is anybody calling me?’ he asks.
‘Yes, my son Eric!’
‘Why are you calling me Eric? I am not Eric and my name is...’ He can’t recall his name. Ya Allah!
He looks at a three storied building with a big neon sign that reads Amol Hotel. This is the same hotel he has been staying in for the last three days. His room is on the third floor, he remembers, a ten by ten space with an attached bathroom, which can barely accommodate him. He enters in to the room through a half open window and stays close to the ceiling fan. It is whirling with dizzying speed and a couple of times its blades shove past him, but he is unhurt. Is my body made of gases?
Inside the room, the single bed with cheap mattress and pale white bed sheet has a piece of ladies undergarments, a brassiere to be specific. 'Must have been left in hurry by the whore I entertained last night'. On the floor are a packet of unused Kamasutra condoms and the empty bottles of beer; tale-telling the kinds of sins he committed last night. On a table, there is a spiral bound manuscript with ‘Mr. Orwell’s House’ a novel by Aslam Sher Khan’ written in bold on its cover. Just near the entrance of the bathroom, he sees a person lying on his back. It seems somebody has beaten him badly; his legs and hands have bruises. He dives in, to have a better view of his face. He is speechless when he recognises the face. It is me. The man on the floor is not moving, and is not breathing either. Maybe he is dead.' If Aslam is dead who am I ?' He wants to cry but can’t. He wants to scream but voice simply doesn’t come out of him.
Gravitating towards the lifeless body, he touches it. In a split of a second, the body sucks him in; exactly in the same fashion the dust particles are sucked in by a vacuum cleaner. Then his mind goes blank.
A while later, his body feels the coolness of the floor. The stench rising from the unflushed toilet fills his nostrils. There is unbearable pain in his left leg and his ribcage. His head is heavy like cotton bales in the rain. His eyes are bloody and blurry. He begins to lose his consciousness. Images, moving in fast cuts like a trailer of a movie, fill his memories. He sees a dilapidated bungalow with moss green walls; a moon faced woman with melancholy eyes, a small town bazaar bursting at seams with people, an old man with meagre beard and a worried face, a beautiful woman in black saree with royal bearing on her face and so on…
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