| About 2xus | My Articles | My Blog | My Business | My Pictures | My Portals |

Tryst with Rhett Butler

By Prakash Subbarao

I travel quite frequently. I normally keep to myself during flights, either listening to music or working on my notebook computer. I consider time a luxury; something that needs to be made the best use of.

So there I was, at Dubai International airport, one day, waiting for my flight back home to Bangalore.

Dubai Duty Free held no fascination for me; I had transited it a million times. These days I just picked up two bottles of my second favourite whisky brand, (you can’t get my favourite brand there!) two cartons of cigarettes and some chocolates. At times I’d stop in for a draught of Kilkenny beer at The Irish Village pub on the concourse, but today I had given it a miss. I was mildly hungover from the previous night’s party and had decided that rather sit around and do nothing, I would finish my trip report. That would save me a few hours in Bangalore. So there I was, typing out a report, pecking at my laptop with two fingers when I happened to look up. My eyes made contact with a handsome man, sitting about fifteen feet away. He was wearing a camel hair coat but his attire oozed a strange Victorian air. “Why, he is the spitting image of Clark Gable” I muttered in astonishment. I was momentarily distracted but soon turned back to my notebook, the man forgotten, and continued with my report. After half an hour or so, the report was complete. My eyes were throbbing with the combination of lack of sleep as well as mild hangover. With a yawn, I clicked the notebook shut and put it back in its case. I stood up, my body stiff, and stretched to ease the tension in my limbs. I looked around at my fellow passengers.

There was an attractive blonde sitting in the seat where the man had been sitting a few minutes before.

The flight was uneventful. I was tired and decided that I’d sleep. The Business Class goodies no longer appealed to me. After all, there just that much one can take of the best food and wine before one gets tired of it. Give me a simple, non-oily, home cooked meal any day!

Hari Lal, my driver, was waiting for me at Bangalore and I was home a short while later. Tiger, my trusty Doberman, jumped on me lavishing loving licks on my face. If he got a few grains of Dubai sand in his mouth in the process, he didn’t complain.

I had been married once, a long time ago. However the marriage didn’t last; the tension of corporate life, the almost constant travel, the late nights and the never ending partying had frazzled my wife’s nerves. We gradually drifted apart. Soon we were almost complete strangers. I would come home, giver her a perfunctory “Hi!”, pull out my briefcase and start working, after having fixed myself a drink. This would go on till around ten p.m. when she would ask whether I would like to have dinner. “No” I’d say. “You go ahead. I’ll eat later.” Dinner placed at the table grew cold. Sometimes I’d just shovel it into my mouth, without tasting it. At other times I’d be so bone-weary that I just didn’t have the strength to do anything and I’d tumble into bed. It would invariably be around two a.m.

I have always been an early riser. That’s the gift that poverty gave to me. We’d all be cooped up in a tiny little flat when I was young, so I had no option but to sleep off early and awake at the crack of dawn, to steal outside and study. The 'sleeping-early' habit left me but not the 'rising- early' one. I’d be up at six and Hari Lal, who doubled as Man Friday, would bring me a steaming cup of tea as soon as I had brushed my teeth. It was a Darjeeling blend that I got directly from the estate. What better way to start the day? It left me deeply satisfied and eager to cross the hurdles that lay ahead before me.

I was at the office at nine a.m. sharp. I had a series of meetings lined up and was glad that I had completed the report at the airport. Rather than go home, I had fallen into the habit of having lunch at the Bangalore Club so 1 p.m. saw me comfortably ensconced in an overstuffed sofa, a glass of beer in hand. As I looked around the room, my eyes fell on a familiar figure. I had seen him the previous evening at Dubai Airport. He was in the same dress and, as earlier, his gaze was fixed on me. He seemed to be staring but in a friendly sort of way. It’s difficult to describe the stare. All I can say is that it wasn’t lewd and there were no emotions or any other overtones in it. It was just a slightly friendly but nevertheless disconcerting stare.

I got up and made my way to him. He watched me, calmly, that same detached look evident.

“Hello!” I wished him. “Weren’t you at the Dubai Airport yesterday?”

“That’s correct” he replied, somewhat formally.

‘What brings you to Bangalore? I didn’t see you on the flight. And oh! By the way! My name is Rakesh”.

We shook hands but I noticed that he had not replied to my questions. Neither had he offered his name.

“And what is your name”? I enquired, with a smile.

“Rhett Butler” he replied, seriously. I noted that though he was white skinned, he had no accent. I just couldn’t place his nationality.

“Rhett Butler!” I exclaimed. That’s the name of a character in a book called “Gone With The Wind! Come to think of it, you look exactly like the actor, Clarke Gable, who played the role of Rhett Butler in the movie. How strange!”

He just nodded.

“Well, it’s been nice talking to you” I said to him thinking what a weirdo he most certainly was. Again he was very taciturn. He just nodded. I walked back to my seat.

I avoided looking at him but I could feel his gaze on me. A while later the bladder signaled its intention to empty itself. Rather urgently, I may add. I arose to go to the cloak room.

When I returned, he was gone. However, on the side table next to the sofa on which he had sat, was a strange object. It was square in shape, around 5 centimeters wide and about 2 centimeters thick. It emitted a dull glow.

I walked up to it and picked it up. I had expected it to be heavy, like, say, a Zippo lighter is. Surprisingly, it was very light. As light as a cheese sandwich? Yes, that appears to me to be a good analogy. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. It had a soft feel to it, like smooth leather but it also had a metallic shine to it. I just couldn’t place it.

I examined it closely from every angle but couldn’t fathom its purpose. There was no button, no lever, no hidden hinge. All its faces seemed completely solid and unbroken. Perplexed, I decided to leave it at the front desk in case “Rhett” decided to come by and claim it later. The clerk at the front desk also looked at it with interest, when I handed it over. He too apparently hadn’t seen anything like it.

I soon put the incident out of my mind. A few days passed. I was scheduled to fly to Singapore on a business trip. The flight was an uneventful one and I took a taxi from Changi airport into the city. My drive to my hotel on Orchard Road took twenty minutes; traffic was light. I had just checked in and was about to go up to my room when a familiar camel hair coat caught my eye. “This is unbelievable!” I told myself. “It can’t be him here in Singapore”. But it was. He had the same clothes on and was looking at me with the same detached stare that I had first seen at the Bangalore Club.

Marching angrily up to him, I demanded an explanation. “Why are you following “me?”

“Sit down” he said, unperturbed. “I have a bottle of your favourite whisky with me”.

This was just too much. My favourite whisky! I was instantly intrigued. Though I have traveled all over the world and sampled all the best that the world of alcohol has to offer, my favourite is actually an Indian whisky fuelled by the rain waters of the Himalayas. It’s bottled at a plant in Kasauli, in Himachal Pradesh.

“What is my favourite whisky? Tell me!” I demanded of him.

“Solan Number 1 bottled by Mohan Meakins at Kasauli” came his immediate reply.

Dumbstruck, I sat down, staring at him foolishly.

“Let’s go up to your room. I will tell you all about myself” he said. “And” he added with as an afterthought “you needn’t worry about my being gay”.

It’s a very strange feeling entering a hotel room with an unknown man. But curiosity had gotten the better of me. I was just dying to know why he was following me, how we was tracking me and how he knew of my fondness for Solan No. 1. Strangely some sixth sense told me that he was a good ‘un and meant no harm.

We entered the room and we settled down in the ante room. There was ice in the fridge. I took out two glasses and looked at him but he shook his head to indicate that he wouldn’t have anything. I opened my suitcase and took out a bottle of Chivas Regal.

“Would you prefer to drink your favourite drink” he asked me in his strangely accentless voice. “Yes, I would” I said with heavy sarcasm. “I would just love that”. I put a lot of emphasis on the “love”. He said nothing. When I lifted the bottle to pour the whisky into the glass I noticed with shock that I was now holding a “Solan No. 1” bottle. I shot a glance at him. His face was expressionless.

“How the devil did you manage to do that?” I blurted out, involuntarily.

“Oh, there’s nothing to it. I will teach you how to do it in a few days” was his breezy reply.

I poured a hefty slug of whisky into a tumbler that I found nearby and took a healthy sip. Ah! The whisky felt great going down. I looked at the refrigerator.

“Are you looking for ice?” he asked and magically an ice bucket appeared in front of me. It was filled with the most perfectly looking spheres of pure, transparent ice. Each sphere was half the size of a golf ball. I had never seen anything like it before. It was so clear that I could see right through it without any distortion!

“Soda?” he asked. “Yes thanks”. I said. A bottle of chilled soda instantly stood before me.

I normally don’t take soda with my Solan No.1. I had said ‘yes’ just so that I could examine the bottles of soda that appeared to see what the label said.

The bottle standing in front of me was of the clearest glass that I had ever seen. It looked so fresh! Like a glass sculpted from the purest of ice from the Alps. Significantly, there was no label. Just 300 ml of bubbling, sparkling, soda in that crystal clear glass bottle.

“Allow me” said Rhett, with a smile, and poured the soda into the glass.

So here I was, in a strange hotel room in Singapore with a strange dude doing all kinds of strange things and yet the mind was calm. Collected. I knew that this stranger meant me no harm.

“I am going to tell you a story that you may find hard to believe” Rhett said. “But I assure you, it’s all true”.

I can smell a good story coming instinctively. “To hell with it!” I told myself and let my guard down. “Go ahead!” I said, smiling.

“As you may have gathered, I am not an inhabitant of earth” he said. “We – the inhabitants of where I come from - are amazed at how you perceive ‘aliens’ as a hostile lot. You show them as invariably inferior to yourselves. You invariably happen to capture these so called aliens in your science fiction movies and TV programs such as the X Files and subject them to all kind of scientific experiments. In reality, aliens surround you in vast numbers and are not at all what you think they look like”.

I thought it best to say nothing at this stage, so I just nodded. A very neutral nod, understand. It was not meant to indicate any support. But at the same time it was not designed to reveal any incredulity.

“We have been monitoring your earth for the past 200 million years” he continued. “We visit it every ten years to check on how things are going and file the data in our knowledgebase. There are several such “earths” like yours spread all over. We monitor all of them in the hope of learning something new. However, we consider ourselves the most intelligent and civilized of all the civilizations that have so far emerged in space”.

“Really!” I interjected. “And how many civilizations are there?” I couldn’t hide the note of sarcasm in my voice.

“Oh! Over ten thousand space civilizations” he replied. “And several hundred are in the near vicinity of earth. But we are amazed that you guys have not detected them”.

Shit! This was unnerving.

“Do you know that several thousands of them have been beaming signals in the hope of finding other life forms and being found themselves?”

“No” I said.

“Yes” he went on pensively. “The problem is that every civilization has its own unique thought-process-wavelength and this seems to act as a beta-blocker. It gives each civilization a narrow window to peer into, the width of the window being of course, determined by the particular bandwidth of that particular wavelength of that particular civilization”.

“Hey, slow down” I protested. “I just lost you”.

“OK. Let me put it like this. You guys have this big bang theory of evolution. You have this Darwinian fantasy that man first crawled ashore from the sea, then developed four legs, then slowly tried to stand up and then finally did. One branch of the apes then went on to become man and the rest, as they say, is history”.

“You mean all this didn’t happen?” I said, gaping.

“Of course not!” was his prompt reply.

“Tell me more” I commended him, now deeply interested.

“The biggest mistake you guys made was coming out of the sea” he said. “In the sea you were comfortable. In the sea you were at peace. In the sea you defied gravity. In the sea you were almost weightless. In the sea you were streamlined. ‘Aerodynamic’ you call it. In the sea you were practically invulnerable. You guys came out of the sea on to land and that’s where your problems began. Your biggest mistake was coming out on to land”.

“Hmmmmmmmmm” I said. This was intriguing.

“In the sea you lead a simple life; there’s no dog-eat-dog there. There are no “cold wars” at sea. There are no territorial divides; there is no problem transferring information when underwater - either electrically or by sound, the sea is a better conducting medium than air. One can send an ultra-low wavelength sound signal out several hundred kilometers with practically no fuss. Yes………………your biggest mistake was coming out of the sea onto land. Then you needed to ‘mutate’, to ‘evolve’. You needed ‘lungs’. All the rules changed. That was your biggest problem”.

“Is this guy crazy or insane” I asked myself.

“Oh, I’m perfectly sane!” he immediately replied. He had read my thoughts.

“One thing that never struck your dumb race was that the sea provides all the nourishment automatically. You guys have now “conquered” space but you know practically nothing about the sea! Giant 90 metre long whales live on tiny krill! Where do the krill come from? You don’t know! Nutrients come from deep in the sea. Where and how large are these reserves? You do not know.

He had a point.

I was feeling tired. The journey had sapped my strength. The time zone made it that much more difficult. If it was ten p.m. in India it was not 12.30 a.m. I longed to get into bed.

“ I will leave you now. I can see that you are tired. Let’s talk tomorrow” he said.

I just nodded, grateful that he had read my mind.

In the blink of an eye he was gone.

And so were the soda and the ice.

And the bottle of Solan No.1.

In its place was a bottle of Chivas Regal.

Unopened.

But I knew by the buzz in my innards that I had had several drinks.

…………………To be continued

To the  Article Index!

All articles © Prakash Subbarao. All rights reserved.