It takes man-years to realize that he is not the center of universe, while it takes a fraction of a moment for the universe to discard him. Though we are all endowed by the gift of clear thinking, it remains foggy for decades as years of youth melt away with rapid advances from the march of old age.
It may seem that love is the only anchor in the boat; it does not keep the boat afloat, gradually sinking in the darkness of doubt and anger.
One counts on support of the close ones but it is the growing distance that closes the chance of ever realizing that furthering shore.
The utter carefree youth and the drifting years to find one’s own self, leads to dying multiple times, and leaving behind legacy of discarded and wounded selves. Be it a battlefield or butter-field, millions of wounds are inflicted, some self-inflicted and rest by others.
The healing begins when the pain subsides. No aspirations or greatness, dreams stay together and functional, the days get boring as colors of a summer sky and the farmland landscape. No more is humming of the birds any music, no more the heart sings joyous ode.
Bulla was overwhelmed by these thoughts all the time especially when it was snowing hard outside. Bulla was an electrical engineering major at this little known Yorkshire town university.
He was twenty-two years old and was deeply in love with his research on ‘attenuation of electrical signals and high sensitivity receiver design’. Or in different words he was involved with his doctoral work to overcome limitation of 3G-cell phone technology. Bulla had never thought about his happiness.
Omega Cell of Finland largely funded his work. Omega was always trying to figure out newer, sleeker and better cell phone products. Bulla considered himself fortunate, that he had a chance to solve some of the nuttiest problems in communication theory.
He worked day in day out and from dawn to dusk had his head buried in the equations and derivations. He was intense and thorough in his work and had left a very positive impression on his faculty. So much so that when it came time for the Omega folks to visit the campus, his advisor would ask Bulla to make presentations to the Omega executives.
Bulla was invited to Helsinki to visit the factory headquarters from time to time. Bulla would meet the engineers and share with them his latest findings. Some of them would get so excited about the findings that they would introduce Bulla as a potential future hire for this company when he graduated. Bulla did not think much about graduation, as he was more of a guy who enjoyed the process than the end.
He was introduced an engineer at Omega and her name was Crystal Hopeman. Crystal liked Bulla very much and grew into liking this young engineer from Yorkshire.
She was round-faced woman with an IQ of 200. She believed in wearing out rather than rusting. She was deliberately trying to stay away from asking questions about what made her happy. She spoke to all, as if each sentence started with a pointed sword and each question left the problem cut into million pieces. She was good at picking off the relevant pieces and presented the problem so efficiently that all the Omega executives were impressed beyond belief. She in particular impressed Jorg CEO of Omega. Crystal had met Amanda, Jorg’s wife on a few occasions. Amanda liked Crystal especially because Amanda had made inroads into Jorg’s selected few people.
Crystal despised girly talk and was tom boyish in her ways. She wore little or no makeup and made other average women at work feel great about themselves. Crystal was impressed by Bulla and she asked him out one evening for dinner.
Bulla, himself was shy beyond belief and only accepted the invite because he felt he could keep the conversation rather technical and stay away from the soft stuff. That suited crystal too and these two hit the same chord.
They were resonating so much that both of them started looking forward to their meeting. Crystal shared with Bulla many personal and work related stories and they were having a ball. Bulla sometimes shared his feelings to Crystal in the following song:
“Say when i met you first
we were two
Like a castle room with you
being the window and i the door
The distance between us maintained by the floor
I could see the beautiful world through your silky veneer
You choose to open up
When a dove flew in and fluttered helplessly in it
I closed my arms to keep the dove in between us
You chose to keep your arms open
Now the dove cannot find its way
As it is trapped in the den of our duality
The dove ponders, as it finds no relief
You, the dove and I are triply confused
The floor is quiet and so is the ceiling
The walls act indifferent as if concealing
The outside world and inside world maintain the multiplex
The wind streams through thy bosom
The dove realizes that you are the reason of the predicament
Why shall I go near thee sings the dove
Why I must keep hitting on these barren walls
Why I must find a way out of the doors
As the dove collapses on the floor of consciousness
The walls congregate
The ceiling wails
The doors convene and the elements resonate
A solutions lies within our confines
Who will speak and who will guide
The walls have their reasons not to collapse
The doors hang on to hinges of time
The ceiling looks at the fallen dove
The wind sings the secrets that neither can decipher
The singularity lies within the frame
With a solution in sight leave from you came
Sings the eternal breeze
Open your heart with love to realize the power of one”
Bulla had no desire to know the work stories but when she spoke it seemed like time would slow down to stand still and her voice sounded like music. At times both would race to solve some of the work related problems, and crystal would win handily most of the times.
Their relationship grew from intellectual to physical and it went on for months. It seemed like they were meant for each other. Crystal grew so fond of Bulla that she started visiting Bulla at his Yorkshire farm.
Bulla was comfortable with Crystal and looked forward to her visits. Bulla and Crystal went on long walks and ended the day at the local pub. Both drank moderately and discussed excessively, whatever was on their minds. Crystal wanted to know more about Bulla. He began to share his intimate world with her including some of his dreams.
He dreamt a lot and had so many stories to share. One particularly fascinating story was that of his long dead sister, Kudrat, and her one time appearance in a dream on April 20th. Kudrat claimed in the dream that after she passed away, her soul passed on to him. That Bulla is carrying his sister’s soul. Kudrat reminded him that she did have one favor to ask of his brother. It was that she wanted him to be prepared to save the world. And then the dream ended.
Bulla woke up at 4 am, puzzled by the dream. Not once in last thirty years had he ever thought of his sister, whom he had never met, and on top of that he had no knowledge of her as he was not even born when she had died. Kudrat, was only eighteen months old when she passed away. Bulla started doing the math feverishly. He was born on June 27th. She died on Sept 1st, ten months prior to when he was born. Which made it likely that he was conceived the day his sister died. Why did the dream come exactly the day of Kudrat’s birthday? Bulla did not want to believe the coincidence. He tossed and turned in the bed till it was time to get off the bed.
Why would his sister ask him to save the world? Bulla was not sure if he was imagining these stories because he was subconsciously making himself a hero. He asked Crystal if he was mad in having these thoughts.
Crystal did not doubt him but reminded him that she loved him deeply especially now that he has the soul of a women. Bulla did not quite what to make of that comment. She herself was concerned th
at she was no Ostrich either. Ostriches are known to lay eggs for forty years.
Her body clock was ticking away and she was getting edgy as to when Bulla would propose.
He always thought the soul had no gender or at least that is what he was taught. What if it did have gender? Or what if all the souls were feminine to began with.
He knew that at the early stages of conception there is a huge fight in the womb between the X and Y. And the battle is mostly decided to go one way or the other on the consensus of the Y-chromosomes to let another X proceed in the world.
One such trip Crystal was very occupied with a certain problem of Omega that she could not discuss this with Bulla. Bulla wanted to help but since it was classified work, she could not share anything about it. On the other hand Bulla was anxious and asked her without revealing the confidentiality at least focus on the mathematical part.
She did and Bulla took delight in providing a solution to that problem in matter of hours.