(This is a sequel to the short story ‘Relative Frequency’ written by Chandra Shekhar (1985), published in Volume 1 (October 2025) of Kattangal Chimes. If you haven’t read it already, please follow the link https://kattangalchimes.in/relative-frequency )
Rema Premnath (1985)
Jim was gone for almost a month now. He was keeping me posted almost daily about his whereabouts. He was in Panama, gathering the available historical data about this fictitious or real phenomenon (four-billion-years-old mother-of-all-ancestors, believed to be still “alive” and breeding in the primordial slime), from all kinds of sources like university libraries, individual explorers, tourist information centres, the archaeological department.
Some people really encouraged him and shared all the information they had. One retired Professor from the Department of Anthropology of the University of Panama recounted his own explorations in the rain forests of Panama and invited Jim to his private lab, now dysfunctional, in the basement of his home. Jim stood amazed looking at the thousands of labelled jars of samples collected from various forest swamps, now turned into just some brown residue. All of them stopped self-multiplying sooner or later. The ageing professor’s—he was to celebrate his ninety-fifth birthday in another two weeks—eyes gleamed with hope as Jim elaborated on his own plans, and I could detect a catch in Jim’s voice as he narrated this story.
But not everyone was as sympathetic. Some thought Jim was simply crazy and shut the door on his face, and I don’t blame them at all.
When I last heard from Jim he was about to set off on a week-long journey to explore a few uninhabited islands around the gulf of Panama, all by himself. He planned to hire a dinghy to get across from one island to the next. I was not very comfortable with the whole idea but knew better than to dissuade him because he had already made up his mind. So I just mumbled a weary “good luck and take care” before hanging up.
After that conversation I lost touch with him. His phone was permanently switched off.
One week passed and then two. I was getting worried and weighing my options of initiating a search through the U.S. embassy in Panama, when he showed up home one morning. Unlike the other times when he returned beaming after his expeditions, he had a faint Monalisa-like smile which lit up his face, and he looked healthy and cheerful. His demeanour was calmer than usual as if he had found something really “fundamental”. He was in no hurry to share the story of his expedition, which he usually did, but just went on with his routine life. After a couple of days, my curiosity got better of me and I asked him, “Tell me what you have found.”
Jim did not answer for a while. He had a quaint look of trying to recall some very precious memory.
Then slowly came out the words. “As I told you, I set off on my journey with no particular guidance from any reliable source. It was tough right from the start. The area I had marked on my map was a group of seven small islands surrounded by mangrove forests. Each day I went to a new island, or so I thought, but soon found that there was no way of differentiating one from another, and that I was lost. I had enough food and water, but very little appetite. The weather was mostly pleasant with occasional mild drizzling. Throughout the day I collected samples in small vials and brought them back to the dinghy in the evening. At the end of each day I was totally drained physically and emotionally. Even then sleep was elusive. Four-five days passed like that, myself roaming around in those little islands.
“On the sixth day, in one of those islands, I came across a pool deep blue in colour, surrounded by trees and shrubs with beautiful foliage. The place had a peculiar charm to it and suddenly I had a feeling that probably I was near to something, not sure what. I collected a few samples from the shore. It was evening time and there was a mild breeze. I decided to spend some time there before moving on. I found the root of a mangrove tree, and sat beside it resting my back on the trunk.
Illustration: Gaurav (AI assisted)
Jim took a deep breath before continuing as if he was about to divulge some personal secret.
“I don’t know how long I sat there because I had dozed off a bit, and sleep takes away your sense of time. I felt a slight touch on my shoulders, as if a small bird or a butterfly perching, and opened my eyes. I was not, and still am not, sure whether I was dreaming, but I was looking into a pair of tranquil, blue, like the blue of the pool, eyes of a kind gentleman.
“He was standing in front of me with a smile on his lips. I don’t know from where he came because I thought the island, and all the nearby islands, were uninhabited. Nevertheless, I wanted to introduce myself, but he spoke first:
‘Jim, I know who you are. Not many people come this far seeking their origin.’
“I was mesmerised to the core by his words and sat there staring at him. But I was not seeing him nor hearing him any more. All my senses and my mind had shut off. I vaguely remember a few lines and images from the verses of the Gita, which my cousin from Bihar had quoted in his letter, flashing through my mind all at once:
‘Of this universe, I am the Father; I am also the Mother, the Sustainer, and the Grandsire….’
“It felt like I myself is a wave rising from the ocean we call the universe which can never be separate from the ocean. All the other existences are also like me but all bound together by some common thread.
With all these things flooding my consciousness, perhaps I might have fallen asleep. When I opened my eyes again it was broad day light and I was still sitting there with my back against that tree. There was no way of knowing how many days and nights had passed.”
His voice trailed off.…
There was no reason to doubt anything of what he said. After a few moments of just trying to digest what he had narrated, I asked,
“Didn’t you look for him when you woke up?”
Jim said with that quaint smile, “I didn’t really feel the need to.”
“So you want to go to India now to trace your nth cousin in Bihar?”
He didn’t take that bait either, but simply said,
“That ain’t necessary either. Because I no longer feel lonely. I have relatives everywhere.”
And from the look on his face I knew that the search was over for him.
A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
– Albert Einstein
(in a letter published in New York Post, 28 November 1972, as cited in Goldstein, E., & Stahl, B. (2015). MBSR every day: Daily practices from the heart of mindfulness-based stress reduction. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.)