Three Instances When My Thoughts Manifested as Happenings
A Response to a prompt by Liberty Forrest, Author
Incident 1
For two tropical creatures like my husband and me, it was bitterly cold. It was the August of 2019 and we were watching the effervescent revelry of a Melbourne mob. It was 11 pm, and I was in one of my favourite spaces on the planet, the Queen Vic. market in Melbourne, the venue of the the winter-night-market.
Bands of revellers, with ear phones, were dancing and singing along to music only they could hear. Food from all around the world, curios and clothes, wine and cheese, coffee and cakes, were being sold at tiny counters spaced around the market place. Small raised platforms had enthusiastic actors and singers performing for no other recompense than applause from the happy crowd gathered around them.
I had already had a glassful of mulled wine, enough to tumble me into tipsy joie de vivre. I was elated; the man I live with regarded my grinning face and smiling face with a jaundiced eye and pronounced in stately tones that ‘we better go back home before it is too late.’
I forced the rest of my yawning family to stay back for some more stolen moments and then we wove our way to the car park. I was shivering as much with excitement as with the cold, and I remember wishing fervently that I had a house close enough to Vic Market to be able to walk back home, even if the last tram had stopped plying. Close enough that I wouldn’t have to depend on my sons driving us long distances to their homes after the Festival.
And now here we are. Close to my favourite spot, living in a space all our own, close enough to walk to Vic market when the fancy takes me. Fancy doesn’t take the man I live with. Chances are that if Fancy came anywhere close, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, he would shrivel her with a caustic, saturnine look. Sigh.
Incident 2
30th July, 2004.
We were returning from a friend’s dinner party. The time was 10.43 at night. My husband was driving the car and he is a slow, careful, conscientious driver. I was seated next to him. I was angry, anxious, troubled. He was unhappy, missing his firstborn more than he cared to admit.
My elder son had left home for Australia and higher studies. He was travelling out of the country for the first time, to a place where he knows no one and would have to look out for a place to stay. Knowing how careful he is with money, we knew he would be going without eating if it meant saving money…
For me, it was not easy living in a joint family, and before we set out from home, there had been a heated, and completely unnecessary argument with my mother -in-law that had agitated me. All these thoughts were roiling inside my head, as we drove through an unlit, lonely stretch of the highway. All of a sudden, a thought popped into my head, “If we have an accident here, no one will even know what has happened to us.”
The next thing I knew, there was a crashing, splintering sound, and our car was literally airborne. A dumper truck and a private bus had been speeding, trying to overtake each other, just behind us. Which of these actually struck us, I don’t know to this day.
Our car sailed to the level of the street lamp-post, tumbled twice, and came to rest, upright, facing the direction we had come from. The roof of the car had caved in. So had the doors. Every particle of glass has broken. There were pieces of glass in my eye, between my wedding ring and the skin of my finger, in my hair, inside my shoes. And my husband was slumped over the wheel, unmoving, deaf to my calls and entreaties.
People gathered around the completely totalled car. A police patrol came by, lights glaring, klaxon blaring. I shook my husband, calling his name, dazed, disoriented, and he sat up groggily.
They pulled us out of the car, the official and unofficial custodians of the people, together. An eye witness and some of the policemen had a whispered conversation before walking back to us as we leaned against the car, supporting ourselves and each other, dazed and shaken.
Another eye-witness, a poor villager who had been lugging a sack of rice to his home, saw a car flying out of the sky, straight at him, and had fainted in fright. When we were pulled out of the wreck of what was once a car, he was lying stretched out on the road.
“Did we kill him?”, I remember asking myself groggily. But he was alright, after he was shaken awake with water and voices.
The crowd, and the police, were asking each other, sotto vocè, and aloud, “Are they alive? Both of them?”
We were, thanks to the grace of God.
…
My friend assured me knowledgeably, when I narrated the incident to her, much, much later, “ You made it happen.” I stared back at her, shocked and still shaken, and she stared back and nodded at me, with perfect certainty.
Incident 3
I take a day’s leave from work in order to go and visit a retired colleague, on her birthday. She has been recently widowed and I don’t want her to be alone that day, of all days. Our friendship has been going through a series of ups and downs, but I resolve to put those aside and be there for her on this important occasion.
It is not easy to get a day’s leave in August, owing to term exams and assignments, but I manage it.
I call up my friend.
“Wish you many happy returns of the day, A____,” I tell her. “I hope you have a wonderful day and a great year ahead of you.”
“Thank you,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice.
“I am coming over,” I tell her, “with your birthday card and gift.” I always send and gift and hand-written birthday cards to people I know.
There is a brief silence at the other end.
Then my friend says, “You don’t need to. There are lots of people coming over, and I might not have time for you…”
It was like a slap in the face. I literally gasped.
I don’t remember how the conversation ended. I sat down, my mind churning with emotions, foremost among them, a sense of hurt. Should I go visit her? Shouldn’t I? Why did she say what she did?
And close on the heels of that, a thought. I wish I didn’t have to.
I was still thinking and hurting, when I heard a strange gagging noise from my mother-in-law’s room and I rushed in to find that she was on the point of throwing up. She is 85 years old and usually very spry but she has hyperacidity which comes to the fore from time to time. On that day, it was worse, much worse, than usual.
I supported her and took her to the washroom. I had to do that through the day.
I didn’t visit my friend that day. I couldn’t.
…
All through my life, I have seen things like these happening. Times when rage and wrath, barely controlled, have turned into cataclysms so intense that I can’t think of them, to this day, without a shudder. These are incidents, far too personal and private, to relate here.
Is it possible that our thoughts actually make things happen?
©️ 2022 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
This story is a response to the following prompt:
Shoutout to Trista Signe Ainsworth for this prayerful piece to begin a Monday morning with:
