The story so far:
"...lies, in the depth of darkness! Chapter 1 : Moment of grief" -> "Part 2: New life! New Beginning!" -> "Part 3: The ‘dare’ behind the ‘truth’!" -> "Part 4: Coming Out!"
Part 5: It ain’t known, till it’s reversed!
by sutirtho
March, 2006
It was the sixth semester of our engineering course. Haroon and I came back from college. Professor Sameer Mohammad took one of the subjects of Haroon’s class, and none of ours. We had different teachers assigned to the same subject. And someone from our department taught us the same as the one Professor Sameer taught Haroon’s branch. We ensconced after snacks, and like ever, we would discuss things that would sound interesting to us. Incidentally, Haroon started off.
“Reverse Speech!” Haroon said.
“What?” I asked.
“I said reverse speech, professor Sameer was telling us about that in the class.”
“And what the hell is that?” I asked.
“It seemed interesting, the least, to me!”
“Hmm… then why discuss? “
“You are among those in the thinker’s community, so I thought, you might find it interesting!”
“Crap, tell me what that at least is!” I scowled.
“There you go! Ok… wait, let’s try with something basic. Suppose you are speaking, and somebody asked you to reverse whatever you said.”
“Reverse as in, the sense? Like, I say that I am not going home, and the reverse of that would be I’m going home?”
“No bud! Reverse as in you say ‘you are going home’, and then you reverse it saying ‘home going are you’”.
“So..? What’s special in that, you are just screwing up the idea you are trying to communicate?”
“No doubt it seems all screwed up, but according to some people it makes sense! They say that research on this area is of Nobel calibre! Well that’s the premise about this whole thing. Let’s get into more detail.”
“Hey, wait a moment; you said you were not interested in the idea!”
“I think I’m now getting some interest, as I’m explaining things to you! You are always special you know!” Haroon winked.
I smiled and he started explaining all about reverse speech.
“Now think of this, what happens if you play a song backwards, for the moment, just think that your CD player has messed up, it’s malfunctioning and playing your song backwards!”
“That’s what they call ‘reverse gear’ on FM radio; they play it backwards and ask the name of the song for a prize.”
“Correct! And on air that’s for fun, but here, according to David John Oates, its reverse speech, i.e. when a recorded speech is played backwards has some interesting and serious connotations.”
“Umm… let me think, you mean to say that reversed speech has something to offer?”
“Yeah, Oates presented a hypothesis on this; he said that a person communicates two ideas that are related, whenever he speaks, one backward and the other one forward. Whatever our conscious mind discovers is the forward speech.”
“Two ideas! Does that mean, he feels anybody just speaks a double entendre always?”
“No buddy! You are getting it wrong! It’s about a forward speech, the idea communicated by that, and the idea you get when the same speech is played backwards.”
“But, that would be a muffled tone or something? And anyway not everyone could communicate two ideas all the time he’d speak? That’s preposterous!”
“He says the ideas are communicated intermittently, say every 15-20 seconds of casual conversation. The second message, i.e. the backward idea is embedded unconsciously in the forward one. To make it clearer let’s say that the conscious mind of the speaker speaks forward and the unconscious mind speaks backward. You with me so far?”
“Hold on.. hold on.. I’m hell confused!” I frowned.
“You were talking about the muffled tone, right? There will be low voices, unclear tones and gibberish, but at regular intervals you can actually hear very clear statements that make sense!”
“Doesn’t help! How?”
“Ok, here’s an example: It’s pretty famous though, you heard about the controversies regarding landing on the moon?”
“Oh yeah, I watched a video, there were so many questions!”
“Yeah, so talking about Neil Armstrong, consider his golden words ‘ .. small step for man ..‘, if you play that backwards it sounds like ‘Man will space walk’, which tells us about his true feelings at that time, that man will never land on moon, that he will always walk in space!”
“My gawd!! What was that? I mean, okay, it might sound like that, but how do you think it proves what he was actually thinking so unconsciously? Or, rather his subconscious mind had such a thought?”
“There are whole lots of good examples of such things, not just the one I cited!”
“Like?”
“Like Hillary Clinton’s reverse speech suggesting ‘I surely would fit in’, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Governor Acceptance speech - reverse of that saying ‘soon I’ll beat the law.’” There are more such interesting examples that suggest that a person truly speaks what’s in his mind, when his speech is heard in a reversed direction! Isn’t that something really good to think of?”
“Umm… I’ll surely do some research on this, the concept is really cultivable, and hence entices me!”
“Yeah, I too am finding whole lot of interest in that! Especially after discussing stuff with YOU!” Haroon smiled flirtatiously. He put some extra stress on the ‘you’.
“Hey .. hey why don’t we try something right away,” an idea flickered in my mind.
“How? What?”
“Shan’t we find some software on net which can play a recorded voice backwards?”
“Yes, yes.. I mean what a helluva idea! That is wow! Yeah, let’s try something.” Haroon looked excited.
We searched Google for that and found a site where a *.wav file could be uploaded and the site reversed it and played it backward. One could also save the reversed file on the local machine.
“Hence, thou shalt speaketh,” I chuckled.
“Umm.. what should we try? Okay, let’s try this – record it : ‘College life is fun’!”
As we reversed the sentence it sounded somewhat like “nnff ss ffila deglka!”
“Ha ha ha … that doesn’t make any sense,” I started laughing freakily.
“Hey wait, let’s play that again. Things don’t make sense much the first time you hear it.” Haroon suggested.
Encore: “nnff ss ffila deglka”!
“What the hell? You get anything from that?” I looked apprehensively at Haroon.
“Why can’t we make out something – let’s try … say ‘enough’ from ‘nnff’, ‘ss’ – take that as ‘is’; – it surely sounds like ‘is’ doesn’t it?”
“And what about ‘ffila’ and ‘deglka’?”
“Well, well let’s combine it – ‘ffiladeglka’”
“Philadelphia!” My eyes lit up.
“Enough is Philadelphia?? … Enough is Philadelphia!! Oh my god Sutirtho!! Enough is Philadelphia!! You get me?”
“No! Not even an iota!! I don’t get you!”
“You know my plan for higher studies?”
“Oh! Yes, so there’s some connection with Philadelphia?”
“Yeah BIG connection! I’m dreaming to get into Philadelphia University’s MS programme in Digital Design. You know I have a penchant for ICs and stuff, don’t you?”
“Oh! My God! This is fantastic! But do you think it meant that Philadelphia University is ‘enough’ for you to apply to?”
“Well, it might pretty well be the case that deep down my mind I want to apply just there, and nowhere else!”
“So you are, kind of, biased on that University, aren’t you?”
“There are other universities as well, but yes, I’m interested more in PU. Anyway, let’s cut down the MS stuff here, we’ve found something interesting to do here!” Haroon said.
“Umm… Okaay.. lets try this ‘Rock and roll’” I said.
The reverse sounded, “ell dorn cdo”. “Now, what’s that?” Haroon was surprised.
“It sounds like ‘El Dorado’ , I think,’ I said.
“What’s that el .. what ?” Haroon frowned.
“El Dorado – well that’s interesting! It’s a legend that tells about a place where there is abundance of Gold, Silver and other precious stones.”
“And how the hell do you know that?” Haroon was perplexed.
“Read that in one of the Satyajit Ray’s novels on the character Professor Shanku, the great scientist!” I replied calmly.
“For me and for you, El Dorado doesn’t make sense? Does it?”
“It might! It might! What if we had serendipity? If we, say, continued analysing sentences?” I said optimistically.
“You! And your serendipity!” Haroon laughed.
We tried out a few more sentences after that. In five out of ten cases we were able to make some meaning, and surprisingly three out of those five actually told something interesting about our thoughts. For example, I said ‘I love listening to rock music' and when reversed, it produced “kkssum kraw ut nnaisl val I” which sounded like “Exam screwed anyways well” and it was really a fact that I screwed up almost every exam the previous semester! In a similar way when Haroon said “The hostel food is so hell bad”, the reverse turned out to be “ddab llh os ss doof lethss ad” and when we heard it again it seemed as if he spoke “Doubles is duplex”, quite technical but made sense! We were enjoying that game pretty much, and we thought we’d continue that game for some time.
We discussed more at dinner, and we were, as if transported to a different world, we were not talking with other friends, just thinking about what we had just heard! Haroon wanted to go out for sometime after dinner, like every other day, and I had some important assignment to finish in ‘Analogue Communication’, so I decided to stay back.
I came back after dinner, I didn’t try to concentrate on my task, I kept listening to the reverse recordings, and I discovered a whole lot of things about reverse speech, as I found out more and more.
Haroon came back pretty late, I was waiting for him. His hair looked dishevelled and he seemed lost in thoughts.
“What happened?” I enquired.
“Aaaaah! Nothing.. just had a small fight with Anuj on that assignment submission stuff. Forget it; we always get into each other’s ways anyway. Hey… who’s that kid?” He pointed at the picture of one of my nephews on my table.
“He’s my nephew, isn’t he sweet?”
“Yes, he’s choooo chweet. I looove kiddies!” Haroon laughed. His smiling face and the twinkle in his eyes always mesmerized me; if among other features I had something to fall for, then obviously that’d be his smile.”
He seemed interested about my nephew, as he continued to ask about his school, whereabouts and other stuff. I felt bit uncomfortable answering so many questions, but I didn’t let that come over my face. But, when he kept nagging me about more, I had to stop him.
“Co’on Haroon, what’s the matter? You are asking too many things about Ryan!”
“He’s soo sweet; won’t I like to know more about him?” He winked.
“Anyway, will take you to my sister’s house someday, and you can meet him. For now, let’s concentrate on ‘reverse speech’”
“Oh yeah sure.”
And then I heard certain things that raised some doubts in my mind. The sentences Haroon spoke, when reversed sometimes had hints on children in them. The first one returned ‘Children are cute’, the second one was ‘Kiddies are nice’ and similar things. I was finding it tough not to sense something fishy in them. Though I couldn’t entirely trust the concept of reverse speech, as I’d not done much of research on that, but still an iota of doubt started lingering in me. I quickly recorded some more of his sentences and then he left my room as he had to work on the assignment as well like me. And since our set of questions was different, studying together wouldn’t have helped much.
After he was gone I reversed some of his sentences and I got ‘Sameer loves children’, ‘Kids play fine’. And those were stunning! Professor Sameer, well, he was one of my favourite teachers in the college. He’d taught us Digital Electronics, and I learnt a lot from him, when I started concentrating more in his class. There was absolutely no harm if he loved children. He was unmarried and had obvious reasons of loving them. I’d been staying with Haroon for the last three years, the first year in the same room, and that’s when we developed a relationship, but it’s still amazing to find that, even when I had known that guy for so long, still there were things about him that I felt I didn’t know! I couldn’t find what those reverse statements of him were referring to, but at the back of my mind I had something, and that was an eerie feeling that not everything was alright or proper! I also started thinking about his daily activities. A touché struck my mind; Haroon would go out every night for an hour or so, and nobody knew where he went. I never asked him, as I respected his privacy. There were couple of things necessary in a relationship, and he believed as did I, that respecting the needs of each other, and giving each other one’s own share of space was necessary. Similarly no one could become overly possessive, that was a definite invasion of personal space. But the discoveries that night made me think otherwise. What was that with Haroon, Professor Sameer and kids? Why everything he spoke had to do with kids?
I couldn’t work on my assignment; numerous questions started firing from nowhere, and that annoyed me. I kept tossing left and right on the bed the entire night. On one hand I found it quite preposterous to believe anything that reverse speech had to offer, on the other hand, I just couldn’t stop thinking and believe that everything was alright. I slept for an hour I guess and when I went to the college the next day, I began questioning every move of Haroon, though there were no kids in the college premise, still I doubted him then, I hated myself for that, but I did. I told to myself, I shouldn’t doubt the person I love, still I did.
I asked him directly “What’s with the kids dude? You seemed pretty much interested in kids last night?”
“What do you mean? I said I love kids, you think there’s any harm in that?” Haroon was disturbed.
“No, I don’t but why should everything point to children and kids?”
“Well, deep down my heart I might have profound love for kids, probably I will pamper my children so much,” He tried to make the discussion lighter.
I was not amused; I felt he was hiding something. I met Professor Sameer for some doubts, and I tried to get into a talk on kids.
“Sir, you know, I have a very cute nephew, and he wants to come to the college and meet my friends.”
“That’s so nice, why don’t you bring him here? And while you do that also bring him to me, I love kids anyway.”
I’d started hating that sentence - ‘I love kids’. Why everybody has to love kids?! I mean, kids are irascible, and why not get annoyed rather than loving them! I’m doubtless that kids are sweet, but wasn’t I finding that the people I was talking to were more inclined towards loving kids! Something, which once again doesn’t seem completely right!
I kept quiet almost the entire day; even Haroon tried talking with me quite a few times, but futile attempts for him all through. I made a plan for the night. I would surreptitiously follow Haroon when he’d go out that night.
Haroon came to my room after dinner; he wanted to talk with me as he sniffed some problem in my mood throughout the day. He tried all he could do to find out my problem, I produced circumlocutory replies to everything that he asked. I said I’d a problem that I’d discuss later and I needed some time of my own. He never got any clue for my ambivalence, and left for his daily nocturnal activity. I was ready for the espionage and I followed him discreetly.
He preferred walking, I guessed he did that everyday; I tried hiding myself in the shadows, and kept my eyes on him. He turned right after the play ground, and I wondered why he was going towards the back entrance of the college. I couldn’t completely decipher where he was heading to, but as I followed him I was assuming, he was going towards a professor’s house, probably Sameer’s. He reached the steps and slowly went up and knocked on the door. After a moment, Professor Sameer opened the door and he went in. I wanted to see more; I’d been to the professor’s house before so I knew that drawing room was visible from the kitchen window at the side. I peeped in through it after getting into his house compound stealthily. I couldn’t see anything or hear any noise. I moved in near the toilet in order to at least get some whispers, and what I could hear was some people sobbing very slowly. I tried to get a sneak peek through the little opening near the utility room; a small view port was luckily available to see what was happening inside. And what I saw inside caught me in jitters, I couldn’t believe my eyes; I felt fidgety! I pinched myself twice to absorb the truth that lay in front of me. My brain stopped working, it went completely blank, I was not able to process my thoughts for a moment; I’d lost the capability of thinking logically. I saw around six or seven small kids, all naked, shivering in fear, sobbing, crying, standing in front of Professor Sameer, who was teasing them physically, rather sexually! Haroon was ensconced at another corner with another bunch of kids. That was how they loved kids! My mind filled with hatred for these two creatures I adored in my life. I managed to take few snaps, using my cell, as proofs. Though, my power of thinking had gone to dogs, I thanked God for making me think in the right direction.
It was the sixth semester of our engineering course. Haroon and I came back from college. Professor Sameer Mohammad took one of the subjects of Haroon’s class, and none of ours. We had different teachers assigned to the same subject. And someone from our department taught us the same as the one Professor Sameer taught Haroon’s branch. We ensconced after snacks, and like ever, we would discuss things that would sound interesting to us. Incidentally, Haroon started off.
“Reverse Speech!” Haroon said.
“What?” I asked.
“I said reverse speech, professor Sameer was telling us about that in the class.”
“And what the hell is that?” I asked.
“It seemed interesting, the least, to me!”
“Hmm… then why discuss? “
“You are among those in the thinker’s community, so I thought, you might find it interesting!”
“Crap, tell me what that at least is!” I scowled.
“There you go! Ok… wait, let’s try with something basic. Suppose you are speaking, and somebody asked you to reverse whatever you said.”
“Reverse as in, the sense? Like, I say that I am not going home, and the reverse of that would be I’m going home?”
“No bud! Reverse as in you say ‘you are going home’, and then you reverse it saying ‘home going are you’”.
“So..? What’s special in that, you are just screwing up the idea you are trying to communicate?”
“No doubt it seems all screwed up, but according to some people it makes sense! They say that research on this area is of Nobel calibre! Well that’s the premise about this whole thing. Let’s get into more detail.”
“Hey, wait a moment; you said you were not interested in the idea!”
“I think I’m now getting some interest, as I’m explaining things to you! You are always special you know!” Haroon winked.
I smiled and he started explaining all about reverse speech.
“Now think of this, what happens if you play a song backwards, for the moment, just think that your CD player has messed up, it’s malfunctioning and playing your song backwards!”
“That’s what they call ‘reverse gear’ on FM radio; they play it backwards and ask the name of the song for a prize.”
“Correct! And on air that’s for fun, but here, according to David John Oates, its reverse speech, i.e. when a recorded speech is played backwards has some interesting and serious connotations.”
“Umm… let me think, you mean to say that reversed speech has something to offer?”
“Yeah, Oates presented a hypothesis on this; he said that a person communicates two ideas that are related, whenever he speaks, one backward and the other one forward. Whatever our conscious mind discovers is the forward speech.”
“Two ideas! Does that mean, he feels anybody just speaks a double entendre always?”
“No buddy! You are getting it wrong! It’s about a forward speech, the idea communicated by that, and the idea you get when the same speech is played backwards.”
“But, that would be a muffled tone or something? And anyway not everyone could communicate two ideas all the time he’d speak? That’s preposterous!”
“He says the ideas are communicated intermittently, say every 15-20 seconds of casual conversation. The second message, i.e. the backward idea is embedded unconsciously in the forward one. To make it clearer let’s say that the conscious mind of the speaker speaks forward and the unconscious mind speaks backward. You with me so far?”
“Hold on.. hold on.. I’m hell confused!” I frowned.
“You were talking about the muffled tone, right? There will be low voices, unclear tones and gibberish, but at regular intervals you can actually hear very clear statements that make sense!”
“Doesn’t help! How?”
“Ok, here’s an example: It’s pretty famous though, you heard about the controversies regarding landing on the moon?”
“Oh yeah, I watched a video, there were so many questions!”
“Yeah, so talking about Neil Armstrong, consider his golden words ‘ .. small step for man ..‘, if you play that backwards it sounds like ‘Man will space walk’, which tells us about his true feelings at that time, that man will never land on moon, that he will always walk in space!”
“My gawd!! What was that? I mean, okay, it might sound like that, but how do you think it proves what he was actually thinking so unconsciously? Or, rather his subconscious mind had such a thought?”
“There are whole lots of good examples of such things, not just the one I cited!”
“Like?”
“Like Hillary Clinton’s reverse speech suggesting ‘I surely would fit in’, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Governor Acceptance speech - reverse of that saying ‘soon I’ll beat the law.’” There are more such interesting examples that suggest that a person truly speaks what’s in his mind, when his speech is heard in a reversed direction! Isn’t that something really good to think of?”
“Umm… I’ll surely do some research on this, the concept is really cultivable, and hence entices me!”
“Yeah, I too am finding whole lot of interest in that! Especially after discussing stuff with YOU!” Haroon smiled flirtatiously. He put some extra stress on the ‘you’.
“Hey .. hey why don’t we try something right away,” an idea flickered in my mind.
“How? What?”
“Shan’t we find some software on net which can play a recorded voice backwards?”
“Yes, yes.. I mean what a helluva idea! That is wow! Yeah, let’s try something.” Haroon looked excited.
We searched Google for that and found a site where a *.wav file could be uploaded and the site reversed it and played it backward. One could also save the reversed file on the local machine.
“Hence, thou shalt speaketh,” I chuckled.
“Umm.. what should we try? Okay, let’s try this – record it : ‘College life is fun’!”
As we reversed the sentence it sounded somewhat like “nnff ss ffila deglka!”
“Ha ha ha … that doesn’t make any sense,” I started laughing freakily.
“Hey wait, let’s play that again. Things don’t make sense much the first time you hear it.” Haroon suggested.
Encore: “nnff ss ffila deglka”!
“What the hell? You get anything from that?” I looked apprehensively at Haroon.
“Why can’t we make out something – let’s try … say ‘enough’ from ‘nnff’, ‘ss’ – take that as ‘is’; – it surely sounds like ‘is’ doesn’t it?”
“And what about ‘ffila’ and ‘deglka’?”
“Well, well let’s combine it – ‘ffiladeglka’”
“Philadelphia!” My eyes lit up.
“Enough is Philadelphia?? … Enough is Philadelphia!! Oh my god Sutirtho!! Enough is Philadelphia!! You get me?”
“No! Not even an iota!! I don’t get you!”
“You know my plan for higher studies?”
“Oh! Yes, so there’s some connection with Philadelphia?”
“Yeah BIG connection! I’m dreaming to get into Philadelphia University’s MS programme in Digital Design. You know I have a penchant for ICs and stuff, don’t you?”
“Oh! My God! This is fantastic! But do you think it meant that Philadelphia University is ‘enough’ for you to apply to?”
“Well, it might pretty well be the case that deep down my mind I want to apply just there, and nowhere else!”
“So you are, kind of, biased on that University, aren’t you?”
“There are other universities as well, but yes, I’m interested more in PU. Anyway, let’s cut down the MS stuff here, we’ve found something interesting to do here!” Haroon said.
“Umm… Okaay.. lets try this ‘Rock and roll’” I said.
The reverse sounded, “ell dorn cdo”. “Now, what’s that?” Haroon was surprised.
“It sounds like ‘El Dorado’ , I think,’ I said.
“What’s that el .. what ?” Haroon frowned.
“El Dorado – well that’s interesting! It’s a legend that tells about a place where there is abundance of Gold, Silver and other precious stones.”
“And how the hell do you know that?” Haroon was perplexed.
“Read that in one of the Satyajit Ray’s novels on the character Professor Shanku, the great scientist!” I replied calmly.
“For me and for you, El Dorado doesn’t make sense? Does it?”
“It might! It might! What if we had serendipity? If we, say, continued analysing sentences?” I said optimistically.
“You! And your serendipity!” Haroon laughed.
We tried out a few more sentences after that. In five out of ten cases we were able to make some meaning, and surprisingly three out of those five actually told something interesting about our thoughts. For example, I said ‘I love listening to rock music' and when reversed, it produced “kkssum kraw ut nnaisl val I” which sounded like “Exam screwed anyways well” and it was really a fact that I screwed up almost every exam the previous semester! In a similar way when Haroon said “The hostel food is so hell bad”, the reverse turned out to be “ddab llh os ss doof lethss ad” and when we heard it again it seemed as if he spoke “Doubles is duplex”, quite technical but made sense! We were enjoying that game pretty much, and we thought we’d continue that game for some time.
We discussed more at dinner, and we were, as if transported to a different world, we were not talking with other friends, just thinking about what we had just heard! Haroon wanted to go out for sometime after dinner, like every other day, and I had some important assignment to finish in ‘Analogue Communication’, so I decided to stay back.
I came back after dinner, I didn’t try to concentrate on my task, I kept listening to the reverse recordings, and I discovered a whole lot of things about reverse speech, as I found out more and more.
Haroon came back pretty late, I was waiting for him. His hair looked dishevelled and he seemed lost in thoughts.
“What happened?” I enquired.
“Aaaaah! Nothing.. just had a small fight with Anuj on that assignment submission stuff. Forget it; we always get into each other’s ways anyway. Hey… who’s that kid?” He pointed at the picture of one of my nephews on my table.
“He’s my nephew, isn’t he sweet?”
“Yes, he’s choooo chweet. I looove kiddies!” Haroon laughed. His smiling face and the twinkle in his eyes always mesmerized me; if among other features I had something to fall for, then obviously that’d be his smile.”
He seemed interested about my nephew, as he continued to ask about his school, whereabouts and other stuff. I felt bit uncomfortable answering so many questions, but I didn’t let that come over my face. But, when he kept nagging me about more, I had to stop him.
“Co’on Haroon, what’s the matter? You are asking too many things about Ryan!”
“He’s soo sweet; won’t I like to know more about him?” He winked.
“Anyway, will take you to my sister’s house someday, and you can meet him. For now, let’s concentrate on ‘reverse speech’”
“Oh yeah sure.”
And then I heard certain things that raised some doubts in my mind. The sentences Haroon spoke, when reversed sometimes had hints on children in them. The first one returned ‘Children are cute’, the second one was ‘Kiddies are nice’ and similar things. I was finding it tough not to sense something fishy in them. Though I couldn’t entirely trust the concept of reverse speech, as I’d not done much of research on that, but still an iota of doubt started lingering in me. I quickly recorded some more of his sentences and then he left my room as he had to work on the assignment as well like me. And since our set of questions was different, studying together wouldn’t have helped much.
After he was gone I reversed some of his sentences and I got ‘Sameer loves children’, ‘Kids play fine’. And those were stunning! Professor Sameer, well, he was one of my favourite teachers in the college. He’d taught us Digital Electronics, and I learnt a lot from him, when I started concentrating more in his class. There was absolutely no harm if he loved children. He was unmarried and had obvious reasons of loving them. I’d been staying with Haroon for the last three years, the first year in the same room, and that’s when we developed a relationship, but it’s still amazing to find that, even when I had known that guy for so long, still there were things about him that I felt I didn’t know! I couldn’t find what those reverse statements of him were referring to, but at the back of my mind I had something, and that was an eerie feeling that not everything was alright or proper! I also started thinking about his daily activities. A touché struck my mind; Haroon would go out every night for an hour or so, and nobody knew where he went. I never asked him, as I respected his privacy. There were couple of things necessary in a relationship, and he believed as did I, that respecting the needs of each other, and giving each other one’s own share of space was necessary. Similarly no one could become overly possessive, that was a definite invasion of personal space. But the discoveries that night made me think otherwise. What was that with Haroon, Professor Sameer and kids? Why everything he spoke had to do with kids?
I couldn’t work on my assignment; numerous questions started firing from nowhere, and that annoyed me. I kept tossing left and right on the bed the entire night. On one hand I found it quite preposterous to believe anything that reverse speech had to offer, on the other hand, I just couldn’t stop thinking and believe that everything was alright. I slept for an hour I guess and when I went to the college the next day, I began questioning every move of Haroon, though there were no kids in the college premise, still I doubted him then, I hated myself for that, but I did. I told to myself, I shouldn’t doubt the person I love, still I did.
I asked him directly “What’s with the kids dude? You seemed pretty much interested in kids last night?”
“What do you mean? I said I love kids, you think there’s any harm in that?” Haroon was disturbed.
“No, I don’t but why should everything point to children and kids?”
“Well, deep down my heart I might have profound love for kids, probably I will pamper my children so much,” He tried to make the discussion lighter.
I was not amused; I felt he was hiding something. I met Professor Sameer for some doubts, and I tried to get into a talk on kids.
“Sir, you know, I have a very cute nephew, and he wants to come to the college and meet my friends.”
“That’s so nice, why don’t you bring him here? And while you do that also bring him to me, I love kids anyway.”
I’d started hating that sentence - ‘I love kids’. Why everybody has to love kids?! I mean, kids are irascible, and why not get annoyed rather than loving them! I’m doubtless that kids are sweet, but wasn’t I finding that the people I was talking to were more inclined towards loving kids! Something, which once again doesn’t seem completely right!
I kept quiet almost the entire day; even Haroon tried talking with me quite a few times, but futile attempts for him all through. I made a plan for the night. I would surreptitiously follow Haroon when he’d go out that night.
Haroon came to my room after dinner; he wanted to talk with me as he sniffed some problem in my mood throughout the day. He tried all he could do to find out my problem, I produced circumlocutory replies to everything that he asked. I said I’d a problem that I’d discuss later and I needed some time of my own. He never got any clue for my ambivalence, and left for his daily nocturnal activity. I was ready for the espionage and I followed him discreetly.
He preferred walking, I guessed he did that everyday; I tried hiding myself in the shadows, and kept my eyes on him. He turned right after the play ground, and I wondered why he was going towards the back entrance of the college. I couldn’t completely decipher where he was heading to, but as I followed him I was assuming, he was going towards a professor’s house, probably Sameer’s. He reached the steps and slowly went up and knocked on the door. After a moment, Professor Sameer opened the door and he went in. I wanted to see more; I’d been to the professor’s house before so I knew that drawing room was visible from the kitchen window at the side. I peeped in through it after getting into his house compound stealthily. I couldn’t see anything or hear any noise. I moved in near the toilet in order to at least get some whispers, and what I could hear was some people sobbing very slowly. I tried to get a sneak peek through the little opening near the utility room; a small view port was luckily available to see what was happening inside. And what I saw inside caught me in jitters, I couldn’t believe my eyes; I felt fidgety! I pinched myself twice to absorb the truth that lay in front of me. My brain stopped working, it went completely blank, I was not able to process my thoughts for a moment; I’d lost the capability of thinking logically. I saw around six or seven small kids, all naked, shivering in fear, sobbing, crying, standing in front of Professor Sameer, who was teasing them physically, rather sexually! Haroon was ensconced at another corner with another bunch of kids. That was how they loved kids! My mind filled with hatred for these two creatures I adored in my life. I managed to take few snaps, using my cell, as proofs. Though, my power of thinking had gone to dogs, I thanked God for making me think in the right direction.
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'Part 5: It ain’t known, till it’s reversed!' statistics: (click to read)
