The Bubble Rule

By Clement Binnings, Jr.

(Book 1 of "The Grover Series", Angel Through the Storms, first introduces Dr. Luc Fontainebleau, his girlfriend Lola and her son Grover, a spiritual avatar.)

Synopsis of Book 2: The Bubble Rule

Duryodhana Talwar, Indian Mafia mob boss now business tycoon, experiences a vision of a young boy, Grover, Keeper of the Flame. In it, he confronts another stranger, his own conscience calling him out. This, he cannot allow, thus he vows to find this child intruder and eradicate him.

Dr. Luc Fontainebleau is recovering from the psychological trauma caused by Lola's disappearance during Hurricane Katrina following her psychotic break. He, Lola and Grover are in Mumbai visiting friends while New Orleans remains under martial Law in the wake of Katrina and Rita. Lola takes action against a brothel exploiting child sex slaves. This leads to the rescue and their custody of an eleven-year-old girl from Nepal named Binita. Luc deems Lola's crusade to be irrational, that it arose from her own personal experience of childhood sexual abuse, and worries that it could trigger an exacerbation of her dissociative disorder. But a part of him really believes that she, like her son Grover, is an "angel". Thus his belief in her is continuously challenged by his scientific mind. When Lola's mission expands to encompass Grover's karmic entanglement in the life of Duryodhana Talwar, Luc has difficulty making the leap of faith required of him and disobeys those who possess a higher knowledge. This choice, not without warning, creates his own personal "Katrina" through which he must fight to save his mind from a hostile takeover by Talwar's treacherous tactics.

Ironically, Duryodhana Talwar is simultaneously fighting the same battle within himself as he faces the consequences of his past actions – where else, but in the field of Kurukshetra*.

*Kurukshetra allegorically refers to the inner battlefield within each of us whereupon the divine qualities (the Pandavas) of the soul battle with the baser qualities (the Kauravas) of the ego.
Author's note: The Kurukshetra War is a mythological war described in the Indian epic Mahābhārata as a conflict that arose from a dynastic succession struggle between two groups of cousins of an Indo-Aryan kingdom called Kuru, the Kauravas and Pandavas, for the throne of Hastinapura. (Wikipedia)

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483559148

Book preview

Prologue

I wonder if it’s like this on other planets where sentient beings have evolved, that it is their nature like ours to violate the laws of nature, to choose discordance over harmony with the life systems that support them, to so alter their ecosystems until the planet can no longer support their existence.

We appear to be hurriedly setting the stage upon which we will view our own looming extinction, a phenomenon as certain to happen as is the next fiery rise of the sun at dawn. If indeed this is happening in a universe governed by immutable laws, it must be necessary, this mad assault upon the animal kingdom, this assault upon our very selves — it must be a necessary part of the process by which we ultimately slay the animal within us. It must be necessary for us to stare directly into this blaze of reality, to experience the burn of our own animal mortality upon our retinae and to be blinded by it if we are to see beyond human vision.

Whether we burn like mountain goats overtaken by a lava flow or fossilize in the mantle, or whether we wither like rose buds that fail to blossom in the spring or ride the air to the forest floor like yellowed leaves from an autumn cottonwood, we will transcend solidity and find ourselves bodiless, for that is the nature of our souls. Our ignorance of this fact condemns us to ego-centered lives where survival of the fittest propels the rape and pillage of all nature’s gifts thereby creating the setting for our greatest lesson. Hail to the Masters who have already learned, to the Seers whose light illuminates a different way, to all those whose example gives us another choice.

This is what my experiences with Lola and Grover and now Duryodhana Talwar have me contemplating.

My name is Luc Fontainebleau. I’ve been interviewing people and chronicling the events of the last nine months, ever since Hurricane Katrina — my therapy, you know. I heard that’s helpful. So much has happened in the last year and a half, I feel compelled to cut and paste all these scribblings into some form of coherence, to create a story so I can look at it like I’m reading someone else’s, so that I might see into it differently, to feel it and not feel it at the same time, to try to make some sense of it, to fully learn the lessons it has to teach so that I won’t blow the same bubbles of illusion all over again, so that I won’t have to relive the pain of their popping.

As I sit down to write this, I am looking at pages written by a man who wound himself around me like a python around a bobcat. I still can’t fathom how his journal became mine, but it did and I’m grateful. I’ve been poring through it over and over trying to incorporate his story into my own, because it is necessary. His initial entry explains why he started it and why he felt compelled to record every happening, every encounter and conversation of every day and his thoughts about them. For him, it wasn’t therapy. It was to be his story, not mine. How ironic that I, of all people, would be his author. This man took an ax to the hard drive of my brain. What I have discovered between these leather covers are big chunks from the shatter, and with the help of others who were there, I’m repairing the damage. Associations of memory are happening.

Helping this process is my daily practice of meditation. And even though I’m not that good at it yet, it’s offering up profound insights, not least of which is that events and impressions recorded and stowed away in the archives of our subconscious minds are indeed accessible. I’ve learned that there is a state of superconscious awareness where every experience is stored for later viewing. Problem is — it’s hard to get there. As we all do, I create my own storms. Indeed, I created my own Katrina. When she blew ashore, the only refuge I could find was deep in the roots of my being, a place my girlfriend told me about, a place where the wind does not blow.

So — where to start this story? Childhood? There’s a lot there. Maybe I’ll go there, maybe not. However it unfolds, I expect many people won’t believe much of it unless they’re into the paranormal or believe in angels. You see, I’m in love with an angel. Well, at least that’s what I think she is. Not an angel as in a really good person or a do-gooder, you know — the kind of girl who’s always thinking of others. Nor is she the ideal girlfriend, the kind one fantasizes about, the kind who’ll do anything for you. No — she’s none of those, but I’m telling you — she’s a real, honest-to-God angel from who knows where in this infinite sea of life, this boundless realm of consciousness few of us have explored, God stuff if you will. Her name is Lola. She’s an angel with invisible wings and I’m a person in love.

And, as if that isn’t enough, her son Grover, who is now only six years old, is an avatar — at least that’s what I’ve been told and I believe it to be true. He’s the little fellow who taught me how to meditate. He’s a spiritual master I tell you — a guru of the highest order — one of those exceedingly rare beings who beholds the infinite tapestry of Life in every fiber, who weaves his way through it with full knowledge of its ultimate design and purpose. Believe it or not, his father was Lola’s father, an abominable man who viciously beat and raped her, his little girl, and he did the same to his wife. Claude Parrish was his name; Sinker they called him — disappeared in the Louisiana swamp during Hurricane Katrina.

To this day, Lola has no idea why Grover chose her to be his mother for this incarnation. That’s right — I said chose. It was Grover’s choice, not some random accident — this much she is sure about. Knowing her goodness the way I do, it makes sense to me. But her goodness also made her vulnerable at that time of her life, particularly in her bad little, isolated world, and Grover saved her. This too she knows, but why her? After all, he is the Keeper of the Flame, the light of truth, and who is she? Just one girl out of three billion plus. I can see her point: even if she knows she is different in a special sort of way, it’s hard for her to understand why a true avatar would actually choose her to be his mother.

The Keeper of the Flame, that’s what Lola calls him. Some psychic named Truman foretold this to her while her baby was yet unborn, and she accepted it without question. Interestingly, this Truman guy, this gentle giant who foresaw the relevance of Grover’s coming into this world, died the very day the child was born — but not before seeing the glowing infant in person, holding him and blessing him and being blessed by him. I never met the man, but Lola says he gave her faith that what was going on inside her was meaningful and true, far beyond anything this world could ever teach her.

I was Lola’s obstetrician at that time, almost five years before we actually entered into a relationship. My life was so empty then, but I didn’t know it. I filled it with work, women, alcohol, gambling — really, intoxication of any kind, anything to distract me from myself. Then Lola appeared one day in our overcrowded OB clinic. She was like a little girl back then, just eighteen, but she seemed so much younger — this sweet, shy, petite pregnant person — this mysterious being whose childlike innocence settled onto the buds of my soul like beads of dew glistening yellow, green and blue in the morning sun on that first real New Orleans day of spring, that day when the air is crisp and clean and the humidity is low and the noon rays have burned off the mold of winter. She roused the protector in me, and I owned that responsibility like I had never done before.

A rosebud sprouted in me that day, its seed sown into the soil of my being when I was just a child by my loving nannie Lizzie, bless her soul, I know she’s resting in peace. Lizzie never made it out of Houston after Katrina — too old and her kidneys shut down, but her heart was so full of love! Oh my — how much love that fat-cheeked, cherubic woman shared — not just with me, but with all the Fontainebleaus, and ultimately with my dear Lola! I’m forever indebted to her and am grateful that she got to witness the miraculous delivery of our angel through the storm before she passed. It confirmed her faith.

So I’m in love with an angel, right? The love part I know. The angel part, I believe. My experience with Lola through Katrina and these nine months after says this to me. But she’s not the same girl I ushered through pregnancy. She doesn’t need me in that way anymore, and I don’t need to be her father disguised as a doctor anymore. She’s transformed. She’s an inspiration. She’s so strong, completely self-reliant and true to the directives of her guru which enter her through some mystical connection with her son. Now, it is me who is the vulnerable one. I am the one needing a guru, and somewhere along the way I unintentionally adopted hers — Grover. I guess that makes me a yogi, but I’m telling you — I’m a dysfunctional yogi at best. Like I said, I’m not really good at this meditation stuff.

Why? The doctor in me, the scientist, the skeptic, keeps blowing bubbles of doubt into my worldly mind, doubt that keeps me from fully embracing the otherworldly — and not without merit I must say. After all, Lola did suffer a full-blown dissociation, a complete psychotic break that took her away from me for months, an inner storm that hurled her into the bottomless abyss of the insane and made me fear she was lost forever. Since her emergence, she insists that it is our world out here on the surface where the rest of us live and die and work and play that’s insane and that her descent into the deep was her only way to discover true sanity. What am I to think? A doctor. I mean, she’s way out there, or should I say in there? Perhaps I fear I might lose myself in the deep with her. Even with all my new experiences, it remains foreign, downright scary.

But look at her now, an angel with inconceivable healing powers. Can I trust she won’t go psychotic on me again? I’m scared to even get naked with her. That’s what triggered it the first time, her psychotic break — thanks to Sinker, of course. And yet I need her so badly in that way. I want so much to make love with her, to bury myself in her, to experience all that she is, all that we could be together.

She says I’m not ready. What does she know? Yes, I’m ready! I’m exploding with readiness. So I question and question some more, and the more I question, the more disquiet I experience, and the more disquiet I experience, the less ready and more dysfunctional I become. I can’t be celibate if that’s what an angel requires!

What to do? Lola knows I have a scientific mind. She counted on that when she recruited me to see her through her pregnancy. She tells me to apply the science of meditation, to be the scientist, the laboratory and the experiment and to judge what’s real or not based on my own experience. She doesn’t want me to believe just because she or anyone else says that I should. Belief, she says, is based on conjecture and is often blind; true knowledge is based on the accurate discernment of one’s own direct experiences. I guess that’s where I’m at — in a phase of active discernment, but can I trust my capacity for that? She even gave me a book to read, Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I haven’t read it yet, but she’s certain that if I do, it will convince the scientist in me that the experiences I had in India were real and not some trick of mind.

So I suppose that’s where I’ll start — in India — weeks after Hurricane Katrina taught us her lessons in New Orleans and her sister storm Rita chased us out of Houston. Contemplating these journals, mine and his, I am humbled by how much I do not know. My ignorance is a formidable adversary that impedes my progress each time I try to tunnel my way into soul awareness. So, impatiently I sit, waiting for my fingers to tap dance over the keyboard and impart meaning to what’s bubbling up from within.

I thought about titling this story the Autobiography of a Dysfunctional Yogi, but that’s not really what I’m inclined to make it. I think it will turn out to be just a piece of my story, a bubble of time in the life of Luc Fontainebleau, if that’s who I really am. You see — there are a few in India, I’ve recently learned, who call me Arjuna.

1

The Voice of Conscience

Out of the silent black vibrates a sound, at first barely audible like the buzz of a bee in the next room, then louder like it is inside the ear, tickling, then stinging as it intensifies — until the whole head gongs like a steeple bell striking its clapper, ringing all thoughts into a singular resonance. The sound subsides to a soothing hum — whereupon a voice is perceived by the quelled mind, the voice of a boy, innocent and pure, gentle, yet authoritative in tone:

Wherever you are, I AM.

You cannot escape me,

for I am the breath

and I am the breather;

I am the watcher

and I am the seen;

I am the Light

and I am the projector.

I am all that you are,

yet I shine

while you roam in darkness.

He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. The voice deepens, impossible to ignore, its pitch and inflection familiar, as if arising from his own chest, but it is not. Its message is alien.

Our whole Life supports you,

yet you choose for yourself alone.

You have blown yourself into a bubble,

where every breath you inhale

deflates the membrane of your limited world,

where every exhalation stretches its constraints,

where each numbered breath of your measured life

replaces an aliquot of oxygen with your expired wastes.

You have chosen to be a bubble floating alone through time.

As such, you are bound to burst.

Time defines you.

He mumbles his response, All bubbles burst — pop! — gone — just like that — nothing! Time is short, so of course I will choose for myself alone. Why on earth would I choose for anyone or anything that does not serve me?

The boy’s voice returns, calm and ageless, like no other he has ever heard:

So you believe,

and as you believe, it will be.

However you choose, I remain ever present, eternally patient,

ever ready to absorb you completely

the moment your membrane bursts,

and you choose of your own accord not to create another.

His heart pounds hard against the underside of his wired breastbone, rattling the iron bars of his rib cage. His chest tightens; sweat oozes through his pores like juice, wetting the silk fabric that adheres to his skin. Who are you? What do you want?

The boy’s voice disappears, its message echoing inside the chambers of his skull. He grabs his head, squeezing it with his powerful hands, as if sheer physical force will silence the uninvited discord. For a moment it seems to work; it dissolves into an incessant dial tone. But then, quite rudely, another voice, a deep one, booms loudly from the outside, a faceless voice, a voice he learned to silence long ago, a voice that has all the qualities of his own, a voice that in fact claims to be his own, a voice he once had to disown if he was to choose the life he has chosen.

Who am I?

Who are you?

You who were created in the image of the Almighty,

yet have chosen to bubble your existence;

You who walk upon the rocks and soil of the Creator’s garden amidst the stars

without acknowledgment or gratitude;

you who drill holes into Mother Earth’s body to extract nuggets and stones

so precious to you that you lock them away in vaults, guard them,

and slay your own innocence for them;

you who bore mile-long hypodermic needles through her crusted flesh

to siphon out her viscous lifeblood from her veins

so that you can fuel your petty desires while polluting her air, ground

and water;

you whose madness mines for her radioactive elements,

demonstrating the absurdity of your fears by concocting

life-obliterating weapons;

you who are foolhardy enough to play God with the aura of her ionosphere,

tearing at it with your electromagnetic spears of ignorance,

thinking your intelligence superior

to that which holds all Life in beautiful relationship with itself?

Who? Me? Duryodhana? You’re talking about mankind, not me!

Yes, you, the collective you and all you imagine yourself to be,

you who boasts your accomplishments

while you rape your Mother Earth of resources created for all her creatures;

you whose gluttony consumes one species after another into extinction,

bequeathing to your progeny a wasteland

where the Almighty intended earthly paradise to be.

What drives you but mortal fears and pitiful desires?

I am not afraid!

Then why the weapons,

the products of fear?

With them, you create a hell where heaven is and always will be.

You reside in your insignificant bubble,

a mere nothing in omnipresence,

a flicker of life lasting no longer than a flash

of iridescent green from a summer firefly.

You have chosen to be flesh rather than Spirit,

so must you arm yourself against and conquer

all those blowing the bubbles of illusion with you.

Who am I?

Who are you? — insanely playing God in our Beloved’s sacred creation!

"I didn’t make the goddamned weapons! They’re necessary. What

world do you live in?"

You are a bubble within a bubble,

each a little speck of nothing,

an imaginary human

within an imaginary world.

You blow bubbles in your mind

and believe them to be real.

Without them, you surmise you cannot exist,

but exist you do,

immortal as the Light you are.

You have created your bubble of mortality

and therefore are compelled to defend it.

Hell is your membraned enclosure.

He lashes out. You’re full of crap! Get out of here! Show me your face. I swear – I will find you wherever you are and destroy you. You don’t know who you are dealing with here!

The vague form of a boy emerges out of the boundless firmament, coming now into sharp focus, encompassing the entire field of his vision, standing erect, regal, his body wrapped in a luminous white cloth, the pupils of his eyes centered within hazel circles bordered by iridescent yellow rings, like filaments of fire jetting outward from penetrating portals of knowing.

Did you not recognize your own voice, Duryodhana? The boy asks with loving tenderness.

Once again, the etheric voice of Duryodhana thunders into his head, causing him to draw his knees up into his chest:

You are the ego of egos,

the enemy of Truth

the perpetrator of evil,

the projector of illusion.

The chaos of your mind

creates disharmony within our body.

Your selfishness tugs upon the strands of Life,

propagating erratic vibrations within our web,

disturbing the rhythms of the Divine.

We are integral with the One Life Living.

Therefore, Duryodhana, there is not one action you take,

not even one thought you hold,

that does not create a perturbation that generates an equal and opposite

reaction,

for that is the law.

I am part of that reaction.

I appear to you so that you might find me,

but fool yourself no longer — you can never slay me.

I’ll find you, you little boy, stealing my voice, pretending to speak for me! You know what I’ve done to little boys, don’t you?

The image of the boy reappears, then disappears, replaced by a vision of himself, Duryodhana, standing atop a towering mountain of smoldering bodies, the corpses of all humans past and present, steaming, stiff and rank beneath his feet. He raises his golden staff toward the sun with his left arm, expands his chest and beats on it with his right fist, I am Duryodhana, the conqueror!

The sun instantly bursts forth in great flares that reach toward the earth and blind his sight. He feels the earth tremble; the pile of rotting humanity under his feet shifts and slides like a huge stack of slimy logs suddenly unbound; he hears the earth’s mantle crack and grate, then split, the rift filling rapidly with molten fire that spews upward into the sky. The earth herself seems to be responding to the call of the sun. He casts aside his staff and slides down the steep slope of burning bodies, hearing the sizzle of boiling tissue and the popping of expanding cavities, inhaling the thick putrescence of smoking decomposition. From above, a rain of red-orange cinders pelts him, forcing him to burrow his way like a maggot into the mound of death he created.

Baby, baby — wake up, wake up! You’re having a nightmare! She’s nude, leaning forward on her elbows and knees, her back arched down so that her rear curves up and over like a tulip bent sideways on a stem, the weight of her upper body indenting the silk-covered Vividus mattress. A rose-colored sheen reflects off her oiled bronze skin from a string of illuminated bulbs draped over the headboard.

Kama? He’s panting. The sheets are drenched with the liquid of fear, fear he has never experienced, fear he cannot let her see. He reaches out and pulls her down on top of him. Man — that was intense!

Tell me.

No. It was just a dream. I was asleep and now I am awake, thanks to you. It is out of my mind. The surge in his groin expands into his arms which he wraps around her and pulls her down on top of him. Come here.

Hmmmmmmm! She slithers into his embrace and lowers her face onto his chest, the tip of her tongue dabbing away sweat beads that line a vertical scar bisecting his breastbone. Her chin raises toward his where their lips meet and compress, then her tongue wanders up the ridge of his nose to the center of his forehead, licking the gnarled flesh of another scar — this one, ugly and deformed, like a squashed starfish.

∞

It’s early dawn just before sunrise. Duryodhana sits low on his gold velvet sofa, carefully unwrapping the strap to a new leather journal embossed with his initials below an intricate design. His feet rest on the edge of an ebony table that gleams, reflecting curved patterns of light shining down from large pendant lamps hanging from a bird-shaped mobile. The wires suspending it from the penthouse’s twenty-six foot ceiling are almost invisible. The cone of light imparts coziness to this corner of the spacious room. He is wearing a red silk robe tied at the waist, the V between the lapels exposing the swell of well-honed pecs rising from up on either side of the valley of his breastbone. Down the center of this gray-bronze vale runs a linear scar, slightly raised like a mole burrow under clay. The robe’s tie at the waist hides a small, but noticeable, abdominal paunch fed by decades of discriminating gluttony. He sits up, sliding his feet to the rug as he opens the cover.

His confidant, Moha, seated on a chair to the side, leans forward and pours himself a cup of tea from a silver kettle. As he sets the kettle back down on the hand-painted tray next to pressed linens, he asks, What is that? You want to read to me?

Yes, my friend. Duryodhana fans the white pages in front of Moha.

The pages are blank.

Not all. This is my journal. I just started it.

Well, good for you. It should be private, yes?

I had a vision, Moha. Something vital is happening. I don’t know what, but I do know that I must record everything until it is finished. I need to share with you my first entry?

If you must.

This is strictly confidential, you understand.

Moha sips his tea. Of course. I am listening.

Duryodhana starts, Wherever you are, I am.

In English?

He spoke to me in English.

Who?

A boy. Listen. I will start over. Do not interrupt.

Moha sits back, his arm supported by a pillow.

Duryodhana continues: "Wherever you are, I AM. You cannot escape me, for I am the breath and I am the breather …" When he finishes, he closes the book, carefully straps the covers and sets it on the table.

That is weird stuff, my friend. Why do you read this to me? I do not want to hear your nightmares.

It was not a nightmare. That much I am sure about.

A bad dream. That is all. Forget it.

No Moha, it was a vision — of great importance.

I do not understand.

That boy! He is fucking with my head!

The expletive makes Moha sit up straight and answer firmly, Duryodhana. The boy is not real. What boy could say those things?

Well this one did! I cannot get the image of that little fucker out of my head. He is here. I know it.

Where?

His eyes drill into Moha’s. In Mumbai!

Moha, knowing the look, hesitates, then dares to counter. Believe me, it was a dream — a vivid one, yes, but just a dream, my friend. Let it go.

No, I tell you; he is real! I know it! I know that boy!

You have seen him before?

"I tell you, I recognize him. He is close. I can feel it. Not only that, he wants me to find him. I could hear it in his voice."

Hear what exactly?

Do I need to read it to you again? He challenged me! Me! Duryodhana Talwar! Duryodhana stands up and walks over to the lofty window overlooking the Arabian Sea, his silhouette husky and dark against the brightening peach-gray, predawn sky. He stares out, then turns back and orders, Get me a police artist. We need to create a sketch of this boy while he is still clear in my mind.

But we leave for Dubai tomorrow.

So? We bring the artist with us.

Then what? Are we going to look for some kid you have never laid eyes upon in a city of twelve million?

Not we. They! They will look for him, and they will find him. You know they will, Moha. They always do. He turns his palm up greasing his fingertips and grins.

Okay, they find him. Then what? We do not need this distraction. We have important projects that need our full attention.

He said I was afraid. He said he would absorb me. He called me a little speck of nothing! He is delusional!

"That is what I am trying to tell you. This whole thing is delusional. How can it be real? What if it was just a crazy dream?"

You questioning me, Moha? Duryodhana retorts, his nostrils flared.

Whatever you say. We will get right on it. Moha shakes his head in disbelief.

We are going to find the little son of a bitch and eject him from the planet!

Moha bows without making eye contact, then turns away.

∞

The sketch artist, a slender fellow in his mid-twenties with a sooty complexion and alert eyes, sits aboard the luxurious corporate jet, his leather chair swiveled toward his client. The point of his pencil curves lines on white paper while Duryodhana Talwar answers his questions. So you saw this little boy up close, yes?

Yes! Closer than you are to me, then so close we were nose to nose, making him look like a Cyclops.

Your face — you touch it his?

Yes — something like that.

Intimate, was it?

Too intimate!

Uncomfortable, yes?

Never mind. Draw him!

"Okay. Do I have it the shape of his head?

The jaw, the chin — not so square — smaller, rounder — like a sling holding a Shiva lingam stone.

The artist erases and deftly strokes the carbon tip of his pencil from the ears down.

Like to that?

Good. The forehead — taller.

How tall?

Exceptional — arrogant.

Oh, yes, I am understanding.

Yes, perfect — but those are not his eyes. His eyes were striking, penetrating. Duryodhana watches as the young artist focuses intently on the work laid out on the table in front of them. He circles the point of his pencil in the air just off the paper as if waiting to receive some enlightening insight before he can make another mark, but it just hovers like a hummingbird beak over a goldenrod. The Chief Inspector had bragged about this fellow, saying he was a natural, a self-taught prodigy who never set foot in any university, that his true talent was not just drawing, but discerning both the image his client describes and the character it represents. He is one of those rare artists who can magically impart life to a portrait. Duryodhana is counting on that and he waits, tapping his foot to a rapid beat.

After a long pause, the artist asks, What color?

Duryodhana closes his eyes, drawing the image into focus in his mind’s eye. The whites were bright, glistening like the finest of pearls sitting in the fluid of an oyster shell.

The artist pinches a corner of the sheet and with a swift lift and tear, discards it to the side where it curls up on the carpet. He reaches into his pack and removes a black case which he opens, revealing six trays of sharpened prismacolor pencils. Color, yes, he remarks as he grins widely.

Good. Mr. Talwar sits back, enjoying the alacrity with which the young man recreates the face in shades of color. He stops at the eyes.

What else? How were they striking? Were the pupils pinpoint or dilated?

Open wide, and the irises were honey brown, sprinkled with fine gold dust.

Like these?

Yes, but more like tiny jets of flame shooting out of those black holes.

He colors the eyes, sharpening the points of his pencils many times to sketch the finer-than-hair filaments of the delicate tissue of the irises.

Duryodhana watches with amazement as the image emerges. Yes. You have captured them.

His hair?

Short, curly, dark brown and soft like the finest wool from the chin of a pashmina goat.

His complexion?

Like the lightest of Northern Indians.

Very interesting, this boy. This face — it shows to me innocence, even wisdom.

Duryodhana sits back to look at the face in entirety and is pleased, then counters, No — you are wrong. Look at those eyes. Tell me what they say to you.

Like I said…

Enough! You have performed magnificently. A true artist! He waggles his head in true appreciation. "Tell your boss you will be detained for a few days. I will make certain that he receives a generous gift for your services. And you, my friend, will enjoy the