The Interface

By JD

“As the jet began its descent at JFK International Airport in the spring of 1997, Jay looked out of the window. It was just after sunset and his heart pounded as he soaked in the dusky silhouette of New York's skyline with a mixture of awe and apprehension. The announcement from the cockpit “We have landed at JFK International Airport— The temperature outside is 42 degrees Fahrenheit...” reverberated like a distant cacophony as ‘screen memories’ appeared and disappeared in his mind’s eye-- in the few minutes while the plane taxied, bits and pieces of his life hitherto, flashed back at the speed of light.”

In the next two decades, Jay’s life would odyssey through his American dream and frightful nightmares as he encounters love, sex, success, trauma, death, rebirth and the paranormal. His undying love for Nina will compel him to explore new horizons of knowledge and venture into the realm of metaphysics and ‘life after death’ in his quest to communicate with the departed souls, in binary language using the websites of dead persons as the Interface...

• Language: English
• Publisher: JD
• Release date: Oct 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370598113

Book preview

The Interface

by JD

Self Published First Edition

October 2016

Dedicated to Readers all over the World

Copyright Reserved by Author

[e-mail]

Declaration:

This is a work of Fiction. Any Resemblance

to real person(s) or event(s) is Coincidental

CHAPTER I

As the jet began its descent at JFK International Airport in the spring of 1997, Jay looked out of the window. It was just after sunset and his heart pounded as he soaked in the dusky silhouette of New York's skyline with a mixture of awe and apprehension. The announcement from the cockpit We have landed at JFK International Airport— The temperature outside is 42 degrees Fahrenheit... reverberated like a distant cacophony as ‘screen memories’ appeared and disappeared in his mind’s eye-- in the few minutes while the plane taxied, bits and pieces of his life hitherto, flashed back at the speed of light.

Thank you for traveling Air India— transit passengers may please contact our ground staff… the soft professional voice of the airhostess brought him back to reality and he got out of his seat and reached for his hand baggage. Walking out of the sky bridge, he set foot for the first time on foreign soil. He did not remember the brief conversation with the immigration officer and the queue through customs as he nervously walked out of the airport trying to absorb the culture shock thrust upon his American dream.

Born in a middle class family in the crowded megacity of Calcutta in eastern India, Jay was the only issue of his parents and had spent most of his childhood in a boarding school in the hills of Darjeeling. Even though Jay seldom got to see his father and their interactions were brief, his father was his role model and Jay always tried to imitate him. Jay had just completed boarding school and come down to Calcutta when his father, an officer in the Indian Railways, died-- ironically, in a train accident. He was 16 years old then.

Lonely, and living with his mother, Jay rekindled his childhood friendship with Roma, a neighbour and family friend. During his long winter holidays, they used to meet officially at every family occasion and unofficially more often than that. Roma was a girl of average looks with light brown complexion, naturally curly black hair and bright eyes. She had an attractive figure and small, firm breasts– she was intelligent, broad minded and adventurous. As Jay and Roma grew up, they explored each other physically but frequently debated and argued over a range of subjects from women’s liberation to the plight of street children in cities to faith and religion. Roma was the girl who not only surrendered her virginity but also in exchange took his too, she was his first heartthrob and his first heart break with mostly happy memories in between…

A year after his father’s death, his mother took up a teaching job in Bombay and they moved to the city of glitz and glamour that attracted millions of people from other parts of India every year. While parting from a sobbing Roma, they vowed to keep in touch and meet at the first opportunity, but with time their letters became shorter and less frequent, the physical distance between them and other emerging priorities prevented them from uniting ever after. Finally, their breakup became a reality when Jay learnt that while in college, she had fallen in love with her teacher, twenty years her senior. Roma graduated with arts, and cracked the Civil Services examinations to join the Indian Foreign Service.

As for Jay, his excellence in mathematics ensured him admission to the best of institutions. New faces began appearing in his life, the aspiring models, divas and would-be-actresses of the glamour world. In his first few weeks in Bombay, he got the hang of the inherent contradictions of the mega-polis. Bombay is home to the mega rich and super stars but also has the largest slum in Asia. It is the finance capital of India but also the hub of a thriving underworld of organized crime. He realized that the backbone of the city is its hard-working, efficient and disciplined middle class cosmopolitan population which along with the railway network, held the city together.

Jay eased himself into his new surroundings and began indulging in physical relationships, often with multiple partners without much mental involvement. His obsession with books, chess and yoga, trained and opened up his body and mind but left him with very little spare time and fewer true friends, although his multifarious activities kept him in the midst of a multitude of colleagues and acquaintances.

The one woman from those glittering years whose memory stood the test of time and the one he could not erase from his mind was Mona, a Russian airhostess five or six years older than Jay, with an exquisite figure, smooth fair skin and long straight jet-black hair running down to her waist. They had met quite by chance during a convocation while she was kind of lost while looking for the washroom— he showed her the way and during the brief interaction, charmed her enough to make her part with her phone number. There was no looking back thereafter. She would come and go at odd hours every time her flight landed in the city but Jay did not mind as she was absolutely stunning in bed. Their physical interaction ranged from quickies to whole weekends depending on her flight schedules. She probably slept with pilots and mature men in other cities but he had a feeling that she always craved for him, she had taught her tricks and positions that he had never before imagined and could ignite his passion anytime of the day or night. In between their physical sorties, they took long walks on the Juhu beach not far from her rented apartment in Juhu Tara Road where they usually met and discussed everything from Marx, Freud and Darwin to perestroika and