Weird Waters - The beginning
Driving to work on a Saturday morning, Raghu was feeling frustrated. What the heck is going on in his company? Why am I supposed to work on weekends? He was annoyed by the callous attitude of his boss and the management. Nobody tells openly what we are working towards. It was not something new to Raghu, having spent 20 years of his career in a defense research organization. But today he was restless and disturbed. He knew he was a crucial piece of the big complicated jigsaw puzzle, that his current project was.
Raghu was an expert in electronic circuit design. For the past few months, he had been working on some special kind of amplifiers - a device that could listen to the feeblest vibrations and remain unaffected by the typical sounds that can be heard by humans. What was the amplifier for? Nobody would tell him. "Was it some kind of communication device to outer space? Whose voices would the device hear?" Raghu wondered. He had the prototype device in his bag lying on the back seat of his car, as he drove his Merc though the empty streets of Mumbai this morning.
This was his usual route from home to work - from Malabar Hill to Colaba driving through the Marine drive each day early in the morning to beat the Mumbai chaos. They say "Mumbai is a city that never sleeps". But in today's mood, Raghu felt that Mumbai is sleeping. Marine Drive was unusually deserted barring a few senior citizens talking a stroll. The cheerful chaiwala, whose spiced up masala chai brings kick starts the day of a few hundred Mumbaikars, had not open yet. The queue at the world famous Bhim vada pav center at Girgaum Chowpatty was small.
As Raghu drove past the Wankhede stadium, suddenly something caught his attention at the corner of his eye. A bright spot of light on the horizon across the bay. He turned his head to get a better view of the bright spot. But it not there anymore. After driving a few meters, he noticed a few rain drops on the windshield and the bright spot appears again on the horizon. Strangely, he cant see the bright spot if he turns and looks at it. It is only there by the corner of his eye. It is all dark and gloomy like before when he looks out of the window.
Raghu was getting impatient. Was he hallucinating? He could blame the restless sleep he had yesterday night, after working well past midnight. The project deadline was getting close yet he still hasn't gotten any results from his experiments. The prototype is ready as per his design. The simulations look all good. But he hasn't heard anything from the speakers of his amplifier. Of course, he didn't really know what sounds he expected to hear.
His thoughts were bouncing back and forth between his project and the bright spot by the corner of his eye. What could be shining on the horizon? It can't be the morning sun. The horizon on the bay is on the West. Everything else seemed dull except the intriguing spot on the sea.
The raindrops on the windshield increased in numbers, steadily gathering pace. And the bright spot getting brighter.....
That's when Raghu noticed that there was no rain outside. The raindrops are only on his windshield. No water droplets on his window. Nobody outside running helter-skelter for shelter. Just the car's windshield getting full of water droplets reducing the visibility of the road ahead. What the hell!!! Raghu switched on the wipers to clean up the windshield. "Swish, Swish!" Water gone.. In a split second, droplets back there blocking his view. "Swish, Swish!". Water gone again...
What is the mystery?
To be continued.....
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