A historic victory in cricket by Team India at the Lords. And a bookshelf crash-landing on the chair of Swaraj seemed connected. Find out how, in this humourous tale, exclusively for Different Truths.

An earthquake begins with a rumble somewhere. Then some natural and perhaps supernatural forces conspire to amplify the rumble. It keeps growing and growing. Finally, it becomes so powerful that it brings down whole towns and cities. Something similar must have happened on 16^th August this year that brought down my bookshelf.

However, when you think about such accidents, you realise that you cannot explain everything. There is always something that lies outside the chain of causal connections. The origins of such accidents are always arcane. However hard we may try. But in any case, we must try to prevent their recurrence.

Cricket History in Lords

On16^th August, the Indian team rewrote cricket history in Lords. It was and will remain a memorable day for our cricket crazy nation. There are two reasons for that. First, it came a day after India’s 75^th Independence Day. Second, the venue where history was rewritten happened to be the Mecca of cricket. I will remember this day for another reason also. The victory of the Indian team synchronized with the crash-landing of my bookshelf. But first things first.

It was the last session of the last day of the second test match. Nobody would have imagined that the English team would capitulate so easily. Even I could not. I was busy doing some work on my desktop. At around 9.50 pm, I received a phone call from a friend. “Are you watching the cricket match or not? If not, then go and watch it,” he commanded. “But why?” I asked. “We’re winning,” he quipped and hung up.

The Indian team winning against our erstwhile rulers is always a great sight. As it is, nationalistic sentiments were already at the peak. I dared not miss watching our adversaries being pounded to submission. I rushed to the TV though I was well aware of the perils of doing so. My wife was watching her favourite serial. I knew my hard won domestic peace could be in jeopardy if I flipped the channel. But no sacrifice is too great for watching the English team biting the dust. In no way it was an inauspicious occasion to ignore her angry looks.

Retributive Justice

Retributive justice was visiting the erstwhile colonisers. India needed only three wickets to power their way to dominance. Joe Root had already departed with a glazed look on his face as replays showed. Having tasted blood, the Indian pacers were going for the jugular.

The last two English batsmen proved rabbits and fell in a trice. Bumrah was bamboozling the opponents with his booming bouncers. The ninth batsman fell to his guile. True to his name meaning light or lamp, Siraj illuminated the way to the pavilion for the last one. The English were outwitted and outplayed. Kohli, who is never short on adrenaline, was jumping and shouting his battle cry. One could see in his charged visage something of a gorilla, hulk or superman. He could even be all these three together. I could imagine most Indians hollering in unison with him., just like me. All the echoes must have resonated in the whole of England.

The raw animal energy leaking out of the TV screen had impacted me also. Trying to emulate Kohli, I jumped from the sofa. With clenched fists I shouted “Yahoo”. My wife gave me an unforgettably unforgiving look. She thundered, “What’s this? Do you think you are Shammi Kapoor? Look at your age. What will the neighbours think?” I ignored her admonition. I was rather happy that she had likened me to a Bollywood hero. So what if he was not alive anymore!

Display of Aggression

Despite the display of aggression by both sides, the match ended on a happy note. Not for the English team of course, but for us. Emotions had been running amok on the field since day one. But, one should never mind a bit of banter, some sledging, a few cuss words. Belligerence on the field does not mean that cricket is no longer a gentleman’s game. Bruised bodies and lacerated egos are a part of any gentleman’s game these days.

And now I come to the incident that made this day memorable for us. Despite being a non-drinker, the victory of the underdog had put me in high spirits. I was still in my nationalistic cups when a loud sound emanated from our bedroom. It was as if a car had crashed into the bedroom wall. There was a loud thud, followed by a clang and sound of glass shattering. My wife forgot her anger, and I came to my senses. We ran towards the bedroom. It was the bookshelf affixed to a wall overlooking my computer table that had come crashing down.

Crash-landed on Chair

It had missed the computer table by a whisker and crash-landed on my chair. The floor was littered with shards of broken glass. All the books were scattered here and there. The spine of only one was damaged. It was Mason’s The Men Who Ruled India. When the reality of the mishap sank in, we heaved a sigh of relief. It was a narrow shave. What if I were in the chair? What if I had not ignored my wife’s admonitory looks? What if my friend had not asked me to watch the match? All these aborted possibilities were ripe with all kinds of sinister potential.

Why the shelf came down was a mystery. My wife reasoned out that it was due to the weight of books. She said, “Didn’t I tell you so many times not to stuff the shelf with heavy tomes?” She was right but her accusatory tone? I won’t say anything about it. “No, it isn’t because of that,” I tried to counter her with a scientific explanation. I went on, “You see how bounteous the rains have been this year? The air is always dank. Paper being hygroscopic absorbs water. Not only the weight of the books, their volume also increases. The real culprit is the weather. Extreme weather conditions are already playing havoc all over the world.” I did not say that the wisdom contained in books also adds to their weight. It would have sounded too esoteric. She remained unimpressed even with my very elegant scientific explanation.

In the silence of the night, I started brooding over other likely causes. There were endless possibilities. The T clamps securing the shelf could have given way. The plywood could have become weak. And the insurrection by termites can never be discounted. There could have been a mild earthquake missed by the seismograph. And so forth and so on. But all these were boringly prosaic explanations. There could be some other wild and exciting reasons as well. They may appear surreal as they belong to the realm of the figurative. But then how can one be any distance away from the figurative when thinking of books?

Inhabited by Spirits

The words of the Chilean magic-realist author Isabel Allende gave me a haunting cue. According to her, “The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.” Could this be true? The more I thought about it, the more convincing her words appeared.

There were ninety odd books stacked in the overpopulated shelf. Authors from different ages, climes and genres were vying with each other for space. There were many English authors sandwiched between their critics and postcolonial thinkers. The Holy Trinity of postcolonial theory, Bhabha, Spivak and Edward Said, was also there. Heavy duty thinkers like Heidegger, Sartre and Lacan too were gracing the shelf. It is a different matter that they were there to impress the visitors.

That one-man demolition squad called Derrida was giving them uneasy company. Some outsiders like Camus, Fernando Pessoa and Sylvia Plath occupied a corner. To prompt them all to spectral mischief were books on the occult by Colin Wilson. This variegated assemblage of diverse minds was an invitation to tectonic collisions. This presence of this motley crowd was surely the proverbial smoking gun.

Mysterious Intellectuals

To begin with, it might have been Kohli’s battle cry that acted as a trigger. Did it first stir the English authors belonging to the imperial period? Or did the anti-colonials break into a celebratory mood first? Nothing could be said about the original causes. Mysterious are the ways of intellectuals that make it difficult to make wild conjectures. But certainly, there was some commotion.

The spirits booked and sentenced on the pages for long must have cut themselves loose. Once abroad, a few of them must have gone through the roof. There must have been a pandemonium. The overspill of the battle of spirits had to have some material consequences. The shelf itself was too narrow a battlefield. Consequently, the battleground itself caved in.

Well, I cannot be sure of all this. I was only looking at various possibilities. These intuitions may appear far-fetched but they are much older than the faculty of reason. By the way, fiction and intuitions often reveal truths that are much deeper than reality.

What is important is that I did not become a victim of collateral damage. According to my wife it was Providence that saved me. I said no, it was not Providence. It was my love for all the combating spirits that saved me from collateral damage.

A Shade Wiser

This episode has left me a shade wiser. I have realised that large scale outlier events are unpredictable. But they may still be prevented. With my newly acquired wisdom I hope to prevent such mishaps in future. I hope to follow what I preach here. Do not let ponderous texts with adversarial ideologies constellate at one place. If this is unavoidable, then avoid watching the India-England cricket match being played at Lords. Especially if India is winning. But you may not be able to stay away if you are a patriot.

In that case watch it only when Kohli is not captaining the team. His feisty battle cry can provide the initial spark for the famed butterfly effect. This may lead to a storm in a bookshelf, if not in a cup of tea. But Kohli not leading the team looks unfeasible in the near future. In that case, do not shout the battle cry in unison with Kohli. Mile sur mera tumhara (singing in unison) may not always have desirable consequences. Believe me, this is no fiction. This is pure science. Even soldiers marching on a suspension bridge are told to break step. Their marching in unison can generate resonances that may bring down the bridge. In such a case serious collateral damage is inevitable. The rest is up to you.  

Visuals by Different Truths

Prof. Swaraj Raj

Prof. Swaraj Raj is a Patiala-based freelance writer, translator, a keen photographer, and nature enthusiast. He retired as Professor of English and Dean, Faculty of Languages, Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University, Fatehgarh Sahib. He has more than 70 publications to his credit in journals and books.

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