Page 253 - harryDEC12_clean.iba

She said in a soft tone and I was baffled.
“How come you know my name? »
“In the plane I sat behind you and heard your name. »
That explanation was not true, I realised at once, since John and I had sat in the foremost last row of the business class and there was an old couple sitting behind us and I would certainly have become aware of the woman while on the way to the toilet.
"Many thanks for your efforts. God protect you, and may your trip through life be smooth lead to the goal that you deserve.”
I bent over to take his heavy suitcase from the conveyor belt. When I turned the woman had disappeared; I caught only a glance of her soft, flowing caftan as she left the arrivals hall. I felt something sting my heart. Shiva – it quivered through my head, an incarnation of Shiva.
I decided to tell John nothing of the encounter; he would declare that I had gone crazy. He was not at all in metaphysics - Coronation Street was more his thing. Anyway he did not know about SHIVA - as this is buried in my heart. In the evening we were invited by the representatives of Cayzer Shipping to an opulent Chinese meal on the last floor of an old reconstructed granary, a rotating restaurant that offered a spectacular view of Singapore. I participated only in an un-concentrated way in the conversation; my thoughts stayed with the unusual encounter. It was as though the past had visited me. Perhaps - I thought SHIVA existed in a parallel universe, weakly interacting with this one, as some acknowledged scientists theories suggested. Is there something like the bondage of genuine love by the pure force of energy, which allowed time travel, I romanticized. What do we really know? Realms of the inexplicable surround us. There are numerous other dimensions. That night I could not sleep properly. My thoughts were wandering into other worlds.
oOo
I got up at 7 a.m.; jet lagged, and booked an hour of play on the tennis court. My partner was a seventy-year-old Chinese who gave me a bashing on the court, on that hot morning of extreme humidity in Singapore. But it was good for me. Bathed in sweat I took a hot shower. Our further flight took off five hours later.
Finally we landed in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, on the soil of the former penal colony. Cairns is named for the former governor William Wellington Cairns, who had originally founded the town as an export harbour for gold and other minerals in the mines to the west of the town, in the framework of the exploitation of the Empire. At the customs control we were asked whether we had wooden products with us. Wooden products? What an absurd question, John Gibbs thought and said:
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