LOVE ALL - Episode 13

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

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LOVE ALL

A Serial By Varalotti Rengasamy

Episode 13

As was her usual habit ever since the inception of WomenWorldWide.com Yamini went to the site, her default homepage, first thing in the morning.

The time was a <st1:time hour="17" minute="45" w:st="on">quarter to six</st1:time>. The sun was about to raise and darkness, about to end its night-shift. It was Friday, 24<sup>th</sup> April.

Yamini’s scream was so loud that it shook the entire building.

Ramamurthy came running to his daughter’s office room. The cook, the nurse and the maid were all on their way to the room.

A shocked Parvathi ran faster than all of them. But for the unusual circumstances that medical miracle would have brought tears to Yamini and Ramamurthy. Now there was no one to even notice her feat.

Yamini had fainted. Her form was slouched on the large, comfortable Executive chair. Ramamurthy and the nurse somehow managed to lift her from the chair and brought her to her bed in Parvathi’s room.

Parvathi was running behind them like a mad woman continuously sobbing Yamini’s name.

As Ramamurthy was trying to lift Yamini from the chair, he turned back to look at the laptop to find out what made Yamini scream so loud.

God took mercy on Ramamurthy and did not let him see what had been there. Yamini had programmed her screen saver to take over if the system remained inactive for 20 seconds and by the time Ramamurthy saw the system, the screensaver was on, showing a large beach with lots of people in it.

Yamini was still unconscious. Ramamurthy called the family Doctor. Sensing the desperateness in Ramamurthy’s voice the Doctor decided to rush to the place. He had also alerted an ambulance service.

Ramamurthy was continuously pacing between Parvathi’s room and the drawing room. He had called the Doctor more than six times on his mobile.

On second thoughts he went to Yamini’s office room.

The screen saver was still on. He wanted to find out badly the reason for the scream. He clicked the mouse and moved it on the pad.

The screen-saver folded in but the system asked for a password to go in which fortunately Ramamurthy did not have.

Yamini’s mobile, which was by the side of her laptop, rang. Ramamurthy saw the name Krips flashing. He answered the call but could not speak coherently.

Given his state of mind he could not sense the shock in Kripa’s voice. He just blurted out that Yamini had fainted seeing something in the system.

Could she come there straightaway?

Kripa in turn called Dr.Gayathri, Shobana, Janaki and Bala.

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

Part 2!
“The Doctor has come.”

Ramamurthy heard his wife calling and rushed to her room.

The Doctor examined Yamini. He felt her pulse, checked her blood pressure and then examined her eyes with a torch light.

He splashed ice-cold water on Yamini’s face. Yamini slowly opened her eyes. Seeing her parents on either side of the bed she held their hands and gently squeezed them.

That kind of reassurance was more than enough for Ramamurthy and Parvathi to break into sobs.

By that time the Moderators of WomenWorldWide.com were by the side of Yamini.

“Nothing to worry, Mr. Ramamurthy. Some kind of a shock. Give her these tablets. And a cup of strong, hot coffee. She should be fine. Let her not move out of the house today. We will have some investigation done tomorrow in my clinic.”

Yamini smiled weakly at her Moderators. Yamini could see some kind of a relief on all the faces except Kripa’s.

Kripa looked as if she had just come out a meeting with the Devil. Yamini could infer that Kripa should have seen what she saw.

There was no point in hiding from the Forum Leaders now. She waited for her parents to move away so that she could tell them all.

“Let me make coffee for all. “ Parvathi started walking briskly towards the kitchen.

Only then Ramamurthy noticed the change in his wife. ‘What is this?’ he thought. She was walking as if she had never had a paralytic stroke in her life.

Ramamurthy ran behind the Doctor who had just crossed the room and told him about the phenomenon.

The Doctor was surprised. He waited in the drawing room till Parvathi finished serving coffee to all. He then examined Parvathi.

“The shock has accelerated her healing process. Your daughter’s scream has given her the equivalent of about five years of physiotherapy. “

Realizing the significance of the event the middle-aged medical practitioner placed his right hand reverentially over his breast.

“Mr. Ramamurthy, we treat. He cures.”

That definitely called for a celebration. But not now. Ramamurthy should find out Yamini’s problem first.

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

Part 3!

Ramamurthy went to his daughter’s side.

“What’s the problem, Yamini? Why did you scream like that?”

Yamini could not hide anything from her father now.

All the eyes were on her. Yamini looked pleadingly at Kripa.

“Our website has been hijacked, uncle. We have been hacked, left, right and centre.”

The other Forum Leaders were shocked. None of them had checked the site in the morning.

“But is..that…”

Ramamurthy could not finish the sentence. Should some technological event cause such a nervous shock and that too in a bold girl like Yamini?

Ramamurthy was searching for words to phrase what was there in his mind.

“It’s not just hacking, Uncle. Our site has been littered with pornographic materials. Yamini should have gone to the Central Forums page which contains many graphic pictures and obscene words.”

“My God!”

Shobana screamed.

“Tell me this Kripa. Have they completely destroyed the site and in its place posted the dirty pictures or have they inserted the pictures in our forums, without disturbing our structure?”

“I don’t get you, Shobana.”

“Come, let’s go have a look. Yamini you stay here. Please give me the password for your laptop.”

She then turned to the other women in the room. “Please wait here we will be back in a minute.”

Yamini and others spent the longest ten minutes of their lives.

“It’s a cleverly planned attack, Yamini. Kripa, we should shut down the site right now. Or else we will be in trouble.”

“We can’t understand a word of what you say, Shobana.”

“The hackers have inserted the pictures in such a way that for the untrained eye it may look as if we had actually posted the pictures.”

“Oh, My God!”

“And we could be criminally prosecuted for that. We could never make the Police understand that we had no hand in the affair.”

Dr.Gayathri intervened.

“There is no point in panicking now, Shobana. Kripa, take my mobile. Call Prathi and alert her. And then talk to the server people and ask them to shut our server down. Thank God we now have an exclusive server.”

Kripa ran to Yamini’s office room with Dr.Gayathri’s mobile. The other ladies also followed suit. Kripa worked for the next thirty minutes as if she were in a trance.

“Amma, please try to reach the site from the other system.”

Dr.Gayathri sat before the other laptop in that room and typed the words WomenWorldWide.com in the browser window.

A big image of red rose appeared on the screen followed by the words,

“Sorry guys. We are closed down for maintenance. We will be back soon. Thanks for staying with us.
Team WorldWideWomen.Com.”

“Are we now completely out of trouble, Shobana?” Yamini looked very concerned.

Dr.Gayathri’s response did nod allay her fears.

“The site is shut down for now. But we don’t know when those pictures were uploaded. They should have done that some time in the night. The pornographic material should have had a lot of captions.

"I am afraid they might have been picked up by the search-spiders and crawlers and the relevant pages would have been stored in Google, Yahoo and other engines.”

“That means..”

“In this Internet age nothing can be permanently destroyed. Those pages with our site’s content and the pornographic material will be there in some remote server owned by some search engines.”

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

Part 4!

Parvathi walked in to the room. Yamini saw her mother and she sprang up from her chair.

“Ma, what’s this? You are walking like a young girl! Ma, you are cured, Ma.”

Yamini stood up and hugged her mother tight and planted a wet kiss on her cheeks. All the women in the room clapped their hands.

Parvathi blushed. And then told them in soft words,

“The Doctor tells me that Yamini’s scream was equal to five years of physiotherapy. Had I known this earlier I would have asked her to scream long back. Need not have wasted so many years in bed.”

There was an uproarious laughter.

“Ma, I am very, very happy for you. How are we going to celebrate this?”

“Simple dear. All of us are going to have a grand breakfast – pineapple kesari, pongal, vada and dosa followed by another dose of filter coffee.”

Breakfast was served in Yamini’s office room. The Moderators now carefully avoided discussing the problems connected with the site.

They all knew that for a week or two, they could not access their site.

They were all so used to the site that it they could not even begin to imagine what it would be like to live without the site and that too for two weeks.

Shobana wanted to discuss a juicy gossip.

“You know Yamini, Vaishali is shutting down her site, Vaishaliart.com.”

“Why, what happened?”

“She could not simply manage the finances. She did not have a proper revenue model to start with. She did not have a focus. Artists are normally bad administrators.

"And apart from her expertise in arts and crafts, she did not have any other resource persons. The site functioned only for two weeks, and that too mostly as her fan club.

"I heard that she could not even pay the design people. They are now taking her to task. “

“Poor girl.” Janaki genuinely sympathized.

Yamini was in tears.

“Hi, Yams. Don’t tell me that you are crying for her. She got what she deserved..”

Shobana placed her hand on Yamini’s shoulders.

Yamini spoke in a choked voice.

“No, I am not crying for Vaishu. I am thinking of your advice on the revenue model, the financial support from your firm, the invaluable contributions made by these great ladies.

"But for you all I would have drowned faster than Vaishu. What did I do to deserve your love?”

“Hi silly girl.” Shobana teased her but her eyes were full too. She wiped her eyes and then told in a stern voice.

“I have handled a number of financial frauds and accounting scams, Yamini. One thing is very clear. The Great Accountant sitting above all of us is an expert in balancing the books.

"Look at it this way! Whatever Vaishali earned by taking classes she has lost. The books are now balanced. Accounts tallied. He is the greatest Accountant I know.”

Yamini suddenly remembered.

‘Hi Krips, should we not tell our members about this…”

“That’s taken care of. I have asked Prathi to send mail to all those addresses in our member-database.’

“Oh, thanks.”

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

Part 5!

Janaki finished the breakfast early. She could not bring herself to indulge in the small talk which the other women were forcing themselves to, just to forget the burning problem at hand.

She saw that the second laptop in that room was free. She sat before the system and clicked Internet explorer. She then opened her Gmail account.

When she saw that KG was on line she could not control herself. In spite of the red light burning against his name and in spite of his status message, ‘A little busy at the moment’ she pinged him. When there was no response Janaki started to type in all caps.

“KG, THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE. WILL YOU NOT TALK TO ME?”

When she repeatedly typed the message a dozen times, KG came on the chat window.

“Hi Janaki. Nice to see you.”

“Do you know what happened to our home, KG? Our dear, sweet, home? It has been raided, ransacked and almost destroyed.”

“I heard about that, Janaki.”

“What did we do KG, except spreading love? What did Yamini do except giving her love, her time and her energy for the women of the world? Why should we be punished like this?”

“Janaki.. please..”

“Is there any justice in the world?’

“Oh Janaki… let’s think of the Holy Mother…”

“No, don’t talk about Her. She is heartless. She’s a sadist. How could She let this happen to us?

"Didn’t you say post after post, that She is nothing but love? Didn’t you say that she pardoned even the evil Kakasura.. I am now convinced that they are all lies. Damned lies“

“Janaki, calm down…”

Fortunately the outburst was over a chat window and others could not see Janaki’s eyes shedding tears of anger and humiliation.

“No, KG. I am not sure of Her love. I am not even sure whether She..”

“NO JANAKI. PLEASE DON’T TYPE ONE LETTER MORE.”

Janaki was taken aback by the capital letters streaming in her chat window.

“You are a good woman, Janaki. I swear in Her Holy name that She loves you. She loves us all. Pious souls like you losing faith in Her love… it’s not good for the world.”

“But KG if She’s there, if She has eyes to see, if She has a heart to feel…”

“ ”

“But KG this is too much. I am shaken. My faith in Her..”

“Please Janaki. I know you are in no mood to listen to a story. But I can’t help saying what happened to me yesterday.”

“ “

“Yesterday afternoon I went for a ride in the MRTS train between Kasthurba Nagar and Triplicane stations.

"There was not much crowd in the train. Before me there was a poor family, a woman in her early thirties and her son who was about three years old. The woman’s parents were also with her.

“The boy was running here and there. Once he went near the door of the train and was about to fall from the running train. Fortunately somebody saved the boy and returned him to his mother.

“The woman was angry and hit the boy on his head. Several times. The boy started crying uncontrollably.

The boy’s grandfather tried to console him saying, ‘Oh, your mother hit you… She’s a bad woman. Come, come, come with me. I’ll get you chocolates, biscuits and toys..Don’t talk to your mother.’

“The grandfather tried to hold the hands of the boy. But the boy shook himself off from his grandfather and ran back to his mother.

The mother was staring at the boy. The boy was seeing her through a wall of tears. Then all of a sudden the boy fell into his mother’s lap and started crying even more. The mother hugged the child and was crying too, repeatedly kissing him on his cheeks..

I could not control my tears, Janaki. You see it’s the mother who had hit the child. Yet the child sought refuge only in her shunning the goodies offered by his grandfather.

I only wish we love our Holy Mother in the same way the boy loved his mother. “

Janaki was trying to control her sobs while KG was typing the words pretty fast.

“Our Mother has hit us now Janaki, we don’t know why. Should be for our own good. We can cry. We can whine. We can plead.

"But can we take refuge in somebody else? Is there anybody else, other than Her? Can we afford to hate our Mother, because she hit us?

"Can we forsake our Holy Mother simply because we are hurt? The three year old child was so full of love for his mother that he refused chocolates and cakes and ran to his mother who had just hurt him.

"Should we not have at least a fraction of that child’s love?

"And you want to change mothers because our Mother hit us, right? And you want to deny God because She gave us trouble, right?

"Because some third-rate crook planted obscene pictures in our website, you want to doubt our Mother’s love, right?

"Because some rowdies posted XXX pictures in our site, our Mother is bad, right?”

Janaki covered her mouth tightly with both her hands to muffle her sobs.

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

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Part 6!

After a while she recovered and slowly typed the words,

“I’m sorry, KG. Tell me what I should do now. I am now like Arjuna who is lost, both physically and figuratively in the battlefield of life. Something tells me that a great battle is about to begin.

"I beg of you KG, you should be my Parthasarathy. My Gitacharyan.”

“Janaki, this is strictly between you and me. I saw Yamini’s horoscope very recently. In case you don’t know, well, I am a sort of expert when it comes to astrology. A family legacy.

"The week starting from today will be disastrous for Yamini. There is a fair chance that she might come out of it unscathed. But she is going to need all the prayers that we can offer for her.”

“KG, teach me a good prayer for Yamini. I am going to chant that non-stop for the whole of the week.”

“Oh, Janaki, don’t you know that the strength of a prayer is not in the words it contains? It’s the love in your heart that gives strength to your prayer.”

“My mind is blank, KG.”

“Do you remember Angel, the nun who came running to my defence when Rex attacked me?”

“Do you think I will ever forget my own mother?”

“Then you should remember your post in response to hers in the religion forum. And you told us that you worship the Holy Mother with the sloka…”

Janaki remembered.

“<st1lace w:st="on">Om</st1lace>, Hiranya varnam harinim Suvarna rajatasrajam
Chandraam hiranmayim Lakshmim jatavedo ma avaha.

“That’s it, Janaki. You have been saying that for a long time. That was the reason the sloka came to you spontaneously when you wrote to Angel. That will guard Yamini against all her enemies. That will do the work of a mighty army and defend our girl from the attacks of the insidious.”

“KG, you are my Guru. I promise in your presence that from now on till 1<sup>st</sup> May I am going to live only on liquid food. and that too barely enough to sustain me.

"And I will be telling the Sooktham 108 times in a day. I will be doing penance for our dear Yamini. Bless me KG that I should be true to my word.”

KG could not type anything for a while.

“You are already blessed, Janaki. You are Her favourite child. When you ask She will never have the heart to refuse.”

“Thanks for being there for me KG. I am now going home to start my penance.”

Janaki logged out of Gmail and stood up from her chair. The other women were still engaged in some small talk.

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

Part 7!

Janaki wiped her eyes and joined them in their talk. The women were discussing the past happenings in the community.

“Aunty, were you not angry with Yamini, because she wanted to give the Fiction Prize to Sriram while you and Vaishali wanted Vindhan to win the prize?”

Kripa teased Janaki.

Yes, Janaki was upset at that time. But this was not the time to think ill of Yamiini. She remembered KG’s predictions about the impending disaster.

“Oh, Kripa! Please.. not now…”

“No Yamini. These people should know. They all think that you were biased towards Sriram.”

“Please Kripa… please….”

But Kripa would not listen.

“Now all of you guys listen. That Vindhan is none other than our own Yamini. She has been writing in that name. She was so fair that she did not want to give the prize to herself.

"She did not want to be the Forum Leader in that capacity. That was the reason she vehemently objected. But when Janaki Aunty put her foot down she could not refuse…”

Janaki was stunned to tears. ‘Should a girl with a golden heart like this suffer? Oh, Holy Mother, if you want someone suffer let it be me and not this angel.’

They all teased Yamini. She then revealed the background to them - how she was insulted by Arvind and how she sought KG’s counsel for the Fiction Forum and his words of advice. KG who had exchanged a few mails with her was convinced that she could groom herself into a fiction writer.

And that he would correct and polish her writings. Only at his insistence Yamini took part in the contest using the ID Vindhan.

Janaki congratulated Yamini and was chatting with them for a few more minutes.

“Take care, Yamini. I suddenly remembered something. I need to go now. Bye, ladies.”

“Aunty, just a sec,.. Prathi wanted me to tell you that she is landing at Chennai on 30<sup>th</sup> April. She would be there for the book-release function. She wanted to visit you on 2<sup>nd</sup> May. I have given your number to her.”

“Thanks, Kripa. She’s welcome anytime. If things go as planned I want to have a meeting of all the Forum Leaders at my place on 2<sup>nd</sup> May.”

Then she told something in a whisper more to herself.

‘I will host a large thanks-giving dinner.’

“What did you say, Aunty?”

“I just said, thank you. Ok gals, see you all. Bye.”

Destiny was hovering in the air and was a privy to the touching conversation between Janaki and KG. It shivered on hearing the words of Sri Sooktham. It did not want to stay there any longer. The opposite camp was any day much more exciting than this group of soft, God-loving people.

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

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Part 8!

The next moment Destiny was standing in a large air-conditioned Bungalow in the posh <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Boat Club Road</st1:address></st1:street>.

It was observing with almost orgasmic happiness as a conspiracy was being hatched to destroy Yamini as well as Ramamurthy.

“Boss, we have hacked that ladies web site. It now contains a lot of XXX pictures.”

The ‘Boss’ owned KNR Properties.

“Good.”

“Boss, we are in for a bonus here.”

The ‘boss’ did not even bother to ask. He just threw a questioning glance at the young man standing before him.

“That web site is run by a girl called Yamini. Her father is Ramamurthy, the one who came to our T.Nagar office and shouted at us. The one who has filed a case against us.”

“Sweet news. Come on have this.”

The ‘Boss’ threw a wad of currencies towards the young man.

“Get Mani on the phone. Fast.”

The young man punched some numbers and politely handed over his mobile to his ‘Boss’.

“Mani, when are you planning to hit that software company man?”

“Boss, he is not moving out of his house. My men will visit his house as Corporation Officials today, pick up a quarrel with him and then hit him. Don’t worry, Boss. We’ll finish the job before evening.”

“No need for that. Put that on hold. Something better has come up. Will talk to you later.”

The ‘Boss’ disconnected the phone and talked to the young man standing before him.

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

Part 9!

“Chandar, when did you post those pictures?”

“Yesterday night, Boss.”

“Have you taken screenshots of that bloody website with our pictures?”

“Yes, Boss. They are all in this CD.”

“Take that to the B4 Police Station and prefer a complaint. The Inspector is our man. Tell him that we need to arrest that bitch and humiliate her father.”

“Yes, Boss.”

As the young man was about to go the Boss had second thoughts.

“Wait. I have a better plan now. If the lady is arrested today, then somebody will file a Habeas Corpus petition tomorrow in the High Court and she will be released.”

“ “

The Boss looked at his diary.

“Let’s first build up the case. Ask the Inspector to get a search warrant against that girl. And an arrest warrant as well.

“Now don’t go to her house till 1<sup>st</sup> May. You see 1<sup>st</sup> May is a Court Holiday on account of May Day. 2<sup>nd</sup> and 3<sup>rd</sup> May being Saturday and Sunday are again holidays. The summer vacation for the Madras High Court starts on 1<sup>st</sup> May.

“The first sitting of the Vacation Court is only on 11<sup>th</sup> May. Even if the girl’s father files a habeas corpus it will come for hearing only on that day. By that time the girl would have been in Police Custody for at least 10 days.

"Our Police people are quite efficient. They would have destroyed her by then. And that would teach the father a lesson he will never forget for his life.”

“You are a genius, Boss.”

“Remember the Inspector has to go to search the girl’s place only on 1<sup>st</sup> May and not earlier. Ask him to take as many policemen as possible when he goes there. Let them ‘discover’ many pornographic materials in the house. And some drugs too.

‘Let him try to book her on prostitution charges as well. I will send some volunteers from our party’s Ladies Wing to demonstrate before the house on that day. So that there will not be any local resistance when she is arrested.

"I don’t care even she is killed. But she should not come out of the lock-up. Got it?”

“Yes, Boss.”

“One more thing. Keep the whole thing as a low-key affair. Don’t let media know about it. Then some over-enthusiastic journalist might find out the truth and we will be in trouble.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“Have this. Pay the Magistrate and Inspector well.”

The Boss gave a bag full of bundled currency notes.

“If you mess up with the operation.. think yourself dead.”

varalotti · Feb 21, 2009

Part 10!

Yamini was blissfully unaware of the danger that was slowly enveloping her from all sides. She was happy that her mother was back to normal and spent most of the time shopping with her
.
Janaki was constantly in a prayerful state. She did not venture out even once during that week.

Every day she got up around four in the morning, bathed and sat in her pooja room to chant Sri Sooktham continuously for twelve times.

She repeated the process nine times in a day taking the total count to 108. She had virtually no time for anything else.

When her husband was quite concerned about her routine, she told him,

“Please don’t ask me anything. I am now fighting a life and death battle.
There is an issue with my Mother which I am trying to settle at all costs.”

True to her word she did not have any solid food during that one week. She had consulted her Doctor and told him about her week-long saga.

The Doctor examined her and asked her not to take some of the drugs that he had earlier prescribed for her blood pressure.

The Doctor also told her that he would send a nurse to check Janaki’s BP two times in a day. If it shoots up beyond 150/90 then Janaki should abandon her fasting. Janaki agreed.

She was repeating the Sri Sooktham 108 times in a day. The words had soaked into the deepest parts of her being. Even then her chanting was not mechanical. It was quite emotional.

Every time when she reached the final mantra her eyes would be full. Her heart would melt for her Holy Mother when her mouth uttered the words in a slightly higher pitch,

“maha devyaischa vidmahe vishnu pathnischa dheemahi
thanno lakshmi prachothayath.”

Many times her chanting would be interrupted by sobs. When she finished the final canto she would visualize the mantra building an impregnable fortress around Yamini.

And every time she finished chanting she did not forget to dedicate the entire fruits of chanting to Yamini’s welfare.

The Holy Mother was moved. And that was not by Janaki’s fasting or chanting. But by her selflessness in dedicating the fruits of her prayer to somebody else who was not even her relative.

Destiny tried to visit Janaki in her pooja room. But it simply could not withstand that white heat of love and devotion and ran away as fast as it could.

The smile on the Mother’s face was the most beautiful sight which continued to melt Janaki’s heart.