ANOMALIES

Priyanka sat on the second floor of a bustling nightclub in Atlanta, sipping whiskey as her thoughts swirled like the smoke-filled air around her. Earlier that morning, a letter from her father had revealed the truth: she had been a mistake. His words, along with the whiskey, led her to lose herself in the music, dancing to the rhythm of the Lauryn Hill remix playing in the club.

On that night, surrounded by the dancers, Priyanka’s mind tried to escape her father’s words. He had written that ‘the universe sought to erase her’ because Priyanka was an ‘error, a thief, and an anomaly.’

Exactly two decades and one year ago, Priyanka was born amidst chaos on a cruise ship in the Caribbean Sea, as a tropical cyclone raged. The ship swayed through towering waves, and it seemed as if the universe itself was conspiring against her birth.

The ship’s captain, Felix Marquez, had shouted to the passengers over the loudspeakers to seek refuge in their cabins until the storms subsided. Vacationers leapt from the starboard swimming pools, fled from the upper port side deck, and vacated the restaurants where wine glasses tumbled, ceramic dishes shattered, and chairs toppled. All raced to the safety of their cabins. The ship’s lights flickered before plunging into darkness, the floor swayed and shifted beneath their feet, and the stars vanished within the torrential rains of the night.

As Priyanka was being born, her mother, Amini Thomas, had a dream of her sunlit village of Thelliyoor where she had been born.

Nestled in the hills of Kerala, it was a place of coconut trees, mango groves, and ripe guavas. Streams, fragrant with the scent of coconut water, trickled over enormous white pebbles, as the symphony of crickets and colorful birds entered that dream of a faraway mythical and magical place in mystical India.

In her dream, Amini saw her deceased father, Colonel Rajan Thomas, just as she remembered him. He had dark Kerala skin, almost black, which contrasted with her own lighter complexion, almost white. His piercing eyes, neatly trimmed mustache, and uniform adorned with medals earned from battling tigers in the jungles of Sri Lanka and facing the silver Chinese bullets of chairman Mao Zedong, raining over his men in the foothills of the Himalayas, during the Sino-Indian war of 1967.

Dread consumed Amini as she watched the Colonel approach her. He walked crisply in his polished boots before standing at attention before her. In his hands, he carried a folded Indian flag, a symbol that could only mean one thing: someone’s child had died in battle.

“Your child,” Colonel Rajan whispered in Malayalam, his voice suddenly stern and harsh, his eyes piercing through hers. “And if she does not die, will you make sure she does?”

Amini shook herself awake from that nonsensical yet familiar dream, comforted by the hope that it could not be her father but some merciless, brilliant and insane villain, hidden in the far edges of the universe.

As her water broke, the ocean waves crashed violently against the ship, as if trying to erase Priyanka’s life before it even began. The winds howled, lightning split the sky, and rain fell in relentless sheets.

Every dream Amini had leading up to Priyanka’s birth showed her deceased relatives pleading with her to kill the child before it could be born. These relentless messages, which she determined could only have come from an uncaring universe, convinced Amini to be ignorant of her own pregnancy—a desperate attempt to protect her baby from the wickedness perhaps lurking within herself.

When Captain Marquez learned of a passenger pregnant on his ship, he understood. The captain knew it was possible for a woman to do such a thing, for he knew the twisted deceptions of the human heart.

The captain, his crew, and the deaf American ship doctor, Williams, who required his hearing aides at all times —sought refuge in the control room from the storm that raged outside, battering their ship with relentless fury.

A phone call came to the control room from an elderly Dutch grandmother, a passenger who reported hearing screams from the neighboring cabin 33, louder than the howling winds. She recognized those screams well, having heard them from her patients from over twenty-five years in the Netherlands. Now, old and unable to help, she shouted over the phone so that even the deaf would listen: someone was giving birth.

Captain Marquez dropped the emergency phone back in its cradle, his heart weighed with the thought of a baby being born in a storm, that was heavy and had saddened his eyes. He turned to face the doctor.

“A child is being born in cabin 33,” the captain spoke. “I will not order you into this storm. I want you to trust your own nobler self.”

A heavy silence enveloped the control room. Sympathetic faces turned toward Doctor Williams, who, aware of the unfolding crisis, felt the weight of their gazes and knew he had no choice but to go out there in this storm and deliver a baby.

Doctor Williams, driven by the Hippocratic oath, bolted from the room without hesitation.

He dashed through the ship’s empty interior corridors, braving the winds that rocked the vessel. Guided by the thought of a pregnant woman with the desire to keep living, he pressed on.

The doctor found cabin 33, unlocked it using his staff keys, and rushed inside. There, he saw Amini, teetering on the brink of death, her knuckles, white as that of a ghost, and clenched to the sheets. Her breath came in ragged gasps. With unwavering courage, the doctor went to work.

The doctor held Amini’s pale hands, because he knew the comfort he offered in her solitude was as crucial as his medical expertise.

During a moment of fatigue, Amini spoke.

‘Doctor…’

“Where is the father?” The doctor asked.

“Dead long ago” She answered, and then “Promise me you will bury me in Kerala, beside my ancestors.”

“You will not die,” the doctor responded.

“The universe is going to kill me” she insisted “in order that my child dies as well.”

“No one will kill you,” the doctor reassured her.

“My father will,” she responded.

This revelation stirred the doctor’s curiosity.

“Your father?” he asked.

“My dead father, the Colonel, who appears in my dreams.”

The doctor glanced out the window, suspecting the evil eye of the universe. Storms do not rage with such intensity without reason. The waves seemed to have a higher purpose, and the thunder rumbled as if the universe itself was conspiring.

“The universe is alive,” he thought to himself, “and the infant is in danger.”

The doctor had a reason to suspect the universe was alive.

He had always been proud of his curiosity and well-rounded knowledge on varied scientific subjects, especially those on the fringes.

A year earlier, he had read a book titled ’Anomalies’ by a physicist named Professor Eduardo Cardenas. The book presented a controversial hypothesis in quantum physics.

The Cardenas hypothesis proposed that the universe possesses a mind of its own, actively intervening to correct any errors, mistakes, or anomalies that could threaten the fundamental laws of physics.

It was a cold and dispassionate hypothesis, backed by complex equations and highly intuitive concepts, that resonated with the doctor more deeply with each read. The doctor had also grasped the prediction of the hypothesis, of strange signs: the universe would use nature to eliminate anomalies and could even influence human dreams.

Thunder exploded, shaking the ship, and the doctor breathed in relief, as the baby emerged with a piercing wail from her dying mother, her eyes wide open. He lifted the newborn into the air to show the mother only to discover that Amini was dead.

“I will protect this one,” Doctor Williams told himself as he cut the umbilical cord, and cradled Amini’s baby, her black Kerala skin so different from the whiteness of her mother’s skin, but rather like the blackness of her grandfather, the Colonel, that glistened in that dim, flickering light of the cabin.

The doctor closed the mother’s eyes with the respect and compassion that one must show a warrior who had died, and confirmed the time of Amini’s death.

The deaf American doctor’s heart became heavy with a weight that could only be described as an immense sadness. “The universe is after this baby.” The storm outside seemed to rage even fiercer, as if echoing his thoughts, the wind howling and the rain lashing against the ship.

As the storm subsided, Captain Marquez, who was studying a strange behavior of the sun, was informed that the mother had died. The death certificate was prepared by the doctor the next morning, and Amini was placed in the ship’s temporary morgue.

One by one, passengers—oblivious to the story of a fellow traveler’s birth and death—emerged from their cabins. Someone noticed the sun seemed a bit different, so they wore their sunglasses, and marveled at the strangely expressive sun, which seemed to be signaling them.

The captain, with a cheerful lie, assured them the sun’s emotional outbursts were a natural sign that the storm would not return. They gazed at the still waves and the clouds that had transformed from ominous threats to magical fantasies, easing their fears momentarily.

One crew member, a Russian who was only known as Ivan and who called himself a mathematician though he failed high school because he spent his spare time tackling the unsolvable problems, from the Riemann hypothesis to Goldbach’s conjecture, was at the helm, steering the ship into the vast sea.

Overhead, the sun blazed in soft, red exclamations, when suddenly, it struck him. He wore his sunglasses, and studied the flashes.

Shocked and amazed, Ivan stumbled and fell, his mind racing because he recognized that the sun was signaling a cryptic message.

Regaining himself, Ivan quickly grabbed a notebook, convinced that the sun’s signals were indeed code and he was determined to decipher them.

Having scribbled down the celestial message, the amateur mathematician rushed to find the captain, who was enjoying his morning coffee with the doctor, in the officers’ cafeteria. The doctor cradled the baby in his arms, while the other crew members looked on.

The doctor had searched the ship’s logs for Amini’s nearest relatives. Horrified, he realized Amini had just made up fictional names and numbers and that the baby really had no relatives on the ship.The decision had been made for the ship to head back to port in Fort Lauderdale, because the ship was ill equipped to handle the needs of a newborn.

Bursting through the door, Ivan shouted, “The sun is talking to the ship!”

“Shut up,” the captain ordered, his voice sharp and eyes stern.

He knew exactly what the mathematician was referring to, though he’d been lying about it all this time. The sun had communicated before, but only rarely. The captain had kept this a closely guarded secret, fearing the ridicule that would surely follow if he ever revealed it, but convincing himself it was because he didn’t want to cause mass hysteria.

The stunned crew, lacking the captain’s years of experience in the seas, gathered around the young Ivan. Their eyes widened with curiosity as the young man read the sun’s messages from his notebook, which the captain allowed since he anticipated the crew had many, many questions by now.

‘I am going to send one who will kill what’s within you,’ was the sun’s message.

Doctor Williams, holding the baby in his arms, listened to what was happening, and he gazed at the flashing sun outside the window of the officers’ cafeteria, and felt a deep unease. According to the Cardenas hypothesis of anomalies that he had read, the doctor understood the universe itself might be attempting to communicate with the help of the sun.

“Go back and tell the sun we are not afraid,” the captain commanded.

Ivan hesitated, but told himself ‘the fate of humanity was not his responsibility,’ and so he obeyed.

Ivan walked outside the cafeteria, pointed his flashlight at the sun, and flashed the code.

‘We are not afraid of you.’

The sun did not respond. The mathematician tried again and again to continue the conversation, this time with milder sentences, but the sun remained silent.

As fearful as the event might have been, the captain was a practical man, and he reminded himself of his responsibility to the one thousand solitary travelers.

The passengers had heard promises, not of riches, but of thrills, relaxation and magic. Cancun, the Bahamas, St. Croix, or Jamaica—anywhere but home. “The passengers must not know that the sun was talking with us ” he ordered his crew. “No one must ever know this happened. They won’t believe you, anyway.”

On the first day of the voyage after the storm, silence reigned. The boredom was ridiculous, and Captain Felix knew it would kill them all before the universe would.

“Amazing,” mused Captain Felix Marquez, shifting his thoughts to his ship, “that for a group of passengers yearning to escape, they were the thousand most quiet and cautious people in the world, and yet destiny had gathered them all on the same ship.”

The captain, determined to lift the vacationers’ spirits, regardless of threats by the universe, commanded the thousand passengers to gather around the pool beneath him.

They arrived, from every corner of the ship, wondering if there would be an announcement of another storm, and gathered beneath him around the pool. The captain grabbed the newborn from the doctor’s arms.

“What’s her name?” the captain inquired.

The doctor, unprepared, said the name of the only Indian film star he could recall from having watched a Bollywood film, many years ago.

“Priyanka,” He insisted. “Her name is Priyanka.”

It was exactly after he said the name, that the doctor’s hearing aid battery died, and he lost the sense of hearing.

“Her name is Priyanka,” the captain proclaimed to the assembled passengers, lifting the infant for all to see. “And she was born in the middle of nowhere.”

Perhaps she knew she was at the center of attention, but at that moment, Priyanka laughed, a silly expression spreading joy like a contagious spark. The passengers erupted into laughter, joined by Captain Felix and his crew.

He gently returned Priyanka to the doctor, who, deaf to the laughter, remained vigilant. The doctor alone watched the baby’s eyes, observing the ship and its passengers.

What the captain, crew, and passengers did not know was that Priyanka was a thief of inhibitions, an anomaly. Unbeknownst to them, Priyanka’s influence was beginning to take hold.

The passengers’ initial joy slowly transformed into a need for liberation, fueled by the remnants of fear from the storm.

It began, at first, with the college students from Boston, who encouraged everyone ‘to live at least once.’

“Fuck it, why not? You only live once.”

They invited the other passengers to join in, chanting repeatedly, again and again ‘You only live once’, which was explained to the middle aged captain Felix, who was too old to know what that meant.

’You only live once?’ The captain asked himself, and yes, “it’s true,” he thought, as he considered it carefully, you only live once.

The chant of ’You only live once’ grew louder as more and more passengers, the crew and even the captain began to join into this madness that had begun to erupt within their hearts. They demanded music and indulgence, and under the captain’s orders, the crew provided rum and entertainment. What started as a timid celebration escalated into wild partying. Only the vigilant Doctor Williams, who sensed the universe’s strange intervention, knew it had all emerged from Priyanka’s laughter.

The captain ordered his own playlist of American rock and roll be blared out of the speakers, and instructed the crew to provide anything the passengers desired.

People began to drink rum, freely dispersed throughout the ship, and escaped into card games where losers had to strut naked over the boardwalk. They snorted the cocaine smuggled in by the veterans of the war when the ship had anchored at the port of Guantanamo, Cuba, instead of Fort Lauderdale.

The men and women announced themselves free for an orgy, but only for the limited time of the hundred nights they planned to be at sea.

It was the Brazilians, with their arms and legs of lean muscles, who showed everyone how to dance Capoeira, and in exchange, those who were versed in the martial arts, displayed remarkable feats of prowess. Indeed, they were kung-fu fighting and they were fast as lighting.

One man drank so much that he climbed the masts and shouted all sorts of blasphemy in a language no one understood, but everyone forgave, for these were shouts of stupor that any human should experience at least once in a lifetime.

The hippies were fighting for more ganja, the Pacific Islanders were juggling balls of blazing fire, and soon the entire ship, clasping each other’s shoulders, sang along with Billy Joel: ‘We didn’t start the fire; it was always burning, since the world’s been turning.’ The American doctor alone attempted to restore order, but it was too late, for Priyanka had unleashed the primal insanity of every responsible human during those hundred nights.

That blazing sun started its cryptic flashings again and encouraged the wildness of these souls lost at sea, to slash and cut off the lifeboats. This was the price for having heard Priyanka’s laughter. In one remarkable night, they had transformed from being the most silent people in the world to the most uninhibited ever to cross the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean Sea.

Through his wide telescope, the Captain, high on cocaine and weary from the rum, scanned the vast oceans. He saw naked mermaids on the coastlines of distant islands, their bronze harps shimmering as they played. Pirates loomed on ghostly ships, anchored at the edges of the earth, calmly waiting to murder everyone on board—if only the universe would allow them.

By the sixth night, weariness began to seep into their partying. The passengers, desperate for sleep, found it elusive as their lack of inhibitions had caused an insatiable lust for life. Captain Marquez, sinking into despair, realized the celebrations had spiraled out of control. The threat of dying from insomnia became a grim reality. Leaning against the railings, eyes glazed from cocaine, they understood their recklessness was killing them. ’You only live once’ had revealed an ominous side.They had become zombies, wandering a ship bereft of sanity, adrift in the ocean, ignorant of where they had come from or where they were heading.

No one knew for sure who started it or how it started, and everyone swore they didn’t start it. But on the seventh night, the ship caught fire. Passengers, in their panic, leapt into the ocean because they had already destroyed the lifeboats, only to be devoured by sharks. Confusion reigned, and blame was elusive, for only the doctor suspected the true fault: it was all caused by Priyanka.

The doctor, knowing they would all drown in the oceans or burn in the fires, sent out the SOS, prompting the United States Navy to intervene. The night stars were flashing brilliant laughter at the burning ship lost in the dark blue Atlantic, where the Navy cruiser found them. The surviving passengers were evacuated from the doomed vessel, but they would all die within a year, because they all lost, forever, all inhibitions, and took life and death risks.

Upon reaching Fort Lauderdale, the doctor, holding Priyanka whom he adopted, swore he would never set foot on another mad cruise again. He looked over to Priyanka and correctly suspected her true nature: a thief of inhibitions.

Decades later, Priyanka found herself in the bustling nightclub in Atlanta. She pushed the whiskey aside, the alcohol already clouding her senses. Rising unsteadily, she drifted aimlessly to the railings, her eyes scanning the sea of bodies below, her movements lost to the music. The air was dense with smoke, mingling scents of sweat, perfume, desperation, and failure, and the dizzying lights flashed in sync with the pounding bass of the Lauryn Hill remix. She observed their rhythm, whispered secrets, fleeting touches, rhythmic sways and moves, and lingering glances.

The dreams of the red headed man who haunted her every night and the words in her father’s letter that morning, caused Priyanka to laugh her confusion out of her heart, her laughter echoing through the club like an anomaly.