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From The Feng Shui detective by Nury Vittachi (Duffy & Snellgrove, Sydney, 2001):
Dilip Kenneth Sinha snatched up the receiver.
"Ye-es?" he said, drawing out the word into a poised and elegant sentence.
"Hello?" said the caller.
"Ye-es?"
"Is that Dilip? It"s me."
"Well of course. I knew it was you. I always know these things," he said grandly. "I knew you were going to call even before the phone rang, Madame Xu."
The caller gave a short, dismissive laugh. "Ha! No need to try to impress me with such skills, Dilip. You know there is no one more psychic in this town than I am."
Sinha smiled. "Maybe so. But I was merely giving my own powers a little exercise. Knowing who's on the telephone has been a specialty of mine since childhood."
This was evidently not the right thing to say. The telephone delivered the sound of a woman taking a deep breath and raising herself up to her full height, which he knew to be in the region of 1.5 metres. Madame Xu Chong Li apparently saw his assertion as a deliberate challenge to her own reputation as a person of peerless paranormal powers. She replied, with an icy edge to her voice: "I myself knew that I was going to speak to you on the telephone this morning several hours before I actually did."
"But that"s because you decided to phone me," Dilip said.
She was unmoved by this argument. "And," she continued, her voice becoming increasingly severe, "out of all the four million people in this city, I knew that it would be you who would pick up the phone."
"Madame Xu. The other three million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand inhabitants of this blessed conurbation do not share my telephone - although sometimes I feel they do," he said, thinking back to the days before his younger daughter"s wedding four months earlier.
"Are you making light of my well-documented paranormal abilities, Mr Sinha?"
"Certainly not, Madam Xu. I am second to none in the fervency of my admiration for your celebrated powers, which I believe can only be accurately described by the use of words such as 'legendary'."
"Mmm," she said, somewhat mollified.
"I was once told by my father that I picked up a ringing telephone at the age of fifteen months and said 'Hello Mama' even though there was no way of knowing who was calling. There were no little screens or caller-ID services in those days. I was very proud of this story and repeated it to many people over the years as proof of the early manifestation of my psychic powers. However, I stopped using this anecdote after I had my own first child. That was when I realized that 'Hello Mama' is what all fifteen-month-old children say. It is more or less the sum total of their vocabulary. These days I am only impressed if a baby points to a ringing telephone and says something like, 'A man named Terence L. Gunasekera is calling in an attempt to sell you shares in a vacuum cleaner company'."
"Very amusing, D.K."
Pleasantries over, there was a brief silence as Dilip Sinha waited for her to continue. She said nothing.
"Always good to hear from you," he proceeded. "Even on a delightfully sunny Monday as this, you add a special touch of brightness to the day"
"Yes.,
"Nice to have a chat." "Yes."
Another silence.
Since she seemed to be waiting for him to continue, he asked: "Now what exactly did you wish to speak to me about, Madame Xu?"
"You"ve got this all wrong," she said. "I think it must be your age. I think you must be getting a bit Celine or something."
"Celine?"
"You know. Celine. When your mind goes."
"Clearly a fashionable new phrase which I have not yet encountered, or which has passed me by entirely. Anyway, proceed. What have I done wrong to deserve the accusation that I have become, as you so interestingly put it, Celine?"
"Well, you know. You are asking me what I have to speak to you about. In fact, you have something to talk to me about."
"I do? And what might that be?"
"Well I don"t know. How would I know that? I am not a mind reader, Dilip Sinha. Or at least I haven"t been for at least five years, except when any of my ex-husbands come round."
As a practitioner of many Ayervedic sciences and various types of Indian astrology, Dilip Sinha was used to dealing with irrational and even deeply disturbed people. But for some reason, he was finding it particularly difficult to follow Madame Xu"s train of thought today.
"Let"s start at the beginning," he said with the voice of a patient schoolteacher. "You phoned me. That is where this discussion started, is it not?" Surely she could not disagree with that?
"I disagree. It all started when an image of you intruded itself into my mind much earlier this morning, while I was preparing myself for the day. I was not even properly dressed! I knew you wanted to talk to me about something, but what it was, I couldn"t begin to guess. So I replied to your summons by phoning your number. I am relying on you to tell me."
"Ahh," said Sinha. "Now I understand. So neither of us knows what I want to talk with you about. That does make this conversation rather difficult."
There was another silence on the phone, but it was not a particularly uncomfortable one - the two had been friends for long enough to be able to spend time thinking silently while aurally linked to each other.
"But I have an idea," said Madam Xu. "I"m expecting a visitor today, but I"ve got a gap in my timetable tomorrow morning. Why don"t I just pop into your flat for a cup of tea, say 10 o"clock? By that time, you may have remembered what it was that you wanted to tell me."
"That sounds like a perfectly splendid idea. I"ll have the kettle on. Darjeeling?"
"Of course. Afterwards, we could take the bus to Fort Canning, and have a walk, like we did last week."
Dilip Sinha smiled as he put the phone down. She probably just needed a bit of company. At his age, he found the attention flattering - after all, he was sixty-two and she was just a spring chicken, somewhere in her mid-fifties.
[Chapter 2, Crimes Committed by Dead People, p. 28-32]
From The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics by Nury Vittachi (Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest NSW Australia, 2006):
He was shaken, but only physically. He was not panicking: he was pondering. He had lived through earthquakes before. The sensation was not easily forgotten. It is impossible to convey the horror of an earthquake to someone who has never experienced one. It's beyond frightening. The one thing you have always always always trusted turns into a lethal enemy. The ground, the firmament, the rocks and trees and mountains, the world, the steady foundation of everything you have ever known starts playing the fool, shimmying and tangoing around for minutes on end. It's the physical equivalent of your mother telling you that she is not your real mother because you are actually the offspring of the Kanasi Lake Monster in Xinjiang province. Earthquakes touched the deepest, darkest part of one's soul. And this was not doing that.
[p. 4-5]
[p. 119]
From The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook by Nury Vittachi (Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest NSW Australia, 2006):
He wanted to know where the Life Force came from. So he closed his book and made a vow. "I will travel on and on and on, never stopping, until I find the primary source of chi'i."
He walked across the city. He walked across the country. He walked across the kingdom. He could not find it.
So he decided to sail around the world.
He got into a ship and sailed far away. He saw many strange things. He saw in the ocean a great fish. The great fish was also travelling very far.
But he could not find the source of chi'i.
The scholar did not give up. He travelled very far, to the other side of the world. He went to the four points of the earth and the four corners of the lo pan.
Many times his path crossed the path of the great fish, who also seemed to be seeking something.
But although he went to a thousand places, he could not find the source of chi'i.
One day he travelled to the land where people can talk to creatures and creatures can talk to people. He saw the great fish passing his boat.
He asked the fish: "Are you looking for something?"
The fish said: "Yes. Are you looking for something?"
The scholar said: "Yes. I am looking for the source of chi'i."
The fish said: "What is chi'i?"
The scholar said: "It is prana, it is the life force, it is Tao, it is the way, it is Heaven, it is God. You have travelled far. You have seen it?"
The fish said: "No. I have been everywhere in the whole world. I have not seen the source of chi'i."
The scholar was very, very said. He cried very much.
After his tears dried, he asked the fish: "What are you looking for?"
The fish said: "I am looking for the sea."
The scholar said: "But you are in the sea."
The fish looked around. He said: "How can that be? I cannot see it."
The scholar said: "You cannot see it because it is every thing you can see."
At that moment the scholar found enlightenment.
... Blade of Grass, never forget the words of Confucius: "Fish forget they live in water and people forget that they live in the eye of heaven. The world is heaven and heaven is the world. This is the beginning of understanding."
[Chapter 1, The Case of the Fishy Flat, p. 19-20]
The teacher said to the nun: "Go ask the butterfly. Go ask a candle. Go ask a drop of water."
The nun went to a sacred barna tree, a tree with white flowers which atteacted white butterflies. She watched and saw how the butterflies lived only one day each.
The nun went to the temple. She looked at candles burning in front of the Buddha. She saw how the candles went out after only one hour each.
The nun went to a river. She saw how the river was made of a million drops of water. She saw how they passed her town in less than the time it took to sip a cup of tea and never come back.
The nun went back to her school. She said: "Life is transient like a butterfly visiting a sacred barna tree."
But the gardener was present. He said: "No. Butterflies make plants live. Already the barna tree is older than you are. It has been growing for a hundred years."
She said: "Life is transient like a candle in the temple."
But the priest was there. He said: "No. The fire in the temple has been burning for many centuries. It is one thousand years old."
She said: "Life is transient like a drop of water passing a town in a river."
But the old boatman was there. He said: "No. The river has been there for ten thousand years. It will be there for ten thoussand more."
... And so it is with us, Blade of Grass. Some of us see the butterfly, the candle and the drop of water. Some of us see the tree, the fire and the river.
[Chapter 5, Bad Marks at School, p. 176-177]
From The Amazing Life of Dead Eric by Nury Vittachi (Duffy & Snellgrove, Potts Point NSW Australia, 2004):
Then, at dusk, it turns into a million, billion litres of glitter nail polish. It sparkles like fireworks. Nobody told me it would do that.
[Chapter 12, p. 21]
"This is ridiculous," l said, after reading pages of useless stuff in a copy of The Book of Complete Family Healthcare I had borrowed from the library "None of this stuff refers to people whose brains are controlled remotely by a supercomputer."
"I guess my problem is kinda rare."
I was still annoyed. "Yeah, but this book claims to be complete. That's what it says. The Complete Book of Family Healthcare."
We ended up with a list of key targets that we more or less wrote ourselves.
Saturday 9.00am to 10.30am: Walking, breathing, playing computer games.
Saturday 10.45am to 12.15pm: Eating, drinking, using the phone.
Saturday 2.00pm to 3.30pm: Opening packets, using a microwave, operating a TV remote.
Saturday 3.30pm to 5.00pm: Getting to the shops, using an ATM, buying stuff.
Sunday 9.00am to 5.00pm: Eric to practice all of the above by himself.
That pretty much covered everything that a teenager needs to be able to do, we reckoned. There were a few extra things I thought of, such as taking showers and stuff, but Eric was reluctant.
"Mustn't get my batteries wet," he said. "Showers are dangerous. I'll have the occasional bath instead. It's not as if I smelt bad or anything, is it?"
I didn't answer. I hope he noticed.
[Chapter 35, p. 72-73]
Programming marathons became part of our routine. Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, Eric Watts and I would retreat to his flat to work on The Real World. I would stay overnight on Fridays and we would do some more work on it on Saturday morning.
Then I'd leave at 11.00am to get myself to my piano lesson before going swimming with a family from church. Eric never did any extra-mural activities.
[p. 25,27]
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