11.22.63

Last week, I finished a 750 page book that at times I could barely stand putting down. Not that it didn't have its sagging moments, its occasional tedium of detail -- which book that long can avoid those things? But I don't recall a book which kept me wondering so long about so many threads, about how the author would resolve each of them.

Probably because I've never been much interested in fantasy and horror -- give me the real stuff, I say -- I've never read Stephen King. And yet I also know that he has written more than just horror; a novella he wrote, for example, was turned into what I consider the most magnificent film I've ever seen, "The Shawshank Redemption." I started on 11.22.63 perhaps only because it is about the assassination of JFK. Even if you don't buy the myriad conspiracy theories, it is fascinating to speculate about all the mystery and questions around the event. Who was Lee Harvey Oswald? What was he like? Who was Jack Ruby? What made him shoot Oswald? What if he hadn't? What if Oswald had missed?

And this book takes you into that thicket of questions. Quite literally so, via that time-tested fiction device: time travel. What happens if you can change the past? What happens if it is a relatively small event you're changing, one with few wider implications? What happens if it is, well, the murder of an American President? Is one of these more difficult to achieve than the other? What happens when you return to the present? What happens when you return to the past after returning to the present?

It's not that nobody has tackled such themes before; and more than that, it's not that none of us have ever thought about them. But King explores them in different ways. Of which, surprisingly, the most telling is a love story. Not the assassination itself, not the travel through time itself, but a love story.

How else can a relationship across the barrier of time play out except as heartbreak? And yet King manages to find believable hope for his story. You can't change the past, but if you want, it can make you whole.

What ifs are fine as far as they go. The what nows are infinitely more interesting.

Small miracle in a river

Late one downpouring September night in the village of Lakhanpur in Chhattisgarh, Sarita felt something. Then again. "It's the baby!" she shouted to her husband, Bhanu. He ran to get the village health worker, and together they helped give birth to Bhanu and Sarita's first-born, a healthy little boy.

Only, there was no time to celebrate. Sarita was pregnant with twins, and the second baby would not emerge. The health worker phoned the doctor. "Get her across the river!", he said. "I'll have a jeep waiting on the other side to bring her in to the hospital."

With the heaviest rain in many years, the river Maniyari was full, fast and furious: about 60-80 metres wide, the water shoulder high. But there was no bridge across it, no other road. The only way to cross, from Sarita's village, was through the water.

It was now close to midnight, completely dark and still raining heavily. Fifteen villagers gathered. Sarita lay on a cot. They put her baby beside her. They picked up the cot and carried it the two km to the river.

When they reached the other side, they put Sarita in the jeep and it sped over bumpy roads, an hour-and-a-half to the hospital. Not long after, her second baby was born. Another healthy little boy.

But to reach the other side … Bhanu and the villagers walked into the water and strung themselves out. Through and across that fast-flowing river, in the darkness, in the rain, they passed the cot, with Sarita and her newborn and her yet-to-be-born lying on it, hand over hand over shoulder overhead.

And so for 2012, I wish you peace, happiness, the company of good friends and any number of small miracles.