In The Silence Of My Solitude - A Novel (Part 9)

                                                       13. The 3 P's.

As I zoomed in, it appeared to me as if the mirror in the photograph was coming
to meet me in slow-motion,and throw whatever it had on my face. It was surreal.
It was like the scenes in some horror movies where they show the shot of the devil,
that too in closeup, in the first scene itself for shock effect with no thought  for

suspense. There was a moment of eerie silence as the the contents of the mirror appeared.

The image blurred a bit because of the zoomin. From that blurred image, and
from the kind of shirt in that image,I came to conclusion that the photographer
was certainly a man.He bent down his neck a bit while photographing so as to
fit the Ataka. Nothing unusual about it.

I hit the zoom button again, and centered the flash portion of the photograph,
and carefully observed. There was certainly something unusual about it. Just 

above the flash, there was a portion of the photograph which was 

blurred more than usual  than its surrounding parts. Generally a blur
in a photograph happens because of movement. So, with the assumption
that  my mother had been using a clean mirror, I concluded that the blur in
the photograph must had occurred because of some movement.

I wasn't able to clearly see the object that was moving in the photograph.

Few hurdles needed to be crossed :

1. General blurring of the image because of the zoomin.
2. The sharp spiky flashes from the flash obscuring the image behind.
3. Distinguishing the general blur from the blur because of the movement.

People say that necessity is the mother of invention. Nothing could had been
truer in my case at that time.I never thought in my life, until that day, that, three
things I loved in school could come to my rescue -- Programming, Physics,and
Python. Three P's.

I quickly opened my laptop, copied the image into it, opened my python interface,
made some coffee,and started writing a program.It took me exactly 5 hrs
to complete the program. Nothing mattered.No one disturbed. Every ounce of 

creative juice flowed.

What I did was..first :  Calculated the general blur of the image, and from
that got the real blur of that particular part of the image because of movement.

Second, since blur of the movement is nothing but an object dragging,
I collapsed the object in space-time, just in the same way a 3D object
could be collapsed to 2D.

I checked and re-checked the program, and ran it. After fixing few more
problems, ran the program again.

It took a whole minute for the image to appear on the screen.

It was a Football.

And what caused the Foot Ball to move? Most probably he,the photographer,
had kept it on his head to make her laugh, or it must had been rolling from the
table behind his head. I didn't see any reason to investigate further as to find
out  what had caused the football to move. Round objects move easily. Simple!

Was I happy that I found Football instead of something exciting? I would say
a mixture of emotions. I was happy about the fact that I judged my mother right,
that she went crazy. But, I didn't find it  even one-tenth exciting as the findings
in 'Blow up'. Then,again, I was satisfied with myself, that I chased a mystery with the
stuff I learnt in school, that I was not a loser after all.But, then again, I was sad that
she went crazy. It would  be a lie if I say that I didn't think about the genetic
component of that craziness.

I wanted to postpone the subsequent questions as I wanted to celebrate my victory.
Generally, people are alone in their failure. I was alone in my victory.

I went out that evening to a bar, had couple of Kingfisher strongs, ate chilly chicken,

and finally ate 3 Meetha pans to counter the beer smell, and came back home at 8pm.

"Dad", I shouted as soon I saw him, "Good News!"
"What? You decided to get married?"
"No! No! No!", I complained like a puppy.
"Then what?", he asked.

"I love you, Dad", I replied shyly, went into my room, collapsed onto my bed, and Slept.

Continued here..