Of late, I find my thoughts turning with increasing frequency to murder. The late lamented Jessica Lal probably has something to do with it. Every day I find myself scanning every newspaper and Web site I know to read the latest update on her murder trial. Think about it: A woman in the prime of her life dresses up and goes for a party. What would she, when she set out from home, have had on her mind? Some fun, some laughs, a drink or two, maybe a mild flirtation. Then home to bed, to sleep, "perchance to dream". Till she wakes to another day. Carpe diem. And so she goes for the party. (I find myself wondering what clothes she wore, what her favourite perfume was...). And there, she is accosted by someone who wants her to pour him a drink. She refuses. A gun appears, a shot is fired, a life is snuffed out. For that most cruel of reasons -- namely, for no reason at all. The media is energized, the public is outraged, the police shifts into overdrive. Arrests are made and headlines centre on the speed with which the case has been solved. And so it moves to trial. A grief-stricken father, a bereft sister, and sundry sensation-mongers visit the courthouse -- and bear witness to a parody. The prosecution is not sure which gun the fatal bullet came out of. The prosecution parades three 'eyewitnesses' -- none of whom admits to seeing what they are supposed to have seen. When 'eyewitnesses' do not 'see', I find it easier to understand why the figure of Justice always sports a black blindfold. I read books for two reasons. And no, I am not changing the subject here -- my subject remains murder. One reason I read is to inform myself about things I am interested in. The other is to relieve the stresses and strains of the workaday world. Fiction, crime fiction, is what I turn to for the latter purpose. And for quite some time -- ever since, in fact, I came across Shane Stevens's By Reason of Insanity -- the novels I have read have mostly centred on serial killers. It's not that I have some dark quirk inside me that is seeking outlet -- at least, I hope not. It is just that of late, most bestsellers appear to have that common leitmotif. In each book, the modus operandi differs. Each author vies with his neighbour to make his particular killer more grisly, ghastly, ghoulish, inventive. But they, these killers, all seem to have something in common -- they are all lonely men, in the real, frightening sense of the word. And they are all men of a very high intelligence. That such a similarity exists between the fictional subjects of most potboilers occurred to me just the other day, when I recalled a man I knew not so long ago. He was a lonely man. A very lonely man. He was married, yet he was alone. When he and his wife drifted apart, he was alone. He became involved with someone, but found himself alone. He got involved with others, yet he was alone. Always, everywhere, he was alone. Even in his dreams. Have you ever been so utterly, completely alone that even your dreams are unpeopled? "My life is like a railway platform," he once mused. "People come. And while they are waiting, they wander around, make themselves at home, find things to look at, things to talk about, things to do. And then their train arrives, and they board it, and they go off on their journeys, and they leave me behind. Always, they leave me behind." He was an intensely lonely man. And he was a man of high intelligence -- I believe that when, a few years ago, he underwent an IQ test as part of a psychiatric evaluation, he was rated in the genius category. Ah, yes. There is one other similarity between the serial killers of contemporary fiction -- they are all ordinary, unassuming men. Some handsome, some not -- but none of them would, their creators assure us, stand out in a crowd. This man I knew was a very ordinary-looking man. In an ordinary job. He was a serial chiller. Every night, for an hour or two, he would log on to a chat site. Always, a different chat site, or at least, a different room. Always, he would log on with a different handle. And he would spend an hour, maybe two, doing what you do on a chat site. 'Hello, Sweet Cheeks,' he would post, to an anonymous handle. Immediately after sending that post, he would post again: *Sitting here in the shadows, wondering which "cheeks" her handle refers to*. She would post back a *blush*. He would post back, *walking over to her and warming my chilled hands over the fire of her blush*. And a 'relationship' would develop. And, after a while, he would log off. Next day, he would log back on, with another handle, another persona, but if he saw 'Sweet Cheeks', he would not venture even a hello. He would, instead, hit on some other handle. He told me about this, late one night. Why do you do this, I asked. People, even flying under anonymous handles, have formed friendships, created little support groups for themselves, on the Net, I pointed out, so if it is loneliness you are seeking to assuage, then why not go that route? "Because there is something the matter with me, and I don't know what it is," he replied. "Women find me easy to talk to. They get friendly fast. But me, I have this quirk in me, I invest all of myself in any relationship, I buy into it emotionally in a big way. And then, suddenly, they up and they leave me. And I never know why, they never tell me why. I have never misbehaved with a woman. I have never, by word or look or gesture, given a woman a reason to cringe, to shy away, to withdraw. "And yet, they leave. And I never know why. I only know it has to be something about me. "After a point, I decided I could not go through that again. I could not get friendly with a woman, start investing emotionally in that friendship, then pick up the pieces again when her train pulled out of the station. "And I cannot, in real life, philander. I cannot go with a different woman every night, bed a different woman every weekend. Yet, I am also a gregarious person. I love company -- intelligent, witty company. I like some conversation, some laughs, some humour. And somehow I gravitate naturally to women. "And so, I became a serial chatter. This way, I get a couple of hours of witty, interesting female company. I chill. And when it ends, there is no letdown, no heartbreak. We part, saying, 'Hey, that was fun, let's do that again.' I know I have no intention of repeating it. Nor, I think, does she." Carpe diem. The serial killers of fiction are lonely men. Their prototypes in real life were lonely men. My friend is a lonely man. Everything is the same. The intelligence, the loneliness, the ordinariness. The only difference is that some retreat deep into the dark of the mind. And from within that blackness, they occasionally sally forth to perform their black deeds. While others skate close to the edges of that darkness, but, god knows whether it is by god's grace, manage to keep from being engulfed. Listening to that was scary. Frightening, because you think, there, but for the grace of god, go I. It's true, you know? That man could easily, so easily, be you. Or I. PS: Why am I telling you all this? Heck, no reason at all -- I just happened to think of him. Cogito, ergo some writing. Prem Panicker is now trying to keep his mind on tamer thoughts. Illustration: Uttam Ghosh Tell us what you think of this diary
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