Cycle of Time

6.A detectives work

As much as Uben wanted to finish reading, and he knew it was time to look up from the book. The sun was up a long time ago, and it was almost noon.

He hurried to get himself ready for work. Although in his mind time seemed to have passed swiftly when he was reading, his body had noticed this passing. He felt very much like someone who had not slept the whole night! But time waited for no one and there were things that needed to be done. The book would have to wait. On top of the list of things that he planned to do was to find out a bit more about Anjaya. His curiosity was aroused now, it was an itch he needed to do something about.

The first thing to do was to review the videos. He had remembered that he was not the only observer of what was going on down below. There was another eye focused on the road all the time. The building always had a couple of cameras focused on the road. Having known the management he had easy access to the recordings. The difficult part was going through hours and hours of recordings. So he decided to make use of the facial recognition technology that was freely available these days to detect Anjaya's face. The plan was to filter the recording, looking for only the ones with Anjay in them.

To Uben's surprise, it wasn't only on that particular day that showed up in the search. The recordings showed that Anjaya had been spotted before and even after that day. His curiosity aroused. Uben forgot all the tiredness he had felt a moment ago and was keenly focused on the work at hand. The most startling thing was that except for that day he was with someone else on all the other days, and that someone else was no other than Maya!

Uben felt a surge of anger, but it was quickly followed by a sadness and a sense of betrayal. He was torn between the need to trust her and a slow creeping suspicion about her real intent. Was she trying to trick him? Was she genuine? These were questions he could not answer.

As he kept scanning the recordings, a few more things became patterns. Anjaya didn't seem at all monk like in the previous recordings. He was distracted and kept gesturing wildly and even seemed angry.

As Uben kept studying the close-ups of Anjaya and Maya, there body language seemed to indicate that they were no strangers. They were mirroring each other, they seemed to be attuned to each other. Maya seemed to be following Anjaya's lead, indicating that Anjaya was more likely to be the dominant of the duo.

Studying it further and replaying the recordings over and over again, Uben almost felt the relationship was of a father and a daughter, or a teacher and a disciple nature. Although not appearing calm, the controlled way that Anjaya handled things, suggested that he was used to being the one in charge .Uben speculated that Anjaya probably knew what he wanted to do and where he wanted to be, him being here was unlikely to be an accident. In the recordings, Anjaya did not seem like a person who wasted his time in unnecessary matters. So Uben found himself paying more and more attention to the Anjaya's movements.

Again it did not appear to be a random incident that they were here so near to his apartment. There appeared to be a plan in all of this. It was as if they were planning something. That something appeared to be centered on the bench. On more than a few occasions they pointed towards it, and also kept looking upwards, seemingly towards Uben's window. At one point Maya sat down on the bench and started reading a book. She did this in an unnervingly familiar way!

Was it all planned? Had he somehow become a pawn in a game they were playing. Was Maya and Anjaya both partners in this plan? Uben had so many questions. All at once, his mind felt like it would burst. But he had to keep on looking, he just had to. He was now looking at Maya more than anything else. He did not want to be let down. But a wave of anger was building inside of him. There was a sense of having opened up to someone only to have that someone let you down.

Uben closed-up on Maya's face. It wasn't that clear but Uben didn't spot the emotions he was hoping for. He was hoping that at least after they had met, Maya would show some form of resistance. There was no indication that she was resisting anything. But there was another emotion he did not expect, there was fear! It was not a normal kind of fear, it seemed to be very specific. This fearful expression was seen almost exclusively in her interactions with Anjaya . It was as if she was afraid of Anjaya. Her eyes showed a fear that was more than skin deep, a fear she really wanted to escape!