When I was going through Murakami’s novel ‘Sputnik Sweetheart’, while coming to the end, suddenly this idea came to my mind. Sputnik II went to outer space on November 3, 1957 from the USSR space centre. It carried the first living item from earth to outer space. She was the famous ‘Laika’. She went to outer space and vanished into thin air. I do not know if she ever wanted to go on that journey. We never asked her. No one raised a single hand against the USSR at that time.
At one point I felt, Sumire and Laika have aspects in common in their endeavour. Sumire never wanted to visit Europe. The journey she went on was under the influence of Miu, a powerful woman. However, she vanished into thin air and no one complained that Miu had something to do with that. Even ‘K’, her close friend, did not raise a single question.
Completely different
I know these two stories are completely different but it is just a thought. I wonder what Laika is doing right now if she is still in outer space. Dogs always have their faith in humans. Is she looking at us still? The Scientists who built Sputnik II designed it not to be retrieved. This means her fate is to die alone in a spaceship for the sake of the future of humans. Isn’t it a paradox? Sometimes I have these kinds of weird feelings and thoughts.
I dressed up without knowing where I was going. Then I saw a coffee shop on the opposite side of the road. It seems like an incredibly old one, but I never saw this shop earlier in my daily routine. It brought strange feelings to me. Strangely, the name of the coffee shop was Sputnik and looks like a spaceship. Then and now I wonder whether the buildings are living creatures. They are growing inch by inch every year.
When I went inside, I saw that the Interior was very strange. That brought memories of a place in a 1950’s movie, covering the floor with red carpets.
In the reception, there was a young receptionist in her uniform with an expressionless face and she hardly moved even a little bit. There were three tables in the shop, but only one table was occupied by a man at the corner. He was wearing a full suit. A cup of coffee which was in front of him, all the time was cooling down. Everything was unusually still. The man in the full suit looked at me.
A dream
The whole picture was filled with a kind of solace. Then I woke up. It was a dream. Yes. No! There are some experiences you really can’t say it is just a dream. I just felt everything was real. In this solace, I remembered a scene from the Interstellar movie. Amelia, daughter of Professor Brand was stuck in one of the world’s which is difficult to find in the galaxy.
The camera slowly closes towards her face to show desperation and melancholy she was experiencing. Similar to Laika when she was sent to outer space. What a coincidence. They both were females.
I sat on the computer chair and switched on my laptop. The digital clock said the time was 2.00 a.m. I started to watch Interstellar again. There was solitude and silence around me all the time. I heard prayers from the loudspeakers of the distant Masjid in the middle of the movie. What a melancholic effect it gave. I could not stand at the end of the movie. So, I sat tight and wondered.
At that time, I lived an expatriate life outside of Sri Lanka. In the film, Amelia cannot imagine that anyone will come to save her. She is far away from the galaxies, not kilometres. At times we can come back from living as an expatriate. But some people cannot return. Amelia can’t even think of such a thing. I will never forget that scene of her looking alone in a galaxy, a small planet. I always wonder how to cope with such loneliness.
But I am not talking about these kinds of distancing events that we cannot control. The distances we create in relationships. When relationships break someone is bound to feel the loneliness. It’s like you know somewhere in the galaxy, there are people like you, but at the same time, you feel that they will never reach you.
Murakami says, “That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair,” in his novel, ‘South of the border west of the Sun’.
I think I went to sleep with deep thoughts. When I woke up, I went outside again and saw the same coffee shop which looked like a spaceship. I went inside. Everything was the same. The expressionless girl at the reception and the full-suit man was watching his coffee cooling down. I sat beside him. He smiled at me. I replied.
“Hello,” I said. But I couldn’t recall the time to greet him. A conversation started. His name was Oleg Gazenko. I told him about the book and my thoughts. He never heard about the book and surprisingly about Murakami. But suddenly he stopped me by raising his hand.
“You know,” he said. “I am the one responsible for sending Laika into outer space”
“Really?” I screamed.
I took my phone and searched for the name he told me. Yes! He was the one who was responsible to send Laika into outer space.
“Working with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it … We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog,’ he said.
Suddenly I woke up again. I can’t say it was a dream. It’s real. I saw unfathomable sorrow in his eyes. So, Isolation of yourself or isolation from your love or isolation from society, whatever it is brings melancholy!
