“There is no magic door to Faith
Faith is the magic door.”
From The Proverbs
of Bachchoo

07.29 am Nov. 12, 2012

I don’t keep a daily diary, never have and now there’s a chance that I probably never will. It’s just that a certain circumstance, an unpleasant thought, a stupid and irrational piece of nonsense of which I am truly ashamed has invaded my head and at times like these I get to the computer and write. That’s a lie. There has never been a time like this.
This is a true story. There’s no purpose in lying to your diary.
Today simple facts obsess. I had my first cup of tea and came down to the computer to write this. Distracted. Will get to the sofa and read the novel by Ruth Padel which she gave me at the Mumbai LitFest last week. Contemplated breakfast, but no, another cup of tea.

15.04 pm Nov. 12, 2012

If this were 12 noon, I would have recorded being with two lawyers in their offices in Chancery Lane discussing a nuisance of a court hearing I have coming up on the 19th. No, I haven’t committed any crime. I’m just in a silly and unnecessary property dispute on behalf of my daughter. The law is an ass, litigants are liars and there are carpetbaggers in the background. My discussions with lawyers entailed “legal” rubbish quite outside the considerations of common-sensical justice. Where are Solomon and Portia when you need them?
I took a bus and then a train to London Bridge station and changed for my home station of Honour Oak. My car was parked there and I was very careful this day to put on my safety belt and to keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel for the short drive home.
I fried some prawns in onions, turmeric, chilli powder and salt and ate them for lunch a half hour ago. I drained the left-overs of a bottle of merlot with my meal and threw the bottle in the bin hoping that it wouldn’t be noticed by a censorious daughter if she came through after work.
Now I’ve got to go to a theatre in Earlsfield run by the Tara Arts group, of which my son Danyal is a sort of musical director. They are working on a Christmas pantomime taken from the story of Dick Whittington adapted to a Bollywood contemporary story. I am writing the lyrics for the dozen or more songs. I shall continue the diary on my return.
So why?
It’s a short story. Some years ago, having written several years of this very same column in this very newspaper, I received a series of emails from a man whose name I honestly don’t remember. He was full of praise for my opinions and style and said he wanted to himself be a writer.
I replied politely. One gets a lot of this sort of email. The writer was very persistent. He said he knew Dom Moraes and other Indian writers who were my friends or acquaintances. I would reply once to his every three or four mails. When I next met (the late) Dom’s partner Saryu, who is a friend, she confirmed that this fellow was a stalker and a nuisance.
I must have written about being in Mumbai in this column and the man emailed saying he would like to meet me. I was quite busy with film-work but he pestered me with polite and flattering, insistent emails and I gave in and said I’d find time.
He then somehow acquired my mobile number and knew exactly where I lived in Santa Cruz. He turned up one afternoon outside my building and phoned. He “happened to be downstairs and passing” and could he come up? It seemed to be one way of short-circuiting his insistence and I weakened and said yes.
He was a burly young man in his twenties. I gave him tea and we talked small talk till he blurted out stuff about some unhappy dispute with his mother and how his relationship with a girl had been disrupted. He was crying. I felt I was in the presence of an over-stressed if not unbalanced individual and said, as politely as I could, that I had work to do and appointments to keep. He left reluctantly.
His emails from then on became more and more weird. I stopped replying. Then for a year the emails ceased.
A year or so later I received a mail from him. He said he had consulted astrologers and submitted my name, place of birth and birth-date to them and wanted to inform me that I would die on November 12, 2012. It was a nasty message. I deleted it and forgot about it.
Then a few days ago, having to home in on the date in my appointments diary, I remembered it. The fatal day was coming round.
I don’t believe in astrology or anything else of a mystic nature but I must admit that these last three days, this prophecy has played on my mind. I’d feel an idiot telling anyone else about it or worse, that I was even giving it a thought.
So off to the pantomime rehearsal. Car crash? Heart attack? A fatal mugging? Don’t be so silly!

21.21 pm Nov. 12, 2012

Rehearsal over. Worked English lyrics into three songs from Bollywood films and brought notes home for three more. Went to the pub for a pint of beer. Then home. Had defrosted some ackee and salt-fish for dinner. Shall watch the News at Ten and then Newsnight. Till I hit this computer the panto and dinner had pushed the foreboding out of my consciousness. I’d forgotten that I was astrologically on death row. If it had been non-astrological I might have reconsidered my lifelong atheism and certainly wouldn’t have eaten ackee and salt fish for dinner.

00.04 am Nov. 13, 2012

Astrology is bunk.