Two Curious Cases of Vanished Ladies

The first story is quite well known because it was filmed by Hitchcock in 1938 under the title "The Lady Vanishes." It was based on a novel called "The Wheel Spins" by Ethel Lina White. A young woman travelling in the Balkans becomes friendly with a middle aged English governess. During the train journey, the governess vanishes & the people who had seen her with the young woman all deny having seen her (for their own reasons). A young man helping the young woman finds out that the "governess" is an English spy returning home with vital information, who is kidnapped by the enemy powers & masqueraded as a patient with facial bandages. However she is unmasked & returns home safe.

The second story is not so well known. It is "The Room on the Fourth Floor" by Ralph Straus. A mother & daughter returning to England make a stopover in Paris. Because of the rush due to the Paris Expo of 1900, they are allotted two single rooms on different floors. The daughter sleeps for four hours due to tiredness & afterwards, finds her mother's room empty & she missing. Everyone, including the cab driver & hotel staff, insist that she arrived alone. Bewildered, she returns to England & has an attack of brain fever which proves fatal.

What really happened was that the mother rang for the maid soon after arrival, & the maid arrived & found her dead. The doctor when summoned, found she had died of Bubonic Plague. Any leak of such news would be catastrophic during the Expo. So the Government went into overdrive, destroyed all evidence of the mother's arrival & bribed all witnesses to deny her existence & successfully hushed up the matter.

Concept of "i" in Mathematics & God

The symbol "i" in mathematics is defined as the solution to the quadratic equation x squared +1=0. It is the "imaginary" number, square root of -1. Though it is imaginary, it is a necessary mathematical tool to extend the range of real numbers R to the complex numbers C, which contains both real & imaginary numbers, a simple example of C  being 2+3i. 

The concept of an "imaginary" quantity being deemed necessary is also the foundation of spirituality as God, for most people is intangible i.e., not normally perceived through the senses. But Saints of all religions say that human life (like complex numbers!) is incomplete without God. An additional dimension is that human ego instead of being capital "I" (as per grammar) should be diminished to "i" (small "i") to take one towards God & make him real, not imaginary!

So an ideal human life should be like a complex number, with a real (worldly) component + an imaginary (read spiritual) component).

Need for parental love & care even for adults

The immortal Jane Austen magisterially proclaimed that "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." An opposing viewpoint, typically Asian, has been triumphantly proclaimed by Sri. Ishwarachandra, the celebrated & award winning Kannada author, in one of his stories, later turned into an award winning film. 

The protagonist is a successful architect, who has lost both his parents at an early age. His mentor at work, a father-figure, also dies suddenly. The architect sinks into depression & is advised to adopt elderly parents from an old people's home as a therapy. He does so & recovers. Later he marries his friend's sister, after making sure that she is also happy to live with his adopted parents. When he is away on a business trip, she faints in the bathroom due to the onset of pregnancy & is rescued from mortal peril by the resident (adopted) parents-in-law. Later the baby arrives. Meanwhile the real son of the elderly man, who had abandoned him, accidentally meets him & invites him to come back to him. The father refuses, saying that the bonds of love are stronger than those of DNA.

This story & film successfully challenge the two stereotypes accepted as normal now. One the obsession with dating girlfriends being the top priority for young men, ignoring their duty to care for their parents & secondly the consequent proliferation of old age homes, which, the kind-hearted manager of one himself says are a shame on our society.