Heck, anyone'd go bonkers giving in to this sort of malarkey but then I wasn't anyone. At least I was employed. :-P
Sometime back in the early 80s Larry drew my attention to a Personal ad in the Malay Mail. It listed a few lines of a prayer to be recited all of 81 times, by golly, going on to claim that "Your prayers will be answered. It hasn't been known fo fail."
Wow, can any claim get better than that?
Without so much as an "Excuse me" I launched the 1st cycle in all of 1 go, counting them off on my fingers as I went along. And although the ad made no mention, I did the entire cycle on 9 consecutive days. If I thought that I'd muffed any cycle, I just went over it again.
I put it out of my mind after that: after all, I had a job to hold down.
One evening, I happened to be visiting Larry's brothers in PJ. Kelvin and Adrian were hard at work in the front lounge on what was then an extremely well-paying Real Big Deal: airbrush art. For the uninitiated, that's like making any other piece of artwork, except that you execute it with a piece of pen-shaped spray equipment attached to an air compressor, hence the term "airbrush". Only nutcases would even think of doing that nowadays when photo-editing software is the weapon of choice, but I digress.
Quite suddenly there wafted in the most intense fragrance that I could imagine: it seemed as if someone had spilled a bottle of perfume in the front garden. Both brothers reacted almost at once so I wasn't hallucinating: I even went outside to locate that broken bottle. The fragrance soon filled the entire lounge and lingered on for perhaps 5 minutes of so before slowly dissipating. Grinning cheekily, Kelvin muttered something about "Ms Perfume" and even suggested I look in the adjoining kitchen as well.
Well, what do you think of that?
I can't help linking the original prayer odyssey with that decidedly curious phenomenon. After all, nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. Kelvin was my classmate through several years at school and has since died, while the usually reticent Adrian is still around and may be willing to talk about it if he's in the mood. Every now and then, Larry would ask me why I never wished for anything of value and I would remind him that the prayers had in fact been answred: the perfume being the response to the dedication I had shown over the 9 days.
Some 30-odd years on I decided to recite the prayers again, starting 1 December. I made a written tally as I did so and discovered that I was 1 short on Tuesday, so I'll say the prayers 1 last time tomorrow just to be sure I have nailed all 81 down. I shall then look out for any unusual manifestation, if any, and keep you in the loop.
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