A Fork in the Forest Path

He clearly remembered the place and time he had come across the blue bottle which gave him the power to 'manage' things. Not a genie in a blue bottle. The blue bottle was a Portuguese man o' war. As you might have expected, it was in the erstwhile Portuguese colony of Goa, a part of Estado da India. It was not a warship as one might be mislead to believe. It was a marine creature;  Physalia physalis or the Portuguese man-of-war otherwise known as the blue bottle. It was as mesmerizing as it was dangerous. A bright blue coloured creature with a sting that was over 10 metres long. It had got stranded on the Velsao beach when the tide had receded. He found it lying in the sand when he was taking his evening walk.

He knew that it was venomous and knew touching it was out of question. He did not want to be stung and nurse the extreme inconvenience for days. But he thought it would be a nice addition to the aquarium in his living room. He was not sure of the effect it would have on the other residents of the fish tank - a couple of angel fish and a small family of sword-tails. He went to the shack on the beach which was the only source of food and drink to the few tourists who visited Velsao. Velsao beach is one of those seaside wonders, as opposed to 'popular' crowded beaches like Calangute, where lifeguards outnumber the number of bathers.The proprietrix was an old friend of the family and he requested her for a container.

She gave him an empty bottle of Skyy Vodka left behind by a customer. Incidentally, it was a blue bottle. But he refused. He explained that he wanted a container with a wider mouth, like a can, but without sharp edges. She fished around and got him an appropriate tin. He took it and thanked her for it. Then he went back to the beautiful creature. He looked around for an appropriate instrument to handle the creature and found a twig of flotsam that had washed ashore. He had to take care that his skin did not come in contact with it. He gingerly pushed the stick under the polyp, when he heard a voice. "Wait, what do you plan to do with me? Are you planning to put me in a fish-tank?"

He jumped back in surprise. A talking marine creature, that too seemingly aware of his thoughts, was not an everyday occurrence. He mumbled, "How did you know that?", not feeling a bit silly on talking to it. After all it seemed capable of reading his mind. But he did feel violated.

"That is non-consequential," it replied. It seemed to have a good vocabulary too. It continued, "That's not what I want you to do." A bit rich, he felt. It was now instructing him. "I want you to throw me back into the sea. I don't want to spend my life in a fish tank," it added. It was now bossing over him, he felt. He thought he could reason it out. He asked, "You will look nice in my fish tank. Why should I throw you back? What's in it for me?"

"Well, I would like to continue living in the sea, not in a fish tank. Let's make a deal," it offered. "Tell me more," he insisted. "What would you say, if I could bestow the power of managing things to happen in the way you desire them to happen?"

"That sounds fabulous, if possible. How do I trust you?", he asked.

"Try it out for yourself," it countered. "Tell me what you desire."

"Well, I was contemplating on having king-fish for dinner, but was not able to go the fish market," he said. "Can you get me a king-fish right now?"

"Certainly. But I will only grant you the power to make things happen. You will have to do some little thing to actualise it."

"Tell me how," he asked.

"Any wish that you make when you are scratching your chin will come true," it said.

"Any wish?," he questioned.

"Except one thing. But I can't tell you about the exception. You will know it when it fails to happen. Every other thing will happen as you wish," it explained. "Try it out now."

"I want a king-fish now," he said, scratching his chin. A true-blue Goan. Fish, the first thing that came to mind.

All of a sudden, a live squirming king-fish materialised on the sand.

"You can go home and cook it after you throw me back. If you don't throw me back, it will disappear," he was warned.

It teased him, "If you had thought it out a bit you could have done better and asked for a dish of king-fish balchão accompanied by a plate of boiled rice. It would have saved you cooking. Think well before you make a wish. Now throw me back into the sea!"

He threw the creature back into the sea and picked up the fish. He took it home. That evening, he sat on the balcão, the balcony of his house, and kept the fish in a earthen dish on the table. He wished for fish balchão, while scratching his chin. The king fish remained unchanged. Disappointed, he picked up the fish and walked into the kitchen, hoping to prepare the dish himself.

As he passed the dining table, he noticed a casserole lying on it. He opened it and the strong smell of fish balchão wafted into his nostrils. He was delighted. He tasted it. It was delicious, but it was made from shark, not king-fish. He decided he had to be more clear when enunciating his wishes.

He decided he had to think through what he did in case he did not want to attract attention. He realised that though since he had no magic lamp, no one could rob him of it. At least, he was safe on that front. But life would become unbearable and he would lose his privacy,  if he became famous. So, he decided to use the power for simple things. Though he could have got along without doing a job, he decided to continue working.

**

He was working as a techie in a small software firm in Goa and as many techies in India do, he decided to move to Bangalore. Writing any code was child's play for him. Though he was quite proficient technically, debugging was a mere matter of scratching his chin. He, however, refrained from letting his chin write the whole code, for he was not sure where it would lead him. He liked to be in control, but did not mind a little help in sorting out issues.

He also liked to play pranks and his chin helped immensely in that field. He had 'magic fingers', as his friends called his abilities. An elevator stuck between floors required just a touch of a button to get it going. A vehicle that would not start required just his hand at the ignition. Anything was possible as long as it was accompanied by the scratching of the chin. It got him a lot of popularity. Very few knew that the malfunctions they had encountered had happened at his bidding too.

He never materialised anything in public view as it would give the game away. But he was not hesitant to add a few currency notes away from prying eyes in the safety of his pocket. He was a little hesitant to do this initially, as he was not sure if the money was real or fake. He checked it out with a banker and found that it was not counterfeit. But he was not sure if a duplicate note bearing the same number existed elsewhere. He was not sure too if the money was disappearing from some other person's holdings, and that bothered him a little. On the other hand, demonetisation had not bothered him at all. It was no skin off his chin.

And then he saw her at an offsite arranged by his office. She was Chinese and was sitting at an adjacent table. He observed her keenly and found her charming. He wished to talk to her and to know her better. They had a couple of chats during the day and he was very impressed with every aspect of her. He wished to take the acquaintance to another level. So he engineered her transfer to his team. He also got her allotted a place where he could constantly keep an eye (actually both) on her.   He was not worried about distraction from work as work would be completed whether he worked or not. He could actually have transfixed a CCTV camera on her and got the feed to his monitor, without lifting a finger. Okay, I admit I was leading with my chin on this one;  he actually did need to lift a finger to scratch the chin.

Over the next few weeks he had the opportunity to squeeze in a few chinwags with her.The more he interacted with her, the more infatuated he became. He wanted to propose to her but in a more romantic environment, and not in the office. He planned his next move. He organised a trek for his team on a weekend.  He hoped that it would give him the required opportunity. Or else he would see that one arose.

The trek was at the Turahalli reserved forest off Kanakapura Road. It was a small forest, extending to just under six hundred acres. At one time it was mentioned on a board that the public were prohibited in the park. But that sign no longer existed. On any given morning, a few dozen trekkers could be found in the forest. There were no wild animals in the park, though it was rumoured that security cameras set up at a nearby real-estate development had captured images of a leopard or two. Now only an assortment of birds and minor animals were found there.

It was not a very tough trek but involved a bit of scrambling over rocks for those interested in doing so. Belying her petite build, she was quite nimble and climbed quite fast.  The sun was blazing when they were the first two persons to summit. She was a bit exhausted and said, "I wish I had brought an umbrella. There's no shade here."

He reached into his backpack and pulled out an umbrella for her. She was surprised and said, that bag looks too small to have had an umbrella in it. Are you some kind of magician?"

He smiled and answered, "Sort of... Ask for anything and you shall have it". 

"I would love to have a suanmeitang," she said, adding, "I don't think it is easily available in  Bangalore."

He reached into his backpack again and produced a chilled bottle of it.  She was awestruck and her eyes widened in amazement.  She was absolutely sure that it had not been in the bag when she had checked it.

He decided it was the right time to pitch his proposal. He said, "I can get you anything you want! I will ensure that all your needs are fulfilled."

"Will you marry me?", he awkwardly finished and nervously scratched his chin, wishing for a positive response from her.

"I can't do that," she replied, "I am in love with Jimmy Ching and we are getting married next month."

His world came crashing down around him as he realised that the only exception to his chin's abilities was the consent of a woman. That had to come from her and could not be the subject of any magical power. He felt he had lost everything in the world. All that he had till now and could have in future meant nothing without her presence in his life.

As they came to a fork in the path, she took one path and he turned into the other. He decided to make one last wish ...

Click here if you think he took the right path


Click here if you think he took the left path

**

The Right Path

A few steps from the fork, he scratched his chin and made his final wish.

All of a sudden, there was some sound in the shrubbery nearby. "Was it the rustling of a Russel's viper?", he wondered. Then, a menacing growl was heard as the predator lunged at its prey.

**

The other trekkers discovered that they were one person short when they regrouped for leaving the forest, so they doubled back. An hour later they found a badly mauled corpse on the path. Looking around they saw tiger-like pug marks on the muddy patch in the path. They were sure there were no tigers in that forest. Suspecting murder and the pug marks to be a prank by the assailant to throw investigators off track, they called the police.

The post-mortem revealed that death had occurred due to stabbing by large fangs. The Forest Department categorically said that there were no tigers in that forest, nor were there any reports of any tigers missing. They took a cast of the pug marks. The Chief Conservator of Forests made it clear that the size of the fang injuries and the size of the pug marks was much larger than any known tiger. An amateur wildlife enthusiast managed to get a cast of the pug marks and suspected that it was similar to the pug marks of the Smilodon populator found earlier in Argentine. But the sabre-toothed tiger, as it is better known has been extinct for long.

Had he taken his revenge on her for rejecting his proposal? Or, was it something else altogether. Let us take a couple of steps back on the path ...

He had continued walking after separating from her at the fork. He felt he was being followed by someone. Had she come back, he wondered? He looked back. She was not to be seen on the path.Just after he had crossed a patch of soft mud, his stalker burst out from the shrubbery and launched itself on him. He was defenseless against it. He had not even tried.

Did our protagonist make a wish to be killed in an attack by a sabre-toothed tiger? Was it the right thing to do? After all, he had taken the right path... Or, had he?

Click here if you want to know what would have happened if he had taken the left path

***

The Left Path

A few steps from the fork, he scratched his chin and made his final wish.

And instantaneously, the clock wound back and he was back on Velsao beach trying to push the flotsam twig under the marine creature, when he heard a voice. "Wait, what do you plan to do with me? Are you planning to put me in a fish-tank?"

He pretended not to hear it and maneuvered the creature into the container. He took it home and put it into his fish-tank. It lived in the tank till it died of natural causes. It continued to attempt to talk to him, but he ignored it. He did not want its bountiful help. For, he had the left the future behind. After all, he had taken the left path... Or, had he?

Click here if you want to know what would have happened if he had taken the right path

Copyright notice: The contents of this blog may not be used in any form without the express written consent of the blog owner, who may be contacted at kishoremrao@hotmail.com.

In Flesh And In Blood

It was in 1986, I think, that I first met Christopher. As a matter of fact, I have not changed his name, like many people do when narrating a past incident, when the protagonist is still around. In fact, if you promise not to laugh out loud, I will even give you his full name: Christopher Lee. He was neither a Caucasian or a Chinese as his name seems to suggest. He was just an ordinary old Indian in ordinary old Bangalore, which had yet to hit its fame as an outsourcing destination in a flat world. He was around 27 then and was working in the blood bank of a leading hospital. For convenience, I will call him Chris. He was probably named after the noted actor Christopher Lee, born Christopher Frank Carandini Lee in 1922. Fantasy movie buffs know the actor as Count Dooku in the Star Wars series, Saruman in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and as Jabberwocky in Alice in Wonderland. This actor is reported to consider his most important role as Jinnah in a movie by the same name. However, many old-timers remember this nearly six and half feet tall actor for his title role in the Bond movie ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ as Scaramanga. And who can forget his role in a series of movies with Count Dracula as the central figure. Well, when the Bangalorean Christopher Lee was born in 1969, the actor had been famous only for one series of films, the one Hammer Films used to count upon for his battiness!

My maternal grandfather had been admitted to a hospital in Bangalore for removal of a cancerous kidney and required transfusion of copious amounts of blood. The quantities arranged for in advance ran out during surgery and we arranged for additional donation from some people who had been had lined up in case of need. One of these was me. Those days I was preparing for an examination and had to spend time in the hospital to be with grandpa and was therefore studying next to his hospital bed.

Seeing my interest and knowledge when I was a high school student, a leading doctor, who is today considered a pioneer of corporate medical services in India had asked me to take up medicine. So, though I had donated blood earlier, I observed the proceedings in the blood bank with interest. Blood banks in India had just switched over a few years ago to using plastic bags instead of glass bottles and use of the new anticoagulant CPDA-1. I had seen movies where the donor and the recipient are directly hooked up and had sniggered at this apparent folly of film makers. On enquiry, however, Chris told me that there had been equipment for this during the world war days but was not favoured now. In fact, he had heard of blood being drawn from arteries for direct link to the receiver, but nowadays only veins were punctured for drawing blood. My left median cubital vein was punctured with a 17 gauge needle, linked to a plastic bag containing anti-coags like trisodium citrate and I started pumping the little rubber ball I was given to hold in my fist. As we waited till for my 450 ml to flow into the bag, we got chatting, as he had nothing else to do. The chap, as expected was knowledgeable in his field and seeing my interest in the matter and hearing of the advice that I had received in my high school, he did not hesitate to tell me what else was in the bag and let me in on the processes that the blood passes through, for storage and transfusion. He, however, did not know of my true profession.

As you know, I had recently qualified as an auditor and was partly in an investigative bent of mind and somehow my thoughts strayed into quantitative analysis. He informed me that they kept the bags classified by blood groups and the Rh factor and separated the constituents into plasma and platelets for further storage. Arithmetically, there were 4 main groups along with the presence or absence of the Rh factor, leading to 8 permutations, and not counting the other subtypes, from the most common O+ve to the rarest AB-ve. I asked him whether he had any stock of AB-ve and he opened his stock register which showed 4 bags of 450 ml each, whereas his stock tray seemed to have 5 bags of 360 ml each. The total quantity was the same, but it seemed to be spread out in larger number of bags. He shrugged it off, saying that partly used bags must have been returned. I was curious and I later asked a nurse whether they did indeed return a partly used bag. I was informed that usually an entire bag was used for transfusion, unless of course, the patient stopped the transfusion in the middle, either by a rejection reaction or by checking out of the world. Both ways, the bag was discarded. So why was he lying about it, I pondered?

The doctors asked for some more blood, and we had to line up more donors. It was quite late in the evening when they turned up after finishing their office jobs and Chris started the drawing of blood. It was time for him to go, but his replacement had not arrived. I told him to go ahead and go saying, I would wait till his replacement came, and if required call the nurse. He packed his bags and left. After he went, I got busy with his lab. The bags discrepancy was there in some other blood groups too. But more surprisingly, the AB-ve was now only 4 bags of 360 ml; one having been issued during the day. The register now showed 3 bags, one having been issued during the day. I jotted down the patient number mentioned against the issue for further verification.

On enquiry at the patient registration counter the next day, I found that the patient number had been inactive for quite some time. Now fully suspecting foul play, I looked in his lunch bag just before he left and found a plastic bag of blood in it. Was he selling blood?, I thought. In those days there was a market of blood banks and few donors were available. I waited till the next day evening and when a doctor had come into the lab, I casually asked him, “Chris, I heard that you sell the blood from this lab to outsiders, is that true?”. The doctor perked up and asked me, “Why do you say that?” I said, “Look in his lunch bag and you will find a bag of blood in it, all ready to be taken out.”

A search of his bag proved what I had stated. Facing the prospect of an enquiry and a dishonourable dismissal, he came out with the time honoured cliché: “I did it for my mother’s sake.” He went on to explain, “She requires this blood and I can’t get it from any other source. Her very life depends upon it”. The doctor, out of sympathy for a fellow medico, decided not to take it up further. However, when I told the doctor that it was different blood groups that he was taking home and his mother would not need different groups if she required transfusions, and challenged Chris with this fact, that the real story tumbled out. And it was amazing. I will not call it horrifying, for every creature has a right to live, whether a predator or a prey, as propounded by animal protectionists; and anyone who denied them this right, would be “blood-geoned” by the very same protectionists, rendering him instantaneously extinct.

Darwin’s theory had been finally been proved right. Not by laboratory tests, but by them, in real life. Adaptation and at a speed unforeseen by Darwin had been going on for some time now. Having been hounded across the earth, they had mutated into an entirely new species, externally human in appearance. For survival, they had adapted to being able to live in sunlight, using some sort of sunscreen they had developed. Their canines had been not been used for the past few generations and had morphed into the normal humanoid ones. Rarely, one of them regressed and had an abnormally long and protruding canine, which their community dentists subjected to extraction followed by prosthodontic treatment. But they still feared the argentum bullet and still needed blood. They had caught religion and did not fear the crucifix any more. In fact, they liked the cross now, especially in the form of the Red Cross, being one of the channels of regular blood supply they could bank on. They were quite modern now - they did not sink their teeth into jugular arteries or carotid veins - they simply used the marvel of modern packaging. And to top it all, they took up jobs in blood banks setting up new standards of food security. Packaged blood was even used in some discreet hotel joints, he told me, where a new style of cuisine had developed: blood-bath was served along with the locally popular khara-bath and kesri-bath, into which they could sink their teeth.

Their mutation had been relatively very fast. Chris’ mother still had some of problems their species had faced over the millennia. But his generation was fit enough to mingle with the humans unnoticed. She was now over 150 years old and frail and not fit to venture out of home and had to be bottle fed. She had married a human and he had died a natural death, if it could be called that. It had been triggered by the disbelief when he found out the truth about his wife: that she was old enough to be his grandmother. And hence, the hybrid had inherited some immunity from the problems that plagued his kind. And Christopher’s mother’s choice of her son’s name was the ultimate irony of it all: Her son playing out his life in the name of the person who played out their lives on the screen.

He also told me that he had recently met another of his kind when he had gone to a college during a blood donation camp and he had fallen for her. They had decided to hook-up. It was a blood-less coup, he said. Or was it? They had met up and decided to tie the knot. ‘I hope it will not be in vein’, he punned. He was introducing her to his mother this Sunday at a feast he had organised at home, a feast at which various choice varieties and vintages of the red fluid from his cellar would be available.

He ended it by saying that I was welcome to this feast, as a guest, if I could stomach it, and not as a part of the menu. I passed............. out.

I came to in a hospital bed surrounded by anxious relatives. They said that probably the blood donation I had given coupled with my sleepless nights spent for preparing for the exam and accompanied by the anxiety over my grandfather’s hospitalisation had taken their toll on my health. I was advised to take it easy for some time to recuperate. But I knew the real story behind my fainting and also that no one would believe it. Now that over30 years have passed and probably Chris has retired (not because he had aged, but because he had aged as per the hospital staff records), I decided to declassify the story from my chronicles and unleash it on the public.

Post-script

I had a sense of déjà vu recently when I heard a little girl exhorting her mother to buy ‘blood’ in a supermarket. I did a double take. Was she Chri's grand-daughter?, I wondered. I tried to see, as unobtrusively as possible, if there were any tell tale signs. Then, I realised she was lisping and wanted ‘bread’’. Yet, she served her purpose to jiggle my memories and remind me to put this story about mankind (?) in writing.

(A large part of this story is true, believe it or not, since I can actually vouch for it! I am sure that, if the hospital concerned is still having old records, it can even confirm the name of the blood bank technician, though I doubt whether the then Chennai based cardiologist, who has even been decorated with a Padma Bhushan, would remember a casual (though hour long) chat with a high school student at MM Hospital, Egmore, Chennai circa 1974.)


Copyright notice: The contents of this blog may not be used in any form without the express written consent of the blog owner, who may be contacted at kishoremrao@hotmail.com.