by Jeff Tikari
recover. The special antidote would remove all traces of the poison from Baldev’s system, but could not reverse the damage. Arun had already taken the precaution of disposing off the remainder of the poison a few days ago: he had buried the packet of poison deep in the ground in his backyard and had planted a sapling on the disturbed soil.
Arun and Seema returned late from Baldev’s house one night, they had eaten their meal in Baldev’s kitchen and so went straight to bed. At three in the morning Arun awoke to the sound of Seema retching. Her ingesta were streaked with blood. Arun blanched. Could Seema have possibly ingested some of the poison? No! Impossible! They had been very careful. It had to be something else.
Seema was looking at him with terror in her eyes, “what’s happening, Arun? Why is there blood in my vomit? Tell me, oh my God! Tell me!”
Arun’s heart turned cold, but he managed to control his panic, “It’s probably nothing, darling. I’ll check it out at the hospital. It is certainly not the poison. You very likely have a leaking ulcer.”
Arun knew that after a certain stage there was no antidote to the progress of the poison. ‘Induce vomiting’ the instructions said. He thought he might just do that to himself - to be on the safe side. He put two fingers down his throat and vomited in the bathroom washbasin. The basin turned red. Arun’s knees gave way. “This is bullshit, man! What the hell is happening? Please, God, what the hell is this? Shit! How the hell can this happen? This is bloody unreal!”
Arun controlled himself. “This is not happening, God! How can it? I know there is not an atom of the poison anywhere around. I have personally got rid of every grain of the stuff. So what the bloody hell is this?”
Baldev heard Arun and his dear lovely Seema were ill, very seriously ill. It was two days since they had visited - two days over which period Baldev had slowly grown stronger – now that there was no poison in his meals. He decided to visit his dear friends: supported by Charan and Henry, his assistants, he set off gingerly.
Arun heard his name being called repeatedly and forced his eyes open and saw Baldev sitting next to his bed with tears running down his face. Arun’s face was wet with tears too, he had been crying for hours. Seema’s dead body lay next to him on the double bed, one slim leg exposed. She had died a few hours ago. He knew he was very close to death too; he had nothing to live for, anyway.
“I’m going now; I’m going to join Seema. Please forgive me, Baldev, if you can find it in your heart.”
“Forgive you; forgive you? It is because of you both that I am alive now!”
“No, Baldev, this is my dying declaration,” he whispered. “We tried to kill you, poison you for your money, but God has punished us and reversed the poison onto us.”
“What do you mean, I don’t understand?”
In a fading voice, Arun gave the outline to Baldev. He told him where he had buried the poison. Baldev saw Seema’s body half covered with a sheet; even in death she looked beautiful. Baldev’s heart was overcome with sorrow; he put out a trembling hand and squeezed Arun’s hand, “I forgive you, my friend,” he whispered, “I forgive everything!”
The twin funeral was taken out that afternoon.
The police dug up the packet of poison, it was soaking wet. Arun had, inadvertently, buried the poison next to an underground natural water channel to his tube well – the source of his drinking water!
Hypnotic Attraction
Three thousand years ago an insidious metamorphosis, slow and unnoticeable took place on a remote and sparsely populated island in the Pacific. Gradually over the years the inhabitants reduced their quantity of food intake. Areas where food crops were grown previously were slowly dwindling and land was being left out of cultivation. Body weight was not affected; in fact, the average tribe weight had gone up.
There is no record of when the island was discovered or any details of the small tribe that occupied it. Capt Cook, on one of his journeys around the pacific, dropped anchor there for half a day and noted the position of the island in his logbook. He also mentioned the luxuriant forests and the abundance of bird and animal life there. He, however, did not observe any signs of human habitation.
Two hundred years later when a team of scientists and anthropologists stopped by the island, attracted by its beauty, they found no humans, but reported that they felt a certain ‘presence’ and that the serenity and peace around the island had an hypnotic attraction. Some members of the team had shown a great reluctance to leave. “It’s so peaceful and lovely here,” they said, “I feel I want to stay here for the rest of my days. I don’t care if I lose my job! There is plenty to eat here. Look at the fruit trees, the bird life, and animals. One could never starve here.” Some made a secret promise to return one day.
The organic metastasis, that became noticeable to the island people three thousand years ago, had a subtle start much earlier. The human body was, apparently, undergoing a quantum evolutionary leap: a change that chanced only on this sparsely populated remote island. The Human metabolism was slowly transmuting to a sun-energy-absorbing photosynthetic body: a body that progressively attained efficiency in transforming the sun’s rays and heat to life sustaining energy-fuel; very like cold-blooded reptiles that have the ability to use the sun’s energy to help supplement their food derived energy. The Island populace had rapidly achieved this benchmark and progressed to becoming beings that could subsist entirely on solar energy. Night-time activities required small amounts of food to supplement their energy.
Food gathering was thus no longer the driving activity for survival and life was no longer a struggle to either combat the vagaries of weather or to pitch ones cunning against wild game to procure a meal. Time was now plentiful. Even the value of possessing material wealth was losing its attraction. Wealth, stripped of its value of being a ‘pool bank’ to tide over bad times, was reduced to inconsequential trivia. No longer was ingested nourishment of importance; no longer were hands needed to till the fields or to do the chores intrinsically knitted to food gathering. The sun’s radiated energy took care of food requirements for the tribe adequately. Weapons and tilling implements were abandoned.
Families could be seen lying around on the beach and other clearings apparently cogitating while soaking up the sun’s radiation. Their life style changed from a struggle for survival to one of tranquility and understanding. The only hang over from their previous living order was a need to keep their thatch and mud-walled dwellings in order.
Meditation, under the circumstances, was a natural progression. The tribe practiced uninterrupted contemplation and reflection for hundreds of years and in time perfected the art of emerging from the body: at first for short periods and eventually for days on end. The body eventually became a burden and so was discarded and buried. The spirits now roamed free and wide, energized entirely by the cosmic vitality.
Casting off of the physical body gave the tribe ascendancy over aging and consequently over death.
Tim and Hillary arrived on the Island one bright morning to spend a blissful fortnight of Honeymooning. They were a part of a team of scientists that visited the Island four years previously. Their kit contained canned food, emergency medical requirements, insect repellents, and a few clothes: if the Island was uninhabited, it was pointless putting on clothes.
The elation they experienced on their first visit immediately enveloped them. They spent lazy days swimming, exploring the forest and making love. Fruit was plentiful and animals had lost all sense of fear of humans. Tim had an accident that could have been very severe for he fell off the high branch of a wild fruit tree, but miraculously landed softly on the forest floor. Hillary foolishly swam out too far and was terrified when a large shark circled her and then rushed in with an attack, but miraculously turned away. Both Tim and Hillary wondered at how fate had intervened and saved them from severe injury or perhaps even death. Days merged into one another, for when one is enjoying one’s self, time seems to fly.
Underlying their enjoyment wa
s a sense of security. They felt strangely safe on the island. They seemed to receive some kind of telepathic forewarning which saved them from many accidents and dangerous encounters with poisonous snakes or insects. They explored caves and saw obvious signs of previous habitation. Cave paintings showed curious drawings of men and women lying prone with, what appeared to be, steam or some form of energy emanating from their body and mingling above the trees. This was quite baffling and left them wondering. Other paintings showed human bodies being buried. Had the whole race perished, perhaps by an outbreak of disease? They found quite a number of actual burial mounds, but on examination the skeletons showed no signs of brutality or degeneration from any disease. In fact the bodies appeared to have been buried in the prime of health. They resolved to return with another scientific team. Next time they would bring friends and family so they too could experience the enchantment of the place. If there were a Garden of Eden, this would seem to be it.
The ship arrived, as scheduled, a fortnight later to pick up Tim and Hillary. It waited in the bay for an hour, hooting incessantly, but no one appeared from the forest. Eventually it was forced to leave a placard behind on the sand