by Sachin Garg
I could have had Goosebumps but I didn’t check. I didn’t check because way too many things were running through my head. If ever someone’s view could change in my eyes in a matter of minutes, it was today.
Who could have said that this lively ball of energy was facing death, straight in the eye? And she ignored it like it was an insignificant corn in her foot.
I thought about myself. What was the biggest worry I had ever had? When had I been the most scared in life? What was the worst that had ever happened to me?
There were people living with bigger pains, and if they could live them with such élan, why couldn’t I? I suddenly rewinded my thoughts when I thought that all her coughing was sheer dramatics. My head hung in shame.
And once I had absorbed the shock, I began to come back to my senses. And my thoughts got a bit more rational.
‘So how much money are we talking about?’ I asked her.
‘I don’t know. Probably around a half a crore or something,’ she said in her characteristic nonchalant way.
I made a little promise to myself. I felt like a foot soldier who is part of a huge battle. The way he looks at the force in front of him and he makes a little promise to his motherland, that no matter what happens to him, he will make sure I protect you with all it might. I made a similar promise to myself, that I will try to save her by everything that I can do. I wasn’t sure how much I could do. To save up half a crore would probably take more than half my life. And Vandana didn’t have all day to start the treatment.
My first idea was maybe requesting Vandana into talking to Divya. But then, there must have been a good reason why Vandana had not spoken to her. The little that I had seen of her, I had my doubts about how he would react.
I thought of talking to mom, but I knew that half a crore was a huge sum even for her. She would believe some lady was duping me into paying the money or something.
I looked at Vandana, looking out of the balcony, as if she was on a weekend break from a corporate job. When she had seen me for the first time, she noticed the unrest in my life on my face. And here I was, having spent more than a month with her, without a hint of the colossal physical and mental pain she was handling.
Standing in the balcony, Vandana had my wallet in her hand, as she had told me her story. She had been fiddling with it for quite some time, without doing anything with it. If nothing else, her action diffused the tension in the air.
‘What are you looking for?’ I finally asked her.
‘Guys your age are supposed to carry condoms in their wallets. But I don’t think you’re that interesting.’
‘Then what you looking for?’
‘Maybe I’m looking for your debit card,’ she said.
And she finally opened my wallet and looked around. What caught her eye was something small, dark and spherical.
‘What on earth is this?’
‘It’s a coffee bean,’ I replied, as a thousand memories of that coffee bean came back to my mind. Although I had felt it many times in my wallet, I had gotten so used to seeing it there that my mind didn’t register it.
‘Are you keeping it there so that you can have coffee when you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I love long stories.’
‘It was a nice and breezy evening in Goa. Navya was wearing a yellow dress, which flew around just enough to keep me interested and not embarrass her. There were days when I could sense that it was taking Navya all her energy to stop herself from wrapping her arms around me. I called them non-verbal cues. Her body language shouted that she wanted me. Navya wanted to say something to me, but instead, she stopped at a coffee shop on the beach, went up to the counter and got one single coffee bean. This was that bean.
She gave it to me and asked me, ‘Do you know The Coffee Bean Theory?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘If someone gives you a coffee bean, you should keep it with you. And as you take it, you can make a wish. And the wish will come true if you keep the bean with you. Once the wish comes true, you need to pass on the bean to somebody.’
‘You mean it’s like a good luck charm?’
‘Yes. Kind of.’
‘Hmm. Did your wish come true?’ Vandana asked
I didn’t reply. I remembered clearly what I had wished for. In fact, I didn’t even know whether the wish came true or not. Navya was in love with me at that time, which I couldn’t reciprocate. And she was such a sweet and adorable girl that I actually wished that Navya would stop loving me such that she doesn’t get hurt. I really hoped that it hadn’t come true, at this point. I needed her, with me.
‘Don’t make that face now,’ Vandana broke my chain of thought.
‘Okay, then tell me, what are we doing next?’
By now, I was PhD in Meth Cooking. I felt I knew everything there was to know.
There were tens of processes. I could use phenol acetone in a tube furnace and then use reductive emanation to yield Methamphetamine. But then, I had searched all night for a way to get our hands on Methylamine, an important ingredient in the process. There were a few other processes and each had one or the other major road block.
The process I finally narrowed down on was simpler than the others and most ingredients and materials seemed quite accessible. But there was just one ingredient which was hard to acquire.
Pseudoephedrine, more commonly called ‘pseudo’. Psuedo is a highly controlled substance. But it is a fairly common ingredient in common cold and anti-allergic medicines. But to extract it from those medicines is another task.
Nevertheless, I slept off with the thought of narrating the strategy to Vandana on the next day, with six days to go for the party. With no TV in the house, she was beginning to lose her cool, with nothing to do all day. But then, I hoped to make her wait worth the while when I would tell her the plan.
‘So, you’re saying we sneak into the Chemistry Lab of your college and cook Meth there?’ Vandana said, with the most surprised expression I had seen on her.
‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘So you’re saying, that a simple little Chemistry Lab of your college has all the equipment for cooking a drug like Methamphetamine?’
‘Yes, almost everything. Remaining things we can get at any chemical store.’
‘You mean, like everything?’
‘Yes, everything, except the most important ingredient – pseudo.’
‘And how do you plan on getting that?’
‘Well, I have a plan for that.’
‘Mind telling?’
‘Well, have you ever wondered that why is the room you live in so well furnished?’
‘Because somebody used to live there. Your ex-roommate perhaps.’
‘Yeah. His name is Roy. He used to be my best friend. He was the one who was giving mouth to mouth to Kanika when I thought was kissing her.’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘He is presently interning at Tanroxy Pharmaceuticals in Manesar. You know Manesar?’
‘No.’
‘Manesar is around two hour drive from Delhi. It’s famous for great resorts and some factories in the area. Tanroxy is a prominent factory in the area. They had come to our college to look for an intern and picked Roy.’
‘But why are you telling me all this?’
‘I am telling you all this, because Tanroxy is a major manufacturer of Pseudoephedrine in India.’
‘It’s like God wants us to succeed in this crazy mission,’ Vandana gave a broad smile.
‘Yeah. He has been showing us the way at every point. I realized that way before. I don’t know about you, but that was very important for me.’
‘Was it? Why?’
‘Because we are cooking Meth, Vandana. It’s not the most ethical thing to do. And knowing that God is with us is important. It means he thinks we are not doing something wrong. We are doing something unethical to save Navya’s life. And what can be better
than knowing that even God think that’s okay.’
Vandana understood my point. She was impressed with the plan I had built up. She could finally appreciate my three days’ effort.
‘You’ve really thought this through.’
‘That’s how I do things.’
‘So what is the next step?’
‘The next step is that you go to a chemical store and buy these chemicals,’ I said, as I handed over the list to Vandana.
She took the list. And squinted her eyes on what seemed very foreign words to her.
‘Phosphus? I can’t even pronounce these words. Why should I go to the market? You’d have to do this.’
‘Because these are suspicious chemicals. And you wouldn’t look suspicious buying them. If I buy them, people ask questions because I look like a guy up to some mischief. If you wear a suit and go and ask for them, you will look like a high school chemistry lab assistant or something.’
Vandana bought that argument, while the real reason was that I was just plain lazy. I needed time alone in this house after the three day mental acrobat. Perhaps, a TV in the living room would have been handy at this time. I liked having Vandana around in the house, but still, it would be nice to have some time away from her at this stage.
Once she was gone, I sat in my balcony and made some tea for myself. I wasn’t much of a tea person but it’s relaxing to have herbal tea sometimes. I looked at the street in front of me and thought of the plan I had made. And I realized that somewhere in between reading that book, I was beginning to get obsessed. The sight of Navya, lying on the couch, in unconscious state spurred me on. I would go any distance to make this worth; losing sleep for nine days was the least of them.
The only unpleasant part was getting back in touch with Roy. As I said, even though officially we were on talking terms, things had been really awkward between us.
I wanted to make this call when Vandana was not home, and perhaps, now was a good time.
Roy was staying in the company campus itself. He must have been taken aback on seeing my name on his screen.
‘Heeyyy Samar,’ he said, in a lively voice, as if things had never been awkward between us. I think things were half sorted on that moment itself.
‘Hi Roy. How are you? How’s the internship going?’
And then he told me about his company, his project and a few more boring details. I asked him if he had girls in his company and he had a story or two to share. At least in that fleeting moment, it was as if things had never been wrong.
But it’s one thing to talk normally on the phone. But it’s quite another to help a friend getting his hand on restricted substances.
‘Roy, actually, I called because I was planning to come to Manesar today.’
‘Oh wow! What for? Something related to your summer project? You are coming alone or is there a team tagging along?’
‘Well, I’ll have a friend along. Her name is Vandana.’
‘New girlfriend?’
‘She is almost my mother’s age,’ I said.
‘So what brings you to Manesar?’
‘It’s a long story Roy. And I need your help for two very important things. I have had a long summer and have some stories to tell you. Have some rum ready for the evening,’ I said and hung up.
It was a heart-warming conversation with Roy after a long time. Maybe I had missed a friend who knew where I came from and what I thought. There is nothing like guy bonding.
Like A Mother
Protecting Her Child
The door opened a while later and Vandana entered, coughing. As much as she tried to shove away the topic of her illness, the fact that she was getting worse every passing day was a reality. She still wasn’t in pain, but very soon, her body will start to visibly give away.
She came back to the living room, with her trademark smile, which I could understand was painfully forced. While she was showing me the jazzy bottles and other utilities she had brought, I realized I had to take care of her before I did anything else.
We had six days until Aradhya’s party. I went back to my notebook and re-planned things to see if I could do those things in five days. I needed to devote a day to Vandana too.
So I messaged Roy, that we will come tomorrow instead of today. And went and sat down in front of my computer. I told myself until I would have found a way to collect money for Vandana’s treatment. I was a great believer in the ability of the internet. Yes, Google has been added to the list of 33 million Gods we have in India.
I called up all the cancer NGOs I could find on the net. But the amount was way beyond their capacity. I went and met one of the biggest NGOs, and they promised me a support of up to three lakhs, if I could make a credible doctor say that it will save her life. But it was far from enough.
I searched some more. And then I came across a story with the title, ‘Sympathy Over Touching Viral Photo -Saves Dying Dog’s Life.’
The story was about a man who’s dog was dying of arthritis but he couldn’t get it cured because he didn’t have enough money for it. So he posted a touching photograph of himself with the dog on the internet and asked for donation. The photograph went viral because of its emotional connect and people donated in large numbers, resulting in saving the dog’s life.
I got an idea when I read about this. And I decided to build a website of my own.
I registered the domain savevandana.com and set up everything in next four hours. I asked for donations on the site and promoted it everywhere I could. I shared the link on my Facebook profile, tweeted it and put it up on my dormant blog too. I messaged whoever I could and asked them to share it as well. And slowly, the website crossed a hundred, a thousand and then ten thousand clicks.
And I waited, staring at my bank account, for the money to come in. Small trickles began to flow in. But the big flourish didn’t come all day. I realized I had done what I needed to do. From here onwards, I would have to let it build. And take care of it from the corner of my eye.
It was dark and late in the day. I checked the clock on the wall, it was three o’clock. We were leaving for Manesar at around twelve the next day. Which meant I could have a much needed good long sleep, even though I had my doubts that whether I would be able to sleep or not, with so much happening in my head.
The drive to Manesar was a long one. With every passing minute, my bond with Vandana was getting stronger and stronger. Definitely, she was the closest person to me in the world at that moment. And to think that I didn’t know her at all until so recently did not seem weird anymore. Length of time doesn’t always decide the proximity you feel with someone.
Vandana was in a pensive mood herself, as we sat in the car. I had a feeling she would say something soon to diffuse the tension.
‘Tell me more about her Samar,’ Vandana said. She had said it to diffuse the tension in the air and lighten up a little bit. She had accomplished it completely.
‘What do you want to hear?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. Something about another of your walks on the beach?’
‘Hmm. So this one time, we were walking along the beach. We were not close to the shack that day and had come pretty far. We had a cone of ice cream each in our hands and it was melting at an unmanageable rate.’
‘How do you eat this thing now?’ I asked Navya
She looked at me. Hung her tongue out. And made a long lick starting from her wrist, where the ice cream had come down melting. After finishing the long smooth lick, ‘that’s how,’ she said.
‘Eeew, disgusting!’ I grimaced.
‘You’re so not my type,’ she replied.
‘Thanks. I don’t want to be your type. What does that mean anyway?’
‘Well, I normally like guys, who, you know, are assertive.’
‘And you think I’m not assertive?’ I said. She laughed. ‘In fact, anyone who spends more than a month in Goa has been assertive about something.’
‘You’re stubborn, Samar. It’s different.�
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‘I prefer stubborn over assertive. A stubborn guy does things. An assertive guy pesters others to do things for him.’
‘You’re just amusing yourself.’
‘Am I? So that’s what you were looking for, huh? Assertiveness?’
‘No.’
‘Then?’ I asked.
‘I guess I was looking for you,’ she replied. ‘Just that I was hoping you would be looking for me too.’
At around four, we reached Manesar. We called Roy as we stood at the company entrance.
Roy came to the gate to see us and he was elated. The moment he laid his eyes on Vandana, he knew they would get along. Roy wasn’t prepared for the fact that we will actually be staying with him in his room. Thankfully, it was okay for him and wasn’t too risky in his company. Roy had a spacious room and he was too chivalrous to let Vandana sleep on the floor. So Vandana got the bed, as Roy and I lay down on the floor.
And once our bags were shoved in the corner, introductions made, inhibitions and awkwardness dropped, alcohol bottles opened, it was time to start narrating the summer to him.
Roy went from shit drunk to absolutely sober in 0.1 second when I told him why exactly we were in Manesar.
‘You guys are fucking crazy?’ he said with a hint of slur. There was definite panic in his voice, as if we were going to push him and make him do it with us. I knew I could talk him into it. But the only challenge was that we had to do it tomorrow. We didn’t have much time.
Ideally, I would have dismissed this conversation for the time being and touched the topic only next day. But Roy would have woken up the next morning and headed to work. It wouldn’t have given me much of an opportunity.
‘There are more than one lives at stake Roy. We will have to do this.’
‘Yes, and one of those lives will be mine if I go ahead with this. You have lost your mind. I am really sorry but I would really appreciate it if you guys leave next morning.’