Kalkoot- The Lost Himalayan Secret

by S Venkatesh

  Sylvan had woken up with his usual mix of alertness and purposefulness. Today was going to be a big day. He needed to do a recce of the site one final time, and report back to the Maestro.

  He glanced at the view as he neatly combed his hair and put on a jacket that draped well over his athletic frame.

  Below the hotel, office denizens were queueing up at a bus stop to head to their workplaces; like a swarm of ants. Going to work in a mindless herd every morning, and crowding back in the opposite direction every evening.

  He wondered what the bus stop would look like after KaalKoot was unleashed tomorrow.

  ***

  Delhi, Tuesday, 9 a.m.

  In the car, en route to the International Cricket Stadium for the recce, Sylvan skimmed through the newspapers. They were filled with stories about how China was saying that the sanctions being proposed at the GSS were an ‘act of war’ and that they would have to ‘respond appropriately’.

  Sylvan went over the plan in his mind.

  It was all quite simple, really.

  The ‘midfielders’ had already received the ‘balls’ containing spores, dormant forms of Clostridium dystolinum, the bacteria that produced the toxin KaalKoot. Employed in industrial units in the city, they would subject the contents of the ‘balls’ to certain temperature, pressure and pH conditions. They would then pass on three pairs, each containing two sealed cylinders, to Sylvan that evening.

  Sylvan’s associate, Yash, had secured a job in the floodlights and generator maintenance room at the International Cricket Stadium eight months ago. He would have no problem smuggling in the cylinders into the stadium on Wednesday. He would keep one pair of cylinders with himself and hand over one pair each to Sylvan and another associate of theirs, Yuko.

  Sylvan, Yash and Yuko would carry large backpacks, specifically designed to gradually release the contents of the cylinders through nozzles. As the three of them would briskly walk across the stands, the potent, finely aerosolised mix of live bacteria, bacterial spores and toxin would disperse widely across the stadium through air currents.

  Sylvan, Yash and Yuko were under the impression that the Maestro already had the antidote and that they had been injected with it. They would realise the deception only when it was already too late.

  KaalKoot was so highly reactive that it would quickly cause infection in those exposed. The spores, too, once they entered a human host, would rapidly germinate into bacteria, which in turn would produce toxin. Breathing and sneezing by affected people would result in aerosolization into very fine particles, and would help in spreading the pathogen further through air currents. The net result would be that within an hour, KaalKoot would have spread like wildfire across a large area. The analogy was that of a thin fuse lighting up an entire nuclear bomb. Just the three pairs of cylinders would be enough to contaminate the air in the entire stadium.

  The people in immediate vicinity would all die, some within an hour and all within sixty hours. Through breath, sneezing and contact, these people, in turn, would infect others too. The potency would be lower in secondary infected people, and the outbreak would gradually die out.

  But by then, eighty thousand people would be dead. And the countries who led the civilised world would be like headless chickens.

  PART IV:

  THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS

  KOLKATA

  CHAPTER 29

  Kolkata, Tuesday, 12 noon

  The yellow cab belched smoke as it careened through the crowded Kolkata streets. Nearby, a long-suffering public transport bus lurched and sputtered as it lugged its fare for yet another backbreaking journey. All around, the sweat and chatter of people merged with the cacophony of horns and brakes into the giant melting pot that was Kolkata.

  But Professor Bani Bhattacharya barely registered any of this. He was in another world, reminiscing about that fateful evening four months ago when he had discovered the Yogyaveer’s scroll at a monastery.

  The monastery was in a remote village in Nepal on the hilly slopes of the Himalayas. Bani had come across it while retracing various routes that Manohar and the Yogyaveer might have taken.

  The sun was starting to set over the mountains, and the intricately carved wooden façade of the monastery was silhouetted against it, forming a mystical backdrop to the scenario inside.

  The middle-aged priest at the monastery was very sick, and he had been able to narrate the story to Bani only haltingly.

  Apparently, a couple of years ago, he had come across a charismatic old man when he was traversing a remote mountain pass while on a trip. Being lone travellers on the icy slopes, they had struck up a conversation. The old man was probably in his nineties, yet had a striking presence—a sparkle in his eye, a swing in his step, a countenance that exuded calm authority and a demeanour that immediately commanded respect.

  Unfortunately, they had encountered a sudden, rough snowstorm, along with a deadly avalanche. As the priest himself was almost crushed by the ice, the old man rescued him, but in the process, ended up fatally injuring himself.

  As he sensed his life-breath leaving him, the old man told the priest that he had the weight of a serious responsibility on his shoulders. He had been guarding a valuable secret for over seventy years, and was keen that the secret should not die along with him. Saying this, the old man had handed the priest a scroll with some verses in Sanskrit. The verses on the scroll would apparently lead the seeker to the secret.

  The middle-aged priest was to find a way to disseminate the contents of the scroll to the wider world. If fate willed, someday somebody who was a Yogya Dayada, a ‘Worthy Heir’, would unlock the key to the secret using the verses on the scroll. If fate willed otherwise, however, the secret was destined to remain hidden forever.

  The middle-aged priest in Nepal narrated the story to Bani amidst coughs and wheezes. He himself had been seriously ill since then, and had found no way to ‘disseminate the contents of the scroll’. His only fear was that he himself might die before he could keep this promise to the old man.

  Bani remembered vividly the kaleidoscope of emotions that he had experienced in that moment. The first emotion had been shock. Despite all the years of searching, Bani’s logical mind had still not fully believed that the Gupt-Kandara and the Yogyaveer had survived all this while. And yet, here was proof.

  The shock, however, was soon replaced by childlike excitement as Bani realised that the verses on the scroll represented a code to get to the Gupt-Kandara.

  ***

  True to form, the Yogyaveer had indeed ensured that only a Worthy Heir should access the secrets of the Gupt-Kandara. The clues in the verses required a potential seeker to know intricacies of India’s history and legends, besides having an expert’s knowledge of Sanskrit and Pali.

  The crowning glory seemed to be the architecture of the Gupt-Kandara itself, designed by the mechanical genius of the Yogyaveer. A series of obstacles—the Great Agonies—inside the Cave would test the seeker to breaking point. Only a person who displayed extraordinary mental capabilities could get past them.

  Bani still remembered the moment when he read the verses for the first time. His hair had stood on end. In particular, he remembered the fourth verse.

  The secret shall be revealed only to the Worthy Heir

  That person alone, of supreme faith, courage, stillness and compassion

  Shall be able to conquer the Agonies

  And prevent KaalKoot from striking again.

  Bani sensed an enormous weight on his shoulders. The meeting with the priest in Nepal had been serendipitous. If it had not been for that, the scroll, and the secret of the Gupt-Kandara, would have been lost to the world forever.

  But if there was anybody who could be the Worthy Heir, it would have to be him. He would share the glory with no one else. And certainly not some upstart banker or snooty secret agent.

  ***

  The scroll was now in, of all places, Bani’s bank locker.

  That was when Ba
ni had enlisted Bavdekar’s and Steve’s support to crack the verses and locate the Gupt-Kandara, given their familiarity with the Himalayas.

  Bani knew that Steve had only half-believed his theories. But this story had been too compelling for Steve to resist.

  And that had made all the difference.

  CHAPTER 30

  Kolkata, Tuesday, 12.30 p.m.

  A tingle of excitement ran through Bani’s spine as he replayed the verses from the scroll in his head.

  The scroll first gave an account of the story of Manohar Rai and the Imperial Guard’s plan to destroy iconic symbols of Indian civilisation, and to unleash mass destruction in case they found KaalKoot.

  It talked about how the Yogyaveer knew about KaalKoot from his teenage years under the tutelage of a guru in the Himalayas. He also knew its antidote—the Prativisha—which was a powder extracted from a mushroom that grew in the mountains. The Yogyaveer went into hiding at the Gupt-Kandara with a meaningful quantity of the Prativisha with him.

  The scroll went on to describe that many years had passed, with India gaining Independence and the world order changing. The Yogyaveer observed all this from a distance, and kept abreast of developments on his occasional trips to civilisation.

  Meanwhile, he was getting on in years, and his health was beginning to falter. However, true to his promise to Manohar Rai, the Yogyaveer had waited till all the members of the Imperial Guard had died; till ‘the last of them was gone’ and ‘the danger was no more’, so that the secret was now ready to be passed on.

  In order to prevent it from falling into wrong hands, the Yogyaveer decreed that the secret would have to be discovered only by a Worthy Heir, a Yogya Dayada.

  This account was then followed by the verses.

  There were ten verses, with four lines per verse. Bani had translated the verses into English and numbered them in his notes.

  The first three verses contained clues to the location of the Gupt-Kandara. The fourth and fifth verses detailed the qualities that the Yogya Dayada—the Worthy Heir—needed to have to be able to crack the Great Agonies. The next five verses—numbers six to ten—gave clues on how to handle the Great Agonies once inside the Gupt-Kandara.

  ***

  Bani chuckled as he remembered the first two verses. True to form, the Yogyaveer had included references that only a person with a deep knowledge of Indian history could understand.

  Verse 1

  Many may seek to find the Gupt-Kandara

  Some for the treasure, some for Kaalkoot or its antidote

  But the Yogya Dayada will look beyond the obvious

  Towards the land the Master visited with hesitation at the end of his journeys.

  Verse 2

  Seven yojanas from the origin of the river the Master had to cross

  Eight yojanas from the Courtier’s second home

  There exists a settlement with the ten noises complete

  Ten yojanas away lies the Gupt-Kandara.

  The ‘Courtier’ in the second verse was probably Brian Houghton Hodgson, the British resident at the court of Nepal in the nineteenth century. Brian Hodgson was the same person who had heard about the legends of KaalKoot and had tried to locate the tick from which it originated. It was his writings on the subject that had got the Imperial Guard interested in KaalKoot.

  ‘The land the Master visited with hesitation at the end of his journeys’ . . . Bani had inferred that the ‘Master’ meant the Buddha. Before his parinirvana—his final exit from this world at the age of eighty—the Buddha had visited Kushinagara, in modern-day Uttar Pradesh.

  But what was the bit about the Master having been hesitant about that last journey? There was no such record. And what was it about ‘looking beyond the obvious’ in the first verse?

  Bani did not have all the answers when he had discovered the scroll four months ago. But he had had no doubt that all the signs pointed to Nepal.

  Nepal was not far from Uttarakhand, where Manohar Rai had lived. Nepal was also where Bani had found the scroll at the monastery. And Kathmandu in Nepal was where Brian Hodgson had made his second home.

  ***

  As the Kolkata cab snaked past the halting traffic, Bani shook his head in disbelief.

  He had been totally on the wrong track the last four months. It was not Nepal.

  That was what Steve had wanted to tell him at Solaris Hospital.

  Steve had said: ‘Master . . . different . . . l . . . l . . . lo.’ The ‘Master’ referred to in the first verse was ‘different’ from what Bani had presumed. Not the Buddha.

  Hiuen Tsang, also known as Xuanzang. The Chinese pilgrim who had travelled to India in 630-645 CE to learn more about the Law of the Buddha. Hiuen Tsang had written detailed accounts of his travels. Hiuen Tsang was respectfully known as the ‘Master of the Law’.

  ‘Law,’ not ‘. . . l . . . l . . . lo’.

  The Master in the verse referred to Hiuen Tsang, not the Buddha. Bani had not ‘looked beyond the obvious’.

  The land that Hiuen Tsang had ‘visited with hesitation towards the end of his journeys’ in the first verse was Kamarupa, which corresponds to modern-day Assam and north Bengal. Not Kushinagara. Hiuen Tsang’s initial hesitation was well documented.

  Damn, Bani thought. To think that he had missed this interpretation. It now seemed so clear.

  The references in the second verse now fell into place.

  The ‘origin of the river the Master had to cross’ referred to the river Karatoya, which Hiuen Tsang had to cross to get to Kamarupa. It is now a small stream known as Phuljhur, but it was once a great river, a branch of the mighty Teesta. The origin of the Karatoya is in the Baikhunthpur jungles in Jalpaiguri district of Bengal.

  The ‘Courtier’s second home’ was Brian Hodgson’s second home. Bani had mistakenly assumed this to be Kathmandu, with England being his first home. But it actually referred to Darjeeling, which is where Hodgson retired to, if Kathmandu were to be considered his first home.

  So the second verse said that seven and eight yojanas from these two places respectively was ‘a settlement with ten noises complete’.

  Yojana was an ancient Indian unit of distance, measuring around thirteen kilometers. ‘A settlement with ten noises complete’ was a euphemistic way of referring to a city in ancient Pali literature.

  So, this city had to be around eight yojanas, or a hundred kilometres, from Darjeeling, and around ninety kilometres from the origin of the river Karatoya.

  Probably Gangtok, capital of Sikkim.

  Damn, Bani cursed again!

  It was not ‘In . . . s.s.sick’ that Steve had meant to say. It was ‘in Sikkim’.

  And ‘Ho . . . Ho . . . Hottt’ was Hodgson. Hodgson, during his retirement in Darjeeling, had spent a lot of time trekking in Sikkim.

  Bani whistled in excitement.

  So the Gupt-Kandara would be ten yojanas, or a hundred thirty kilometres, from Gangtok. He needed to consult his books for a narrower fix on the location, but it was pretty clear he needed to head to Sikkim.

  Steve’s last utterances were not the blabberings of a delirious mind. They were the desperate outpourings of a soul who knew that time was limited. And that he needed to convey the maximum possible details with each breath.

  Bani sighed heavily as he took off his glasses and wiped a tear from his eye.

  The tear was for Steve. God bless his soul.

  CHAPTER 31

  Dabolim airport, Goa, Tuesday, 12.05 p.m.

  Sam sunk into his window seat in the Sukhoi Air Force aircraft. He had had exactly five hours of sleep in the preceding forty-eight hours, and was struggling to focus.

  It all seemed surreal now. The last two days had been a blur, and he just longed to rewind the clock, back to Mumbai, back to when things with Ananya had been lighter.

  He remembered a particularly lazy Sunday afternoon when they had hung out at his apartment, exchanging light banter as he made coffee. He also remembered them kissing that af
ternoon— the passionate kiss of two souls who loved each other.

  He sighed. All that was gone. A chain of events had now been set in motion from which there was no turning back.

  The aircraft began its steep ascent from Dabolim airport. As the gigantic vista of the Arabian Sea dominated the view, Sam could see a few ships dotting the surface of the waters. Insignificant. Miniscule.

  It reminded him of a time from very long ago. He must have been around eight years old when the Colonel had taken him on his first of many treks up the Himalayas. He remembered being awed by the sheer vastness of the mountains and the dots that were the towns far below. Man’s handiwork, irrelevant and infinitesimal compared to the enormity of nature.

  A part of his being was beginning to yearn for those times when sleep consumed him.

  ***

  Kolkata, Tuesday, 1 p.m.

  Bani got off the cab with a spring in his step.

  He needed to figure out a list of places in Sikkim—ten yojanas from Gangtok—which might contain the Gupt-Kandara. To do this, he needed to refer to the books that Mukhshuddi would have hopefully borrowed from the Asiatic Society library.

  Bani could feel his heart beating in anticipation. He could not wait to meet Mukhshuddi at Olly Pub.

  ***

  Olly Pub, Park Street, Kolkata, Tuesday, 2.30 p.m.

  ‘Dada, you seem anxious. Everything okay?’ Mukhshuddi asked Bani as he slurped down a drink.

  ‘Nothing, Mukhshuddi, all fine. Just a little preoccupied,’ Bani replied. ‘Anyway, I have to go now. I will trouble you again if I need anything more.’

  ***

  Dum Dum airport, Kolkata, Tuesday, 2.45 p.m.

  Sam heaved a sigh of relief when he finally exited Dum Dum airport. With alerts out for him everywhere, it helped that the ACG agent escorting him had bypassed security and whisked him out.

  ***

  Park Street, Kolkata, Tuesday, 2.45 p.m.

  As Bani stepped away from Olly Pub and walked down the street, a sixth sense told him that something was not all right.