Kalkoot- The Lost Himalayan Secret

by S Venkatesh

  What he was experiencing now was not a torrent; this was a maelstrom. But there was no mention of a maelstrom in the verses.

  He let go, waiting to be lashed against a rock or die of asphyxiation. He hoped the end would be swift.

  An Edgar Allan Poe story about a maelstrom came to Sam’s mind while he was waiting to die. The protagonist got out of the maelstrom by remaining still and not fighting or flailing his arms about; by resisting the urge to struggle and not tiring himself out.

  The eighth verse from the Yogyaveer’s scroll now made sense.

  Verse 8

  He who is still in the face of the most intense motion

  He who observes the flow of the universe with equanimity

  For him the waters shall not pose a danger

  He shall reach his destination without much effort.

  ***

  Delhi, Wednesday, 7.40 p.m.

  Something unprecedented was happening in the VVIP stands at the International Cricket Stadium.

  There were six heads of state present, including leaders of most of the free world.

  Three of the six had started to exhibit symptoms.

  Commando agents in hazmat suits, accompanied by the country’s best doctors, had swiftly swooped in on the scene and escorted all the cricketers and leaders out of the stadium.

  In order to prevent a stampede, the authorities announced that the match was being temporarily paused due to some technical issues with the pitch.

  But, by then, almost a third of the forty-five thousand spectators were contending with nausea in some form—some throwing up in their seats, some trying to rush to the toilets and some others nursing it silently as they found themselves paralysed.

  The security personnel tried hard to stem the panic, but it was difficult to do that considering that some of their own people were exhibiting symptoms.

  ***

  Inside the Cave, Wednesday, 7.50 p.m.

  Verses notwithstanding, this was one tough gig.

  For a few minutes, which seemed like hours, Sam was one with the swirling waters. He was tossed, turned, whacked and mauled, but he stayed absolutely still.

  And then the waters started slowing down mysteriously. The whirls grew progressively less ferocious, and Sam was able to gather his wits enough to take deep breaths.

  As he looked around, he realised that what he had fallen into was not a river, but a kind of a whirlpool within a confined area. He had not actually been moved forward much; instead, he had been spun around viciously and repeatedly like in a high-speed blender.

  And now the blender had finally come to a stop.

  If he had tried to fight it, he would have lost energy very quickly, and might have dropped dead by now.

  Gingerly, his head still spinning, Sam stepped out of the waters.

  But such was the impact of the high-speed churning that he had lost all sense of balance, and fell flat on his face onto the hard cave floor.

  ***

  Sam lay still, in that face-down position, for a few minutes. He had neither the mental nor the physical energy to attempt getting up.

  Finally, after what seemed like an effort of a lifetime, he picked himself up.

  He was bleeding from his nose and lips; he had probably torn a couple of ligaments in his leg, and his left hand felt like it had just been inside a wringer.

  But he would live. For now.

  ***

  Delhi, Wednesday, 8 p.m.

  Sylvan, Yuko and Yash had left the stadium after unleashing the pathogen, and met up at a café nearby. They were all under the impression that they had been injected with an antidote.

  So, it was with some surprise that Sylvan noticed that Yuko’s eyelids were drooping, and he seemed to be struggling to talk.

  That was when Yash noticed Sylvan’s arms dangling lifelessly, almost as if he had lost the ability to control them.

  Sylvan, Yash and Yuko had been the closest to the toxin when it was unleashed. They had inhaled the highest concentration of KaalKoot.

  Sylvan and Yuko dropped dead within seconds of each other.

  Yash screamed with terror, and started dialling the Mansion on his phone just as he ran out of the café.

  But the screen of Yash’s phone instrument was dead. The memory of all their handheld instruments had been programmed to auto-destruct in order to avoid detection by the authorities.

  Yash tried throwing away the phone as he ran, but he had already lost control over his arm movements.

  He collapsed to the ground in a heap.

  ***

  Inside the Cave, Wednesday, 8 p.m.

  Sam looked around in the dim light and realised that he was in a confined cylindrical atrium-like chamber, with the whirlpool in the centre.

  He looked up. The ledge from where he had fallen was not visible. There was nothing he could hold on to, so there was no way that he could climb and locate the ledge.

  As his eyes adjusted to the light, he noticed that the cylindrical chamber had a diametre of around twenty metres, but it had perfectly smooth walls, without any exit.

  He had gotten out of the water, but that was small consolation. He was trapped.

  ***

  After five minutes of closely combing the walls of the cylindrical chamber, enduring immense pain from the mauling he had just undergone, Sam finally got his break.

  There was a section of the wall that looked somewhat different from the rest. It was close to ground level, at a height of only 3 feet.

  Sam gingerly pressed that section, and sure enough, the wall opened up to reveal a small tunnel.

  Sam hesitated, then crouched and squeezed into the narrow tunnel, cursing all the extra calories he had consumed in the last few months.

  It was completely dark inside; no chemiluminescent rocks there. Sam could not see a thing, but he could pick up enough cues to know that the tunnel did not widen or open up into any larger chamber. It was basically a dark, long hole, 3 feet wide and 3 feet high.

  Sam panicked slightly as claustrophobia hit him. Entering the tunnel did not seem like a bright idea anymore.

  He moved back a bit, intending to get out the way he had come in.

  Unfortunately, that was not an option anymore. The exit wall behind him had slid shut.

  He was stuck in a crouched position inside this dark, suffocating coffin, the stuff of his worst nightmares.

  CHAPTER 45

  Delhi, Wednesday, 8.30 p.m.

  The organisers had played highlights from past matches on the TV screen at the stadium in order to not cause panic.

  But it is difficult to avoid panic when the better part of forty-five thousand spectators are experiencing strange symptoms and turning progressively delusional. Every exit out of the stadium witnessed a stampede.

  In an unprecedented occurrence, the Indian Army was called in to maintain order in the stadium.

  The Indian government, in turns aided and prodded by international agencies, evacuated the government delegations and then undertook the largest quarantine exercise ever to have been attempted in the world.

  The exit gates were closed. All spectators, other than the cricketers and diplomats who had been evacuated, were ordered to stay put in the stadium.

  At least twenty different parts of the stadium broke into pandemonium on this announcement, but they were brought under control by the Army.

  Not all the Army personnel had masks and protective suits. Some of the jawaans were beginning to show symptoms themselves, but their instructions were clear. Nobody was to move from their posts.

  ***

  Inside the Cave, Wednesday, 8.35 p.m.

  Sam had been in that dark tunnel, crouching in the same position, for a while now.

  The lack of oxygen was making him feel woozy. Was he probably beginning to asphyxiate?

  He had tried to find some room to wriggle, but he could move neither forward nor backward. The wall behind him had slid decisively shut, with no hooks or levers on it. Meanwhil
e, the passage was narrower ahead, so moving forward was not an option either.

  The absence of light made everything worse, including the claustrophobia.

  As he tried to move his head upward, he banged against the hard ceiling of the narrow tunnel and let out a scream.

  ***

  Delhi, Wednesday, 9 p.m.

  The international media had been fed a story that Delhi was affected by a virus similar to the SARS virus which had affected Asia many years ago.

  This message was intended to give the impression that it was a serious outbreak, while also implicitly offering hope that this epidemic could be contained, just like the SARS epidemic.

  Inwardly, however, the secret agencies of the most powerful nations of the world convened in war rooms across the globe were shell-shocked. The delegates and heads of state had been injected with cocktails of botulinum antitoxins, but that did not seem to work. Clearly they were dealing with a genetically modified pathogen here, one that produced a toxin that might have no proven antidote.

  ***

  Inside the Cave, Wednesday, 9 p.m.

  The darkness and the silence were intimidating, even more than the constraining physical space. Sam yearned for his smartphone to check his email; for the remote control to switch on mindless TV programmes; for all the silly jokes on WhatsApp; for the loud, mind-numbing beats at the lounge bar near his office. . .

  But there was no respite. He was a prisoner in what was almost like a coffin, with nobody to hear his cries.

  ***

  Sikkim, Wednesday, 8.55 p.m.

  Damini’s driver informed her that they had reached the inn at Lachung where Sam had halted.

  The inn was deserted, save for the innkeeper and one other man who was hanging out in the lobby.

  Damini took a closer look at him. His description matched that of Sam’s driver provided by the Army man who had been shadowing him till Lachung.

  ***

  Lachung, Wednesday, 9 p.m.

  Damini could not resist a sigh of relief as she heard Bikash’s description of the stocky man with a sunken face and cold eyes who had been with the crew of SUVs and light trucks.

  Finally, here was proof that the Maestro was indeed on the trail of the Gupt-Kandara.

  She immediately called Kunal from her satellite phone and told him that she had the proof needed to dispatch ACG agents from Kolkata to Sikkim. She also gave him the coordinates of the Gupt-Kandara.

  She looked at her watch. If all went well, she might be able to get to the Gupt-Kandara by around 11 p.m. Hopefully.

  She also needed reinforcements. She had a machine gun with her, but outside of the Rambo movies, one did not take on twelve baddies with a single machine gun.

  The weather had improved. She wondered if the Army post at Lachung might lend her a few men, but she could not afford to lose time waiting for them. They would simply have to follow her when they were ready.

  She instructed the driver to leave for Yumthang. He would have to wait there while she covered the journey—on foot—after Yumthang to the Gupt-Kandara.

  Guilt continued to gnaw away at her.

  She let out an uncharacteristic sigh. It was dangerous to enter into a combat situation with so much self-doubt, but she did not have a choice.

  ***

  Inside the Cave, Wednesday, 9.30 p.m.

  For no particular reason, Sam remembered a distant afternoon from his early childhood.

  They had gone to a beach near Mumbai: Sam, his parents and their friends. The Colonel had picked up a beautiful sea shell and shown it to the kids—elaborate, intricate, nature’s best piece of art. For the rest of that afternoon, Sam and the other kids had scanned the beach looking for shells. They had returned home in a cacophony of fun, games and laughter, Sam carrying a bagful of shells.

  Later that night, when the lights were off and the world went to sleep, Sam had heard it . . . the light scraping of the floor. Maybe something was moving over it.

  He had gotten up from his bed and then seen it by the light of the moon. A snail was crawling out of its shell, taking tentative steps. A living, breathing, beautiful being, whose existence had been obscured by light and noise. It was now audible in the silence, only to those who could respect the stillness of the moment. A stillness and freedom which Sam had felt as he trekked in the Himalayas after graduation, and even as he had worked on his education venture. A stillness which had gotten shrouded by the noises from outside—the failure of his venture, the success of his peers, society’s expectations, and the Colonel’s disappointment.

  Until a beautiful part of him crawled so deeply into its shell that he almost forgot it existed. Overpowered by his MBA, his job, morning meetings, conference calls, promotions, loud beats of the disco and a blur of unfulfilling relationships . . . and underneath it all, cynicism, bitterness and meaninglessness.

  Year after year, he had shut out that inner voice until he heard it less and less. A voice which grew ever so faint that it was almost gone.

  Almost.

  But not entirely.

  Because profound urges stem from a spring so deep that no mortal force can extinguish them. They lie dormant, biding their time, until a ray of light begins to draw them out.

  Now Sameer fully understood the importance of what had happened over the last few days.

  In trying to find the woman that he loved, he had also found somebody he had lost touch with.

  Himself.

  ***

  Crouched in the unbearable darkness and silence of the cave, it all came to Sam.

  Memories of that cold night, seventeen years ago, when he and the Colonel got the telephone call. About Sam’s mother’s death in an accident. He had been eleven years old then.

  Maybe, despite his pretending otherwise, the Colonel and he were actually quite alike. Not a father and son separated by a chasm of clashing personalities, but two individuals trying to come to terms with the hand that fate had dealt them. The Colonel, by lapsing into coldness and substituting love with rules, expectations and reprimands. And Sam, by escaping into cynicism.

  Suddenly, in that crouched position, Sam felt a strong yearning to get up and give his father a hug. For all those lost years.

  ***

  Along the stream near Yumthang, Wednesday, 9.30 p.m.

  The Maestro’s party made its way on foot, along with a cart carrying their equipment, by the banks of the tributary of the Lachung Chu. The storm and the mist had abated considerably, helping their progress.

  The Maestro could not help but smile as the caravan stopped in front of a rock formation.

  The lion’s mane meeting the scorpion’s claws.

  ***

  The party led by the Maestro had temporarily camped in front of the ledge that Sam had seen four hours ago. This was the ledge up on the hill opposite the stream which had looked strikingly similar to a balcony but was located on a naked cliff almost 300 feet above the valley.

  ***

  Inside the Cave, Wednesday, 10.30 p.m.

  The euphoria of Sam’s profound realisations was beginning to die out, replaced by a deadened, sickening feeling that none of his resolutions meant anything if he was not going to make it out of the tunnel alive.

  ***

  Along the stream near Yumthang, Wednesday, 10.45 p.m.

  The Maestro and his men had tried getting up to the naked ledge, but it seemed impossible, perched as it were atop 300 feet of sheer, slippery rock with no ridges or footholds.

  Like Sam, they reasoned that there ought to be another way up.

  Like Sam, they had traced the path of the stream further up and come across the spot where the stream disappeared into the mountain face.

  But unlike Sam, who had been trekking in the Himalayas since he was a kid, they had been unable to spot the place where the rock looked different from the surroundings. In spite of being assisted by battery-powered, high-intensity floodlights, they missed the entrance.

  ***

 
; Inside the Cave, Wednesday, 10.55 p.m.

  There are laws even the strongest of wills cannot break. The wooziness of the head and the morbid chatter of his subconscious mind seemed to drive a wedge into Sam’s brain.

  For a brief moment, his despair turned to hope as he sensed some movement at the narrow end of the tunnel ahead of him.

  But it turned to panic as he realised what was causing the movement.

  Some sort of large insect, possibly the size of a rat?

  That did it for Sam. His mind, already teetering on the brink of insanity, snapped.

  CHAPTER 46

  Along the stream near Yumthang, Wednesday, 10.55 p.m.

  The Maestro and his troops retraced their path to the vicinity of the ledge which was located at a height of 300 feet.

  It was time to decide.

  Their ladders would not reach that high. Some men from their party would have to reach the highest point possible and then drill holes into the hard rock face by firing heavy-duty darts. They could then try to hoist themselves up to the ledge.

  It was tricky, but the Maestro had the equipment. And men that he could dispense with, if the need arose.

  ***

  Damini was tracing the path of the river from Yumthang.

  Despite the eeriness of being a lone soul walking by the moonlight through icy cold weather and treacherous terrain, Damini could not help but stop to marvel at the rock formation in front of her.

  The lion’s mane meeting the scorpion’s claws.

  ***

  Inside the Cave, Wednesday, 11 p.m.

  An unholy collage of images flashed through Sam’s mind—a story he had once read . . . of a man who was confined to a coffin, alive. Unable to stop the rats that were gnawing away at his eyes, ears and nose, powerless as the vital forces of his life were chewed away, one by one.

  Sam closed his eyes, desperately trying to stop the deluge of morbid thoughts. But they kept coming. Images of being stuck in a ditch, with only killer snakes for company, and no way to haul himself out.

  The mythological figure Trishanku—the most unfortunate man ever, stuck in an endless purgatory—making it neither to heaven’s gates nor to the redeeming fury of hell’s fires. Waiting endlessly, yearning for release.