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THE MAGIC BULLET

By : Chandrashekhar Sastry ( Posted on :11 Mar, 2006 )

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The Magic Bullet
(A drug or therapy or preventive that cures or prevents a disease)
chandrashekhar sastry

The trekkers had halted here on the night before the kidnapping. It was a remote area and it would be easy to disappear from here. The ice capped peaks against the blue sky, the silvery stream in the valley below and the little village with green fields around. It was Paradise. Alpine, but there was no Edelweiss, as he said in the picture postcard he had sent her. With the help of an interpreter she had asked, at lodging houses in the hamlet below, of her husband. The photograph was instantly recognized and many told her they had seen him. But they could not tell her any more.
�Ask the bearded Mentor in the WANTED poster.� It was displayed at all teahouses and lodges. �He has now been taken. He can tell.�

She met him across the bars of a well-lit cell in the high security prison of the Capital. The sun was streaming in and although his fair face was in shadow she could see that it was serene. The high cheeks and the strong Greek nose gave him the tranquillity of a sage. Only the intense eyes under bushy eyebrows and the unruly beard hinted at his calling. She pleaded with him for some news of her husband. Where is he held captive? Can I go meet him? If he is no more tell me where he is buried so I can take his remains home. The man turned his face away and did not answer her questions. Tell me something about him she demanded loudly bringing up the guard alongside her. She waved the guard away and held the bars with clenched fists. �Tell me�, she repeated.
The man in the cell smiled. It was a melancholic smile and he followed it with a despondent, �What of our mothers who have lost their sons, our sisters who have lost their husbands? All without a trace.�
�Please,� she pleaded, �I beg of you, just tell me where he died and where you have buried him.�
�The agony of one white woman is nothing beside the torment of my people,� and with that he turned his back on her in dismissal. She left after that pronouncement and returned to the Capital flinching every time she saw a woman in mourning. And there were so many. She learnt much by talking to them.
~
Their kind was new. They wanted to destroy government not defeat it and win. They took their war to neutral zones by kidnapping aliens. It made them dangerous and sometimes made them successful. The women in mourning told her of his charismatic arousal of youth. He always travelled in shadow and the lights were put out before he entered the stage. After his compelling injunctions to youth to wield arms, his passionate rally to subscribe generously for buying munitions and his colourful prophesies of ultimate victory, the lights were again put out before he left the stage. �It is only through staking one�s life that freedom is won� was his constant refrain. Bitterly, they called him the instigator, the Pied Piper, who led so many boys to their death, who produced so many women in mourning. Our sons, nourished by our breasts, have now been fed a poison that warps their minds, they said.
These holy warriors drew the attention of the world by taking to arms. They believed they had to pass the count of 5000 deaths before international intervention. Civilian deaths by reprisal and extra-judicial killings were inevitable but these were skillfully played upon to galvanise their boys to even more violent and suicidal acts. So it escalated in a vicious spiral. They knew how to handle international media beautifully. Publicity of any sort renewed their vigour and meant victory and recognition. The mindless viciousness of their methods was forgotten in the noise and din of their demands for splitting away from the state. They had seen what they could get by the power of the gun and they would not settle for anything less.

When the Mentor was arrested his close disciples planned and executed a daring hijack of a plane full of VIP�s forcing the state to release him very soon in exchange. Clips of the exchange were broadcast the world over and she watched it on the BBC in horror. What a failure of justice? What needless heroism by the soldiers who died while capturing him? All wasted and thrown away for an exchange of rich merchants and venal politicians. But Very Important Persons.
He was sent overseas, to the land of the BBC, to conjure up funds, to procure arms and most importantly to raise suicide squads from amongst expatriates. This was his newest device towards cost-effective measures. No one else could rouse the passion of youth like he did. He knew the risks he was taking, but he had lived with risks all his life. He always journeyed incognito and his supporters provided him safe houses and cover. He had taken off the hair on his face and trimmed short the hair on his head.
After he entered the stage in Birmingham the spotlight came on. He made his powerful call to youth to take to arms, described in vivid detail the oppression they should fight and demanded that they contribute well. �It is only through staking one�s life that freedom is won,� he concluded, then raising his voice, �One who equips our heaven-blessed crusaders is like the one who directly participates in the just struggle,� and the baskets being carried around the audience grew heavy with money. No wonder they called him God�s gift to the militants.

It happened as the car was crossing the bridge across the river. He was thrown out before the vehicle hurtled into the freezing water and all those trapped inside were drowned. He was picked up by the truck, which had hit them, unconscious with multiple injuries and fractures. They drove out a good distance before depositing him on the road near a wayside hotel and speeding away. Fortunately, a doctor in a passing car gave him first aid and took him along to the Metropolis. The first hospital was only nine kilometres away.
She was Nurse-on-Duty the night he was brought in. The operation theatre was readied for emergency operations and the Surgeon had been summoned from his home. She was told that the sole survivor in a road crash was being operated on. Nurses were rushing hither thither and she was to get a bed ready in the postoperative ward. The operation took four hours, after which he was brought in. Carefully they lifted him and laid him on the bed. The drip bottle was hung on. When she turned to look at him she saw his head was swathed in bandage; only his brow, closed eyes and nose were visible. Something about them disturbed her. The bushy eyebrows, the luxuriant lashes, the Greek nose and the olive complexion marked him out as a foreigner.
The police came, photographed him and took an inventory of what was found on him. They found no clue to his identity. His clothes were readymade, bought in the Metropolis. When he opened his eyes they found that his jaw injuries did not let him speak and they could not interrogate him. They left with strict instructions to the hospital staff.

He saw her when she entered the Ward. The clipboard fell from her hands as she met his eyes but she concealed her surprise, bent down, and picked it up. Long training had made her compassionate to the suffering of patients. As she left his bed she turned once again and saw the fear in his eyes. She knew that he knew and that he was afraid. All day it kept buzzing in her mind as she went about her tasks. The Matron pulled her up once for being absent-minded.
That night she sat alone in her room thinking. Her first duty to the patient was to afford him help and succour. When he recovered he would go back to his old ways and perhaps cause a lot more suffering for many innocent people. She could, of course, inform the police; they would extradite him for trial in his country, which had the most slow mechanisms of justice and the most arcane of laws. He may even escape custody again from there. No, she must invoke the old Semitic laws of a life for a life. But how could she place herself in judgement. He looked so boylike with his wild eyes and so full of promise as a young man. Someone must show him better ways. Would it be possible to tutor the Mentor? Suddenly she remembered something she had read from Sartre.
�The criminal does not make beauty; he himself is the authentic beauty.�
That was the fascination youth found in him. He made senseless and indiscriminate killings appear holy. He injected the seminal poison. Yes, he had the fatal and attractive beauty of the serpent. She had seen a resplendent one in their country swaying to the pipe of a snake charmer. When asked to, she had confidently extended her hand to be wrapped by the snake. She knew it had been defanged. It was not cold-blooded at all and was warm and sensual to touch.

No one would know it had been made to happen. Early next day she picked up a pale injectable from the pharmacy of the Hospital. He was awake as she entered the Ward. She pretended to consult a chart and smiled at him as she shot a measured 1.5ml into the plastic pouch of IV fluid. The pale streak diffusing into the clear fluid seemed beautiful.
The excellent facilities of the Queen Mother Hospital would ensure that he survived but the injectable she had used would paralyse his vocal cords and he would never articulate a word again.

Written By : Chandrashekhar Sastry

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