INDImag – Contemporary fiction | Motivational short stories | Social stories | Short story criticism

Midnight and whereabouts, 1973, on the sidewalk bricks of Chowringhee, inside the squalor of a tent emerged the incredible body of a boy infant. At all places and in all times thereafter people were to identify him as Arco. His birth itself was of little consequence if one were to consider the foreseeable death of a nine month old pregnancy. In fact that night many mothers ended their pregnancies. This observation in profusion of events certainly escaped Arco. For the next twelve years he grew up playing on his sidewalk deprived of all inquiries and contrition (replete with flies and dogs)

It was precisely in the summer of 1985 when that particular night approached and shook him out of his boyish preoccupations. His wretched sidewalk demonstrated that it could hold drunkards and dogs in equal respect. Arco had just entered his sidewalk tent. All the sounds inside tent belonged to mother. He wondered how she was not going to last fore-ever washing dishes in other houses. The thought filled him with remorse. Suddenly the world almost leaked into him. He thought of man and his most potent creation – cacophony. He also thought of the darkness, sun and birds. He did not wonder about their counterparts yet. The temporal universe to him was still unique, linear. He was reminded of the need to toil and earn if one were to live. He let himself into a formidable dizziness.

At around that instant there was a large thud followed by clamor of many-mouthed crowd over the busy Chowringhee asphalt. Arco emerged from his tent like he had emerged from womb twelve years ago – surprised and yet ignorant of the cause of his surprise. Arco’s body was still as incredible without any trace of it infecting his faculties. On the road he saw a drunken man lying harmlessly in the middle of a round column of people. The man’s attitude best fitted that of a dead. A flailing truck was the suspect in bringing the misfortune. He also saw the warm blood emanating like sun beneath the head that had almost burned the asphalt. The vehemence of blood would also burn on his mind. That night sleep was hard to befriend. Not knowing what to do Arco stared into his hands but darkness preserved him. This was of little consequence because he was to look into his hands again.

On the second night of that fateful summer of 1985 Arco found himself facing another act of blood singing the asphalt, another drunk man and another truck (or bus).  The blood showed the vehemence that besieged the night before. Again, that night Arco found sleep impossible to imagine. Weltering in sweat and horror he did what he was to do at some point in his unusual lifetime. A vacuous peering into hands (now better illuminated under the promiscuous glow of side-walk light post) followed. Arco noticed something unnerving. His right hand was an exact copy of his left (or vice versa)! The crookedness and dimensions of fingers and thumb, the ridges on nails, the mounds and creases on palms, the scars on his wrist and even the innumerable dirt-carved whorls over the pulp of digits! He shook his head in disbelief but the physical puzzle refused to budge. He traced back his forearm only to find the arbor of veins and even hair patterns symmetrically disposed. Susceptible to hypothesis his mind coveted a storm. A hallucination? He waited for morning. The night was the longest night. Later, a borrowed mirror confirmed his regrettable discovery. His face was exactly the double of a half, his torso and his feet were obedient to the new found trend. To test (or to intensify) his hypothesis that he was nothing but a man mirrored upon himself Arco inflicted a soft abrasion on his right hand. The abrasion scrupulously replicated itself on his left! He was not hallucinating! He observed other beings that obediently failed to match his talent. He noted that for some reason God had gifted (or cursed?) him. He thought of the cruelty of warm, sun-like blood that had mirrored across time. He almost succeeded in imagining the unfathomable mirror of events that obliges itself to replicate (reflect) history over and over. Following the regret of knowing the useless there was delight of discovery and longing to reach the root of it.

Three years passed without the world seeing any development worthy of writing about. Under the watchful (and somewhat sad) eyes of street dogs Arco once ate the abominable combination of ghugni and banana. This led (or may be something else did) him into a brilliant sequence: Universe is composed of infinite events (infecting objects and beings) and the events reflect across event-mirrors. These event reflections can be separated in time as opposed to the images in silver or water that are instantaneous to man (and dog). The number of such event-mirrors must surpass any finite number known to man. In fact the act of conceiving this number is in itself an event (a thought event) that has been and will be reflected again. One such event-mirror must have crossed him rendering him perfectly bilateral symmetrical. If systematically addressed, each half of his person is nothing but the sum of their actions and reactions in sequence, of proliferation, orientation and death of fundamental particles. The present is a reflection of past and precursor of future. In this way Arco, sitting on his sidewalk cradled in moist Kolkata air singlehandedly visited the greatest wisdom destined to escape mankind (despite a morbid repetition).

In 1999 inspired by Calcutta University’s medical school curriculum, I undertook the casual reading of stacked Forensic Medicine dissertations at the library. Fungus, dust and pages filled the space between the thick covers. There were words and case studies too. One that I find particularly tormenting, I lay it here:

In 1994, inside a nose-ripping morgue in Kolkata Medical College, assistant professor of Forensic and State Medicine Margaret Bhaduri, completely unaware of Arco until his own death, undertook the autopsy of a man. Police found the man in a Nimtallah ditch.  A dagger held deftly in sweaty and trembling hands of hooligans had attempted to enter the person of the unfortunate tanned youth. The circumstances of the mishap were of little interest since the body was unidentified and impoverished. Margaret noticed that the mortal wounds (a total of six entry wounds) on the person of that unidentified man were peculiar. For each of the wounds on one side of middle line, there was exactly similar infliction on the other side! He advised himself – the events on one half of the body had mirrored on the other side. This thought along with all other experiences of past led him (later that night) to consider the multiplicity of events as configuration of the time bound universe.

I do not know if the corpse that Margaret dissected that day was Arco’s or if it was his reflection (what power can a humble upbringing bestow other than ignorance?). In my faith of Arco’s hypothesis (as if it was mine!) it has become impossible for me to tell if the shadows and eyes of my wife that I see today are the same eyes that I saw yesterday. No man has seen a continuous temporal being or phenomenon. Is because to a beholder, interruption in the form of sleep or dream or death is obligatory (like religion is to some)? But this is not what torments me.

I find myself dissolved in enormous sadness. The belittling realization of recurrent universe was perhaps not for me. I know that Arco’s story has been told before and therefore it cannot be original. I also know that the reader’s act of reading this story must have existed before too. Even the sadness that I wear today has materialized in a mind of some past. My hubris is a repetition.

And I am nothing but the consequence of an implacable recurrence…

Thank You For Reading This Post. Please Stop By Again.