A dying confession
He woke up sweating in the middle of a summer night in 1941. It was 2 am. Next to him, his chest hairy and arms swung over his head lay Rachid. His member, long and curved when erect, was now curled up and hidden. As a young bisexual man of color in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, he had witnessed a surge in patriotic fervor among young Germans who wanted to shake off decades of political impotency. His German lover, Jutta Schenkl, a fellow graduate student, had told him that Hitler was regaining the moral pride of Germans enslaved by crippling sanctions due to lost wars of the past. He had lost his virginity to this beautiful nymph with hazel blue eyes and while removing the sheets after an intense night of love making, Jutta told him that she feared for their safety. Jews, homosexuals and Romas were rounded up and deported to concentration camps the previous week. She, a blue-eyed Aryan and former member of the Jungmädel was forbidden to marry and have children with men of color. Both would be shot if discovered. He told this to Rachid, his secret lover, the night after listening to an impassioned speech by Subhash Bose, a patriotic freedom fighter from India who had travelled to Germany to enlist Nazi Germany’s help to defeat the British who ruled his motherland. He confided everything in Rachid, a French Moroccan, who cared only for material and physical pleasures, but was the sweetest person in his graduate school with a genteel nature, voracious appetite and a virile lover.
Bose’s plan for his native India was to create an army in Germany drawn on support from students and expats of Indian origin who lived in Germany at the time. The British had to be defeated on the battleground and Bose was enlisting the support of the Axis-Fuhrer’s Germany, Tojo’s Japan and Il Duce’s Italy. Towards October 1941, Bose created the Indische Legion or the Azad Hind Fauj, and developed a radio station that had all of us entertained with his rousing speeches of freedom coming to India. He registered to become a soldier in the legion, much to the chagrin of Jutta, who had wanted to escape to Canada with him ever since Hitler had irked the entire world with his bold decision to invade Eastern Europe. She feared war that would burn Germany. NG Swami, an active member of Indische Legion told him that Hitler’s army would roll into Europe, cross into Asia, and bury the British on Indian soil. Bose’s Indian National Army was being mobilized on the eastern front near Burma and with Hitler advancing from the West and Bose along with Tojo’s army from the East, the only way out for the English army was to jump into the waters of the Indian Ocean. Victory was nearing.
Rachid suspected something that month-the scent of a woman in the apartment. Normally, Jutta and he would make love on her bed in her modest apartment. Her brother’s visit to town had her visiting late at night and ended up in a session of passionate love. On being questioned by Rachid, he denied everything about the love making, but confessed to having had Jutta over for dinner. After kissing and professing his eternal love, Rachid left the apartment. Torn between two lovers and a country that hated the non-Aryans, he a black-eyed and brown-skinned Aryan from the far-east was now a soldier. At the legion’s army parade the previous day, he listened to a speech by Rommel, who promised victory against the English. The new flag of the legion was raised-a leaping tiger, which was a fitting tribute and depiction of the native Indian who yearned for freedom from the British East India Company that ruled his motherland, crushing any form of revolt. Army drills, rifle handling, and shooting practices were replacing his evening preparations for his course seminars and his graduate coordinator was becoming increasingly worried about his long absences from school. Months passed but he never saw action. Jutta consumed his nights and he woke up every morning with Rachid by his side. Never did they meet. He considered himself lucky that she always insisted on leaving before midnight. He did not stop her. Rachid would be coming with his bottle of Moet & Chandon to celebrate his graduation and entry into the French Morroccan army and was to be deployed elsewhere soon.
Hitler’s erratic behavior was throwing Bose’s plans awry. There was no significant impact of the Indische Legion on the English. In India, Gandhi’s non-violent Satyagraha and his fast-unto-death methods were uniting the country’s Hindus and Muslims in their common fight against the British government. The world had united against Nazi Germany and the war had reached his backyard. There were daily bombings and many cities were in rubbles. He spent several of the last few days in air raid shelters at the University campus where his research projects were temporarily halted. Jutta had moved into her parent’s home in Bavaria. She had promised to take him with her to Canada if the Germany lost the war. She did not want to live in a country that made forced repatriations for wars started by Hitler. That would enslave the country for ages and hurt German pride. She was Aryan. He, on the other hand, was determined to fight with the Germans and be in one of their tanks when it rolled over the Hindu-Kush mountain range of modern day Afghanistan and into the plains of India. He wanted to be free in his own country.
When he saw the tanks of allied soldiers rolling into the streets of his town, he knew it was all over. Rachid told him that Hitler had killed himself in his bunker and the war was coming to an end. Rachid wanted to escape to any country other than his native Morocco. He wanted for them to live together for the rest of their lives. There was no going back. He packed his belongings and told him that he has established contacts with a group of people who were leaving for the United States in a steamer across the Atlantic and that he had purchased two tickets. Jutta had called the previous night and told him that she had purchased an extra ticket for him to travel with her family to Montreal.
Bose’s right hand man, MR Vyas gave a speech to the legion saying that Germany’s rout in the war was not going to help their cause. They were to mobilize themselves and prepare for a trek across the Alps and assemble in neutral territory-Switzerland, till Bose issued new plans for the future of the army. The plan was to march along the shores of Lake Constance. He revealed this plan secretly to Rachid and would be the only one to know. He could have escaped with Rachid to the United States or with Jutta to Canada. She traveled all the way from Bavaria with a cousin to give him the ticket and told him to be at the train station. They had a modest dinner of soup and bread and made love. It was past midnight. The door opened and Rachid walked in. He saw them in naked embrace. He smashed everything in the apartment, promised to kill him and his legion and walked out. He never saw Rachid again.
He told Jutta to leave for Canada alone. He was consumed with guilt. He lost Rachid forever. He put on his army fatigues, picked up his rifle that never saw a shot fired across the British army, slung it across his shoulder, picked up his rucksack that had some provisions for the march across the Alps to Switzerland and closed the door for the last time.
Captain Singh, a young man of tremendous fortitude and strength, led the march. Morally wounded and with a deflated sense of worth, they trudged on. After several hours of walking, they reached the edges of the town of Immenstadt when shots rang out. Several soldiers lay dead. He was taken prisoner, deported to India, and tried for treason against the British government. He heard that the legion was shot and killed by French Moroccan soldiers camped at Immenstadt.
He is 90 and has a shattered knee, lives in Toronto and wonders if Jutta is alive and well in Canada
The Hippocratic Nose
Staring at the poster hanging on the wall in the doctor’s office of the nasal passage with its pinkish hue and sharp attributes of the nose with no defects, bends, cuts or bruises, I was embarrassed by my own nasal features — the prickly hair that seem to have a life of their own and the monster that lurks in my own nose. The picture below that of the healthy nose in all its glory is that of a diseased one, the reason that brought me to the ear, nose and throat specialist regularly now for 17 years. The pear-shaped structure in the poster appears to be the clean, medical textbook version of the monster in my nose, and is given the innocuous name of nasal polyp. This sweet sounding nasal outgrowth is not a bulb of an exquisite orchid, but a vicious vile being that grows and shrinks like a balloon fish that uses water to inflate and deflate on command. Several blood tests for identifying the trigger indicated eosinophilia, a medical condition that I gradually came to accept, but whether my nasal polyp was due to an allergen was impossible to identify from the skin allergy tests that a renowned specialist in Toronto performed on my arm. Before Google replaced the physician, I relied on the chirurgeon-in-white to perform polypectomy a to help me breathe, talk, smell, sleep and have a normal life.
A decade and a half after the first of my three surgeries, with the help of Reddit and health forums, I narrowed down the possible triggers to alcoholic drinks. The Internet is an astonishing place to search for health conditions. Particularly helpful are health forums that draw together patients suffering from similar conditions and there I found by fellow sufferers. I was simply overjoyed to read my symptoms shared by a few hundred patients in the US and Canada and how the monster ruined their lives. It was beyond the safety rules of a laboratory where I worked to test whether it was absolute alcohol that the monster enjoyed as a TGIF drink. Perhaps it is one of the many ingredients in alcoholic drinks that were bolstering the monster? And that’s how I came across hops, the ingredient in beer, and the quintessential Canadian drink that brings families and colleagues together. Every time I chugged a beer, the nasal congestion would kick in and the monster would wake up from its slumber. Christmas parties sans alcohol became the norm in my life, but that did not dampen my spirits, and I always helped myself to a third filling of carbonated drinks or the fruit punch and gradually veered towards the kids at parties where I found my comfort and strength. Talking to my friends about their latest collection of Glenfiddich or wines that were brought from Niagara served to only bring about a yearning for the same. For this reason, monkeying around with kids seemed to be a better choice.
At the fourth decade of my life, nightmares that I had as a 10-year-old returned, and this time it was not rabid dogs chasing me down the street but polyps that wrapped themselves around my windpipe, effectively choking me to death. I am certain I saw the white light that people who almost died have reported seeing. In fact, Aulus Cornelius Celsus, also known as the Roman Hippocrates, who wrote the book series “De Medicina”, likened polyps to “the nipples of a woman’s breast” and wrote in his case reports that “large polyps dangled into the pharynx” and “on cold and damp days strangulate a man”! And my physician said polyps couldn’t kill!
The monster keeps me awake at night leading to fatigue during the day and I lost my cherished and well-paying job as a result. However, I am not unhappy since I believe I contribute significantly to medical science by harbouring this monster in my nose for 17 years now. Hippocrates must have developed his Oath after seeing the damages caused by the polyp, which he termed “polypus” due to their resemblance to sea polyps. The catacombs of the nasal passage of his patients must have been inundated by greenish-yellow polyps when infected and unhealthy. Having influenced medical science brings me immense joy since over several millennia, the condition has persisted and has remained the favorite of drug companies. Big pharma recently discovered through clinical trials that dupilumab has revolutionized therapeutic approaches to solving this nasal crisis. We certainly have come a long way now to treat this condition. The earliest record of nasal polyps is found in Egyptian literature of approximately 2000 years BCE. Susrutha, the great Indian surgeon who practiced in the fifth century is considered the founder of modern rhinoplasty and nasal reconstructive flaps. While the Roman physician, Claudius Galen, treated polyps by applying goose fat, calf tallow and turpentine, Hippocrates used a crude snare by fashioning a loop sinew around the base of the polyps and passing one end through the pharynx, which effectively snipped the polyps or sometimes used a hot iron passed through the nostrils to cauterize polyps. Celsus used caustic agents and a sharp spatula to separate the polyp from the bone, excising the monster with a hook-like instrument. The “knotted-string” method was used by Paulus Aegineta in the sixth and seventh centuries and by Rolando, the famed Italian physician in the pre-Renaissance period of 1000-1200 AD. However, if I had the choice, I would prefer to have my polypectomy undertaken by the ancient Egyptians who were known for their familiarity and dexterity in the nasal cavity as they routinely removed cranial contents through the nose to prevent facial disfiguration while mummifying the dead. My physician is, unfortunately not so well versed in this Egyptian procedure.
The monster that lurks in my nose wakes up to the spike in blood levels of eosinophils which express interleukin-4 receptor, a molecule that is the target of dupilumab, a biological drug that costs US$ 37 thousand a year, with the adverse effect being corneal inflammation that can blind me or positively gain from hair growth, which has been recorded as a side effect of dupilumab. However, I may have a new nose with a strong sense of smell and a full head of hair. If only the government was willing to let me have some of this drug for free, I could have a beer, watch the Senators play and say La vie, c’est belle.
The Elusive Mr. Max
Mr. Max has been on the run for nine whole years now. I have employed all resources at hand and spent a couple of hundred dollars finding him. He is slippery as an eel, elusive as a unicorn, and uses numbers to his advantage to outwit those who pay from their own pockets to pin him down. Since 2009, when he first surfaced, he has been on the forefront of news channels, radio stations, Internet ads, and is featured on billboards and posters in bus stations, airport lounges, and of late on gift cards. But, rarely does one encounter him. In fact, the odds are one in 29 million that a Canadian will personally meet Mr. Max. Well, that is not too bad for a population the size of Canada with most residents living in urban areas along the 49th parallel. Mr. Max is a truly pan-Canadian denizen who often makes an appearance in the midst of folks grinning from ear to ear, though the underlying truth is that they would rather not be in the photograph, as they fear for their lives, their future, the enormity and significance of their acquaintance with Mr. Max, which can either haunt them or bless them for the rest of their lives. You see, Mr. Max is known to be a bane and a boon to those who have met him and since tales of woe tend to resonate with the public, people whose lives were upended after their chance meeting with Mr. Max dominate the conversation around Mr. Max. However, to me, Mr. Max is not one who would cause me to abandon my principles and values. Mr. Max epitomizes charity, love and hope and in this season of giving, he represents all that I value and cherish. Mr. Max is the angel that announces the arrival of financial salvation, the truth and light of the happy retired life, the one who mitigates the mortgage, the wrecker of car loans, the one who absolves lines of credit and the one who delivers the key to a winter home in the Florida panhandles.
A doormat saying ‘Welcome’ is for Mr. Max, if and when he visits my home. If he does, I would urge him to accompany me to Puerto Playa in the Dominican Republic, where fruits are plenty, the spotless beaches and sparkling white sand where the turquoise waters touches the soul. I would spend nights at a resort with Mr. Max, and coax him to take his shirt off and show his well toned body to a bunch of screaming 50 and 60 year old ladies from Nova Scotia and Winnipeg and get him to perform his signature moves at the nightly resort games under the swaying coconut trees. I would get him his favorite drinks from the bar by the pool, and make sure he got the best table at the buffet, where warm omelettes are served by kind staff with lovely smiles, pleasant eyes and sexy features. I would make Mr. Max feel like he is king. If he ever wanted to feel even more tropical, I would take him on a long haul flight to spend a few nights in Singapore, and trek with him in the urban forests of Bukit Batok, eat plenty of nasi goreng in the Malay quarter, chicken Kottu roti in Serangoon, walk along Changi Beach Park, shop on Orchard Road, and take the mountain car to view Sentosa Island, gaze at the imaginary equatorial line a degree away and fly back to Canada, just in time for the Stanley cup play offs.
While some folks have spent a lifetime waiting for the lovely Mr. Max, others were luckier. However, the more I heard of what Mr. Max could do, I made it my life’s mission to meet him. I devised my own algorithm to crack the mathematical code that would unlock his whereabouts, to no avail. I used websites that predicted the frequency of his occurrence, but lost considerable time and money in the process. In fact, Mr. Max often made an irregular appearance, much to the dismay of many. However, his hosts who are not privy to his appearances until the day he appears on stage deftly handle the technicalities in such a way that, in such an event, the chances of meeting one of his minions is increased. In fact, at this very moment, I have an opportunity to meet a minion, and the excitement is palpable.
Mr. Max was coveted like a lovely object of desire so much that I prayed fervently. I had read stories that some of those few who were fortunate to meet Mr. Max were desperate, broke and in despair, while others were retired and had not many encumbrances, and yet others toiled away in factories and coffee shops, when Mr. Max paid them a visit. The most poignant tale came from someone who said that they were laid off from their jobs the previous day, before Mr. Max rang the doorbell. This struck a chord as I was laid off as well, and at a time when any others would be depressed and hurt, the first thing I did was to pay for an opportunity to meet Mr. Max as the stories implied that being laid off may increase the chances of meeting Mr. Max. Therefore, even before the gravity of the job loss sank in, I was already in line with money in hand. I skimped on my lattes at Starbucks and double-doubles at Tim Horton’s, ate home cooked meals, drank homemade brewed coffee, watched pirated online movies, and dug into microwave popcorn so that I could afford my only vice and fixation – a meeting with Mr. Max. It may appear to some that I have an addiction and perhaps I should seek help. To these detractors of my life’s ambition, I have developed a strategy and that is to pay to see Mr. Max, only when there were more than 42 of his minions in the fray. By doing so, I automatically eliminate most opportunities of meeting Mr. Max alone and instead, enhance the chance of at least securing a private visit to one of the minions, and if lucky, to meet Mr. Max.
Under my pillow lies a scrap of paper with a barcode and with a smile I go to bed on a Friday night. Saturday could be just another day filled with chores and wrapping Christmas gifts or my rendezvous with the elusive Mr. Max.
Divine forgiveness
Twenty-four years ago, in a crowded jailhouse lounge that was washed and painted the previous week, a frail old lady wearing a blue-bordered white sari stood amidst 350 prisoners, a few dozen prison officials and Catholic priests. The walls were adorned with images of a white Christ with a bleeding heart on fire, the Virgin Mary with another bleeding heart and the Infant Jesus decked in a majestic white robe and a golden crown in stark contrast to the swaddling clothes in the manger in a barn in Bethlehem, while colorful streamers ran across the ceiling. Inflated balloons were strung on white pillars that supported the tiled roof of the jailhouse, and despite the large windows being open, the mid January air in this coastal district of Kerala, God’s own country in the southern tip of the Indian sub-continent, felt heavy with the smell of flowers freshly cut for the occasion, and the occasional whiff of cheap perfume that one of the jail officials had appeared to have used liberally, either to thwart the smell of alcohol from the previous night’s revelry or to obfuscate the odor of sweat that was no stranger in this humid town by the sea.
Eager reporters from local dailies and national newspaper chains were relegated to a corner of the lounge and camera-wielding assistants crept up behind the crowd to catch a glimpse of the future saint, a fair-skinned European who called India her home. Two years had already passed and I was one of the 350. Rage, anger, frustration, dejection and hopelessness had set in the moment I was corralled into a jail with several others, who wore the same khaki uniforms and expressions. Except for a few repeat offenders, everyone else in the jail were first timers, spoke different dialects and professed their innocence.
The Jesus Fraternity, a voluntary agency assisting prisoners, working under the Kerala Bishops’ Council commission for justice, peace and development, had spent months in preparation for this solemn visit and Father Joseph Macholil, the Kerala unit director, was secretly congratulating his success at coordinating the visit by the highly respected Saint of the Gutters. Forever on a global circuit, her holiness was nearly impossible to access and if not for the connections that Father Macholil established with the state politicians, this visit would not have materialized. I felt myself drawn towards the commotion at the center of the lounge where it seemed that the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost in the Holy Bible that had several tongues on fire 2000 years ago had dawned once again in this abode of sinners. Officials barked orders in Malayalam, the local language of Kerala, whereas nuns of the order of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by the Saint of the Gutters, spoke to each other in Hinglish, a pidgin English with words largely from Hindi, the predominant language of northern India or in Bengali, the language of Calcutta, the headquarters of the Missionary, which attracted several thousand nuns from impoverished families, who found a calling in serving the destitute in Calcutta. A few police staff dared to speak in English, a language that has challenged Malayalis, the members of the collection of the ethnic groups defined by their native language, Malayalam.
I examined my hands as I walked past the crowd and felt the blisters, bruises and cuts from the days spent in the jail yard, digging the reddish blood and sweat-soaked soil for tapioca and yams and hauling the harvest to baskets, under the watchful eyes of jail wardens with rifles strapped across their shoulders. Our nails and hair were trimmed the previous day by overzealous jail staff abhorrent at the thought of their jail wards appearing shoddy and unkempt when dignitaries visited. We were fed an extra portion of tapioca boiled with meat for a week prior to the occasion, undoubtedly to hide our emaciated and undernourished bodies in a jailhouse where the regular meal consisted of rice gruel, a few vegetables and an occasional morsel of fish fried in grease that has seen better days. Having examined by nails and the back of my hand, I turned to look at my palms. I remembered feeling my mother’s face when she last visited me in jail a fortnight ago. Her eyes had swelled up when she felt the rough palms on her cheeks. Those soft hands that were carefully nourished with coconut oil and massaged as a child were long gone and in their place were calloused hands from handling garden tools every day for two years now. I closed my palms and my eyes and my mind raced back to the night six years ago, on a dark and moonless night in the center of my hometown. The steeple of the church was visible on the far west and the outline of the statue of St. Dominic, the patron saint of the town, could be discerned even in the dark. On the 24th of November 1992 with the rain beating down on the roof of the High Court of Kerala, the events that transpired that unforgettable night were read out by the prosecution lawyer, while my hands remained glued to the prisoner’s box railing, that in some sense prevented me from collapsing at the sight of watching my mother staring at me, with tears running down her cheeks. The court heard that because of my enmity against the deceased Jose, along with my brother, Paul, and friend Sal, and armed with butcher’s knives, we assembled on the 29th of August 1986 at about 7:30 pm on the rear side of our ancestral home situated near the town fire station. While waiting, the deceased Jose, who was riding pillion on a motorcycle ridden by his brother John, proceeding westwards, stopped after being asked to do so by my brother. I was accused of delivering the fatal blow on Jose’s chest and neck, while my brother and Sal inflicted cuts on his hands and arms. John, who started to run away, was caught and the court heard that the three of us stabbed Jose and John several times and also delivered a violent blow on Jose’s neck that almost decapitated him, and when the deed was done, that we escaped on motorcycles. The prosecution lawyer, claimed that the police received a phone call and proceeded to the scene of the murders. The injured victims were lying on the sidewalk with bleeding injuries. They were transported to the hospital by paramedics but succumbed to their injuries. The High Court pronounced its judgment and sentenced us to 14 years rigorous imprisonment.
As a devout and church-going Catholic, a person of strong faith and a god-fearing man, the thought of breaking the Lord’s commandment, Thou shalt not kill, had never transpired in my mind. What happened that night was an aberration that no quantum of punishment can heal or bring back the dead. When Christianity was introduced to the local population in 52 AD by Thomas the Apostle who preached the gospel throughout the Malabar coast and founded several Christian churches mainly along the Periyar river and its tributaries, where there were also Jewish colonies, the religion spread quickly among those suppressed by caste dominance. The local inhabitants in present day Chennai on the east coast of India returned his proselyzation favor by murdering him in 72 AD. The Christians who were converted by Thomas the Apostle were named Syrian Christians, to which I belong and so did the victims Jose and John. In a sense, due to marriages within the community, we share common genetic lineages and common ancestors and I was told that the victims were actually second cousins once removed. Two thousand years of Syrian Christianity in Kerala provided my ancestors with a moral compass, which enabled our survival as a minority in a fragmented yet multi-religious Indian society. The Syrian Christians top all other communities in Kerala with respect to the socioeconomic development index, which is based on parameters such as the possession of land, housing and consumer durables, education and employment status. Yet this moral compass acquired from religion was completely shattered that eventful night and proved that Richard Dawkins was right when he said “the very idea that we get a moral compass from religion is horrible”. The pre-Christian Germanic tribes of Europe regarded the Church’s teaching that murder was wrong as preposterous. They reasoned that killing innocent people was acceptable and normal because the strong should do whatever they wanted.
Innocence was, however, anathema to Jose and John. The entire town was aware of these two bullies who would brazenly commit acts of violence and intimidation, molest women, pick brawls and commit lewd acts in public with the connivance of local politicians that even the police force tasked with law and order could not deal with these two hoodlums. Their rapport with gangsters and street urchins was important during local elections so that the townsfolk could be intimidated to vote for the politicians in power and as a result they became the untouchables. In the summer of 1986, my older brother Jacob dared to stand against the local politician during the municipal elections. Having spent a considerable fortune in rallying people to his speeches, Jacob succeeded in shifting the perception that the incumbent politician was an honest man who cared for the wellbeing of the town and its inhabitants. The nefarious deeds, crooked deals, links with gangsters, ill-gotten wealth stashed away in cooperative banks, and land deals that were made without proper documentation were all uncovered by Jacob and announced in public speeches during electioneering. A week later, while attending a wedding celebration, Jacob was attacked by Jose and John and left for dead after repeatedly being stabbed. Jacob survived and went on to win the election in a wheelchair.
Seeing Jacob in a hospital gurney with blood and flesh protruding from his body killed my innocence and I seethed in anger. At St. Dominic’s church, the priest at the confessional was unable to console me with Hail Marys and the Lord’s Prayer. My parents suggested that I move away to another town and calm myself down, being thankful that Jacob survived and won the election. They opined that the full weight of the law could now be applied to bring Jose and John to justice, since the local police serve their ruling masters and were not married to the law. For three months, I stayed with a cousin in a little hamlet by the sea, fishing and reading my favorite novel, The Godfather, by Mario Puzo. I was finishing my undergraduate degree in arts and had recently appeared for an examination that would enable me to enter the police force. There was no turning back to a life of aimless wandering amidst a crowd of Sunday churchgoers, playing soccer on the streets with kids in trousers and unkempt hair, ogling at pretty girls coming from St. Aloysius High School or heading out to buy fish and vegetables with their mothers in tow, covering their long tresses with scarves that smelt of freshly made coconut oil and holding plastic bags imprinted with images of St. Dominic or the crucified Jesus. Things were falling in place and my life and career seemed poised to take off.
A week before I was to leave for the police sports academy, my cousin came running one night and informed me that Jose and John were seen vandalizing my brother’s office, damaging property and setting the typewriters and other equipment on fire. It was the incident that changed my life and that of others in a small world that we had built with my brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. Office equipment could have been easily replaced since a budget was set in place for any such eventualities; innocent lives and properties were often the target of political and religious frenzies. ‘To err is human; to forgive, divine’ said Alexander Pope in the poem, An Essay on Criticism a few hundred years ago. Forgiveness should have come naturally to a Syrian Christian. After all, did Jesus not forgive his crucifiers? Was the Hindu Brahmin priest who killed Thomas the Apostle at St. Thomas Mount in Mylapore punished for the act? Perhaps, taking a cue from the New Testament, the Christian converts in 72 AD, may have prayed for the killer and his family. To me, that night was long and vivid. April 24, 1986 was a night of a total lunar eclipse. The hamlet by the sea was the perfect venue for a dance of celestial bodies, with the moon situating itself on the opposite side of the earth from the sun so that the earth’s shadow fell on the moon and blocked sunlight from reaching the cold, rocky body about 2160 miles in diameter in size and 239,000 miles away. The dance lasted only for about 30 minutes while I raged on. My head pounded with thoughts of vengeance. As Marie Trout said in her book, ‘The Blues – Why it still hurts so good”, forgiveness divorced from accountability is as efficient at salvaging relationships, as is holding one’s breath under water to prevent drowning. Jose and John should be held accountable for their misdeeds. Heading back to the rear of the tiny thatched house that served to isolate me from the wrath of gangsters and hoodlums in the town, I could not stop thinking how my performance as a soccer player had impressed top officials in the police department and I was asked to join the police soccer team, which was a childhood passion.
The 13th FIFA World Cup was held in Mexico in June 1986 and Argentina was captained by the 25-year old Diego Maradona, who played a big part in his team’s success. Maradona had scored the ‘Hand of God’ goal and the “Goal of the Century” against England and his magic footwork was the talk of the town. Believing soccer to be my destiny, I nervously waited for the paperwork from the police department that would enable me to move away from the town for training and practice in the police soccer academy. I obtained clearances from the local police for any criminal convictions, attested by the physician at the local hospital as a healthy 25 year old capable of endurance in sports and also secured a good character certificate from the school principal, a Catholic priest, who officiated all family celebrations at our ancestral home – births, baptism, confirmation, marriage, anointment of the sick, death, taking up religious vows and the weekly confessionals at church. Despite the hopes of a career as a soccer player afforded by the well wishes of many and blessings of the elders, the grievance I nursed against Jose and John could not be wiped out. Abandoning my hometown and my brothers and friends to the mercy of Jose and John would be selling my soul to the devil. The town has to be freed from the clutches of these evil men.
Two months later, on a dark night, I headed out towards my ancestral home, armed with a few butcher’s knives. I looked up at my hands again, neatly scrubbed and smelling of coconut oil that was provided liberally to all inmates that morning during morning showers. The floors in the shower room were slippery with coconut oil that flowed from the bodies that were briefly massaged by the subservient among the jailbirds, but despite the best efforts of the cheap soap and lather, the fragrance of coconut oil lingered on. The commotion in the center of the jailhouse lounge grew louder and the cameras were busy flashing away, temporarily blinding anyone who looked into them. The Saint of the Gutters was animatedly pointing out to the image of the Virgin Mary on the wall and saying something profound in English that the nuns who accompanied her folded their hands and wept. None of the inmates and officials did, for none of them perhaps understood what she said. In the traditional fashion exhibited by Indians, they constantly and unconsciously wobbled their heads from side to side in acceptance at what was being said. As I approached the Saint, my knees felt week and my hands felt wet. Wishing to wipe away the sweaty palms against the arms of my shirt, I felt the sweat becoming sticky, heavy and slippery. I could not help but notice my bloody hands as if I had just slaughtered a goat or a cow. Back in my ancestral home, my brothers and I took turns to slaughter ducks, chickens, goats and the occasional bullock during Christmas, Easter and wedding celebrations. I have felt animal blood in my hands and washing them out prior to handing the freshly cut pieces of meat to my mother in the kitchen was sufficient to absolve me of the crime of killing animals and the spicy meat dish purged of blood always tasted wonderful. Vasco da Gama, the great Portuguese explorer who was the first European to reach India by sea, landed in Kappadu, near Calicut on the Malabar Coast on 20 May 1498. He was driven by the need for unopposed access to the Indian spice routes to boost the economy of the Portuguese Empire and maintain a commercial monopoly over spices. Black pepper, known as the King of Spices, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, ginger and turmeric that Vasco da Gama took with him also ended up in the large uruli in the kitchen that mother reserved for celebrations. The meat was cooked in coconut oil and spices and served with matta rice. Palm wine or toddy flowed freely and the smell of meat and rice wafting from the jailhouse kitchen quickly brought me back from my reverie and I stared at my bloody hands. Assuming that I may have scraped my palms on the pillar or a nail that jutted out of one of the chairs that I happened to push aside when moving towards the lounge, I proceeded to wipe my hands at the bottom of my mundu, tied around my waist. Nobody would notice that my mundu was stained with blood in this melee. Wiping furiously and quickly, I noticed that there was no stain on my mundu but my palms felt bloody. Panicking, and sweat pouring in large beads down my forehead, I yearned to cry out for help. Not only would anybody care but also crying in a jailhouse filed with hardened inmates is a call to be crucified within the walls of the shower, or the lavatory, or the kitchen. Sodomy and rapes in jails are part of prison behavior, particularly when inmates are held together at one place fighting for supremacy, territory, sex, food, entitlements and even mere survival. Holding back my tears partly at the thought of being sodomized and mostly about having bloodied palms that refused to clear, I dragged my almost numb legs towards the Saint. The story of the woman in the Bible who had been suffering from bleeding for twelve years and who was miraculously cured when she touched the edge of the cloak of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew came rushing. My hands shed the blood of Jose and John. Corrupt and wicked as they were, but it was not my right to shed blood or take a life. I wished to be healed like the woman in the Gospel. I rushed towards the Saint, and fell down on my knees in front of her. Officials and nuns accompanying the Saint rushed to hold me, believing I had passed out. I felt a warm touch on my forehead, which lasted for a few seconds while I grabbed at the blue-bordered sari that I saw in front of me. At the same time, I rose up and releasing the sari, grabbed her wrinkled hands that were raised out. I remembered her hands years later from a 1979 gelatin silver print photographed by the journalist Mary Ellen Mark. I held on to her hands for several seconds, what seemed to be minutes to the officials who managed the show. I was pushed and shoved to make way for others to have a word with the Saint. The bloodied palms did not find a place in my life again, while I served five more years in prison for the crime of murder.
While I was in prison, on the 5th of September 1997, Angeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu passed away due to congestive heart failure and sitting in front of a television that provided the simplest form of luxury in the jailhouse, I wondered if she would have ever remembered me after that visit. Released on account of good behavior after serving 7 years in prison, I lived a life of relative peace in my ancestral home surrounded by family and friends. Due to my criminal history, no respectable family would propose an arranged marriage of their daughters to me and I was resigned to the fact that I would die a bachelor. Richard Dawkins described in his book ‘Selfish Gene’ how I share half my genes with my siblings. If I saved my sibling, there is a 50% chance that I have saved a copy of the “save your siblings” gene. Perhaps this is what I was meant to do with my life. I saved my siblings from Jose and John and in the process helped in kin selection and thereby spreading the gene.
The Clinical Doppelganger
They were separated by birth and 3624 km and neither knew each other. Death did not unite them and both were buried at the local cemetery as per their Catholic faith. After the initial shock had passed with messages pouring in on Facebook, where one was not sure of whether to click the ‘like’ button, or to leave a condolence message, neither men were found to have common friends on social media, which made it all the less puzzling as to why on earth would two men share anything at all, except for worshipping Our Lady of Guadalupe. Yet, Sam found himself staring at his doppelganger throughout the day at work, and fret over it at night. His sleep had become erratic and was often scrolling through social media and health forums for answers. When he mentioned that he had a doppelganger, I was not surprised. We often come across such individuals in our daily lives at social events, who share details that often resemble our own experiences, and we tend to relate to their career paths, education, families, life style, hopes and dreams. Yet Sam told me that this was much bigger.
Sam worked as a clinical trial data analyst for a large corporation and spent hours reading patient narratives. With a PhD in Medical Sciences and several years of experience, he was meticulous, adventurous, curious, and enthusiastic, but never reached a high point in his career, which was in the doldrums. Having explored academia in several countries, he tried his hand in scientific research, and had a good start but floundered along the way, and never took off seriously in a world that was either publish or perish. At his new job, he took on the task of analyzing clinical trial data with gusto. During the course of his work sitting behind a computer all day, and with very limited exercise in winter, except for the shovelling snow, he developed symptoms of asthma. Sam often complained of breathlessness and shied away from sports, although he was fond of biking and had once biked from Toronto to Niagara Falls, and often biked to work. While he did not share the details of his life with anyone for a long time, a setback at the job front forced him to discuss his health issues and I was overcome with empathy. Sam deserved better and he was working his way up the corporate ladder. His friendliness, mannerisms, and discipline were his crutches that carried him forward.
A message popped up on my screen several wintry nights ago when I was playing Candyland with my kids and excusing myself, returned the call and Sam asked me to meet him for some exciting discoveries that he made. Coming from Sam, I was not surprised, as he had made a seminal contribution as a graduate student that made headlines throughout the world. Burning with envy, I had often thought that Sam’s good fortune was probably due to Lady Luck smiling on him, which led him to secure multiple fellowships to continue his research studies in the best universities.
Expecting to find Sam with a new revelation in his career front, as he was constantly moving jobs and cities trying to find the one that matched his passion and drive, I was perplexed and amused when he revealed his doppelganger instead. This person resided on paper, or more specifically, on one of his clinical study reports and in the absence of a photograph of this individual, it was impossible to deduce the use of the word doppelganger in the context. It struck me later when Sam briefed me on this person who lived in far away Lomas de Chapultepec, a suburb in Mexico City, that what Sam needed was a professional to take care of his mental health.
The doppelganger was diagnosed with asthma the same year Sam was and was a victim of a violent assault by thugs who took his car away; some parts of Mexico are too dangerous to travel. To make matters worse for him, his father-in-law’s health nose-dived, which cost him an arm and a leg since Mexicans did not enjoy the universal health program that Canadians do.
Clinical narratives are a mixed bag of events. To the clinician familiar with medical history of patients, these may be usual run-of-the-mill issues and perhaps for the general practitioner in a private practice, an exciting case history may catapult her or him to fame in the medical community. To researchers reading clinical narratives for the purpose of documentation to comply with rules, perhaps no time is spent on dwelling in the lives of patients who live on paper. Sam, on the other hand, was entrusted with monitoring adverse events related to pharmaceutical drugs, so as to alert authorities of the relative risk of using the drug. This involved reading clinical narratives that were documented by the monitoring center constituted by pharmaceutical companies. The more Sam read about his doppelganger, the more he was convinced that his medical history mirrored that of his own. Sam mentioned that he, as a teenager, had snickered at the nasal sounds emitted by a fellow passenger on a bus, who obviously suffered from some nasal ailment that prevented normal inhalation and exhalation. Years later as a graduate student, out of sheer jealousy, Sam had wished death on his fellow graduate student suffering from asthma, who had secured a coveted fellowship to continue his studies abroad at one of the top schools in the world. Sam’s realization that he would end up getting diagnosed with asthma was the nail in the coffin of sin.
While the asthmatic connection was uncannily true in terms of a shared start date when symptoms were first reported, the thing that raised the hair on my back was the day when Sam was car-jacked in Toronto, where he went to visit friends. Paying no heed to advice, he met up with friends at a bar in Kensington Market late night and to save on parking fees, he parked in an alleyway that had no lights and was lined on the sides by large garbage bins. Finding his way back to the car at around midnight, Sam fumbled for his keys and apart from sounds of running feet, he did not remember what happened at that moment. He had passed out with a numbing pain at the back of his head and woke up at Sunnybrook Trauma Center in Toronto, with bandages around his head, bruised lips and few broken ribs. And his car was gone.
His insurance pay out allowed him to get a new car that was essential for work and taking his kids around for games. His time away from work was counterproductive to his mental health and his wife felt that he would be better at work. Sam became a recluse, stayed unshaved for long periods of time and never ventured out of his home even for grocery. As strange as it seems, his wife and kids left him to go to stay with her father who was diagnosed with glioblastoma. She could not stay without the kids and her father could not manage by himself and this was the least she could do. Sam again reminded me that his doppelganger’s father-in-law had been ill as well.
Sam became increasingly erratic and spent more time with clinical narratives at work. At home, he continued to search for his doppelganger online. Using a combination of search terms, he was unsuccessful at finding anybody in Lomas de Chapultepec and hit a wall each time search results came back in Spanish. This necessitated translation tools and at the end of it, Sam was sleep-deprived, lost his sense of humour, happiness and social wellbeing.
Sam’s luck shone one day when at last he found his doppelganger. A death that was reported in a Spanish daily carried the photo and details of a suicide victim in Lomas de Chapultepec. The reporter did not spare any details and even described how Alejandro was found with his wrist slit in the bathroom of his house. Suicide was suspected and the body was sent for an autopsy. The name of the victim was printed below the color image of a 45-year old man. Alejandro had several social media profiles and Sam spent hours reading about Alejandro, his doppelganger, who loved his family, spent hours with tons of friends with whom he partied almost every night in various parts of Mexico and beyond. There were pictures of his daughters and a good-looking wife and pictures of his parents around the dinner table. He seemed to be a social person until the time he was assaulted by thugs and had his car stolen. There were no further online posts from him. Upon his passing, Alejandro’s friends posted extensively on his Facebook profile and recollected their friendship with him.
Sam killed himself the next day. His wrist was slashed with a decrepit can opener.
