Chemistry

Continued from October 2006 issue.. The drug therapy was halted. The patient was, however, not released from the private quarters of Dr. Phukan’s nursing home. It was planned that Dr. Phukan and Abhagiri would disclose the stunning results of their study at a public gathering. They wanted the patient who now had the looks of a sprightly teenager to also address the doctors, scientists, reporters and the general public who would be invited to the meeting.

A meeting was scheduled for the following week. In the meanwhile, though, there was a sharp deterioration in the condition of the patient.

The doctor and the Ayurvedic expert, the monk, expected the patient’s weight to stabilize once the treatment was ended, and then slowly start to increase. But the patient continued shrinking. The doctor got concerned, and told Abhagiri that any further decrease in bulk or height would be undesirable. For the changes that were occurring were psychological as well as somatic. Not only was the patient starting to look like a child, but his demeanor, his behavior, the way he spoke or walked, and above all his intelligence level was becoming like that of a pre-pubescent boy. When the reversion engineered by them had brought him to the threshold of youth he like to gossip about the good-looking young girls of his village; he wanted to go hunting, fishing and farming or engage himself in activities normally expected of a 20 or 30 year old. Now, all that was gone. He wanted to talk about games that he played as a child and of eating. “When will these changes come to an end?”- the doctor wondered. “When will the patient start to grow like a normal child from the physical and mental state that their drugs caused him to revert to.”

A demoralized Dr. Phukan began reviewing the procedures that they followed during the course of the treatment. He hoped to discover errors or oversights that may give hints of actions to arrest the decline in physical condition of the patient. The examination indicated that there were no glaring mistakes that either he or Abhagiri had committed. The compounder or the aide, who had prepared the drug from the third week of the treatment, if anyone, must have made thus errors or dereliction of duty. Further inquiry confirmed this suspicion. One day the aide had broken a glass vial containing a rare ingredient while mixing the potion. He was scared that he would be punished if this was discovered and substituted the wasted compound with another without informing either the doctor or the monk. Then there were those leaves that had become stale with growth of fungi. There was also a container whose label had partially come off, so that the aide must have used it by mistake.

Abhagiri did not know any Ayurvedic medicine that could be used to stop the continuing drop in the size of the patient. Dr. Phukan knew that there was nothing in western medicine that could be of any help. “If he continues to shrink, won’t he finally disappear?”- worried the doctor.

With the shrinkage in the patient’s physical stature continuing unabated, a horrified Dr. Phukan resorted to an intensive dietary program. The doctor started paying more attention to the quality and quantity of food that was administered to the old man (who was now a boy). The doctor made sure that he got sufficient quantities of food that were rich in minerals and vitamins, and at regular intervals. His goal was not to overstuff the boy’s stomach for doing so may result in indigestion and a loss of appetite. It was hoped that these nourishment when properly absorbed into the body would halt the decline, and would ultimately stimulate a growth process. An Ayurvedic book called ‘Rajaballabh’ that Abhagiri had recommended was also purchased for this purpose.

Several times during the day, the patient was given freshly squeezed juices that were prepared alternatively from oranges, ripe tomatoes, apples and mixed vegetables. The breakfast consisted of two half-boiled eggs, slices of vitamin-enriched bread along with butter, and about half a kilogram of pure cow milk. Well cooked fish or lamb meat with rice, potatoes and peas were served for lunch. For afternoon snack he was given pieces of coconut, a few dates, pistachios, some raisins and four glasses of milk. The evening meal which was fed around 10 p.m., was kept simple and vegetarian with a couple of rotis, some rice, a little barley, and a stew of cauliflower, cabbage, potatoes and lentils. In addition to all the above, the boy was allowed to have supplements of juice made from raw meat, sugar candy and cod-liver oil whenever he desired. A few items like rice and bread were peptonized before being offered to the boy so that he could digest them easily. Before sending him off to sleep in the night he was given a few Ayurvedic digestive pills, and strangely enough a small dosage of brandy.

The patient withstood the barrage of all that rich food remarkably well during the first few days. Then one night he developed serious indigestion; he could not digest those fruits, meat and vegetables any longer. That was not all. A bout of dysentery overpowered his weakened defenses, and he defecated many times during the night. The doctor was shocked to discover in the morning that the patient had lost several kilograms of weight overnight. It seemed to the doctor that reversion in age that had been occurring unabatedly during the previous weeks accelerated its pace, by now purely undesirable, considerably in those twelve hours. The patient appeared to have become younger by at least ten years during that period. Alas, he now looked like a ten-year-old.

There was another factor that added to the heightened consternation on part of the doctor. Daily records of patient’s height now indicated that he was losing an inch and a half per day compared to loss of an inch daily during the previous week. Dr. Phukan wondered if he should abandon the experiment completely and leave the final outcome to fate. But he was frightened at the prospect of witnessing the patient reduce to a little baby. “Who will take care of him then?” he asked himself. He knew that it was possible to hire ‘wet-nurses’, nurses who took upon themselves the arduous task of breast-feeding their charges with own milk. But such hired help had to be brought from the big city of Calcutta, a thousand kilometers away, and was expensive costing over thirty rupees a month in addition to food and boarding. The doctor had already spent a considerable sum on the experiment so far, mainly on the rich diet that had become necessary caused by the unforeseen complications. He realized the need to shore up his battered finances, but at the moment was unwilling to begin seeing other patients for regular diseases, because such diversions would hurt his research.

Dr. Phukan knew that certain glands controlled human height during the formative years. He wrongly recalled having read of an experiment in which dwarfs who received preparations developed from endocrine glands of chimpanzees grow to normal heights. Since chimpanzees were found only in Africa, he bought a large native monkey that resembled a chimpanzees by virtue of large stature, prepared a crude liquid extraction from its glands using his own method, and injected that into the patient. But nothing changed, the patient continued to shrink.

The old patient had never married and had no children to carry on his family name. He had several nephews who looked after his daily needs now that he had grown old. They expected him to die soon leaving to them bulk of his estate. The patient was distrustful of his nephews who he considered to be good-for-nothing gold-diggers, who were treating him well during his last days only because their sight was set on his hard earned wealth. He thought in disgust that they would curve up his fertile farmland and divvy up his bank balance as soon as he died. But he had no choice for he could not handle the daily chores by himself.

When the old man left for Dr. Phukan’s nursing home in the city he went unaccompanied. He did not disclose to anyone, including the nephews, the real reason why he was making the trip. “I will be away for six weeks. At first I will go to Dr. Phukan’s clinic to get rid of this chronic migraine that has been bothering me for the last few years. Then I will spend some days at the holy temple at Kamakhya.”

There was an important concern that forced him to keep his true intentions secretly. He was not overly troubled at the thought that if his real wishes became known, fellow villagers would ridicule him for his lust for young girls at an advanced age. What worried him more was that if his nephews learnt of the designs to get married and have children, they would immediately stop taking care of him, for then they would not get any share of his wealth which naturally would go to his own children. That by itself would have been superbly acceptable except under the scenario that Dr. Phukan’s experiment failed and the old man was left to fend for himself. He did not want to risk that harrowing prospect and hence the subterfuge.

When their uncle did not return for over nine weeks, the nephews got worried. Their uncle hardly ever left home for more than a day or two at a time. So they wrote him a letter at Dr. Phukan’s address in the town. The old man was illiterate. The doctor responded with a lie that their uncle was fine and dandy.

After three more weeks, one of the nephews decided to visit the old man in the town. This sly nephew thought that if he can meet with his uncle alone for a few hours, he would be able to use his charm to convince the old man to will over the property to him and him only. The nephew met Dr. Phukan at the nursing home and wished to speak with his uncle. The doctor had no inkling into the nefarious design of the nephew. Neither did he know of the patient’s desire to keep the experiment a secret from even his kith and kin. Thus the doctor escorted the man to the private quarters where the patients was held and explained how he had transformed their uncle to a small child, thanks to the amazing drugs that he invented.

The nephew could not believe what he saw with his eyes or the words he heard from Dr. Phukan. He was shell-shocked by sheer implausibility of the story relayed to him. “Does Dr. Phukan think that I am an idiot, a nincompoop who will believe any cockand- bull story that he dishes out? How in the world does he have the audacity to show a young boy, and tell me that that’s my uncle. That’s absurd, purely insane”- the nephew thought.

He concluded that Dr. Phukan was lying through his teeth. Perhaps his uncle was alive no more, the stupid experiments of the doctor may have already cost him his life. He had heard that ‘foreign-returned’ scientists and doctors like Phukan played with lives of not only animals but also humans. His uncle may have been sacrificed at the alter of so-called science, and now the doctor was trying to cover up his act. Or, perhaps his uncle was still alive and the doctor wanted to unscrupulously grab his uncle’s wealth.

The nephew consulted with a lawyer and filed a complaint against the doctor in the town’s thana or the police station. The case stated that his uncle who was undergoing medical treatment had disappeared from Dr. Phukan’s nursing home. It further went on to say that the doctor claimed that his uncle had been transformed into a young boy by dint of his amazing age-rejuvenating drugs. The nephew complained that the incident was nothing but a clever ploy to lay hands on his uncle’s considerable real estate and other properties.

The police inspector who was a dedicated servant of the government went to Dr. Phukan’s nursing home early next morning ostensibly to conduct an official inquiry. He wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on. If the complaint were indeed true then the inspector would apply the law of the land, arrest the doctor and put him in prison till a judge decided upon the case. But the foremost reason why the inspector rushed to the doctor’s nursing home was that for some weeks he had been hearing rumors about the experiments and wanted to satisfy his curiosity.

When he arrived at the nursing home, the inspector saw that Abhagiri was ensconced on a large tiger skin in a classic asana position at the entrance to the building. He was enjoying the pleasure of opium smoking. The smoke that emanated from his mouth formed circles of increasing size and decreasing density as it spiraled upwards until the thinning outer lines became indistinguishable from the surrounding air. Several of the monk’s disciples who were mainly from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar sat surrounding him on the ground on cloth mats; they seemed to be keenly watching the lines of smoke rise, and eagerly waiting their turns at babaji’s pipe.

The disciples recognized the inspector to be a respectable member of the police force because of his starched and ironed khaki uniform. They stood up from their tattered mats and lazily offered him salutations. The monk, however, did not care to rise from his seat or address the officer. When the inspector inquired about Dr. Phukan’s whereabouts, a servant ushered him into the house, and offered him a chair to seat while he went in again to inform the doctor. At that moment the doctor was busy in his laboratory. The inspector explained to the doctor the reason for his visit. He was responding to an official complaint by the nephew about his uncle’s disappearance from the doctor’s nursing home. In the complaint he claimed an alleged attempt on part of the doctor to cover up the crime by absurdly claiming that his uncle who was in his late sixties had been turned into a child of not more than twelve.

Continued to next issue...