The Forsaken Wilderness, page 15
‘What on earth are these GODDAMNED creatures!’ I shrieked. ‘I’ve seen variants of them, in the winged and insectile form. Are they the much sought after specimens of extra-terrestrial intelligence? These monstrous mutations of animal and bird, plant and insect, fish and coral! WHAT the HELL is all this!’
‘Get a hold of yourself, my boy!’ he huffed. ‘You wouldn’t want to burst an artery on their account. Those aren’t extra-terrestrial entities! They’re what the mountain has spewed forth. No one knows just what on earth they are. All we know is that they come from the very pits of the mountain. Some hold strange theories…’ his lips cracked apart slyly.
‘Such as?’ I raised an eyebrow.
‘Such as the possibility that the comet or unidentifiable aerial object lodged in Ranibaug is nothing more than a Soviet test flight from after the Second World War which crashed into the peak due to atmospheric irregularities. Some say that Nazi physicists and rocket scientists in South America propelled a craft across the globe filled with an assortment of genetically modified animals, to cause wide-scale panic, if discovered. The assumption being that when found, it would no doubt be thought of as concrete evidence of alien life.’
‘Some sort of diversionary tactic,’ I supposed.
‘The experiments they conducted on the livestock produced startling effects on the flesh, and also invariably on the landscape in which they were administered. They were in search of the Holy Grail, after all. Firm believers in the occult. High ranking generals of the SS. Wanted to execute a plan of total world domination by altering the magnetic poles of the earth.’
There are mysteries which yield enigmas, discoveries which disclose the unconscious forces that propel beings in action, into order, into conquest, and down quests unquenchable till they reach the ends of the earth no wiser than when they had started. Such as was my lot in this life!
The more I sought a solution to all I had witnessed, the more entangled I found myself in some abject theorising, in the presence of those whose wishes were not drastically different from my own. Those who sought to unravel the vaulted information that tormented us, that lived in morbid contemplation of Ranibaug and its Queen Goddess.
‘There are parts of the earth uncharted for all of eternity.’ Swaami Anal-Anivaarya stated. ‘Designs that our creator intended not to share with us, thoughts he schemed to leave out of our experience. And perhaps it is better that way! Or so it may seem…’ he mumbled to himself.
I turned an ear to listen more clearly to what was being said.
‘This…’ he waved his palms about himself. ‘Garden of Eden is not the spawn of alien intervention. It is the fruit of human will. Of dedicated care, and careful study. The taming and cultivation of this wilderness is no more a product of superior intelligence than the mere sparrow’s nest, constructed meticulously over the course of countless days and weeks, twig by measly twig at a time. But they have managed to get inside your head and convince you of its mystery…’ he pointed at me. ‘Of its divinity, even! And I say you are a fool for it!’
‘Who?’ I said.
‘The people you met up there. The pagan lot, barbaric, uncouth. An aghora cult of madmen and witchdoctors reigning supreme over one of our own mountains. One of God’s own creations.’
I now slowly began to see the full purpose of our expedition.
‘I had sent you there to clean up that whole lot, to purge the peak of the demonic influence, and mark a location for the building of a new temple. A temple that would cleanse the damned mountain itself! The Forsaken Wilderness that drives people insane with its winds and its atmospheric abnormalities. God has yet to make his presence known at Ranibaug. As of now, it is our imminent duty to rid his Himalayas of all improper elements. That includes unconventional faiths and random religions of any sort that could spring up and populate parts of the neighbouring villages, and cause undue influence on the mountainfolk’s way of life. Which is why I have created for myself here, a sort of private ecosystem where I may attempt to evaluate the effect that one of those creatures might have on the natural environment.’
‘And?’ I gazed about the expanse of green, glowing a burnt fluorescent with the glaring sunlight. ‘What are the results?’
‘It hasn’t managed to mate or reproduce as yet.’ He shook his head in disappointment. ‘But we are working on it. After all, we do have to be discreet. It was sighted the other day by some of the forest guards. They have put out an alert across the area. You see, if this thing turns out to be harmless then we can rest assured that it is not imbued with any special capabilities, let alone extra-terrestrial or supernatural properties—that it is indeed nothing more than a bizarre state experiment by some country from some corner of the globe. That it was dropped into our lap by chance and contains no real significance, certainly not cosmic and least of all divine!’
PART FIVE
Return to Ranibaug
chapter one
Some years hence, I journeyed back up to Harki Dun with a team of ex-colleagues from around the Garhwal region. We made it no further than the rock face that shielded Ranibaug from the tread of the ordinary human foot: the obstacle we had once so effortlessly overcome. Even with the varieties and store of advanced mountaineering equipment and cordage at our disposal, we found no anchor on the sprawling base of the tree trunk. The protruding rock too had become merged with the toes of its roots. It was as if a spike had been placed upon the head of a hurdle to prick the foot of he who leapt high enough to cover it. Climbing the rock face inordinately meant climbing the gigantic tree trunk that spanned its ledge.
It was now no longer a tree, it was indeed a monument, having grown considerably since when I had last seen it, and having stretched itself imposingly upon the horizon. It could be spotted from a mile away, and was by now something of a landmark for lost parties.
We produced our photographs before the state authorities and also shared our findings with the Wadia Institue of Himalayan Geology in Dehradun. Swaami Atal-Anivaarya Natija was summoned by the military to the Dehradun Cantonment. A private conference was held with the Office of Army Intelligence. Several generals were in attendance, and it was said that Swaami Atal-Anivaarya was compelled to disclose all information currently at his disposal regarding Ranibaug and the fate of the expeditioners there vanished. What he revealed is still classified, but one can only assume that he did not share his true impressions, and by all means must have composed an account to fit the official story, bereft of any speculative apprehensions that were otherwise characteristic of his opinions on the subject. He was not, however, to my knowledge, called upon to present before the authorities the strange animal I had sighted at his Resort, the presence of which I had made known in my brief but very public statement to the police.
I was never called upon by the army. A reporter working for the Himalayan Traveller Biweekly Journal got in touch with me for a story he was working on about the HRA Institute of Mountaineering and Research, and the unaccountable disappearance of its founder—Professor Charan Prakash Chaturvedi and his ex-employee Shera, a known mountain guide from Hrishikesh. I furnished him only with the rudimentary details of our expedition to Ranibaug, the hardships and storms and so on, reserving the more alarming implications for my own account later to be shared with the public.
chapter two
It was several months later, when in the process of penning my account of the incidents there witnessed, that I was contacted by Ms Pratyusha Negi, who it seems, had had a sudden change of heart regarding the fate of her ex-employer. Swaami Atal-Anivaarya’s donations notwithstanding, she had been experiencing some difficulties with the maintenance of the HRA Institute and requested my urgent assistance. I wrote to her that I was at present engaged in a rather serious matter, a matter which neither she nor her mother had deemed fit for consideration, but nevertheless an experience, which I felt compelled to account for.
She wrote back several weeks later, a complaint—somewhat in the tenor of a formal letter or legal brief—of Swaami Atal-Anivaarya Natija’s recent usage of the Institute grounds for certain occult rituals and midnight mass ceremonies, where an assemblage of sadhus was sighted by one of the chowkidaars deputised to guard the premises at night. He spoke of a large, somewhat oblong looking animal that had been shackled to a pole. An animal he found entirely impossible to identify and whose form he did not in the least recognise. It seemed they were in the process of training or manipulating the creature into the motions they desired. It was first made to climb up a mound, then made to trot upon its hind legs, then propelled from a ramp into an airborne squeal. It was strung up to a lattice work around a jungle gym that was under construction, and suspended from its top bars. It was made to produce a wide variety of raucous sounds that repelled the chowkidaar at once from the scene of the atrocity. He failed to catch sight of much through the bushes. The sound of a horn or shankh finally deafened him into retreat and eventual hiding.
Once the night passed, he arose from his cabin to find the campsite empty, and devoid of any signs or stains of the nightly activity that had eluded his understanding, and had vanished right before his eyes before he could provide evidence of it.
Pratyusha Negi alone believed his story, as she had supplied the Swaami Ji with the keys to the establishment, given that he was a supposed partner in the absence of the Professor, and knowing fully well that he was capable of anything outside the ordinary, having been responsible for the Professor’s disappearance in the first place, she proceeded to investigate further into what had been reported to her.
We decided to rendezvous at a dhaba on the old Khathauli Bypass route. She was guarded and hesitant at first, but as the afternoon progressed she grew thoughtful and dazed. She appeared not to have slept for many nights, and had great big craters under her eyes that blackened with the slightest bulge from her sockets.
‘Would you like some tea?’ I at length thought fit to ask.
‘I wouldn’t mind a cup,’ she sniffled into a polka-dotted handkerchief she produced from her denim jacket.
I called for a cup of tea and a glass of sweet lassi. The young waiter disappeared into the kitchen with the order and in fifteen minutes emerged, balancing a tray on the heel of his palm while swatting flies off the rim of the tandoor with the ragged cloth wrapped around his other hand.
‘Have you been to his resort?’ I asked, once the lad had delivered the two glasses onto the table, and pranced off.
‘I haven’t,’ she took a sip, stirring the thick liquid about in its cup and applying the warm edge to her temple. ‘Have you?’ she placed it back onto the wobbly wooden table imbalanced with one leg shorter than the other.
‘I have,’ I said, inspecting the sweet lassi before delving into it. ‘It’s an eight-acre medical farm, in which there also happens to be a greenhouse, laboratory, and private aviary. A collection of indigenous birds, caged up and confined at night and allowed to roam the premises by day.’
‘There has been talk,’ she informed me, almost confidentially, ‘in various prestigious scientific journals in Delhi of a startling new technique discovered by Swaami Shree Shree Gurudev Atal-Anivaarya Natija.’
‘A technique?’ I took a sip of water before proceeding to slowly stir the lassi with a tablespoon.
‘A technique by which any animal can be cured of any ailment, wound, disease or injury that might have been inflicted on it in the wild, and be brought back to health.’
The lassi nearly entered my windpipe. ‘I’m sorry?’ I coughed.
‘Some kind of miracle botanical cure!’ she stated, straight-faced as a stonewall. ‘Found in his plants.’
‘Is it legitimate?’
‘Seems to be.’ She blew into her cup.
‘Have you seen its results?’
‘The Professor claimed to have….’
‘Ahh…I see…’ I almost got up from the stool I was precariously balanced on. ‘The Professor’s area of expertise happened to be the botanical sciences.’
‘Why do you speak of him in the past tense?’ she frowned.
‘Okay happens to be…’ I corrected myself. ‘Does that make you feel any better? It doesn’t give me any joy to refer to him in the past tense, Pratyusha. I only hope to God that he is still alive. I wish it as much as you!’
‘You could have stopped him, like I did,’ she squirmed. ‘You had the chance to. You saw me. Blocking the wheel of that jeep with my foot,’ she paused, sort of spitefully. ‘But you didn’t. You went along with him…’
‘Now that’s an instance that certainly ought to be referred to in the past tense. And left there too, if you please. In the past. It doesn’t do anyone any good to bring it up.’ I hushed my agitation and drew close to the table, hunched up under my jacket. ‘I think we’d do better to focus on what ought to be done about this, not what has been done and has happened. If Swaami Atal-Anivaarya is experimenting on animals and birds, and has indeed synthesised some sort of a concoction, which he claims came right from the bosom of Ranibaug itself, then we may have some clarity as to what links him to the Professor’s disappearance. If the Professor had been sent on some sort of recovery mission by Swaami Ji, then it might make sense taking this up before the authorities and doing whatever we can to see to the Professor’s safe retrieval.’
‘But the case is closed,’ she snapped. ‘The Uttarakhand authorities have declared it a simple open and shut missing person’s case. The area is restricted. They can’t send up a search party.’
‘You mean to tell me that no one has gone up since?’
‘How am I to know?’ her forehead creased up in thought. ‘All I know is that the Swaami Ji’s claims are all a lot of nonsense! Claims to be imbued with special capabilities. How on earth could he have possibly come up with a miracle cure to treat all animals. By magic?’ she almost laughed, or it was at least the closest she came to a laugh. ‘You see, I had at one point even studied to be a veterinarian, and I’ve never heard of such a cure to this date.’
‘Were you studying to be a doctor for humans or animals?’ I asked.
‘Both.’ she said. ‘I was sitting for my M.B.B.S., M.D. and M.S.…’
‘What do you think Swaami Ji keeps doing out there on the weekends?’ I interrupted her before she had fully answered my own question. So impatient was I, that when the cheque arrived I scarcely paid it a glance, causing her to reach for it in an involuntary attempt at courtesy; an act I took strong objection to, as it was I who had asked to meet her here in the first place in light of the sudden revelations that had baffled and upset her.
‘What do you think?’ she finally asked of me.
‘I don’t know,’ I exhaled. ‘I was there for a couple of days, and I couldn’t make head or tail of his activities.’
‘The Patwaari and Forest Ranger are going to be arriving there for an inspection,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll soon see what comes out.’
‘How do you know?’
‘My mother,’ she breathed faintly. ‘She reported him to the authorities on multiple occasions for spiritual malpractice. Brainwashing, she claims.’
‘What?’ I sat her back down once the table had been cleared. I called for another cup of tea, this time for myself.
‘I can only guess what Swaami Ji keeps doing out there in that forest,’ she sneered, dragging the foot of her stool up to the table with a screech. ‘Research! Discovery.’ She spun her bent palm up around into the air in disbelief. ‘At least, that’s what he says.’
‘What else does he say?’
‘He once professed to have developed a fantastic method,’ she almost smirked. ‘A method by which he can communicate with any form of mammalian, reptilian, amphibian, bird, or even aquatic marine life.’
‘How?’ I nearly choked on the cup of tea that was shortly brought to me.
‘Just how a dog trainer tells his dog how to sit, when to bark, how to flip, whom to attack. Or else, how a ringmaster in a circus manages to tame the most terrifying lion into harmless submission, and presents him before the crowd as sedate as a vegetable.’
I wondered a while without saying anything, rattling the cup of piping tea up to my mouth, and burning my lips with the approach of its contents.
‘Since the dawn of existence!’ she began, now finally mustering up her long suppressed classroom manner. ‘Since Adam and Eve, mankind has strived fanatically to try and understand our fellow living creatures. How to tame them, how to breed them, how to kill them, how to make use of them when required. Till now, only the attempt to communicate with the dolphin has been successful. With the others…it is safe to say that there are many creatures on this earth that we will perhaps never be able to fully understand.’
A long silence loomed over the empty tabletop, lapsing sullenly into the adjoining murmurs. I had very little to add to such a thought. It had never occurred to me in my wildest and most adventurous thoughts, to think that this very trick had been mastered by a member of the human species. It would be nothing short of a leap for the sciences, not to mention the administrative possibilities inherent in such a harmonious reorganisation of nature.
