This was a curious case indeed. If the problem that now faced Bhrigu, hadn’t come from a Doctor, and a highly qualified one at that, I would have been well disposed to advise him to go see a doctor himself. A detective can solve cases and put criminals behind bars, thus improving the health of the criminal justice system, but there was little to nothing he could do to cure people of idiopathic illnesses. That domain, as far as I knew, was still strictly and securely under the takers of the Hippocratic Oath. But flouting all logic, there he was. A well qualified Physician telling his tale of woe. This case is best remembered by us for its wild paradox. I will now provide the details.
‘My sister passed away a year ago.’ began the robust man with a fat face marked with lines of perplexity. Although it was quite hot, he was wearing a suit and sweating profusely beneath it. ‘Her husband is a drunkard and can hardly take care of himself, let alone his boy and hence after a tiring legal battle, we adopted our nephew, Shiv, and brought him to live with us. It is about him that I need your consultation. I have heard that you are some kind of mind magician. Please, it’s your expertise only that can help us.’
‘Sir, I will help you to the best of my abilities.’ replied Bhrigu, looking earnestly into the troubled man’s face. ‘Do tell me the matter with your nephew.’
‘He…he has an ailment. A rare disease. If he is not administered medicine every twelve hours, he tends to get hyper excited to the extent of injuring himself and sometimes, us too. We give him oral medication; a tablet that dissolves through his tongue and acts within a matter of few minutes. That keeps him calm.’
‘That’s a strange affliction indeed.’
‘Yes.’ The man replied, wringing his hands in his sheer state of desperation. ‘The medicine is a relief to us all. The trouble is, somehow for the past one week, the medicine is not showing any results.’
‘He must be throwing it away.’ I offered.
‘No. There is no chance of such a thing happening. We give him the tablet and he has to take it in front of our eyes. Only then do we leave him alone.’
‘I have heard of such cases.’ I blurted again, leaving Bhrigu to click his tongue in annoyance. ‘He must be stowing it away in his mouth and then on your departure, spitting it out again.’
‘No. That’s impossible too.’ The man cried. ‘The medicine, as I mentioned before, is a dissolvable tablet. In contact with the tongue, it is absorbed in less than three minutes. We see him take the medicine and we stand there for ten minutes to ensure that it must, beyond all doubt, have been dissolved. We ask him to show us his tongue too. I see the white marks that the dissolved tablet leaves behind. That’s proof enough that in no way he could have prevented its absorption, once it was inside his mouth.’
‘Sir, I understand your problem, but I don’t think that such a thing falls under my purview. A battery of tests is what anyone would suggest.’ Bhrigu said politely.
‘No, sir, no!’ The man cried like a child ‘I have had all the tests done on the child. There is not a trace of medicine in his blood for the last one week! I know that somehow he has not been taking the medicine. I don’t know how but it sure is the case. Oh! One day of lost dose can turn him quite uncontrollable, in a week he has become as wild a boy as ever walked the surface of the earth! He has turned the whole household upside down. Throwing things, running ceaselessly about the house, jumping up and down on the couch! Oh! My wife says that if he doesn’t stop his activities soon, she will have him sent to the orphanage! I can’t bear that too! I am in such a fix that I don’t know what to do!’
‘What is the age of the child?’
‘He is eight years old.’
‘How is his behavior otherwise?’
‘He is the sweetest and gentlest boy. It’s not his fault that he suffers from such an affliction! If only he took those medicines!’
‘Do you think that if he had a choice, he would rather not take the medicine?’
‘No. He has never complained once. He is such a docile boy. He does what he is told without the slightest fuss and that’s why the whole business is so bizarre. How, in God’s name, is he somehow failing to take those medicines?’
Bhrigu thought for a space and said, ‘Sir, I would very much like to visit your house.’
It was a half an hour drive in the doctor’s car and we soon found ourselves being ushered into his humble house. The living room had sparse furniture but the arrangement was elegant. There were a few trophies on a glass shelf and a huge picture of a serene monk was hung over it. It gave the comic illusion that somehow those trophies belonged to him.
‘Whose trophies are those?’ I asked
‘Oh! They are my wife’s. She is a baker and has won many baking competitions.’
‘That’s good.’ I said, admiring them.
‘Tell me, sir,’ Bhrigu began, looking intently at the man, ‘Is your wife a professional baker?’
The good doctor was silent for a space and I thought I saw him wince but decided against it. ‘No. Of course not.’ he said at last. ‘When I am earning, why she should work?’
‘I see.’ said Bhrigu with an air of finality and asked no more.
There was an awkward pause after which the doctor said, ‘You must be wondering how the room’s so clean. Well, Shiv is confined to his room. We think that this is for the best.’
‘Right.’ replied Bhrigu.
After 5 minutes, the wife came into the room carrying two cups of tea. She could be in her late thirties and wore a green colored sari. Her face was plain and she carried a careworn expression. It was the variant of fatigue that comes from years of exhaustion. She placed it on the table and was about to retreat when Bhrigu called after her. ‘Madam, please pardon me if I sound impertinent, but I have a few questions to ask you.’
The lady was quite evidently taken aback at such a sudden order because an order it was, wrapped in the parcel of politeness.
‘Sure.’ she replied timidly and sat on the chair before us.
‘There are three questions that I would like you to answer truthfully.’
She gently nodded her head.
‘You love the boy, don’t you?’
‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ she replied at once. ‘Shiv is like my own son and I love him. He is always my priority.’
‘Don’t you have children of your own?’
‘Yes. I have a boy. He is twelve years old.’
‘How does he get on with Shiv?’
‘They are thick as thieves.’
‘Okay. Last question. Please don’t mind the impertinence. I am only doing my job.’ said Bhrigu, looking kindly into the woman’s eyes.
‘Its okay.’ she replied with a sigh. I thought that she could do with some rest. No doubt, the up keeping of a boy suffering from hyper excitement was proving to be a great burden on her nerves.
‘Are you satisfied with your husband’s income? Do you not sometimes feel that if you were a professional baker you could make ten times more than he does presently?’
This time the fatigue, the pain, vanished from her face only to be replaced by shock. Her eyes opened wide with fear and alarm and she opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t manage to say anything intelligible.
‘Wh…how did you…N…no…’
‘It’s okay madam. I have got my answer. Please call your husband.’ Bhrigu said ‘We will leave after having a quick word with him.’
The shocked woman left the room in trance and in a matter of seconds, her husband was with us.
‘You called me?’ he asked ‘Should I call in the child? Excuse me; I had to leave you to look in on him. My wife alone can’t handle the burden.’
‘Sir, the burden is to be eased off your shoulders.’ Bhrigu replied with a smile. ‘Give him the medicines as usual.’ After a pause he added a cryptic line. ‘And never annoy your wife.’
The next day, the doctor telephoned to offer his gratitude. He said that he followed the advice and now the child was doing wonderfully well.
On questioning, Bhrigu revealed to me that it was the wife who was responsible for the episode.
‘How did she do it and why?’ I asked him ‘And how did you know?’
He smiled and said ‘She was a baker, remember? The medicines she gave to the child were the exact replicas of the tablet but were made from sugar and flour. Small sized candies, they were and nothing else. When her husband wasn’t looking, she would empty the bottle of the medicines and put the replicas instead. That’s why they did not have any pharmacological effect. They weren’t medicines at all. Let’s come to the next segment of the question. Why did she do it? Two things made themselves apparent to me as soon as I entered their house. First, by the austere look of the room, it was clear that the doctor had a meager practice and the trophies, tastefully decorated on the shelf told me that his wife was a very talented woman but I was left to ascertain if she was ambitious too. You see, talent and ambition are two sides of the same coin. If you have one, the other is sure to follow. When I questioned her it became clear to me that she wasn’t satisfied with her husband’s income and she knew she could get a much better life with the gift she had of baking. But I think no support was forthcoming from her husband. His unenthusiastic response to my question regarding his wife being a professional baker is a testimonial to the fact. Men with a weak emotional and mental constitution can never tolerate their wife’s success as they feel that, that will most definitely shift the balance of power in her favor. Such men have giant egos inflated to a bursting point by their own sense of inferiority. The powerlessness they feel in the outside world is balanced by the bloated state of false pride they take in being a powerful man under, at least, his own roof. That is his only sense of security; the only little light of hope and when it is somehow challenged, he becomes a perfect specimen of conceit and egoism. I can show you enough data to prove this fallacy. I call it- “The bloating effect” Don’t laugh now, Sutte, because it is very distracting. If you don’t like it, I will rename it according to your preference. Alright? After all, you are the one gifted with a sparkling wit, aren’t you? Now if you are over your fit, can I finish stating the results of this case? Can I? With your permission? On second thoughts, I think I would rather not. Go ahead, figure it out by yourself. Your excuses are not working. I know its all lies. You laughed at the name, didn’t you? Alright. Alright. Although I think I should not say a word more. Now where was I? Thank you. The doctor, I am afraid to say, falls under this category. He knew in his heart that his wife would out income him if only given a chance and so he resolutely denied it. The wife was left feeling embittered. To add to the resentment she nurtured towards her husband for squashing her dreams, he burdened her with another child. His frugal income was proving ends difficult to meet as it was, and now she had to further kill the necessities of her own child to take care of another’s. I knew she had lied when she said that she loved him like her own son. There were photos of her son all around the room, but not one of Shiv’s. Hence she came up with this plan. She thought that if somehow the medicines failed to act and the child’s behavior became erratic, she would force her husband to put him up for adoption elsewhere or to give him to an orphanage.’ He took a breath and began ‘This served to secure two ends. First, she would get rid of the unwanted child and second, she could have revenge on the man who crushed her dreams so brutally.’
‘Wow!’ I exclaimed in an added effort to undo the hurt I had caused him by my unintentional lapse. In my defense, I should say that he had rather curious names for his theories. ‘But when did you know it was the wife?’
‘As soon as he narrated his tale, I had a strong suspicion. She and her husband had access to the medicines. If not her husband, it was only she who could have switched them without anybody knowing. Why she did this became clear to me only when I interrogated her.’
‘Poor woman’ I sighed ‘She has been greatly wronged.’
‘Don’t worry’ Bhrigu replied with a chuckle ‘She will get to chase her dreams after all.’
‘How?’ I asked, surprised.
He gave me a folded page from his diary and said. ‘I put this below one of the trophies before I made out of the house. The trophies were sparkling so I knew she dusted them regularly. She was sure to find the note. This is just a copy. The original is still with her.’
I unfolded the page and read- ‘Madam, I know you switched the medicines and also that why you did it. Your husband need not know anything about it. I know that although he is a man of science, he is a very superstitious man. I think that every weak man tends to be one. I ascertained this peccadillo of your husband from the picture of the monk hung in your living room. It was covered in dust, although the trophies beneath it shone brilliantly. You are responsible for the household chores so it was clear enough that you deliberately chose not to clean the monk as you hate him. He has been the source of your worries. Has he not? Your husband wastes a lot of money on him? Does he not? He spends so much time revering the monk that he has no time left for his clinical practice. Believe me; my researches prove that this is quite a common occurrence. Such religious dogma is rampant in the country. But today, we have got a chance to use it to your advantage. Tell your husband that the medicines didn’t act on the child because the disembodied spirit of the monk was angry with him as he did not support his wife enough. So, in order to teach him a lesson, he cursed the child. Only when he prays for forgiveness for his sin and allows you to follow your heart, will the curse be lifted, or else he will be doomed. I gave a mere suggestion of the thing to your husband. You now, have only to put it into words for the effect/illusion to complete. This, I hope, will see an end to your worries and as a satisfied woman, you will be able to take very good care of Shiv, who is but an innocent victim in this affair.
Regards,
Bhrigu Mahesh.
A week later, the courier man brought in the most magnificent looking cake I had ever clapped my eyes on with a note stuck into it that said just three little words but expressed a heart full of respect and gratitude- ‘Thank you, Sir.’