A PAINFREE MAN
Stephan
C. Hmar
It was 12:00 in the
night. Yes! It was already late. But then midnight robbers played well.
Five robbers assaulted
a lone man in one of the dark corners. It was so usual….. First, they took his
wrist watch, and then his wallet. They were looking for a ring---finger-ring or
neck ring---for it worth more in the choor
market.
Annoyingly enough, their
unlucky prey did not have any costly ring. And so they penalized him more by
more punches.
Suddenly, a strange
voice spoke from one corner, “Satisfied now? It’s my turn now!” The five men
dumped their unforgivable prey by the dark and turned toward the voice.
The strange man walked
out into the lights. He was tall in a strange robe beneath a cowboy hat. They
could not see his face. He said, “Try to harm me in any way you can. If you
succeed, you win. If you don’t, then take to your heel towards your respective
home!”
He was polite, way too
polite, you may feel! In fact, yes! An arrogant hero, who can bash up five robbers
unmercifully, like in the movies, was the need of the time. But, as it turned
out till then, he was one softly odd hero in one odd advanced hour of the night.
Or one softly ghost…!
One of the robbers
mocked him, “You think you’re a strong ghost that will scare the hell out of
us. Disappear before we kick the shit out of you.”
The strange man said, “You
are wrong, but you can try that…!”
The five thugs did not
lose the chance. They hit, punched and kicked him up to the last atom of their
energy. But the man still stood, painless. The stolen wrist watch has struck 1:00
AM already.
He said, “Retire! You
have got yourselves exhausted without harming me a bit. Next thing could befall
your worst nightmare!”
All the five robbers
rushed away, panting, into the dark like household rats.
*****
Five years ago, Mr. Painfree
set out for the fifty eight times to consult a doctor. For him, but then, it
was very usual, hope capsized him unusually that day, yet again. Yes! It was
unusual.
People whom he knew had
said, “This doctor can do miracles.” (And perhaps Painfree was unusually
hopeful of the miracles hovering about doctors).
He said to the doctor,
“Don’t check me like your regular patient. These are my recent x-rays. And here are my recent sugar content, and then my
cholesterol, and then my uric acid, my chest results, and whole abdomen
ultrasound results…”
The doctor looked at
him, surprised. He waved him towards the bunk bed and scrutinized him with his
stethoscope.
Everything was normal
for Painfree. As always.
The doctor did not say
a word. He looked at him, this time quite unusual and said, submissively, “You
are one rare case to live with all these pains. How could you live a normal
life like this? You are one rare case.”
He did not prescribe
medicine nor encouraged him. He was drawn more by the next patient.
Do not forget this, consultation
charges attract doctors more than remedial!
Painfree walked out the
consultation room, much burdened by the stenciled name of the doctor: Dr. Rare-ly,
MBBS, MD, USA.
The following week was
absurd. A cyclone hit his mind. “A very rare case!” This rareness depressed
him. More weeks had passed on with more depression.
You see, when you are
in a dark pit knowing that no one can help you out, you end up an addict. But you hardly know what. Like
that addict that you were, Painfree too was unknowingly addicted.
From morning till dark,
he would keep thinking beneath his pains. Unknowingly, he severely gets
addicted to the dark side of the world, the hopelessness of life. And like any
one of us would do at the end of that unpleasant tunnel, he resorted to find
his own cure, by HIMSELF.
And you will find his
next choice of direction quite strange.
He broke his piggy
bank, withdrew all his savings from the bank, sold his house and set out to the
farthest village to find the answer for his rarest condition. There he set-up a
laboratory, to venture into his unknown rareness and found the cure.
For the whole year, he
read and read books on anaesthesia. Soon, he learnt that even with the known
chemistry, the door was marvellously wide opened to know how anaesthesia exactly
works. He painstakingly worked for years (he couldn't remember), to come out
with the right formula. He mixed carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and xenon in different
proportions over and over again and drank each of the yielded solutions.
You see! Solution-less
life gives freedom. That was exactly what he did! No more fear of life or
death! It looked like a good thing though. But wait till I tell you more on his
outcome.
After three years and
six months of his experiment, he yielded an orange-pink solution. He gulped it
down soon enough for the thousandth times. It tasted the same like before.
After 15 minutes, he collapsed on his laboratory floor, only to find himself
alive the next morning. Magic happened with that waking: he was fit and well,
no more pains in his body.
“Ah! The pain has
gone.” He laughed out loud for the first time in many years. He ran about his
laboratory, jumped up and down the desks, and broke the glasses until he
accidentally cut his wrist with a razor sharp knife. But ah! No more pain. He
felt the rubbing of the knife, the flowing of blood, but not the pain.
You see! It was not
accidental nor a simple success. It was an experiment with a perfect success. With
that single gulp of the orange-pink solution, he was painless for day, then
weeks, and then years.
A painful man becoming
painless, for years with one gulp of the solution? It was the most miraculous
of miracles.
News spread like air in
the village. People gave the name “Painfree.” Sick people came to him for the
solution. Alas! He did not keep the note of his experimentations, nor did he
remember the proportions of the elements. He could not recreate that unique
solution. No more.
Let me tell you! When
you cannot help when they expected the most, they messed you up.
Every night he was
summoned by the Chief, asking him the god he worshipped: the ghostly spell that
had cured him.
No answer satisfied the
chief.
Strangeness has no
limit and could come in any forms. You imagine the strangeness of pain amongst
the painless, or the painless in the world of the pains? That was just the speck of the picture. Small though, his strange invention made him devilishly
strange, so they expelled him from the village.
And that was it! That
was his whereabouts!
******
Painless pulled him up
from the dark shadow; he was covered in bloods. He murmured, “Thank you,” and
then he could feel himself in the air; the lights were flickering but real now,
like a man well set from a perfect nightmare into the light. Like that
unexpected sunshine after the storm….
Then she looked at her
badly wounded husband, “Oh! What have they done to you? Heaven and hell be
damned. They don’t care for any good soul. They don’t care anything….only
selfishness.”
******
Painless knew about the
extremities of life—from the pain to the painlessness, due to his experiment. He felt he was a chapter from the beginning
and the end. Still then, he was odd, not
fitting in the society. Painlessly he cried, “Alas! There is a limit to everything,
but not knowledge. I saw people confined in the dreaminess of things, not
looking the conscience. Not to the reality of knowledge.”
He looked at his unused
money in the bag and he said, “Let me try to experiment a medicine for painless
to pain. Hope it will ring a bell, at least.”
THE
END
