Skip to main content

A Vampire Dies

Fiction
Dr Pattabhiraman has had his usual overdose of his favourite Bacardi white rum. His weekend overdose begins on Friday evenings. Saturday and Sunday are days of leisureliness. Though the university is open on Saturdays, Dr Pattabhiraman has no classes on Saturdays. It is his day of research in the university library. His Saturday research usually ends in the manufacture of a thesis for some scholarly journal like The Indian Scholar and Asian Literary Review. On Friday evenings, however, he likes to take a long stroll into some deserted areas of the city. This evening he has reached Subhash Bose Botanical Garden.

There is not a soul in sight. It is quite late in the night. Dr Pattabhiraman is haunted by Keats’s poetry and he recites a couple of lines from the Ode to a Nightingale.

‘Now more than ever seems it rich to die,’ the professor recites musically as he does in the lecture hall, ‘To cease upon the midnight with no pain.’ Just as he lifts the palm of his right hand as if to seize the emerging midnight, a police constable appears around the corner.

‘Hey, man, what are you doing here at this time of night?’ The constable asks imperiously, looking the professor up and down.

‘Reciting a poem,’ the professor says, ‘John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale.’

‘Not nightingale, man, not quite,’ says the constable spitting out paan juice that looks like blood. ‘Vampire. There’s a vampire somewhere here, people say. A female vampire. Today is Friday too. You have every chance of getting your blood sucked dry if you don’t go home this minute.’

‘Vampire!’ the prof says gleefully. ‘A female one at that! Wonderful! I have never seen a vampire. I’d love to see one.’

The constable looks at the prof to make sure whether he is insane. ‘I have warned you. My duty is over. I leave you to your fate.’

Just as the constable is about to walk away, an eerie music rises somewhere in the darkness of the botanical garden. ‘O my god!’ cries the constable.

‘It’s quite godly, the music,’ says the prof.

The music rises to an A R Rahman kind of crescendo which mesmerises the prof and stuns the constable. Soon the crescendo acquires a material shape, the shape of a woman with an unearthly beauty.

‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’ The prof sings borrowing words from Christopher Marlowe without noticing the constable falling down unconscious with his head resting on a cake of dried cow dung.

‘Who are you pretty lady?’ The prof asks.

‘I am Miriam Hussein Kaufmann,’ the lady answers very sweetly.

‘What are you doing here at this time?’

‘I’m running away,’ she says.

‘Oh, that’s interesting. Eloping alone? You want company? I’m quite lonely, you know.’

‘I’m running away from America,’ she says rather impatiently.

‘Aw! Everyone runs to America and you’re running away from it!’

‘Mr Trump wants an ethnic cleansing. He wants people to go back to the countries of their ethnic origin. My ancestors are Indians and so I’m here in India.’

‘Wrong place, lady. Quite a bad choice. India is also on a quest for racial purity. We will not drive you away, we’ll lynch you.’

Just then a car stops unexpectedly a few metres away and the driver is obviously unable to start the engine again. Two men get out of the car. Dr Pattabhiraman recognises them. One is a leading political figure from the ruling party and the other is a prominent businessman. On seeing the lady, they move towards her.

‘What are you two doing here at this time?’ The politician demands. ‘Such open immorality is against our country’s great culture, don’t you know? A man and a woman having rendezvous in a public place like this. Don’t you have any shame?’ He goes on with his tirade until the lady loses her temper.

‘Shut up, you idiot!’ She says. ‘I’m a vampire. I’ll suck your blood. I’m thirsty.’

‘Oh, oh,’ says the prof. ‘Such a bad taste in such a fine lady! Sucking blood is the sole prerogative of our politicians, my dear lady. I’ll get some Coke for you if you come with me.’

The businessman takes the politician aside and mutters something in his ear. They discuss for a while before making an offer to the lady.

‘We’ll give you plenty of blood, if you want. But you’ll have to sign a contract agreeing to our T&C.’

‘I don’t want any contract. I want blood.’ The lady is visibly angry.

‘Blood is our business too, you see. It’s better for you to cooperate with us whether you like it or not. Or else you won’t survive another minute here. One phone call is enough for a mob to materialise here and lynch you.’

The lady suddenly undergoes a metamorphosis. She transforms into a hideous monster with her canine teeth jutting out like tusks. A wind rises in the trees and a heavenly music emanates from the darkness. Even before anyone realises what is happening, the vampire is at the politician’s neck and blood flows from his vein. She drinks deep.

‘The bitch!’ The politician mutters as soon as the vampire releases him from her celestial clutch. He pats his neck. The businessman hands him a kerchief. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Hey, are you okay?’ The prof asks the vampire who looks faint. The vampire collapses.

‘We’ll get her later,’ the businessman tells the politician. ‘Let’s get to a hospital right away.’ Just as they leave the constable wakes up from his peaceful sleep.

‘What have you done?’ The constable asks the prof who is checking the vampire’s pulse.

‘She’s dead. It looks like.’ The prof says.

‘You killed her? You are under arrest.’

‘I didn’t kill her. She sucked the politician’s blood and she died.’

‘Sucked neta ji’s blood! Then she’s under arrest too.’

‘But she’s dead.’

‘We’ll take care of that later. Circumstantial evidences, my dear man, are against you.’

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 285: #StorySurprise




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

The Call of Islamic State

A year ago, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) reported that about 4000 people from the West left their homes and countries to join the Islamic State (IS).  Many of them are women.  The reporters had made a special study of the women who joined the terrorist outfit and found that it was difficult to categorise which type of women were particularly drawn to IS. “While most of the girls are young, some as young as fifteen,” says the report,  “there are also mothers with young children who make the trip. Some of the girls have difficulties in school and are said to have an IQ below average,  but there are also women who are highly educated. It also appears that even though a relatively large portion of the girls had (or still have) a troubled childhood, there are some who come from families with no known problems with the authorities. Most of the girls come from religiously moderate Muslim families,  yet some converted to Islam a...
33 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

The Plague

When the world today is struggling with the pandemic of Covid-19, Albert Camus’s novel The Plague can offer some stimulating lessons. When a plague breaks out in the city of Oran, initially the political authorities fail to deal with it as a serious problem. The ordinary people also don’t view it as an epidemic that requires public action rather than as individual annoyances. The people of Oran are obsessed with their personal sufferings and inconveniences. Finally the authorities are forced to put Oran in quarantine. Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, delivers a sermon declaring the epidemic as God’s punishment for Oran’s sins. Months of suffering make people rise above their selfish notions and obsessions and join anti-plague efforts being carried out by people like Dr Rieux. Dr Rieux is an atheist but committed to service of humanity. He questions Father Paneloux’s religious views when a small boy is killed by the epidemic. The priest delivers another sermon on the necess...
28 comments
Read more

AAP and I

Who defeated Arvind Kejriwal?  Himself or us? His party ruled for just 49 days.  They were momentous days.  He implemented his promise on setting up a number for reporting corruption; in two weeks instead of the promised two days.  He met people to discuss corruption issues, though the crowd was beyond his control.  He did what he could.  He would have done more if he could.  He put an end to the VVIP culture in politics.  The politician became aam aadmi.  Ministers started travelling in vehicles without the screaming red lights and horrifying screeches.  But the police had to go out of their way to provide protection to the chief minister.  Who defeated the chief minister’s vision that political leaders need no such protection from their own people? He revolutionised the admission procedures in schools.  Schools which charged hefty amounts from parents illegally stood to lose.  The aam aadmi would have g...
25 comments
Read more