“Dada, are you alright?”
Pralay enquired, his eyes fixed on the figure of a man lying on his back beside the road. There was no answer. The man – in his mid-thirties – was wearing a moss-colored shirt and shorts. A white umpire hat and a sturdy walking stick lay by his side. His entire attire resembled a hiker’s.
Fearing the worst, he moved closer for further inspection and, to his relief, found that the man was still breathing. There were no signs of injury on his body. He had simply lost consciousness.
“Dada, dada?” Pralay shook him gently. “Wake up!”
It was 5 in the morning, and Pralay was going to the local police station on his motorbike to report for duty when he had suddenly come across the unconscious stranger on the side of the road.
After a few unsuccessful attempts to wake him, Pralay took some water from his bottle and sprinkled it on the man’s face. The water’s coldness was sufficient to bring the man back to his senses.
He slowly opened his eyes and looked around in dazed confusion. As soon as his eyes met Pralay’s, he sat up straight with great effort.
“W-water…please give me some water,” he whispered meekly.
Pralay handed him the water bottle, and the man almost emptied it in a single gulp.
“Thank you,” he replied with renewed vigour after a few minutes of silence. “You can’t imagine how happy I am to see you. You’re the first person I’ve seen since last morning.”
“But why were you lying unconscious in the middle of the road?” Pralay asked in baffled amazement. “This area is a part of the forest reserve, and many wild predators roam the jungles adjoining these roads. You’re lucky that you survived the night in such a dangerous place.”
The man shot him a perplexed look but did not answer immediately. He looked long and hard at everything around him and tried in vain to make sense of the situation.
What he said next deepened the mystery even further.
“I-I had set out to trek through the forest yesterday morning,” he explained slowly. “After nearly half an hour, I came across the opening of a large cave staring ominously at me. Excited by the smell of adventure, I decided to explore it. The cave offered little except a few bats and other nocturnal animals taking shelter in its dark recesses. Following the narrow, uneven path within, I soon reached the opening on the other side and found the forest even denser here. After a few minutes of exploration, I realised something astonishing – I could not smell anything around me. As you know, forests have a distinct smell – the smell of leaves, animals, tree trunks, and the soil. But I couldn’t smell anything at all.”
The man paused for a moment to catch his breath, his body shivering at his own words. He drank the remaining water from the bottle and continued. “Naturally, I was quite taken aback. I had come quite some way since the cave’s opening and decided to return to my hotel on the other side. Slowly, I made my way back to the cave opening, but was met with another surprise. The opening had gone! Disappeared into thin air! I didn’t take a wrong turn, as I had marked all the trees along my path. A wave of panic washed over me, and I desperately searched for the entrance. But even after half an hour, I couldn’t find it. By this time, I was quite tired and had already finished what little water I had left. The sun was on the verge of setting, and the amber rays of our setting star cast an ethereal glow over the forest. I roamed through the forest as long as my legs could carry me, searching for a human settlement to spend the night and ask for advice. It was late into the night when I finally came across this road. The sign for a man-made structure gave me some comfort, and I decided to sit and wait for a passing vehicle to notice me. But somewhere down the line, I passed out due to exhaustion. And today, you have found me and woken me up.”
Pralay was listening to the strange tale with eager attention. As soon as the man finished, he asked a question that had been burning inside him for quite some time.
“Can you smell things now?” he enquired.
“No,” the man replied. “I still can’t smell a thing. Is something wrong with me? Am I sick?”
He gave Pralay an anxious look – a look filled in equal parts by helplessness and apprehension.
Pralay scratched his head in confusion. He couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation. The best thing to do, he decided, was to take the man to the nearby state hospital for diagnosis.
He helped the stranger up, told him about his plan, and seated him carefully on his motorbike. Although the man was still quite weak, he managed to hold on as Pralay headed for the hospital.
***
“Ritwik babu,” the senior doctor spoke softly. “How are you feeling now?”
“I feel hungry,” Ritwik replied from the hospital bed.
Dr. Chatterjee looked perplexed. “Hungry?” he gasped in astonishment. “But you ate a full-course meal just half an hour ago!”
“I know,” Ritwik replied, running his hand through his hair. “But the food tasted wrong. My stomach is full, but I still feel famished. It’s as if my body doesn’t understand that there is food in my stomach.”
“Doctor,” he turned pleadingly to his attendant. “What is wrong with me?”
“Well…umm…we don’t know yet,” the doctor answered hesitantly. “But we’re running some tests. We’ll get the reports by evening. Till then, relax and take some rest. And don’t worry,” he offered a faint smile. “Things will be fine.”
It was difficult to understand whether the last assurance was meant for the patient or the doctor himself.
Pralay was sitting on a bench in the long corridor and got up expectantly as he saw Dr. Chatterjee approaching.
“Never in my 40 years of practice have I seen such a strange case,” the doctor remarked, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “All the tests we have performed on him so far have given us nonsensical results!
“At first, we thought our equipment was malfunctioning,” he slumped down on a chair beside the police officer. “But they’re working fine for all samples except his.”
Dr. Chatterjee’s excited words echoed through the empty corridor.
“To be honest, doctor,” Pralay spoke, sitting beside the agitated doctor. “We’re as puzzled about him as you are.”
Dr. Chatterjee gave the young officer a questioning look.
“He doesn’t exist on the national database,” Pralay explained further. “We contacted the government and ran a check on his name.
There are around a hundred people who go by the same name, but none match his description.
So, either he’s lying about his identity, or he’s a ghost.”
“I don’t think he’s lying, officer.” Dr. Chatterjee whispered.
“Yeah,” Pralay responded in a grave tone. “Me neither.”
***
Two days passed, and the sudden appearance of the mysterious man in the small hill town caused quite a sensation among the locals. Ritwik Ghosh was the talk of the town, and hordes of curious people flooded the hospital in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the biological anomaly. Local newspapers had a field day, and headlines included government conspiracies, lab experiments, and alien civilisations. The police had to cordon off the hospital premises to prevent unwanted interference with patient treatments, and only currently admitted patients and their family members were allowed inside.
While the whole town was alive with excitement and gossip, Mr. Ghosh’s condition continued deteriorating with every passing hour. His body rejected every edible item provided to him, and ironically, he was starving while eating full meals. Even the water he drank was found unsuitable for him after the first day, and he was supplied with distilled water thereafter. All the senior doctors from the neighbouring states had flocked to the hospital, but they were left scratching their heads after reviewing the reports and examining the patient. As his health started failing him, Ritwik became even more delusional and kept mumbling about the great cave that had brought him here. Every now and then, he also talked about his parents and his sister, and expressed a strong desire to meet them again. All possible tests were performed; all possible treatments were administered, but under the watchful eyes of the top doctors of the country, Ritwik slowly withered away. He died on the fifth day of hospitalisation, leaving behind a mystery unlike anything the town had ever seen. But as they say, time and tide wait for none, and soon, the curious case of Ritwik Ghosh was lost beneath local gossip and politics.
***
“Hello?” Pralay answered the telephone at his office desk.
“Pralay babu?” The familiar voice of Dr. Chatterjee was heard from the other end. He sounded quite agitated.
“Yes, Dr. Chatterjee,” the officer answered. “Is something wrong?”
“Can you please come to the hospital now?” The urgency in the doctor’s voice was clear. “A day before Mr. Ritwik Ghosh’s death, I had sent his biological samples to one of the leading biological labs for a few additional tests,” he explained. “The reports came in last night. There’s something I must tell you.”
“Okay,” Pralay replied animatedly. “I’ll be right there.”
It had been two weeks since Mr. Ghosh’s unfortunate demise, and he had almost been relegated to Pralay’s subconscious amid the pressure of work at the station.
When Pralay reached the hospital, it was 9:30 in the morning. He found Dr. Chatterjee in a pensive mood in his chamber, sitting with his head cupped between his hands.
“Good morning, Pralay babu,” he offered a faint greeting. “Please, have a seat.”
Pralay settled in the chair with tense anticipation.
“Do you know what chirality is?” Dr. Chatterjee shot out of the blue.
“Chirality?” Pralay responded with surprise. “I don’t think so.”
“The word chiral originates from the Greek word meaning hand.” Dr. Chatterjee explained patiently. “Chirality in biology refers to the asymmetry of molecules like amino acids, sugars, and DNA.”
“They exist as non-superimposable mirror images which we call enantiomers.
Chirality is fundamental to life because biological systems, like enzymes and receptors, are highly specific and only recognize and interact with one enantiomer. This phenomenon is called homochirality.”
Pralay listened intently to Dr. Chatterjee’s words, trying to process all the information properly.
“You see, Pralay babu,” Dr. Chatterjee continued with composure. “We live in a homochiral world.”
“All living organisms in our world are built from molecules of a single chirality. All proteins are made of L-amino acids, and sugars in DNA are D-sugars.
I had sent Ritwik babu’s samples for enantiomer testing, like I informed you over the phone.”
Dr. Chatterjee paused, took out a file from his top drawer, and showed it to Pralay.
“The results have confirmed,” he spoke in a grim tone. “That his DNA had L-sugars, and proteins were made of D-amino acids.”
“W-what does that mean?” Pralay enquired in astonishment.
“It means,” the doctor continued in his foreboding tone. “That he is not from this planet.”
Pralay sprang up from his chair like a spring.
“That’s preposterous!” he exclaimed. “How can you say that?”
“Calm down, Pralay babu,” Dr. Chatterjee spoke in an empathetic tone. “I understand how you feel.”
“It’s even more baffling to me than you think. Not even in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine something like this could be possible.”
Pralay had, by this time, reigned in his emotions. He slumped back to his chair, his eyes still wide in amazement and disbelief.
“But the results explain why Ritwik babu died of starvation,” Dr. Chatterjee further stated. “His body rejected all the biology of our world, and nothing worked on him. His body was seeking its own enantiomer pairs and disregarded the mirror images like they did not exist. They also explain why none of our medications worked on him, and why his reports were all gibberish.”
“The cave!” Pralay shouted excitedly. “He said he had come from a cave!”
“Yes,” Dr. Chatterjee replied softly. “I think that cave was an interdimensional connector. It connected our world to another world with the opposite chirality.
Ritwik babu had stumbled upon it by ill luck and had crossed it without understanding the consequences of his action.”
“Then we should search for the cave right away!” Pralay remarked.
“You could. But I don’t think you’ll find it,” Dr. Chatterjee responded. “I think Ritwik babu had tried his hand and failed, and we would fare no better. It has probably gone – gone somewhere no one will find it again for a long, long time.”
“But why did it suddenly appear, and how could it vanish without a trace?” Pralay asked out of curiosity.
“I don’t know the answer to those questions, Pralay babu,” the doctor spoke in a measured tone. His eyes had drifted to the horizon outside his chamber window.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” he added theatrically.
