Inspector Dorab Silva's Story From Richa Lakhera’s Hungry Gods

Richa Lakhera’s revenge story Hungry Gods takes a hard look at greed for wealth and power. Full of twists and turns it takes the readers to the underbelly of the film industry, corporates, and power centres. An excerpt:

‘You were poisoned,’ Gouda comes to the point.

‘Poisoned?’ Silva waits for the men to make sense.

‘There are two important things I will now convey to you based on my analysis. First regarding your condition: you were poisoned. But there was little erosion of the stomach tissue and limited dehydration. The good thing is whoever poisoned you, assuming such was the case, did not intend to kill you. The intention it appears was only to put you out of action for a while. I have sent it for further analysis to the toxicology lab. Although I am more or less sure of its nature.’

‘But who would poison me?’

‘Malafide intention cannot be ruled out considering your line of work. It could also have been ingested inadvertently except this is a very particular Piperidine complex. It has to be made by an expert in these matters, a doctor or chemist or at the very least a talented druggist. You need remarkable pharmaceutical knowledge to not overdo the ingredients which can lead to severe hallucination and worse. Quite rare this colloid derivative is, the poison I mean.’

‘Simplify for God’s sake!’ Silva’s eyes are yellowish.

‘Well, there is nothing simple about it. This poison which has been found on your person is a sort of a reverse biocide. In science, biocides are known as life-sustaining, they help in nurturing, perpetuate balance of nature. But this poison is reverse, an Omnicide—a mimic, closest to what is called an Organic Death Particle. It’s believed to lead to the irreversible destruction of a living organism.’

‘Death particle? Mimic?’

‘To put it simply, mimic is a “bad” particle—reverse of a biocide which is supposed to be “good”—mimic, inverted in all its properties! Mimics target the same metabolic pathways, shut it down or makes it toxic. I have not seen something like this used as a weapon—and this is not the place, I can safely say, I expected to find something like it!’

‘You found this weird stuff in me? It is impossible—’ ‘This weird stuff is not as rare as you think. For instance, the
herbicide  2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid  is a mimic of a plant growth hormone, which causes uncontrollable growth leading to the death of the plant. On humans and animals it will be ineffective, totally harmless. It could just pass out with urine or sweat unless the body has been injected with a receptor hormone, then it is uncontrollable.’

‘But where do you get it from? Who makes this stuff?’ Silva is baffled and Dr Das tries to simplify the information as much as he can.

‘Biocides are synthetic, but a class of natural biocides can be derived from bacteria plants, even fish. Poison lends itself most conveniently to a good murder with it’s worm-like stealth. Of all the methods to murder, this would be the most painful and cruel one. This is the probably the only way to murder someone and get off scot-free. Easy to administer and if you do your homework well, there is no dearth of poisons which leave no apparent mark.’
‘And this “mimic” has got something to do with this yellow shit leaking out of my eyes, then?’

This is the probably the only way to murder someone and get off scot-free. Easy to administer and if you do your homework well, there is no dearth of poisons which leave no apparent mark.

‘Good deduction. The skin as you must have noticed has become yellow and patchy—in the area of cheek, ears, lips…it’s like you rubbed into it. The yellow will go. With the treatment I am giving you it will come out in the urine because you are still alive, might burn a bit. Had you been dead your eyes would secrete this for days. Little pearls around the eyes just like so,’ the doctor made a soft ring around Silva’s yellow-rimmed eyes and brought
it cautiously towards his nose.

‘You said there are two things. What is the second thing?’

‘That bit is of far more important consequences to Thackeray’s murder case. The poison we found on you is of same nature which we found in Mr Thackray’s system.’

The doctor points to a picture of Dinesh Thackray’s corpse. He zooms into the area around the dead man’s empty-looking eyes. The colour of his iris was all mixed up and it looked messy like someone has defecated into them and bits were streaming off his lids which were rimmed with little round marbles of dull yellow. Of course the dose given to Thackray was a killer concentration as compared to you. And that explains these yellow crystals—Thackray’s corpse had been leaking them for days.

‘Both of us were poisoned the same way?’ Silva cannot believe what he is hearing.

‘Perhaps you got plain unlucky. Perhaps you got too close to the killer. Who knows? That’s for you to find out.

‘Perhaps you got plain unlucky. Perhaps you got too close to the killer. Who knows? That’s for you to find out. There’s one more thing. The extract needed to make this is obtained from certain leaves—maguey—found in some of the Northeastern hills. Their flowers have different smells—multi-fragranted. There is a practise in certain countries to administer this complex for healing purposes. To cure a kind raging madness or extreme violence. Sort of a
medicinal lobotomy. So, its results depend on how much and in which form you take it—’

The doctor shows another picture and Silva peers at it with renewed interest. ‘We compared some of Thackray’s old pictures of when he was young and alive to some of his recent ones from just before his death. The distinctive yellowish tinge in his eyes, the unnatural red swelling started to appear a year ago…so whoever was administering this to him, started with little doses. Little enough to not kill but to start the decay of his body. It’s as if someone wanted him to suffer before he was killed,’ Dr Das explains. ‘But how do we find out who is responsible? It could be anyone.’ ‘You know here we might just be lucky. The thing is this poison is hard to use. Not very stable. The complex just breaks apart easily, so most people need a stabilizer. The thing is that the ingredients to make the stabilizer are stocked at only at a few drugstores. I explained the same to Mr Gouda and he already has his team working on it.’

(Excerpted with permission from Hungry Gods by Richa Lakhera, published by Rupa Publications, MRP Rs 295, PP 204)

Feature Image Credit: Rupa Publications

Also Read: The Aromatic Saffron, From Marryam H. Reshii’s The Flavour of Spice

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