Death Of The Clown

The Death of the Clown

Dr. Vishram "The Clown" Bhatt's son and grandchild's physiognomies
bore exact resemblance to his own when he was their age. Dr. Vishram
Bhatt was now 71 years old. But when he was 35 his facial countenance
was a replica of his own son Vikram who is now touching 35. Vikram has
the same balding hairline, the same large ears with the tuft of grey
hair growing on the top of his ears, the 5 feet 9 inches of height. It
was another thing that with the onset of age, the height and size of Dr
Vishram Bhatt's body and his members had shrunk. His once well worked
out upper torso had taken on a slight hunch, his eyesight had grown
inestimably weak and his speech slurred from time to time. Not to
mention the myriad little sicknesses and maladies that intermittently
ailed his time-ravaged body.

It is the year 2049. Dr Vishram Bhatt has been existing perfunctorily
since the last one month and his mind and body has taken a heavy
trouncing in recent times with the result that he had lost interest in
life and does not wish to live anymore. Throughout his life, Dr Vishram
Bhatt held the belief that the world was a beautiful place to live in
only for the young. Infirmity, disease and physical deformities were
unwarranted hindrances in life which prevented a person from
experiencing with the help of his senses, constant happiness and
eternal bliss. Human beings were meant to benefit from happiness
through the physical senses for eternality. The fragrance of the wet
earth in the morning after an intermediate spell of rainfall in the
night; the pleasure of beholding the golden sun set over the horizon;
the coolness of the sea breeze at night which brushed against the skin
thereby rejuvenating it and tightening the pores, the highly gratifying
sensations that one derived from listening to music, the taste of
exquisitely prepared delicacies which set off a series of explosions in
the tastebuds on contact, the ethereal heights to which human bodies
were elevated during the act of intercourse were blissful delights that
was granted by the almighty to be experienced by humanity forever and
not just for a mere span of forty five to fifty years of our adult
lives. To Dr Vishram Bhatt, spirituality was hogwash and merely a
complicated way of attaining what was easily and readily available to
be seen, heard, felt, tasted and smelt.

And so in the morning today, he readily accepted and embraced the self
deprecatory feelings that were running amok in his mind. The wish and
the urgency to die had been growing inside like a tumour for the past
one month and the wish to thus rid himself of a body which was no more
useful to experience the world in it's fullest had taken full effect in
Dr Vishram Bhatt's mind. But the serenity with which he wished to die
would not occur. Something had gone gravely wrong in his
experiments.

Vishram Bhatt was once the director of molecular biology at the
National Institute of Fundamental Research and one of the leading
scientists of his age. He had published the results of many path
breaking theories and experiments in the field of genetics that had
pushed the boundaries of human knowledge to the limits. Besides his
colossal status as a leading scientist, he was probably the most
effervescent and charismatic of all the scientists who were ever born.
He teamed up his inventions and discoveries with the flamboyance
usually found in a rock star. He would announce his latest discoveries
with a grand public showing in which semi naked dancers, entertainers
and musicians would also share the stage with him. In lieu of his
unique and public persona, the media had bestowed the middle fix "The
Clown" on him which was something that he readily attested to with
enthusiasm and aplomb. His ground breaking discoveries and research
resulted in human beings benefiting in ways that they could never have
imagined. For example, due to his initial forays in organ harvesting,
the world had reached a stage where any defective organ in a person's
body could be replaced with fresh organs grown from the donor's own
DNA. Severed limbs could be regenerated and people who had met with
fatal accidents and who were on the brink of death could be brought
back to life with the help of some of the techniques and procedures
that Dr Vishram Bhatt had helped innovate. The world had become a much
better place to live in and Vishram was hailed as a modern day genius
on the likes of Einstein and Edison. He was someone whose discoveries
and inventions had radically shaped the way we live and catapulted the
progress of the human race in double quick time. But for all his
enthusiasm, brilliance and the prestigious accolades and medals
conferred upon him by almost all the governments of the world in the
early years of his development as a scientist, Dr Vishram Bhatt rued
the fact that none of the countries of the world encouraged and allowed
human cloning.

Having reconciled himself to the situation, Vishram who had married
Darshana at the age of 33 cloned himself at the age of 36 and made
Darshana incubate and eject Vikram out into the world. The simple
Darshana who was always more in love with Vishram than the other way
round was only too overjoyed to carry a child who would resemble
Vishram in more ways than one. Now, Vishram's whole philosophy in
cloning himself was to attain immortality. He wanted to continue to
enjoy the earthly delights of the world forever. Neither he nor mankind
had yet found a solution to prevent the process of ageing. And so he
figured that cloning would have to do the job of sustaining his
intelligence for another century, till the time he hit upon the final
solution to reverse the ageing process. The search for the solution to
ageing could take more than two lifetimes if one considered the rate at
which the progress in that particular direction was shaping. And so
drawing comparisons to a snake that sheds it's old skin and continues
to live unabated in it's new skin, he figured that he would live in his
new cloned body and reach an adult age from where he would simply carry
on his research from where he left off, the old body having withered
away and died. But that is only considering the fact that the cloned
body would resemble Dr Vishram Bhatt in intelligence and physical
behaviour apart from the obvious physical characteristics. But Dr
Vishram Bhatt was willing to take a gamble on that though past tests on
cloned subjects concluded that cloned individuals did not necessarily
exhibit the same behavioural characteristics as the original specimen
and oftentimes strayed from the original specimen's psyche to a great
extent. But these tests were not conclusive to say the least and from
his own experiments, the Doctor had derived favourable results in a
majority of his tests.

Alternatively Dr Vikram Bhatt figured that in the shape of his cloned
body, he would continue to experience the pleasures of life with the
senses at its youthful best. He had also made up his mind that since he
would be anyways alive while his new body was in the process of growing
up, he would never forget to remind the young Vikram to avoid the
pitfalls and the troubles that he himself had gotten into while growing
up all the way to adulthood from a child to an adolescent and a
teenager. He reckoned that with the same body, identical brain and
similar physical characteristics, the experiences of the young Vikram
would turn out to be a recapitulation of his own life. And since the
father and original specimen would be there all along to guide the way,
the young Vikram could avoid the mistakes that Dr Vishram Bhatt himself
had made around the same point of time thereby rendering Vikram's life
happier and colouring it with more positive vibrations than he himself
had had the pleasure of experiencing.

The allegorical birth of Vikram was a triumphant personal moment for
the 35 year old scientist poised as he already was on the fringes of
popular acclaim and international recognition. But all that dissolved
into insignificance when weighed against the birth of his child Vikram
through whom he wished to live another life. For him it was a moment of
being reborn in one dimension while still being alive in another.

But things took a drastically wrong turn when Vikram was just 4 years
old. Though he started speaking at about the same time that most
infants do, by the age of five he still could not grasp sentences and
would flounder in his perceptiveness at every corner. In other words,
Vikram was a "Late Latif"; someone who was a slow starter in life but
who, according to doctors would surely catch up with the rest of the
kids in due time. To the horrified Dr Vishram Bhatt this was indeed a
body blow. In his own childhood, from the testimony of his parents, by
the age of five he used to possess the intelligence of a twelve year
old often dabbling in mathematical calculations and confounded everyone
around him with his prodigious intelligence. On top of that the child
version of Dr Vishram Bhatt's inquisitiveness knew no bounds
questioning the workings of everything from the world around him to the
inner workings of the human body. Far from that, little Vikram did not
even possess the IQ that regular kids did. Dr Vishram Bhatt assured
himself that this was just a temporary phase and it would soon pass.
Much to the relief of the Doctor, this temporary phase did pass and
Vikram managed to catch up with the rest of the kids. It was but only a
temporary relief because far from the geeky self absorbed kid that Dr
Vishram Bhatt was in his childhood, Vikram was metamorphosing into the
school bully! It was something of a shock for the busy scientist to be
affronted by reports from the school head mistress about the violent
and highly detestable behaviour that was routinely exhibited by the pre
pubescent Vikram. On being confronted about these disgraceful acts,
Vikram would be unapologetic and unmindful of warnings and continued to
display rebellious antisocial behaviour throughout his teenage years.
By now Dr Vishram Bhatt had almost entirely given up on his far from
prodigious clone who if anything had turned out be a prodigal son. To
combat this personal misfortune, Dr Vishram Bhatt immersed himself in
his research work, infusing into it all his energies and frustrations
of this immense personal failure. It was an epochal time in the life of
the great scientist whose greatest discoveries and life altering
theories happened around this period. His charismatic stage shows which
besides serving the sole purpose of introducing the audience with his
latest breakthroughs also became highly anticipated events in itself.
And while, Dr Vishram "The Clown" Bhatt entertained his audiences which
came from far and wide to attend his spectacular "entry free" stage
shows, smiling and cavorting with the audience, his heart shed silent
tears for his alter image; his son whose persona had slowly but surely
drifted from his own in a tangent that Dr Vikram Bhatt could never have
thought possible even in a mated offspring!

In his teenage years Vikram was involved in a great number of offences
including theft, shoplifting, arson, larceny and battery all of which
paled in comparison to the huge amount of shamefacedness that the good
Doctor had to face when Vikram was arrested for raping a young woman.
This was an extremely trying time for the Doctor. He managed to quell
the subsequent charges with his considerable influence and goodwill and
settled for an out of court settlement with the aggrieved family. It
was clear to the doctor by now that he had made a heinous mistake by
even proposing to think that he could live on in the body of his son by
cloning himself with the hope of re-experiencing life in a fuller form.
And the thought of Vikram carrying on his scientific work from where he
himself would leave them when he died was a preposterous idea now.
Vikram was a complete dunce in his education and he remained that way
all through high school and college. He failed terms regularly and
finally abandoned college midway. Along the way Dr Vishram Bhatt had
tried extremely hard to bring up Vikram in the same way that his own
parents had brought him up and aimed to deliver the same sight and
sound experience that he imbibed when growing up. But even though the
experiences and upbringing were the same for Vikram as they were for
the Doctor, Vikram had grown up to be a separate individual with his
own set of goals, beliefs and ideologies none of which confirmed in any
way with the doctor's own.

Towards his mid twenties, dragged by a friend who had started a
restaurant Vikram wisened up on his own and got his foot into the
catering business. If there was one thing that Vikram had an appetite
for it was food. With his olfactory nerves and his taste buds in
synchronicity Vikram flourished in the restaurant business by setting
up two successful speciality food restaurants after learning the tricks
of the trade from his original partner and breaking away from him in
time to branch off on his own. From time to time though, Vikram's
Jekyll and Hyde reared it's ugly head in the form of a broken nose of
one his employees who tried to swindle money off him or in the shape of
the battered windscreen of an ungrateful business rival's
Mercedes!

Dr Vishram Bhatt had in the meantime carried on his life's work in
solitude reaching the great heights that had been predestined for minds
such as his. After his wife Darshana met with a grisly death in a car
accident around Vikram's twenty fifth birthday, the doctor even more
steadfastly turned towards his work with a fervent approach and
resolutely refused to be drawn into any kind of affair or another
marriage. Besides he refused to harbour anymore thoughts about cloning
ever again in his mind and spoke openly against the cloning of humans,
something which was in direct contrast to his previous pro-stance in
the early stages of his career. But within his mind, he hadn't
completely abandoned the idea, and the suggestion that the experiment
could be repeated one last time seeped out of his sub-consciousness on
the occasion of his clone-son Vikram's marriage to the ravishing Ravina
who was the daughter of one of the Doctor's closest friends. The Doctor
had known Ravina since her childhood and seeing her married to his own
son filled his heart with joy and a vicarious pleasure. She was in
actuality marrying him. But the good Doctor banished this lascivious
thought from his mind as quickly as it had entered.

On the night of the marriage of his first born son, the Doctor
summoned Ravina into his study in the small hours of the morning after
the wedding feast had ended and after every single guest had left. The
doctor's heart was heavy and he had a lump in his throat. The newly
wedded wife bedecked heavily in all her bridal finery advanced slowly
into the room, summoned as she was by her brand new father-in-law. The
doctor's study was lined on all four sides with racks lined neatly with
hundreds of books, journals and manuscripts. The room was well lit by
two magnificent gold plated lampshades. The doctor sat in the great
wine-red leather armchair by the side of the window; his head bordered
by the Venetian blinds, which were drawn across the window thereby
rendering the inhabitants and the contents of the room opaque to an
outsider.

"Come sit down, my dear Ravina" the doctor ordered sweetly in his husky
voice.

Ravina sat down coyly on the divan. She had been here innumerable
times before as a kid along with Vikram, listening to fables narrated
by Vikram's father in his inimitable style. The impatient Vikram after
a few minutes would usually sidle away to play with his other friends
while Ravina would be left in solitude to listen to the Doctor's
stories. She used to cherish those moments spent listening to the
stories in that room and remembered them in her later life with warmth
and nostalgia. She never stopped coming to the Doctor's room for advice
beyond those childhood years even as a teenager and a young adult. The
omnipresent Doctor was always there for advice. She deeply respected
Vikram's father who had over the years become almost like a surrogate
dad. The sentiments were reciprocated too with Dr Vishram Bhatt finding
in the sweet natured child the daughter he never had and did not wish
anymore to have. And now as Ravina sat tremulously before the wizened
old man in a new role, she looked around the rows and rows of books
lined along the racks. Every conceivable corner was crammed with books;
books which she recognized now from a distance. Ravina spontaneously
burst out crying. The doctor got up from his seat and ran his hand over
the Ravina's head. The little girl in a frock of yore who used to squat
on the floor while he narrated fairy tales had blossomed into a lovely
young woman.

" It's perfectly alright to cry at a moment like this, Ravee. Is
something weighing on your mind? Do you have something to say? I know
these are tears of happiness." stated the Doctor.

"No, I'm extremely happy to be your daughter-in-law. It's just that
coming into this familiar room as a bride has filled my heart with
nostalgia and joy and I could not take it anymore. I'm perfectly
fine."

The Doctor helped Ravina to some tissues and waited for her tears to
dry off, some of which had already stained her made up face. But that
was alright. She was going to retire to bed now anyways.

" I have something to tell you my dear Ravee."

Ravina was all ears.
"It is something which has been weighing in my mind for the past 2 days
and I felt that I
must share it with you."

And with that the Doctor removed a few aging black and white
photographs ensconced inside an envelope from the topmost drawer of the
chest.
"Have a look at these."

Ravina took it from the Doctor's hands and perused them.
"Oh my God"

The doctor smiled wryly.
"Is that you Uncle Vikram? This is your wedding right? Vikram looks
just too much like you in these photographs. In fact both of you look
like twins separated by 35 years!"

" Yes my child. Vikram is me."

" I don't understand." Ravina's eyes widened sensing an impending
revelation that reeked of bad news.

"You see, Vikram is my clone. I had cloned Vikram in order to live my
life through him. I had hoped that he would turn out to be just like
me, which is what should have happened ideally. But that was not to be.
I hope you understand my situation and my ordeal, my young child. No,
no don't make a face like that?listen to me properly."

The doctor continued.
" I had hoped that Vikram would follow in my footsteps and my
profession and after I died he would carry on the unfinished research
that I'm sure I would not be able to bring to fruition in this life of
mine. You see Ravee, one of the main projects of my life, which I have
been successfully researching and progressing is the discovery of a
technique to terminate the onset of age. A lot of progress needs to be
made on that front and I know that in one lifetime there would never be
enough time to hit upon the right formula and the solution. You see
Ravee, ageing is a disease which can be cured. It is only a matter of
time before I find the cure. And once that is accomplished, there would
be eternal life in the prime of health and the flushness of young blood
coursing in the veins of everyone on this earth. Just the way the
creator had desired for all of mankind - never-ending life and
unlimited happiness. Vikram was a disappointment as he did not turn out
to be like me, as you know. Not that I love him any less. But I have
one request of you my dear child.

Ravina was still looking at him frozen in her upright seated posture
and too stunned to react with words.

"Now it's perfectly alright for you to refuse what I'm asking of you.
But I hope you will give it the deepest consideration because it
involves something which is extremely close to my heart. I do not have
many more years to live and with my death will perish the struggle and
the quest for the answer to the fountain of youth. I ask of you to
consider dear Uncle Vikram's one last wish. Will you carry my
clone?

Ravina's eyes widened even further and her jaws dropped all the way to
the ground. But she regained her composure soon enough. From her seated
position she looked across to the backside of the stooping despondent
figure of her father-in-law who had turned around to draw open the
venetian blinds and was staring solemnly across the lawn. Ravina
thought about the absurdity and the immense predicament that Uncle
Vishram had put her into. She knew that the doyen of scientific
research that he was, he would be easily capable of pulling off an act
such as this without any risk to her life or any risk of Vikram being
aware of it; of this she had no doubt. Oh, her husband she thought. He
was in actuality a clone of this man standing in front of her! So, in
reality she had been in love with a younger version of Uncle Vishram
all these years of their courting and cavorting. The thought made her
nauseous and giddy at the same time. She felt light-headed and knew
that she would faint. The sharp Doctor who had turned back around to
face Ravina noticed her drooping eyes and her swaying countenance and
immediately came to her rescue. He steadied her nerves with a tablet
and a glass of water. Ravina regained her composure subsequently and
the colour soon rushed back into her cheeks. She dwelled again on the
dilemma; the pros and cons and the repercussions of the request at
hand. If she said "yes" then she would be artificially inseminated by
the doctor's own DNA thereby harvesting within her body the seed of a
child whose physical make up and constitution would again be identical
to the old man standing in front of him. History would be repeated for
the second time and the child born from her womb would be a clone of
Uncle Vishram. A feeling of revulsion echoed through her system as she
thought of the different kinds of love that she would experience
towards what was essentially the same man; the daughter's love that she
felt for Uncle Vishram; the sexual love that she felt for Vikram, and
the motherly love that she would eventually feel for the unborn child.
But the revulsion soon gave way to a feeling of wonderment and
condescension. What harm could possibly arise from such an act? Just as
Vikram grew up to have a mind and a life of his own, her child even by
being a clone of Uncle Vishram would in effect follow his own destiny.
Besides, as Uncle Vishram described in no mean terms; he wanted her
child to take up the cudgels after he himself hung up his boots. It was
for the betterment of mankind and with Uncle Vikram's mind and genetic
make up, who knew? Her child would be feted throughout the world as
much as Uncle Vikram and would grow up to be rich, famous and above all
highly intelligent - a genius to boot. Which mother would not want a
child such as that promised as it was even before it's birth. She
weighed another consideration. What would Vikram have to say about
this?

As if reading her thoughts, Uncle Vishram spoke out.
"Remember Ravee, that if you do agree to carry this out, it will have
to remain a secret between you and me; it will be carried with us all
the way to our graves. Under no circumstance should Vikram come to know
about what I have just told you; neither about his own identity and
neither of that of the baby. Think of it Ravee as a service that you
are doing to the entire human race. Carrying this secret within your
heart is the greatest responsibility that comes along with that
decision."

Ravina considered it for the longest time and was about to say "yes"
but then her mind suddenly jumped against the decision and she blurted
out crying again. This time she held her head in her hands and sobbed
with a racking cough.
"No I cannot do it. Please Uncle, do not ask me to carry out a deed
such as this. I cannot do this. My whole body shrinks and revolts at a
thought such as this. Please, I beg of you."

The Doctor sighed.
" It's perfectly alright for you to refuse the suggestion, my dear
child. I would never force you to carry this out. I made this clear at
the start of our conversation. Come, it's very late. I will help you to
your room."

Raveena stood up from the divan still sobbing softly with her head
hanging down and her chins touching her chest. Thus immobile rooted to
the spot she stood for a minute while the Doctor stood patiently by her
side. She lifted her head up very slowly and stared at Uncle Vikram in
the face.
" I have made up my mind. I will do it. I will carry your clone and it
is a secret that I will carry within my heart to the
crematorium."

And with that wordlessly and slowly she walked out of that room never
to walk back into Dr Vikram Bhatt's study again. Within two years of
that fateful night Dr Vikram Bhatt's clone-grandson Vishwas was
delivered from Raveena's womb.

And so we fast-forward to the events of today. It has been one month
since Vishwas was born. Since that very day of his grandson's birth, Dr
Vishram Bhatt has been on a constant dosage of pills and medications in
the intensive care unit of the Leelabai Hospital and the daily
reportage of the state of his health and well being is being beamed
constantly on the news channels and on front page newspaper reports
across India. The whole nation is hoping for a speedy recovery. But the
doctor-patient laughs silently when he hears the well wishes of the
populace. Little do they know that he died the day his grandson was
born. His clone grandson was born with his hands deformed and a hole in
his heart. The doctors did not give little Vishwas more than 6 months
to live. A pall of gloom had immediately descended over the Bhatt
household with Dr Vishram Bhatt suffering a massive stroke on hearing
about his clone grandson's condition on the same day. His spirit was
crushed and all hope had departed from his seventy one year old heart.
With great sadness he had accepted the fact that he would die without
finding a cure for ageing, and there would be no one able enough to
finish his research that he had so zealously pursued for the better
part of his life on this planet. Through his half-closed eyes, lying on
the hospital bed of the ICU, he noticed his son sitting dejectedly on a
chair opposite him. He was sitting in a posture akin to Rodin's "The
Thinking Man". He winked at Vikram who was still staring at the floor
and then "The Clown" shut his other eyelid forever.