Preliminary Note from his collaborator, Dr Vatsan:
Those that have followed the exploits of the world’s foremost consulting detective will recall that it is on the website of The Wire that the chronicles of my illustrious friend and colleague, Om Prakash, first appeared. Known to an admiring public as ‘Chalak’ Om on account of his astuteness and acumen in disentangling mysteries, he had a long and distinguished career, which he however brought to a premature end, on these grounds: “What we have these days are not mysteries, but scandals—which we have now grown too blasé to be even shocked by. I would rather retire from my chosen vocation, return to my village, and devote the rest of my life to the cultivation of mooli.” This, in fact, is what he did. But at the end of the 2024 General Elections, sensing a glimmer of hope on the horizon, he decided to emerge from his retirement. The Return of ‘Chalak’ Om is heralded by two hitherto unpublished accounts from the canon. The first appeared yesterday, the second follows below.
§
Mr ‘Chalak’ Om of Bekar Street yielded, in his estimation of the human race, to one person and one person only: his distinguished predecessor, Mr Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street. Whenever the conversation veered toward the bizarre events that I am about to relate, Om was wont to say: “You have done me the great kindness, my dear Vatsan, of bringing to the attention of the reading public such little skills of deductive reasoning as I may possess. This deserves my gratitude, which I offer without reservation—that is to say, subject only to the judgement that you tend to ply your craft less in a spirit of scientific exposition than of, shall we say, lurid and titillating description. Well, well, one must not complain; and I trust you will not see me as doing so. I bring this up only to suggest that should you ever consider writing up an account of this affair, I hope I may rely on you to employ for it the title ‘The Adventure of the Media Vampire’. No doubt such a title militates against my own unenthusiastic views on sensationalism, but on this occasion, ‘vampire’ is as apt a description as any one can hope to find for the blood-sucking villain of this piece. More importantly, perhaps, it is my way of paying homage, in a queer, inverted way, to certain sentiments of the great man, as recorded by his faithful Boswell in the account known to all the world as ‘The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire’. My reference is to this assertion of Holmes’s: ‘This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghost need apply.’ Such indeed is also the substance of my own inherited belief—one which, however, appears to have been driven to suspension in this case. For, in ‘unravelling’ it, I have, in defence of superstition, had to resort to the sophistry that one must always allow for the one exception which proves the rule. That, at any rate, must remain the ‘official’ version of my position on the subject—unless you should defer a public account to a time when it is safe for publicity. ”
The case in question is indeed the only one, from among the innumerable mysteries that inhabit ‘Chalak’ Om’s crowded archives, in which he found himself constrained to invoke the supernatural for a solution. As to how convincing—but no, let me not anticipate. In the belief that the passage of years has now made it safe for me to do so, I shall reveal my hand, and share a confidence, at the end of this account, after the conclusion of what Om has referred to as ‘the official version’ of the story. Naturally, I can offer no evidence for the truth of my revelation—my readers must take it or leave it, according to their disposition.
It was on a certain warm afternoon of April of the year —— that the city of Mumbai—the financial, industrial, entertainment and fashion capital of the country—became alive to the fact that the television channel Nation’s owner and prime-time host, known far and wide because of his natural propensity for spontaneous combustion, had been found ranting in his seat. This in itself was no cause for alarm, nor even mild surprise, for it was an extensively recognized fact that this man spent all his waking hours ranting and, indeed, ranted also in his sleep, because that was his profession and the means by which he made his (very substantial) living. What was a source of overwhelming concern for the man’s sanity is that, for the very first time in his career, he actually seemed to have a reason for ranting. For he was discovered, in his office, raving in rage and screaming in pain from what remained of a pulverized and bloodied nose in the centre of his normally smug and self-satisfied face.
It is scarcely necessary to recall for readers the nature of the man’s avocation. Even so, for the benefit of those that might still be ignorant, here is a brief description. From his studio, each day, he broadcast a new lie aimed at sending good and innocent people to jail, or dividing the citizenry along communal lines, or exculpating criminals from wrong-doing, or slandering politicians who did not share his ideology, or one or another of such constructive and deeply nationalistic things under the benign gaze of his political masters. That he should be enabled to perform his splendid services for the country without interference from urban naxals and similar undesirables naturally required that he be afforded 24-hour protective security, at home and at work, with the tax-payer’s money.
Ringed as his office was by three layers of police cordons, permitting neither ingress into nor egress from his room without official scrutiny, it was a source of complete bafflement to the entire official security establishment how this media celebrity had succeeded in acquiring a broken nose. All that could be gathered was that he was suddenly heard screaming in anger and pain on account of a nose bleeding from and flattened by an apparently prodigious force, in which state the dozen policemen who rushed in upon registering his discordant yells discovered him. The only other feature of interest recorded by the investigation team was a splash of the victim’s blood, as if it had spattered there, upon the wall some eight feet distant from where the victim sat. Here, if ever, was a genuine Locked Room Mystery.
An FIR was naturally filed against some person or persons unknown for conspiring with external agencies to wage war against the nation, threaten internal stability and security, support a neighbouring enemy nation, and show disrespect to the culture and traditions of the country by visiting violence upon the nose of a national icon. That did not, of course, solve the mystery, so it was only a matter of time before our humble abode at b221 Bekar Street was invaded by the rotund person of the Minister of Internal Affairs, seeking Om’s assistance in shedding light upon the shocking assault that had been perpetrated against the nation’s leading patriot.
From the beginning, Om had displayed no interest in the case, ascribing it to a security failure on the part of a flat-footed police force. He ventured the same opinion again when pressed by the Minister for an explanation. “Mr Minister,” he said, “Over 63 per cent of the electorate did not vote for your party in the recently concluded Election. I would hazard the view that any one of approximately 614 million anti-nationals in the country would have claimed the soundest of motives for pushing this television personality’s nose in for him. A competent security system should have prevented the event. Having allowed it, it is scarcely feasible to expect that all but one of 614 million individuals can now be eliminated from suspicion.”
The Minister of Internal Affairs bridled at the suggestion that his police staff was an incompetent lot, and he made his displeasure plainly known to ‘Chalak’ Om.
“Very well, then,” said Om. “If you can underwrite the complete ability and loyalty of the police, we are left with only one possible solution to the mystery. As you may be aware, I myself have no use for the super-natural, since the world of natural phenomena presents, in my view, enough material for learning and understanding without our having to transcend it for an explanation of those events whose provenance is only and entirely earthly. At the same time, however, I cannot deny one of my own favourite dicta, namely that when one has eliminated everything that is possible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
“Thus am I led to a paranormal explanation of your patriot’s unfortunate nose. Let us consider the simple and bare facts of the case, four in number, as we know them.
“One, no-one could have entered or exited that room without the knowledge of the surrounding security agents who you assure me are unceasingly alert and eagle-eyed.
“Two, from the writing-pad on which your friend was scribbling at the time his nose was—ah—vandalised, we find that he had made a list of untruths which he was planning to broadcast in his evening show. The list included the following items: (a) an account of who had attacked whom at a university campus; (b) a ‘report’ on who had and had not made communally incendiary statements at a public meeting; (c) a template for how to pass off suicides as murders and murders as suicides; (d) a slanderous depiction of honourable human rights activists as terrorists; (e) a wholesale suppression of the incidence of maternal anaemia, poverty, and youth unemployment; and (e) a wholesale exaggeration of the magnitude of the economy’s growth rate.
“Three, the man’s nose afforded every evidence of having made contact with a portentous force, suggesting the imagery, to one of the investigators on the spot, that ‘it (the victim’s nose) had run into a concrete wall.’
“And four, there was a splash of blood that matched the blood from the nose on the wall, some eight feet away, which the victim was facing.
“I submit that the only explanation that covers these facts is one that is not quite contained within the four walls of earthly rationality such as we have been trained to recognize and accept. Once we accommodate a fifth dimension in our scheme of things, we find that the pieces fall smoothly into place. I put it to you that what follows is all that survives when once the realm of possibilities has been exhausted. From the first of the facts that I have reviewed above, there was no-one else in the room, apart from the victim himself, when his nose was bloodied. And from facts three and four, and the eminently reasonable assumption that the victim was too deeply in love with his own face to cause it even the slightest and most inadvertent damage with his own fist, I conclude that his nose did in fact run into the facing wall, with a force that pulverised it.”
“Are you suggesting,” asked the Minister with a sneer, “that the poor man rushed headlong into the wall for the sheer pleasure he knew it would bring him?”
“No, no, Mr Minister,” replied ‘Chalak’ Om. “You neglect to take any account of fact number two—that your illustrious client was preparing a list of untruths at the time his misfortune overtook him. Once you do, you will be enabled to see that it wasn’t he who rushed into the wall, it was just his nose.”
“How—where—what is the connection?” sputtered the Minister.
“Ah! You will find the answer in the story of the puppet who lied. Collodi’s Pinocchio, Mr Minister. We are told that his nose grew with every lie he uttered. And so with your friend. Nature herself eventually rebelled as he added lie upon lie to the list he was preparing that afternoon: the nose grew by an inch with the first lie, by a foot with the second lie, by three feet with the third lie, by five feet with the fourth lie; by six feet with the fifth lie; and with the sixth lie, it shot out all of eight feet from his face to run smack and with an awful velocity into the wall, with the consequences we have seen. After that there was no more nose to contend with. That, Mr Minister, is what happens to puppets who lie.”
The Minister’s face turned dark with fury, and then a sickly green with dread, even as he blustered uncertainly: “And you expect people to believe this?”
“This is very small beer, Mr Minister,” said Om in a low voice, “compared to what people are expected to believe when they are treated to the daily broadcasts put out by your friend—in the name of what it is essential for the citizenry to know.”
The Minister got up abruptly and saw himself out of the door.
There was a long silence after the man’s departure. I broke it, eventually, by asking: “Surely you don’t set store by your own explanation, Om? It is not like you, to advance magic and miracles as solutions to problems of logic and reason!”
Om’s body was racked by convulsions of internal mirth. “No, Vatsan,” he said, laughing heartily, “Of course not. All of that was just moonshine!”
“What, then? What is the truth?”
“The truth, Vatsan, is the truth of Father Brown’s Invisible Man. As he once observed, in a resolution of one of his mysteries, there are some men people never see even when they are right in front of their eyes. Such as men in uniform: postmen, soldiers, laboratory clinicians, waiters, policemen. Imagine this. A man, call him X, dresses up as a policeman, and mingles inconspicuously with the other policemen forming a ring around the television host’s office. It occurs to nobody to ask any question when X takes in a cup of tea to the man at eleven o’clock in the morning. The tea is, let us imagine, ‘spiked’. Five minutes later, he re-enters the fellow’s room with a snack, of which three-quarters has already been removed, to convey the impression that the occupant has eaten most of it. The impostor replaces the empty tea-cup with another cup carrying traces of regular tea. He pockets the original tea-cup, to remove all evidence of the sleeping draught in it, which by now has taken effect on the man in the seat in front of him. He has wanted to do this for long, and now he has created the opportunity for himself. With considerable satisfaction, he retracts his arm and lets loose, dabs some of the resulting blood on the wall opposite, exits the room—again in full view of every other policeman present—and then retires once more, and permanently, into private life. Presently, our celebrity awakens, has no notion of what has occurred, and sets up that infernal din which brings the policemen rushing in. The rest you know.”
“But who, Om, who is X?” I cried.
“Does it matter very much, Vatsan, who out of 614 million persons with good reason to do it actually did do it? Ah, I see, you will insist! Very well. Let me just say that in the days of my prime, professional boxers I have transacted with have told me that running into my straight left was very much like running into a concrete wall.”
“Om! You are not saying, are you, that—?!”
‘Chalak’ Om of Bekar Street placed a finger upon his lips. “I am saying nothing, my dear Vatsan. Nothing.”
The author is a lapsed academic who sometimes writes under the name of S. Subramanian.
