The Mystical Mr B: Part Four

Recap:

Mr. Balasubramaniam, or Mr. B as we will call him, is a senior citizen who now lives with his son in Delhi. His story of transformation from a common man to a miracle maker begins with the visit of a sadhu to his house in Coimbatore fifteen years ago. The sadhu took a fancy for Mr. B and left his house after giving him the address of his Varanasi ashram.

Mr. B married off his daughter to an engineer who worked with BHEL. Mr. B and his wife visit their daughter when she gives birth to her first child and since her husband was posted now at Varanasi, Mr. B and his wife got the opportunity which he thought was only a dream.

While preparing to depart from Varanasi, Mrs. B finds the piece of paper on which the sadhu wrote his address fifteen years ago. Taking this to be an omen, both husband and wife pay a visit to the ashram where the aging sadhu recognizes Mr. B and warmly welcomes him.

While leaving the ashram, the sadhu presents Mr. B with a necklace made of mercury (spatik) and tells him to wear it whenever he needs his (sadhu’s) guidance. After retirement, Mr. B shifts to his ancestral house in a village. One day he comes across a crowd gathered in the fields and sees a young boy lying unconscious after being bitten by a poisonous snake. He uses the necklace and revives the boy to everyone’s surprise.

Mr. B is pestered by his friends in Delhi to narrate more and one day he tells them the story of Kuppuswamy, the cancer patient.

After the miracle of the snakebite victim’s revival, Mr. B found himself besieged by villagers with problems for which they sought his miracle solutions. Mr. B, however, was reluctant to put the necklace to use for the mundane problems with which the villagers came to him. He was against abusing the sadhu’s gift. He was not sure that the boy was revived because of a miracle by the mysterious necklace. What if it were a fluke? A mere coincidence? Mr. B hated to be recognized as a man of magic as the villagers had made him be.

One day, however, a strange case came to him. Kuppuswamy’s family was in deep despair over his health. Kuppuswamy was diagnosed with cancer five years ago and his family had got him treated in the cancer hospital in Adyar, Chennai. Despite the best efforts, the doctors told the family that the cancer was spreading and it was only a matter of time that Kuppuswamy would succumb to the dreaded disease. There was no way to stop the spread of the cancerous germs in his body. They, therefore, shifted Kuppuswamy to his home in the village, and, as a last resort, his family petitioned Mr. B for a miracle.

Mr. B visited the patient and felt the urge to help. He put on the necklace once again and shut his eyes, fearing what the sadhu would tell him to do this time. Sure enough, he heard the voice within him asking him to feed the patient with mud from an ant-hill where only red ants lived. He was foxed. A red ant-hill? Where could one find such a place in this village? He debated for a while whether to disclose this to the family. How can mud cure a terminally ill patient? Had he heard the voice clearly, or was there a mistake?

When finally he told the family about the solution that had come to him, they stared in disbelief! After much debate, they took a chance, more so because Kuppuswamy anyway was dying. A hunt was launched for the ant-hill of red ants and finally located. Mud from the ant-hill was brought and for three days, they forced the helpless patient to swallow a fistful of the mud. 

On the seventh day, the patient reported some progress. He was feeling good; he said. There was a big meeting amongst elders of the family and they decided it that Kuppuswamy will be taken to Chennai again for a reevaluation of his health.

Hearing about the strange medicine that Kuppuswamy was administered by his family on the advice of Mr. B, the doctors were skeptical. But when they conducted tests on the patient, it stupefied them to find that there was no trace of cancer in him.

The doctors could not believe this. The tests must have been wrong, they thought, and asked the family to get another test done in AIIMS Delhi. The results of the second test only confirmed the Chennai test. Kuppuswamy was free of cancer and healthy.

The soil from the anthill was obtained by the doctors and analyzed, but they found nothing in it to show any healing properties. After much analysis, they filed the strange case as “patient recovered because of unknown reasons”.

The reputation of Mr. B as a miracle man was now firmly established. Kuppuswamy’s case was published in a medical journal as a case study and widely circulated across the globe. Reading it, researchers and scientists from various countries began visiting the village to meet Kuppuswamy and Mr. B. Now, Mr. B found himself surrounded by people from across the state who had traveled long distances to seek his help! Mr. B lost his privacy, peace, and sanity.

It was then that his son, who had married by then and was living in Bengaluru, intervened to rescue his father. He asked his parents to sell off the house and shift with him to Bengaluru. He had one pre-condition. He told his father not to talk about the necklace or use it under any circumstances. Mr. B agreed readily.

Mr. B moved with his son to Delhi when his son got transferred. From time to time, his son- and daughter-in-law warned Mr. B about the magical necklace and told him they will not allow him to stay in the house if he ever broke his promise.

The friends of Mr. B fell silent as Mr. B concluded his story. What a pity that we could not use such a beneficial power! They also appreciated Mr. B’s bold decision to help Mrs. Chakravarty, despite the dire consequences. They promised Mr. B never to reveal the truth.

For those of you who have read the four parts of this story with disbelief, here is what I have to say. No part of the story is made up by me, and all the miracles have happened. Courtesy my father, I met Mr. B in Delhi and listen to his story firsthand.