7.4 Vhy
Ruchi and I had a codeword for times when we got hyper, a mantra that was guaranteed to calm us down in any crisis. I used that mantra now. Coldshower, I told myself, then repeated it over and over again, imagining an ice cold cascade of water on my head and face and shoulders, coldshowever, coldshower, coldshower...
I stared suspiciously at the duplicate Mikey. "What the hell are you talking about?" I said, harsher than an older brother should speak. Then again, one of the qualities of an older brother--or older sister--is that at times you get cheesed off with your younger sibs.
He sounded really genuine. But I wasn't fooled that easily. He was probably playing some kind of a mindgame, using psychological warfare to attack me. I glanced at the telephone. It was behind him, out of my reach. But my bedroom door was closer to me than to him, the first door down the passageway. If I jumped up from the sofa, ran inside and locked myself in, then called for help...Police, help, my duplicate younger brother is attacking me! Send lots of paunchy hawaldars with dandas, quick! Yeah, sure, that was a great idea.
I was still trying to figure out the best thing to do when he spoke again. Of all the things I might have expected him to do--attack me, zap me, send me into hyper-space with a flick of his wristwatch--he did the one thing I wasn't prepared for. He said, gently,
"Bhayya."
I stared at him.
"Bhayya," he said again. "I know you know that I'm not Mikey."
I sat up suddenly, knocking my head on the corner of the sofa and not caring. "What?"
He held up his hands placatingly. "You're right. I'm not."
"I'm what? You're not?" I said stupidly. Then tried to rephrase myself. "What do you mean?"
He gestured at the passageway, in the direction of his bedroom. "You and your gf, you saw me last night, when I arrived here."
"Arrived here?" I suddenly thought of this image from a sci-fi movie, called The Arrival starring Charlie Sheen, where the hero suspects that aliens have landed and are infilterating our cities and changing the climate of our planet to make it more hospitable to them. In the climax of the film, the hero finally finds and enters the alien spaceship, and he sees how the aliens use a machine to disguise themselves as us. In the movie, the aliens have these weird feet which point backwards and are double-hinged.
Suddenly, I wanted to check Mikey's feet, to see if they're were double-jointed and pointing backwards. Instead, I said, "What do you mean, you're not Mikey? Arrived here from where?"
He took a step forward. "Don't get hyper, Vhy. I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking I'm some kind of evil twin or duplicate. But I'm not. I'm just Mahesh, your brother. I'll never do anything to harm you."
"You just said you're not Mikey."
"I'm not. I'm Mahesh. Back in my world, you guys never called me Mikey. It was always Mahesh. Except you....you used to call me Maheevey, sometimes."
"Maheevey?" I said, puzzled.
"Yeah, like the song in that Hrithik Roshan film...you know..." he hummed a bit of the tune, tunelessly. Mikey never could hold a tune, couldn't even hum a simple ten second ad jingle. It sounded like a dog gargling with Listerine, then swallowing the Listerine. "Aaja maheevey," he said at last, seeing that I might not have appreciated his non-talent for musical rendition.
"Oh," I said. "That Maheevey."
"Yeah," he said, taking another couple of steps. "So I'm Mahesh, not Mikey, okay? Now I have to talk to you. I need your help."
I blinked at him. "You need my help? For what?"
"To close the Vortal. It's out of control, Vaibhav, bhayya. You have to help me close it. Before someone else comes through. Someone more dangerous."
I stared at Mikey, or Mahesh, or Maheevey, or whoever the hell this guy was, who looked like my brother, talked like my brother (almost) but sure as hell wasn't my brother. And yet he still called me "bhayya" in that same plaintive tone, just like Mikey used to call me when we were younger and he was really in need of my help.
I focussed on the last thing he had said.
"What Vortal?" I remembered the thingie that had flashed on his monitor screen, which Ruchi had read before it changed. She had said something about a Vortal too. Very specifically with a V. Not portal, Vortal.
"The one that I used to come here, to your world. Bhayya, it's out of control. It was only supposed to bring me here, and that was it. But I don't know how, Viveka went through it too. And now someone else came through in her place, because of the Balance. And that person who came through, she's the one who attacked Mom. And now she's out there somewhere. On the loose. We have to get her back through the Vortal and bring back Viveka. Our Viveka. You have to help me."
"I do?" I asked again, stupidly. Then realized how stupid that sounded. "I mean, Mikey...Mahesh...whoever you are...I haven't a clue what you're talking about. I mean, I know something happened with your comp last night, and Ruchi and I saw you vanish from your seat and then reappear a moment later, and she said she saw the word Vortal on your monitor screen. But I don't know what you're talking about, about you going through, and Viveka going through, and this other person--the bai and Mrs Mudgal said it was Viveka, or looked like her. Just like you look like Mikey but you say yourself you're not Mikey, you're Mahesh. So I'm a little confused. No, actually I'm totally confused. Actually. Shit, I'm getting Ruchi's disease. Actually. So, what the fricking hell are you talking about, Mahesh-Mikey-whoever? What is this Vortal and how is it making all this weird crap happen?"
My face was burning now, like I had a 102-degree fever. My throat was as dry as a roll of cottonwool. I could feel my blood pulsing in my temples, the way one of the X-men could feel every tiny physiological and psychological of another person in her own body. I felt as if I was the body-snatcher here, not Mikey. Which of the X-men was she, anyway? The one with that empathic power who could leech the power out of any of her superhero friends--or enemies? I was so freaked I couldn't even remember, even though I had seen the DVD again just night before last.
"So you better explain right here, right now," I said, "just what the hell you're talking about. And while you're doing it, stop calling me Vaibhav, okay? I mean, why the hell do you keep calling me Vaibhav instead of Vhy? Nobody calls me Vaibhav. Except Dad when he's mad at me. If you're pretending to be Mikey, at least get that much right! And my gf's name is Ruchi. You missed that one too."
He nodded, then hung his head, looking sheepish. "I know. But Vaibhav is what I call my big brother back home." He paused, looking away. "At least, that's what I called him before...before I lost them all."
I stared at him, wondering how he could look so normal when he was obviously so whacko. I wondered if the duplicate Viveka had seemed this normal just before she attacked and almost killed Maa. But what was this crap he was laying on me? Maybe it was some kind of mind game to get me to drop my guard. High hopes.
"I'll explain," he said, seeing the look on my face. "It was all my fault. I started the whole thing when I created that damn thing. I didn't know it would turn out to be this powerful. Or that I would lose control of it all. All I wanted was to get my family back. And it was the only way I knew how. You understand me, Vaibhav. I mean, Vhy. You know how much I'm into computers and tech. It's the only way I knew to get them back. To get you all back again."
I raised a hand to point a finger at him. I don't know what scared me more--the fact that I was alone in the house with the duplicate Mikey when he was making some kind of move on me, or the fact that my hand was shaking.
"You better start making sense," I said. "Or I'm going to call the police and have you arrested for impersonating my brother. What did you do with the real Mikey? How did you get into his body? How did you get into our world?"
He looked at me with an expression of pain so genuine, I almost felt sorry for him.
"Don't you get it yet?" he said. "I am your brother. I'm Mahesh. Mikey. Whatever you want to call me. I'm just not the Mikey you know."
"Yeah, sure," I said, "And I'm actually Tom Cruise but I'm wearing a latex mask like the ones they use in the m:i movies."
"No, no, no," he said. "I mean, for real. I'm your brother. But from another world. An alternate world that's very similar to this one in most ways. Except..."
"Except...?" I asked, rolling my hand to indicate he should keep the projector running, the audience was waiting.
"Except that in my world, all of you guys died in a car accident and I was left alone. And that's why I created the Vortal. Because if I couldn't get you back, then I wanted to be with you again. So I slipped into this world and replaced your Mikey."
I stared at him. "Wow. That's some story." The sarcasm was so heavy in my voice, I could have applied on a slice of toast, with a knife. "Now pull the other leg too, it's so much shorter, I'm walking with a limp."
He cried out, "I'm telling the truth! You've got to believe me, bhayya! I was only trying to get back to you guys, to have you as my family again. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. But something went wrong. Viveka went through the Vortal too, and someone else came in her place. And now the Vortal is open and I can't close it. I don't know how to close it. And I'm scared that lots of other people are going and coming through it, all the time. And some of them are really bad people. And things are going to get really really scary if we don't shut down the Vortal right now and I don't know who else to turn to, because Viveka's gone, and Maa's in hospital and Dad's dealing with that, and..."
He staggered, overwhelmed by his emotion. And then, he actually lurched and started to keel over.
Without thinking about it, I moved forward and caught hold of him. I helped him over to the couch and put his legs up. He lay there breathing heavily for a moment, and I remembered the time I had carried him once, when he was really small, maybe a year old, maybe less, and he had had a bad cold and cough and fever, and I had been so worried--I was just a kid then too--and I remember picking him up and cuddling him and saying, "Don't worry, everything's going to be fine, it'll all be fine..." the way I had seen Maa do.
He opened his eyes and looked up at me. Tears rolled out from their corners and trickled down his cheek and over his nose, falling to the couch, wetting the upholstery.
"Bhayya, you have to believe me. I'm telling the truth," he said.
I was silent for a long moment, staring at him. Remembering all the things one remembers when one has been a brother for all of one's life, the fights, the arguments, the hugs, the kisses, the homework-helpouts, the cricket, the cycling, the bandaids and tincture of iodine, the falls and the tumbles, the video game marathons and the movie marathons, the Horlicks and the Bournvita, the cola and orange Rasna, the onion cream wafers and the french fries...
Finally I said, "I do."
He stared at me wordlessly. Tears still filled his eyes.
"I believe you," I said.
And, as JaishreeKrishna is my witness, I did. I believed him. Every incredible word of his incredible story.
I stared suspiciously at the duplicate Mikey. "What the hell are you talking about?" I said, harsher than an older brother should speak. Then again, one of the qualities of an older brother--or older sister--is that at times you get cheesed off with your younger sibs.
He sounded really genuine. But I wasn't fooled that easily. He was probably playing some kind of a mindgame, using psychological warfare to attack me. I glanced at the telephone. It was behind him, out of my reach. But my bedroom door was closer to me than to him, the first door down the passageway. If I jumped up from the sofa, ran inside and locked myself in, then called for help...Police, help, my duplicate younger brother is attacking me! Send lots of paunchy hawaldars with dandas, quick! Yeah, sure, that was a great idea.
I was still trying to figure out the best thing to do when he spoke again. Of all the things I might have expected him to do--attack me, zap me, send me into hyper-space with a flick of his wristwatch--he did the one thing I wasn't prepared for. He said, gently,
"Bhayya."
I stared at him.
"Bhayya," he said again. "I know you know that I'm not Mikey."
I sat up suddenly, knocking my head on the corner of the sofa and not caring. "What?"
He held up his hands placatingly. "You're right. I'm not."
"I'm what? You're not?" I said stupidly. Then tried to rephrase myself. "What do you mean?"
He gestured at the passageway, in the direction of his bedroom. "You and your gf, you saw me last night, when I arrived here."
"Arrived here?" I suddenly thought of this image from a sci-fi movie, called The Arrival starring Charlie Sheen, where the hero suspects that aliens have landed and are infilterating our cities and changing the climate of our planet to make it more hospitable to them. In the climax of the film, the hero finally finds and enters the alien spaceship, and he sees how the aliens use a machine to disguise themselves as us. In the movie, the aliens have these weird feet which point backwards and are double-hinged.
Suddenly, I wanted to check Mikey's feet, to see if they're were double-jointed and pointing backwards. Instead, I said, "What do you mean, you're not Mikey? Arrived here from where?"
He took a step forward. "Don't get hyper, Vhy. I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking I'm some kind of evil twin or duplicate. But I'm not. I'm just Mahesh, your brother. I'll never do anything to harm you."
"You just said you're not Mikey."
"I'm not. I'm Mahesh. Back in my world, you guys never called me Mikey. It was always Mahesh. Except you....you used to call me Maheevey, sometimes."
"Maheevey?" I said, puzzled.
"Yeah, like the song in that Hrithik Roshan film...you know..." he hummed a bit of the tune, tunelessly. Mikey never could hold a tune, couldn't even hum a simple ten second ad jingle. It sounded like a dog gargling with Listerine, then swallowing the Listerine. "Aaja maheevey," he said at last, seeing that I might not have appreciated his non-talent for musical rendition.
"Oh," I said. "That Maheevey."
"Yeah," he said, taking another couple of steps. "So I'm Mahesh, not Mikey, okay? Now I have to talk to you. I need your help."
I blinked at him. "You need my help? For what?"
"To close the Vortal. It's out of control, Vaibhav, bhayya. You have to help me close it. Before someone else comes through. Someone more dangerous."
I stared at Mikey, or Mahesh, or Maheevey, or whoever the hell this guy was, who looked like my brother, talked like my brother (almost) but sure as hell wasn't my brother. And yet he still called me "bhayya" in that same plaintive tone, just like Mikey used to call me when we were younger and he was really in need of my help.
I focussed on the last thing he had said.
"What Vortal?" I remembered the thingie that had flashed on his monitor screen, which Ruchi had read before it changed. She had said something about a Vortal too. Very specifically with a V. Not portal, Vortal.
"The one that I used to come here, to your world. Bhayya, it's out of control. It was only supposed to bring me here, and that was it. But I don't know how, Viveka went through it too. And now someone else came through in her place, because of the Balance. And that person who came through, she's the one who attacked Mom. And now she's out there somewhere. On the loose. We have to get her back through the Vortal and bring back Viveka. Our Viveka. You have to help me."
"I do?" I asked again, stupidly. Then realized how stupid that sounded. "I mean, Mikey...Mahesh...whoever you are...I haven't a clue what you're talking about. I mean, I know something happened with your comp last night, and Ruchi and I saw you vanish from your seat and then reappear a moment later, and she said she saw the word Vortal on your monitor screen. But I don't know what you're talking about, about you going through, and Viveka going through, and this other person--the bai and Mrs Mudgal said it was Viveka, or looked like her. Just like you look like Mikey but you say yourself you're not Mikey, you're Mahesh. So I'm a little confused. No, actually I'm totally confused. Actually. Shit, I'm getting Ruchi's disease. Actually. So, what the fricking hell are you talking about, Mahesh-Mikey-whoever? What is this Vortal and how is it making all this weird crap happen?"
My face was burning now, like I had a 102-degree fever. My throat was as dry as a roll of cottonwool. I could feel my blood pulsing in my temples, the way one of the X-men could feel every tiny physiological and psychological of another person in her own body. I felt as if I was the body-snatcher here, not Mikey. Which of the X-men was she, anyway? The one with that empathic power who could leech the power out of any of her superhero friends--or enemies? I was so freaked I couldn't even remember, even though I had seen the DVD again just night before last.
"So you better explain right here, right now," I said, "just what the hell you're talking about. And while you're doing it, stop calling me Vaibhav, okay? I mean, why the hell do you keep calling me Vaibhav instead of Vhy? Nobody calls me Vaibhav. Except Dad when he's mad at me. If you're pretending to be Mikey, at least get that much right! And my gf's name is Ruchi. You missed that one too."
He nodded, then hung his head, looking sheepish. "I know. But Vaibhav is what I call my big brother back home." He paused, looking away. "At least, that's what I called him before...before I lost them all."
I stared at him, wondering how he could look so normal when he was obviously so whacko. I wondered if the duplicate Viveka had seemed this normal just before she attacked and almost killed Maa. But what was this crap he was laying on me? Maybe it was some kind of mind game to get me to drop my guard. High hopes.
"I'll explain," he said, seeing the look on my face. "It was all my fault. I started the whole thing when I created that damn thing. I didn't know it would turn out to be this powerful. Or that I would lose control of it all. All I wanted was to get my family back. And it was the only way I knew how. You understand me, Vaibhav. I mean, Vhy. You know how much I'm into computers and tech. It's the only way I knew to get them back. To get you all back again."
I raised a hand to point a finger at him. I don't know what scared me more--the fact that I was alone in the house with the duplicate Mikey when he was making some kind of move on me, or the fact that my hand was shaking.
"You better start making sense," I said. "Or I'm going to call the police and have you arrested for impersonating my brother. What did you do with the real Mikey? How did you get into his body? How did you get into our world?"
He looked at me with an expression of pain so genuine, I almost felt sorry for him.
"Don't you get it yet?" he said. "I am your brother. I'm Mahesh. Mikey. Whatever you want to call me. I'm just not the Mikey you know."
"Yeah, sure," I said, "And I'm actually Tom Cruise but I'm wearing a latex mask like the ones they use in the m:i movies."
"No, no, no," he said. "I mean, for real. I'm your brother. But from another world. An alternate world that's very similar to this one in most ways. Except..."
"Except...?" I asked, rolling my hand to indicate he should keep the projector running, the audience was waiting.
"Except that in my world, all of you guys died in a car accident and I was left alone. And that's why I created the Vortal. Because if I couldn't get you back, then I wanted to be with you again. So I slipped into this world and replaced your Mikey."
I stared at him. "Wow. That's some story." The sarcasm was so heavy in my voice, I could have applied on a slice of toast, with a knife. "Now pull the other leg too, it's so much shorter, I'm walking with a limp."
He cried out, "I'm telling the truth! You've got to believe me, bhayya! I was only trying to get back to you guys, to have you as my family again. I didn't mean for any of this to happen. But something went wrong. Viveka went through the Vortal too, and someone else came in her place. And now the Vortal is open and I can't close it. I don't know how to close it. And I'm scared that lots of other people are going and coming through it, all the time. And some of them are really bad people. And things are going to get really really scary if we don't shut down the Vortal right now and I don't know who else to turn to, because Viveka's gone, and Maa's in hospital and Dad's dealing with that, and..."
He staggered, overwhelmed by his emotion. And then, he actually lurched and started to keel over.
Without thinking about it, I moved forward and caught hold of him. I helped him over to the couch and put his legs up. He lay there breathing heavily for a moment, and I remembered the time I had carried him once, when he was really small, maybe a year old, maybe less, and he had had a bad cold and cough and fever, and I had been so worried--I was just a kid then too--and I remember picking him up and cuddling him and saying, "Don't worry, everything's going to be fine, it'll all be fine..." the way I had seen Maa do.
He opened his eyes and looked up at me. Tears rolled out from their corners and trickled down his cheek and over his nose, falling to the couch, wetting the upholstery.
"Bhayya, you have to believe me. I'm telling the truth," he said.
I was silent for a long moment, staring at him. Remembering all the things one remembers when one has been a brother for all of one's life, the fights, the arguments, the hugs, the kisses, the homework-helpouts, the cricket, the cycling, the bandaids and tincture of iodine, the falls and the tumbles, the video game marathons and the movie marathons, the Horlicks and the Bournvita, the cola and orange Rasna, the onion cream wafers and the french fries...
Finally I said, "I do."
He stared at me wordlessly. Tears still filled his eyes.
"I believe you," I said.
And, as JaishreeKrishna is my witness, I did. I believed him. Every incredible word of his incredible story.
posted by Ashok K. Banker at 12.10.05
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