Monkey Shot Into Space - April 2007

I awoke last morning not the sounds of birds chirping, nor the first rays of light signaling the end of night and welcoming a beautiful dawn, a city enveloped in gentle mist, the sounds of the milkman collecting coupons from baskets strapped onto gates and replacing them with sachets of milk, or the tingle of the paperboy's bicycle bell. Nope. I had traded in all my alarm clocks for an army of coal miners armed with heavy duty power drills, drilling holes into my flesh. They didn't even spare the bone. The pain was growing intense. At times it felt like they had grown tired of drilling and were resorting to sticks of dynamite to blast through the rock(bone and flesh), as I could feel miniature explosions under all those wraps of crepe bandage. For moment it stopped and I heaved a sigh of relief, little did I know that that lull was the calm before the storm, a moment's silence before they drilled into an underground lake that would go on to flood the mine, killing them all. My hand had started swelling up. It was barely 7 am.

I don't want to go into details of how I managed to catch a few hours of sleep that night as it would involve more trucks laden with miners being picked up from their homes, dropped off at the mine, gathering their gear, lighting their first cigarette, switching on their helmet mounted lamps, you get the point, don't you?

The next two hours were excruciating. Every ticking second was slowly transforming me from a sweet boy to a furious animal, filled with rage. Not any animal mind you, but into a giant pissed-off full grown Silver-back gorilla. As my dad drove me to the hospital, I sat like a caged animal waiting to run amok and smash anyone who came in between me and the consulting room, where the doctor better lay waiting, or else, pulp him with the fury and tenacity of a raging whirlwind the moment I set my sights on him.

All set, I stepped out of the car, and headed for the reception. The song playing in my head at that point in time was not "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" or "George of The Jungle". I think it was Metallica's "One" followed back to back with Megadeath's "Symphony of Destruction". There was a nurse behind the counter. I headed for her, like a lion creeping up on an unsuspecting wildebeest, no that wasn't it, was more like Arnold in Terminator. But the nurse was smart. She sensed trouble, and guided me straight to the orthopedic's room. As I walked towards the examination room, I was surprisingly getting calmer and calmer. My hot head, getting cooler, and just for the record, the air conditioner had nothing to do with it. It may have something to do with seeing a multitude of people who seemed to be in an equal amount of agony if not more. But that wasn't to last long.

After a very brief wait, I met the ortho. A scrawny looking figure. Now, I really wanted to beat the living day lights out of him. As he unwrapped my hand, I am not exaggerating when I say this, it looked like King Kong's. My palms were so badly swollen, I had stretch marks on my palms! Who the hell gets stretch marks on their palms? It looked like a water balloon, that was on the verge of bursting. I wanted to fist him real bad, but that's when it occurred to me that I couldn't make a fist with my right hand, because it was swollen up, and more importantly, it lay in his hands! That was a big let-down. I had no other alternative but to co-operate. So I did.

He told me that he has to put my arm into a cast. He then came to me with a bag full of stuff I was in no mood to figure out. By now, I was thinking worse case scenario, trading in the coal miners for some Pakistani militant outfit armed with surface to air missiles, machine guns, (surgery). Instead, he wrapped my forearm in a nice cotton carpet like thing. Then he put on gloves. He wriggled his fingers. Moron, thought he was "Dr. No" from that old James Bond flick, Mr Non-sticky hands. It takes great amount of self control and years of meditation and yoga to stop you from hitting such guys. I had none of these, but still, somehow managed to keep my temper in check. He pulled out this funky blue wire mesh, rubbery, sticky stuff. He started coiling that all over the cotton wrapped on my arm. The whole procedure took about five minutes. Then miraculously that blue mesh turned solid, hard as steel, and he said it was "That's it". He told me that it was some new wonder material – lighter and stronger than the traditional plaster of paris.

He made me wriggle my fingers and Lo!, the swelling disappeared. He had handed all those coal miners the pink slip, "You're Fired".

I think I am being experimented upon like all those monkeys that were shot into space in the name of science. Electric Blue cast made of new-age wonder material. Ladies and gentlemen, (There's the Stars Wars theme playing in the background) I present to you, the space monkey of our times, Sachin Pulickal.

Who needs Dan Brown? Dan Brown can go shoot himself. Better still he can take Stephen King and all his cronies with him and play Last Man Standing. Hopefully they'll end up shooting each other and they'll succumb to their injuries.

In six weeks, you lucky few will have the rare honour of reading the sequel to this, "The Space Monkey Returns". (That's when I get the cast off.)

Disclaimer: All characters mentioned in this short story are factual. Any resemblance to any character is intentional. All Right reserved. April 2007© No part of this article may be published or photocopied without the author's permission. If it comes to my knowledge that you did photocopy it or steal parts of this article and modify it for your personal use, it will not be pretty. Nor will your face, once I am done with it.