Is There Another Me Somewhere?

          “Read,” I said to Sri Husband, thrusting a newspaper article at him, “About stem-cells, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood and cloning. These are Indian ideas. We knew all about them several centuries before Christ was born. It’s all written in our puranas.”

          “Was I-n-d-i-a-n written in the Devanagri or Latin script?” he asked, as always, straying from the topic at hand.

          “That I don’t know, but one scientist, he read about it,” I told him confidently. “And our Pradhan Mantriji also said so.”

          “It’s ok for you to say Pradhan Mantri without the ji,” Sri Husband said, out of focus again. “The two words are respectful enough.”

          I got the conversation back on-line: “They say the Kauravas were cloned. Otherwise how could one mother have a hundred sons and all of the same age?”

          Sri Husband quipped: “What, no daughters? By law in today’s India, Gandhari would have got into trouble.”

          It wasn’t me saying so, I was reading something a wiser and better person had written: “… a verse in Mahabharata under the chapter Adiparva describes how the Kauravas were created from a single embryo. According to the description, the Kauravas were created by splitting the single embryo into 100 parts and growing each part in a separate kund or container. They not only knew about test-tube babies and embryo splitting but also had the technology to grow human foetuses outside the body of a woman. Something that is not known to modern science.”

          Sri Husband was silent. I’d stumped him. I grinned wickedly.

          He grinned right back: “Their highly skilled technical staff could control and regulate air temperatures and humidity, no doubt, in their infection-free laboratories. Maybe, just maybe, they had good science fiction writers, too.”

          I didn’t know what he was getting at. He continued, “Did they commute to work on two-wheelers or cars?”

          “Don’t be silly,” I said, “There were only carts, then, driven by horses and bullocks. Or slaves.”

          “Ah,” he said, “But they had Pushpak Vimaans. So they had runways, but no road-traffic jams.”

“Maybe,” I said, adding, “And they had many weapons that match those that we have today. They were bright.” I was equipped with the printed word before me. It wasn’t me saying so, smart PhDs wrote this stuff.

          “So, we were a clever people,” he agreed. “Intelligent, evolved, practical and quarrelsome.”

          “Quarrelsome?” that was a googly.

          “See the number of intrigues and fights that are documented. With humanized animals and demons.”

          “But that’s mythology,” I said.

          “The technology is real and the rest is mythology? Good, good.” I know I’m on unsafe ground when Sri Husband gets extra-polite.  

          “We can’t prove the truth,” I agreed, “But can we prove they did not exist? If cloning is mentioned, how can we say for certain that it didn’t happen, that it’s all fiction?”

          “We can’t. It may well be true,” Sri Husband had to grudgingly grant me that. “Let’s say we were smart and intelligent once upon a time.”

          “Are you saying we’re not smart and intelligent now?”
          “No.”

          “Then what are you saying?”

          “That we should concentrate on the here and now. Let history-scholars dig and analyse the archives. We should be doing our duties and jobs properly, handling garbage and governance issues instead of sitting around dwelling on past glories. Good scientists don’t rule out any possibilities, true, but they move on, too.”

          Me, talking to myself: “Lecture-baazi shuroo.”

Aloud I said, “You can’t deny that Shushrut-surgeon and Charak-physician were great professionals.”

          Sri Husband: “Drs Shushrut and Charak would have moved with the times.”

          Me: “You know, there was plastic surgery; Ganapati’s head is proof of that.”
          Sri Husband: “Plastic or other surgeries for repair of cut noses and ears, and battle or hunting injuries I can believe. Our ancestors were clever and skilled. But if someone’s head was cut off, and you had the talent to reinstate it, why not use the same head? Assuming that loss of head would mean loss of life, after attaching the head back, how would you revive the person?”

          I wondered why he used ‘you’, meaning me.

I voiced a thought: “Do you think every person has a clone? Or had? Is that why there are so many Indians on the planet? There must be some method to find out. Can my clone be made with a couple of my bone-marrow cells?”

          “Another you?”

          “Yes,” I said smugly. “Would be nice. No?”

 “Nightmarish,” said Sri Husband shuddering.

         

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