The Butterfly
Effect
The
butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a
complex system. The concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings and
causing a typhoon.
Of
course, a single act like the butterfly flapping its wings cannot cause a
typhoon. Small events, can however, serve as catalysts that act on starting
conditions.
The
things that change the world, according to chaos theory, are the tiny things. A
butterfly flaps it’s wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe –
Good omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
For the want of a
nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider the battle was
lost,
For the want of a battle the kingdom was
lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
- Benjamin Franklin’s
variation.
This
story is an attempt to create the butterfly effect, where a small, seemingly
unimportant event triggers a catastrophe of great magnitude.
***
The Last Foxglove.
The flower was mesmerizing. Radha stared at
it, spellbound. How had she never noticed this one before? She knew all the
flowers grown in this nursery, didn’t she? She must have missed seeing it,
because she never passed this side of the garden on the other days.
It was unlike any other she had seen. It was a long flower, the petals formed a neat little groove around each other, to close into a long hollow, exactly like a bell. The
petals were a bright yellow. They reminded her of the Kancheevaram saree that
her aunt Savitri had worn to Anna’s
wedding last year. It had looked ghastly on her aunt but looked gorgeous on
this bloom. She had not noticed this particular flower earlier. It was dotted
with bright orange, with streaks of harsh pink along the insides of the bell. Yes,
this was a new one indeed. She wondered what it was called.
All the other blooms along the stalk were
gone, somehow. Only this one remained.
Could she pluck it? Radha looked around
carefully. She knew that the lanky security man would be stationed around the
garden at this time. But he was nowhere to be seen now. She glanced at her
watch. It was 1.57 PM. He must have gone for lunch as he did, sometimes. He
would usually be back long before 2PM. Today was her lucky day.
Radha
reached for the flower, stretching her hand carefully over the prickly fence
that had been erected around the shrub. She dug her long nails deep into the stalk,
already imagining the joyful expression on Amma’s face when she saw this bell
flower.
Besides, tomorrow was Thursday. Amma would
be happy to decorate the white foot- long marble idol in their puja room with
this flower. Radha smiled to herself, as she placed the flower gently in her
handbag. A tiny wisp of apprehension sliced through her mind. She could lose
her job for this, if she was caught with the bloom.
Radha knew the rules. It was strictly
forbidden to pluck flowers, leaves or anything else from the garden of the
institute. Radha began to walk a little faster towards the nursery gate. Well,
she had been slogging for a whole nine months as the stenographer at this
place, hadn’t she? Surely she was entitled to pluck a small bloom once in a
while?
Besides, Baba loved yellow flowers, didn’t
he? She was doing this for Sai Baba, her favourite deity. All sins would be
forgiven. She envisioned the snow white Baba, with the yellow flower on his
head and smiled again, as she slipped out of the garden gate of her office
premises, into the long pathway that would take her past he main building and finally lead to the main exit of the
Institute of Herbal Medicine & Research Laboratories.
***
Damn!
It was late! Joel glanced at his watch and swore under his breath. 1.58
PM.
Why was there so much traffic at this time
of the day? Those bloody ambulances, they had come out of nowhere onto the main
street, three of them no less, one behind the other, their sirens blaring as
they whizzed past the traffic lights. The traffic had come to a standstill what
with all the vehicles and people scrambling hither-dither out of the way. He
was only two furlongs away from the institute but the signal had turned
red.
The
ambulances were no doubt headed to the Falcon hospital five blocks down the
main street from the institute. He was supposed to have been at his post at
least ten minutes ago. No one would miss him, he knew. After all, he was the
chief of security for the nursery premises of the IHMRL.
But
then, he knew that he couldn’t afford to go slack on his job, especially since Shaji
Sir had given out the special instructions, two weeks ago.
Joel
honked angrily when a cyclist crossed his path and he had to slow down just
when the signal turned green. Two
minutes later, Joel parked his bike in his parking slot and hurried over to the
garden to check on the flower.
He reached the garden gate, already
noticing the absence of the bright yellow speck that would have been visible
from this point. Panic made him break into a run as he recalled Shaji sir’s
specific order to keep this particular flower safe, although Joel didn’t know
why. He reached the shrub and stood panting with his palms on his knees, as he
gaped at it, unable to believe his eyes. All that stood there was a sorry-looking
green stalk, with its end rudely gnawed off, hairy green strands still hanging
haphazardly around the leaves.
The
foxglove was gone.
***
Three more patients! Dr.Dhruv Ramani replaced
the receiver of his landline slowly into its cradle, his hand shaking slightly.
How had this happened? He'd heard the wailing
ambulances as they passed the institute a while ago. How had he let this happen? He wiped his
forehead with his pristine white hanky and absently examined the wet droplets
of sweat that dotted the starched cotton.
Sixteen people were already dead. All of
them were suspected to have succumbed to the same reaction. And the chief
doctor had called him at once, as soon as the ambulances had reached the
emergency ward of the Falcon. He would call Dhruv, of course. After all, he
enjoyed a sizeable percentage of the profits that came in with the sale of the
drug from Dhruv’s pharma company, didn’t he?
But now the bastard had decided to grow a
conscience all of a sudden and was trying to wash his hands off the matter.
Where had this conscience been when he had agreed to prescribe medicines
exclusively produced by the institute and marketed by Asha Pharma? Dhruv was
one of the sleeping partners of Asha pharmaceuticals and had a spotless
business reputation. Until now.
Now,
everything they'd worked for, was in jeopardy.
All because of a drug - Digipure.
A wonder remedy made from a type of Digoxin
extracted from the yellow foxglove flower, the Digitalis Grandiflora.
A miracle medicine that arrested the congestive
heart failure and congenital heart disease in patients with weak hearts, by
relieving the fluid retention in irregular heartbeats.
DigiPure. It had been a dream come true for
Dhruv, when Asha Pharmaceuticals, which he'd registered under his wife’s name,
was the first to harness the amazing curative properties of a combination of digoxin
extracted from the foxglove flower at IHMRL laboratory. They'd been the first
to manufacture and market the phenomenal medicine across the city.
Soon after Asha Pharma hastened to
patent the combination, the medicine was released into the market with great
aplomb. The results were remarkable in treating patients with history of
heart attacks and the sales had shot up, so much so that Dhruv managed to
secure exclusive marketing contracts with 14 hospitals in the city. Thousands
of heart patients had been saved because of DigiPure.
But then, no one had foreseen the side
effects that manifested themselves, only one year after the patients were
administered the drug. 97% of them suffered a condition that caused a
series of contractions in the cardiac muscle that ultimately led to the Sudden
Death Syndrome in regular users of DigiPure.
Thankfully,
Shaji’s team managed to isolate a new kind of Digoxin, from a particular
hybrid variety of foxgloves, which were multicolored, and peppered with a deep
shade of pink within their bells. They’d been grown as a result of random
grafting, right within the nursery of the IHMRL by the gardeners and the research
team stumbled upon their unique qualities quite by accident. The animal
testing, and consequent testing on a few patients, disclosed that the new
elements nullified the deadly side-effects of DigiPure, within two-three weeks
of administering it. The patent was through as well and the drug could be
manufactured in bulk and would be released under a new name shortly.
There was just one problem, though. The
morons at the lab had used up all the samples of the new hybrid flowers to research
the digoxin. And now, they were left with one, just one flower in their campus.
Fortunately, Shaji had assured him that
they would be able to extract a considerable amount of digoxin to salvage the
situation for another month or so. New hybrid saplings were already been planted
and there was hope of yielding a good harvest by the end of the year. They
could still produce a sizeable quantity from that single bloom for a fresh
batch and release them to the hospitals that had administered DigiPure to their
patients.
Dhruv
sighed heavily and picked up the phone to summon Shaji to his cabin.
***
‘It
is gone!’ Dr.Shaji wailed.
Dhruv
stared at him, shell-shocked. Gone? How could it be gone?
‘The
foxglove is gone, Dhruv! Gone from the nursery.’ He began to weep again and
sobbed, ‘It only needed another day to bloom completely for us to extract the
digoxin…but now…’
Shaji let unabashed tears flow down his
plump cheeks, and blew his nose noisily into a large red wrinkled hanky. For a
brilliant scientist with double doctorate degrees under his belt, Dr. Shaji was
a hyper emotional wreck, even under normal circumstances. And this was a
catastrophe.
Dhruv felt his head reeling and clutched
the edges of his desk with his hands.
‘But it was there this morning…I saw it on
my way in…’ he croaked.
‘That asshole of a security left the flower
unattended and went for lunch. Lunch, can u believe it?’ Shaji’s eyes flashed
with rage.
Dhruv groaned inwardly. His stomach
clenched at the thought of the enormity of losing the only source of salvaging
the situation. Why hadn’t he arranged for more security for that goddamned
flower? But then, this had never happened before. Never in the history of the
institute had they ever lost any specimen of flower, leaf or even a seed from
the premises.
He watched Shaji move his sizeable bulk
over to the chaise lounge. The furniture groaned pitifully as his immense mass
sank into its depths.
‘Finished. We are finished now.’ Shaji blew
his nose again, in-between incessant sobbing. He wiped his eyes with the red
hanky that he’d just blown his nose with.
Dhruv had ceased to feel any disgust towards
Shaji’s mannerisms, ions ago. He was used to Shaji’s dire lack of finesse or
hygiene outside his laboratory, in all the years of working with him.
How had this happened at this crucial time?
Had his competitors gotten wind of the research and stolen the specimen? It was
highly unlikely. They had taken extraordinary care to ensure that no one knew
about the current research his team was working on…but then, could he have a
mole within his own team?
A knock sounded on the door and Joel
entered, looking scared out of his wits, but trying to appear brave. Dhruv had
never seen him so disheveled and downcast since he’d hired him four years ago.
‘It was the stenographer, sir,’ his voice
faltered. ‘I glimpsed her hurrying out of the garden gate and caught up with
her before she left the compound.’
Ridiculous! A mere stenographer had
betrayed his secrets to the enemy? But then, it wasn’t ridiculous at all. In
fact, it was brilliant. No one would have suspected a lowly employee, a woman
at that… It was possible. If only they could get her to spill the beans about
who she was working for…
‘But she had nothing on her, sir. The
female staff has frisked her three times over.’ Joel gained confidence from the
sound of his own voice. ‘She claims to have plucked the flower as an offering
to God, but says she threw it away somewhere near this very place…we looked
everywhere she indicated, sir…our security is still searching the entire
grounds…’
‘We can’t even sue her, Dhruv…’ Shahi cried
in agony, from his perch on the creaking seating. ‘She only plucked a flower.
We can’t let out the secret that the specimen is a storehouse of path-breaking
research and invention...’
‘It was because of those ambulances that I
was too late to stop her from plucking it, sir…’, Joel voice trailed off.
What would they do now?
One foxglove. Just one last foxglove.
‘A girl plucked a flower and hundreds are
going to die…’ Shaji’s prediction of doom echoed around the room in the still
silence.
***
‘Dhruv!’
Asha’s voice pierced into his consciousness. ‘How disgusting! Wake up, Dhruv!’
He groaned and opened his eyelids, only to shut
them again as a shaft of light sent slivers of pain shooting into his pupils
and straight onto his skull.
He
recognized the hangover for what it was and tried to tune out Asha’s voice from
his hazy mind.
‘You didn’t even remove your shoes, Dhruv!’
She moved around the room, drawing the blinds, dusting the bedcovers around him
and tugging the sheets from under his deadbeat form. ‘Couldn’t you have gotten
out of your suit and shoes before tumbling into bed?’
Dhruv pulled himself out of the King sized
cot and sidled over towards the washroom. He was going to be sick again. When
had he finally returned home last night? 1 AM? He couldn’t be sure. He recalled
plopping into bed, in the semi-darkness, next to Asha’s supine form…
He vaguely remembered parking his Audi in
the garage, because the driver had left for home after waiting for him till 11
PM last night. How had he even driven himself home from the institute? It was
only ten minutes away from his bungalow when the traffic was light, but then…what
a miracle he was still alive, given his state of mind, he thought, just before
he threw up violently into the basin.
‘You know how much I hate it, when you do
this on Thursday mornings, Dhruv…’ Asha continued her rant, raising her voice
to make herself heard above the din of his torment. ‘Especially when we have
our weekly SaiBaba puja too…’
Dhruv heaved again, coughing out the
remnants of last night’s distress-binge.
‘You barely notice the trouble I take over
the decorations,’ Asha continued. ‘And what is that bell-like flower I found on
the top of your car, Dhruv? It’s so cute, a perfect yellow too, the maid found
it when she went to sweep the garage this morning and brought it in because it
is so pretty…’ she almost smiled as she turned towards the washroom, only to
face the door, which had been shut firmly on her face. She heard the sound of
running water and realized that Dhruv had long since begun his shower.
Asha sighed and left the bedroom. She
headed to the kitchen and placed some kheer into a silver bowl for the ritual offering.
She entered the puja room and placed the kheer in front of the idol. She smiled
benignly, as she rearranged the soft yellow-orange petals of the bell on Sai
Baba’s head and proceeded to open her prayer books to begin her chants.
*****
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