The horror story of Narenstein

(With apologies to Mary Shelley, author of the famed classic, ‘Frankenstein’)

This is a dark tale of how a scientist called Dr Narenstein Moody experimented with an inanimate mass and inauspiciously gave life to it in a laboratory called Gujarat.The monster of his creation now threatens to stalk the land.

Read well this monstrous tale, O reader, shudder at the dark prospect of this dire creation visiting you and think well of how we may learn to confront the monster that now rages in our midst, threatening to destroy this country and all who live in it. The tragic story is related in the first person by Dr Narenstein himself...

One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself as a pracharak; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless day? I seem to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. I had returned to my old habits. I collected bones from charnel-houses; and disturbed with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame and psychology.

In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from the eyes of the world, I kept my workshop of filthy creation: my eye-balls were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment, designed to spread hatred throughout my state. The dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.

I could not turn my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. Spring, summer and the monsoon passed away during my labours.

Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree. Only the knowledge that this creature, whom I hoped my labours would give birth to, will help us most certainly in reaping great electoral benefits in this state and, indeed, the country, kept me going. The energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my labours would soon end...

IT was a dreary night that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I may infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.

It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull saffron eye of this creature, designed to create hatred between communities and mayhem on a gigantic scale, trained to hurl gas canisters and bulbs of petrol, wield knives, rods, chains, kill, maim, rape, loot and even pluck the bud of life from the infant. It breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form?

Oh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that creature, this giant of genocide, whose limbs were ready to tear apart anything that deigns to come in its way.

O horror, that I have unleashed such wanton mischief upon the world! O magnificence, that I have conquered the vagaries of history and tempered it like steel to achieve my cause!

The story, as you may have discerned dear reader, is incomplete. It is we who must write its ending.

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