"The Dream"(Rex Raman Rajkumar) I wanted to believe that it was all a dream, another nightmare, yet it was so hard for me to deny it. It was still vivid in my mind, that a few minutes back I had grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and yet again I was so confused in the dilemma that I couldn’t judge where I was really standing. It was the fight of me versus the whole world, a challenge between me and the rest of them. I tried holding back, not to shed any tear, simply because I didn’t want them to get the idea of me being a weakling. What was really true to me was that I had full faith in my instincts and that I would bring everything back to normal. Eventually, as the light fell over me, it all became clear.

“Have you read the book ‘Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ Mr. Tim?” the Doctor, examining my dad, asked me. I nodded, trying to give him the impression that I hadn’t, yet I seemed to know where he was going. “No”, it was a simple and tiny answer. “He was born as an old child, and he died as a baby. Your father’s case is somewhat similar.” The doctor reciprocated.

He waited for a reaction, but when he got nothing from me, he continued. This time his emotion was clearly visible and I couldn’t stop from looking away. I looked through the glass into the care room where my dad was resting, the room where my dad had spent almost a month. When I returned my senses back to the office, he was already giving up with his years of practice and said that he could do nothing at all.

“I believe it’s time for you to pay back your dad. Every memory, every little thing, has been erased from your dad’s brain. He is new just as a new-born child. He has to start all over again, and I am sorry, but this is the only way to get him going…. Maybe it will take another decade to be where he was when thirty years old, but you have to try and give him a chance. We are really sorry, we tried everything. All we can say for the moment is that we will keep looking into the case. Hopefully we can come to a conclusion once the genetic department sends us the results. Until then the only thing I can ask for is a miracle.”

I swore that I wouldn’t shed a tear and I didn’t at all, but who would have known how hurt I was when the doctor said ‘all I can ask for is a miracle’? I was aware that my dad had lost all of his memories and I wanted the doctors to do the miracle. What could I have said back? Everything was starting to fade away. I barely smiled at the doctor, left the seat and dragged my legs to dad’s care room. I wanted to cry, but all I could shed was a dry tear. I guess I had been crying a lot since that morning when my dad woke up and was acting weird; childishly weird, when he couldn’t even utter a single word properly; all he could utter was a child’s blabbering.

My mom laid her head over dad’s hand, with both her hands tightly holding his arm, profusely trying to connect with the feelings and saying that she would never leave him alone. “Mom, let me drive you home. You need to take some rest.” I asked.

She didn’t reply back, I had known she wouldn’t and so I didn’t push harder. “Maybe I can get you something to eat or drink?” She didn’t reply back to that either.

“Mom?” As I went closer, I could hear her sobbing. How was I supposed to take care of two grown up children? I realized the same thought must have occurred to mom after I was born, their third son. But she took care and raised me very well and that too without a clinch. Now it was my turn to pay them back, to take care of my two grown up children.

I bent down over my mom, hugged her tightly and promised her, “Mom, everything is going to be all right. You trust your son, don’t you? Everything is going to be all right.” Maybe I wasn’t completely honest, for I didn’t know if everything was going to be back to the normal again, but I knew I was going to try harder.

A few days had passed with no change, neither from the doctors nor dad. I kept insisting to my mom that we should inform them, my brothers, but every time she would stop me, saying, "I have never needed them”. I knew how hard it would have been for mom, giving up the dreams of being with her sons, and ever since both of them left the house she had stopped speaking their names. Guess it was her tactic to numb her feelings for them, deep inside her heart.

Relatives kept pouring in, friends, acquaintances, giving us hope that everything would be back to normal again. But my dad had not even the slightest idea what was going on around him, he simply stared at them as if he was seeing them for the first time. Either me or mom had to ask him to say, ‘hi’… he was a child trapped in my dad’s body.

Later, I was again inside the doctor’s office. They said they had something to tell me, good news apparently. I wanted to be optimistic, but let’s face it; a few days back they had said that nothing could be done and I was no longer sure whether to trust instinct. “Mr.Tim, we have got the result from the genetics department.”

“And?”

“And we believe we have something.”

“Is he going to be all right?” It slipped out of my mouth. I believed, even if I was not being optimistic, I secretly prayed that everything would be back to normal again.

“I can’t say it for sure, but he can be back to normal again, say, in years, or months, or days, depending on how you choose to work out with him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know what I should call it, but something appropriate would be Genetically Modified.”

“GMO?” I was transfixed, hard to believe what I had just heard. ‘GMO?’ I heard myself saying it again.

“Yes, GMO. The human genes primarily consist of four bases, adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine. But your dad's genes consist of another base called Animine (acting as anti-thymine). Eventually, it acts as a key lock system to thymine restricting the full chemical bondage with adenine. Proteins, memory cells, are in the phases of alteration….”

Perhaps it was good news, but explaining the composition of genes was not helping me. All I wanted to hear was what could they do to help my dad, and so I had to interrupt him.

“Doc, what can you do?”

“We can try to extract the base, before it replicates in hundreds.” He paused for a moment and continued almost immediately, “Yes, by any chance has your dad undergone an operation in the recent months?”

“Three months back.” I replied curiously.

“As I feared, your dad had been injected with this base. Animine is being developed in the laboratory to study the characteristics of organism transition, once injected inside.”

“What?” I literally threw the words out of my mouth and mind. And all the while I was thinking that the former institute was so concerned for their patient, calling up every weekend asking if there was any change, and I so dumbly replying to their every question. Now it all made sense, when they asked if there was any change in his behavior, talk, and recognition of things. Why had I never seen that?

“Tim?” the doctor snapped, bringing me back to his office again. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.” But it was visible through my semi exposed emotions that I had been up to something, and it was steering clear. How do I get back at them? How do I sue them? I was trembling and it was hard to keep it down. But then something inside me asked me to cool down, something for the concern of my dad. “Would another surgery help?” I asked finally.

“Tim, that’s why I asked you to meet me. Extracting and clipping a base from the gene is a complicated process. We have to replicate the portion, work on it formally before we work it on your dad. Replication wouldn’t take long but we don’t know for sure if the surgery would be the best shot. If the surgery is a success, then it will be like a black-out, everything between the period of those three months will have never happened. But a small complication may lead us in a completely different direction.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Another option is to try suppressing the effect of Animine…” He continued,
“And then your responsibility of being a son starts. He has to start all over again, starting from learning the alphabet. The suppression would work slowly the first time, adapting to the environment, and so his learning will be slow. But once it adapts, the effect of Animine will be almost nullified, speeding up the process of his learning. And he can be back to normal in five or six years. But there’s one thing, he will not at all remember the past. Neither will he remember you nor your mom. You have to make sure that he accepts his environment, and that he belongs there. You have the options in your hand. Think over it, but you have to remember there’s not much time. Once the portion gets replicated, we can do nothing.”

Good news perhaps. Laughing or crying was no more an option. The only option I had was to choose between the loss of my dad or the other way of losing my dad. Either way, the darkest possibility existed. Was I ready to live with my dad, who has no memory of having me as his son? Or was I ready to experience a new person in my dad?

I saw my mom far into the hallway, her smile had left her and she looked gloomy. The only way that I could give her smile back was to give her my dad. If I had chosen the less complicated way, I would be stealing her smile for the rest of her life. And I knew when she would stop smiling; my world would come to an end. I wanted to pay back my dad for everything he did, but not the way in which he wouldn’t even acknowledge me. I wanted dad to be proud of me when I pay him back. I wanted my dad to walk with his head held high when I did something for him. The only thing that could give me company was a miracle, and that decision was the miracle that I had taken.

I didn't realize I had fallen asleep. My eyes were still sore when I woke up the next morning. As I warily opened up my eyes, my nephew was sweetly looking at me. "Hey, come here." And he jumped up in my bed, and stared at me again. I knew what he was asking for, "There at the desk is your chocolate. But share it with your sisters." I gave him a kiss and sent him away. As he grabbed the chocolate and walked away, he stood up the bottle that was lying on the table, the bottle that seemed to be familiar to me. A moment later, my dad came in, "You look tired. Didn't you get a good sleep?"

I smiled, replied "Nothing", got up and hugged him tightly. It felt really nice and right, finally to be in the arms of my dad. Far in the lawn, I saw my mom playing with her grandchildren, sis-in-laws preparing the breakfast, my brothers reading newspapers. It was a wet tear that came down that very moment. Indeed a Miracle.

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