The Giant Rat of Sumatra

I am a great fan of Sherlock Holmes. For me, his stories are not just literary masterpieces but much more - a guide for leading a better life. For me, Holmes personifies the great virtues of man - intelligence, sagacity, leading by example and action, a steadfast sense of duty, chivalry and much more. He is an inspirational role model.

Dr. Watson's accounts of Holmes are a treasure trove of myriad human emotions. The many characteristics of these stories include the fleeting mention of those cases that Holmes solved but the good doctor didn't have the time or energy to pen down. Dr. Watson usually mentions them at the beginning of his stories to show the context of the times in which Holmes solved the case to be detailed in the story. Most of them have pretty bizarre descriptions. From the 'abominable story of the leech' to the 'amateur mendicant society' to the 'man who wound up his dinner by throwing his false teeth at his wife' to 'the man who stepped inside the house to get his umbrella and was never seen again in this world', these stories have always evoked an amused smile in my face.

But again, you may laugh and point out that all of them are figments of the imagination and it doesn't behoove a sane person to take them seriously.

But are they always in the realm of fantasy?

One such intriguing snippet is mentioned in 'The Sussex Vampire'. In the initial conversation with Watson, Holmes mentions about Mathilda Briggs which is a ship associated with the 'giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared'. No further detail is given. There is no evidence of these rats in the subsequent story. It was almost as if Dr. Watson used to conjure them up to enhance the dry humor of his writing.

However, I read something very very interesting last month about the rats.

On a chilly Dec morning, the 18th in the year 2007 to be precise, I opened bbcnews, as is my daily routine and was stunned to see the following news item,

A giant rodent five times the size of a common rat has been discovered in the mountainous jungles of New Guinea.

The 1.4kg Mallomys giant rat is one of two species of mammal thought to be new to science documented on an expedition to an area described as a "lost world".

(Complete story at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/g2/hi/science/nature/7149569.stm)

Fact and fiction are entwined in strange ways. New Guinea is very close to Sumatra, both of them being in South East Asia Pacific. What an astounding coincidence! The imagination, allowed to run free, offered other alternatives. The rats might have moved from New Guinea to Sumatra, or they might have existed in both places. Or there was another explanation. Often Dr. Watson deliberately altered the true facts of a case to preserve the anonymity of the people involved. The case of Matilda Briggs could have taken place in New Guinea but Dr. Watson had changed the name to the nearby island of Sumatra and still left a subtle hint as to the geographical location. There were so many possibilities and interesting speculations...

Of course, at the end of the day, I am a sane person and can distinguish between fact and fiction. Nonetheless it gave me an overwhelming sense of thrill and happiness to read the article and imagine that Holmes had figured out the existence of these singular creatures long before modern scientists with all their modern gadgets could.

Tarapodo

During my undergrad years at IIT Kharagpur, we used to look forward to Friday evenings when movies would be screened at the Netaji Auditorium. There, apart from the cinematic experience, we reveled in other entertaining frivolities, some of which had almost attained the status of tradition over the years, like needlessly trying to squeeze ourselves en-masse through the iron gates, engaging in friendly inter-hostel banter and so on.

One of these was a particularly interesting one. The auditorium lights were turned on as we entered and as you might expect, should have been turned off just before the start of the movie. But on almost all screenings, spanning over a period of five years that I was in KGP, the lights were kept on for a good 20-25 seconds after the movie had started. Not an awfully long time - you might say, but the consistency was striking. We used to shout 'Lights Off' to our hearts content. Sometimes the yell 'Tarapodo, lights' was added to this. Legend was it that Tarapodo was the person who sat in the control room and managed the lights, projector and screening.

Our clamor wasn't out of impatience or malice. It was jovial boisterousness. Our combined shouts would often be terminated by peels of laughter ringing across the auditorium. We didn't miss any opportunity of shouting about Tarapodo at the beginning of each movie. If during the show, the picture dimmed or the screen blanked out, his name would be clamored in a similar way. However I didn't know of anyone who had actually seen Tarapodo in person! Like many of my friends, I had the sneaking suspicion that in reality no such person existed. Still the mythical Tarapodo was one of the many quaint customs that formed a part of our daily life at KGP and we were happy with it.

As the years flew past, I graduated from KGP and left India for US in pursuit of graduate studies. Life was in a fast changing lane and new aspects of existence came forth like towering waves, sweeping past many of the old ones. Caught in this tide of time, the memories of Tarapodo faded into oblivion.

However it was not all over yet. Last summer after a gap of almost four years I heard his name again but rather unexpectedly and tragically. One morning, I received an email in one of the many KGP related yahoogroups that contribute to my email traffic. The sender was a friend of mine whose father was a professor at IIT and who had been born and brought up in the KGP campus. He said that last week, a IIT technician called Tarapodo had passed away from old age and ailment. The email eulogized over his long, valuable but underrated services to the institute which, according to the writer, included movie screening responsibilities. It ended with the usual conclusion that his demise was a huge loss to IIT Kharagpur.

The email had a profound effect on me. Suddenly I was faced with the prospect that there could be a real person behind the name that we used to routinely utter. It was so weird now to hear about him in a different context. Did Tarapodo really exist? What was he like? A frail, old, unkempt but animated Bengali babu? Did he really use to sit in a small dark room and listen to our shouts? Did he feel bad that we seemed to take his name with irreverence? Or did he actually enjoy playing with us and deliberately delayed putting off the lights? Maybe... maybe not.

I wasn't grieving. I hadn't known the deceased Tarapodo personally for such an emotion to be evoked. But I was rather contemplative with a touch of melancholy. I knew not why. Maybe while going forward in life, I had missed seeing things that were taking place underneath the surface.

As I signed off my email, I wondered if another Friday evening would come when I would find myself transported back to Netaji Auditorium. Maybe a new technician had been hired there since the death of the person mentioned in the email. Maybe keeping up with modern times, the screening process had been automated. Would I then see the lights turn on and off without any glitches? Seemed like a lot less fun to me...