Anamika Written by: Amrevis

Her eyelids fluttered open. In the eerie glow drawing close to her neck she recognized the contours of a knife. She knew that in a moment her throat might be slit. There was no time to think. A basic instinct to survive took over.

Her right hand shot upwards taking the hand wielding the knife in a firm grip. She noticed the quick look of surprise in his eyes. She pushed him.

As he fell backwards, her leg connected with his lower abdomen, sending him tumbling over the table lying few feet away. He crashed to the ground and the table overturned with him, the things lying on it falling with an angry resonance.

As she jumped off the bed, myriad plastic tubes connected through needles to her arms, legs, shoulders and chest got wrenched off leaving in their wake, a piercing pain and streams of thick red blood. The pain made her scream, her voice sounded strange to her ears, not her voice at all. There were two other men in the room, they were shouting at her.

'They are the hunters, I am the hunted,' she thought, as adrenalin raced through her body.

Her right leg described a wide ark and caught one man on his nose. 'She broke my nose,' he cried as he fell.

Without losing a moment she turned on his companion, who was trying to grab her neck. She caught his hand and through his own momentum chucked him forward; banging his head against the steel cupboard and at the same time she gave his hand a sharp twist, breaking the bone. Clutching his broken arm, the man fell down. She placed her foot on his broken arm. He let out a wail of pain.

'Why are you trying to kill me?' she hissed, increasing the pressure from her leg onto his broken arm.

'We are here to save your life,' he gasped, as he futilely attempted to extricate his broken arm. 'You are bleeding all over. You will be dead in a minute.'

She noticed the bandages on her body and the blood pouring from different spots. The bleeding was bad, she understood that. 'Who did this to me? Where am I?' she said.

'You are at a hospital in Lakhswadeep Island.'

Lakhswadeep! Her head turned. 'What am I doing at Lakhswadeep?' she thought. 'Who are these people? Why were they trying to kill me? This room looks like a sort of laboratory. Am I the victim of a sadistic experiment?' Even as her mind reeled under a confusing array of questions, a man in white cloak crept into the room.

She was just a moment late in discerning his presence. But a moment is a lot of time, lot of time to die. The man had already plunged into her back. Her muscles turned limp and her mind started going blank. She knew that she was dying.

*

'Thank God you arrived, Dr. Bhatnagar. Anamika almost killed us,' cried the one whose arm she had broken.

'I have given her a sedative. She will be unconscious for at least an hour,' said Dr. Bhatnagar.

The other two, who had borne the burnt of her fury, rose gingerly. 'She shattered my nose,' the first said.

'She is a fighting machine. Almost disemboweled me with one kick,' said the second, rubbing his stomach.

Ignoring the plight of his assistants, Dr. Bhatnagar said urgently, 'She is bleeding to death; get her on the table quickly.'

Anamika was placed on the table. Dr. Bhatnagar applied pressure bandages to staunch the flow of blood. The needles that got wrenched off when she flew out of the bed were restored and plasma, nutrients and medication were again flowing into her body.

An hour passed before she regained consciousness. Through the corner of her eye she saw a man sitting on a chair. She vaguely remembered that a while ago she had fought few men who were trying to kill her. Was this man, sitting casually on a chair a threat or was he harmless? She tried to move her limbs but could not.

 'I have put restraints on your hands and legs,' said Dr. Bhatnagar, rising from the chair and coming beside her.

'Why?'

'To protect my clinic staff and myself, an hour ago you tried to kill us.'

'What is this place?'

'A clinic! I am Dr. Bhatnagar, in charge of this clinic. You were in bad shape when you were brought here, shot once in the neck and a couple of times in your chest. But now you are out of danger.'

This was monumentally surprising. She had no recollection of being shot. 'Who shot me?' her voice was a hushed sort of whisper.

'Some fishermen found you in the ocean, unconscious. Somehow you were clinging to a rubber tube. They brought you to my clinic. For past one week I have labored to save your life. I think you are out of danger, although it will be another month before you recover fully.'

The door opened and a man walked in. He had bandages around his head and on his hand.

'He is my assistant Rakesh Murlidharan. You cracked his skull,' said Dr. Bhatnagar.

'I thought he was trying to slit my throat.'

'I was using the scalpel to slice off the old bandages around your neck,' Rakesh said.

Two other men followed Rakesh into the room, one with his arm in a sling, and the other had his nose bandaged. 'My colleagues, Ashok Raina and Nandu Tiwari,' Rakesh introduced them to her.

'So Anamika is conscious,' Ashok said.

'Who is Anamika?' she asked.

'You are,' said Rakesh.

'We didn't know your name, so I decided to call you Anamika. Anamika is a hindi word that roughly means a beautiful woman whose identity is a secret' explained Dr. Bhatnagar. 'Now you can let us know your real name.'

Her name was on the tip of her tongue, but as she opened her mouth to speak, the realization quickly dawned that she could not recollect her own name. She tried desperately, but to no avail. She had no memories. Her mind ran cold.

'I guess you can't remember,' said Dr. Bhatnagar.

She nodded quietly. 

'Loss of memory can be the result of gunshot wounds you suffered. Don't exert your mind any further. I think in few days your memory will return gradually.'

'Till that happens I have to remain Anamika,' said she.

'Unless you want to be called something else,' Dr. Bhatnagar offered.

Managing a wry smile, she said, 'Anamika is fine for the time being. Can I have the restraints removed from my hands and legs?'

'Only if you promise that you won't kill us.'

'Four of you can easily tackle me,' she blurted.

'Believe me, four of us are no match for you.'

She thought that the doctor was joking. Intending to humor him, she said, 'ok, I won't hurt anyone.'

Dr. Bhatnagar had her restraints removed.

*

Every corner of the island was resplendent with the melodious ringing of the waves as they crashed against the breakers lining the beaches. The breeze carrying a tangy smell of the sea and the coming and goings of large flocks of sea birds was in itself a celebration of nature in its most sublime.

The island's solitary brick and mortar structure, the clinic, was a one storey, three-room affair, built on a rocky outcrop fifty feet high, rising vertically from the sea. A colony of about 100 tribal fishermen lived in a small fishing village, tucked away in one corner of the island. Their primitive huts, their boats carved out of thick tree trunks, their uncanny primitive way of life was an ideal depiction of a society so secure in its primitiveness that it has no use of modernity.

Another week passed. The nom de guerre had attached itself to her identity perfectly. Everyone on the island knew her as Anamika. The bullet wounds in her neck and chest had still not healed fully and she was racked with pain, especially when she was moving around. But even more unbearable was the sheer ennui of being confined the bed, and she often opted to sit in the hall, where she interacted with other patients, island's tribals all of them.

The tribals had their own language, which at first she didn't understand, but within few hours she picked up sufficient repertoire of tribal words for conversing. The staffers at the clinic were much surprised by the speed at which she mastered the new language.

Her worst enemy and the best friend in the island was invariably the mirror. Much of her day would be spent in front of mirror looking at the reflection of a woman young, beautiful with clear skin and sharp features, flowing black tresses like a halo around her head. She would shout at the reflection. Who are you? Why can't I recognize my own face? She would rack her brain till her head ached, but that changed nothing. Every time she gazed into the mirror she met a stranger, a stranger whom she could only refer by the bizarre name, Anamika.

Somewhere beyond the sea was her world, where lived her loved ones. But the same world harbored her enemies as well, ones who shot her and dumped her in the ocean to die. Who were they? Who hated her enough to kill her? She desperately wanted to fathom the identity of her friends and enemies, but the truth remained lost in the labyrinths of her own mind.  

In the evenings she would venture out of the clinic to the beach, watching the fishermen return to the island with their boats loaded with the days catch. She would wait for them with anticipation, hoping that they would come with someone who could shed light on her identity.

*

It was an evening and the crimson globe of the sun was descending gradually into the sea. The horizon was lined with small fishing boats carving their way to the beach through a maze of meandering waves. Anamika stood next to a groove of palm trees looking nostalgically at the sea. She heard footsteps and turned to see Dr. Bhatnagar walking towards her.

'It is impossible to creep up to you,' Dr. Bhatnagar said.

'Why would you want to creep up on me,' she said dryly.

'I am alluding to your excellent reflexes.'

'We have talked about my reflexes many times.'

'Let's talk about your miraculous recovery then.'

'There is nothing miraculous about being shot multiple times and being left for dead in a stray vessel.'

'But you survived. Isn't that miraculous?'

'I don't even know who I am.'

'There is something I want to show you.'

Inside his office in the clinic Dr. Bhatnagar opened his drawer and brought out a gun. 'Do you know what this is?' he said.

'Of course,' she said, taking the gun from him, 'Mauser 453, German make, heavy caliber bullets, good for short range, but bullets tend to veer slightly off the trajectory if fired at targets more than 100 meters away.'

'Can you dismantle this gun?'

For a fleeting moment there was the blank look her face. But she quickly realized that dismantling a gun came to her naturally. Within seconds the many sections of the gun were lying on the table.

'Put it back again,' said Dr. Bhatnagar.

She accomplished fusion of the various pieces with the same mechanical perfection.

When the gun was reassembled, Dr. Bhatnagar said, 'not many people would know how to dismantle and reassemble a gun.'

'How do I know all this?' said she, astonished at her own feat.

'That day when you gained consciousness suddenly, you fought like a professional.'

'What kind of professional?'

'Someone who is trained to fight and to…' Dr. Bhatnagar let the sentence linger in the air.

'And to?' she looked at him suspiciously.

'And to kill.'

'Nonsense, I am not a killer,' she exclaimed.

'I am not saying you are a killer. I am only saying you are trained to be one. For that matter you could be a cop or an army officer.'

Cop or army officer! She knew what those jobs were, but she could not remember ever being one.

'Let's go out,' said Dr. Bhatnagar. 'I want to see you shoot.'

The lawn outside the clinic was brightly lit with two halogen lamps. A tree stump stood on one end of the lawn. Dr. Bhatnagar asked Anamika to shoot at it from the other end. She fired three shots in rapid succession. Every shot struck bull's eye. Probably alerted by the sound of gunfire, a flock of birds rose into the air from a nearby thicket. Anamika raised the gun towards the sky and fired twice, both bullets found their mark and two birds plopped down on the ground.

'You are an excellent marksman,' Dr. Bhatnagar said, 'I have never seen anyone shoot like this.'

'Where did I learn to shoot?'

'Cops, army officers or even amateur enthusiasts get trained in shooting.'

'Criminals get trained too,' there was quiver of fear in her voice.

'I won't believe for a moment that someone like you can be a criminal.'

'Why? Why can't I be a criminal?' she threw the question as a challenge.

'Well…' Dr. Bhatnagar faltered for a moment or two and then continued, 'you seem like an honest person to me.'

'Maybe I am a cop or an army officer,' she said nostalgically. 

'In two days a boat is leaving for Cochin. With that boat I am sending your photographs and details about how fishermen found you at sea and brought you to the island. I am sure someone will recognize your photographs and send us a message.'

'What if the photograph reaches those who conspired to kill me? They could come here to make a second attempt on my life?'

'I am optimistic…'Dr. Bhatnagar mumbled.

'Thanks for your optimism doctor. But my photographs are not going in that boat.'

'But we have to do something.'

'I will go in that boat.'

Throwing up his hands in frustration Dr. Bhatnagar said, 'there is no way you can leave in two days. You still need medical care…'

'I am recovered enough for what I have to do.'

'Do what?'

'Find the people who tried to kill me. Get even with them,' snapped Anamika, and leaving the dumbfounded doctor behind, she marched off towards the sea.

*

Two days later she boarded a steamer bound for Cochin. She stood at the steamer's railing and waved at Dr. Bhatnagar, the other staffers of the clinic and the tribals who had come to the jetty to see her off. The steamer waded into the wide expanse of the ocean, and the figures on the jetty turned smaller and smaller. In few minutes the jetty disappeared from view and she sat down on an armchair laid out on the steamer's deck. From her pocket she took out a small visiting card that had spots of blood on it. It was her blood. Dr. Bhatnagar had told her that he found the card in her pocket. Whoever tried to kill her did an excellent job of removing every means of identification from of her but somehow one item remained behind, the card bearing the name and address of a Hotel Fiona in Cochin. 'Hotel Fiona,' she murmured to herself, 'I hope someone recognizes me there.'

Continue to Part Two

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