On the first day of the week, the Sunday, Jatin found a small dent at the back of his skull.

He discovered it while standing in front of the mirror at seven in the morning, a weekly ritual. Jatin was the usual corporate slave, working nine to five during the week, sleeping the whole day on Saturday and waking up early on Sunday, fresh as a freshly-baked pizza, complete with warmth and ready for the dressing.

He stood in front of the mirror, like he had dozens of times in the past, Monday after Monday. There was joy on his face and peace in his heart. His appraisal at the workplace had finally come through. The money would still take a couple of months to show up in his account, but that was okay. He would survive till that time on the money he was making – pay his bills, take Richa out a couple of times (but not too many) and get all the groceries. As long as the bills were paid, he had no problem. Savings would be for another day.

It was at this moment, while the comb was gliding through his freshly washed, smooth hair, came to a stop. So abrupt was it that the comb went flying out of his hands and onto the floor, clattering and coming to a stop under the dresser. He did not bend to pick it up. For the next six days, it would rest there, while he would have a lot of other things to focus his attention on.

He peered closer into the mirror, his sight trained on the edge of his head. Yes, there was a clear dent, like a ding on a car that had been hit on the roadside. Jatin kept feeling it for a while, like an obsessive-compulsive, unable to tear his hand away from the location. There was no pain or discomfort; just a dent where there had been none yesterday. He felt his scalp thoroughly. No abrasions, scratches, or formation of a scab. The dent was possibly in his skull, which now brought on a fresh bout of dread.

What if this was a bout of disability, some form of physical handicap? He stopped himself from going down that road. Fear would make him freeze, preventing him from any logical thought or action. And in a good part of his life, that was the last thing he wanted. He would rather concentrate on the fact that there would be more money coming in soon and his life would be just a little more comfortable.

It was small enough to not be noticed. Suddenly realising he had spent more than enough time in front of the mirror, he quickly got away, starting to get ready for work. Maybe he was spending more time worrying about something that hardly warranted so much attention.

When he got back at night, the dent was surely deeper. The dent made the outer circumference of his head look like two gentle hill slopes, split in between by a valley running through it. Jatin stared into the mirror, unable to comprehend what was going on. Physically, it felt like a part of his skull had melted, like wax and collapsed, ever so slightly. It was like a slightly deflated balloon that hadn’t fully gone bust. There was no pain or discomfort, not yet at least.

That night, Jatin slept fitfully.

The next morning, he made a decision. He would not look at the mirror. If the image of yourself could cause you so much grief and discomfort, then what was the use of it, really? There was nothing wrong with him that he could spot, except the dent of course. No corrective action came to his mind. Perhaps it happened to some people, the one in a billion argument. Perhaps it was just a rare condition that had decided to rear its head on his head. He would put off going to the doctor just yet.

Should he wear a hat? He felt the dent with his fingers. Yep, deeper still. It was starting to run down the back, towards the nape. The skin was loose over the part where the bone structure within seemed to have collapsed. Making a decision was difficult.

He would go with the hat. It was hot outside, and he was a door-to-door salesman. There was not much conversation that was made with his type. People usually bought the thing he sold - a transistor in this case, or just closed the door on his face. Either way, wearing a hat wouldn’t put him in a spot of bother.

And that was how his second day started out.

Jatin went about, as usual, knocking on doors and peddling his goods. It had only been a couple of years that the transistor had come into the market. People still loved the novelty of it, the fact that there was entertainment available, right in your living room. While the rich folk still preferred going out to the shops and buying a more expensive version, the smaller ones that Jatin sold were more economical to the middle-class folk.

As he went about with a single radio set and taking orders (he brought them the new sets a couple of days later after the order had been placed), his thoughts never left the dent on his head. It was as if he could feel it asking for his attention from the back of his head. The conversations with his customers (or would-be customers) seemed hollow, lacking character and content. For most of the time, his pitch came as a practiced monologue, interspersed with questions, haggling about the price of the set and the usual conversations. The loose skin, with no bone support underneath, felt strange.

At night, he lay in bed wondering what was going on. His fingers found the now-familiar dent on the top of his skull, tracing it, down his nape. It was starting to show its effect on his spinal column now. He could feel the dent starting to extend towards his back. It was like a mini valley, being formed by an invisible burrowing river that started at the top of his head. The doctor would have to be consulted tomorrow. And there would definitely be no going to work. He was afraid of flying into a panic in the middle of a conversation. His body felt like it was packed with steam, like a pressure cooker without a whistle, ready to burst at the slightest agitation. He closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to come and rescue him.

The third day found him looking for a doctor in the dirty bylanes of the locality that he often peddled his wares at. One of his customers had suggested a physician, a reliable one of course, who could treat almost anything that was thrown at him. This gave Jatin hope that the strange ailment of his would finally be taken care of. Having feigned sickness at the office (not that he really had to), he was now roaming about, jumping across puddles and potholes, with hopes of treatment finally in his heart.

“This way,” the doctor’s assistant led him into a dark chamber, after making him wait for about thirty minutes. Strangely enough, he was the only patient. Wasn’t such a doctor supposed to have more patients?

“Yes?” the doctor said, without looking up. The chamber was quite cramped, with bare little space for even the doctor to sit comfortably. Everything that had to be of consequence had been stashed in with little regard for aesthetics or convenience. On the right side stood a rickety cupboard, stacked high with bottles of medicines with worn-out labels. The dust on the shelves looked like things hadn’t been moved in a while. On the left was the doctor’s table with a chair stuck on the other side, very close. The other side of the doctor had dusty files, piled from the floor to almost waist height. There were multiple piles. Jatin could not discern a way to sit on the chair the doctor was sitting on, except by climbing atop the table. Behind Jatin lay the examination table, a slightly rusted one with a worn-out cloth on top. In the space between the doctor’s table and the examination bed stood Jatin, thoroughly unsure about if he had made the right decision. A loud banging sound came from upstairs.

“What’s that noise?” Jatin asked. “What’s your problem?” the doctor said, ignoring his question and looking up, bringing him back to the room. “Oh, um,” Jatin began, trying to sit on the precariously balanced stool opposite the doctor. Having seen to the fact that the patient was about to begin his list of travails, the doctor went back to looking at the sheet of paper that was kept in front of him.

“I seem to have a strange problem…,” he began. “Nothing is strange to a doctor like me. Pray, let’s not waste time. Get to the point,” the doctor said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Okay,” Jatin said, having made up his mind. “I have a dent,” he said and waited for the doctor’s reaction.

The doctor stopped reading and looked up towards Jatin, giving him his full attention. His eyes still glued on his face, he slowly folded the paper, dragged a paper and pen, and got ready to take notes. “Go on,” he said, his voice reflecting the concentration on his face. Except Jatin did not know where to begin. What was he supposed to tell the doctor? That there was a dent running down the middle of his head, now till his lower back, like a line of control? Words evaded him, like rain on a scorching summer day.

Intuitively, he reached out for the dent in his skull, a habit that had formed after the problem had come to light. The eyes of the doctor widened immediately. “Is this…this dent that you talk about, growing?” the doctor hazarded. Jatin’s face lit up. Perhaps there was a cure after all. “Yes, yes! It has been growing, every day! It has reached almost the base of my spine!” ventured Jatin, exited.

The doctor’s expression remained somber. “Manish!” he shouted. A well-set man wearing a vest and a dhoti ran in. “Ji doctor saheb?” he said, wiping the sweat with a thin towel perched on his shoulder. “We have a fish,” the doctor said and waited. The man nodded and left immediately. Jatin could hear the sound of locks being locked and bolts being fastened.

The doctor exhaled and braced before delivering the news. This was always the most difficult part. “I am afraid you will have to stay with us for a while,” he announced. “Stay? What does that mean? Do you intend to conduct tests?” Jatin asked, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. The doctor shook his head. “No, no. Not a few hours. I mean a couple of days. Till the process is complete,” the doctor said, looking up towards the door. His assistant, the man in the dhoti, had quietly appeared.

Jatin quickly stood up. There was something seriously wrong here. He wouldn’t wait another minute. “I am leaving. I think I will consult someone else,” he said, standing up and trying to move towards the door. He found his way blocked by the assistant, who, he was starting to realize, was more of a thug. “I don’t think that would be possible,” the doctor said, grimacing.

The next sensation was a sharp pain at the back of his head. At this point, he would remember, later on, he felt that his skull had split into two and was barely being held by the skin over it. Black spots swam in front of his eyes, and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

***

He woke up on day five and couldn’t leave the bed. Jatin realised two things at this point. The first was that an entire day had passed with him being unconscious. He found this out by looking at the calendar nailed right across the bed, where his eyes came to rest as soon as he opened them. The date was the twentieth. A little calculation and he figured out that he had been out for over twenty-four hours.

His body had undergone a change that he could not immediately comprehend. It felt unreal, something that could perhaps happen only in a story, or a nightmare but not (never) in real life. However, as his finger traced the rift which begun at the edge of his skull and went downward, he realised something that scared him beyond words. His entire body felt like it had split down the center. Tears appeared in his eyes as his index finger traced the divide down his temple, crawling down the bridge of his nose, down his throat (the dent had a split), and continued going down. He stopped at the bottom of his chest cavity, his entire being in tatters.

The second realisation was a little more difficult to understand because of the mere absurdity of it. The bed he was on wasn’t his. This was not so strange, in hindsight. As memory returned, images of the final encounter with the doctor played out in his mind. It came to a stop at the point when something hard had hit his head and he had blacked out. The thought brought back a fresh spate of throbbing headache.

“Ah you are up I see. That took a while. Though, in your condition I would not expect anything else,” the doctor said, coming into view. He looked tired. He had the look of someone who had not slept for a while. Jatin realised that the doctor had probably been waiting for him to wake up. He tried to get up, but his body felt weak. The coordination between his left and right sides felt strange and awkward. “Don’t try to get up. It will still take a couple of days before you can move properly again,” the doctor said, patting him on the shoulder, laying him back on the bed.

“What is happening to me?” Jatin asked, spouting the only question that mattered. “It is not something that is common, I can tell you that,” the doctor said. “But if you want to understand what is really going on, I would have to get into some specifics. Do you have any understanding of biology?”

“A bit I think,” Jatin replied. “Well, that will help then. What is happening to you is more prominent among the lowest rung of creatures, namely microorganisms,” said the doctor. “But I am not one,” Jatin blurted, sounding a little foolish to even his own self. “We know that bit. But somehow, once in a while, some strange strain of that early form of life gets active in one’s DNA. Let’s say that all have it, but it kicks up in really few people,” he replied. “Like one in a million?” Jatin ventured.

“More like ten,” the doctor answered. “The process is called mitosis, where an organism starts to split through the center. Once the less essential parts are split into two equal halves, the most important part, the nucleus starts to divide. At the end of the process, we have two absolutely identical, completely functioning organisms who behave the same way. Am I making myself clear?” “But I am not a microorganism,” Jatin croaked.

The doctor closed his eyes and shook his head. “Yes Jatin, we all know that, especially me, since I am a doctor! You must calm down. I understand that this process can come as a shock to you, as is natural. The human body is not conditioned to take this process too well. You might feel heightened hunger or even suffocation, as your pair of lungs slowly morphs into two. But it is all…” “NO!” Jatin screamed trying to get up but collapsed in a heap on the floor. His limbs felt loose, beyond his control. His voice came out garbled. A thin streak of saliva dribbled on his chin.

“I can’t…,” he tried talking, but the words refused to form. The center of his body stretched dangerously. The skin felt saggy like old people. The doctor breathed deeply and signaled someone who was outside the room. The thug came into view. “Trust me, I am doing this for your own good,” the doctor said. The thug got ready to swing a stick that he held. “What happens when the division is complete?” Jatin tried to say, but all that came out were more spit bubbles and drool.

“Rest, Jatin. You need it,” the doctor said. The familiar whack came again and all was dark once more.

***

Day Seven

“Are you looking for an address?”

“Yes. Is there a doctor’s clinic here?”

“What a coincidence! I had just come out for some work. Come, come. My clinic is this way,” the doctor said, leading Jatin towards the consultation room. A man standing outside the door exchanged looks with the doctor but remained impassive towards him. Jatin settled down on the chair in the cramped room. A strange sense of déjà vu assailed his senses. Everything felt familiar. A loud banging sound from upstairs assaulted his senses.

“What is that?” he asked. “Nothing. Just some construction work being carried out on the upper floors. Let’s get down to business shall we?” the doctor smiled. Outside, the sun climbed higher, the rays glancing off closed terrace rooms packed with secrets.