Malgudi
Present
The black innova raced through malgudi. It was still early in the morning so they faced no traffic jams. Achyut stopped the car in front of a house whose nameplate read.
"Bharat Mehra Commissioner of Police" Shrey read out the nameplate loud. The lack of sleep was now taking a toll on him. "My father" Achyut said "don't worry you won't need to meet him the things we are dealing with are not regular police work." Each sentence Achyut said increased Shrey's fears by a quantum; he preferred to silently follow him up the staircase into a cool yet well lit room, filled with bookshelves.
"Tea or coffee" Achyut asked as they entered the room.
"No thanks" Shrey simply declined "how could he possibly think about such formalities when vampires were at large.
"Looks like I have scared you. Don't worry you will be safe and so will be Salil. I would have let Mr. Chauhan tell you the story but we need to hurry things up and also it wont be fair not to tell you what is going on ,so until the others come let me brief you about what is going on over here.First of all any questions?" Achyut beamed.
Shrey somehow managed to find his voice. "You said you are better equipped to fight those things by birth. What did you exactly mean?"
"I meant that due to some reasons that I might not be able to explain to you fully I was given certain powers at the time of my birth that makes me able to fight vampires."
"and what exactly are vampires?"
"I will come to that and that's the main story. But before that anything else that you might like to ask?"
"you said there are others so how many of you are there ?"
"we have a concentration of 5ppm among the humans. Yes that means 5 for our malgudi of 1 million. You will meet all of us soon.Say in about an hour or so. So shall I start about vampires?" He got up.
Shrey could not think of anything else to say so he mumbled
"yes sure."
Achyut went towards a bookshelf picking what looked like a story book and taking it to Shrey.
"Do you know this."
"Shrey had a brief look at the cover and said "yes it's a book of children's stories."
"And this also is the earliest written account of vampires in the world. Yes vampires existed much before Count Vlad Tepes III of Romania decided to go immortal."
"Who is Vlad Tepes III? "
"He is popularly known by many other names Vlad the impaler, Vald Drukul and most popular of them all, Dracula. But he's not in this book. This book is much darker, this is about a person who was forced to be a vampire. "
"What?" Shrey sounded as if Achyut was questioning his intelligence. You mean the stories of Vikram and Betal are about vampires.
"Not stories THE STORY , the story that binds them all" Achyut calmed him down and felt himself trying not to remember that fateful day in the December of 2001 when he had first heard that story from Chauhan himself.
***
Malgudi
Eight and a half years ago
"What?"
"I said there is a vampire at large my dear." The bearded man said.
"Who are you and what are you saying? And how do you know me." He had been so outraged by the statement that he had even forgotten where he was.
The man smiled , " You will laugh if you hear my name , for when my parents were naming me they didn't know that somewhere near my 30th birthday a Hindi film shall be released that will make my name a standing joke , and it is my duty to answer this question of yours as well tell you about yourself and about vampires. And I am afraid I cant tell you about yourself until Rhea here wakes up which I believe should take another hour or so I must start with vampires. And yes my name as I said it's a quiet funny one these days , I was named by my parents as Vijay Dianath Chauhan."
There was something in Chauhan's eyes, like prof singh's voice that made Achyut smile even at that time.
"Mr. Chauhan" he began, "you were saying something about vampires"
"ah yes , and as all of the people present in this room are in one way or the other involved in this mess so I better tell all of you. Tell me how many of you have heard about the Vetal pachchisi."
"You mean the stories of vikram and betal" prof singh said.
"No! Raman I mean the story of vetal pachchisi"
"All I know is that a king carries a ghost upon his back who tells him a story and asks a question and then runs away when the king answers as the ghost has the king under the vow of silence."
"Too much reading of Chandamama." Chauhan said and began
"The actual story goes like this .."
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