SANKAR CHATTERJEE - SHORT-STORIES

Sankar Chatterjee possesses the passion for traveling worldwide to immerse in new cultures and customs to discover the forgotten history of the societies while attempting to find the common thread that connects the humanity as a whole for its continuity.  His most recent essays appeared in Foliate Oak, Wilderness House Literary Review, Door is a Jar, Subtle Fiction, The Write Launch, and Friday Flash Fiction among many others elsewhere.

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HOPE ON AN AUTUMN DAY
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​On a recent gorgeous autumn day, Mark from US was visiting the Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, site of Israel’s national cemetery of Jewish faith.  The trees shadowing the graves of past heroes were in full bloom displaying rainbow of colors.  A gentle breeze was blowing to add to the serenity of the place.  During the tour, Mark noticed several groups of young men and women in uniform spread out throughout the complex.  Carrying their weapons on their shoulders, they were listening to their leaders at various memorial sites.  Mark learned that they were recent high school graduates who just joined the armed forces under the country’s mandatory draft system.  They were brought in there to pay respect to the past heroes as well as to motivate them for their future sacrifices, if needed.  After a few hours of visiting notable graves, Mark went to the place’s café to get a bottle of water.  While in line, he observed that a recent female graduate in uniform and in front of him was struggling to untangle her pink side pocketbook that got wrapped around her carry on machine-gun.  He also noticed that the color of her pocketbook not only matched her thinly applied pink lipstick, but also to a pink gemstone attached to a gold ring she was wearing on one of her fingers.  “What a unique coexistence of disparate objects on a human is!” wondered Mark, while the moment lingered on his mind.
Mark paid for the water bottle and grabbed a seat at a corner table.  Earlier, he had seen a sign on the entrance door about free Wi-Fi inside the café.  He took out his smart-phone to check out online e-messages.  And that’s when he came across to a “Breaking News” on a network’s site.  His own country, without any consultation with UN, the international organization or any other friendly country, declared unilaterally the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (even though, the embassies of all countries reside in the port city of Tel Aviv).  Jerusalem itself exists in the middle of a regional political volcano, being claimed by both faiths of Judaism and Islam.  For last seventy years, the UN has been attempting to create two neighboring nations with the city being shared by both countries due to its historic religious importance to both faiths.  But no success has been achieved yet.  Now the political commentators were forecasting about renewed violent protests in the region shattering last few years’ dormant peace.          
However, Mark was already beginning to feel more optimistic about the future of this region.  It had been true that since Israel’s creation, this entire region has been mired in religious and political conflicts.  But he was already living in that fleeting moment he had just experienced: a peaceful co-existence of a lethal machine-gun, a pink pocketbook and a matching pink gem-stone on a gold ring.  “May be the lasting peace will come to this region with peaceful coexistence of its citizens from various religious faiths, after all,” he murmured. 

HUMANITY CONTINUUM
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In the soft pink glow of the setting sun, Prof. Robert Max, a renowned researcher in the field of finding a cure for the debilitating effect of stroke on vulnerable patients, was lost in thought. He wondered “How did our country, until now most advanced on earth in science-based innovations, come to this point of ignorant ideology-based society, while drifting away from science?” He and his fellow scientists have been trying for last few score years to fully understand the effect of cascading biological events that take place once a stroke occur.  Only recently evidence-based research shed the light on the effect of diversity in genetic make-ups of patients on the outcome of the survival.  In addition, the difference in visual symptoms of an occurring stroke on a male, female, or a transgender person also came to light.  Then, the case of his fellow colleague, Prof. Boyd Smith, a pioneer on research on stem-cell, collected from aborted fetus.  Already, the stem-cell therapy has been finding its usefulness in various hard-to-treat indications.
 
But, an unforeseen humiliation had been directed towards them previous week. Both of them had appeared before the Senate Research Appropriation Committee to request for more funding.  As they were presenting their scientific findings, they sensed the members of the major political party in that committee were getting agitated hearing some of the scientific terms they were using.  Finally, the Chairman, denying their request, blurted out “You two appear like “welfare-queens in lab-coats” asking for your entitlement money.”  What an insult, it was!
 
Before heading home for the evening, Prof. Max checked his e-mail inbox for any new incoming messages.  One of the messages stood out.  He learned that the current administration in the capital had issued a secret directive to the officials at the Center for Disease Control, the nation’s highest health authority, prohibiting them from using seven words in their official documents.  They were evidence-based, science-based, vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, and fetus (words anathema to the ideology of the current political administration).   Both Prof. Smith’s and his scientific presentations were adorned with those seven words in order to explain their scientific advancements to date and request for additional grants for future research.  And now, Prof. Max understood the reason behind their humiliation. 
 
Then, he suddenly remembered the words of his guru in India from his hippie days in late 70’s.  “Remember, we are all actors on this world stage.  At the end, only noble souls win; otherwise current humanity would never have existed.”