The Philosopher's Stone

Pareshbabu had found a philosopher’s stone. When he got it, where, how and whether there are others like that…why do you need to know all that? Just listen to the story I’m telling you.

Pareshbabu was a middle aged, middle class man. He lived in his ancestral home and practiced law. His earnings were not much but enough to sustain him. One day, while coming home from his office he found a stone on the roadside. He did not know what it was. It looked different from all the other pebbles and he put it in his pocket. He noticed that the keys had turned yellow when he took them out of his pocket to open the front door. He was baffled by how it could have happened. It was steel, how did it become brass? Perhaps he had lost it earlier and his wife made a new one out of brass and he had not noticed it before.

Pareshbabu entered his room and poured everything out of his pocket, execpt his wallet, on the table. Then he went upstairs and forgot about the keys. After some rest and snacks, he came downstairs to look over some papers of the litigations. As he turned on the light, the first thing he noticed was the stone. It was nicely rounded and shiny. He made the decision to give it to his young son the next day. He could play marbles with it. Pareshbabu pulled open the drawer of his table and put away the stone inside. The drawer also had a pen knife, a pair of scissors, pencils, papers and envelopes. Strangely, the scissors and the knife immediately turned yellow. Pareshbabu touched the stone to his glass inkpot, nothing happened. When he touched it to a lead paperweight, it became twice as heavy and turned yellow. Pareshbabu called to his servant, "Haria, bring my watch from upstairs," in a voice that was shaking. Haria brought it over. It was made of cheap alloy, with a leather strap. As soon as he touched it with the stone it turned yellow and stopped as the springs inside turned to gold and became weak.

Pareshbabu sat stunned for some time. He came to the realization over time that he had acquired possession of the extremely rare philosopher's stone, which when touched transformed all metals into gold. He folded his hands and praised the gods and goddesses, “Hail to Ma Kali, why such a blessing on me? You are great and the truth, God Hari. Do you play games with me? Am I dreaming all this?” He pinched his left hand hard; no, it was not a dream. He did not wake up from sleep. He felt dizzy and his heart thudded in his chest. Like Shakuntala he placed his hand over his heart and said, “O heart, please calm down. If you fail now who will enjoy this god given wealth?” He had heard once that a man upon winning four lakh rupees in the lottery jumped in joy so high that his head struck the ceiling and cracked right open! He held on to his head in case he too jumped like that.

Just like extreme grief, people, in time, get used to extreme joy too. Pareshbabu quickly returned to his normal state and started to plan his next course of action. It was not wise to let the news out suddenly, some ill-wisher might cause problems. Right now, he would only tell his wife Giribala. However, women could not conceal anything. Pareshbabu went upstairs and told his wife the story of their good fortune slowly and incrementally. In addition, he compelled her to swear that she would never reveal it to anyone except the thirty-three crore gods and goddesses. Pareshbabu warned his wife but himself became rather careless. He pressed the stone against the steel beam on his bedroom ceiling. The beam weakened and changed color to gold. As a result, the roof caved in. Next, he touched all the pots and pans, plates, bowls and buckets in the house and turned them all to gold. People wondered why he suddenly gilted everything. Friends and family started asking all kinds of questions. "Go away," Pareshbabu told them in response. Don’t badger me with your questions. What bothers you about how I use my belongings? Pareshbabu stopped interacting with others as a result of the flurry of inquiries. His clients decided he must have gone mad.

After this, Pareshbabu slowed down. Changes made too quickly invited questions from others and made them suspicious. He sold some gold and deposited the money in the bank. He also purchased shares in many companies. He bought twenty bigha land in Ballygunge and constructed a huge mansion and an attached factory. He was able to easily lubricate the palms of all the important people, so there was no shortage of steel, cement, or bricks. In one place he saw a pile of rusted metals from junked automobiles. He asked the owner for a price. The owner, being an honest man, said, "Take away all of it for free. But I can't afford the transportation." Pareshbabu everyday picked up ten or twenty maunds of trash and inside a room in the factory, in secret, turned them to gold. Ten Gurkha soldiers guarded his factory, along with five bulldogs. Nobody could enter without his permission.

Making and selling gold was not difficult but trying to do so on a large scale needed help. Pareshbabu advertised in the papers and after interviewing many applicants, he chose a recent M.Sc. graduate Priyatosh Henry Biswas for a monthly salary of hundred and fifty rupees. Priyatosh did not have a family and decided to live in the factory itself. His personal chores never took him more than an hour. He slept for seven hours, worked eight hours in the factory, and wrote long poems and love letters to his classmate Hindola Majumdar for the remaining eight hours. He was a simple man, did not mingle with anyone, did not go to church on Sundays, he was not curious about anything, not even about the source of so much gold. Pareshbabu considered him another gem, next to the philosopher’s stone itself. He melted the gold in an electric furnace and made it into solid ingots. Pareshbabu sold that to a Marwari syndicate. His bank account increased quickly. His wife had everything she ever wanted in jewelry. In fact, the weight of all that gold made her whole body hurt. So much so that she got fed up with gold and wore only two conch-shell bangles and a necklace of rudraksha beads.

But Pareshbabu could not keep his activities secret for too long. Bengal government ordered police investigations about his business. However, the investigators, not being yet indoctrinated into the rules of utopian Ram-rajya, were easily tamed by ten-twenty bhoris of gold each. The scientists started wondering about the source of his wealth. If they were born two centuries earlier, they would have easily guessed about the philosopher’s stone. But modern science had no place for such a thing, so they decided that Pareshbabu somehow had succeeded in smashing the atoms and rejoining the broken bits together to make gold. Problem was that Pareshbabu never replied to any of their letters and Priyatosh was an idiot. When asked he always said, “I only melt the gold. It's not clear where it came from. The tale was initially dismissed as a fairy tale by foreign scientists, but recently they too have become curious. At the advice of the experts, the Government of India panicked and decided to declare Pareshbabu as a danger to the national security. He was not in violation of any law, so nothing could be done against him. They tried to arrest him and even issued an ordinance to seize his factory. But other powerful persons, at home and abroad, strongly objected to it. Ambassadors to India, from countries like Britain, France, America, and Russia developed close relationships with Pareshbabu and often invited him for dinners. At such gatherings, Pareshbabu kept his mouth shut and only responded with a "yes" or "no." Nobody could make him spill out any secret, not even after many glasses of champagne. Congress leaders in Bengal had suggested that he share his secret with a few trusted leaders for good of the country; but the opposing Communist Party warned him, ‘Be careful. Don’t tell your secret to anyone. Simply carry on with what you're doing. That is ideal for everybody.' The crowd of relatives, friends and flatterers increased daily. Pareshbabu offered them enough rewards but everyone wanted more. For the time being, his enemies stayed quiet, not knowing how to react. In spite of his rise in wealth, Pareshbabu kept a simple lifestyle. His wife too was old fashioned and did not know how to spend exorbitantly. Nonetheless, Pareshbabu rose to global fame. It was said that he could easily own four Nizams. What he ate, wore, said, or liked became big news in Europe and America. He had recently begun receiving marriage proposals and love letters from all over the world. Ladies were sending their pictures with descriptions of their assets and requesting, “Dearest Sir, let your first wife be. I have no objection. But you are a generous, liberal-minded Hindu, please purify me and admit me to your harem. Or I shall take poison.” Piles of such letters were coming every day. Giribala grabbed all such missives. She had appointed a white girl to answer such letters for her. Every day she translated these letters and wrote Giribala’s reply in English. In a fit of temper, Giribala cursed and said many nasty things but the white girl did not know enough Bengali. She wrote only one (??) phrase "Damn you!" Can’t you get a rope for your neck?” Ten famous scientists from Europe wrote to Pareshbabu that if he divulged the secret formula of his gold, they would try to make sure that he got all three Nobel Prizes together--in Chemistry, Physics and also the Peace prize (??). Giribala thought that too was a love letter and through the white girl answered, ‘Damn!’

Pareshbabu kept decreasing the price of gold, as its market price had fallen from one hundred and fifteen rupees per bhori to seven rupees and ten annas. The British government was repaying American loans with cheap gold purchases. America was pretty mad but could not find a way to object. Britain wanted to pay up each penny of the outstanding sterling balance with India too, but the Prime Minister of India objected by saying, “We did not loan you gold or dollar. We provided material help during the war. We want to be paid back in the same way.”

The pundits of economics and politics were confused and could not decide on any plan of action. If it were the eras of Satya, Treta or Dwapar yugas, they would have done arduous meditations to please Brahma, Vishnu or Maheswara and obtained boons to control Pareshbabu. However, this was impossible during the current Kali yuga. Some experts suggested the use of silver or platinum instead of gold. Others objected, as those too might be mass produced. Perhaps safest was to use radium or uranium standards or go back to using the ancient methods of bartering and exchanges of goods.

Churchill was enraged beyond control. He said, “We will never let the Commonwealth be destroyed. We won’t waste time in complaining to the UN either. Let the British rule be reestablished in India. Our army will arrest that scoundrel Paresh and imprison him in the Isle of Wight. Allow him to produce as much gold as he desires there. But that gold will be Imperial gold, property of the United Kingdom and we will decide about its distribution.”

Barnard Shaw said, “Gold is a useless metal. You can’t make plough, sword, axe, boiler, engine, nothing useful with gold. Pareshbabu is doing us a favor by showing us the false power of gold. He ought to now try to make the gold as strong as steel. I shall shave my beard only with a razor made of gold.”

An agent from Russia wrote to Pareshbabu, “Dear Sir, you are most cordially invited to come and stay in our country. We do not distinguish between blacks and whites. We will treat you like a king. By sheer stroke of fortune, you are in possession of a great power. Please pardon us, but you're not very smart. You can make gold, but you don't know how to use it. There, we can help you. If you have political ambitions, we can even appoint you the head of the Soviet Union. We will provide you a mansion on a land of one hundred acres right in the heart of Moscow. And if you want solitude, we can gift you a whole town in Siberia. It is a beautiful country. Your religious Shastras have named it Uttar Kuru.” Giribala thought this letter too was a love letter and answered it, ‘Damn!’

Pareshbabu kept slashing the price of gold, now it is only four and half annas per bhori. Previously, the annual output of mined gold in the whole world was about twenty thousand maunds. Now Pareshbabu alone was producing a hundred thousand maunds every year. Gold standard was totally destroyed. Inflation raged in all the countries. Paper money and coins had no value. In spite of increasing the pay scale manifold, people were still suffering hardship. Prices of every item in the market were rising sky high. Ten members of each political party were lying on the ground in front of Pareshbabu’s mansion vowing to fast till death. Anonymous letters were being sent to Pareshbabu, threatening his death as an enemy of humanity. Giribala had started moaning and wailing, “What is the point of all this wealth if we can’t live in peace? Throw away the evil stone, dump all the gold in the Ganges and let’s go live a simple life in Kashi.”

Pareshbabu made up his mind. He called Priyatosh the following morning to explain the gold's mystery. Priyatosh remained stoical. Pareshbabu gave him the stone and told him to destroy it by whatever means—burning, dousing in acid or any other means. Priyatosh responded, "Right O." A guard approached Pareshbabu in the evening and yelled, "Please come quickly." Biswas-babu is insane. He is calling for you.” Pareshbabu hurried to Priyatosh and saw him in his bed, crying his heart out. Pareshbabu asked, “What happened?” Priyatosh handed him a letter, “Read this, Sir.” Pareshbabu studied— "My most beloved, Goodbye. My father does not agree to our wedding. He has all kinds of objections—you don’t have any family, you live in someone else’s house, you only make a hundred and fifty rupees, and on top of that you are a Christian and younger than me by one year! He says this marriage cannot happen. No way. And listen, have you heard of a Gunjan Ghosh? Good singer, good looking, curly hair. Works in the Civil Supplies and makes six hundred rupees a month. Only son of a contractor father who has earned millions of rupees. They have arranged my marriage with him. Please don’t be sad. Remember Bakul Mallik? Three years junior to me, we both studied in the same Diocesan School. She does not compare to me but still, she is one in a thousand. Take her. You will be content. My dearest, this is my last love letter. You will be my younger brother starting tomorrow, and I will be your devoted didi. Yours till tomorrow—Hindola”

Paresh read the letter and said, “You are really an idiot! Hindola is moving away by herself. It is very good news! Why are you moping? You cannot, of course, go to the temple in Kalighat to pray; however, you can light two candles in your church. Come on, get up, wash your face and have some tea and luchis. Oh, and by the way, did you get rid of the stone? Priyatosh pitifully said, “I swallowed it, Sir! I don’t want to live this life. The stone will go with me to my grave. Oh God! After loving her for so many years, now it is Gunjan Ghosh!”

Pareshbabu was taken aback. "Why did you ingest the rock? It wasn't poisonous, was it?”

“Don’t know the composition, Sir, but it feels like poison. I have measured out ten grams of potassium cyanide to take tomorrow morning even if it isn't and I don't die by tonight. Don’t worry Sir. I will keep you safe in my grave until the Day of Judgment, you stone. Pareshbabu said, “What crazy ideas? Listen, forget all this. I’ll try to get you married to your Hindola. Her father Jagai Mazumder is my childhood friend. I’ll give you plenty of wedding gifts—her father will definitely agree. But you are Christian—"

“I’ll convert to Hinduism, Sir.”

"This is referred to as "True Love!" Get up, and let's go to Dr. Chatterjee and get that stone out of your stomach.”

Pareshbabu told the doctor that Priyatosh accidentally swallowed a pebble. An x-ray was taken. Dr. Chatterjee declared it a very unusual case and planned to send a case report to the Lancet. The boy's ascending colon seemed to have the stone stuck in a small semicolon. It could be left as it was for now, if it caused problems, it could be removed by cutting open the abdomen.

Receiving Pareshbabu’s letter, Jagai Mazumdar came hurriedly to meet him. And after their conversation, he ran to call his daughter. "Hey Dola, Priyatosh has consented to convert to Hinduism. You can marry him now. Better not delay. Today he'll go through the purification rites, let’s set the wedding tomorrow.”

Hindola was taken aback and asked, "What are you saying, Baba? You mentioned Gunjan Ghosh yesterday; are you referring to Priyatosh today? See this lovely diamond ring Gunjan gave me? What’ll he think? You and I both have promised to him. How can we go back on our words? Additionally, Gunjan and Priyatosh, How can you even compare the two?”

Jagaibabu said, “Sure! Like you know everything. Priyatosh is now ‘auriferous’. He has a veritable gold mine inside him. That stone must be removed at some point. He received it as a gift from Pareshbabu. Return your diamond ring. Priyatosh can buy you hundreds of such rings. How can you compare Gunjan Ghosh to such a wonderful boy? No more arguments. You are marrying Priyatosh.”

Hindola tearfully said, “I’d always loved him. However, he is such a fool." Jagaibabu said, “Of course he is, or why would he want to marry you? One who carries the philosopher’s stone inside him could easily marry the most beautiful girl in the world.”

Priyatosh Henry Biswas had not a shred of ego in his heart. He underwent the ritual purification with holy fire lit by one seer of vegetable ghee. Five Brahmins ate a feast of luchis, vegetables, curds and sweets. After that, he and Hindola tied the knot on a fortunate day and time. But Jagaibabu and his daughter’s wishes were not fulfilled. The stone stayed where it was. After some time, a strange thing started to happen. Pareshbabu's gold began to lose its luster, and after about a month, it all turned back into iron. There was an easy explanation. Everyone knows that unrequited love can spoil one’s physical and mental well-being. Similarly, successful love can improve one’s health too. All the organs worked at peak speed, and the metabolism increased. It happened to Priyatosh also. Within a month he had digested the stone. Not a speck of it remained in the follow up x-ray. With the disappearance of the stone, its effects too disappeared. And all the gold reverted back to steel, iron and alloys.

Hindola and her father were very upset. They called Priyatosh a liar and a cheat. Over the course of many days, they checked his stool but found nothing. However, Priyatosh, after digesting the stone, had become much smarter and more confident. He did not care about his wife and father-in-law’s barbs. He refused to take cyanide, even when Hindola threatened divorce. He had realized what St. Francis and Paramhansa-Dev had said years ago: Women and gold are equally useless. Nothing compares with iron. Now he is running Pareshbabu’s new scrap-iron factory with a daily output of fifty tons and living happily.