Murder of a model!

The papers few days ago blared the murder of a model in Chandrapur. Her mutilated body was found abandoned on the roadside and police identified her, based on the tattoos on her body. Her boyfriend was the prime suspect for the murder. He is the son of an alleged drug peddler from the Gittikhadan area in Nagpur. When he was picked up by the police, he denied any involvement, as it’s customary but on further interrogation confessed to the murder. His motive was jealousy as the girl was also seeing other men and was procrastinating in typing the knot with him.    A very common story of LSD, love, sex and dhokha (धोखा). Add to it some intoxicants and it adds up to a catastrophic cocktail.
But how do I figure in this story?
You will understand once you read on.
I am in charge of a surgical unit in our hospital and by rotation we are on call for emergencies on Sundays. And that particular Sunday was one such Sunday.
The day began as a relaxed day, getting up late, watching TV and chilling. when I get a call from my resident informing me about two emergencies which presented in the casualty. The first was a case of acutely inflamed appendix or appendicitis.
The appendix is a finger like pouch attached to the beginning of the large intestine. It is believed to be a vestigial organ and was earlier useful for digestion of complex carbohydrates like cellulose. But since we stopped eating grass way down the evolutionary chain it shriveled up. It also believed to harbour the ‘good bacteria’ which help in digestion. But sometimes it’s lumen gets blocked with a faecolith (hard piece of shit) or or an ingested seed or sometimes worms, causing it to swell up and become inflamed. This condition is known as appendicitis and the treatment is surgical removal of the inflamed organ before it swells up so much that it burst discharging the contents of the large intestine into the peritoneal cavity.
The other was a case of torsion testis in an engineering student.
The testis or balls as it’s colloquial known as is suspended in the scrotum like a bell and it’s clapper. The clapper being the testis hence in Hindi it’s also colloquially called ‘ghanta’ (घंटा) or bell. The suspensory cords contains the artery veins, spermatic cord and surrounded by a muscle called the cremasteric muscle, whose function is to pull the testis upwards in response to a stimulus. This stimulus could range from stroking the inner aspect of the thigh, called the cremasteric reflex to straining during defecation or vigorous coitus. If the testis is loosely suspended in scrotum, it could cause a twist on the cord and testis, cutting off the blood circulation to the testis. Imagine if one’s balls get twisted the agonizing pain which would ensue.                                             On a lighter note it reminded me of of our Hostel Days in Christian Medical College, Vellore. We had our own campus terms and one of them was ‘kottais’. In Tamil kottai meant seed, but in campus lingo with the added ‘s’ to indicate it’s plural, it meant ‘balls’. Then it was further abbreviated and you need not say the word, just hold your hand hand up as if you are holding a cricket ball and give it a twist in an anticlockwise direction or a torsion. This would convey a painful message, ‘kottais’ or ‘balls’ to the intended person.               Returning to the present this is a real emergency because if not corrected within 6 hours the testis would become gangrenous and have to be removed and the double whammy is gangrenous testis secrete antibodies against the testicular cells and can destroy the opposite testis too.                                I instructed my residents to inform the anaesthetists and post the patient for surgery ASAP and I would be coming for the surgery.    So I embarked on a medical mission of mercy driving down the 15 kms to the hospital.     Now along the way there was a large gathering of people blocking one lane of the road. It looked like there might have been an accident and the crowd was gathered to display their protest. There was a security guard posted by the under construction Metro project, who directed me to use the other lane. Sensing there was a tense situation brewing but there was also an emergency, I took the risk. As I came close to the crowd there were burning tyres strewed on the road leaving just enough space for me to squeeze between the crowd on one side and the tyres. There was also a two wheeler coming from the opposite end and both of us reached this narrow patch. I stopped to permit him to cross but he rather than crossing, stopped his motorcycle and was peering curiously into the crowd trying to figure out what was happening. I made the mistake of tapping my horn and immediately the crowds attention turned towards me. A visibly emotional and agitated looking youngster separated from the gathering and stood in front of my car and bent down. I braced myself for a rock to smash my windshield to smithereens. Instead he pulled one of the burning tyres and placed it under my car. Luckily there was a sensible elder who came immediately removed the tyre, pacified the youngster while indicating to me to scram! I immediately drove out of the danger zone and reached the hospital. The operations went off successfully the twisted testis of the teen could be salvaged and the inflamed appendix was removed in the nick of time.                   Only the next day did I find out what the gathering was all about. The murdered model lived in that locality and her body had been brought home in preparation for the last rites. The gathering was of the mourners. The former boyfriend and perpetrator belonged to a different community so the gathering was taking communal hues. Definitely what the boy did was wrong and no one has the right to snuff out anyone’s life. But senseless violence would be counterproductive. Quoting Gandhi, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind