The second decade of the new millenium has come by and old heroes have been forgotten...
.... But these heroes still live ... lurking beneath the surface of society ... dormant ... waiting for the zeitgeist to propel them back into the limelight ...
Hariteman lay in a drunken stupor in his decrepit, dingy apartment. He had lain thus for the past 6 years ... since Abhinandanboy had walked out on him ... hand in hand with Nell's son. No one remembered, cared or needed his superzeroic deeds any more. He had neither shaved ... any part of his body ... nor showered ... since God-alone-knows-when and an oppressive, noxious air pervaded the room, impregnating his every pore with its stench.
A persistent knocking on the door managed to creep into his conciousness and made its presence felt. He tried to ignore it but it persisted until the rhythmic pounding started to resonate in his skull. He woke up and growled hoarsely, cursing the Mischievous Monkey Gods - “Stop that infernal knocking! Who is it?”
“Sirjee .... Courier”
Uttering his choicest curses he stumbled towards the door and pulled it off its rusty hinges with a twist of his wrist. A trembling courier boy stood in front of him ... in a baggy green cap, rainbow coloured t-shirt and short pants. Something of his manner and his attire reminded Hariteman of his erstwhile sidekick and his expression infinitesimally softened.
He accepted the envelope, gave a get-the-hell-out-of here grimace to the courierboy and slammed the battered door back into its frame.
It was addressed to Prof. Senile Butt Harite ... it was a name he hadn't heard in a long long while ... the name of his alter-ego, the sour-tempered professor who used to teach at SHIT (St. Hosh Instt of Technology), a terror to his students and a chick-magnet among his female colleagues. He tore open the envelope and found an invite to a reunion meet for all the ex-professors of SHIT.
A very human chill ran up his superhuman spine.
In the alternate universe that he inhabited, all the super-villians, femme fatales and arch nemeses of Hariteman had their alter-egos as various members of the faculty at SHIT. To invite all of them to a single venue was an invitation for disaster ... culminating in events which could bring about the next Armageddon.
Hariteman would have to resurface once again! He would have to protect the populace from perdition! He would have to prove to the world (and Abhinandanboy) that he wasn't just a drunken old has-been, but the macho, heroic figure on whom nubile nymphets and middle aged aunties would swoon over.
But first he had to bake himself some blueberry pancakes with his cute pink oven mitts.
.... A couple of hours later ... fortified with honey-laced blueberry pancakes ... Hariteman flew towards the reunion venue ... Mount Poinsur.
By the time he arrived, the party had already begun. A look at the guest list confirmed his worst fear. They were all here.
Hairy Prasad – Part Man – Part Monkey ... Hairy Prasad had been tranformed into a mutant monkey when a Mechanics (or as he pronounced it “Mechonics”) lab experiment had gone horribly wrong and mutilated him in the wrong place. Driven mad with pain and fury due to the loss of his favourite appendage, he had developed a serum which had not only regrown his ... er lost limb ... but as a side – effect gave him an additional appendage ... a prehensile tail and covered his body with thick, coarse black hair. His natural physical strength grew three-fold and he could perform such feats that only our genetic cousin ... the chimpanzee can replicate.
Fatty Jose – This sultry siren, voluptuous vixen had that mythical figure desired by all ladies: 36-26-36 .... Multiplied by 2. Despite her additional tonnage, she was the object of desire of all the super-villians. Most of Hariteman's adventures involved Fatty Jose being the damsel in distress, the Olive-Oyl to his Popeye. But despite the offer so readily available from her side, Hariteman never caved in to his basic instinct ... and this had made Jose bitter towards him ... A Poison Ivy to his Batman.
... And finally Hariteman saw his arch-nemesis, the perennial thorn to his flesh, the flint in his eye
Absolute Jeero – Mild mannered Groovy-Shankar had been a Professor at SHIT and had enjoyed 5 years in his capacity as Professor of “One-Subject-Or-Another”. He was an incompetent, near-sighted fool and finally the students of SHIT after having suffered him long enough decided to complain against him and had him booted out of the college. The only man who could have saved him from expulsion, Hariteman himself, a venerable figure in the eyes of the authorities had chosen to remain silent. Apparently his goal of converting SHIT into a training-ground-for-future-leaders-of-the-industry had led Hariteman to realize that having Groovy-Shankar out of the way was not a bad thing.
Nursing an implacable grudge againt Hariteman for this act, Groovy-Shanker decided to use his scientific prowess to develop a robotic armour which he would use to massacre the students of SHIT and kill Hariteman. However his incompetence proved to be the better of him. The armour's cooling unit malfunctioned and Groovy-Shankar was frozen alive inside. But he did not die. His body turned into a living ice-box and he gained the power of manipulating the ambient temperature around him to kill people. He adopted the moniker of Absolute Jeero (Jeero is how he pronounces Zero)
Over the years Hariteman and Absolute had many epic battles but ultimately Hariteman used to always be the victor.
The EPIC AWESOME FINAL BATTLE had begun and nothing less than the future of humankind was at stake.
CONTINUED IN PART 2:
THE DEATH OF HARITEMAN
