Diary of a Malayali Madman, page 4
I was somewhat reluctant at first, but decided to take the doctor’s advice. It helped that most of our patients were not local but came from the small towns and villages further away. Not being acquainted with them or their families reduced my discomfort in charging them twenty rupees per session.
I was assigned one of the downstairs rooms as my consultation room. Dr Murukan worked upstairs. I had strict instructions that only those whose problems could not be solved by counselling and talking therapy and needed further treatment should be sent upstairs. There were barely four or five such cases a day. So, in effect, when I made around two hundred rupees a day, the Doctor only made eighty or hundred rupees. At first, I was concerned that this might create some friction between us. But Dr Murukan didn’t seem to mind, and his attitude towards me didn’t change. Nevertheless, I devised a plan whereby patients who needed medical attention for physical ailments – those with high blood pressure, and with sodium or hormone imbalances – were sent up to him with little chits describing the problem. In that way, I managed to send at least half of the patients to him. Even then, he didn’t react and continued dealing with me as usual. As time went on, I began to feel that there was something secretive about him, something beneath the surface. He was evasive and tended to respond to personal questions with one-word answers. I found myself beginning to speculate about his behaviour, and when my thoughts started getting uncomfortable, I resolved to stop probing into his affairs and to let him come to me if and when he wanted to talk.
Apart from me and the patients, the only other people Dr Murukan talked to were the waiters and the cashier at Hotel Ruchi. He never talked about his personal affairs and shared nothing about his family or his hometown. In the clinic, he seemed energetic and happy, but outside it he wore a dark cloak of severity. Not many people dared to engage in small talk with him.
There is bound to be a moment in everyone’s life when one feels the uncontrollable need to open up to a fellow human being. I was certain that, before long, Dr Murukan would also feel this urge. I was not wrong.
2.
One day, when the day’s consultations were over and it was time to close, Dr Murukan came to me and said:
‘Vivek, if you’re not in a hurry, why don’t you sit down for a while?’
‘Of course, Doctor, I’m not in a hurry.’
The Doctor seemed relieved. We talked late into the night. I say ‘we’, but the truth was that he talked and I sat there listening to him with great interest.
‘Vivek, you don’t know anything about me, do you?’ he said by way of an introduction. ‘Who I am, who my family is, or why I came to this new and unfamiliar place to open a clinic. I feel that you should know all this even if no one else does.’
What followed was a flood of words. He talked about his father, now dead, a younger brother who appropriated all the family wealth, a cunning sister-in-law who turned his mother against him with her manipulations, the sense of utter loneliness and alienation he felt within his family, the confrontation he had with the management of the hospital where he began his career, the narrow escape from two separate goonda attacks, forgetting to get married amidst all the chaos in his life, the slow development of misogyny and a general disinterest within him … several such incidents. His descriptions of some of these events seemed strange. The intricate details he went into when narrating some of the earliest events in his life made me marvel at his memory, even as I started wondering about his state of mind. The sights he saw on a boat trip with his father when he was six or seven years old, including a big snake crawling along a deserted and disused jetty – these descriptions were so exquisite that I felt I was witnessing them myself. The description of the time he spent working in a hospital in Chennai where, on most nights, he had dinner with a beautiful Telugu eye specialist was the most resplendent with details. As he narrated how she got engaged to a cardiologist, all the while pretending to be in a relationship with him, the Doctor was overcome with emotion, his voice cracking and his eyes wet.
Whenever he felt that he was being overly emotional, the Doctor brought himself back to normality by reciting a couple of lines from Thirukkural or some other ancient Tamil text to support the idea that such incidents were natural and common in human existence. After the first couple of times, I began to find this strategy tedious.
The Doctor concluded his monologue by describing the unbearable mental anguish he felt on the nights he spent alone at the clinic. By the end, I began to suspect that perhaps he was on the brink of being clinically depressed. However, quite suddenly his demeanour changed and, as if he had experienced some sort of catharsis, he became upbeat and happy.
‘Oh, look at the time. We forgot all about dinner. Come, let’s go find some food – kanji and chammanthi, or perhaps some tapioca with fish curry. Whatever you fancy.’
‘No, sir. I think I’ll go home and have dinner. They will be waiting for me at home.’
He didn’t insist, but made me walk with him to Hotel Ruchi, where he continued talking for another half hour standing by the roadside. It was only when a lorry pulled up in front of the hotel and the workers charged into the hotel like a starving horde that he finally decided to go in and have his dinner.
The road home was wet with dew, the rubber trees cast dark shadows in the moonlight. As I walked along, I inadvertently spoke aloud: ‘The Doctor’s case seems to be so much more complex than all the other patients’ I have seen so far.’
But that turned out to be an isolated incident. After that night, I never had occasion to be concerned about Dr Murukan’s mental state. Nothing in his behaviour or conversation since has made me think that way, and he never again talked to me about his private life.
3.
Much has changed in my life in the twenty years I have worked with Dr Murukan. I have learned a hundred times more about people and the experiences of distress and trauma that they undergo than I had ever learned as a psychology student. And although I never actually trained in psychiatry, I acquired a certain level of understanding about mental illnesses and how to treat them.
I would quite like to write about at least some of the thousands of clients I have seen during this not inconsiderable amount of time. But I am only going to write about one of them, a person with whom, for some unknown reason, I felt a strong connection. Without further delay, let me tell you his story, a story that will also take my readers through some of the important chapters in my own life.
Two or three months into my practice, I spent an entire morning until about lunchtime with a patient named Mohanan, a seller of tender coconuts at a temple named Kudungomkaavu. Despite the time I spent with him, I was left with no useful insight into his problems. I was exhausted and could muster up the energy to see only one more patient. I sent the other ten or so in the waiting room away, saying that I had to go somewhere urgently.
I told the same lie to Dr Murukan, left the clinic, went home and straight to bed. I must have slept for about twenty minutes, and when I woke up, all I could see was the face of that tender coconut vendor, a face as innocent as that of a young child.
He spoke as if he were narrating a simple story, but the experiences and problems that unfolded in his story were complex and many layered. Where is Kudungomkaavu? How does one get there? I asked him these two questions, directly and indirectly, but he evaded answering them. He said his name was Mohanan and that he was from Eranmoola. I recognized the name of the place, but had no real idea where it was. In any case, I was able to guess with some level of certainty that Kudungomkaavu was in Eranmoola.
Kudungomkaavu had a unique attribute, Mohanan said. Instead of a male priest, the pooja there was conducted by seven unmarried women, one on each day of the week. If the priestess of a particular day was menstruating, one of the others did the pooja twice that week. Taking days off and working extra days was an intrinsic part of their role. This rule, that the deity of Kudungomkaavu – Kudungothappan – could not have a male priest and must be attended to by unmarried women priests, and a different one each day, was apparently set right at the time the temple was built.
It was a small temple. Every Friday evening, there was a kettiyaattam, a ritual performance, the expenses for which were usually paid for by one of the devotees as an offering for Kudungothappan’s blessing. There were many who believed that Kudungothappan’s blessing would fulfil dreams of a good marriage, fertility, foreign travel and so on.
Throngs of worshippers would begin arriving at the kaavu right from the morning on Fridays, their numbers reaching at least two hundred by evening. On other days too, the temple was popular, averaging a hundred devotees a day. Mohanan sold tender coconuts at the kaavu premises for seven or eight months in a year, the sales peaking in the months of March, April and May, and ending as the rains arrived by the end of May.
Mohanan’s merchandise came from the coconut palms growing in the ten-cent plot around his house and from his neighbours’ lands. He would climb the trees early in the morning, harvest enough coconuts to sell over the next couple of days, and climb them again on the third day. He would pack them into four gunny sacks, which he carried on his shoulder to the makeshift stall in front of the temple – a palm-leaf thatch on four bamboo posts. A boy from the neighbourhood, Sreelal, accompanied him and the first sack of coconuts, and waited there until Mohanan transferred all four sacks into the stall. It would be a quarter past nine by then, and time for Sreelal to go to school.
He made barely enough money to make ends meet. The rainy season brought more misery, and he had to make do with whatever odd-jobs he could find. He regretted having dropped out of school – if he hadn’t, he could have at least found work as a peon and not had to struggle quite so much. He said that he found it difficult to fall asleep on some nights; he twisted and turned in his bed, mired in his worries, and got up exhausted in the morning with no energy to go to work. Months would pass by tediously until the hot and sultry days were back again.
‘You know, Doctor, at first no one paid much attention to my little business,’ Mohanan told me. ‘But slowly the kaavu management people seemed to realize that I was making a living there and began grumbling. They pestered me about clearing away all the husks and debris every evening, demanded a rent of twenty rupees per day for the use of the premises, and insisted that I leave before the Friday evening rush started … I thought that was it – moths in my gruel, end of my livelihood. Then this amazing thing happened. One afternoon, the Thursday priestess, a woman named Chithra, came up to my stall and bought a coconut. I refused to take her money even though she was quite insistent. “No, no, you don’t need to pay me for this,” I kept saying. So then she tricked me. “Okay then, I won’t ever drink another one of your tender coconuts,” she said, all serious. I had to give in then and take her money. In fact, she paid me a rupee more than the usual price and wouldn’t take it back from me.
‘She came again the next Thursday, all friendly like, asking me my name and whereabouts. “Why do you always stand out here? You could come into the temple at least on the days I am here, no?” I felt I should say something to her but couldn’t think of anything, so I asked her name. “I know you know my name already, but I’ll tell you anyway. It is Chithra,” she said and gave me this weird smile.
‘For the next four or five Thursdays, without fail at noon, Chithra came for her tender coconut. It began to feel as if the only reason I was going to the kaavu with my coconuts was to see her. But then, just like that, she stopped coming. Another priestess took over her day. I was heartbroken. But since I didn’t have another option, I continued going there and selling my coconuts from morning to late afternoon, until the sun was low in the sky.
‘Not long after, like moonlight in the darkness of my life, one of the other priestesses came to my stall and bought a coconut. Madhuri, the Monday priestess. Mustering up my courage, I asked her, “Do you know what happened to Chithra, the priestess who used to come on Thursdays? Haven’t seen her in a while. Is she okay? Not ill or anything?”
‘Madhuri frowned and gave me a withering look. “She was fired because of bad behaviour. I hope you are satisfied.”
‘The rough edge to her voice made it sound as though it was somehow my fault that Chithra had lost her job. She seemed very angry at me as she stomped back into the temple.
‘That evening, one of the kaavu managers came to my stall and demanded a coconut as though he were entitled to it. He drank the water and tossed the shell away. “Mohanan,” he said, “you are selling coconuts here purely because of our generosity. Otherwise, you’d be gone from here in a matter of minutes. Don’t you dare forget it. You are not qualified to pass comments on who we hire or fire here.”
‘My throat went completely dry. I couldn’t speak. In any case, what would have been the point in answering back? I just stood there trembling.
‘I went home deciding that I’d not go back there. But when morning came, I couldn’t just stay at home, so off I went to the kaavu as usual, carrying my coconuts. The sales were just beginning to pick up when a political-party leader near my house, Chandrettan, and a few other people came to the stall.
‘There was not even a shadow of friendliness on Chandrettan’s face. “Our district meeting is coming up,” he said in a gruff voice. “You must make a donation of hundred rupees.”
‘I was shocked. “What are you saying, Chandretta? How can I afford hundred rupees?”
‘I don’t think he liked me addressing him with the familiar “Chandretta”. His face darkened. “There’s no need to waste time arguing over it. Give him a receipt for fifty rupees,” he said to one of his gang.
‘Handing over money I could barely afford was hard. But my troubles didn’t end there as I found out the next morning. Someone had trashed my stall – the bamboo poles were pulled up and lay broken in half. There were a couple of people there taking photographs, people I didn’t recognize, dressed in dull green khaddar kurtas and grey trousers. “We didn’t destroy your shop,” one of them told me. “We heard that this shop was responsible for making the temple surroundings dirty and came to investigate. It was already trashed when we got here. So what will you do now? Will you continue your business here?”
‘I didn’t reply. They said if I continued selling coconuts there, I’d have to make sure that the husks were cleared away and the surroundings kept clean. They mentioned the name of some organization and said that it was their job to ensure that our town was clean and environmentally friendly. I kept my mouth shut. And that was it – my little business selling tender coconuts at the temple was done. Now I try to get by doing whatever odd jobs I can get. It’s okay when there’s regular work. But there is a new problem around here. People expect you to spend at least a third of your daily wages on foreign liquor. If you’re not ready to do that, you can forget about having any kind of human companionship.
‘That’s my life now – lonely, no friends, no company. And I can’t stop thinking about Chithra. I’m not brave enough to go looking for her, to find out where she lives and all that. It would be good to have someone to talk to about all this, but I have no one. I haven’t been able to sleep properly either – I just lie there at night, with all these thoughts rushing through my mind. That’s really why I came, Doctor, to see whether you could give me some medicine that will let me sleep.’
Mohanan narrated this entire story almost in one breath. By the time he finished, he was panting. His face was pale and he repeatedly tried to lick his dry lips. ‘Here, drink some water,’ I said, offering him a bottle of water.
A couple of mouthfuls seemed to revive him a little. He sat forward, eager to hear what I had to say.
‘You don’t have any habits like smoking or drinking, do you?’
‘No. I used to smoke beedis, but gave up a couple of years ago.’
‘Well, that’s good. Have you ever had a fall? I don’t mean a little fall on a slippery floor or anything like that. Something more serious, say from a height, where you may have hit your head?’
‘No.’
‘Have you felt you can’t retain things in your memory for long?’
‘No, Doctor. I have no such difficulties.’
‘Are you in the habit of reading books?’
‘No.’
‘Never read a book?’
‘Only school books.’
‘And how far did you get in school?’
‘Until class seven.’
‘Why did you drop out?’
‘We couldn’t afford it any more. My father passed away and my mother, well, she’s always been sickly. If I didn’t go to work, nobody would’ve eaten.’
‘What sort of work did you find then?’
‘In a grocery store, as a helper.’
Pretending to remember something suddenly, I pulled open my desk drawer and took out three postcard-sized pictures. They were all of women. One showed a young woman in her late teens wearing a salwar kameez, the other a middle-aged woman in a silk sari. The third was a picture, taken from the back, of a rural woman carrying a pot of water on her hips, and clad in a white mundu and blouse that showed off her shapely behind – a picture that was sure to attract the attention of any man.
I passed them over to Mohanan. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Which of these pictures do you like most?’
Mohanan did not take very long to decide and, as I’d expected, chose the picture of the rural woman.
‘Now tell me, does this picture have any similarity with any woman you know? Does it remind you of anyone?’
Mohanan flushed and looked down, as if he couldn’t meet my eyes.
‘It does, doesn’t it? It reminds you of Chithra,’ I said without hesitation.
