A Life Incomplete, page 16
‘No.’
‘It’s Kuldeep.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. With his maid.’
‘His maid?’
‘Indeed.’
Saroj goes numb all over. The left hand freezes on the fan of the harmonium, while the right struggles to find the appropriate keys. She goes off-key and misses the rhythm that she had captured so effortlessly earlier in the morning.
A few minutes later, the bridegroom walks in to pay the customary obeisance before sitting down beside the bride. A clutch of marigold garlands covers his chest, having left telltale signs of saffron on his virile pink turban as they made their way towards his neck. A ceremonial plume adorns the pointed tip of the turban. A fringe of golden strands streams down from the turban to cover his face but Saroj can catch a fleeting glimpse each time he moves his head. It is enough to send shockwaves through her body.
The couple rise to begin the ritual perambulations of the Guru Granth Sahib. The group resumes the kirtan with a fresh set of verses. But Saroj is in a trance, barely aware of her surroundings and unsure if she is singing at all. The fingers of her right hand continue to behave erratically on the keys and it is left to her companion to raise her voice and make sure that her harmonium provides the music to accompany the verses.
The couple complete their first round and sit down to receive blessings. Kuldeep turns his head and his eyes meet Saroj’s for the briefest second before he looks away. He appears calm, curiously unaffected by the encounter. Saroj feels the blood drain from her body. Her face is pale, her eyes refuse to open and her fingers tremble uncontrollably on the harmonium. Her companion gives her a worried look and asks, ‘Are you feeling okay, sister?’
‘Yes…No…felt dizzy for a moment…’ she mutters, trying to control herself. Realizing that she has no choice but to fill in for Saroj, the girl goes back to the kirtan.
The second and third rounds of the holy book are completed without much contribution from Saroj as far as the kirtan is concerned. She is still in a daze when the final round starts, accompanied by the verse ‘I am now tied to you forever…’ She reels under the impact of the words and faints. Her head slumps on the harmonium, creating a stir among the other girls. A couple of them step up to carry her out of the hall into a small room at the back of the gurudwara. She lies on the cot for a while, recovers a little and returns to the hall to resume her seat. The marriage ceremony has ended and the prayers are concluding. Still weak and unsure of herself, she feels she is at the mercy of dark and ominous waves.
26
Sunday may be a day of rest for government employees but it is the busiest day of the week for Waryam Singh. This is the day the government hospital receives its supplies of medicines. Waryam Singh is the first to be there so that he can obtain whatever his wards need. He can ask for the most expensive of medicines or the most basic ones; no doctor or pharmacist in the hospital turns down his requests. Quinine along with a medicine for fever; eucalyptus oil in case of a bad cold; a pneumonia mixture and white oil to tackle pneumonia; zinc lotion for the eyes; borax, cotton wool and bandages for the injured…he draws his requirement as he wants. He takes these home, wraps them into small rolls of paper and dispenses them to the needy.
The hospital staff are willing accomplices in this arrangement. They acknowledge that Waryam Singh does more for the poorest folk in the town than their own hospital. Besides, the hospital has no real empathy for the unfortunate. From the doctor to the pharmacist, from the nurse to the sweeper, all seem to be intent on fleecing the destitute. You don’t grease their palms, you don’t get treated. That is the norm at the hospital. But when you don’t have enough to manage two square meals a day, how do you satisfy the greed of these vultures?
Under normal circumstances, taking even the smallest of supplies out of the hospital without proper authorization would be considered a crime, attracting stiff punishment. Waryam Singh, though, has been helping himself to an assortment of medicines for years and nobody at the hospital seems to mind. They know that much of his meagre monthly salary of thirty rupees is spent on the impoverished and the needy. He does the same with the gifts that he receives from patients who have benefited from his medicines. Relatively affluent families have given him ten or even twenty rupees as a mark of their gratitude. Without the slightest thought, Waryam Singh has used the extra cash to help someone in distress.
His personal life is austere to the extreme. He usually eats at a small dhaba near his home. A couple of chapattis from the tandoor and a bowl of lentils or some vegetables don’t cost him more than ten rupees a month. He washes his own clothes if he finds the time. And he has no other expenses worth mentioning. Yet, he is always in debt, borrowing five rupees from one, ten from another to tide over some pressing problem that someone is facing.
This particular Sunday morning too is going to be a busy one for him. He has spent the morning preparing small rolls and pouches of medicines which are then carefully placed into a larger bag. He is on the verge of leaving for his chores when he realizes that his clothes are all rather dirty. He goes out to fetch a bucket of water and is about to sit down to wash a few of them but changes his mind.
Getting up, he puts on his clothes and picks up his shoes and socks.
With the retreat of the monsoon, the months of September and October see a steady fall in the incidence of malaria. But this is cold comfort for those who have been exposed to the debilitating impact of the malarial parasite for a prolonged period. Their resistance diminished, they find themselves susceptible to a host of other ailments including typhoid and influenza, or even asthma and tuberculosis. The approaching winter is a particularly serious threat to such patients. If they can’t be cured in October and are still on the sickbed in November, there is every chance that it will become their deathbed.
The dirty, narrow by-lanes of the town are populated with dozens of such cases, groaning away in their sickbeds without anyone to care for them. And the rare patient who isn’t on his own typically has someone who is indifferent to his fate or unable to provide any real help or, worse, convinced that nothing can be done to save him.
Waryam Singh takes it upon himself to tend to such unfortunate souls. His problem, though, is that the patients are scattered all over the place and he has to shuttle from one end of the town to the other. He wants to visit each one of them but how? There are only twenty-four hours in the day and there is only one of him. Alas, if only he can clone himself into four so that everyone can be given the attention they deserve. But that isn’t possible and so he simply neglects his own person and his appearance. He does have one clean pair of clothes that is mandatory for a hospital staffer, though there are times when even this modest requirement falls by the wayside.
Noticing a gaping hole in his socks, he picks up a needle and hurriedly starts to darn it with long, untidy stitches. The door opens a couple of inches and through the gap he sees an eye peering at him. Awkwardly holding the sock in one hand and the needle and thread in the other, he rises to open the door.
Saroj stands before him, still as a statue. He is startled by her unexpected appearance. Her face is ashen and bears an indescribable sadness about it. Her eyes still carry traces of the tears she has shed, with telltale streaks visible around the corners. Even the lips, usually blessed with a pinkish hue, look dark as the monsoon clouds.
‘Saroj!’ The sock falls from his hand. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Haven’t you heard, Bhapa ji?’ she whimpers, perching herself on the edge of his bed.
‘Heard what?’
‘Kuldeep has married.’
‘What?’
‘He has.’
‘Whom?’
‘The same one.’
‘Prakash?’
‘Yes.’ She turns her face way, afraid that Waryam Singh will read the torment in her heart.
‘Damn!’ he cries in anguish. ‘Just what I feared!’
Seeing the state Saroj is in, he sets aside his thoughts about Kuldeep and turns to console her. ‘When did this happen?’ he asks softly.
‘This morning,’ she says and again turns her face away from him.
Standing beside her, he gently pats her head. ‘There…there… maybe this was inevitable.’
She is lost in her own thoughts. While she has given up on her own aspirations towards Kuldeep, how can she remain unaffected by the events of the morning? She feels like the bankrupt businessman who has not only faced the tragedy of having his home auctioned in public but also the humiliation of seeing a new owner move in before his eyes.
‘Why are you so upset, Saroj?’ Waryam says, his hand on her shoulder to calm her down. ‘You’d lost him long ago.’
Still silent, Saroj can feel her overwrought emotions unravel. Waryam Singh knows that there is nothing that he can offer by way of advice or arguments that could assuage her hurt. It is difficult to see her grapple with pain of this magnitude.
‘Where are you coming from?’ he asks.
‘From the gurudwara.’ Saroj looks into his eyes.
‘From the gurudwara? At this time?’
‘Yes. I went there early with my group of devotional singers.’
‘I thought your group goes there in the evening.’
‘The secretary of the Singh Sabha had asked us to come this morning, for the kirtan during the Anand Karaj ceremonies.’
‘Anand Karaj? Don’t tell me it was your group that provided the kirtan at the wedding!’
Waryam Singh’s heart, seasoned as it is by many an ordeal, struggles against its moorings. Gazing straight into Saroj’s eyes, he probes, ‘So you actually participated in their wedding ceremonies?’
‘I did,’ she whispers and raises her hands to cover her eyes. It does little to shield her emotions from him. The dam of her resolve gives way and she starts to sob helplessly. Looking at her, Waryam Singh’s eyes also become moist.
‘Forget about this, Saroj. Tell yourself that it hasn’t happened,’ he counsels, gently caressing her shoulder.
Worried that she is still sobbing and his words are having no visible effect, he lapses into thought for a while. ‘I hope you aren’t in a tearing rush to go home?’
‘Why?’
‘Just asking…’
‘Well…there is nothing particularly urgent. But I am worried about Bau ji. He’s been busy drinking for almost two days now.’
‘Is your servant at home?’
‘He is.’
‘And Radhia is there too?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case, come with me for a couple of hours. What I have to do might give you a different perspective.’
Saroj remembers that she had turned down a similar request earlier. How often has she repented that? Saying no a second time will only add to her guilt. She really is in no mood to go anywhere, and her concern over her father’s condition looms large. Yet, she finds herself unable to decline his suggestion.
‘I’ll come,’ she consents.
Without saying another word, Waryam Singh puts on his shoes, picks up the medicine bag and closes the door behind him as they leave the house.
27
The Kali Bari Bazaar lies a short distance from Sadar Bazaar as you head towards the railway station. It derives its name from an ancient temple dedicated to Ma Kali and is much revered by the small Bengali community. The street itself is narrow and straight as an arrow. About halfway down the street, an alley to the right takes you into an opening called the Gallu Mal Square, a small locality of about fifty houses. ‘House’ is actually a misnomer for the humble dwellings in the locality since many of them are thatched huts and a few are shacks with mud walls and a sheet of tin that passes off as a roof. Virtually all of them are occupied by cobblers, sweepers, grass-cutters, daily wage labourers, horse-keepers and others who make up the lowest strata of society.
Walking briskly through the bazaar, Waryam Singh – with Saroj following a couple of paces behind – turns into the alley and reaches the dilapidated neighbourhood. A few minutes later, they arrive at a ramshackle little hut that has nothing more than a loosely hung gunny sack posing as a door.
Saroj is hit by waves of nausea. During the short walk from the bazaar, they have seen heaps of decomposing garbage on either side of the alley. The stench rising from them is almost palpable. The low-lying area has no visible outlet for water. The drain on the side of the alley has overflowed and the fetid water has occupied every pothole to create cesspools that have to be negotiated with extreme care. The monsoons have taken their toll on the mud-plastered walls, lacerating them with gashes that only add to the misery of the occupants.
Already finding it difficult to breathe, Saroj struggles to retain control as she follows Waryam into the hut and takes stock of her surroundings. The place is little more than a tiny cell with neither a window nor a ventilator shaft. The absence of light gives it a strange, smoke-filled aura. Groaning in obvious agony, a man of about thirty-five is lying on a rickety cot. An assortment of rags is tied to the wooden frame at various angles to keep the cot in a horizontal posture and prevent it from collapsing. Half-a-dozen round cakes of cow dung, some crumbling but a few still fairly intact, are strewn under the cot. Undeterred by the arrival of the intruders, three or four largish rats scurry around the floor as though they own the place.
The cot occupies most of the hut, barely leaving enough space for a bench or an even smaller cot. One corner is occupied by a small hearth, a couple of earthen cooking pots, a wooden ladle and a mud pitcher. A hookah with a somewhat crooked pipe hangs from a small hook on the wall. Two brooms, a basket unravelling from one side, some animal bones and a few rags occupy the rest of the floor. The wall next to the cot is splattered with the spit and phlegm from the patient’s relentless coughing. A few score flies hum busily around the wall. An army of large black ants swarms all over the floor, leaving little space to move without stepping on them.
Seeing the visitors, the patient folds his hands in respect and tries in vain to get up but is stopped by Waryam Singh. His chest rattles with phlegm when he coughs. His muffled voice forms some words but neither of them can decipher anything. Contorted by weeks of pain and coughing, his face causes Saroj to step back in fear even as Waryam Singh moves up to him to enquire, ‘So how’s it going, Jawanda?’
His words are still not intelligible but the shake of his head leaves them in little doubt. His condition has not shown any improvement.
A young woman of about twenty-five walks in, carrying a cake of dung strangely adorned by a burning coal that sits in the middle. She places it in the hearth and bows before Waryam Singh with folded hands to welcome him. Her eyes dart around the room, looking for something on which they could sit. A person as important as Waryam Singh has come to her dwelling and she has to keep him standing! She shrinks in his presence. Rushing outside, she returns a few moments later carrying a small bench.
‘Please sit down here,’ she offers. ‘That’s all we poor folks…’
‘But how is he feeling, Attiya? Has the medicine I brought the other day provided any relief?’
‘Not really,’ she replies despondently. ‘May the Guru preserve your glory! But there is no perceptible improvement yet. He coughs constantly and his health seems to be failing by the day. He used to eat at least half a chapatti till a couple of days back but now, even that…’
‘Come on, Attiya. You can be such a fool at times,’ he rebukes. ‘What made you think that he is any condition to digest a chapatti? A bit of milk is all that he can take at this time.’
Attiya stares blankly at him, her silence providing an eloquent riposte to his reprimand. ‘And pray, where do I get the money to buy the milk?’ her eyes seem to ask.
Saroj feels her heart sink in despair as she takes in the woman’s appearance. Is this how helpless, how hopeless things can become when one is mired in abject poverty? She looks at the woman’s clothes and then, out of sheer embarrassment, eyes her own. Her kameez has lost its buttons and barely covers her bosom. Her salwar, too, has given way around the knees and is completely frayed near the ankles. The dupatta is tattered and falling apart.
Waryam Singh gives the man the thermometer and takes the reading. Opening his bag, he fishes out two little rolls of paper. ‘Here! Give him this one right away with hot milk and the other one at night before he sleeps. It should give you some relief from the cough and also ease up the phlegm a bit. Give this for four days and I hope he’ll get better.’
‘Thank you and may the gurus bless you, Sardar ji. But do take a look because his eyes seem a bit strange to me today.’
‘Don’t you worry. He is going to be fine. Just make sure that he takes the medicine regularly.’ He takes out a one-rupee coin and hands it to her.
Attiya lowers her eyes in gratitude, unable to say anything that can remotely express her sentiments.
Waryam Singh caresses the patient’s head and smiles. ‘Get well soon, Jawanda! And don’t lose heart. You have to give strength to your wife too. May the Lord bring you relief soon.’
Jawanda’s lips move as he folds his hands and tries to say something.
Waryam Singh collects his bag and leaves the hut, followed closely by Saroj. Once they have left its vicinity, Saroj observes, ‘He seems to be in a pretty bad condition, Bhapa ji.’
‘I doubt if he will survive this night, Saroj,’ he says softly.
She looks back at the forlorn hut and asks, ‘What will she do if he dies in the middle of the night? That poor, poor woman!’
Waryam Singh sighs and slowly trudges down another alley.
Saroj stops in her tracks. ‘Bhapa ji, I think I ought to stay with her tonight.’
Waryam Singh looks at her in wonder. She appears transformed by her visit to the hut. ‘Really? Are you sure you’ll be able to spend an entire night in that hovel? You won’t pass out?’ he mocks gently.
