Hashinur had been standing by in case he was needed. Suddenly he stepped up to the Swedes and began speaking Hashinurian, which turned out to be Swedish, heavily accented, to be sure, but grammatically correct and entirely comprehensible. He went on at some length in his high-pitched, rapid-fire way. The astonished Swedes responded with a dozen questions to which Hashinur responded to their apparent satisfaction. Everyone else, including Charanjeet, stood in stunned silence.
As soon as the Swedes had left—after placing a substantial order—Hashinur was bombarded with a hundred questions: How did he know Swedish? Why did he know Swedish? Had he lived in Sweden once long ago? Had he had a Swedish lover? Hashinur smiled or scowled depending on the question. But he did not answer.
XXXII
WHENEVER MOHAN CAME to the FFW factory, as he occasionally did, it was only to see whether there was any way he could be of use—some aspect of the operation that needed explaining, some quirk in the bookkeeping perhaps, some balky supplier. But Charanjeet now knew the operation well enough to deal with any contingency.
“We had some balky bobbins replaced not long before you got here,” said Mohan.
“I know. And two of the replacement bobbins were still breaking thread. I insisted Shabilan Bobbins replace them immediately and check their milling tolerances. I am in touch with Baenbal in Germany—”
“They are excellent, but pricey,” said Mohan.
“They have agreed to match Shabilan’s prices and offer a longer warranty,” said Charanjeet.
This made Mohan both happy and melancholy. “I have become entirely superfluous,” he said.
Hashinur confirmed what Mohan already knew: Charanjeet was doing an excellent job. Hashinur led Mohan around the factory floor to show him a new piece of sorting equipment and the most recent production samples. Mohan had become a visitor in his own factory.
“How is it, Daddy, that Hashinur speaks Swedish?” said Charanjeet, trying to cheer him up.
“He speaks Swedish?”
“What everyone called Hashinurian turns out to be Swedish.”
“Really?” Mohan laughed. “Then we all speak a little Swedish, don’t we?” The thought of it made him laugh again.
Charanjeet and Mohan met for lunch every week at Bistro 77, and at one such lunch, Mohan proposed that Charanjeet might soon take over the entire Kapoor Industries operation. “I think it is time,” said Mohan.
“Are you all right, Daddy?” said Charanjeet.
“Oh, yes. For an old man, Charanjeet, I am quite well. True, my blood pressure is higher than it should be. And I am too fat. Dr. Burgati wants to put me on a diet.” He sadly moved the chunks of curried lamb around on his plate.
Two weeks later at lunch, Mohan clutched suddenly at his chest. His face went white, and he began to sweat. “I don’t feel good,” he said. His head lolled back. He slumped in his chair, his hand dropped onto his plate with a crash. Charanjeet watched in horror as brown sauce seeped across the white cuff. “An ambulance!” he cried.
Mohan was loaded onto a stretcher and wheeled out of the restaurant into the ambulance. A paramedic strapped him down, hooked him up to oxygen, then worked over him, checking his vital signs and starting an intravenous line. Nurses met the ambulance at the hospital door and wheeled the stretcher into the emergency room. They drew a blood sample. The doctor on duty injected a “clot-buster” medicine into the port in his arm. Mohan was hooked up to an electrocardiogram machine, which began whirring and clicking. A second port was inserted into his other arm through which nitroglycerine was injected. He was given a handful of pills to swallow. “You have had a heart attack,” said the doctor.
“A mild one?” said Mohan hopefully.
“We shall see,” said the doctor as she studied the EKG readout.
Charanjeet had arranged for a private room. Mohan’s stretcher was wheeled through the wards to his room. Charanjeet met him there and then sat holding his hand. Before long, Golapi arrived, accompanied by Dr. Burgati. The doctor scowled as he looked through Mohan’s file. “There can’t be much in there yet,” said Mohan. Dr. Burgati looked up from his reading but didn’t say anything.
The next morning Mohan was scheduled to have an exploratory catheterization. An attendant shaved his groin. “That is where we will insert the catheter.” Two hours later Mohan woke up back in his room. Dr. Burgati was there.
“Nothing too serious, I hope,” said Mohan.
“It is too late for such wishful thinking, Mohan. You now have two new body parts. Stents have been placed in two arteries.” He showed Mohan the pictures, pointed out where the vessels where dangerously narrowed, and then showed him the picture with the stents. Mohan felt his eyes fill with tears. Golapi wept beside him. “What does this mean?” said Charanjeet.
“It means your father dodged a bullet,” said Dr. Burgati. “For now. You will be in hospital for three or four more days at least. You should hire an attendant.”
“We can take care of him,” said Charanjeet.
“Can you? Can you bathe him? Feed him? Shave him? Help him to the toilet? Wipe his behind? No, I thought not. Hire someone. There are servants trained to do these things. You will especially need someone once you are home.”
“We have—”
“I know what you’re thinking. But your maid will not do such work. Nor should she. She knows nothing about sanitation. She is not trained in these things. And once you are home, Mohan, you must change your ways—a healthy diet, exercise, less stress, no cigars—your habits will kill you.”
“But I eat a healthy diet.”
“No, you do not. Ghee and oil and lamb and chicken are not healthy, certainly not in the quantities you eat them. Vegetables and fruits, brown rice and beans—that’s what you must eat.”
“I know you’re a fanatic about food,” said Mohan.
“Look at yourself, Mohan,” said the doctor, and reached over and patted Mohan’s belly in a not entirely friendly manner. “Now look at me.” Dr. Burgati was proud of his trim form. He held open his white coat and turned this way and that. He patted his own flat belly. “You see, Mohan? We are the same age. And yet you weigh as much as two of me. I can do thirty pushups.” Mohan was afraid Dr. Burgati might actually get down on the floor and do the push-ups. He felt old and sick and pathetic, and finally pulled the covers up over his belly and looked to Golapi for help. But she remained silent.
“You will have pills to take that will lower your cholesterol, others to lower your blood pressure, and others to thin your blood so that it flows easily past the stents.” He held up each little bottle as he named the contents. “The pills are important, but they cannot save your life. That is up to you.”
When he thought about it, Mohan had to admit that he had known this was coming. He had noticed that he was short of breath after climbing a flight of stairs or running a few steps to get out of the rain. And there had been moments of a thick heaviness in his chest that he had dismissed as he was wont to dismiss any disagreeable news. So here he was on the other side of a heart attack.
Life would be different now, for him, of course, but also for Charanjeet and Golapi. She was fat too, now that he thought about it. “We must change the way we eat,” he said. “Cook will have to change the way she cooks.” Golapi looked at him in horror. She knew he meant it. Charanjeet had been contemplating his father’s bedpan. “And we must find an attendant,” he said.
Lahore was a city of seven million people. It would not be hard to find someone willing to do the work. Finding someone who was competent was another matter altogether. The hospital administrator suggested that Charanjeet contact Caritas, an agency affiliated with a Roman Catholic order of nuns. They agreed to send several candidates to the hospital.
The first three women who showed up were impossible. The first seemed on death’s door herself, the second was doltish, the third confessed she was terrified to be around sick people. Charanjeet could not imagine why the agency had sent them.
&n
bsp; “But, Mr. Kapoor,” said the agency representative, “this is difficult work for very little pay, and for most people the work is hateful. For a woman to touch a man in the way that attendants must sometimes touch their clients is sinful and forbidden in most people’s minds. We have to hire the desperate.”
“All right, if not a woman, then a man” said Charanjeet.
“But a man won’t do it. Men are unwilling to do such work.”
Charanjeet sighed. “What are we to do, then?”
“We will send you more candidates.” And so they did. Over the next two days, there was a steady parade of women of every age, all from the lower social castes of course, and all uneducated. “Well,” said Mohan despondently after one particularly sorry candidate had fled in tears. “We will just have to do the best we can without an aide.” He was still too weak to stand or walk without a walker, and he still had an oxygen line in his nose. But he was eager to leave the hospital and sleep in his own bed.
At that moment a girl limped into the room. She looked to be no more than fourteen. She was thin and didn’t appear strong enough to do much of anything. The left side of her face had a raw looking scar that went from her ear to her chin. She walked with a curious twisting gait, owing to a deformed right leg. She wore Western clothes—pale cotton pants and a threadbare men’s shirt buttoned up to her neck. Her black hair was tucked under a scarf.
Charanjeet was shocked at the sight of her, and at first he didn’t know why. There was nothing in her person that was particularly shocking, and he had never laid eyes on her before. Then he realized it was the scarf wrapped around her head that had shocked him. Every well-to-do New Yorker would have recognized it.
“Insouciante!” he cried.
On hearing Charanjeet’s incantation, or what sounded like one, Abinaash—for it was she—took a step backward, ready to flee if necessary. She wore this tattered headscarf rescued from the ashes of the Kavreen Style factory as a kind of totem, a reminder of the terrible fire and of the windings and turnings her short life had already taken. Wearing the scarf reminded her of her own courage.
“I have come for the interview for the position of medical aide,” she said.
After taking a few moments to pull himself together, Charanjeet managed to interview Abinaash and, to his surprise, found her to be well qualified. She could read and write, and she knew some English, all of which was highly unusual. And she was not afraid of hard work. She had some hospital training and work experience. “I have been learning to be a nurse’s aide,” she said proudly, “at the Caritas Hospital.”
“And how will you have time to do your studies and take care of my father?” said Charanjeet.
“I will take care of Mr. Kapoor,” said Abinaash. “Then I will study.”
“You do not look terribly strong,” said Mohan. He could not imagine her hoisting his bulk out of bed.
“My strength does not show,” said Abinaash.
“Are you an invalid?” said Mohan.
“I am not. I was injured in a fire. This”—she touched the scar—“will fade, I am told. I can walk, but I will always limp.”
“We will need you to stay with us, of course. Are you willing to live in our house?” said Mohan.
“Of course. It is part of the job. If I am to be your aide, I will have to be there.”
“You will have to shave and bathe my father, and feed him,” said Charanjeet. “Then there are … the bedpans.” He watched for her reaction.
“It is part of the job,” she said. “It is to be expected.”
XXXIII
ABINAASH CHANDHA HAD REMAINED in the Caritas Hospital in Lahore, not very far from the burned up Kavreen Style factory, for three months. Her shattered leg had required four surgeries. Every morning in hospital, when the nun on duty brought her breakfast of spiced rice, onions, and mangoes, with yogurt lassi and sweet tea, Abinaash would say, “I cannot pay for this. I must leave and go back to my village. I have no money.”
And every morning the nun on duty would smile at her and say “Abinaash, you are not expected to pay. The word Caritas means that you do not have to pay.”
“But I want to,” she said. “I have to.” Her insistence was unceasing and relentless.
“So, Abinaash,” said the mother superior one day, “I will tell you how you can pay. You get around well enough now. The doctors and nurses say it is good for you to walk, to exercise your leg. It is what we call physical therapy. You can help take the meals around to the other patients.”
“But I want to pay with money,” said Abinaash.
“Well,” said the mother superior, “we will pay you for your work, and then you can pay for your care.”
The next day Abinaash accompanied the nun delivering patient meals, and she did so every day after that. She would be waiting by the kitchen door each morning when the assigned nun came downstairs. Abinaash spooned the rice into bowls, scooped up the yogurt, dished up the fruit. She pushed the cart from ward to ward. Abinaash needed time to recover after each surgery, but she was always impatient to return to her rounds.
“Soon you will have repaid all the surgeries,” said Sister Hildegard, a German nurse. Hildegard had taken a special liking to Abinaash.
“I can never repay all that. The care. The food. Never,” said Abinaash. “How could I?”
Sometimes, after she had changed Abinaash’s dressings, Hildegard sat and read to her.
“I can read,” said Abinaash.
“But can you read German?” Of course Abinaash could not, so Hildegard read to her from a German book. Abinaash sometimes fell asleep to the sound of Hildegard’s voice.
One day Hildegard told Abinaash that she was ready to be discharged from the hospital. Abinaash went around to the sewing factories, but when the managers looked at her, they saw a cripple and turned her away. “I am an excellent seamstress,” she explained. “I was on the sixth floor of the Kavreen Style factory. On the sixth floor we did the fine stitching.”
They looked her up and down. “Go away. Cripples are depressing to look at. You can do better on the street begging. With that scar and that leg.” Walking through the teeming markets and busy streets of the city, Abinaash thought maybe that was true.
One morning, the mother superior at the Caritas convent came downstairs and found Abinaash sitting in front of her office door. “I want to work here, sister. I can help. You know I am good at it.”
“But Abinaash, you are an experienced seamstress and an excellent worker.”
“No one will hire me. They don’t want to look at a cripple.”
It was true that Abinaash had performed valuable service while she was still a patient, and they could certainly use the help. “But how can we pay you, Abinaash? We don’t have the money to pay you.”
“If I can live here,” said Abinaash, “you don’t have to pay me.” After consulting with her colleagues and checking the budget, the mother superior offered Abinaash a job with room and board and the small sum of six thousand rupees a month. Since her room and board were taken care of, she could send all the money home. She sent a letter with the first month’s pay.
“I am paid the same as when I was sewing, but I don’t have to spend anything. And I have a bed in a dormitory and excellent food every day. I am happy to send you this money to help with expenses.” Her brother read the letter to the family sitting on straw mats in their hut. Abinaash’s mother clutched the bills to her heart with tears in her eyes. Her father just stared at his hands, chafed and callused, the ragged nails caked with dirt.
Abinaash was energetic and curious. When she was not serving meals or cleaning up, she followed Hildegard on her rounds. Hildegard explained what she was doing, how you changed a dressing, how you took someone’s temperature or measured their blood pressure, and why. “Your body has a temperature, like the air or water. If it is too warm, it tells us you are sick. We can measure your temperature by putting this thermometer under your arm. And blood always flows th
rough your body like water through a pipe. If the pressure is too high, it is also an indication the patient is sick.”
Abinaash watched in astonishment each time Hildegard drew blood, tying off the blood vessel, thumping it with her finger, then sliding the needle in easily, right through the skin as if by magic. The ruby-colored blood rose in the syringe. She pulled the needle out and pressed a piece of cotton over the spot where the needle had been.
“How does one become a nurse?” said Abinaash.
“There is a lot of schooling involved,” said Hildegard. “It takes a long time.”
“I have time,” said Abinaash.
The next day Hildegard showed Abinaash a brochure for a nurses’ training program at the Mayo Hospital in Lahore. “It is our sister hospital,” she said.
“But I have never been to school,” said Abinaash.
“You’re smart, and you can read,” said Hildegard. “Nothing is impossible.”
Sister Hildegard could be forgiven for being an incorrigible optimist. Her father, a private in the German army, had disappeared into the freezing Russian mud in 1943. Five years later, despite all odds, he had showed up alive in Würzburg on his parents’ doorstep. He had spent four years in a Soviet prison camp, but he picked up his life as though nothing bad had happened. He married his childhood sweetheart. They had three children, and he began a successful business career.
He often told his children his story with its grim beginning and hopeful outcome, and he always ended with the words that Hildegard spoke now. “Nothing is impossible.” Despite twenty years of experience in the squalor and poverty and despair of Pakistan, Hildegard continued to believe in improbable dreams. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she could not abandon hope. Worse yet, she could not stop dispensing it.
Abinaash lay awake on her narrow cot that night, trying to imagine what going to school might be like. And what would it be like to be a nurse? She leafed through the brochure over and over, studying the pictures of people in white coats doing various medical things. Even being a nurse’s aide exceeded anything she had ever imagined for herself.
The Capitalist Page 13
