by Dipika Rai
‘Lokend Bhai . . .?’ Eyebrows’ question brings both of them back to their senses. Everything is not all right.
‘What will we do?’
Mamta grasps her left hand with her right and squeezes. Unexpected waves of softness break under her skin. ‘We must go to him,’ she says. What will I do if he dies?
‘Sai Sidhi Hospital, that’s where they’ve taken him. I know it.’
Eyebrows wastes no time, she grabs Mamta’s arm, she will pull her the whole way there if she has to. She sees herself as the maker of Mamta’s destiny. All this happened so she could help. At last Devi has set her a worthy challenge. God, if she’d thought up such a scenario in her dreams it would have been illicit enough to make her hide her conniving head under her pillow, but Devi has handed it to her on a silver tray: a dying man, bleeding to death, with only her as his saviour; a broken woman, desperate to save her beloved, with only her as a guide. The glory of service, the marvel of self-sacrifice is irresistible to her. She will save Mamta. She will save Lokend Bhai. She will save them both, help them find their way in this world, keep them whole, force them to survive. She will give life.
Prem grabs Mamta’s other arm, and Sneha his. The whole chain waggles forward.
‘The number 35 bus will get us there. We’ll get off at the water tank and walk from there. It’ll be faster.’ Eyebrows is familiar with all the bits and pieces of the city.
For the first time in months, Mamta furtively runs her fingers over her kidney scar. How is his pain? What is he feeling? His wound is an almost exact mirror image of hers. Now our scars will bind us. She looks around, afraid someone will discover her thoughts. Save him, Devi. Jai ho Devi, Devi jai ho.
Lokend would have thoroughly disapproved of his private room, had he the strength.
Mrs Sahai, positioned like a watchdog in the doorway of ICU-1J, plans to control what happens in the Party. She casts her eyes down the corridor, filled with Party people. She shrugs. Two or three more won’t make a difference. They’ll get chased out by the staff one by one anyway. In the meantime, she has the best seat in the house, close to Lokend Bhai. Anyone wishing to see him must check with her first.
Lokend Bhai . . . Minister Lokend Bhai. The hijra might have done her a service. He will definitely become a martyr if he dies, and if he survives, why then the elections are won for them with an overwhelming landslide victory. What a wonderful situation. She picks at a piece of food stuck between her teeth. Now who can she ask to get her some magazines? Some tea? The newspaper?
‘No visitors, not allowed. Come back tomorrow between nine and eleven,’ the nurse on duty barks at Mamta.
Come back tomorrow? What if tomorrow doesn’t come? She cannot move.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ the watchdog asks with unassailable authority.
‘Didi . . .’ ‘Tomorrow.’ The watchdog moves purposefully towards the room, chart in hand. ‘Rules are rules.’
‘We can’t stay here all night, Didi,’ Prem whispers roughly. ‘Find a place for us,’ he says without saying.
Where can she put them? All she knows is that her Sahibji is in hospital. Where can I send you? My only place is Mrs D’Souza’s home.
Mrs D’Souza’s home! It’s almost three o’clock. She must not be late for work. She cannot afford to lose her job. ‘Didi, I have to go to work. What bus? What number?’
She leaves the hospital. Once again the chain, Mamta, Sneha, Eyebrows, Prem, and the mongoose cage, shuffles forward.
It is the one day that Mrs D’Souza won’t care if her servant is late. It is the day that her daughter has come racing home, straight into her mother’s arms, adrenalin-shaken and fragile from her meeting with Vikram. Cynthia D’Souza wanted to tell him of her intention to break up. She’d tried to be gentle. She told him they were young, that they should live a little, that she wanted to be free for the sake of freedom, but Vikram refused to understand. He’d grabbed at her arms, her hair and her clothes, and she’d managed to escape with her dignity intact only because his mother returned early from her boring card party.
Cynthia D’Souza put her head in her mother’s lap and cried. She vowed to herself that she would never leave the family fold again and argue with her mother over boys. Thankfully the blue marks, dead giveaways, were well hidden under her skirt. Her mother put a quiet hand on her head and soothed her hair. It had to be one of those explicable female moments. Mrs D’Souza can remember them from her own youth, the tears suddenly appearing in her eyes, her heart pain growing strong enough to split her chest and her need to cleave to her own mother, a creature so distant and antiseptic it was a wonder she’d had a child at all. Yes, Mrs D’Souza, running her fingers through Cynthia D’Souza’s thick hair, realises her daughter is growing up.
Mamta knows what she must do as she climbs up the stairs with her sister in tow. Surrounded by vulgar anatomical graffiti that neither fully understand, Mamta helps Sneha awkwardly change into her only spare sari. She remembers this same sari resting on her mother’s shoulder on the day of her wedding.
Her sister carefully groomed, they run up the stairs. ‘Memsahib,’ there is a gasp in her voice.
‘What is it?’
What can she tell her? What can she say? Her life is filled with the sound of one word: Lokend Bhai. Her world is just that. Lokend Bhai. She needs to be there for him just as he was for her. ‘I have to go . . . go somewhere, could be for one month . . . or six, I don’t know . . .’ She is shocked by her own words. ‘My sister,’ she steps aside, revealing Sneha standing behind her, like a magician’s assistant. ‘Can she . . .? Will you . . .? I wanted to know if she could . . .?’ Mrs D’Souza is in a remarkably listening mood, it has been a good day. She will make tea for her daughter soon. She waves a magnanimous hand at Mamta.
‘Of course she can take your place. But come back to me, Mamta. You are like family here. Cynthia adores you. Does your sister know the job? I won’t pay her what I pay you. After all, she has no experience.’
‘Yes, memsahib. Of course, memsahib.’ Facing her mistress, she quickly retreats to the door, while Sneha is ready to dive down and grasp Mrs D’Souza’s feet. The sisters run down the stairs to where Prem is waiting for them holding an empty cage. His city shirt doesn’t provide good shelter for the mongoose. Raja is clinging to his back, digging his claws in, making the boy wince with each move. ‘Come, let me show you where you will sleep. Be on time! And no stealing at all. Please don’t disgrace me.’ Mamta needs to spell out the rules for Sneha. ‘Oh yes and one more thing, be nice to Baby.’
‘Baby?’ ‘Mrs D’Souza’s dog,’ she replies, giving Sneha a quick squeeze with her arms. ‘Say my hello to Kalu.’ Now it’s Sneha’s turn to sleep under the stairs.
‘Kalu?’ ‘He’s nice. You see that bedroll, it’s his. That’s his space over there, you sleep on the other side.’ Sneha nods. Her anxious hands clutch her things tied in a bundle with a piece of brown cloth. ‘Chacha, my sister,’ Mamta calls to the man in khaki. Chacha looks at her, he has been in close conversation with Eyebrows. ‘She is with Mrs D’Souza now.’ Mamta offers no other explanation and Chacha doesn’t demand one. From the day she arrived he’s been consistently taciturn, dependable.
Sneha clings to Mamta. More than anything she wants to stay close to her sister, to all that’s familiar. Mamta had nowhere to go when she first came to sleep under that stair, and she was grateful for its shelter. The same shelter terrifies Sneha who has had much too much time for plans.
Mamta walks out of the gate and melts into the night, just as Kalu did a long time ago. She had promised herself she would mark the day that happened, but she couldn’t tell you when she’d simply begun walking out of the gate with the same artless confidence of her under-stair companion. It is dark, the neon is blinking on the far side of the street.
Sneha runs after her into the rain. What does she care about staying dry? The rain camouflages her tears, now streaming down her cheeks, cleaning them of village dirt.
/> If you look into rain at night, you can see the individual drops come toward you before they disappear as water in your eyes. Mamta watches the rain for minutes. Should she go back to Himalaya House, under the stairs with her sister? Go back to the dispensary? She would be accepted, even welcomed, in both these places, but her life is here, at the Sai Sidhi Hospital. Forever. Her life is here.
She feels outside of herself, she must. She sees a story in her life, she must; otherwise the prospect of sitting in the rain, uncovered, would seem ridiculous enough to her to want to change it.
The only living things undeterred by the rain are the tenacious ants. Just like the ants, they won’t be able to stop her. She sees the ants, fleeing from forming puddles, but always surviving, rising to the surface on their last dying breaths, the bubbles clinging to their bodies like jewels. Hundreds of ants survive the night in her puddle alone. As they rise to the surface on their private air bells, she rejoices for them.
The morning is fresh, clear and innocent, like a washed and combed child. She realises that, though her life is unchanged – she will continue to eat, sleep, and come awake as before – nothing will ever be the same.
The hospital is still dark, but she is able to look in through the glass criss-crossed with reinforcing steel on the upper half of the front door. There is no one at the desk. Mamta stays looking, nose flattened against the transparent surface. She pushes the door open and walks in. Her throat is dry, but she remembers the pattern of the English letters burned into her mind: ICU-1J, ICU-1J, ICU . . .
Everything that looked familiar yesterday suddenly seems treacherous. She is lost. She gasps. What if he dies? What if he is dead? Don’t think about that.
She sees a man talking on the hospital phone and waits for him to finish. ‘Tomorrow . . . sweets . . . don’t forget.’ He is excited, cradling the phone, shaking his head with disbelief.
‘Babuji, I, Shi, U?’ The new, proud father of a baby boy looks up, his eyes still wet with happiness and points to the end of the corridor, where it divides into a T.
There may have been no guard at the door to the hospital, but there is an orderly at the head of the T. Behind the orderly she can see two families, children in arms, all waiting, sipping tea from ther-moses brought from home.
‘Not here,’ the orderly shouts at a couple of stretcher-bearers behind her. She presses face-up against the wall, trying to hide. ‘Can’t you see the signs? ICU –’ he points with an insolent forefinger ‘– is over there. Get out, come round the other side. No one can go through here.’ She leaves the screaming and follows the stretcher-bearers dressed in white Nehru caps and striped green uniforms, like lifers wear in prison. The body of the patient is almost covered up to the forehead in a green sheet. She has the urge to pull the sheet away from his face. It isn’t a good sign, to cover a living person’s face. What if he dies? What if he is dead? Don’t think about that.
She follows the dying man.
Suddenly the stretcher-bearers notice her walking close behind. They are out of the building now, back down the steps, going round the other side as they have been told to. ‘Family?’ the orderly in front asks without turning round to look at her.
She lies with a nod, then says, ‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘My . . . uh . . . my man.’ The words manifest her dream. What if he is dead? Don’t think about that now. She walks quickly past the stretcher and yesterday’s litter, suppressing an urge to sweep away the plastic bags, sweet wrappers and bits of rotting food along their path.
Then she sees the letters I – C – U carved solidly into wood. It is dead quiet. The nurse is on her rounds, or in the bathroom, or nodding sleepily, but she isn’t here to stop Mamta entering. She walks into the ICU, a corridor with doors on one side. She looks up at each door, 1E . . . 1F . . . 1J. She knows the curve of the number-letter combination as intimately as her own birthmark.
She pushes door 1J open a sliver. The sliver becomes a crack. The crack becomes an opening. The corridor light leaks into the room. She can see the sheet stretched even across the bed. A green bed. A sheet stretched even.
The bed is empty.
Her hand stays on the door handle. He’s gone. Gone . . . gone . . . gone. Dead. Gone. Dead . . . dead . . . dead.
She has pictured this scenario so many times in the last few hours that her reaction, or lack of it, surprises her. She will never have reason to be happy again. It is a deep bitterness she encounters. What on earth made her mad enough to think herself so lucky?
Those hands that led her back up to standing and fed her buttered chapattis were her thatched shelter from the rain, fine sand at the bottom of a tamarind tree waiting to break her fall, a memory of quiet, even joyous, retreat. All this time, it was the feel of those hands that reminded her she was a person.
And now . . . gone . . . dead. At least now she doesn’t have the added agony of loving him in person. At least now she can hoard her fantasies, and in her fantasies she has held him in her arms, melting into him like warm rain in parched earth.
‘Don’t forget under the bed. Strange man, didn’t want a private room. But it’ll fill up soon enough, they don’t lie empty for long. Here, take this.’ The nurse stands out as clearly as one of Mrs D’Souza’s Christian calendar angels in her crisp white uniform and funny crown cap, her hair pulled back into a severe bun beneath it. She tosses her a green sheet and bobs her capped head at her. ‘You’re new?’
Of course. She’s been mistaken for an employee, she has that air of service. Mamta nods, noticing the nurse’s skin, glowing black in contrast to her uniform.
The nurse can tell the cleaning woman is tired, but her day must go on. She has three more hours to her shift, might as well talk to keep her awake. ‘He came in with a stab wound this morning. Some kind of politician. I had to chase his watchdogs out of here. That woman just refused to leave. Said she’d alert her father – someone high up, said she’d call the police . . . sat right in the doorway . . .’ The nurse struggles with the language. She’d railed against being posted up north, the place of spoken Hindi and chapattis. ‘’Till I told her. I told her, “Madam, if he dies it will be your fault for obstructing the door to his bed.”’ She wrinkles her nose slightly.
Mamta nods, she isn’t sure she’s heard right . . . if he dies, if . . . if . . . IF! ‘So where is . . .’
‘In the next ward, Ward A. Lucky for him, Dr Pande did the operation. He’s the best.’
Mamta holds her muscles in place until the nurse leaves, then squats beside the tin chair, the one that was used by Mrs Sahai, arms held straight-elbowed in front of her for balance.
She quickly walks to Ward A. This time no one tells her to stop. There are so many others like her in the hospital, also stinking, having spent the night somewhere without shelter. She flattens her hair and walks on.
Mrs Sahai is standing right up close to his metal bed, giving him the election news. Lokend’s eyes are closed, he looks wan, it is the first time one can see something of his father in him. Mamta watches from the door, shaking from her own trembling and the shoves of passing shoulders.
She can see the curve of his forehead, almost count every laughter line, follow his profile up to his neck, and after that the hospital green sheet all the way to his toes, the same toes, once encased in leather slippers. Help me, Devi.
Mrs Sahai looks up. ‘Let him rest,’ she whispers, gathering command. ‘Don’t disturb him. If he could, he would make it his business to take on the ills of the whole world,’ she says, trivialising their meeting. ‘You’d better go back.’
Go back to where? Where she came from? Mrs D’Souza’s? Gopalpur? To her former life? She daren’t ask. She daren’t think. The hospital is the only place for her now. What if Lokend Bhai dies?
Lokend opens his eyes. ‘I . . . know you.’
Somehow she finds herself close to the green sheet. She touches the sheet, feeling the toes through the cloth. A deep sense of being alive pours thr
ough her fingers. Yes. She is by his side.
‘I . . . know you.’ He only wants her. They are in their own circle of light, all the others are forced to step back. They are the only two people in the room, Mamta and Lokend. The rest have swirled off into nowhere, water down a drain, leaves in a hurricane, sparks in smoke.
‘Yes, I am from Gopalpur. Prem, my brother, Sneha, my sister, you brought them here.’ She holds her hands out to him, soiled from her night under the stars, palms folded in prayer, Namaste, what a wonderful greeting, acknowledging the divinity in the other’s soul. ‘The box of sweets,’ she tries to explain again, ‘at my wedding. You came. You gave me a box of sweets with a picture of Devi on it. I remember it was cashew barfi’ – she can recall everything in fine detail – ‘and buttered chapattis.’
‘No . . .’ he grasps her hands tightly. Mrs Sahai visibly twitches with revulsion at the filthiness of Mamta and the stale odour of her skin. The painkillers have made him groggy. ‘Not Gopalpur.’ And that is all his body can manage for the day. He has lost much blood, and though stable for the time being, the situation could turn in an instant.
Their fingers entwine. She closes her eyes, out of his line of sight. Oh, Devi, let me rest in this moment.
Mamta has been taken, used, reused, discarded and defiled, in so many ways, that this sensation of holding a man’s hand, purely and simply, without thought or panic is utterly new to her. It is the one action capable of erasing her husband’s face, the template of cruelty, from her mind.
Chapter 15
MRS SAHAI CONCLUDED THAT HE WAS a hopeless case. All month long she tried to convince him to take up the political baton again. That damn village girl showed up to kill her plans. She saw the election zeal, if she could call it that, seep out of Lokend’s pores. He would never become a politician. There was no reason for her to waste her time on him.
