Le Gayi Pavan Ura
The Wind Carried It All Away
"Are you Maasood Ahmed?" My heart sank for a moment.
"Yes."
"Step in, it's your turn."
The room is empty of patients. I head to the doctor's room and the dark woman towards the front door, perhaps to inform Peter that his punishment is coming to an end. Doctor is kneeling over my file.
"Did you get your X-ray done?"
"Yes."
"Other tests?"
"Here."
"Let's take a look."
He scrutinizes the X-ray against the light for long, then reads the report, glances at the other reports as well.
"How do you feel?"
"The same."
"Is someone with you?"
"What?"
"A relative, a close relation?" The question involuntarily causes a smile on his face.
"I am all alone in the world; there is no one with me."
"Ah . . . Look, there is cancer in your liver. There is no reason to worry. Get yourself admitted to the Government Hospital. It is in early stages. You'll get better."
The heart stops. The breath gets stuck in my chest. The head grows so light that it seems to float. There is no life left in my feet. So my fear was real.
"Doctor, even I know that a cancer patient has his days numbered. Please tell me how more do I have."
The doctor stands up and comes over to place his hand on my shoulder. Not just the shirt, my entire attire is soaked in perspiration. "Don't worry too much. Get admitted tomorrow. I am certain you'll regain your health."
"Doctor, please, answer my question."
"Even if you don't get any treatment you can easily live for another month or two."
Bzzzzzz!
"Elizabeth, bring him water."
Water seems thick and leaden in my throat - as if something molten. Taking one gulp, I put it down.
"Should I call a riksha for you?"
"No, no, Doctor, I can find it myself. I am not really as worried. This stage was bound to come. So what if it comes earlier." My own voice seems to come from afar - as though in a dream.
Once coming out of the clinic, I take the sidewalk and reach the street crossing. Most shops have closed. I sit down the by the steps of a closed shop near the crossing. My mind is still blank, totally numb. There is a chaotic movement of thoughts in its tiniest corner. A thought I did not completely grasp has already escaped me and while a second one enters slowly, another one glides over it in a rush. The two barely manage to walk across when the first one re-enters. My head currently is similar to a room full of mice but with few holes where a cat suddenly has announced its arrival. A handful of mice have managed to hide inside the holes, but the rest are desperately trying to enter. The ones already inside want to take a peek, whether the cat has left or not. My head is suddenly too heavy. It's becoming unmanageable to keep it on the shoulders. Should I rest my elbows on my knees to hold my head? Should I close my eyes? The traffic goes on. Whew . . . w . . . w . . . w! My, I can't even keep my eyes shut. The claustrophobia is so intense I feel I am going to die. As I open my eyes the sight makes me tremble. In the darkness before me runs amok a sea of glinting, blood-shot eyes. Why does this night keep on staring at me with its countless reddened glares? It is sizing up its prey perhaps. The red eyes have started to float away in the river of darkness. The light turns green by the crossing. Let me just press down on this spot, here, the size of a pebble, hardened like a rock. Slowly the spot will increase and I will die even before the entire liver has turned rock. The doctor said the whole game would be finished in a month or two. I will not admit myself to the hospital. I will not die by stepping outside of life. As long as I have the strength to take one step, I will walk. When I can't do that, I would prefer to die quietly in my cubbyhole. People will take out my dead body, put it by the dirty sewer and seize my room. No, I will give the room to Shado before I die. There are too many persons cramped in one small room. That is why half of them have to pass their time outside the house. The boys sleep by the sewer at night. That way they will have two roofs to live. I still have two hundred rupees saved from the medicine. I will not buy any more now. I will not waste money paying doctors any fee either. They are enough for my food. But when do I eat and drink? I have no appetite. I don't even feel like looking at food. Peter and Elizabeth have walked past me - just a yard away - holding each other. Like a victor, Peter held the cigarette in his mouth like my dog once had come to me clutching a mouse in his jaws. His neck grew taut and turned into an extension of his back, his tail erect, touching the sky. As long as the mouse kept writhing, he kept jerking it. When it died, he dropped the mouse on the ground, and for a while, kept hovering around all puffed up. Then he lost interest. An eagle dove down to snatch up the mouse and flew away. I sat by the small bridge and he lay down resting his mouth over the paws. Silent, weary, distant from everything in this universe, a lonesome unit cut off from all else. What happened to the excitement? The mouse that had stirred him so much was now in the eagle's claws. But he had lost all interest long before the mouse became the eagle's prey.
Elizabeth talks while laughing and laughs while talking. Elizabeth, I cry, hey you Elizabeth, listen, I have something important to tell you, just what you need to hear. Every spirit is a jigsaw puzzle; its pieces are not simply mixed up but missing too. We borrow pieces from other spirits to complete a picture, but how can it be completed when the pieces belong to different puzzles? In fact, a few pieces of each and every puzzle are missing from the beginning. That is why not a single picture can ever be completed. The day spirits are able to find their lost pieces, the world will be heaven. Our souls are forever thirsty, too famished. Being is a mirage - a patch of sand, not water. It is an illusion to think we are quenching our thirst, that our spirits are being completed, lost pieces are being retrieved. Nothing happens. After the initial passion, you two will rest your chins on your paws and stare into the atmosphere and the eagle will have snatched the mouse. Listen to me, Elizabeth. I know it. I am telling you from my own experience. They are on their way to somewhere holding each other by the waist. Why the hell are you shouting? We all live out our own experiments. Your and Safia's love affair was so grand and passionate, like a bursting lava, like torrential tempest. It was so difficult to pass the day at work. Her face was before your eyes every moment. Come evening, you would run off to her home. Whenever you could steal a private moment with her, you would peer into her eyes and life seemed to converge to a solitary focus. There were rumors of her getting married somewhere and your world seemed to descend into darkness. She cried her eyes out and you went and made vows at shrines and got amulets from saints. Then your prayers were answered and you two got married. And when the separated ones met on the first night, the softness of silk and melting warmth, both, entered your hearts. We had thought our souls were completed. But soon melancholy, irritation and lack of interest followed. These are the various names of the same loneliness and emptiness which we try to fill up by imposing one body atop the other. What laughable solution! We would fight over little things, for hours, for days and weeks. No child was born to us. Perhaps she was barren or I was not capable. Worried what the world would say, I stayed together for six years in that hell, then we parted company. Let these thoughts go . . . now that death has finally caught up with me. I should ready myself for it. I'll buy my shroud tomorrow. I will also talk to the bather; arrange for a grave for myself. Two hundred rupees should be enough. I will save about fifty rupees and that will do for me, hahaha! . . . hahaha! Should I call a maulvi tomorrow and ask him to recite my death rites? I could wear my shroud and lie down on the funeral cot before him? I can then come home after thanking the mourners, holding the shroud under my arm . . . hahaha! Stupid, dumb! I was never that far-sighted and well-prepared in life, then, why would I be so do for death? All will be done - with time. I will become a part of the ocean of eternity. Body does not matter. So, no one knows where my nail clips, once a part of my body, went. Where is the end of my pinky which the doctor had severed from the rest of my finger after it got caught in mother's sewing machine? Mother would admonish me, time and again, not to tinker with the machine; she'd even hit me over the head few times, saying, you'd cry if . . . and one day it finally did. Cries rent the sky. I cried snuggling into mother's breasts - soft, soaked with perspiration - beating like a hammer. There was no end to my wails. She collected me in her arms. "What did you do? What will I do now?" The children who had hurried over to our place stood dumbfounded. The little Kamni gawked among them. Her bright brown eyes seemed to fall out of their sockets. Her face was colorless. Her little mouth was ajar and wonderstruck.
"Kapil, go run to the hospital and get his father." Kapil ran off bare-chested, pulling his shorts and his snot as well. Raising her head over the wall Kapil's mother inquired, "What happened, Massu's mother?"
"Got his finger caught in the machine. Hai, if I had known, would I have kept the machine open here?"
In the open beyond the jute curtain, cleaning the drain by the quarters, Kalu Bhangi asked in a worried voice, "Bibi, what happened? I'm coming in, so veil your head." My mother drew her dupatta over the side of her face. Dark skin glistening under the sweat, the dhoti tied tautly around his loins, a badly soiled turban wrapped around the head, the dark drops of filth dripping continuously on the floor from the broom in his hand! He tossed the broom to one side. "Children, make room." He steered the sowing machine wheel back and forth. My cries were reaching heaven. "Brother, leave it lest it gets worse."
"No, Bibi, the finger has come out. Bravo, Massu, pull your finger." He pulled my trembling hand. The blood-drenched finger had been freed. I twisted and turned while holding the left wrist in my right hand. Kapil's mother came in panting in her soiled sari. You could always see dirt lines on her blouse made by the creases on her belly. The smell of asafetida and turmeric wafted from the skin as always. "Massu's mother, don't worry; all will be all right."
"Kapil's mother, I don't have a good feeling."
"Keep heart. It is Bhagwan's kindness that the injury is not serious."
Kalu lifted me up and started towards the hospital. My mother came after us as far as the jute curtain.
"Go to his father first."
"Bibi, don't worry."
My cries had changed to sobbing. A procession of children followed us. A voice issued from Kalu's soiled moustache, which turned inward upon his upper lip: "The grown ups get hurt every now and then. Crying doesn't become you."