And that is just how it happened. One fine morning, Mishraji
woke up, and found that he could not speak. The words just would not come out.
And that was that. The whole incident was so sudden, its causes so obscure, and
its effects so complete, when asked how it happened, some friends of Mishraji
were heard answering in the idiom youth uses these days: Just like that. He
tried and tried to speak, but the words just refused to come out, almost as if
there was a wellspring of alphabets inside his heart which had dried, and all
that remained now was a hole in the ground.
Of course, Hema panicked. The first call went to Dr. Arora,
their family physician and Mishraji’s friend ever since the Mishras moved in
here after Mishraji’s retirement. Dr. Arora is a GP, that breed of doctors
which is rare now. He also fits the classical image of the GP- tall and gaunt,
with a thatch of cottony white hair, steady eyes which give you a almost hooded
look from behind wire-rim glasses, a steady hand, and maybe a penchant for a
snifter or two of brandy in the night. He arrived within minutes of Mrs. Mishra’s
call, got Mishraji to open his mouth, stick out his tongue, open his mouth
wider, took a torch and focused the beam inside his mouth and peered, pressed
his Adam’s apple, felt his tonsils, diagnosed thrush and was gone after a
prescription of fluconazole and a cup of tea.
A couple of days and many fluconazole gargles later,
Mishraji was sitting on the porch of his house, quietly sipping tea, and still
quite unable to speak when Bipin babu walked in the gate, nonchalantly walked across
the lawn, pulled a chair, sat in front of Mishraji and stared himself into
discomfiture when even five minutes after his arrival, Mishraji did not say
anything.
Bipin babu: “If you are not going to ask me for tea, you
could at least have asked me to take a seat.”
Mishraji: “…”
Bipin babu: “Today’s newspaper is there?”
Mishraji: *shakes head*
Bipin babu: “Newspaper wallah did not come?”
Bipin babu is a very close friend of Mishraji. Both worked
in the pensions office together for nearly twenty five years, having joined as
a clerks, and risen through the ranks together till they both took VRS a few
years ago, and moved here. Bipin babu is a Bengali from Siliguri born to a
family settled in Bihar, while Mishraji is a brahmin from Darbhanga in Bihar,
whose family chose to settle in Durgapur. By some strange coincidence, the
young sons of both families chose to make a life in the capital, met during a
pensions’ office interview and have been very close friends since. Bipin babu’s
is a widower whose daughter lives in Bangalore with her family, and he has
returned this morning from a visit to Bangalore. Hema, Mishraji’s wife enters
this scene before it becomes anymore awkward, and fills Bipin babu in. Bipin
babu promptly explodes.
“What does that Arora know? When was the last time he
treated anybody apart from middle-aged, fat, hypochondriac hags?”
All of a sudden he realizes that Dr. Arora is also the
family physician of the Mishras and stumbles in his voluble condemnation of Dr.
Arora.
“I mean…I mean..it has been two days now! Kisi aur ko dikhana chahiye, ab. I say
we take him to AIIMS, kyon, Mishraji?”
This is one sentiment Hema is totally in accord with.
***
And that is how Mishraji visited that august centre of
healing for the first time in his life, as a part of a small caravan of
wellwishers who are there to support him in his hour of need. Led by the puny,
hirsute and loquacious Bipin babu, he found himself at the back of a small
wedge of people who push through the crowd in the OPD at AIIMS, beset by the
simultaneously clean and dirty antiseptic smell that all hospitals seem to
carry. By a combination of divine timing and his silver-tongue, Bipin babu has
managed to secure him an appointment with a MD thus it is that Mishraji got his
tongue scraped at depths he did not even know existed, his mouth examined at
all sorts of angles and under the light of all sorts of torches, and got sent
back home with a different gargle-mouthwash and instructions to return after
three days when the test-results are in.
And three days later, Mishraji is back, for the second time,
to a place he has ever been to, in well over 40 years. He wants to tell them that he has had enough
of this nonsense, that he doesn’t want to get checked up anymore, he doesn’t
want to foul his mouth with anymore of those mint-smelling, nasty gargles, that
he is fine without speaking, thank you. But of course, there are no words, and
this time the young, fresh-faced intern passes him over to a gray haired throat
specialist who goes through the same routine, orders some more tests,
prescribes some other gargle-mouthwashes and advises them to return after three
days.
***
Mishraji feels like he has become a spectacle now. He sits
on the porch, while a host of people seems to arrive, one by one, to see him. He has lived a major part of
his lifetime in this city, and has known a lot of people. As news of his
ailment spreads (phones!), a lot of those friends and relatives and relatives
of friends and friends of relatives he knows come to visit, and express their
sympathy. It is a familiar cycle- the male of the family usually comes to sit
by him on the porch, feeling as uncomfortable as Mishraji himself is, while the
females usually go on to the sitting room with the kids, discussing the history
of Mishraji’s illness with Hema in stage whispers he can all too well hear. The
kids run around the house unconcerned about Mishraji, or the stage-whispering
going on in the sitting room or the discomfiture of the male of the family as
he sits on the porch with Mishraji, wondering what to say, or whether to say
anything at all, because speaking in front of a person is often like leaving on
the next person the burden of responding, and in this current situation,
Mishraji is…well, slightly hindered from responded. And yet, you cannot go
visit a person and say nothing and come back. And so, the situation on the
porch usually degenerates into a monologue from the unfortunate visitor.
“Heard from Garewal about your…situation. Could not stop…….anyway,
it had been long since we had met, this also gave us an excuse to see you. Don’t
worry, before coming I spoke to Rajesh- you remember Rajesh?- the son of
Patiyal who used to live next door to me?, yes he is a doctor now, preparing
for his MD now…he told me- nothing much to worry, probably some kind of fungal infection…How
is Abhishek doing now? (Abhishek being Mishraji’s son) Last I heard he had
moved to California, no? Yes, the son of my brother is also there, in New York.
I will send the number, probably they will meet sometimes. Also, Guptaji’s
daughter has moved to Canada- remember Guptaji…..”
Sometimes, Mishraji
wants to tell them that he is fine, he has just lost his voice, it not as if he
is suffering from cancer or something.
***
Mishraji has decided that this is the final time he is
coming to a hospital for this particular ailment. He has had enough. He is
sitting in front of the gray haired throat specialist, flanked on either side
by Bipin babu and Hema, as he goes through the reports of the various tests he
had ordered. Mishraji wonders what they say, the extracts of his body. He wonders
about the ancient customs of fortunetelling where they foretold by studying the
innards of animals they slaughtered mercilessly. He is wondering if these
arcane specialists similarly studied his future in his sputum and the patterns
the scraping off his tongue made on a slide, pressed under a coverslip and
viewed a few thousand times magnified. What kind of news is this person with
grey hair and rimless specs and antiseptic smell going to give him here? And
will I be able to thank him after he has pronounced the worst, he wonders, as
the half-forgotten lines from a poem read long ago float in his mind.
“I am afraid,” the doctor addresses Mrs. Mishra, “Your
husband’s reports are perfectly fine.”
“Then, then…”
“I said he is perfectly fine. He is suffering from no
ailments of the throat.”
“…”
“I suggest you take him to see a colleague of mine. Here, I
have written a referral.”
He proffers a sheet with a card stapled to it. Mishraji
watches Hema as she receives it, reads it and processes the information. Then
she stands up with an explosive force which almost sends the metal and plastic
and rubber chair crashing back.
“A…a…psychiatrist,” It is almost as is Hema is suffocating
in her anger. “You are suggesting that my husband is faking it?! How dare you?”
Hema almost climbs the table to set herself upon the grey haired specialist,
but Bipin babu intervenes and leads her out of the chambers. Mishraji follows
them, silent and docile as a child.
***
Mishraji is not a tall man. He barely stands five foot five
in his shoes and is losing hair so that only a fringe is left around the sides
of his head now, the rest of it left shiny, bald, spotted and mildly helpless.
He sports a toothbrush moustache and wears carbon-frame glasses. He used to be
an avid reader of newspapers, but now does not. Now he merely sits on the
porch, sipping cup after cup of tea, watching the shadows move from one of the
lawn to another. Wondering, thinking. These shadows flicker before him like
black and white film- moving on and on and on, and repeating every day. No one
comes to visit him anymore, except Bipin babu, who comes every day, sits with
him for a half-hour, tells him of what is happening in the world of relatives
and friends and other people at large.
And then there is Hema. His silent Hema who would climb on
the table of the doctor who would call him mentally ill. His rock of fortitude.
Hema who never complained through all those years when there was never money
for anything apart from the education of Abhishek, who was always there waiting
for him in the evenings, no matter how late he came from work, who fought him,
who teased him, who loved him through all those grey years, but never once lost
faith in him, never once carried an argument of the night over to the morning.
Who stands by him even when his only son has replied to her mail that he is
bang in the middle of a very important project and cannot possibly visit for
another two months and it is not like father is very serious anyway, and has
sent money for the best possible psychiatric care available.
Strangely, the clearest memory Mishraji has of a young Hema
is not of his wedding night or any of the days or nights immediately following
that. The Hema he most clearly remembers is from the time he took her to her
father’s place for the first time. Back to her home in Darbhanga, so her
grannies could see her one more time. So, she and he were seated in this small
room at her ancestral place, and those ladies would come to see them, to give them
their blessings. And there were those three girls- Hema’s cousins, supposedly,
with tongues moving faster than a darji’s
scissors and wits even sharper. How they were joking around and taking his
case, and how he, with his leaden wit was trying and spectacularly failing to
counter them. He remembers Hema, all decked up and bejeweled and with bright
eyes and shy smile, trying to suppress her laughter at his clumsy wit. That
image is imprinted in his brain, those girl’s voices and Hema’s silent laughter.
He thinks about his struggle through college, the early days
of his career, venal superiors. He thinks about the people who took bribes from
people the age of their fathers. He remembers the nights of frustration, when
he would come home and get drunk in frustration and Hema would put him to
sleep, caressing his head, trying to melt his impotent anger. He remembers the
overlooked promotions and his heart surges molten lava inside his chest, and
then he remembers the promotions which he got, however belated. He remembers
the joy on her face those evenings when he came home from work to announce the
happy news, he remembers the pleasure of both of them taking Abhishek out for a
movie or just dinner. And then he thinks of Abhishek and his happy dreams stop.
And then he thinks of the last years of work, of Abhishek
going the US for higher education, of his choosing to stay there. And himself
choosing to retire.
This retirement was probably the final straw on the back of
a tired camel, Mishraji thinks. All that busy energy now reduced drinking cup
after cup of tea and scanning news article after horrific news article in the
news paper. And then the day before he lost his voice-that piece about the
children dying in hospitals, and politician who was responsible for running
the hospitals claiming some wild-ass political conspiracy behind that. Mishraji
can only clench his teeth at such specimens. He ended his newspaper
subscription that day. He doesn’t want to know the news of such a place, anymore.
Bipin comes everyday to tell him what is happening in the world. He is an
eternal optimist, but Mishraji wishes he would stop. He wishes he could take
them and run away somewhere. His heart aches when he sees Hema stand silhouetted
against the window in the late morning, looking forlornly at a world even she
is trying and failing to make sense of.
And then there was this girl. Sushama her name was, Mishraji
remembers, one of the trio who so belligerently took her case that day, the
first time he took Hema home. She got married. Six days later, as her husband
was taking her for a drive, some drunk driver broadsided their car. What a
futile way to go. He still remembers the day Hema told him. He wants to tell
Hema his heart is bursting. That it is such a wasteful way to go. That it such
a lonely, and pointless world, and that he cannot live without her. That he
grieves over everything that happened and did not.
But….
