WELCOME CHILD

Bongs love their English and have many a Benglisized words and phrases to their credit. One such word is 'issue'.  While to the rest of the world this simple word would mean either a problem statement or an episode in the publishing world, to the learned Bongs however it could also mean children...for instance if some elderly were to ask you koyta issue tomaar means how many children do you have? 

Long time ago I was asked by the Editor of the quarterly magazine for National Insurance at Calcutta (it hadn't turned Kolkata then) to write for the Spring Issue....funnily  since I was an expectant father,  I wrote a few lines to my child yet to be born in the spring of '91. I then got it typed on the old type writer. As luck would have it, Debi was the Deputy Editor of the magazine and when she saw what I had written, she refused to publish it, not because it was unfit but she felt it was too personal to be shared. She kept the paper neatly folded along with her treasured possessions. It lay there untouched and unseen by anyone till my daughter turned 21. Debi was trying to put together an album with pictures of Mrittika and then I suggested to put this poem as a preface to the photo album...and she agreed. 

Sharing with you today, the lines written nearly a quarter of a century ago to my child to be born. Today I still believe in what I told my child then and happy to see her take on a profession where she will heal the wounded and bring smile to many.

Welcome Child to this earthly abode,

An abode that is wicked, cruel,

Treacherous, wild and polluted.

But still I welcome you, for you are hope

In Tagore’s words, “Every child born, it brings with it hope that God is not yet

Disappointed with man.”

If you ask me who you are,

I won’t be able to say.

Maybe you’ll carry a part of my name,

Rest you’ll come to know day by day.

Your religion- don’t ask me child,

For the only prayer I learnt in school

Said “Our Father in Heaven…”

Beyond that I know not much

Don’t bother too much about it kid.

Just remember to follow a humane path.

Have faith in Him, fear Him, love Him and the saffron, the cross & the crescent

will all follow.

When you’ll be born

You’ll be a tiny mini pigmy.

You’ll wet me and I’ll sing for you,

You’ll cry and I’ll cuddle you.

When you grow a little,

I’ll teach you nursery rhymes,

Rhymes that times would have changed.

I might say Johnny Johnny, Yes Papa

Eating brown sugar, No Papa

Telling lies, No Papa

Open your mouth, Ha..Ha..Ha.

Funny? No child it’s not.

World you grow up in will be different, For sugar won’t be sugar any more.

Then will come your Alma Mater days.

With bags filled with books,

That’ll weigh more than bricks.

I pity you kid.

For you’ll have to bear this burden.

But Baby, learn to run and play.

Be a kid when you’re a kid.

For childhood you must surely live

For beyond this hood

Lies pain, agony & misery.

Enjoy Child.

Then my mind goes towards your future,

What will you be? Que sera sera..is the easiest thing to say.

Do I want you to be a millionaire?

No..No…Never! For becoming one

You’ll eat into others’ pockets & forget humanity & humility.

I will never want you to walk

On a bed of roses, for the first whiff

Of dust will scar your tender skin.

Do I want you to conquer the world-

Another Chenghez, Another Adolf?

No..No..Never!

I’d rather see you play the fiddle

Than see you burn the world to ashes.

So what do I want to you to be?

Not much cause my want may not be what you can and your can must take precedence over my want.

But of course I’ll be happy to see-

You help a blind man cross the street,

Feeding a hungry person,

Clothing one with none;

Will be happy just to see you sweating it out to earn your bread.

 Just be a Good Soul, My Child.

Welcome Child, to this heavenly abode,

And for your stay, God speed you well.

Yours,

Baba

January 1991 

SS

A DATE WITH HISTORY

A boy in an all white school uniform with a green blazer was trying to sneak into the compound of All India Radio when he got spotted by a khakhi clad guard who shouted, “Kya chahiye, kya kaam hai?” “Uncle, what is the height of this tower?”Asked the boy. “Kyon, kya karega?  Koodega! You want to jump down from there? Get lost before I beat you with my danda.”

The boy walked away to the bus stop across the road, clambered on to a DTC bus and headed  home. Sitting in the bus, his mind was racing from one thought to another, thinking like a cornered grandmaster in chess as he saw his king check mated from all corners. How could he have made such an error? How will I face my father and my mother? Can there be anything worse than this? One question followed another, one fear greater than the earlier one crept in, one shame greater than the previous, gloriously walked through the shades of the mind of a 18 year old boy.

Getting off the bus he went to a triangular park where he had played every game on land looking out for people on balconies overlooking the field to applaud his skill with the football or dexterity with the cricket bat. But today was different. He did not want anyone to see him. He wanted to be alone by himself. Quietly he gathered his thoughts and courage. But today was different. It was for him a choice of death today or living for another day. Cowardly he chose the latter. He had always been good at lying and ten out of ten times his gullible parents would fall for his stories. Today was not so different as he concocted yet another story.

As he walked into the house, an expectant father asked him, “how was the exam today?” “The question paper was out of the syllabus. It was very bad. No one has done well.” “Don’t worry son, it happens. Keep your calm and do well in Paper 2 tomorrow after all History is your strong subject. I am sure you will get good marks overall in History.” The rest truly is history.

It was February of ’82 and time for Class XII Board examination, the mother of all exams for school kids as it decided their future subject, college and often their future. Those were good old days or should I say bad old days of Paper 1 and Paper 2 for each of the five subjects plus you had to mug up the class XI and XII together and no breaks in between exams. Pressure and load especially for the weaklings like us was bone crushing to say the least. The Church and the Gurudwara outside the school offered little peace and comfort despite walking and kneeling inside almost daily. Dear God, save me this time, next time I will study hard was a prayer oft repeated as Our Father in Heaven...

First came the Hindi 1 & 2 exams which somehow went off all right. This was followed by English 1 & 2. Before the exam started for English 2 we were like all days made to stand outside in an assembly as the cold Delhi winds lashed our faces. Some of us got into chatting about the next exam, History. “Last year the board did not give good marks in History.” Said one while the other remarked, “It is better to prepare for Political Science”. I too nodded in agreement. 

Went home that afternoon and opened up what many say is the biggest disease in History…VD…it is not what you think…it is a book by VD Mahajan which all would have read sometime or the other. History had been our man’s subject of strength right from times he could remember for in other subjects like Maths and Science he needed chits hidden all over and copying over the shoulder of the bright boys sitting around to pass and many a times even those did not prevent him from failing.  He was in a happy mood when he went to sleep and got up early. Father served him tea in bed while his mother made hot paranthas as he sat inside the quilt taking the last minute glance at the numerous lines he had highlighted in the book and notes while preparing for the Boards.

As the clock stuck 12 noon, he got out of the bed, wore his ‘lucky’ school uniform walked out with his bag hanging from his shoulders. Head held high, he caught a bus to Krishi Bhavan and went straight to his friend’s place at 42 Rajendra Prasad Road with whom he went to school on all previous examinations.  As he entered the bungalow he saw his friend in  T shirt and track bottom basking in the sun on a cane chair with a newspaper in his hand. What nonsense he felt, there is no time left and here is the Lord of Kunchenjunga sitting as if he had all the time in the world.

“Jaldi kar or else we will be late for the exam,” he shouted and was stunned by his friend’s response…”Why didn’t you come for the exam in the morning? There is no exam now…it is all over!” “It can’t be, show me the calendar”. “See the Paper, man”, as he handed the exam question paper. On it was written, ISC History Paper I, Starting 9 am,  8^th February 1982. Indian History is replete with many mavericks and fools but none as big and foolish as our man today. History has seen many an empire crumble and many a king fall to his ignominy but none more than our man today….couldn’t even check the time table of the most important exam of his life time!

Crestfallen he rushed to the school and went to the principal’s chamber and with tears pouring out explained what had happened. “Father, I mistook it for a 2 pm exam…please Sir do something…give me an hour to write at least…Father you can do it…please Father…“ he pleaded. “Son, seeing your empty desk we asked your friends for your telephone number to ring you up but they did not have it”, said the Principal in white robe. “We even wanted to send the school car to bring you but some of your friends said you wanted to skip this exam to prepare better for the next, so we didn’t and now we can’t do anything. It is completely out of our hands now.” 

And that's when the boy walked from the School Gate to AIR station at Parliament Street with just one thought in mind....only to be denied again entry to the Pearly Gates...maybe to live again.

 Next day the boy came to give the History Paper 2, on the right date and time. It was World History and he rattled off one answer after another and was certain by the end of the day that Paper 2 would help him score over 80 percent and let him cross the Rubicon of overall 40 percent in the aggregate for each subject. He would realize his folly when the final results were declared after a month, History 2 was not marked for him….it appeared as ‘Nil’. When he saw the marks as they hung outside the school gate he calculated 67 percent in 4 subjects. He felt elated after a nerve wrecking time in between exams and this day, so he rushed to tell his parents of the good news.

Sixty seven percent in Humanities did please his parents. Seeing their happiness he felt bold enough to share what had happened that fateful day. Normally the mother would distribute sweets in the colony whenever the results of her daughter were declared but today she wept and said no more. No amount of consolation by the father worked and neither did the son’s holding her feet for hours.

History is truly a funny subject. With his mark sheet he couldn’t believe he had come into the cut off marks zone for admission and was standing in the queue for an interview of a good college trying to explain His-story to the History Head of the Department. “I can get you a letter from my class teacher in school, Ma’am, that I was good in History. Please do not reject my admission.” The teacher possibly saw the boy was for once speaking the truth and cleared him for admission.

It was the day that the mother herself went to the mithai shop and got laddoos packed for colony and her office and felt happy as all said, “Badhai Ho! Beta ko Hindu College mein admission mila hai…sports quota mein nahin…merit pe? Wah Wah..Badhai Ho!!

A Tale Told by an Idiot

What adorns the walls of most homes these days….it’s the 51-inch or the 48-inch or may be the much smaller 32-inch or 26-inch (hope nobody is getting other ideas!) wall pieces called the Idiot Boxes. Over the years they have become sleeker, smarter, flatter with fancy names like Bravia and Aquos.   Wow!

It was the year 1973. I was a little girl of about eight who had been transported from a tiny town near the Bihar-Bengal border called Chittaranjan to the big, bad metropolis called Bombay. That was when I first saw the tiny box called TV…..not in our own house but in another apartment across the road. My father showed it to me from the window even though from that distance I could not make much of it. All I could gather was that it was a rectangular box and on its screen some pictures could be seen.

My next proper encounter with this box was at my uncle’s place in Calcutta where I stayed for about three years completing my schooling. This was the late seventies when Thursdays meant ‘Chitrahaar’ and weekends meant ‘Movietime’. Death of a former President or Prime minister meant endless days of classical music. Election meant two-three movies a day!!  Sports meant 5 days of non-stop cricket. News meant Doordarshan - Gitanjali  Aiyer and Minu Talwar , Usha Albuquerque and Tejeshwar Singh. Smart haircuts, printed chiffons and silks, strings of pearls….. but,of course, we saw them all in black and white. Very sedate…very sophisticated… unlike the garish purple and shocking yellow suits which adorn the modern news readers…there are now so many of them we cannot even remember their names!!!  

Kids these days are used to these fixtures on the walls which they can switch on with a remote in the bedroom or in the living room lying down or sitting up, studying or eating. But watching television in those days was a grand family affair, almost like a ritual. Doordarshan began only in the evening. Doordarshan’s signature tune could be heard emanating from every home sharp at five. Remember its ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ logo? Evening tea had to be completed on time. On Thursdays by eight o’clock servants made sure their work in the kitchen was complete, ‘rotis’ made, oldies served their dinners whether they were hungry or not. School going kids like me, made sure that all homework and assignments were done, bags packed by the cut-off time. On weekends this shifted from eight to six-thirty. Nobody needed to remind us…..all were on their toes. The exceptions were my college going brother and cousins- because the balcony seats were reserved for them. They didn’t have to rush to grab better seats. And also they didn’t have homework to complete or ‘rotis’ to make or vegetables to peel.

At the appropriate time we would all make our way to the living room on the first floor. Guess what, even the less fortunate neighbours would start trooping in… mothers-in-law and   daughters-in-law with their kids in tow. The “durrie” would be spread on the floor and all of us…the lesser mortals like us, the ladies of the house, the neighbours and the servants would take our seats looking at the little rectangular box. At the stroke of 8.30pm my male cousins and brother would come and take their balcony seats on the sofa. One of them would switch on that little box –“the wonder of wonders, the miracle of miracles”. The Bengali news was coming to an end….Pankaj Saha was signing out. Time for Chitrahaar…a string of Hindi film songs….half an hour’s treat put up for us by the only channel that operated….Doordarshan. Many of us would still recall the Nirma and Vicco Turmeric ads that interspersed the Dev Anand-Waheeda and Rishi Kapoor-Neetu Singh romantic hits.

Weekends were a grander affair. Show time shifted to six-thirty. Saturdays were for Bengali films but Sundays were what we, the children of a lesser God, looked forward to ---Hindi movies. Since show time went on till nine thirty or ten, if my Aunt was very generous, tea and ‘jhaal muri’ would be served in the living room or “the hall” as it was called and the servants (who were young boys in their teens) would rush out in the ad and news breaks to fetch them. The balcony seat holders were all Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak fans and any other movie was not up to their intellectual levels! I wonder why the Fellinis and Truffauts of our family sat through the Shammi Kapoor- Sharmila Tagore and Uttam-Suchitra movies! May be just to follow the Bengali and English news! Show time was often followed by erudite debates on  whether Raj Kapoor’s “Teesri Kasam” or Bimal Roy’s “Do Bigha Zamin” could come anywhere close to a Satyajit Ray or a Ingmar Bergman movie!!

Sometimes things would even hot up a bit. There was this servant who, while watching a Jeetendra or Amitabh Bachchan movie, would get so excited that he would start moving closer from his rear stall seat on the “durrie” to the balcony seats and in his excitement start banging on the glass top of the centre table! Once he would have probably cracked it if a sharp word from one of the balcony seat holders had not woken him from his trance. In his excitement, while watching a Uttam-Suchitra starrer, he once managed to break the leg of a wooden chair!!

The television first entered our house in the late seventies. It was an anniversary gift for my mother. By the early eighties the television had grown legs of its own and did not need a table to be placed on. No crochet or embroidered cover was required to adorn it. It came fitted inside a wooden cabinet with shutters which would open and close. I still remember the make-Sonodyne. It stood at an angle in one corner of the living room facing the sofa. My father brought home the second set just before the Cricket World Cup in which India won-1983.

Gradually we switched from the black and white to the coloured…Onida’s “ neighbour’s envy, owner’s pride”. How we loved those big hoardings of the green serpent-monster springing its little horns of jealousy!!We graduated from news, songs and films to psephologists Prannoy Roy and Ashok Lahiri,  from ‘Chitrahaar’  and ‘Chalachitras’ to soap operas like ‘Humlog’, and ‘Buniyaad’. Our first English serials were the unforgettable ‘Yes Minister’, ‘Different Strokes’ and ‘The Jewel in the Crown’.

Much has changed…..The idiot box is no longer a box….it has become Sleek, Slim and Smart.  Doordarshan news has given way to 24x7 news channels……The television has come of age…age of channel surfing. Geetanjalis and Salmas have made way for Barkha Dutts and Rajdeep Sardesais. We have appointed Gods like Arnab Goswamis who raise questions on their own and demand answers in the name of the Nation. Has the idiot box opened up a new Pandora’s box? 

Wonder where the buck will stop!!

DS

LIFE...CAMERA...ACTION!

Internship- Nobody said it was easy...no one ever said it would be so hard...

Last year was one hell of a ride- from learning to draw blood to learning how not to draw conclusions about people...from running for reports to running for signatures...from breaking our backs in the EMS to fixing broken bones with casts and slabs...been there, done that! Thinking about it now, there were many small incidents that made us think, laugh and changed the way we looked at life.

Holi-day...A Doctor is Never off Duty

My first Emergency duty in internship was on the fourth day of my first posting- General Surgery. And it was Holi!!! 32 hours of non- stop work which included doing the dressing of two full-body burns patients and a case of head injury who after the dressing, gets up and then loses consciousness to fall on you...I needed a reason to smile. And there were plenty! It was past midnight when a man was brought in by a group of five to six guys with a CLW over his head. Of course, all of them were high on life and spirit! While two of us were attending to him and suturing his wound the man decided to introduce himself, “Hum to iss nagar ke Shehenshah hain” and his cronies all repeated together “Aap to iss nagar ke Shehenshah hain”!!! They repeated this all the while that we sutured not only boosting the confidence of His Highness but also adding to our amusement!

And then there was another fellow, in his twenties, who had come with an uprooted nail and a partially amputated finger. Once the dressing was done he asked me very seriously, “Ma’am main beer toh pee sakta hoon na?” Why not, we’ll be right here, waiting for you!

Ek Aam Kahani

There was a patient admitted in the Paediatrics ward during our posting there. He was six years old, a case of Nephrotic Syndrome, relapsing for the third time and a smile so bright that it did justice to his name, Roshan. He was from Bihar and had come here for treatment. His father worked in Mumbai and Mother had come here with his younger brother. They had decided to take room in Mumbai. “Jab tak yeh thik nahi ho jaata, hum yahin rahenge.” They were willing to do anything to see their child healthy again. He would smile, laugh, play with us but hardly ever spoke. When his mother would go out to get something he used to stand right in the middle of the ward looking at the door waiting for her to come back. When I used to wait in the ward he would come slyly from behind and pat my back, give me high fives and happily pose for photos with me. One emergency night I came to the ward at 1.30 am and found him sitting on his bed, eating a mango with the pulp all over his face and hands. “Tu raat ke dedh baje aam kha raha hai?” I asked him. He nodded in glee. “Usse aam bahut pasand hai, humare ghar mein pedh hai aam ka. Aaj uske papa uske liye Mumbai ke aam lekar aaye hain”, the mother said.

A few days after my posting got over, I was passing the Paediatrics ward. I thought I would say hi to my friend once. I saw him standing in the middle of the ward again, looking at the door. Must be waiting for his mother to come back, I thought. As I waved at him, he ran towards me shouting, “Aa gayi, aa gayi!” He then grabbed my hand and pulled me towards his bed. “Aaj main ghar jaa raha hoon”, he said, the most he had ever spoken to me. The mother smiled and said, “Aaj discharge de denge. Woh aapka hi intezaar kar raha tha!” 

Lost and Found

During my posting in Peripheral Civic Hospitals, I was working for a month in Bhabha Hospital at Bandra. It was a Monday morning and I was feeling no better than Garfield. I was late to work; somebody had put a cross on my muster on a day when I was actually present and let’s just say that it was one of those days when you feel everything is going wrong! I was heading towards the ward when a little girl, six to seven years old, came to me and asked, “Didi, bacchon ke aankhon ke doctor kahan baithte hain?” I told her the OPD number. “Tumhare saath kaun hai?” I asked her.

“Papa”.

“Papa kahan hai?”

“Woh meri behen ko dikhaane aankhon ke doctor ke paas lekar gaye hain.”

“Toh tum akeli ho? Aur koi nahi hai?”

“Papa ne mujhe bike ke saath rukne bola tha...par mujhe bike nahi mil rahi. Toh main yahan aa gayi.”

“Thik hai, main tumhe le jaati hun papa ke paas.”

“Nahi nahi, aap bas mujhe bata do doctor kahan hain, main bahar hi wait karoongi.”

“Par main tumhe akela toh nahi chhod sakti. Chal mere saath chal.”

I took her to the OPD building. She looked around, spotted her father waiting with her sister, and waved “Papa”. He came and asked what had happened. She said she couldn’t find the bike. Her father explained to her where he had parked it but then decided to go and check himself. “Aap bacchi ko aise akela chhodkar mat jayiye”, I told him. “Nahi, nahi, galti ho gayi,” he said.

I turned to leave when suddenly the girl called out “Didi! Very very thank you!!!” and smiled, two of her upper incisors had fallen off. But the gap in her teeth seemed to fill my day with joy!

If Tomorrow Never Comes

I was sitting in the Casualty at V.N.Desai Hospital, Santacruz. At 2.30am, a case of Road Traffic Accident came in. One person was brought dead. His friend was hurt on the shoulder but not seriously injured. His wife was also not hurt much and had gone home. The auto driver had injury over his leg. As the Medico Legal Case was being made, I learnt that the deceased was travelling in an auto with his friend and his friend’s wife. They were returning home from a get together. A speeding car had rammed against them and the auto had toppled over. The car sped away, leaving this man bleeding to death and the others injured.

By this time some of their other friends had also come and they had informed his family. At around 3am, his son came. He was just a boy, probably eighteen or nineteen years old. He saw the body. Then he just sat quietly on a chair in the corner. His mother called, all he managed to say was a hello...one of his father’s friends took the phone then from his trembling hand. Around him people were talking about post mortem, the police was talking to the auto driver. And the boy just sat, without a sound, without any expression on his face or a tear on his cheek.

What must he be going through? Could he have imagined in his wildest dream that he would be woken up in the dead of night to come to the hospital for his father’s body? That a man who had left home happily to meet his friends, and must have called or messaged once the party was over, would be no more in a few hours? That three others in the same auto survived with minor injuries and only his father lost his life? That suddenly from worrying about ensuring minimum attendance in college, he would have to worry about the others in his family? The uncertainty of life hit me hard.

His father’s friend who was there with him during the accident came and sat next to him and put his arm around his shoulder...and suddenly the dam seemed to collapse, the tears just flowed...and the boy wept.

This One’s for the Cynics

My last posting was in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. In one of the antenatal OPDs, we interns were taking the basic history. I was calculating the weeks of gestation of a patient when I heard my friend ask a patient, “Pehle kitne, chaar bacche hain?”

“Jee sir”, she replied.

Exasperated, he asked, “Aur kitne chahiye?”

“Bas yeh aakhiri sir.”

Normally I stick to my job and don’t end up talking or commenting on things that are none of my business, but this time I found myself blurting out, “Pehle chaaron ladkiyan hain kya?”

“Jee Madam.”

“Isiliye!” I said.

Few days later, on a post emergency day which happened to be the last day of Navratri, three of us had finished the work and were standing in the corridor when the husband of a patient came towards us. The patient had come in the emergency the previous day and we knew her history. She had been taken up for Caesarean Section. It was her first pregnancy.

“Sabh thik ho gaya na? Kya hua?” My friend asked him.

“Haan sabh thik ho gaya. Jo chahiye tha wahi hua. Sherawali mata aa gayi hai, Sherawali mata”, he said, unable to contain his excitement.

When we looked a little lost, he said, “Beti hui hai...Jo maanga tha, wahi mila!”

We congratulated the proud father. After some time we were asked to collect the patient’s blood for some test. The patient was there in the ward with her beautiful pink bundle of joy. The grandmother was wrapping her up nicely when the father came in.

“Kyun, aur ruk nahi paa rahe ho? Lo, pakdo usse,” said the grandmother as she handed over the baby to him. “Gaal dekhen hain uske? Golu hai...jab se hui hai, sab doctors uske saath khel rahe hain...Golu Golu keh rahe hain. Hum bhi use Golu bulayenge,” she said.

The father kept looking at his precious, his eyes filled with love. He then kissed her tenderly on the forehead and said, “Iska naam Gauri hai...Main iska naam Gauri rakhunga!”

MS