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| Sujatha |
This is an English translation of “Nagaram” a short story written by Sujatha. Translated into English by Saravanan Karmegam.
***
….Madurai was the second capital of the Pandiya Kings. The
city of ‘Madra’ mentioned in ancient maps, the city of “Madhura” known in the
English language, and the city of ‘Metra’ referred to by the Greeks are one and
the same. They all refer to the city of Tamil Madurai—Caldwell’s “Comparative
Grammar.”
The murals drawn on walls a foot above the ground seemed to
share life in harmony with each other in different hues—Nizam lady tobacco, RK
brand’s sleeveless braziers, Warning: Fire of revolution on the way, Gospel
assemblies, Haji Moosa Textile shop (Ocean of textiles), and procession
carrying fire pots by atheists scheduled on 30.09.1973.
It was just another day in Madurai. As usual, the pots were
lined up in a 'queue of meditation' waiting for their owners near the
water tap. Small children were playing in sand without fear of tetanus. Pandian
Transport Corporation buses were busy emitting local spirit-adulterated diesel
smoke. The policemen, looking protein deficient and wearing stiff half khaki
trousers, were trying to regulate the traffic. The bustle of the city resembled
a random movement of particles in ‘Brownian’ motion. A thin, not so lengthy
procession of some men wearing Khadar shirts was slowly
marching on the left of the road, raising slogans against the government for not
controlling inflation. A multitude of ordinary masses walking without sandals,
the imposing towers of the Meenakshi Amman temple, the dried Vaigai River, and
a bridge built spanning its width—it is the city of Madurai.
Our story is about a woman who had come to this city.
Valliyammal, along with her daughter Papathi, was waiting in
the outpatient ward of Madurai Government Hospital. Papathi had a temperature.
The doctor she consulted in the Primary Health Centre in her village got her
scared of something serious and hurried her daughter to be taken to the
Government Hospital immediately. She boarded the bus in the early morning for
Madurai and …...
Now Papathi, aged about twelve years old, was lying on a
stretcher surrounded by a group of six doctors. The glass stones of her nose
rings worn on both sides of her nose were glittering in the hospital lights. A
streak of Vibhoothi smeared on her forehead and her hands
sticking out of the blanket covering up to her chest were looking bony. Down
with high fever, Papathi was sleeping with her mouth open.
The chief doctor gently tilted Papthi's head and examined her
eyes, lifting the eyelids up. Pressed her cheeks gently and checked her
forehead with his fingers. He was a professor of medicine educated in the West
and used to take classes for postgraduate medical students. The doctors
standing around him were actually his trainee doctors.
“Acute case of meningitis… Notice the…”
Valliyammal was watching her daughter anxiously amidst their
conversation. Everyone standing around her came forward one after another,
examined her eyes with an ophthalmoscope, and checked her pupil movement with a
torch. They then jotted down their observations.
“Get her admitted”- instructed the Chief doctor.
Valliyammal looked up to their faces in bewilderment. One of
them told her, “Amma…we have to admit this girl in the hospital. You please go
to that man sitting over there. Where is your receipt?”
Valliyammal hadn’t got any receipt.
“It’s alright. He’ll give it… Hey...old man! Come this side,”
he yelled.
Valliyammal went to the Chief doctor and asked him,”
Ayya…will my child be alright?”
“Get her admitted first. We will take care of her. Doctor
Dhanasekaran… I want to attend this case myself. See that she is admitted. Now
time is up for taking classes. I will attend her once I am back.”
He left the place like a minister with his entourage
following him. Doctor Dhanasekaran informed Srinivasan,, who was standing
beside him, to get her admitted and ran behind the chief doctor.
Srinivasan stared at Valliyammal.
“Please come here…ma. What is your name? Dei…scapegrace…
bring that register”
“Valliyammal”
“What is the name of the patient?”
“He is dead.”
Srinivasan raised his head and stared at her.
“Patient means sick person. Who do you want to admit?”
“My daughter”
“Name?”
“Valliyammal”
“You are playing mischief with me. Aren’t you? What is your
daughter’s name?”
“Papathi”
“Papathi… Thank God, I got it. Take this receipt and go
straight, and you will find a person sitting on a chair near the steps leading
upstairs. He is the income appraiser! Give it to him.”
“My child?”
“Nothing will happen to your child. Let her sleep there.
Hasn’t anyone accompanied you? You may go now,” he told her and turned his
attention toward his routine work. “Who’s Vijayarangam?
Valliyammal didn’t like to leave her child alone. The queue
and the thick stench floating around there had made her feel sick. She grew
angry with her dead husband.
She went straight, holding the receipt in her hand. The chair
was empty. The backrest of it was thick with dirt. She showed the receipt to
another person sitting near. He looked at her with his clumsy left eye that
opened one-fourth of its eyelids as he was busy writing. “Wait…let him come,”
he told her, pointing at the empty chair. Valliyammal wanted to go back to her
daughter. She was caught on the horn of a dilemma that took a magnificent
proportion in her illiterate heart, whether to wait there or to go back to her
child.
“Will it get delayed?” – She was afraid of asking him.
Finally the income appraiser came there slowly, evidently
after admitting his son-in-law, and sat on the chair. He sniffed a pinch of
snuff three times, rolled her kerchief like a rope, wiped his nose, and got to
work with renewed vigour.
“Look here… Everyone should stand in the queue. I can’t do
anything if you come like a swarm of winged termites.”
After a wait of thirty minutes, the receipt was snatched from
Valliyammal when she held out her hand to give it.
“Get it signed by the doctor. There is no doctor’s signature
in this.”
“Where should I go to get it?”
“From where did you come here?”
“From Moonandipatti”
The clerk chuckled at her reply. “Moonandipatti? Bring that
receipt.”
She gave him that receipt. He flipped it a couple of times as
if fanning himself with it.
“What is your husband’s income?”
“My husband is dead.”
“What is your income?”
She blinked, unable to understand his words.
“How much will you earn a month?”
“If I get work during harvest season, I would get some paddy.
Or pearl millet or ragi.
“So you won’t get your wages in cash. Will you? It’s alright.
I will write down your wages as ninety rupees.”
“Is it for a month?”
“Don’t be afraid. They won’t charge you anything. Along with
this chit, you go straight and take a turn to the left, and you will find an
arrow mark on the wall. Go to room number 48.”
Valliyammal received that chit from him with both her hands.
As her simple mind was confused with the descriptions the clerk gave her, she
was roaming in the hospital corridors like a piece of paper that was left free
in the air. She was an illiterate woman. The number 48 had then slipped out of
her mind. She was afraid of going back to the clerk to ask him again.
Two patients, half sitting, half lying on a single stretcher
with tubes inserted through their nostrils, went past her. In another pushcart
was moving Sambar rice in a wide-mouthed cauldron. White-capped men were busy
walking here and there. In full makeup, the lady doctors were going past in
white coats with stethoscopes swaying around their necks like garlands.
Policemen, boys carrying coffee tumblers, and nurses alike were all busy
walking in all directions. They seemed to be in some indescribable hurry. Valliyammal
didn’t know how to stop them to explain her situation or knew what to tell
them. She saw some people crowding in front of a room and a man collecting
brown colour chits with an ease of stacking up cards. Valliyammal went to him
and handed him over the chit. He got it from her without any special attention.
People were waiting outside, sitting on benches. Valliyammal grew worried about
her daughter, Papathi. ‘She is lying there all alone,’ she thought.
The man who collected the chits was calling out the names one by one and made
them sit in a row. When he called out Papathi’s name, he gave that chit to her
and told her, “This chit is not meant for this room. Go straight.”
“I don’t know where to go,” Valliyammal said.
He paused for a second and stopped a person who went past him
and told, “Amalraj, show this woman room number 48,” and turned to Valliyammal
and said, “Follow him. He is going there.”
She had to run behind Amalraj.
There she found another group of people crowding around. A
man collected the chit from her. The odour permeating the hospital and the
weakness from not having food for so long had made Valliyammal feel slightly
dizzy.
After half an hour, she was called. She entered the room. Two
men were sitting in the chairs facing each other and scribbling something with
a pencil. One of them scrutinised her chit, flipped it again and again, and
said:
“You are coming from the O.P. department. Aren’t you?”
She couldn’t reply to this question.
“It is written to admit the patient. But no bed is empty. You
may come back here exactly at seven in the morning.”
“Where should I come?”
“Here…the same place. You can come here directly. Okay?
When she came out of the room, Valliyammal was very much
worried about her daughter, who she had left for more than one and a half
hours. She didn’t even know how to go back to her daughter. All the hospital
rooms were looking similar with the same person sitting in front of all the
rooms and collecting the chits. In one of the wards, so many persons were lying
on beds with their legs or hands lifted up, tied with bandages. In another
ward, small children were crying, wrinkling their faces. Everywhere machines,
patients, and doctors—she was still unable to find the way to reach out to her
child.
She called out to one lady doctor and described the place
from where she had left her child. “Many doctors were standing there, talking
to each other. They asked me about my income. Some even told me that I don’t
have to pay any money. I have left my child there, Amma,” she narrated.
She went by the way the lady doctor has shown her. The door
was locked. The fear that was till then creeping into her heart had now become
a fright. She started crying, stood in the middle of the corridor, and wailed.
A man going past told her to move aside and cry. It seemed that crying there
seemed as uninteresting as the smell of aseptic liquids.
“Papathi…Papathi… Where will I see you again? Where will I
search for you?” She kept walking, talking to herself. An entrance gate was
visible that side. It was the exit door of the hospital. It was kept open, and
only those who went out of the hospital were permitted through that gate. She
could recollect that she had seen that gate.
She came out. She now remembered that she had entered the
hospital through another entrance after walking a long distance from this gate.
She ran towards that entrance and reached the other gate. She remembered those
wooden steps. Yonder, there lay the empty chair of the clerk who was appraising
incomes! Yes…it was there!
The entrance gate had been kept closed. She could see Papathi
still lying on a stretcher with her eyes closed.
“Ayya… Could you please open this door? My daughter is lying
there.”
“Come at three. Now everything is closed,” she begged him for
ten minutes with all her possible efforts. She couldn’t understand his language
as though what he spoke was in Tamil. She couldn’t understand what he had
demanded of her. When he opened the door for someone and was busy touching his
eyes with a petty amount he received, she rushed inside using that minute of
his servility. She went running to her daughter, scooped her up in her hands,
sat on a separate bench, and wept.
The senior doctor had had a cup of coffee after taking
classes for M.D. (Doctor of Medicine) students and left to visit the wards. He
could vividly remember the case of acute meningitis he was handling in the
morning. He had read about some new medicines published in B.M.J. (British
Medical Journal).
“I told you in the morning to get that case of meningitis
admitted. Didn’t I? That twelve-year-old girl… where is she now?” he
asked.
“No one has been admitted today, doctor.”
“What? Not admitted? I have told you very specifically.
Dhanasekaran, don’t you remember that?”
“Yes… I do remember, doctor.
“Paul, please let me know what had actually happened. How
come it could have missed like this?”
The person called Paul went downstairs and inquired of the
clerks sitting there. “You people simply write on papers to get them admitted.
There is no space in the wards even to stand,” they sulked.
“Swamy… it is the chief doctor that asks now.”
“Is the case known to him?”
“Maybe… Who knows?”
“I haven’t received any case pertaining to a twelve-year-old
girl. Even if anyone had come to me, I would have told them to come only in the
morning. Two or three beds will get empty tonight. If it is an emergency, you
must inform us in advance. Or else just pass a word that the chief has some
personal interest in that. That is enough. Are they related to him?”
Valliyammal stood clueless as to what she was going to do
till the next day at seven’ o'clock in the morning. The ambiance of the
hospital was so much more intimidating for her. She wasn’t sure whether she
would be allowed to stay with her daughter. Valliyammal thought for some time
and scooped up her daughter, cuddled her along her chest, supported her head on
her shoulder as the girl’s hands hung loose, and came out of the hospital. She
boarded a yellow coloured cycle rickshaw and asked the rickshaw puller to go to
the bus stand.
…
“What nonsense are you people talking? Seven’ o'clock in the
morning? The girl will die before that. Doctor Dhanasekaran, please get the
out-patient ward checked. She must be there somewhere. If you don’t find a bed
in that wretched ward, arrange a bed from our department ward. Make it
quick.”
“Doctor, it has been kept reserved.”
“I don’t care. I want that girl admitted now. Right
now!”
The chief doctor had never shouted like this. The panicked
doctor Dhanasekaran, Paul, and Miranda, the head nurse, were on their toes in
seconds and ran to the O.P. ward in search of Valliyammal.
…
“It is just an ordinary fever. Isn’t it? We can go back to
our village, Moonandipatti. No need to go to the village hospital. It was that
doctor from the health centre who got us panicked and chased us away to
Madurai. Everything will be alright once we consecrate Vibhoothi with a
jaggery cube.”
“If Papathi recovers, I will donate two handfuls of coins
to the Vaitheeswaran temple,” Valliyammal prayed solemnly.
***Ended***
