Above all, these daily plunges into the very heart of the poverty and suffering of an Indian slum would enable Dr. Loeb to better understand what form effective help should take. "I had been prepared to give tens of thousands of dollars to buy a whole slum and build it anew," he was to say, "when in fact the urgent need was for a ration of milk to be distributed to rickety babies whose fontanels were still open, for a people who ran a high risk of epidemics to be vaccinated, for thousands of tuberculosis sufferers to be rescued from fatal pollution. That experience shared with my son and Bandona made me appreciate a fundamental truth. It's at grass roots level that gestures of solidarity are really noticed and appreciated. A simple smile can have as much value as all the dollars in the world."
A simple smile! Every Wednesday morning, Max hired a minibus at his own expense. Into it he piled ten or so rickety children, youngsters suffering from paralysis, from polio, from physical and mental handicaps. Some of the
mothers, together with Bandona and Margareta, accompanied the young doctor and his pitiful little troop. On one Wednesday morning the bus contained an extra passenger, Max's father. The vehicle crossed the large metal bridge over the Hooghly and, with great blasts of its horn, tackled the madness of the traffic jams. No. 50 Circus Avenue was a decrepit old two-story building. A simple painted sign at the entrance announced: Estrid Dane Clinic, 1st Floor. Could this vast, dusty, and badly lit room, furnished only with two large tables, really be a clinic? wondered the American professor as he allowed his bewildered gaze to roam over the austere decor. The scene he was about to witness, however, was to give him one of the greatest medical thrills of his life.
Once all the children were in their places, the mistress of the establishment appeared. She was an elderly lady with short hair, small in build, and almost insignificant in appearance. Although she was a European, she was wearing a simple cotton sari. One detail struck the American instantly: her smile, a luminous smile that encompassed the whole of her wrinkled face, her bright eyes, and her delicate mouth reddened with a bit of lipstick. Hers was a smile of communion, life, hope. "That smile alone," Arthur Loeb was to say, "lit up the wretched refuse dump we were in with a supernatural brilliance and consolation. It was pure charisma."
At the age of eighty-two, Estrid Dane was one of the glories of British medical science. Yet she was neither doctor nor healer nor bonesetter. For forty years in the clinic she had opened in London, her long, slender hands, her gentle voice, and angelic smile had cured more physical ailments than many a specialist institution. The greatest professors sent her their hopeless cases. The press and television reported on her activities. "The old lady with the miraculous hands," as she was called, was known throughout almost all of England. In the twilight of her life, Estrid Dane had decided to go to Calcutta and dedicate her final years to the poorest of the poor. She had settled in this run-down old building in Circus Avenue and it was here that, each morning, with the help of a few
young students whom she was training in her technique, she perfomed her miracles anew.
Margareta and Bandona deposited the inert body of a small, emaciated boy of five or six on the first table. His arms, legs, eyes, head, everything about him was devoid of life. Arthur Loeb could not help thinking of "a little corpse that had kept its freshness." His name was Subash. He was a polio victim. On the previous day his mother had brought him to Max. "Take him," she had implored with an expression that was heartrending. "I can't do anything for him." Max had examined the child, then returned him to his mother's arms. "Bring him back tomorrow. We'll take him to Estrid Dane."
"The old British lady's hands were placed gently on the child's thorax and fleshless thighs," Arthur Loeb would recount, "and her eyes, her mouth, the dimples of her cheeks, all wrinkled as they were, broke into a fresh smile. To me it was as if that smile struck the patient like a laser beam. His eyes shone, his little teeth appeared between his lips. His lifeless face lit up a shade. Incredible as it seemed, he too was smiling." Then Estrid's hands began their awe-inspiring ballet. Slowly and methodically the old woman probed Subash's muscles, his tendons, his bones, to try and distinguish the dead areas from those where there might still be a spark of life. "You sensed that this woman was searching with her brain and her heart as much as with her hands," the American was to continue, "that she was constantly asking herself questions. Why was such and such a muscle wasted? Because of the breakdown of its link with the nervous system or because of undernourishment? Why had this particular area lost all sensation? In brief, what were the possible causes of each lesion? Her hands stopped continually to seek out the fingers of one of her students and guide them to a deformity or a sensitive area. Then she would give a long explanation to which all the girls listened with religious respect. The truly magical part of her treatment came only after the stocktaking. Throughout the entire half hour that followed, Estrid Dane's palms, firm and tender by turns, kneaded the body of the little polio victim, forcing him to react, rekindling in him the flame apparently extinguished.
It was absolutely spellbinding. Each movement seemed to say to him, 4 Wake up, Subash, move your arms, your legs, your feet. Live, Subash!' "
Squatting in the shadows behind the old woman, Subash's mother kept watch on the slightest movement near her child. Like all the other onlookers, the two Americans held their breath. There was not a sound to be heard but the friction of Estrid's hands on the cracked skin of her small patient.
No miracle really occurred. No one saw the paralyzed boy suddenly get up and rush into his mother's arms. Nonetheless what did happen remained for the Doctors Loeb, father and son, a demonstration of what they did not hesitate to qualify as "exceptional medical prowess." "Suddenly," the professor was to recall, 4t a series of vibrations seemed to shake the child's body. His right arm came to life first, then his left. The head that had seemed for so long to be soldered at his chin to his chest in a prone position gave a slight movement. Timidly, weakly, the life was being breathed back into that mummified body. It was obvious that the fingers of the old British woman in the Indian sari had somehow set the engine moving again. They had reawoken the nervous system, compelled it to send its impulses through that little living corpse. This was only a first result and the road to complete recovery was, I knew, a long one. Nevertheless that terrible city of Calcutta had taught me the most beautiful lesson in hope of my life."
"They look Asa herd of goats being led to the slaughterhouse," thought Stephan Kovalski watching the family entering the compound. "With his cotton loincloth tucked up between legs that were as thin as matchsticks," the priest was to recount, "the father walked in with a basket on his head containing the family possessions: a chula, a few cooking utensils, a bucket, a pitcher, a little linen, and their festival clothes wrapped up in newspaper secured with strands of jute. He was a frail man with a large drooping mustache, a thick mop of salt-and-pepper hair, and a face that was unshaven and furrowed with wrinkles. A certain suppleness about his bearing suggested that he was younger than he looked. Behind him, with lowered eyes and her veil pulled down over her forehead, trotted a woman with a light complexion dressed in an orange sari. She was holding on her hip the family's last born child, a bony little boy with close-cropped hair. A young girl with her head uncovered and two long braids followed with two boys in vests, aged fourteen and ten. Their heads were bowed and indeed they looked as timorous as a herd of goats being led to the slaughter." 424
Son of Miracle was waiting for Hasari and his family at the entrance to the hard-won trophy that was to be their new home. He had had the floor decorated with a rangoli covering. The residents of the compound immediately formed a circle around the somewhat dazed newcomers and the taxi driver began the introductions. He had bought several bottles of bangla from the godfather's clandestine supply, and glasses circulated from hand to hand. The head of the compound pronounced a few words of welcome and clinked glasses with Hasari, who could not get over the warmth of the reception. "After all those
years of suffering it was as if the great god Bhagavan had suddenly opened the gates of paradise."
Stephan Kovalski was by no means the last to join in this little celebration. Along with the eunuchs, the Pals would now be his nearest neighbors, and his stomach had survived so many onslaughts that now it could certainly put up with a few mouthfuls of alcoholic poison, even in the blazing heat. Not everyone, however, had the same powers of endurance. Kovalski saw Hasari's pupils dilate suddenly and turn a strange whitish color. Before anyone had time to react, the rickshaw puller staggered and fell to the ground. His body was shaken by a series of convulsions, his throat and cheeks distended as if he were about to vomit. Kovalski fell on his knees and raised the sick man's head.
"Spit it out. Spit all that poison out," he urged him. In response to these words he saw the lips half open beneath the bushy mustache. "Spit, old brother, spit," he repeated. The Pole heard a gurgling in the depths of Hasari's throat and saw a stream of reddish froth appear from between the corners of his mouth. The residents of the compound realized then that it wasn't the bangla from their welcoming festivities that was making their new neighbor vomit. He too had the red fever.
That evening, as the sun's disk was vanishing beyond the mantle of smoke that imprisoned the slum, the sound of a horn tore the priest away from his meditation before the picture of the Sacred Shroud. The sound was as familiar to him as the cawing of the hooded crows. As soon as he regained consciousness, Hasari had decided to
honor his new hovel with a puja. He had placed incense sticks in the hinges of the door and in the four corners of the room. Then, as thousands of millions of Indians had done each evening since the dawn of humanity, he had blown into a conch to draw down upon himself and his kinsfolk "the beneficent spirits of the night.'* Kovalski prayed with a particular fervor that this cry might be heard. "But for some time now the gods of the slum had seemed to be suffering from a cruel deafness."
Although he would much rather have shared his sleeping spot with a couple of eunuchs than with a bacillary tubercular, Big Brother Stephan did not hesitate: he invited Hasari and his eldest son to share a bit of veranda outside his room. There were too many Pals to lie down outside their own hovel, and the stifling heat of the premonsoon weeks made sleep inside the slum houses impossible. Kovalski would never forget the first night he spent lying beside his new neighbor, not only because of the sound Hasari's lungs made with each breath—like the^, noises coming from a blacksmith's forge—but primarily because of the confidences he was to hear. Hardly had the priest lain down on the cement than Hasari turned to him.
"Don't go to sleep yet, Big Brother," he entreated. "I need to talk to you."
Many times Kovalski had heard appeals of that kind, sometimes from complete strangers.
"I'm listening, brother," he said warmly.
Hasari appeared to hesitate.
"I know that my chakra will soon cease to turn for this life," he declared.
Kovalski knew well the meaning of those words. Hasari was expressing foreknowledge of his impending end. The Pole protested, but only as a matter of form. After the crisis of the afternoon, he knew, alas, that neither Max nor anybody else could save the unfortunate man. "I am not afraid of death," continued the rickshaw puller. "I've had such a tough time since I left my village that I am almost sure ..." Again he hesitated, "Almost sure that today my karma is less heavy and will have me born again into a better incarnation."
Kovalski had often discerned this hope in the confi-
dences of the people he had helped to die in the slum. It had a calming effect on them. Tonight, however, it was of other things that his new neighbor wanted to talk. "Big Brother," he went on, propping himself up on his elbows, "I do not want to die before I've..." He choked, shaken by a fit of coughing. Kovalski thumped him on the back. All around them there rose the snores of sleeping people. In the distance they could hear the sound of shouting and the blaring of a loudspeaker; somewhere there was a celebration going on. Long minutes passed, during which the Pole wondered what sudden concern could be preoccupying his neighbor at so late an hour. He did not have to wait long for an answer. "Big Brother, I cannot die before I've found a husband for my daughter."
For an Indian father there was no more powerful obsession than that of marrying off his daughter. Amrita, the rickshaw puller's daughter, was only thirteen years old but if the cruel years on the pavement and in the shantytown had not tarnished her freshness, the gravity of her expression bespoke the fact that she had long since ceased to be a child. The role of a girl in Indian society is a thankless one. No domestic task, no drudgery is considered too much for her. Up before everyone else and last to go to bed, she leads the life of slave. A mother before ever having children of her own, Amrita had brought up her brothers. It was she who had guided their first steps, foraged for their food in the hotel refuse, sewn together rags that served as their clothes, massaged their fleshless limbs, organized their games, deloused their heads. Right from her earliest years, her mother had unflaggingly prepared her for the one big event of her life, the one which for a day would transform a child of poverty into the subject of all the conversation in the small world of the poor who surrounded her: her marriage. All her education was directed toward that end. The shanty of cardboard and planks in their first slum, the pavement squats, had been for her places of apprenticeship. It was there that the skills of a model mother and perfect wife had been passed on to her. Like all Indian parents, the Pals were aware that one day they would be judged on the manner in which their daughter conducted herself in her husband's house and, as
her role could only ever be one of submission, Amrita had been trained from the very first to renounce all personal inclinations and relinquish all play in order to serve her parents and brothers, something that she had always done with a smile. Ever since she was a small child she had accepted the Indian idea of marriage, a conception that meant that Hasari would one day say to Kovalski, "My daughter does not belong to me. She has only been lent to me by God until she marries. She belongs to the boy who will be her husband."
Indian custom generally requires that a girl should be married well before puberty, hence the occurrence of the child "marriages" that seem so barbaric to Westerners. In such cases it is only a question of a ceremony. The real marriage takes place only after the girl's first period. Then the father of the "bride" goes to the father of the "groom" and informs him that his daughter is now capable of bearing a child. A more definitive ceremony is subsequently arranged and it is then that the young girl leaves her parents' home to go and live with the boy to whom she has been "married" for years.
The daughter of a poor rickshaw puller not being a particularly desirable match, Amrita's first period had come before she was married, almost on the eve of her eleventh birthday. As tradition would have it, the little girl had then abandoned the skirt and top of a child and put on an adult's sari, but there had been no celebration on the piece of pavement occupied by the Pals. Her mother had simply wrapped up in a sheet of newspaper the piece of rag that had absorbed the first blood. When Amrita would marry, she and her entire family would take the piece of linen to the Ganges and immerse it in the sacred waters so that the young wife might be blessed with fertility. In order to make this glorious occasion come without further delay, Amrita's father had first to resolve a problem, a very crucial one indeed.
As his father before him had done for his sisters and as millions of other Indian fathers had done for their daughters, Hasari had to get together a dowry. Indira Gandhi might well have forbidden this ancestral custom but that did not prevent its continuing in modern India in a way that was
even more tyrannical. "I can't give my daughter to a man who is paralyzed or blind or a leper!" the rickshaw puller was to lament to Kovalski. Only such disinherited people would agree to take a girl in marriage without a dowry. The poor man never stopped doing all kinds of calculations but they all came back to the same fateful figure. Five thousand ru
pees was the sum he had to collect before the very humblest of boys would accept his daughter. Five thousand rupees! That meant two whole years of running about between the shafts of his rickshaw or a lifetime of being indebted to the slum's mahajan. But what lifetime and how much running about? "When you cough red," he was to go on to say, "you watch the sun rise each morning and wonder whether you'll see it set."
Kovalski entrusted his new neighbor to Max, who put him on a powerful treatment based on antibiotics and vitamins. The effect on a virgin metabolism, totally unaccustomed to medicines, was spectacular. The attacks of coughing became less frequent and he recovered enough strength to start pulling his carriage again in the humid heat of the weeks that preceded the monsoon. The imminent arrival of the annual deluge enhanced his prospects of increased income since rickshaws were the only vehicles that could get about the flooded streets of Calcutta. Still, even that would not be enough to guarantee the indispensable five thousand rupees.
It was then that fortune intervened in the form of a new encounter with one of the vulturous procurers that prowled the streets in search of business. The meeting took place outside the agency for the SAS airline company on the corner of Park Street where the exhausted puller had just set down two ladies and their heavy suitcases. Struck by an attack of coughing that shook him like a reed in a tornado, Hasari was so unwell that two other pullers rushed to help him lie down on the seat of his carriage. Suddenly a face pockmarked from small pox appeared above Hasari's. The eyes were full of sympathy.
The City of Joy Page 41