Hijab
Page 26
Today, I had delivered Nusrat’s baby against many odds. Yes, the baby’s collar bones were broken but he survived the ordeal. Nusrat will be discharged either tomorrow or the day after. A baby is born, and a son has died. Other than these, what do I know about her? If I see everyone’s life in such a cross-section how close to the truth can I get?
Is the way I see and perceive, wrong? There are lots of other people living in Amoka, who don’t come to see me in this hospital. Why is it that only things like suicides, drugs, murders, anguish, and terrorism come to my attention? Why only the dark side? The orange-haired man started screaming profanities again. I closed both my ears and eyes.
Had I known answers to all my questions, would I be sitting on the toilet bowl in the middle of the night chanting Pranayama?
I came out of the room and stood by the window. There was not a single star in the sky. I stared at the sky and even as I did so, I felt that there was something going on there. Sure enough, suddenly the sky turned purple as if someone was painting it in broad brush strokes. Disneyland’s 10 pm fireworks came to my mind. I thought I was in the middle of a dream. I pinched myself and confirmed that was not so. It was almost as if someone was projecting the sky with luminous purple from a projector. Five minutes later, the sky turned dark green and yellow. Five more minutes later, it was pink in colour.
The sky was a cacophony of colours. It seemed as if a game of Holi was being played in the sky. The pervasive jumping lights came through the window and reflected on my face. I did not know what it was or what exactly was happening. The whole show seemed like a large-scale replica of a Jeetendra–Sridevi movie song set. I stood there witnessing it.
I had seen a rainbow in the sky but never seen the sky bathed in rainbow colours one after the other. Stephanie who was standing behind me said, ‘Aurora Borealis. Northern Lights. Doc, how fortunate are we! People go to Cook County and wait all night to watch this.’
People from all over the country come to Minnesota to watch the beauty of Aurora Borealis. They wait for hours to get a glimpse of its magic. Apart from Iceland, it is only in our town that the majesty of this natural phenomenon can be seen so well. I had heard that our eyes do not do justice to these lights caused by the convergence of sun, air and the earth’s gravitational field. I was witnessing it for the first time.
The whole expanse of the sky turned into a fabric of purple, green, yellow, pink and red. It felt as if I was transported to a divine world. I was pinching myself hoping that this should not be a dream. I went on YouTube on the phone in my hand and searched for ‘Northern Lights’. There were some videos that came up. But it felt that none of these high definition videos did any justice to the feast of colours that I was witnessing.
Stephanie said, ‘Doc, keep the phone aside. Trust me. By the time you try to confirm if this is an illusion or real, this beautiful spectacle will be over. Just enjoy.’
I picked up my phone again. My camera did not have enough pixels to capture this beauty in all its glory. I took a picture. It was slightly hazy. I sent the same picture to Radhika with the message, ‘We have an Aurora Borealis happening in our town.’
I got her reply, ‘What is it? Looks very hazy.’ She had obviously not seen the picture I sent. I did not bother to explain. She also had perhaps not slept all through the night.
The sun had risen outside. I washed my face and poured myself another cup of coffee. As I was leaving, I thought of talking to Nusrat once, in the maternity ward upstairs. I went to her ward. She was also awake and was speaking to someone in Sanghaali. As soon as she saw me, she disconnected the phone and smiled, ‘Come doctor, have a seat.’
She looked tired. The baby born just a few hours ago was sleeping in his crib.
I didn’t quite know what to say. ‘Nothing really. My shift has ended, and before I go home, I thought of talking to you once.’
She smiled weakly, ‘When will they discharge me?’
‘Usually after such complications, they keep you for a minimum of three days. If you recover quickly, we can perhaps discharge you even earlier.’
‘Oh…alright.’
‘Do you have something important that you have to do?’
Nusrat looked at me strangely implying if this was even a question to be asked.
I was embarrassed and immediately tried to change the subject, ’Didn’t anyone from your home visit you to see the baby?’
She did not answer that question either.
The baby woke up and started crying. She picked him up for feeding.
Both the arms of the baby dangled by its sides. The collar bone probably pulled a bit and he started crying loudly.
She gently moved the baby’s arms to the side. She placed two soft pillows on her thighs as a support to the baby’s arms and started feeding him.
I glanced at the label on the crib. It had the baby’s name on it: ‘Mohammad Igal’.
I looked at Nusrat, surprised.
‘Don’t worry, doc. He shall not be a terrorist. He cannot, even if he wants to.’ And then she started sobbing loudly.
I kept looking for some motion—a twitch, flicker or even a small muscle fiber to fibrillate from the little fellow’s tiny fingers peeping out of his blanket.
Acknowledgements
Our sincere thanks to
M.S. Nataraj, Professor Narayan Hegde, Uday Datta, Pranita Kaginele, Prajwal Kumar, Rachel Fedorchak and Anjum Hasan for their valuable feedback.
Kanishka Gupta, our agent without whom this book would not be possible.
Sayantan Ghosh, our commissioning editor for meticulous editing.
Team Simon & Schuster India for production, marketing and distribution.
Vivek Shanbhag and Arunava Sinha for their nice words.
Guruprasad Kaginele
Pavan N. Rao
First published in India by Simon & Schuster India, 2020
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Copyright © Guruprasad Kaginele, 2020
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