“But AIDS is a worldwide epidemic. The British, too, are grappling with it in their country.”
“I don’t know where you get your news, boy, but you had better not say things like this in public. AIDS must have come from the Africans, who are all the time fucking like monkeys, or from the Americans, who keep experimenting with different viruses to spend all those dollar grants they get, or from the Italians, those insatiable devils, who’d do their own sisters given half a chance. No, the British have a high moral code, son. They would never do something like that to their own country.”
“But, Doc, it has nothing to do with countries. You can get AIDS from anyone: a partner, a syringe, a salon, a blood bank.”
“Nonsense, you only get it from a weak will—that’s what! How come we never had this when we were young? Don’t tell me we didn’t have urges, boy. We didn’t get aroused? It was just that our morality was high. We chose our partners and stayed with them. And where did we get that from if not the British?” His eyes wore a faraway look, and the woman, too, seemed happy, for she thought our discussion was about her.
Exasperated, I picked up the receiver and dialed the NGO I knew. This was the one at Prarthna Samaj, which had visited our college campus during our annual festival and put up posters and banners and given out leaflets cautioning us against AIDS. The killer disease was here, they said, and what killed was not the disease as much as ignorance. Over two days, a human penis with eyes, hands, lips, covered in padded white satin-soft material, resembling an astronaut’s suit, had gone around shaking hands, telling us males to be Condom Men, namely, real men who took responsibility for their actions, who protected themselves and their partners from risks. “Safer sex is better sex,” Condom Man droned, in a deep voice that came out of a small microphone pinned to his suit. “Who says you can’t feel pleasure through a condom? Who says you can’t enjoy sex while wearing one? It’s a question of what you feel in here,” he boomed, pointing to his head with a pudgy white finger, his other hand on his hip. Accompanied by a group of helpers, Condom Man went around the campus, telling us to embrace him as a sign of our commitment to fight AIDS, to put the safety back into sex. If not that, then shake his hand at least, in a solemn lifesaving pact.
When the crowd scattered or eyed him warily from a distance, Condom Man would pick up a guitar and strum away to the words of a song that was deep and bluesy, in the tradition of John Lee Hooker or B. B. King. The song went something like this:
You ain’t so cool and you ain’t so kind
if you don’t keep her safety in mind
You ain’t so hip and you ain’t so hot
if you can’t be her man on the spot
You ain’t so smart and you ain’t so clever
if you don’t get wise to her secret fear
You ain’t so fair and you don’t really care
If you don’t carry no condom to wear
O Condom Man, he’s the real man
O Condom Man, ladies’ man
He is the one who understands
Condom Man would shuffle and dance while he strummed away. He’d do so in the quadrangle or in the canteen, not hesitating to climb onto tables and chairs and deliver his message from there, and the whole act was so ludicrous, so Theater of the Absurd, that hearing him, the crowd would return: boys and girls so curious and amused that they’d lock arms across one another’s shoulders and sing along happily. I must say Condom Man’s enthusiasm was infectious. It made us feel united against a common, unseen enemy. I was so impressed by Condom Man’s act that when his helpers asked for volunteers to join their campus program I decided—without hesitation—to enlist right away. I went to the staff room, and that’s where I met the real Condom Man. She was gorgeously tall and fair, with warm brown eyes. “Hi,” she said, smiling, extending her hand. She loosened the bun at the back of her head and let her hair cascade down her neck and shoulders. “Hi. I am Dr. Sayoni. But you know me as Condom Man.” All I could do was nod limply and take her hand, which was softer than the satin-white outfit she wore.
THE PHONE AT THE NGO OFFICE rang for a while. I wondered if I had hitched onto the helpline. I was about to hang up when a woman answered. It was Suchita Shah, Dr. Sayoni’s assistant, a grim-faced woman in her twenties who’d taken it upon herself to protect Dr. Sayoni’s privacy. The doctor was always in demand. She was always being interviewed by the press, always in the news for rescuing minors from brothels or for taking up cudgels on behalf of some laborer who’d lost his job after testing positive. The more I worked with Dr. Sayoni, the more my admiration grew. I began to see her as a veteran of many battles, a woman who’d given up a promising medical career to follow her convictions.
Suchita Shah said the doctor wasn’t in. She sounded cagey until I told her who I was. I inquired when Dr. Sayoni would be back and Suchita hesitated before saying, “Dr. Sayoni has gone to the police station. There has been a complaint against her by a political leader who thinks she is inciting trouble in colleges. The politician thinks Condom Man is vulgar. He says that Condom Man symbolizes free sex; he is promoting premarital sex, which is against Indian culture. He wants Dr. Sayoni to set down in writing that she will kill Condom Man, that Condom Man will cease to exist from today. Only then will he withdraw his complaint.”
“But that is absurd,” I said. “Condom Man is so effective. He works; he sinks in. Research has proved that after meeting him students think twice about having sex without a condom.”
“Yes, but you know these politicians. They want any opportunity to be heard. A bunch of party workers came this morning and started protesting outside our office, and then came the police van, and it was so humiliating, Madam being taken away like that, like a common criminal. I, too, wanted to go, but Madam said, ‘You stay here, Suchi, and look after the office.’ ”
There was a pause and I don’t know whether I imagined it, but I thought Suchita sounded like she was in tears. I had never heard her sounding so upset, not even while she instructed patients in terminal states, who would be lying in the NGO office, playing out their last-minute wishes on gadlas. There’d be a priest reciting passages from the Bhagavad Gita or a cleric reading from the Qur’an, and there’d be a strange look of wonderment on the patient’s face, the look of a child.
Regaining control of herself, Suchita Shah asked me what my business was and whether she could help in some way. I told her my problem: a woman with HIV, all the symptoms, and nowhere to go. Suchita said I should send her to their office right away.
I thought for a moment. With Dr. Sayoni not being there, was there any point in me going to the NGO office? After all, I wasn’t feeling too well myself. My cold was getting the better of me. My fever had taken up residence; it ate at my bones, my skin, my stamina, and my will. Drawing my chair close and resting my elbows on Dr. Doongaji’s green felt-top table, I spoke to the woman with AIDS. I told her how to get to Prarthna Samaj, to the NGO office, where she’d be given food, medicines, and a place to sleep. She’d stay with others who had the same problem as her, and from them she’d learn how to cope with her sickness. Before that she’d be taken to a government clinic where she’d be checked. She thought “checked” meant “cured” and her eyes lit up. “Kha sakungi?” she asked. “I will be able to eat?” I nodded and turned away, unable to bear the smile on her cadaverous face.
I led her out, holding open the doors as I would for any lady more fortunate than she. People in the waiting area stared at me, as one might at someone who was foolishly ignorant. Only the compounder kept busy, separating colored tablets from white pills and pouring and shaking thick colored mixtures in large brown bottles. Occasionally he’d stick his tongue out, run a label over it, and slap the label onto a medicine bottle. Then he’d shove the medicine at the patient through a small arched opening in the partition.
I led the woman to a cab and instructed the cabbie where to take her. I slipped her the fare money and a five-hundred-rupee note. She took the note blankly an
d I wondered if she knew its value.
Then I returned to Dr. Doongaji in his office. On my way in, the compounder nodded at me, as if to say he approved of my action or simply to suggest he had safeguarded my place in the queue. It was difficult to fathom what he meant, his being the language of pills, powders, and potions.
“Well, now let’s look at you, Pesi,” Dr. Doongaji said, rising to his feet. “Let’s see what you’ve come down with.”
With a wave of his hand, he directed me to a room on the right. I knew the place only too well: the examination room with the raised bed, the Rexene mattress, the hard air pillow, the black wall fan swishing hot air over you while you were recumbent, the stool at the foot of the bed that I’d use to hoist myself up, and the green conical lampshade that dangled from the ceiling and had had a bulb missing for as long as I could recollect.
I lay down and Dr. Doongaji bent over me with a flashlight, saying, “Say aaaah.” He opened his own mouth, showing me his row of gold fillings. He forgot to shut it.
“Aaaah . . . ,” I went, holding my breath and looking up at the ceiling. I did that to avoid breathing in the doctor’s musty breath. He peered inside my mouth, frowning, holding on to the flashlight like it would lead him to some rare, hidden treasure.
“Hmm . . . bad, very bad,” he said, his eyes blinking. His eyebrows were gray and bushy, like foxtails, and as he came closer I got the smell of sour, fetid skin.
“Wait,” he said, gesticulating with his open palm like he had just received a bolt of inspiration. He moved to the side, to where there were shelves along a wall. The shelves were lined with dusty old medicine bottles. He opened one of the bottles and, placing a finger over its neck, turned it turtle. He did this a couple of times, so that the liquid came in contact with his finger, and then he came over and said, “Now, Pesi, open wide, like the tunnel on the Khandala ghat. Imagine this is a big bus passing through, you are in the bus, and if you don’t open wide you can’t pass; you can’t go to Khandala.” I smiled. I’d heard these words since I was a boy.
He asked me to raise my head, which I did, and then he pushed the pillow below my neck, between my shoulder blades. He hooked two fingers round my upper teeth, and tilting my head back, he shoved his other hand—the one with the medicine—into my mouth, all the way to the uvula, which was sore and inflamed. Using his thumb and first finger, he caught the uvula and squeezed it hard, saying, “There . . . there go the viruses.”
I began to choke and splutter, yet he squeezed away, rubbing my uvula like it were some inflamed evil that had to be snuffed out. My eyes filled with tears. My nose began to water. My mouth felt bitter. Whatever he’d applied was trickling down my throat. It was thick and burning, and I felt my uvula swell up. I thought it would burst.
Removing the stethoscope that hung around his neck, he placed it against my chest and said, “Breathe in; breathe out.” He tilted his head and cocked his ears, as if he was trying to catch what the viruses were saying, as if he was trying to decipher their next move of attack, imminent in some zone somewhere. He blinked and wheezed, shifting the stethoscope to different parts of my chest. At one point, his eyes narrowed, and I thought I saw a slow, triumphant smile spread across his face.
My thoughts returned to the woman with AIDS. I wondered if she had reached Prarthna Samaj. “Prarthna,” in Hindi, meant “prayer,” and I wondered whether hers would be answered. Whether she would get her appetite back.
Holding the stethoscope to my chest, Dr. Doongaji asked me to cough three times, which I did. “Hmm,” he said. “Bad chest, too. It’s all this pollution, boy. It’s settled in your nose, throat, and lungs.”
“It’s getting worse by the year, Doc,” I said. “I wish the authorities would do something.”
“Authorities? What authorities?” he snapped. “There is only lawlessness here. No one is working to improve things. No one is bothered. The other day my primroses died. You know the ones outside? Such nice flowers, so healthy they were. First they lost their color. Then the leaves wilted one by one, and finally they all died. If plants can’t survive in this city, how do they expect human beings to live? Remember my words, Pesi; remember them well: the price of progress need not be death. That’s what the problem with this city is. No respect for the living. No respect for life.” He blinked. I noticed his eyes were watery, pools of misty regrets gathered over the years and locked away.
“Come,” he ordered suddenly. “Remove your pants. It’s time for Doongaji’s dhamakladoo.”
Doongaji’s dhamakladoo, as he called it, was nothing more than an injection, a savage poke delivered with such fury that it played hell with the viruses, ejecting them in twenty-four hours flat. That was Dr. Doongaji’s guarantee, the patent by which he was known. No one knew why the dhamakladoo hurt so much or why it had to be delivered so viciously, like a deathblow, but it worked wonders, always did.
While he prepared the injection, I lowered my trousers and waited. My left hip was exposed. My face was on the pillow, which smelt odd. I raised my head and looked. The pillow had hairs and specks of dandruff stuck on it. I shoved it aside, and curling my hands into tight little balls, I placed my head on them.
From where I lay, I looked around the office. On the wall opposite were two large windows with thick green curtains. At the side was a glass almari, with shelves of old books and older forgotten medicines. From the top of a wall stared a giant-size portrait of Dr. Doongaji’s father, Dr. Tehmurasp Doongaji, in a thick white overcoat and with a tall black pagdi on his head. He had magnificent whiskers and eyes brimming with hope. He, I was told, used to maintain an exquisite collection of convertibles, which doubled up as ambulances for his patients. And more often than not, he ended up paying for his poorer patients’ medicines from his own pocket. And yet he had that look of imperious pride, of fierce inapproachability, a refusal to bow down to life’s vicissitudes or its viruses. In the center was a 1979 calendar, its pages buff with age, its edges curling inward. Above that was a grandfather clock, its pendulum swinging gently, rhythmically, its second hand moving in fits and starts across its stolid white face.
I looked at the time and thought of the woman with AIDS. Her clock, too, had started its final countdown. She’d be living on borrowed time. How long would that be? Months? Weeks? Days? Or hours? Would her last days be comfortable? Would she have good days and bad days? Would she laugh on good days and sleep through bad days? And would someone tell her what they were about and why they happened? And would someone be by her side, holding her hand when she slipped into deep and permanent sleep? I wondered if I should have found out more about her. About her poverty, her pain, her real hunger. I wondered if she had family who ought to be informed. I wished I had taken her to the NGO office myself. I wished I could know what was being done and why. Like the second hand on the old clock, I had acted spasmodically, clumsily, to suit my own rhythm, my own convenience.
Great doubt rose in me. Self-loathing and anger. I did not deserve treatment. I did not deserve the cure. My self-worth was gone, gone with the woman in the cab.
I felt a cool, stinging sensation on my hip and got the sharp smell of an antiseptic. I saw Dr. Doongaji rub my hip with a wad of cotton. In his other hand he held the syringe. “Chaal,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “Come, it will hurt a bit, but bear up.”
I rose and swiveled myself off the bed. “Sorry, Doc, I need to go,” I said, slipping my feet into my Docksides. As I tucked my shirt in, I felt my mind triumph over my fever, my virus, my cold.
The doctor’s forehead clouded with confusion. His hand froze in mid-air. I noticed it was shivering. His eyebrows furrowed and he said, “Come, don’t be such a bayla, Pesi. Don’t be such a coward.”
“I’ll be one if I stay, Doc. Sorry, but I need to go.”
The half doors swung open easily. Holding the railing, I jumped over the stairs and rushed toward a waiting cab. “Prarthna Samaj!” I said to the cabbie. “Jaldi!” The cabbie knew by instinct it was a matter
of life and death. In Bombay it was always like that. Someone’s life hanging by a thread, someone’s head at stake. The meter dropped instantly.
In the cab, I thought of Doongaji’s dhamakladoo, the third-degree treatment for viruses. The syringe went all the way in, piercing flesh, piercing layers of tissue, blood vessels, and cells, into the bloodstream, into the heart of the enemy virus. What chance would it have against a hand like his? The hand of experience, which held down the syringe even after it had unloaded its contents and then along the same pathway made its way out, an axe of a needle with teeth. I tried to remember if I had seen the doctor change the syringe or the needle—if not on that day, then in the past—but there were no such recollections. I felt relieved to have ducked the dhamakladoo. At the same time I felt sheepish, for it was wrong to have rushed off the way I did, without an explanation. It was wrong to have taken the good doctor for granted, this sweet relic of a doc, who had served us well, in the time before AIDS, mistrust, and other progress-borne infections.
THE CAB HONKED AND SNARLED its way through the burgeoning traffic. Oozing past the Grant Road Bridge, we got stuck in a traffic jam created by pushers of handcarts struggling with their cargo. There was a lot of honking and under-the-breath cursing, but no one stepped out to voice their frustration, for everyone could see the struggle on the faces of the handcart pushers, their dark, spindly legs quivering, their knees shining with sweat, their gaunt faces melting under the heat of the summer sun.
A traffic cop came and blew his whistle hysterically. Gesticulating wildly, he bawled at the cabbies, who revved their engines and surged forward in a show of sullen hate.
On the bridge, brown sugar addicts pulled at lines of powder burning on silver foil, which coiled and hissed like baby serpents before disappearing into their parched lungs and throbbing, delirious minds. At the side, women cooked in burnt vessels, on small sooty kerosene stoves, while their children played with torn bicycle tires, which they tried hard to balance and roll. Under the bridge, hawkers of cameras, wristwatches, mobile phones, and transistors screamed, “Foreign, foreign,” in a way importers of other viruses don’t draw attention to themselves. Small gaudily dressed families, tourists from other parts of India, paused to consider the menu of choices, the glamour and glitz of a push-button city that knew all the right buttons to push, the right signals to send. Up ahead at the movie house, black marketers weaved a conspiracy of profit, whispering prices under bated breath, and farther up, on the pavement, out-of-work migrants stopped and pondered their chances over a wild, spinning roulette wheel. Where the wheel would stop, on which number, would determine who ate, who drank, and who got to live out his fantasy in the cages of untrammeled vice, Bombay’s sleaze street built on the assumption that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Breathless in Bombay Page 27