Every Day We Disappear

by Angela Long

Hand-picked by Kalyan – a harm-reduction network formed to educate communities about the risks of injection drug use – the trainees had travelled to Kurseong from towns in the Himalayan foothills known more for premium tea gardens and alpine trekking than drug addiction. They had come to do what had never been done before in these parts – to talk about clean needles and abscess management, condoms, and collapsing veins. They’d come to learn a three-thousand-year-old Chinese medical practice and apply it to one of this region’s most modern tragedies – soaring rates of injection drug use and HIV/AIDS. Rates which had caused India’s National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases to declare an epidemic requiring urgent intervention on local, national, and international levels.

  But interventions had been slow to trickle into these hills. So slow that the addicts themselves took matters into their own hands. And it was a lone doctor from Canada – trained in acupuncture and naturopathy – who had volunteered to help them.

  Dr. Louie adjusted her headlamp. “A little too far to the left,” she advised Darpan, and inserted a new needle into my ear. The other trainees gathered around, casting beams of light across the Red Cross, taking note.

  The Lonely Planet warned to expect the unexpected of this country. I didn’t expect to meet Dr. Louie while drinking Darjeeling in the dining room of Cochrane Place. Nor did I expect her to invite me to the Red Cross to meet a group of ex-addicts training in the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association protocol, a widely recognized therapy where five needles are inserted into standardized spots on each ear to reduce withdrawal symptoms associated with substance abuse.

  Anyone who has met Dr. Louie would tell you she’s impossible to refuse. She made me want to put down my cup of tea and help. She made me want to wear long, swishy skirts and necklaces weighted by chunks of art. She made me want to fly to India with thousands of acupuncture needles to donate stashed in my luggage and just walk through the Nothing to Declare door, smiling.

  She made me say things like “You can practice on me,” to four overly eager trainees whom Dr. Louie must remind to dispose of used needles, and to always, always unwrap new ones.

  “We have plenty of needles,” she constantly reassured them.

  Darpan adjusted his headlamp. “Inhale, please,” he said, positioning a fresh needle above Sympathetic. “Exhale, please.” He pricked my skin. I tried not to wince. Even though I wanted to help, I was terrified of needles. But Darpan’s touch was gentle, his voice soothing. I focused on his T-shirt embroidered with a Chinese dragon, then on his face, as he searched for the next point on my ear. I wondered if his six-year-old son, the son he’d told me he isn’t permitted to see anymore, had the same chubby cheeks, the same Buddha-like smile. “Inhale, please,” he said and I took a deep breath.

  I thought of what Darpan told me earlier about hitting rock bottom during the last days of his addiction. “I couldn’t die. I couldn’t live,” he’d said of the dilemma of wanting to kill himself but knowing even that was impossible. Buddhists can’t die – they are reborn again and again, in realms with names like cold hell, hot hell, hungry ghost hell. “It was better to live,” he explained.

  “Exhale, please.” The needle pricked Kidney. I focused on the other trainees – on Prabin’s Italia jersey, on Karma’s Converse sneakers, on Sanjay’s button-down shirt so neatly tucked in. Though they bore crude-looking tattoos of Batman symbol and cannabis leaf, there were no track marks or hollowed-out eyes. I knew they were over thirty, but they barely seemed to have aged past eighteen. They looked more like hip IT graduates than men who had spent half their lives injecting drugs into their veins.

  “Good job,” Dr. Louie said when Darpan completed all five points on my ear. “You don’t have to be suffering from withdrawal symptoms to benefit.” Finally, I began to relax. Everyone switched off their headlamps, conserving batteries. Who knew when the power would come back on?

  Even with power, the light was dim at Kurseong’s Red Cross. A single bulb dangled, interrogation-style, from the ceiling. But maybe it was better we couldn’t see too well. The colonial-style bungalow – one of the town’s many reminders of the British Raj, who had once sought refuge here from the Kolkatan heat – had seen better days. Hardwood floors were worn bare. The fireplace, complete with bevelled mantelpiece, functioned as a garbage can. In the back of the house, where “Ladies” was scrawled in white chalk on a plywood door, I turned on the faucet, hoping what Dr. Louie had told me earlier was just a joke. But it wasn’t. There was no running water.

  But such conditions failed to daunt Dr. Louie and her trainees. They donned headlamps. They squirted disinfectant onto their hands with religious fervour. Sanjay cleaned the surface of the worktable with rubbing alcohol. Prabin arranged six red plastic lawn chairs around the perimeter of the living room. Karma laid out new acupuncture needles on a square of paper towel. Darpan opened a plastic candy jar labeled “Used Needles.”

  Dr. Louie explained the mission of the day in English. Only when they were certain Dr. Louie – Dr. Laura, as they called her – had finished speaking, did the Nepali translations begin. Today they would practice acupuncture on volunteers from the community. They would take turns. They shouldn’t feel shy. Dr. Laura would observe and help them. Now they just had to wait.

  They didn’t have to wait long. Soon, several women in rainbow-hued saris were waiting at the door. Word was out that free treatments were being offered at the Red Cross. It didn’t matter that no one had heard of acupuncture before.

  The women were shy in front of the male trainees, lowering their eyes. But when they saw me leaning against the wall, notebook in hand, they placed their hands in prayer position. They bowed their heads. “Namaste,” they said and smiled. One by one, they offered me their lawn chairs, until the trainees explained they’d need them for their treatment. They settled then – eyes darting back to my face every few minutes.

  While the trainees distributed consent forms, the chants of “Gorkhaland! Gorkhaland!” rose up from Pankhabari Road. Every day the protesters marched and every day I felt a little more nervous. I’d read of this region’s massive unemployment, illiteracy, poverty. I’d read of refugees and migrant workers, unstable borders, and militant groups. The threat of violence loomed as menacingly as the monsoon clouds. But Sanjay said, “Drugs are more dangerous than terrorists.”

  The monsoon swept through the street, sending rubbish flying and rain clattering on the tin roof. Yet the feeling was tranquil inside the living room of the Red Cross. Karma bent beside the woman in a red sari, reading her consent form aloud, pointing to where she could sign her name with an X. Prabin tried to steady his hand, shaking, I was told, after years of injecting spasmoproxyvon – an over-the-counter muscle relaxant usually prescribed for menstrual cramps. “Inhale, please,” he said to the woman whose cheeks were whittled to bone. Darpan helped an elderly man step across the threshold, listening to his complaints of a sore knee. A teen-aged boy arrived, thin and nervous, and Sanjay took his arm, guiding him into a more private room.

  The volunteer patients closed their eyes. Needles sprouted from their ears like silver whiskers. Occasionally, the women caught sight of one another and giggled. They’d been instructed to relax, sleep if they’d like, for forty-five minutes, while the treatment took effect.

  Meanwhile the trainees tidied their work-site. Their relief was palpable. They had worried no one would come. They had worried they wouldn’t get a chance to practice their new skills. They had told me this was the first time they’d done something they were proud of, something that helped to forget about the stigma of being an ex-addict and possible carrier of HIV.

  As the rains died down, the chanting of “Gorkhaland! Gorkhaland!” resumed. The women in saris began to stir. It was time to remove their needles. With expert precision, the trainees extracted them one by one, careful to deposit them in the plastic candy jar. The sound of a Hindi pop song broke their concentr
ation. Karma fished around the folds of the elderly gentleman’s tunic and extracted a cell phone. “Tell her I’ll be home soon,” the gentleman said.

  Quietly, the women in saris took their leave, entering Pankhabari Road with umbrellas held aloft. They caught my eye one last time and bowed their heads, saying, “Dhanyavaad.”

  In the doorway, the elderly gentleman leaned on his cane. “Can I come back tomorrow?” he asked.

  The Orchid Grower

  The moon was almost full. Mr. Pempahishey sat in Holumba Haven’s courtyard in a well-worn T-shirt and a pair of drawstring shorts. It was only when I got closer that I noticed the rifle leaning against his knee. I tried to get past with a nod or a good evening, but Mr. Pempahishey was in the mood to chat. “Why, you’re a busy young lady,” he said when he noticed my haste. He looked up at the moon, his hair the same colour as its pale yellow orb.

  I tried not to look at the rifle. It glinted in the moonlight as though just polished. Mr. Pempahishey looked at the rifle too, smiling as he patted its barrel. “Oh, such a pleasant evening,” he said. “The stars are so much brighter this time of year.”

  The moon rose high above the orchidaria where his seedlings lay in wait. Thousands of orchids – Indo-Burmese, Himalayan, exotic. He oversaw their nurturing just as he oversaw everything else at Holumba Haven – the guest huts, the partridges, the caged rabbits, the wild turkeys, the guinea pigs, the guard dog. “For your safety,” warned a sign on the door of my guest cottage, “please remain indoors between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. when the guard dog is released.”

  Holumba Haven was Mr. Pempahishey’s self-built kingdom and he did what he pleased there. I knew it would be impolite to ask about the rifle.

  “Yes, a very pleasant evening,” I said, breathing in the scent of the gardens – the jacaranda, hibiscus, the delicate feathery pines – and trying to forget about the chaos of Kalimpong beyond the gates. Today the walk into town along Hill Cart Road had been even more trying than usual. I didn’t know it was a festival day. Flatbed trucks carrying papier-mâché effigies of ten-armed goddesses to be submerged in the Teesta River had clogged the narrow road. Every truck had hosted its own mini-party complete with fireworks, drumming, boom boxes, chanting.

  “Go back to America!” a group of teenage boys had yelled from behind a goddess’s writhing torso.

  “Yes, a beautiful night,” I answered Mr. Pempahishey. I stood there for a few moments admiring the moon. “Well, it’s almost ten o’clock,” I said.

  “Did my son show you the orchids yet?”

  “Yes, Norden showed me this morning.”

  Mr. Pempahishey reached behind to pick a hibiscus blossom, twirling its stem between his fingers. “Only one orchid is blooming right now,” he said. “The Vanda cristata. You should have come during a different season to view the orchids.” He picked up the rifle. “Well, it’s ten o’clock.”

  ~

  “The Himalayas!” Norden had yelled at six o’clock that morning, knocking on my door as though the mountain range was an invading army. “The Himalayas!”

  I’d splashed cold water on my face and walked to the ridge at the top of the two-acre property where the pines cleared and you could see across the valley.

  “It’s the first time they’ve appeared since the beginning of the monsoon,” Norden said. “Just wait a moment, the clouds will clear again.”

  And they did. The peaks lit up one by one. Massive, snow-clad peaks that shrank the world to minutiae.

  “Look at that ‘V’ shape.” Norden pointed. “That’s the pass to Lhasa. The Old Silk Road. It’s not very far away but none of us can go there now. Politics have changed everything.”

  “What politics?” I asked. The disputed Chinese/Indian border, the Gorkhaland movement, the Maoists?

  The Pempahisheys, I’d learned, loved to talk. They even offered subject discussions upon request. Subjects ranged from botany to geography to history. They specialized in Tibetan cultural history and religion in the trans-Himalayan region. But there was no need to arrange a discussion. Every morning at breakfast the stories began. I’d learned about the characteristics of migrant workers, the traditional dress of the Bhutanese royalty, the article Mr. Pempahishey had written, “Orchid Eaters of Shangri-La,” published in the American Orchid Society Bulletin of 1974.

  “Have you ever heard of Dr. Graham?” Norden asked as he set down my porridge. “Dr. Graham was a missionary from Scotland. He founded a boarding school in Kalimpong. And not just a school – there’s a workshop, farm, bakery, swimming pool, hospital. My father went there for a time. That’s why he’s so fond of wearing shorts. That was part of their uniform, you see.”

  I’d noticed Mr. Pempahishey’s penchant for wearing shorts regardless of temperature and the fact I’d yet to see any other Indian man wearing shorts. I buttered my toast, smiling at the sunflower placemats.

  After breakfast I watched Thinlay, Norden’s wife, fill copper bowls at the free-flowing spring, elegant as a Tibetan princess, hair swinging in the sunlight, while the children played by a pond filled with lotuses. Every morning my head swirled with stories.

  “You want to write about India, don’t you?” Norden asked as I sat down to dinner. He was there the instant I sat down at the checkered tablecloth. There must have been a motion sensor to alert him the moment I crossed the threshold of the dining room. I knew they worried that I was lonely. Should I tell them I didn’t mind eating alone as I read my book or admired the antiques filling the wooden armoire and hanging on the walls? The horse bridle. Tribal masks. Heavy strands of Tibetan coral and turquoise beads.

  Norden ladled a spoonful of Sikkimese rice onto my plastic plate, part of a matching set that included everything from the saltshakers to the butter dish to the marmalade pot. “Someone called Kiran Desai wrote a book set in Kalimpong – The Inheritance of Loss. Have you heard of it?”

  Yes, I’d heard of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel and had read it twice.

  “Some people don’t like that book in this town,” Norden said. “A writer shouldn’t call the truth fiction when so many people die.”

  It was time for the momos. Tonight they were stuffed with lotus root and Kalimpong cheese. “How is everything?” Thinlay asked as she set the plate down.

  “Wonderful, thank you,” I said, wishing she’d join us. But I knew it was Norden’s job to entertain the guests. He put his hands in his pockets and looked towards Hill Cart Road.

  “You’d never know that just twenty years ago severed heads hung in net bags from poles on the road below,” he said.

  The dining room was empty. The Japanese banker from Mumbai was on a tour of Dr. Graham’s. The journalist from London was playing golf.

  “Whose heads were they?” I asked, putting down my fork.

  “School headmasters. A reporter. People accused of being informers. Many were killed in infighting between splinter groups seeking an independent state. We heard stories of brutal slaughter and even cannibalism.”

  “Did you know anyone who was killed?”

  “I still know people who are killed.” Norden scooped more rice onto my plate. “Kiran Desai calls an incident that happened on July 27, 1986, fiction. Thirteen people were registered as dead that day.” He gestured to the empty chair across from me. “May I?” He sat down for the first time since I’d arrived nearly a week ago.

  “It was the day of a protest,” he began. “The Central Reserve Police Force and the State Armed Police Forces tried to quell the movement and threw tear gas. But the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. The tear gas blew back in their faces. The protesters became bold and ran after the police. That’s when I heard the shooting.”

  The cook arrived with a plastic casserole dish. Norden lifted the lid. “Dal Makhani. Your friend Dr. Laura loves this dish.” He scooped some onto my plate. “Now, where was I?”

  “The s
hooting.”

  “Oh, yes. I ran down to the road. There were bodies everywhere. The wounded were hiding in culverts. I ran to get my father. ‘We need to get the jeep out of the garage!’ I yelled. My dad drove with the wounded in his arms. There was blood everywhere.” He fiddled with the salt shaker. “My dad kept driving until we reached a checkpoint,” he continued. “A policeman held a gun to my head. My father started shouting: ‘Don’t shoot! He’s my son! My son!’ The policeman must have recognized him – my grandfather used to be the local chief of police – and let us go.”

  The cook set another platter on the table. “Manchurian Veg,” Norden said.

  “That’s okay,” I said as he reached for the ladle. “I’ve had enough.”

  He looked around, making sure we were still alone. I could hear his children playing outside by the lotus pond. I could hear Mr. Pempahishey directing the gardeners in the orchidarium on the slope above the dining room.

  Norden fiddled with the ladle of the Manchurian Veg. “Suddenly a little boy in the street recognized one of his friends inside our jeep. ‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘That’s my friend!’ I tried to explain the jeep was full, that there was simply no room – but the boy tried to jump in and be with his friend. I asked him to leave, and when he got out and was running away, I heard a shot. The policeman shot that little boy in the back.”

  Thinlay arrived to take away my plate. “The cook is making you a special dessert,” she said. She walked back into the kitchen, balancing platters on her arms.

  “Our jeep did many trips that day. One man and one woman literally died in my arms,” Norden said, wiping a crumb from the checkered tablecloth. “But the worst part of the story is that I can still see that little boy, especially when I look at my son. I can still hear his voice.”

  The Cook

  “Sikkim Himalayan Academy?” I asked at the bus stand in Bhuriakhop, a small village in West Sikkim. A girl wearing a school uniform of blue skirt and white blouse beckoned me aboard a minibus packed with elementary school students.