by Venkat Iyer
He suddenly became aggressive and said he had been trying to get work but I always avoided him. Now he wanted money which he said he would repay later in the form of labour. I refused to budge and politely told him that unless he worked he was not getting any money from me in advance. He raved and ranted for ten minutes before leaving. As soon as he had left everyone heaved a sigh of relief. He was not the first person to ask for money but his demeanour really put me off. Meena warned me against him saying that he looked like a violent man and must not be encouraged.
I liked Bunty a lot and he was welcome at the farm. He was soft-spoken and never even mentioned his father and the trouble they had with him at home. I came to know of his frequent fights with his father when his mother came with his food one day to the farm. She explained that he had left early without eating a morsel after having a fight with his father. There were days when he would come and just loiter around the farm, chatting and helping me with some sundry tasks after school.
Immediately after failing to clear his class X exam, Bunty left for a job in a chair-making company close by. He now visited the farm only when he returned for a holiday or some festival. There was little I saw of his parents till that day when Ramesh came asking for money.
A couple of weeks after that, things reached a brutal climax in Ramesh’s life. I reached the village to find a convoy of policemen. Slowly I learnt the gory details of the event. Jitesh had come home for a break to be greeted with the sight of blood all over the house. His mother was lying on the bed hacked to death. The poor boy almost fainted right there and barely managed to crawl out of the house for help. The police were now looking for Ramesh who was missing.
A few hours of searching and the missing blood-covered axe was discovered among the bushes near the river. A few feet away the police found Ramesh hanging from a tree. He had used a thin nylon rope to end his life after the gruesome crime he had committed. Everyone in the village was numbed by the incident and it took us days to overcome the shock.
This murder and suicide came as a jolt to all of us. Somehow I had naively imagined that such violence was never possible in the village. At any rate I had never expected such brutality. I had lived in a city once teeming with gangsters and shootouts. Dawood Ibrahim, Chota Rajan, Varadarajan and others were household names. We had serial killers like Raman Raghav, but they were just names we read in the paper. We were not close to them or the crimes they committed. Life was cheap in the city. But somehow I felt personally involved and shocked at Ramesh’s death. Things were too close for comfort here.
The gruesome crime was a major topic of discussion. Some of the villagers even offered to sleep in my house at night in case I was scared that Ramesh’s ghost would return to the farm to haunt me. I jokingly told them that I would offer it alcohol which will ensure that it did not harm me. In spite of the jokes and the brave front I put on, the first couple of nights after the incident were difficult to pass. I also started locking up the main gate at night.
Thefts
In a small village with the houses so close to each other one would think that thieves would not dare come. But the village had its fair share of thefts during the last few years.
Jayendra ran a mobile recharge shop and everyone knew that at the end of the day he returned home with a lot of cash. In the middle of one night he heard his mother, who was sleeping in the next room, scream in panic. He rushed out to see the fleeting image of a man opening the front door and running out. Torn between checking on his mother and running after the thief, Jayendra decided on the former.
The thief had removed the tiles on the roof and jumped down. His mother was in pain for he had fallen straight on her and when she screamed he had run out of the house. As usual they did not report the matter to the police. The logic was that since he had not got anything, why report!
Once Jayesh the postman’s wife entered the kitchen early in the morning and got the shock of her life when she saw a man sleeping in a corner. She went back to the bedroom and woke up her husband. Jayesh, instead of calling for help, foolishly took a stick and prodded the man. The man got up with a start, pushed both of them aside and ran out of the front door.
A quick check of the house and they found that he had entered through the window of the grocery store that they ran on one side of the house. He had gone through the contents of the cash counter and cleaned it. They went to the kitchen and found that the thief had even eaten the leftovers from the previous night. What no one could figure out was why the thief chose to sleep in the kitchen knowing well that the owners were sleeping in the next room. Again the matter did not get reported.
A few weeks later we heard that similar incidents had happened in the next village too where the thief had entered the house, taken some money and also eaten the food. It looked like the work of the same person. Someone finally had the sense to report the thefts to the police. Soon enough we heard that the police had caught a drug addict who was roaming in the area. He needed money for his daily fix and was targeting houses at random. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief to know that he had finally been caught.
We were not comfortable with the thefts happening so close and felt that the time had come to strengthen our fence and try and make it difficult for people to enter. The barbed wire fence was rusting in places and it was easy for anyone to lift the wires and sneak in. We got the fence redone so that entry would be difficult.
11
Doctor in the House
While basic amenities were lacking, the most serious lacunae were in healthcare. I learnt this the hard way. For some time I had not seen M and heard that he was ill. I went to visit him and found that he was almost half his weight and looking very pale. Not having much faith in the self-diagnosis that he had jaundice, I told him that he should visit a doctor. He agreed and the next day I offered to drop him to the doctor.
We reached the clinic or what seemed to me like a small hut, near Charoti, where there was a dirty bed and a pot-bellied doctor. The doctor asked him a few questions and then went on to administer two injections, one in each buttock. I was stunned when I saw him pick up the syringe and plunge it into a vial without even sterilizing it. He charged Rs 50 and gave no prescription or medicines. His only advice to M was to eat chicken.
On the way back I explained to M the need to sterilize needles and how dangerous it was not to do so. M said that since he had used two separate syringes, it was fine and nothing would happen. Besides, he explained that since the injections were administered on separate sides of the buttocks the chances of infection were very low. I realized the futility of my explanations and gave up. I was having lunch when Lahu Kaka’s son Harishchandra came running and told me that M was having fits and was not registering anything. I left my unfinished lunch and rushed to his place to find M in a delirious condition with his eyes half-closed. I said that he must be taken to the hospital at once. I was shocked when his family said I would have to wait till someone got some prasad from the next village, which would miraculously cure him. I lost my temper and told them that I was taking him to the doctor.
My defiant tone did the trick and soon a couple of guys with M’s wife got into the car and we shot off to the clinic with a moaning M in the back seat. The doctor had left but I caught the doctor’s assistant and demanded to know what M had been injected with in the morning. Apparently the doctor had one standard cure—Neurobion and vitamin injections—which he gave everyone who came there.
With no doctor around, our next choice was to take him to a hospital. I suggested the Kasa primary hospital which is just a couple of kilometres away. M’s wife and her brother were clear that under no circumstances would they take him to the Kasa hospital. They explained to me that there were no doctors in the hospital and it was run by ward boys and nurses. We had no choice but to take him to Dahanu which is around 30 kilometres away. We managed to reach Dahanu and admit him to a private hospital. The doctor there turned out to be from Mumbai, where he had been practising t
ill he shifted to Dahanu to set up the hospital. He put M on saline drip and immediately recommended some blood tests. The next day he informed me that M had typhoid and pneumonia. There was no sign of jaundice. Since he had suffered fits, the doctor also advised a CT scan at a later date. The nearest scanning centre was only at Vapi, around 50 kilometres away, or in Mumbai.
A few days later, M’s wife and her brothers came to pay me for the petrol since I had driven so far with her husband. When I refused to accept the money, they were surprised and told me that they thought all city people were only after money and never did anything free. I felt embarrassed that this was the image we had built in the minds of the villagers.
It was much later that I learnt that the doctor we had been to in the morning was, in fact, a quack and did not have a real degree. Years ago someone had died under his treatment and his licence was revoked. He, of course, continued to practise in his little hut near Charoti. The hospital at Kasa had been built a couple of years ago with the best infrastructure and facilities. Unfortunately there were no doctors since no one wished to take a posting there, even though it was only 100 kilometres away from Mumbai. Even if there were doctors there were usually no medicines available to be administered to the patients. Such was the pathetic medical infrastructure near the village.
Besides the ‘double-dose’ Dr S there were a few other doctors in Kasa. Most of them had BAMS degrees, which meant they were Ayurvedic doctors, but they blatantly prescribed allopathic medicines and even administered injections. One of them had even set up a small nursing home with five beds and gave saline to whoever chose to come to his hospital.
It seemed strange that the village folk rushed to the doctors for even small ailments. I could remember during our childhood whenever we fell ill my mother would always try out some home-made cure before taking us to the doctor. In the village they just seemed to have forgotten these cures or did not trust them. One night, in 2015, B’s mother rushed to the farm and said her son was terribly ill and had to be taken to the hospital. They did not wish to go to the government hospital and chose a private hospital near Dahanu. I spoke to the doctor after he had examined B and the doctor said it was a case of acute acidity and nothing else. I questioned B and gathered that he had not eaten the whole day and had drunk a couple of beers with friends in the afternoon. The doctor kept him for a day and sent him back with Gelusil and instructions to eat before drinking after charging Rs 3000. I thought it was a waste of money when this ailment could have been treated at home itself. But then, as a policy, I never gave medical advice to people and it was up to them to decide the best course of action for their illness.
The Death of Moru Dada
One of the victims of the pathetic healthcare in the village was none other than Moru Dada. After our initial fracas over the tractor and the distancing of Moru Dada from our daily farming activities, we became good friends. We never raised the topic of the tractor and it was as if it had never happened. Almost every alternate day I would run into him somewhere or the other and he always stopped and inquired after us.
A couple of years at the farm and he too, like the other villagers, realized that I was here to stay and not running back to the city. Moru Dada was very helpful as having been the sarpanch till 2010 he knew of every scheme that the government announced and was always willing to share the information with me. He even shared saplings which he would get from the forest department or the agriculture department and guide me on how to plant them.
A few years ago, somewhere around 2011, he called me one day and asked me to drop by when I had the time. He did not sound very well and that evening I went to his house. He looked extremely ill and tired. We sat on the bench in his front porch and after the initial pleasantries he asked, ‘Do you know what diabetes is?’ On asking who had got it he replied that it was him but he could not understand what the doctors were telling him.
I gave him a detailed explanation of the disease and also stressed on the fact that he would have to be careful all his life as it was not going to vanish. I told him, ‘Moru Da, you have to walk every day.’ He replied, ‘Walk where? I don’t go anywhere now.’
I explained the need for him to exercise and that walking was the best form and it would control his disease too. He seemed to get what I was saying and said he would start the next day.
A few days later, I met him on the road, not walking but on his bike. I said, ‘Arre, you are to walk everywhere and here you are back on your bike.’ He smiled at me and said, ‘Come home, I will tell you what happened.’
It seemed he had got up early and tried to go for a walk. The first few minutes were fine till he met someone from the village who stopped him to ask where he was going. It was indeed a strange sight for most villagers to see Moru Dada walking and that too so early. He said, ‘I can barely walk for five minutes before being stopped by someone and you tell me to walk for an hour?’
I realized that it was not going to be an easy task for Moru Dada to walk. He was the former sarpanch and a political leader and there was not a single person who did not know him. Besides, the concept of a walk was alien in the village. You walked when you had to go somewhere for work or to meet someone. Why would you walk just for the sake of walking? I could think of nothing to advise Moru Dada other than to walk a bit early to avoid people.
A few days later, as I was sipping tea at Konduram’s tea shop, one of the old men sitting near me remarked, ‘Do you know that Moru Dada has lost it? Toh veda jhala (He has gone mad).’ I looked at him in shock and asked him how he knew. He said that Moru Dada walks at weird hours and does not go anywhere. He just roams around without a reason and returns home. It must be a mental illness. I tried to explain that maybe he was just going for a walk as advised by his doctors. The old man replied, ‘We have such excellent medicines now. Which doctor would have told him to just walk?’
On my way back, I dropped to check on Moru Dada. He saw me and said, ‘So you have come to meet the mad man.’ We laughed at the whole thing and I left after telling him to ignore what people were saying and continue his walks. I knew he would not do it and this would end in a disaster. Sure enough, within a month his sugar levels shot up and he was admitted to the hospital. He returned after a few days and this time the doctors prescribed insulin injection twice a day. He had to be put on a strict diet of rotis and vegetables with meals every two hours. His wife did all that she could to make him stick to the diet and nurse him back to health. He seemed to get better after a couple of months till tragedy struck again.
It was his wife this time. She had been complaining of headaches for quite some time and finally it was diagnosed as brain cancer. Moru Dada and his son took her to Mumbai for treatment. Meena met them in Mumbai and contacted an oncologist she knew to find out what we could do for her. Unfortunately the cancer was at an advanced stage and all the doctors advised that she be taken back to the village and kept happy till her final time came.
Moru Dada couldn’t believe it. His world was shattered. He had taken her to Mumbai in the hope that something would be set right but he brought her back home after a month with little hope. After they returned, he called the local witch doctor, Shankar, in a last attempt to save his wife. Shankar, after a lot of mumbo jumbo, declared that evil spirits resided in the two tamarind trees outside Moru’s house and they would have to be chopped down.
Moru Dada immediately got the trees chopped down. He would do anything to save his wife. The chopping of the century-old trees did brighten up his home but did nothing for his wife. She died peacefully surrounded by her family and friends within a month. This was the end for him. He wept for days openly and looked like he would never get over it. From a huge bulky man he had become a thin shadow of his former self and it was difficult for some to even recognize him. In his time he was a political fixer, a man who could get things done, someone who was willing to push all boundaries if it suited him. From a farmer he had become a fixer, a man you went to for organizing vote
s, people, meetings, almost anything. There was nothing he couldn’t do for money.
All that came back to haunt him as he sat in the porch, ruing his life. People in the village had never seen him walk; he was always on his motorbike, a sign of his power and wealth. A few years ago, he had helped the local MLA win the elections and the MLA had gifted him a second-hand Maruti 800. Moru Dada tried driving the car but he was not happy sitting inside a box. The bike was his chariot and he was rarely seen off it except at home. But his wife’s death hit him hard. His sugar levels shot up and he went to the hospital again for a while.
He came back completely broken. He kept telling me, ‘I grow such good rice and all they give me is dry rotis. Death is surely better than this existence.’ He stopped walking and started riding his bike. One day, while riding back from Palghar, his slippers fell off but he did not notice it. He had kept his foot on the hot silencer and by the time he reached home his toes had been burnt. Due to diabetes his toes were numb and he did not even realize that something had happened. The wound did not heal due to diabetes and finally the doctors had to amputate the toes to make sure that the gangrene did not spread.
Moru Dada had three sons and he had made every effort to see that they were settled comfortably. The eldest, Sunil, was interested in tilling the land. Moru Dada built a house for him on the land itself and got a tiller and other equipment that he needed. The second son, Nilesh, wanted to work in a company. Moru Dada used his vast influence and got him a decent job. His wife is a trained nurse and using his fixing skills he managed to get her a job too. The last son, Sachin, is a driver. Moru Dada got him a truck through a government scheme and even managed to get him a regular contract to deliver the Public Distribution System (PDS) ration for the government. After his wedding, Sachin left the village to settle down in Boisar.