by Anirban Bose
The dean tried all sorts of manoeuvres with the residents, but they wouldn’t budge. The bone of contention was the police report against the municipal corporator, which the dean refused to file. As the situation reached an impasse, the strike loomed large on the horizon, seemingly as inevitable as the impending monsoon rains.
Adi was sitting alone in his room when someone knocked on his door. Adi opened it and was surprised to see Neil standing outside with a very apologetic look on his face.
‘Hi Adi, I… I need to talk to you.’
‘Sure,’ Adi replied somewhat uncertainly. ‘Come in.’
Neil walked in and sat on a chair next to the window. He waited for a few minutes, looking around, smiling hesitantly as though unsure of what to say. Then, lowering his head, he said, ‘It’s Renuka… She won’t see me any more.’
Adi sighed. ‘What did she say? I mean, did she say why?’ he asked.
‘No. She just called me up and said we shouldn’t see each other any more. I was going to ask her to the Med Ball, but she called me first. Now, she just won’t talk to me.’
Adi wondered why Neil was telling him all this.
Neil looked at him and said, ‘I’ve thought of slashing my wrists, man!’
The depth of his despondency suddenly struck Adi. ‘Hey, Neil! Nobody’s worth dying for. What do you want me to do, man? Come on, man. It can’t be that bad!’
Neil buried his head in his hands and began to sob. Adi studied him silently, finding it hard to believe that this was the same self-assured chap who had whisked her away in his car right in front of his eyes. He put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly and said, ‘Calm down, man…you’ll get over it. Your life is worth a lot more than just Renuka…You’ll forget her.’
‘Four years,’ he sobbed. ‘I’ve known her for four years…it’s not easy to forget, man.’
Adi was surprised. Four years? Renuka had been at medical college for less than two…
‘We met in high school, and have been going out for four years, but we were really serious in the last two years. I can’t understand it, man…and the worst part is she won’t even give me a reason… I wish she’d at least tell me why. Could you talk to her, Adi?’
Adi was taken aback. ‘Me? What good would that do, Neil? I can’t convince her of anything.’
‘No, Adi, she thinks of you as a very good friend and thinks very highly of you. I’m sure she’ll talk to you. All I want is a reason… I just want to know why.’
For the next few minutes Adi argued with him, trying to avoid a meeting with Renuka. Yet, somewhere within him was a nagging curiosity about Neil and Renuka’s past: the history, Adi suspected, that would explain his own messy tryst with her.
Finally, unable to dissuade or dismiss Neil, Adi said, ‘Fine, I’ll try and talk to her, but don’t expect any miracles, okay? And please Neil, don’t do anything stupid.’
At that very moment, Toshi burst into the room. ‘Did you hear?’ he said, excitedly. ‘The residents have decided to go on strike. Man, I’m going home.’
SEVENTEEN
It was the last day of the ultimatum.
Negotiations between the dean and the resident doctors had deteriorated rapidly after the dean had resorted to threatening the residents with jail time for dereliction of duty under the Maintenance of Essential Service Act. Until he discovered, much to his chagrin, that the very same rule which allowed them to pay a pittance for the resident’s labour – they were students and not employees – excluded them from the provisions of the act. So he had the residents locked out of Resident Vista: ‘If you don’t work in the hospital, you don’t need the rooms,’ he had said, hoping that the prospect of becoming homeless in Bombay would break their back. Unprepared for the solidarity amongst the residents, he failed on both counts and only ended up strengthening their resolve even further.
Over at the ob-gyn wards, Dr Choksi looked very harassed. Dr Uma tried to give him a detailed plan of the patients’ care before she along with the two other residents walked off the next day. They went over the fine points again and again, but Dr Choksi’s worried eyes focused more on the unsettling future than on her detailed instructions. His clothes appeared even more crumpled and his awkward hairdo had acquired a new frizz. His coat pockets bulged with a sheaf of papers, which he kept pulling out, reading impatiently and shoving back in. He drifted around the ward purposelessly, finding the familiar area suddenly rather alien.
While on rounds that day, he turned to the students and asked, ‘You are coming tomorrow, right?’
The students fell silent and looked at each other indecisively.
Dr Choksi was very surprised. ‘Why… Why you are all not coming? ‘
As the natural choice for the next class representative, Adi felt it was his unwritten prerogative to be the spokesman. ‘We are joining the strike, sir,’ he said.
Dr Choksi’s eyes widened with surprise. ‘But this doesn’t concern students…just the residents.’
‘We have to show our solidarity with the residents, sir.’
‘But…they really don’t need your solidarity and I was hoping that if you are here, you would be of some help.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. But the dean has treated the residents very poorly. Now he’s thrown them out of their rooms… Where will they go with their books and luggage in Bombay with nowhere to stay? He still refuses to register a police case against the corporator, which shows where his sympathies lie. We all know, sir, that the residents do most of the hospital work. All of us are all going to become residents some day. So, we will show our support for the residents and join the strike. Maybe only then the dean will truly appreciate what the residents mean to this hospital.’
Dr Choksi looked away. He shook his head glumly, then shuffled across the floor to talk to the nurses – the additional blow of vanishing manpower adding a few more degrees to his lurching gait.
Adi started packing his books before heading back to campus, feeling rather proud of his extemporaneous little speech. A few appreciative pats on the back from the other students bolstered his confidence. He knew that this exchange would reach the rest of the class soon, making him even more eligible for the class representative’s position. He looked at his name written on a piece of white tape stuck to his bag. Then, smiling to himself, he added the letters ‘CR’ behind it.
He looked around for Isha and spotted her talking to Dr Choksi. He waited till she had finished and walked back to join him. They began to walk out together.
Adi gloated secretly, expecting her to praise his brilliant speech any minute. When she didn’t initiate any conversation, Adi said, ‘I hope the residents are successful in their effort.’
‘What? Oh, yeah,’ she replied.
‘The dean must apologize personally for what he did, and they have to arrest the corporator for his actions. Otherwise this could go on for a really long time.’
She nodded silently without looking at Adi.
Her silence surprised him. He decided to probe a little more. ‘What were you talking to Dr Choksi about?’
‘Hmm? No…nothing.’
‘You know Isha, you don’t lie very well.’
She smiled but remained silent.
‘Poor man,’ said Adi. ‘He will have to deal with the entire ward by himself. I feel sorry for him but I’m glad we didn’t agree to come to the ward tomorrow.’
She stopped walking. ‘Adi, have you read a book called To Kill a Mocking Bird?’ she asked.
Adi smiled. ‘Sure. It is one of my favourite books. By Harper Lee, right?’
‘Yeah. It’s one of my favourite books, too…perhaps the best book I have ever read. Tell me, Adi, what did you like about it?’
‘It’s just such a great book. I especially loved how the lawyer…what was his name… Lazarus...’
‘Atticus,’ she corrected. ‘Atticus Finch.’
‘Yeah, Atticus… I specially like how his daughter, Scout, calls him by his first name— Atticus t
his, Atticus that… Someday, if I have a daughter, I hope she calls me by my first name, too.’
She began to laugh. ‘Atticus is a lot easier than Adityaman,’ she said.
Adi smiled. ‘Imagine, when my daughter is ten months old and starts saying dada, I’ll say, “No, no, forget dada… Call me Aaa…dit…ya…maan”.’
She laughed again. It reassured Adi to see her laugh.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘What I liked most in the book was Atticus’s character. Even though he was white, he defied all the other whites in his small town to defend a poor black man because he thought he deserved a fair trial.’
‘Sure,’ agreed Adi. ‘That description through the eyes of an eight-year-old child is riveting. It is a brilliant book. I’ve seen the movie, too… Anyway, why did you suddenly bring up the book?’
‘Because of what I told Dr Choksi.’ Then, turning around to look at Adi’s confused face, she said, ‘We are going back to the wards tomorrow to help out with whatever we can.’
He stared at her for a few minutes, shocked into silence. ‘Who’s “we”?’ he blurted finally.
‘Payal and I. Don’t worry, you don’t have to come or even know about it.’
‘But what will you do? You guys are just second-year medical students!’
‘I don’t know,’ she said calmly. ‘Just hold a retractor while Dr Choksi operates, or set up an IV, or check somebody’s blood pressure. There is a lot we have learned to do in the past few weeks.’
He stared at her with disbelief. ‘But…what about the strike?’
‘I don’t support the strike. How can doctors endanger their patients’ lives? I don’t understand it. It’s just not right.’
‘But you know what happened, Isha! The dean and the residents…’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘The dean is mean and the residents want blood and we want time off from the wards… Everybody has their own little agenda. But what about these patients? They didn’t do anything wrong, yet they’ll suffer the most. Their only fault is that they fell ill and are so poor that they cannot go to private hospitals. They are too poor to protest, and so poor that nobody really cares. Being poor is not a crime, and I am not going to be a part of this strike.’
‘But Isha, we have to stand up for what is right!’
‘Precisely, Adi. Stand up for what is right. Do you honestly believe you are right to join the strike?’
‘What do you mean? I said we have to support the residents! They have been wronged!’
‘And it’s okay to let the patients suffer because of that?’
‘No, it’s not! But sometimes you have to make hard choices. That is the reason I support it.’
‘Are you sure, Adi? Are you sure there is nothing else motivating you to ignore the plight of these patients?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ask yourself, Adi! You stood up for a frog when it needed help. Why is your decision so different this time?’
Adi fell silent for a few seconds. Something in her words struck a chord but he couldn’t put a finger on it. He tried one last time. ‘But what will the others think, Isha? I just talked about joining the strike! They will think that I am trying to get into Dr Choksi’s good books. The whole class will feel let down!’
She smiled. ‘Why do you care so much about what the class thinks or says, Adi? Why do you think it is so important to do what everybody else thinks is right? What do you feel about it? You don’t have to join us, Adi. Payal and I are going… I guess that is the advantage of having only one friend. And that is why I was talking about Atticus…about doing something that you feel is right, even if everybody else is against it. Atticus was brave because he had strength of character, the courage of his convictions. Being brave does not mean taking a gun and killing five bad men…being brave is just having the courage to stand up for what is right and say it with conviction, ignoring whatever anybody else has to say.’ She paused and added, ‘Do that and your daughter may actually call you Atticus.’
Her words were still ringing in his ears when Adi joined his friends for dinner at a nearby restaurant later that evening.
Toshi was bursting with excitement about his trip home. ‘Man, I leave in two weeks,’ he said. ‘Can’t wait to see them… I haven’t seen them in two years.’
‘Why are you going after two weeks? Why not now?’ asked Sam.
‘I didn’t have the money to get air tickets. My parents are sending me money and then I’ll buy my tickets.’
‘How long will you stay, Toshi?’ asked Adi.
‘A month at least… Maybe more, if the strike goes on longer. Pheru, you can have the room to yourself for a whole month. That should help you study for your Pharmac exams. And Harsha, you’ll remember to be my proxy, right? Don’t forget my roll number is 69…you know, like the position…’
Everyone laughed. Amidst the laughter Adi noticed Rajeev staring at him from the other end of the table, his eyes conspicuously devoid of any mirth.
‘Man, I have my exams in less than four weeks,’ said Pheru. ‘This time I must pass…it is my seventh attempt. Pharmac can’t be all that tough, man. And, I need my room back.’
‘You can stay with me Pheru…for as long as you want,’ said Toshi. ‘But don’t worry, I think you’ll pass. It’s different this time.’
‘Why is it different this time?’ asked Pheru.
‘Maybe because this time you are studying?’ said Toshi and everyone laughed.
The appetizing aroma of greasy Mughlai food filled the air. They pulled up their chairs and waited for the feast to be laid out on the table with hungry eyes and growling stomachs.
Toshi took a glass of water and proposed a toast: ‘To the strike…may it last long.’
Everyone raised their glasses and cheered. Adi mumbled a few indistinct words.
‘Speaking of the strike,’ said Rajeev, softly. ‘I’ve heard that some of the people from our class have decided to go to the wards despite the strike.’
Adi felt a funny sensation in his stomach. He looked at his food. The biryani seemed fine.
‘Really? Who?’ asked Sam, his face full of indignation.
Adi tried to nip it in the bud. ‘What difference does it make if some second-year medical students decide to join the strike or not? We can’t be counted on to give patient care…the strike will be effective with or without us.’
Pheru turned towards him. ‘Are you going to the wards tomorrow, Adi?’
‘No,’ replied Adi, ‘I’m not…but…’
‘I heard somebody from your batch was going, Adi,’ said Rajeev.
Adi grimaced, wishing he could sink his fist into Rajeev’s mouth to stop the words from forming. ‘What difference does it make?’ he said with irritation. ‘Let the ones who want to go, go!’
Pheru dropped his spoon and looked at Adi.
‘What difference does it make? Are you joking, Adi?’ he said, angrily. ‘Do you have any idea what it was like to be punched and kicked by that corporator, that son of a bitch who probably cannot even spell his own name? The bastard held my collar and slapped and punched me…and even though I was furious, I begged him with my hands folded to try and get him to stop. I begged him, Adi… I begged him! And you think he hasn’t done anything wrong? He killed her! He may not have strangled her, but he might as well have! If I’d had a gun, I would have fucking shot him that day. What difference does it make? Even now, I feel a hollow panic inside me when I re-live that moment. I could see her face turning dark and her body gasping for air like a fish out of water. So don’t tell me that it doesn’t matter that somebody is going to go against the rest of us, and go to the wards. This needs to be a total strike! Total!’
Adi quickly tried to think of some way to stop the situation from spiraling out of control. ‘Calm down, Pheru,’ he said. ‘I’ll find out who it is…’
Before Pheru had a chance to react, Rajeev said, ‘I think it is Payal and her friend…what is her name…the
one who Sheetal said you took to Kamats some time ago. Isha, right?’
Adi felt the blood drain from his face.
Pheru turned red. ‘Those bloody bitches!’ he started.
‘Shut up!’ shouted Adi. ‘Just shut the hell up!’
Everyone stopped eating and stared at Adi.
Pheru stared at Adi in disbelief. ‘Adi,’ he growled. ‘You…you fucking son of a bitch! You knew! You knew all along it was them!’
‘You don’t know them, Pheru! You have no right to talk about them like that! You can say anything about me but you don’t know them, okay?’
Pheru’s mouth opened and shut a few times without uttering a sound. ‘You like Isha, don’t you?’ he sneered finally.
‘That is besides the point, Pheru!’ shouted Adi.
‘Saala, Adi, you fucking bastard! And you’ve been leading us on all this while! “I’ll find out who it is, Pheru!” You’re protecting her…her? She’s betraying our cause, she is betraying me! She is betraying all of us, and you want to help her? You forgot how she shut Harsha out…now you want to cover for her?’
Adi looked up to see Harsha staring at him with a vacant expression.
Adi didn’t know how to react. He felt mortified and embarrassed, and yet angry and wronged. He felt that he owed them an apology and an explanation, just like they owed him one. He realized he had to do something quickly to manage the situation.
‘Guys,’ he said, trying hard to keep his voice calm, ‘I’ll try and talk to them to see that they do not go to the wards. I know I can convince them to join the strike. But don’t disparage her like that…please… I can’t tolerate that. You have no idea what she is like, so just fucking stop it!’
The table fell silent, the mood suddenly somber and hostile. They ate their food robotically, hurrying to minimize the time left in each other’s company.