The young man on the seat across from them put his newspaper on the trunk and approached the fallen passenger from one side; and from the other, the husband, holding his cards in one hand, leaned forward hanging on to the armrest of seat with the other. Then their eyes fell upon the puddle of liquid that had formed beneath the buttocks of the unconscious man on the rubber floor of the compartment—he had urinated.
The young man pulled the unconscious passenger’s legs a bit on to the trunk, to straighten out his neck.
The husband threw his cards behind him and, reaching out over the armrest of the seat, he put his hand over the man’s nose and saw that he was still breathing. He wasn’t dead.
The wife had definitely been losing that hand. She gathered up all the cards and put them back in her purse.
The husband jumped up from his seat. Opening his thermos of water, he quickly removed the celluloid cup. He filled it up from the sink and handed it to the young man, so that he could pour water into the fallen passenger’s mouth.
The man lying on the floor was of medium height with a skinny body and a gaunt face. The bones of his jaw were sticking out, his eyes were sunken and his body felt extremely cold. He was sweating. There were even drops of sweat shining on the white hairs peeping out from beneath the undershirt he wore under the open top of his nightsuit.
The young man splashed two drops of water on his face and then tried to pour water into his mouth.
The next moment, the fallen passenger opened his eyes. Screwing up his eyebrows, he looked about him in surprise. Then he put out his hand for help to stand up.
The young man held his hand and lifted him up. He sat down on top of the newspaper on the trunk.
The cool breeze coming from the open window hit him for a moment and then he became totally conscious. Just then his glance fell on the puddle of urine on the floor. His feet were going to get dirty. He pulled them up. Then he got up, pulled his dhoti off the upper berth and went to the bathroom.
The young man looked at the large wet stain on his newspaper. An odd combination of emotions crossed his face: dejection, sadness, disgust, loathing.
The wife looked at the puddle of urine on the other side of the trunk and turned her face towards the window.
The husband washed out the thermos cup carefully and put it back on the jug. Then he came and sat in his seat. He had no idea what to do. He glanced towards the wet dirty newspaper. He considered getting up to see if the pages on the inside were also wet. If they weren’t, he could take them out and read them. First he looked towards the young man sitting on the seat across—he had got up from one end of the seat and sat at the other end, so that his back was towards the dirty floor. Who knows what he was thinking! His back to the window, he was just staring into the void in the opposite direction. The husband cast a glance at his wife. Although she was looking out the window, she was taking stock of the inside of the compartment from the corner of her eye, and because of that, her eye met her husband’s sidelong glance. He felt reproach in that half-glance from his wife and he turned away from the soiled newspaper and quietly sat down.
Then he thought he would again enjoy the beauty of the valleys and mountains outside the windows as before. Outside, the clouds had cleared and the hills, freshly bathed in the rains, looked lovely. But he wasn’t enjoying the sights anymore. His wife was obstructing the whole view from their window and he was forced to make do with the windows next to the bathroom and in the middle. He could barely see the view because of his wife. He wanted to go and stand at the window. But he also didn’t want to go over there.
He thought he might then refocus his thoughts on that honeymoon trip twenty-five years ago, but not a single scene from the journey would surface in his mind. Although he was seated with his back turned to the large, wet, round circle on the newspaper and the puddle of urine on the floor, those images kept intruding on his cherished memory. Suddenly, a saying of his grandfather’s began to echo in his ears: ‘When a man dies, his doors open up down below.’ His grandfather had once told him this to explain why someone had soiled his bed while dying. So, is the passenger on the upper berth going to die? he thought. What’s wrong with him? He’s travelling in a first-class compartment—he must be an important officer or businessman. He must have some terrible illness. What if he’s fallen unconscious sitting in the bathroom? What if he’s died in there?
All at once, he felt a great pressure below his navel and he felt like he needed to urinate. He got up agitatedly and went and stood in front of the window. But he didn’t care about the view outside. The pressure beneath his navel had increased unpleasantly. He wanted to go and tap on the door of the bathroom. But he didn’t want his fellow passengers to consider him impolite, he decided, so he stopped himself and went and stood in front of the other window.
Just then the train entered a tunnel, but he didn’t move away from the window. He kept trying to look at the wall of the tunnel in the dark. He couldn’t see anything. After quite a while—though it seemed to him as if just a few seconds had passed by—a thin gleam of light appeared. Then the wall became visible and in the next moment the train emerged from the tunnel. He put his head out the window and looked towards the rear of the train. The train was turning. One could clearly make out the mouth of the tunnel from quite some distance. When another mountain came into view he pulled his head inside. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. The passenger from the upper berth had emerged and was lying on the opposite seat, his legs hanging down. He had left his dirty nightsuit in the bathroom and had put on an undershirt with the dhoti folded over and tied like a tahmad around his waist.
Suddenly the husband forgot that he had to go to the bathroom. He sat down on the seat directly across from the ailing passenger and stared at him intently. The darkness around the man’s eyes had become deeper and heavier. His cheeks looked more sunken. His jawbones were protruding even more than before and his face was downright ashen. He looked strangely cold, as though a deathly pall had suffused his being.
The ailing passenger opened his eyes and ran his tongue over his lips. Perhaps he had opened his eyes because he sensed the husband’s sharp gaze, or maybe there was no particular reason. The husband leaned forward abruptly and asked in English what the problem was. In a voice that was fainter than a whisper, the ailing passenger told him that he had loose motions.
Loose motions … diarrhoea … cholera … The husband looked around the compartment, aghast. He again felt some pressure below his navel. But how could he go into that bathroom? He walked once around the compartment with some agitation. Long ago, before he had built his bungalow, when he lived in two rooms next to his landlord, the landlord had come down with cholera. Immediately after eating lunch, his landlord’s health had deteriorated and, by evening, by the time the lamps were lit, he had become totally incapacitated. It was as though all his blood had turned to water and was draining out of him on to the road below; even his hands and feet had begun to cramp … The husband took the soap and hand towel from the basket next to his wife and went into the bathroom.
The bathroom was not dirty. But to one side, that dirty, wet nightsuit hung from a hook. He turned his back to it and unbuttoned his pants to urinate, but he couldn’t make it happen. Because of the immense pressure he felt below his navel and his fear, he just stood there, waiting, for a long time. The train jerked along violently. Much as he wanted to relieve himself, he just couldn’t. It was a very long time before he finally managed to do so. Buttoning his trousers, he then washed out the washbasin faucet with soap. He was in the habit of washing his hands and gargling after going to the latrine. So, after washing his hands, he filled his cupped palms with water without thinking about it. But as he was about to fill his mouth with water, he suddenly stopped and pulled his hands away from his lips, letting the water fall from his hands. He then decided to gargle with the water from his jug. He came out of the bathroom. He gargled, using a little water from the jug, and
then went and sat on his seat. The upper-berth passenger got up and went back into the bathroom.
His wife was now sitting straight up. He looked at his watch—it was already twelve-thirty.
‘Let’s eat whatever we’re going to eat,’ she said to her husband. And without waiting for his reply, she took the tiffin box out of her basket and the two of them began to eat.
Suddenly he turned and asked the young man sitting across from them how long the sick passenger had been having loose motions.
‘He’s gone several times since morning. He may have been having trouble since last night.’
‘Why haven’t you called a doctor?’
‘He said not to.’
‘Maybe he has cholera.’
‘Maybe!’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s an officer in the railway.’
The husband broke off a piece of roti and thought to himself, That’s why he’s all closed off and shrunken into himself! If he had been in his place he would have kicked up a fuss and made everyone help him, not just the passengers in his compartment, but those in the next one as well.
His wife was eating happily, but he was having trouble getting anything down. While they were eating, the passenger from the upper berth had gone twice to the bathroom and, the second time he had come out, he was wearing just his undershirt and a khadi turban cloth wound round his waist. After he came out he lay down weakly and his legs began to cramp. A couple of times, when the cramping made him twist his knees from side to side, the turban cloth, which already provided inadequate cover, flopped open. But he wasn’t even conscious.
The wife, who was sitting across from the ailing passenger, looked disconcerted. Noticing this, the husband wanted to get up and fix the turban cloth, but he was eating. He told the young man to do it. The young man heard him, but he pretended not to. Perhaps the passenger from the upper berth heard him. In his state of semi-consciousness he tried to straighten out the turban cloth covering the lower half of his body. But the very next moment, when his legs twisted with cramping, the cloth again slipped. The husband asked his wife to switch places with him.
His wife got up and went and sat in his place and he sat in his wife’s place across from the ailing passenger.
Even though he didn’t want to, he looked over at him. The passenger was slumped over, apparently unconscious. His knees kept twisting from the cramping and, when they did, his lower body was exposed. He had a lot of hair down there. The husband could see some whitish foam stuck in the hair. He quickly averted his glance. Whether or not the man was an important officer, he was still filthy, the husband thought to himself. He clearly had no idea about hygiene. He didn’t clean himself. So much hair! He felt happy that he himself was very tidy—he shaved eight times with one blade and then he cleaned himself off down there. This man looked like an officer, but he obviously didn’t pay any attention to personal hygiene. It was a good thing that he and his wife had switched places. How could he have anticipated that such a situation would arise even in a first-class compartment? The man probably wasn’t even that hygienic when it came to eating and drinking. That’s why he had cholera—or some other illness … Whatever it was, it was the result of intemperance.
But the next moment he reproached himself. Anyone could get cholera; it could happen even in a first-class compartment …
Just then the ailing passenger smacked his hand hard on the trunk because of a cramp. The young man got up from his place and came to sit on the edge of their seat.
‘He is getting cramps,’ he told the young man in English. ‘Just press his arm a little.’
But the young man again ignored him. The ailing passenger seemed to repulse him.
The man was cramping horribly. He was flailing his arms. The wife was ignoring him, eating with her back to him. Something like this could happen to me too, the husband thought suddenly, the same thing could happen to me. And he imagined himself writhing in the passenger’s place.
He swallowed the last bit of his lunch quickly and, taking some water from the jug, he gargled in the window. After he had washed his hands and wiped them with his handkerchief, he got up and went to sit on the corner of the trunk that was not wet. The newspaper had dried long ago. He pushed it to one side and began to press the ailing passenger’s arm. He had hardly pressed the man’s arm for half a minute when it cramped terribly, causing the man to sit up. For the first time, a sound emerged from his lips that sounded like a long sigh.
But he wasn’t able to sit up for long. He lay down facing the other direction, but his legs kept folding up to his chest from the cramping.
The husband held on to the ailing passenger’s legs. With renewed zeal, he began to press his calves. As he pressed his calves lower and lower, he finally reached his feet. For a moment he felt embarrassed. The man’s feet were dirty. The husband realized that perhaps he wasn’t conscious enough to put on shoes. He wanted the young man to feel ashamed for refusing to touch the sick man. By performing this good deed, he wanted to elevate himself in the eyes of his wife, in the eyes of the young man, even in his own eyes. Then he imagined himself lying sick and helpless, and began pressing the man’s feet with supreme devotion. The joints of the toes, the toenails, the mounts beneath the toes and the big toes, the soles of the feet, the heels—with each part he pressed, he felt as though he were pressing his own feet. He wanted to press the man’s feet thoroughly and crack his toes, but the man’s calves cramped again. The husband could clearly see the man’s calf muscles jumping. The man sat up again and let out a low moan.
Just then, they reached Kalyan station. The husband took some soap from his wife and ran out and washed his hands under a faucet on the platform, then gargled two or three times. After this, he went running to the station master’s room and told him there was a passenger in the first class—perhaps a railway officer—who was suffering from cholera. He had soiled the floor. They needed both a sweeper and a doctor.
The station master immediately sent the sweeper. As for a doctor, he apologized and said that the station doctor had gone on vacation. He added that an ordinary doctor would not be willing to take up a cholera case, but he would immediately send information about the situation to Dadar station by telegram. They would bring a doctor there, or the invalid would be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
Just then, the train whistle blew. He thanked the station master and ran back to his compartment. He was breathing heavily when he took his seat. He saw that the ailing passenger’s head was tilted back and his feet were hanging down. The man seemed to have no consciousness of his body. The train whistle blew again and they started to move. The man suddenly awoke and sat up. ‘I want a doctor here,’ he whispered irritably in English. Then he lay back down on the seat and fell unconscious again.
The husband glanced over at the area where the ailing passenger had soiled the floor in the morning. The sweeper had cleaned that area. He had also cleaned the trunk. His glance again went to the sick man. His seat was wet and the sticky liquid had formed a pool that shone in the sunlight coming through the window.
When the train set off again, the young man from their compartment, who had been enjoying a stroll about the station, jumped into the moving train. As he entered the compartment and glanced at his seat, his fresh enthusiasm vanished and that same revulsion and loathing returned in its place. He closed the door and stood for a moment with his back against it. The husband slid closer to his wife and made room for the young man on their seat. He motioned to him to sit down.
The youth cast a glance at the empty space and then looked at that unconscious, half-naked, filthy passenger. Then he suddenly pulled at the chain holding the upper berth and, stepping on to the armrest of the seat, jumped up and lay down. He didn’t get down again until Dadar station.
The husband suddenly wished that he could play a game of cards with his wife. But his wife was sitting with her head leaning half out of the window, as if the cholera germs were co
ntaminating the air inside the compartment. After Kalyan station, there was an increasing number of local stations. He wished that he could tell his wife to let him sit near the window for a little while. But then his attention was again drawn to the man lying exposed on the seat across from them. He tried as hard as he could to think about that honeymoon trip a quarter of a century ago. He thought of the relatives who had come to see them off at the station. He thought of the nicely decorated first-class coupé, of his wife, as delectable as a tray of delicacies, but somehow he had lost his memory of that scene which symbolized his youth and masculinity. Whenever he tried to imagine his powerful, erect member, it transformed itself into that three-inch lump of withered flesh hidden in the pubic hair of the cholera patient on the seat across from them.
He felt fearful and got up to stand at the window and watch the sights outside.
Before Dadar station the husband began to arrange the luggage. The train had already entered the station, when suddenly the ailing passenger sat up. ‘I have to get off,’ he said. His voice sounded dry and extremely weak, and he asked if someone could hand him his pants.
The husband immediately handed him his pants. Then he turned away and, on the pretext of closing the cap of his thermos properly, he washed his fingers that had touched the trousers.
The man quickly began pulling on his trousers, but he had scarcely got them above his knees when his energy ran out and he fell backwards on to the seat.
The husband was turning around with the thermos in his hand when he glanced again at the ailing passenger. His head was on the seat. His eyes were closed, both his hands had abandoned the task of pulling on the trousers. They hung down limply. His lower body was exposed and his legs, partially covered by the trousers, were hanging off the seat. That three-inch lump of shrunken, shrivelled flesh in a jungle of pubic hair—that symbol of vitality—was imprinted in his eyes with all its pathos.
Hats and Doctors: Stories Page 22