by Vikas Swarup
I pat her shoulders. ‘I’m proud of you. So who was this magnanimous friend?’
‘I can’t tell you his name.’
‘His? You mean it’s a man?’
Neha suddenly becomes cagey. ‘Look, you want to eat the mangoes or count the trees? What’s important is that we have the money, not how I got it or who gave it to me.’
‘You’re right,’ I say, conceding the point. ‘The important thing is that we can get Ma’s operation done now.’
I go to bed that night with a warm glow in my heart. Osama bin Laden was dead. And Ma was going to live.
* * *
Dr Nath’s chamber reeks of some kind of cloying perfume when I step into it at 10 a.m. the next day, dressed in a white salvar kameez.
The specialist greets me with the shameless eagerness of an adolescent on his first date. ‘Where’s your sister?’ he asks, gazing hopefully at the door.
‘Neha has her exams. She won’t be coming to the hospital any more,’ I reply, almost involuntarily adjusting my dupatta over my chest.
‘Oh.’ Dr Nath tries to hide his disappointment by becoming officious and businesslike. ‘I have reserved the OT for the day after tomorrow. You need to admit your mother tomorrow, so that we may monitor her condition.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘You have the cash?’
‘Yes, exactly two lakhs.’ I open my purse and start taking the bundles out.
‘Wait.’ He stops me. ‘I don’t handle cash. You need to deposit it with the cashier downstairs and bring me the receipt.’
‘I have one request.’
‘Yes?’
‘I would like to meet the donor to personally say thank you. Can you arrange it?’
‘Look, in such matters it is best not to know too much. We follow the same policy as in anonymous adoptions.’
‘The donor will be fine after the operation, won’t she, doctor?’
‘Of course she will be. Healthy human beings can live quite easily with one kidney.’
‘At least tell me her name.’
‘What good will that do? But if you are desperate to know, it is Sita Devi, like the wife of Lord Ram in Ramayana. Satisfied? Now go and get me the receipt from the cashier.’
I step out of his office and take the elevator to the ground floor. The payment window is located on the far side of Reception. Just as I have finished paying the money to the cashier, I hear what sounds like an argument coming from the Reception area.
‘I’ve told you before also not to come here. Does nothing enter your brain?’ a man’s voice hisses harshly.
‘What to do, sahib? I need the money urgently. My son is very sick,’ a woman’s plaintive whimper comes in response. I cannot see her because of a pillar blocking my view.
‘You will only get the money tomorrow, after the operation. But let me warn you, Sita, if you set foot here one more time, we are going to stop doing business with you. Then don’t blame me if your family starves to death. Now go back to the clinic.’
Sita. My ears prick up at the name. Almost instinctively my head swivels in the direction of Reception and I tilt to one side to see behind the pillar. I am expecting a healthy young girl, but the supplicant who turns back dejected from the counter is a middle-aged woman, dressed in a tattered green sari. She looks like a skeleton, with her sunken eyes, gaunt face and thin, chapped lips. Her hair is dirty and unkempt. Her ribcage is clearly visible under her blouse, the skin shrivelled like some old parchment. She drags her feet slowly, as though suffering the aftereffect of a major operation. In the swanky environs of Unity Kidney Institute she looks as out of place as a meat dish in a Jain vegetarian meal.
No, I tell myself. She can’t be Ma’s donor. But something about the woman piques my interest, like a story that has to be read. Inserting the receipt into my purse, I follow her as she shuffles out of the hospital’s revolving door.
With her head hung low, she ambles to a bus stop adjacent to the hospital. A Delhi Transport Corporation bus bound for Gurgaon arrives within ten minutes and she boards it. After a moment’s hesitation I clamber in too, taking the seat directly across from her.
Sitting within touching distance of Sita, I examine her closely. There is a bandage peeking out of her back and her arms are riddled with punctures of surgical needles. It makes me even more curious to speak to her, but she barely notices me, a stranger in a bus full of strangers. From time to time her thumb brushes over the bottom of her eyes, wiping away tears.
The bus traverses an unfamiliar route via the Outer Ring Road, which is congested with traffic. Everywhere I look I see people, cars and more people. As I watch the teeming streets and maddening rush of the city, I am overcome with a strange burst of emotion. How vast the city is, and yet how lonely. No one has time for anyone else. Our lives are ruled by the clock, each one of us trapped in its ticking, stuck in the rat race with no end in sight. Perhaps we are no different from cars, each a self-contained cocoon, each travelling apart from the others, hurtling down a highway to nowhere.
Lost in my thoughts I fail to notice the passage of time. The bus is already in Gurgaon and my quarry has risen from her seat, preparing to disembark.
The bus stops in front of a glitzy shopping arcade full of designer brands and stylish cafés. Through the glass façade I catch a glimpse of the sprawling food court on the second floor, teeming with call-centre executives and suburban yuppies soaking in the hip atmosphere. The mall is emblematic of Gurgaon, a nouveau riche city bustling with sleek office buildings, multiplexes and plush housing colonies. People say it looks more Dallas than Delhi. Perhaps that is why it has become a preferred hub of many multinational companies.
Sita casts a wistful eye at the mall, mesmerised by the neon ideograms promising pizzas and fried chicken. Then, with the resigned air of a woman who has accepted her lot in life, she turns around and crosses the road.
I follow her down a couple of blocks, making sure she doesn’t spot me. Eventually, she enters a side street and I find myself in a leafy residential area. It has large houses, paved walkways and few pedestrians. After the frenetic bustle of the mall, it is a haven of solitude, the torpid calm of noon broken only by the whirring of air-conditioning units, occasional cars passing, and the faint hum of jazz drifting from an open window somewhere.
Sita stops in front of a modest, double-storey house, painted white with green shutters. A wooden nameplate on the wall outside identifies the house simply as ‘3734’. There is no name of the occupant. The other intriguing thing is that it has a guardhouse, with a uniformed guard.
Sita speaks to the guard and he allows her to enter through the metal gate. I am still debating what to do when I see a familiar face approaching from the other side of the road. It is none other than Tilak Raj, the ward boy from the government hospital, escorting a man who, from the dust and grime on his clothes, looks like a day labourer. I duck behind a tree, waiting for Tilak Raj to pass. But his destination, too, is house number 3734. I watch him exchange a few words with the guard and then enter the building with his companion.
By now my curiosity is killing me. I simply have to find out what’s happening inside the house. Fixing up my courage, I approach the guard.
‘Yes? What do you want?’ He gazes at me suspiciously.
‘I have come to meet Tilak Raj,’ I reply, nervously clutching my purse. ‘He told me he would meet me here.’
‘Yes, he’s inside.’ The guard nods and unlatches the metal gate.
I enter through an open door into what looks like a waiting room. The day labourer is sitting on a plastic chair, together with two other men and Sita. There is no sign of Tilak Raj.
I wander out of the waiting room into a corridor. Inside, the house is quite spacious. There are at least two other rooms on the ground floor.
I peep into the first one and discover a man lying in a metal bed, an IV going into his arm. ‘It’s paining a lot, Sister,’ he groans, thinking me to be a nurse.
&
nbsp; I step closer. A clipboard attached to his bed identifies him as Mohammad Idris. His age is listed as twenty-nine, but he looks ten years older with his straggly grey beard and hollow cheeks. ‘See here, Sister, this is where it hurts,’ he murmurs, lifting up his shirt. I recoil in shock at the sight that meets my eye. There is an ugly, puckered 10-inch wound in his side, bristling with black surgical thread. It looks like a patch-up job by a particularly callous surgeon.
‘If I had known it will be so painful, I would have thought twice before agreeing to sell my kidney,’ he says before lapsing into a coughing fit.
I enter the next room to find a woman in a similar condition. Sunita, who is thirty-eight, is strung up with IV leads that are tangled around her arms and chest. Her dark skin is stretched tight across her cheekbones, and her eyes are shadowed in dark circles. She also has an incision in exactly the same spot as Idris, the wound still draining liquid despite the surgical thread holding ragged edges of skin together.
Unlike Idris, she has no regrets about the operation. ‘Doctor-babu said the second kidney is of no use and takes up unnecessary space. Might as well make some money from it.’
‘How much did you get?’ I ask her.
‘They promised me thirty, but gave me twenty thousand. Still, it’s enough to live on for six months at least,’ she replies.
So both the patients have sold their kidneys and are now in postoperative recovery. But who has performed the operations, and where?
The mystery is solved when I go up the stairs to the first floor. I enter through a set of swinging doors into a hallway. There is a toilet on one side and a metal door with two glass portholes on the other. Just above the door is a red light flashing like a beacon. I peep through the porthole and freeze. Because before my eyes is a scene straight out of a grisly horror film. There is a patient lying on an operating table, surrounded by masked doctors in green scrubs and lab-coated technicians. There are oxygen tanks, anaesthesia machines, and contraptions and devices I have never seen before. Surgical instruments are lined up neatly on tables, and the shelves are stacked with surgical supplies. I am looking at a full-fledged operating theatre. The air inside, though, is far from antiseptic. It reeks of desperation and exploitation.
The setup is becoming clear to me. This is the kidney black market that has led to the phenomenon of ‘transplant tourism’. Dr Nath gets poor, indigent people to sell their kidneys, which are extracted at this facility, and then provided to rich Indian patients and medical tourists from abroad who are willing to shell out big bucks for a transplant. MLA Anwar Noorani is the final link in the chain, the kingpin providing political protection to this nefarious racket.
I’m not sure what galls me more, this brazen harvesting of human organs or my own reprehensible attempt to procure a living kidney donor. This nondescript clinic is thirty kilometres away from the swanky Unity Kidney Institute, but the gap between donors and donees is much wider. Mirza Metal Works was a sweatshop run by children. This is worse: a death trap for the poor.
Feeling overwhelmed and nauseated, I turn away from the operating room only to bump into Tilak Raj. ‘What are you doing here?’ His eyes widen.
‘I came to see the donor who is giving her kidney for my mother. I now realise it was a mistake. I should never have come here.’
‘That’s right. Those who want to enjoy meat shouldn’t visit the slaughterhouse.’ He grins. His dark smile sickens me. I now realise he is as much a part of this illegal operation as Dr Nath.
‘Anyway, Sita’s operation will be performed today,’ he adds as he escorts me down to the waiting room. ‘By tomorrow the kidney for your mother will be delivered.’
‘I don’t want it any more.’
‘What are you saying?’ Tilak Raj’s jaw slackens. ‘You don’t want Sita’s kidney?’ He says it loud enough for everyone in the waiting room to hear.
‘Yes. I can’t take her kidney. One person’s happiness cannot be born of another one’s misery.’
Sita springs out of her chair and rushes towards me. ‘What did you say?’ she demands, a manic gleam in her eyes.
‘I don’t want your kidney,’ I repeat. ‘It will be a sin to accept it.’
‘No!’ She lets out a terrifying shriek. ‘My son will die. They promised me thirty thousand. Where will I get so much money? I’ve already given my liver. A kidney is all I’m left with. Please take it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ She crouches suddenly, and begins circling me like a predatory creature. ‘You rich people, you think just by saying sorry you can get away with anything. I’ll kill you, kutiya, saali.’ She lunges at me, scrabbling at my face like a woman possessed.
Taken by surprise, I fall backwards, almost crashing into a chair.
She pins me to the floor and begins raining blows on my shoulders and head, her face a mask of insane fury. I try to defend myself, flailing to get her off me and not succeeding. Her need is greater than mine, and so is her rage.
It is Tilak Raj who comes to my rescue by physically wrenching Sita off me. ‘Have you gone mad?’ He grabs her by the throat and slaps her twice.
She continues to glare at me sullenly like a reprimanded child, breathing heavily through her nostrils.
Tilak Raj turns to me. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
I nod.
‘Why won’t you take Sita’s kidney? I assure you it is perfectly healthy, hundred per cent guaranteed.’
‘It is not a question of health, but of morality. I had become weak. That is why I was looking for an easy way out. But I’ve realised there are no shortcuts to a clean conscience.’
‘All this is beyond me.’ Tilak Raj waves his hand. ‘Just tell me clearly, have you arranged a kidney from some other clinic?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘Then how about his kidney?’ He pats the shoulder of the man he has brought in. ‘This is Gyasuddin, a house painter.’ He squeezes the man’s biceps. ‘See, very healthy.’
‘No, I don’t want his kidney either.’
‘Are you worried that he is Muslim? It doesn’t say on the kidney that it belongs to a Muslim or a Hindu. It belongs to whoever pays for it.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I say with a trace of irritation. ‘I don’t want any kidney from this place.’
‘Then how will your mother get a new kidney?’
‘From me.’
‘What? You will donate your own kidney?’
‘Yes.’ The answer has been staring me in the face right from the beginning. I just didn’t have the courage to confront it.
Sita rolls her eyes. ‘You were calling me mad,’ she smirks at Tilak Raj, ‘but this woman is madder than me. Ab mera kya hoga? Now what will happen to me?’
‘If this one does not take your kidney, someone else will,’ Tilak Raj counsels her. ‘You will just have to wait a little bit.’
‘I can’t wait,’ she wails. ‘My Babloo will die if he doesn’t get treatment by tomorrow. Oh, Babloo, Babloo, Babloo.’ She starts beating her chest like a mother who has already lost her son.
‘What’s wrong with Babloo?’ I ask Tilak Raj.
‘Loo-kee-mia,’ Sita interjects, pausing to let it sink in. ‘He has loo-kee-mia. The private hospital has asked ten thousand for his treatment. How will I ever get so much money? Who will give it to me?’
‘I will,’ I say quietly.
Tilak Raj jerks his head at me. ‘Do not play with poor people’s emotions. Their ill wishes have a habit of coming true.’
I open my purse and pull out the envelope I received three days ago from the store, containing my salary for the month of April. I count out ten thousand, fold the notes into a wad and offer it to Sita.
She looks at me disbelievingly and does not move, like a cautious cat afraid to touch an unknown bowl of milk. Eventually, hope gets the better of her. She grabs the wad and begins counting the notes, licking her thumb intermittently.
‘Yes, it is the full ten thousand.’
She emits a puzzled grunt. ‘Are you really going to give me all this money?’
‘Yes.’ I try to smile, but what comes out is a skewed grimace. I just stand there, finding it hard to fight back the tears. I am in the world of the wretched, full of misery and poverty. For these people, the kidney is not an organ, but an asset to be sold, to feed their families, to save a sick child. And even ten thousand is but a drop of water in a parched desert.
‘It is a miracle,’ Sita shrieks, the crazed glint returning to her eyes. ‘Today, I have seen a miracle.’
I feel like telling her that the bigger miracle is that I have woken up, come out of the poisonous fog that had enveloped me for the last seven days.
She looks up at me in wary gratitude, as though worried I might still change my mind. Then, stuffing the cash inside her blouse, she dashes out of the building like someone escaping a raging fire.
‘You should also leave now,’ says Tilak Raj, shaking his head in apparent frustration. ‘From where do such people come, gypping me out of my commission?’ I hear him mutter under his breath, as he shoos me out of the door. I know it is a reference to me, not Sita.
I walk out of the clinic with my head held high and my shoulders lighter. How exhilarating it is to be free of the crushing burden of guilt! How dazzling life feels when you’re part of the healing and not part of the hurting!
* * *
I return to the Unity Kidney Institute with a DTC bus of the same number and go straight to the cashier’s window. ‘I’ve changed my mind about the transplant. I want my money back.’
The cashier immediately calls Dr Nath, who invites me back to his office. ‘What’s the matter? I have got you the best possible deal. All arrangements have been made for the transplant.’
‘I don’t want Sita’s kidney. I’ve just met her.’
‘Just met her? Where?’
‘I’m coming from your clinic in Gurgaon.’
‘You’ve been to the clinic in Gurgaon?’ His brow contracts in a worried frown. ‘Please wait,’ he says, and steps out of the room. Through the small glass window I see him make a call on his cell phone.