I hadn’t had many chances to look at myself in my life. The woman who was not my aunt had no mirror in her house. Well, she had a small one once, but the man who was not my uncle broke it when he was drinking.
I had looked at my reflection in shop windows, and a furniture store on Park Street had mirror squares stuck to the outside of it. In the early mornings the shop front would be crowded with women and men who lived on the pavement and were checking their hair before going off to work.
But a whole big mirror like this? Never.
I took a good long look at my face. I liked what I saw. If I tilted it a certain way and let one side be partly in shadow, I looked a little like the movie-star women whose pictures were on posters and billboards.
Then I covered up part of my nose and pretended it had been taken by leprosy, like Usha’s.
I still looked good, I decided.
Then I backed up and started to do a Bollywood dance that I had learned in Jharia. I watched myself sway and twist.
Again, I looked good.
‘Hold still,’ Usha said, but she wasn’t angry. ‘No lice. Good for you.’ She put a part down the middle of my head and wound my hair into two long braids that hung down my back. ‘Maybe we can find some ribbons for your braids.’
It felt funny walking back into the ward in a gown with no trousers. But I liked the feel of the braids bouncing against my shoulders.
‘Here she is,’ Usha announced to the other women. ‘All clean and fresh. Everyone, this is Valli.’
I really looked at the other patients for the first time. Some looked normal, like any other women, and had just small bandages on their hands or feet. Others had feet propped up in big casts and bandages on their faces. Some were sitting up and reading. Others were resting.
They all smiled and said hello.
Except one.
‘Is she going to wake us up rudely every morning like she did today?’ she asked.
‘As I recall, Mrs. Das, you brought no peace to us in your early days here.’ The woman in the bed beside mine put her hand over her cellphone to talk to the grumpy-looking woman who didn’t like me. She then went back to her phone conversation. File folders and notebooks were open all over the top of her bed, and she kept looking at them as she talked.
I sat on the edge of my bed. The last time I had been too sleepy and too scared to notice much. Now I wanted to notice everything.
In the home of the woman who was not my aunt, I had slept on the floor. Everyone did. That was all there was. In the streets I slept on sidewalks and benches, parks, graves and beaches.
This was the first time I would have a bed.
‘Do I have to share this with anyone?’ I whispered.
‘It’s all yours,’ came a voice.
The woman in the bandages could talk.
I swung my feet off the edge of the bed. It was fun.
‘Can you swing your feet?’ I asked the bandages.
‘Maybe soon,’ she replied. ‘My legs aren’t too bad.’
‘I’m Valli,’ I said.
‘I’m Laxmi.’
‘Do you have leprosy, too? You must have it bad.’
‘I was burned,’ she said.
‘It was one of those kitchen accidents.’ The woman with the cellphone was finished with her phone conversation. ‘Her husband’s family wanted more dowry. When there wasn’t any more, someone poured kerosene on her and set her on fire. I don’t know how she’s still alive. And I don’t know how she stands the pain. At fifteen!’
I looked at Laxmi. I thought of Elamma. I thought of the man who was not my uncle. It made me want to go back to Jharia and get her.
The cellphone rang again, and she started another call.
Some of the patients propped up their pillows at the back of the beds. They leaned against them when they sat up.
I did the same. It was comfortable.
I looked around the ward. Everyone was ignoring me. Some were dozing. Laxmi’s eyes were closed. The grumpy woman was scowling at me. I ran my hands over my new braids, breathed in the clean smell of my skin and clothes and waited to see what would happen next.
‘You’re going to need a skin graft.’
The doctor – another doctor, a man – was looking closely at my feet, along with Dr. Indra.
‘You will need to explain that to her, Dr. Kaur,’ Dr. Indra said. ‘This is a girl who needs explanations.’
Dr. Kaur took a small mirror out of the pocket of his white jacket. He set it up so that I could see the bottoms of my feet more easily.
I squished up my face with disgust. My feet had looked terrible when they were covered with dirt. All cleaned up, they looked even worse. Large deep sores looked like they had been carved out of my feet with a knife.
‘They don’t hurt,’ I said.
‘That’s the leprosy germ at work,’ Dr. Kaur said. ‘It eats away at your nerves. The job of nerves is to make us feel things, especially pain. It’s a very important job because if we don’t feel pain, we don’t know that we’re hurting ourselves.’
‘Dr. Indra said you can’t fix nerves.’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Maybe one day. But we can stop the damage from getting worse. You’re going to start taking the drugs today. And I can repair these holes in your feet by taking some skin from another part of your body and patching it over the wounds.’
‘You’ll take some skin?’
‘Probably from your upper leg.’
I rubbed my thigh. I was trying to figure it out.
‘You mean you’ll cut it out? That will hurt!’
‘You won’t feel a thing,’ Dr. Indra said. ‘We’ll put you to sleep.’
‘I’ll wake up!’
‘They did the same thing to me,’ the cellphone woman said. ‘I’m healing beautifully. Isn’t that right, doctors?’
She had bandages on her feet.
‘I want to see,’ I said.
‘Neeta is an expert,’ Dr. Indra said as she undid one of the bandages on the cellphone woman’s feet.
I looked at the big wound on Neeta’s foot. It was covered over by a round patch of skin.
‘That does not look good,’ I said.
‘It will,’ said Dr. Kaur. ‘And so will your feet, I promise you. Ask us any questions you want. At any time.’ He turned to Dr. Indra. ‘When do you suggest we do it?’
‘I’d like to wait until the middle of January. She’s quite malnourished. Let’s build her up a bit.’
‘The middle of January it is.’
He went on to the next patient.
Dr. Indra started to bandage my feet.
‘I know I can’t keep you on the bed all the time, but please, as a favor to me, stay off your feet as much as possible. Don’t make your injuries worse. Look out the window, talk to your neighbours, and help us make you well and strong.’
My feet were dressed again in bright white bandages. Dr. Indra gave me cloth slippers to wear over them when I walked around.
‘Dr. Indra?’
‘What is it, Valli?’
‘The people who are paying for this. Do they really expect me to do something great with my life?’
‘They really do. And you know what?’
‘What?’
‘So do I.’
14
A New Type of Roti
The pill was small, yellow and round. I tossed it to the back of my throat the way the nurse said to do, and gulped it down with a big glass of cold water.
‘That’s it?’ I asked her.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘One each day for a year. When you take it, think about it eating the germs that are eating away at your nerves.’
The nurse poured water for Laxmi and held a straw to her lips so she could drink through her bandages.
‘Where does blood go?’ I asked her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It gets made in the heart, right? And goes all through your body on those red lines? Where does it go when it
gets to the end of the lines?’
‘Those red lines are called veins and arteries. And your blood doesn’t go away. It keeps moving through your body. But you are right. The heart pumps it.’
‘Like Sealdah,’ I said. ‘The heart is like a train station. Trains aren’t made there, but they come and they go.’
The nurse looked at me with a funny expression on her face.
‘You’re going to be a scientist some day,’ she said.
‘Is Dr. Indra a scientist?’
The nurse smiled. ‘We all are.’
She moved on. I thought about my heart as a train station. I put my hand on my chest where the stethoscope had gone, and I felt it thumping.
‘Try your wrists, too,’ Neeta suggested. She held up her own wrist and showed me where to put my fingers. It took some time, but I found the spot.
‘It works on both wrists!’ I explained.
‘On your neck, too.’ Neeta put her fingers on the side of her throat. ‘It’s called a pulse.’
I found my own pulse on my neck. Then I had to see if I could find it on someone else. Laxmi was the closest. I could reach one of her wrists without getting off my bed.
I found her pulse. Then I put on my slippers and moved on to the other patients.
Most of the women didn’t mind. The grouchy woman, Mrs. Das, tucked her wrists into her armpits when I came close, so I didn’t even ask.
Maybe she doesn’t have a pulse, I thought.
I got so involved in finding everyone’s pulse that I often forgot to notice whether the wrist I was holding had a hand with fingers on it or not. Once, when I did notice that the fingers had been eaten away, I was so excited about feeling the blood beating through the veins that I didn’t care about the fingers.
The lunch cart came around. I tucked into the rice and dal that people around the world had paid for. I imagined people from all over the place getting together and discussing what I would like to eat. I licked my plate clean. I didn’t want to waste a single grain of rice.
For the next three days I slept and ate. I found everyone’s pulses again, except for Mrs. Das. I could have tried for the pulse in her throat, but she was in such a bad mood that I was afraid she might bite me. Dr. Indra let me listen to my heart through her stethoscope again. I took my pill every day with a big glass of water, and I tried to stay off my feet.
That was easier than I thought it would be. I was very, very tired. It was as though I had been saving up my tiredness all my life in order to feel it now.
‘I’m the same way,’ Neeta said when I woke up from my morning nap just in time to eat lunch. ‘Most of us here are. The only time we can rest is when we’re in the hospital.’
I saw women nodding all over the ward.
‘Tired from what?’ I asked. The only other people I knew with leprosy spent their time dodging stones beside the railway tracks.
And the fortune teller, I reminded himself. And maybe there were others I didn’t know about.
‘I’m a sales director for a health-supplies company,’ Neeta said. ‘I have fourteen salespeople working under me, nine of them men. Although, if one of them doesn’t change his attitude by the time I get out of here, there will be eight men instead of nine.’
‘Don’t you have leprosy?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Or I did. But I took the pills and now I’m cured. But my nerves are damaged and I developed bad ulcers on my feet.’
‘Ulcers?’
‘Sores. It’s my job to check up on all the men who work for me. I was running around fixing their mistakes, and I didn’t take proper care of my feet. So I came here to get fixed up. But even here,’ she held up her phone, ‘they call me with their problems.’
I wanted to see her phone. I had never held one before. I wanted to see what was in the folders and notebooks on her bed. I wanted her to explain everything to me.
But instead, as soon as my lunch was finished, I fell back asleep.
I woke up the next morning feeling like I had finally caught up with my tiredness.
‘I’ve got my energy back,’ I announced.
‘Wonderful,’ said Mrs. Das, although her face didn’t look as though she thought it was wonderful.
I couldn’t stay in bed.
I fetched the broom from the corner of the ward and swept under everyone’s bed. I went out into the hallway and looked in the doors of the other wards. I had a great time saying ‘Good morning’ and making the namaste to everyone until a nurse shooed me back to my own ward.
I kept busy there for a little bit, with breakfast and another washing, but after that I ran out of things to do. I thought of checking everyone’s pulse, but a lot of the patients were sleeping again. I already knew they didn’t like it when I woke them up.
I played little finger games with Laxmi for a few minutes. I tapped her finger, then she tapped mine, and we kept up a rhythm that way while I sang – quietly – one of the songs I’d learned in Jharia. But she couldn’t do anything for very long. She was only awake for a little while at a time.
‘They have her on heavy drugs for the pain,’ Neeta said. She was reading through her folders again.
I took that as an invitation.
‘What are you doing?’ I moved in for a closer look.
‘I’m charting sales figures for each area of my district,’ she said. ‘If a certain product sells better in one neighborhood than in another, I want to know why. Is it the salesperson? Is it the soap? But I can’t know why until I know what’s going on. Can you read? Do you know about numbers?’
‘I can read a little, in both Hindi and English,’ I said proudly. ‘And I can count to one hundred.’
‘Then you’ll be able to understand this. It’s not hard. Look.’
She showed me a circle divided by lines.
‘This is called a pie chart.’
‘Pie?’
‘For you it’s called a roti chart. The circle represents all the sales of our company’s products for three months in one area by one salesperson. Do you understand?’
At first I wasn’t sure about the word represents. But then I nodded. It was like a train station representing a heart.
She went on. ‘Each section represents one of our products.’ She went around the circle. ‘Hair cream, hand soap, shampoo, shaving lotion and so on. I look at this chart and see that in this area, we have sold more shaving lotion than shampoo. That’s different from what I see on other charts, where shampoo is the bigger seller. Now I think about why. The sales rep for the area is a man. Is he selling only to other men? Is he too pushy around women so they don’t want to buy from him? Is he too shy around women and doesn’t approach them at all? Or is it something else entirely? From this information,’ she tapped the chart, ‘I can figure out which questions to ask to solve the problem.’
‘Where do you live?’ I asked her.
‘In Howrah, the other side of the river.’
‘In the garbage piles beside the railway tracks?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, no! I have a very nice apartment in a new building. Railway tracks? Where did you get such an idea?’
Then she gave me some paper and a pencil and showed me how to make my own roti chart.
‘There are ten patients in this ward,’ she said. ‘Divide the circle into ten equal sections. Equal means all the same size.’
I went back to my bed to do that. It took several tries, but I did it.
‘Now find out how many of the patients have leprosy and how many have burns.’
I went from bed to bed. Everyone told me what they had except for Mrs. Das.
‘She has leprosy,’ Neeta said. ‘It has affected her sense of humor. What are your results?’
‘Seven have leprosy, three have burns.’
‘Show that on your chart,’ she said, but she didn’t tell me how to do it.
I went back to my bed and thought about it. When I figured it out, I knew without asking Neeta that I was absolutely right.
Absolutely.
After that I did roti charts on how many took sugar, or milk, or sugar and milk, with their morning tea. I charted whether they were married or not and who preferred rice to roti.
I fell asleep late in the afternoon with my bed sprinkled with my lovely charts.
The nurse woke me up to take my pill. She gathered the charts into a tidy stack, put them in a spare cardboard folder she had in her office and tucked it all under the corner of my pillow. I swallowed my pill with a big glass of water, put my head back down on my pillow and stretched my arm out across the folder.
I fell back into a sound, restful sleep.
15
Midnight Clear
‘Valli? Valli, wake up.’
I opened my eyes. Dr. Indra was sitting on my bed. It was night time. I’d slept through dinner.
I sat up. ‘I’m hungry.’
Dr. Indra laughed. ‘Of course you are. We’ll get you some food in a minute. But first I have something for you. Do you know what tomorrow is?’
I shook my head.
‘Tomorrow is Christmas Day.’
‘No more shopping days left.’
‘No more. Tomorrow there will be a Christmas party here. You’ll have a very special dinner and everyone will get presents. But I won’t be here. I’m spending Christmas with my parents. So I have something I wanted to give you tonight.’
She reached behind her back and brought out a package wrapped in pretty paper. Santa Claus was smiling, over and over. No one was beating him up.
She handed it to me.
I held it in my hands. It was heavy. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with it.
‘It’s a present,’ she said. ‘You have to take the paper off to see what’s inside.’
I found the ends of the paper. They were stuck down with tape. I carefully loosened it all so the paper wouldn’t tear.
‘What is it?’ asked Laxmi.
‘Yes,’ said Neeta. ‘Show us.’
It was a book. I tried to sound out the title, but the words were too big for me.
‘Biology of the Human Body,’ Dr. Indra read for me. ‘This is my old biology book from school. A lot of it will be too hard for you now, but you’ll be able to understand some of it.’
The Best Day of My Life Page 9