Karnali Blues by Buddhisagar

Author:Buddhisagar [Buddhisagar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354923890
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2021-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

THE SEVENTH DAY

Narmada,

How well you care for him and nurse him,

My father.

You don’t just look lovely, your manner is good too.

What do you know of how happy we feel when you come?

You are …

You are … What could I write after that? I gazed at a fly buzzing in the window for a moment. Then I watched a bird hopping about on the veranda. I felt stressed. What should I write next?

Ah, now I’d thought of something.

You are Nightingale.

Something I’d studied in my course came in handy for the first time. Nightingale was the same kind of nurse; she served the patients excellently.

‘What are you writing?’

My heart thumped into my mouth: Narmada was at my side. She must have noticed how red my face had become. I shut the door of my exercise book and closed the latch of my pen.

‘Oh! It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing much.’

She went towards Father. Narmada and I still hadn’t had a proper conversation—I was too much of a coward. I was afraid that she might force it from me, she might snatch it out of my hand and read what I had written about her. I looked around the ward. Krishnaji was watching, and he smiled when our eyes met.

Narmada looked at the medicine bottles that were heaped up around Father’s pillow. The medicines smelled really bad. She counted the tablets and capsules. Then she wrote something down on a piece of paper and handed it to me. ‘Get him this,’ she said.

I took the piece of paper and stuffed it into my trouser pocket.

Outside, the sun was hot. Most of the patients fell asleep after midday. Their carers had gone out to stroll here and there and the ward was quiet. The fan was turning—phatatata—and the green curtains on the windows were fluttering gently.

Mother had gone to drink tea; I had just returned from eating a bellyful of meat and chiura at the Bijuli Hotel.

The day was passing at a snail’s pace. It was hard to pass the time. Even the hand of the clock was having to force itself to move.

Father was lying on his back and thinking about something, his eyelids moving gently. His lips quivered too. Since the day before yesterday, he had started murmuring as he thought. After he had been mumbling for a while, he asked, ‘Who are they?’

Mother and I looked towards where he was pointing, but all we could see was the junction of the ceiling and the wall.

‘Who is it?’ Mother was scared. ‘There’s nobody there. What could he have seen?’

‘They’re sitting there,’ Father said breathily. He had begun to get out of breath too. What things did Father see, what things?

‘Who’s that standing to the side?’ he asked again.

If only there had been somebody there!

Mother and I were at our wits’ end.

Narmada felt his forehead and checked the dripping of the saline. I had forgotten now how many salines he had had. Since he arrived, there had always been a saline hanging there. Dr Nandan had told us, ‘If he gets dehydrated, his head will hurt more.

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