Stories of the True by B. Jeyamohan & Priyamvada Ramkumar

Author:B. Jeyamohan & Priyamvada Ramkumar [Jeyamohan, B.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2022-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Palm-Leaf Cross

It was when my father was on his deathbed that I visited Neyyoor Hospital for the first time. It was a thing of great wonder to me back then. I stood mesmerized, gazing up at the tall building with its gleaming white columns that soared like twin palms. On either end of the high, tiled rooftop stood a pair of crosses. The dried golden leaves of the huge neems that surrounded the building were littered all over the roof. But the yard in front of the hospital had been swept clean. The ground marked by the wavy sweeps of a broom was punctuated with a variety of footprints.

Nurse-ammas wearing white caps and long socks, dressed in gowns and bearing an assortment of objects in their hands, hastened about. A tall man in white trousers, who was following behind two khaki-clad women, strode past me. The entire place was icy-cold and a strange smell that stung my nostrils hung in the air. I inhaled it with deliberation and filled myself up. In the hospital veranda, an enormous white pan with a black rim rested on a metal tripod. A nurse-amma who stepped out of a room washed her hands in it – a dish for washing hands bigger than the plate we eat in! Once she left, I ventured a gentle touch of the pan. It was white as an egg-shell. The smoothness of its curvature thrilled me and I couldn’t stop feeling it.

‘Don’t touch it,’ chided the man who walked past me. I withdrew my hand. ‘If you touch it, I’ll beat you,’ he said, peering at me before turning away. It sounded like he was talking with a wad of betel leaves in his mouth. He was a rather peculiar man – his face seemed as though it had been baked in fire. He was wearing a policeman’s khaki trousers paired with a white shirt. Unadorned by a moustache, his lips seemed like a crimson, knife-carved wound. The sides of the nose, which was perfectly straight at the bridge, looked as though they had been pinched. His forehead was lined with wrinkles. More than anything else, it was his eyes that astonished me. Eyes like that of a wildcat. Cat man!

Amma popped out from one of the rooms. ‘What are you grabbing at? Won’t you keep your hands to yourself . . . come now,’ she said, dragging me away. I peered into each and every room as I walked through the corridor. People lay in metal cots covered in blue sheets. In some rooms, tiny glass bottles were arranged on the table. Outside one of the windows, a crowd milled around, bearing cups in their hands. A man clad in white was pouring medicine into the bottles and distributing it to them. ‘Don’t make noise . . . Ei, step aside . . . old lady, come here,’ he shouted.

Appa lay in the long building behind the hospital, the one that had only small beds. Every one of those beds had someone in them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.