Tuesday, 7 June 2005

The Anguish of Dark memories

I suddenly thought of the man and his daughter. I was writing about the daily "Sofie's choice" that you make as father or mother, when you don't know if you are going to eat that day, when you decide which of your children is going to eat and how much, if you can take your child to the doctor... and I thought of them.

He was from Rajasthan, he had said. His thin sun-burnt face was creased with lines. He had come to Delhi to break stones on the roads because there was nothing to eat in their village. His wife and two children were dead. Only that girl was left. 8-9 years old, thin with wise eyes. She was sick, swaying slightly. She had diarrhea and vomiting. And she was dehydrated.

It was Sunday afternoon and I had promised my wife that we would go out. I gave him some medicines for his daughter and told him to come back next morning. There was no other way.

I saw him after a few months. How is your daughter, I had asked. She died that night when we had come to see you, he had said simply. Without any hint of resentment or anger in his voice. I can't tell you how that made me feel, like shit. If I had not gone out that afternoon, if I had kept her in the clinic and looked after her, she would be still alive, perhaps.
 
*** 
Every now and then I think of that woman, the mother of five daughters, whose husband wanted a son. In the quarters for the lower staff in the NPL flats. She was so anaemic and I had told her husband to wait, not to try for another child. 
 
Blood was soaking her sari. I was sitting there with blood on my hands, unable to do any thing.

She still comes in my nightmares, making me wake up with my heart pounding in my chest. Her daughters must be grown up and married. Wonder what kind of lives they had? And did her husband remarry?
 
***
When the dark memories of my work as a doctor in Delhi in the early 1980s stop me from sleeping, I think of her. Living in the hut on the footpath near the Pusa institute crossing. It was very hot and she had been in labour pain for 2 days. I had put in an IV drip and gave oxytocin and after hours of crouching there in her hut, finally the baby came out.
 
An Italian woman holding a new born Indian baby and baby's mother, Delhi, India, 1986

 She called him Rajkumar. I hope that you could study and had a better life than your parents, dear Rajkumar. I think of you as I drift to sleep.

***

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