A dug-up Nandigram road

Nandigram, Jan. 12: Makhan Dolui was gasping for breath. A patient of acute asthma, his two inhaler sprays were exhausted a day after the Nandigram flare-up.

He could not be hospitalised. The reason: some residents of No. 7 Jalpai village had dug up all roads to make it accessible to police.

Makhan, 65, died on the afternoon of January 8.

He had stopped tilling his one-bigha plot because of illness and entrusted son Sukdeb, 32, with the job.

Sukdeb, also a contract labourer in a ship-repairing yard at Haldia, was away from home when his father took ill.

“I could not return home because of the explosive situation here… the roads were dug up and there were skirmishes here and there. I managed to return home on January 7 and found my father very ill,” said Sukdeb.

Haldia, 70 km from his village by road, is only 4 km across the Haldi, but Sukdeb had to travel by road as the ferry service had stopped because of the violence.

“When I reached home in the afternoon, my mother was almost insane with pa- nic. She implored me to get him hospitalised immediately,” said Sukdeb.

Medicines were not available in battleground Nandigram, where most villagers were busy fighting each other over land acquisition.

Sukdeb went to a neighbour to borrow his rickshaw van that evening. The 8-km road from the village to the Nandigram block hospital was dug up at five places.

“The van owner told me that at least eight men were required to accompany my father as the three-wheeler would have to be lifted across trenches,” said Sukdeb.

His mother Ashalata saw Makhan sinking. “I told my only son to do something. But he was helpless. It was virtually impossible to take my husband to the hospital.”

“The villagers are fools. They prevented the police from coming but allowed one of their own to die without treatment,” she added.

“There could be others like my father,” Sukdeb said.

Sukdeb failed to hospitalise his father. “What could I do? The village was still tense and the only way to save him was to put him on oxygen. The entire agitation against land acquisition appears meaningless. I was the only son and could not perform one of my basic duties.”

Sukdeb waited till the morning of January 8 and left for Contai, about 40 km away, to get the two sprays. “It was 9 am. I had walked for about 10 minutes when my wife Sulekha came running. She told me to return home as my father’s condition had deteriorated. He lived for four more hours and died without any medication,” he said.