Crossings
I WAS not there the first time round, but I am told that as the ambulance lumbered up the flyover, he looked at her and very distinctly said, " Palash". Lying inside the emergency vehicle, at a time when more exigent thoughts swirled in the other heads, he had spotted the trees electric with flower.
I had always thought of ambulances as sterile carriers, never bothered with their insides. That thoughts like palash could bloom within one, I had no idea.
That's the thing about spaces and people related to all things medical; they emphasise the already obvious suspension of normalcy.
Sitting in the hospital lounge, unable to take in any more Animal Planet playing in a loop, the old grouse stirs. (In a hospital situation, you feel the need to blame someone.) I settle for the man - it could never have been a woman - who came up with the colour scheme for hospitals, white on whites.
Hospital lounges are different. Like any other waiting space they are charged with emotion and exchanges; more enjoyable than soaps - provided you have a bit role - only with the volume turned down.
There are patterns. Mondays, Tuesdays, the place is crawling with people. Wednesdays, Thursdays, slump; mobile updates all around. From Friday the crowd begins to peak - junior colleagues, fourth cousins taking a kindly detour on the way to the multiplex or mall. (Worry worn nerves pick up on these like bloodhounds on the loose.)
Work on the eavesdropping and you will find yourself rich with classified information - Doctor X attends too many conferences, Z Diagnostics has good machines but not great with the MRIs... You learn to tell from the general drift of whispers, expressions, attention to attire - kalamkari or khadi wear teamed with backpacks suggest NRI - and absence or presence of earphones, how near or far the visitor is to the person admitted.
And then there are conundrums like her.
She has made herself quite comfortable on the sliver of a bench and is now sitting cross-legged, rolling a paan. I nudge H and say, "Must be a grandchild. Happy visit."
No sooner have I given my verdict, than the paan lady's phone starts to ring and in a loud telephone voice, she recounts how the patient suffered a blackout and was discovered " ekkebaare moro moro (almost dead)".
More details. Minutes before the incident she had shut the bedroom door on him. The smell of the dog and his cigarettes was too much. And had she not missed her paan box, which she had left in the drawing room, he would have never been discovered so soon etc etc. I start to say something about missing a remote, when the stranger lady to my left shushes me. "Quiet, I want to know how exactly she is related to the patient," she says.
Inside the lift, wedged between a wheelchair and other visitors, a word comes back to me. Liminality or in-betweenness, as Bhabha defined it. I had struggled with the concept many moons ago; it had cost me that term's only C minus. So this is it, I tell myself. In between floors, in between sad and happy, sickness and good health, hope and...
A hand starts waving in my face as I step into the corridor. An administrative staff has recognised me from my many visits. Liminal bonds have their own grammar. " Abar... Again?" he asks and adds genially , "In China they shoot them once they turn 60. Khoob bhalo kore... Very good thing to do." H, who has just walked out of the HDU, looks aghast. I mumble something about him meaning well and walk in.
Walking past forlorn bed after bed, one feels guilty for the simple act of being able to walk around. It seems like such an obscene exhibition of good health.
His bed is empty. He is sitting in a chair next to it. So how's it going, I ask him. "This place is bedlam," he tells me with a wan smile. Then adds, "I am punning on beds." And how is he feeling? He replies in baritone-turned-whisper, "And I am the chairman. I am punning on..."
HDU stands for high dependency unit.
Upala Sen
