Courtesy: Fine Art America
Ashwani Kumar
“It was windy, cold and raining. But rains were not strong. I drove responsibly but a bit insanely. I was shivering in my sweat shirt. What was it? I did not know. All I knew I had to buy Fruit Shoot for my six-month old daughter. I remember distinctly when Shabana called me. Her voice was thrilled, perhaps choked with some unexpected joy when she told me to buy Fruit Shoot. I don’t know if you have ever tried it. It comes in various flavours I can hardly differentiate. All flavours are the same. War or Peace. Don’t they sound the same? Someone told me violence is universal; these days you can’t make out anything that happens in London or elsewhere. The other day didn’t you see how those guys butchered people in Paris? Did they make any difference before killing? Differences are meaningless. Often I can read labels and buy the flavours Shabana likes. Haha, I am told they have nutritional value. Since childhood I always had nutritional deficiency. No wonder I know so much about worms, especially threadworms- those tiny parasites like voodoo of nationalism that acquired more power and potency as I became an adult. They continue to dwell in some unpleasant corners of my body forcing me to do things against my desire or nature, or may be both…”
“I am talking to you over here. Oh, I forgot, let me get you some coffee. They say coffee was discovered by Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herd. You also like Latte?” He chuckled with a secret grunt and continued…”
“Sometimes you do things that you know are not very significant, yet you do them. It was one of those things I did. I still remember it. I can share it with you, you are a stranger, but I can tell you something I can’t tell my wife, even. Did I buy Fruit Shoot for myself or for my family? Or was it a trick to keep Shabana happy, whom I knew from college days in Dhaka?”
While he kept talking to me, I suppose his eyes got moist. I could see through his glasses. He might have cried. His eyes were translucent, transmitting colourless, non-measurable droplets of past infections. He was a microbiologist. He knew the structure of cells, knew also how to break down emotions into millions of nano cells and hide them forever. We were sitting across each other but felt as if we were in a tunnel, waiting for speeding cars to zip past us.
Fulton canteen was a state-of-the-art facility, designed like a bomb shelter. He slumped forward. His voice softly trembled along. He continued, “…the other day, we travelled to London. After a long time we were travelling together not for visa or emigration work. Shabana was visiting her sister’s house. She looked so happy. After a few miles and when I had gone past city limits, her brown eyes flickered. She suddenly turned around and said, ‘you know we are free after a long time. I am not complaining but we used to be talking to each other more often. You remember we used to watch the fading lights of the sun when we were students. Not that I feel lonely, or wish we could live a day or days on the clouds, and feel wet all day and night’. She was embarrassed at her own expression of longing and delicately touched the hair falling on her forehead. She knew me better than anyone. I smiled languorously and proceeded with my thoughts. I knew she was neither bored nor struggling in her research. I wanted to tell her something. But again I pretended to be mute and immobile like a cell phone without a sim card. What was the day, the year? I don’t recall. Perhaps December…”
The cruel December was lodged in his flesh like a shrapnel from grenades used against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
“Well, I forgot to tell you a very obvious fact of our lives. Shabana always did better than me in her studies. Intelligence was not her only strength. She was equally good with her memory, though she now complains she does not easily remember numbers, or dates, in particular. She was lucky to have great colleagues in her lab. Unlike other women I know, her post-pregnancy recovery was quite normal; no emotional breakdowns, or any signs of loss of physical appetite. No symptoms of anything going wrong. After all, we had been slowly settling down in Brighton. People here are good, sometimes so good that you find no fault with them. Boring, you could say. There was no distinction between good and evil here. Occasionally, I would go to the railway station or bus stand and wait for the arrival of a wrong-doer. Does evil exist or is it just a false idea?” He muttered so softly I barely heard it.
“It is absolutely necessary for us to think of evil. You can’t dismiss it for the sake of writing a story. The other day when I met a bunch of young and aging Turkish students, we debated Karl Marx, Adam Smith and lots of nationalist dictators. Obviously, none of us directly discussed anything about evil. Why? I don’t know. I told you I was not good at studies, never wanted to know everything. For instance, I was never interested in solar research. Did I tell you we were from good families with no history of parental violence or anything remotely associated with dysfunctional behaviour? My family traded in brick, tile and soorkey. Family history matters. Maybe I am just stupid, you may be wondering. How hard is it to live every day knowing you know yourself?” He lifted his head and looked around. People were still eating, forks and spoons struggling with gastronomical habits. Somehow, he felt reassured. He stared at me and startled me with a sudden spring in his tone when he said with his eyes shut “…there are times when you are born again as a miracle.”
I forced my back straight. He continued hurriedly, “This has happened to me. On one of those dirty moonlit nights, I was returning home from tuition. Lonely, like a ghost on the Narinda Bridge Street. No car, bus or vehicle around. In the night, the dirt and squalor of the day looked like vanilla cheesecake. The stench of garbage like men’s deodorant. These days you can’t romance without deodorants, though I am recusing myself from this curse of modernity. Are you listening? Houses in our city are neither horizontal nor vertical. They are often closed from all sides. I am serious. They are mostly segregated. There are cemeteries, mostly illegal, all over my neighbourhood. A legal electronic crematorium has also been set up for everyone. But you can’t peep into the lives of the city- how little we know about each other in the cities. One of my friends from Moscow was telling me dictators always like to control cities because they think they could stop the supply of essentials and people would never revolt though many would still be peeing in the public, especially along the railway tracks. Would you argue that his foresight was proven wrong? Shabana says I am often hasty and impatient; there is a deep fault in my nature. Nature! Ah, the unspeakable beast, remorseless murderer fettered to my body. I confess I know so little about it. Let me continue with my story of the miracle.”
“I saw shadows of an effigy slowly coming from behind. I also heard footsteps. When it came close, I recognized instantly. It was our great leader in a military dress installed on the cart. He looked real but was obviously made of mud and thatch and covered with a red saree border. He did not look ferocious but withdrawn. Blood droplets oozed intermittently from wounds all over his face. I stood confused and also felt a strange satisfaction. I don’t know why. In the crooked rays of the moon, I saw several dogs, emasculated and hungry, dragging the cart as if they were taking him for immersion in the local river. As the serenading shadows came closer, my fears turned into microbes- I felt like some amoeba stirring my body and I wanted to throw up the truth that death was more biological than physical. You may worry about your health, your integrity and wealth too because it could increase or decrease, depending on how you keep it. But nothing is more permanent than biological life. All this while shadows suddenly entered into me like an invading army of bacterial pathogens. They quickly disappeared into the embers of my physical self and kept chewing lovers’ bones there. I silently came home and slept in my room alongside my mother on the floor, dreaming I am afflicted with a mysterious disease and I got telepathic power to cure anyone of any infection. Little did I know that this was just a dream. I can’t cure anything though I keep thinking I can. Strange disease…”
While he was still talking, his phone rang. I overheard him talking to his mother. He resumed, “My mother is very ill. She is admitted in a hospital in Bangkok. I don’t trust doctors in Dhaka. My uncle was treated in Kolkata for kidney ailment. I don’t know if you know it- Kolkata cures everyone, and death is a bribe there. In my family everyone suffers from some infection or the other. Are you thinking I am going to tell you the history of infections? I am only sharing with you biographies of my family. Did I tell you the story of cholera? No, no, first let me tell my story. You are an exceptionally patient listener. And how strange that I like your perspectives on life. I will always remember the way you said ‘intentional works are no great scientific discovery’. Let me tell you. I was never a very intelligent student. I would study just before the exam and had almost photo memory. So I did well in the examinations. As soon as I finished graduation I got a job in the hospital labs. It was quite prestigious as many senior, molecular scientists also worked in the hospital.” He paused and ordered some French fries, shook his head, straightened his elbows, smiled, and continued his story.
“Anyway, the senior scientist in the lab liked me. He saw some potential in me. Maybe he liked my chlorine bleached body smell. He had given me access to his office and the freedom to come and go anytime. Still I wanted to escape the monotony of daylight freedom. So, I preferred to work in the night. Life kept stirring itself. The city burned with rumours of military takeover. I never heard anything about the father working in Dubai. The lab work had become monotonous. A multinational company was developing vaccine for canine virus. And my lab was selected for testing it on pot-bellied goats from Sylhet. Vaccination for animal health is a necessity for our civilization. I had started liking the idea of scientific experiments in the dark. So, I would squander my day in the auto parts shop gossiping about the benefits of military rule. Or photocopying old question papers for Shabana. In the night, I would secretly sneak into my lab. This became my routine.”
I nodded politely, and stretched my legs. My body was getting a bit restless. He stopped and breathed heavily, like Caribbean workers shifting heavy furniture before painting a house.
“It was quite late, post-midnight. There were no guards around. Still I avoided taking the main entrance and entered the hospital lab from the back entry. As soon as I passed the doorway, I found a woman sobbing inconsolably in the corridor. Her body lolled with a smothered hysteric rhythm. I stopped. I did not know what to do. I thought she must be the mother of a patient. I asked her. I don’t remember exactly what I said. She faintly answered that her son was diagnosed with Cholera. Doctors said he would not survive. How could anyone die with Cholera? Was cholera such a deadly disease? My heart was full of sorrow but also started pulsating with the suppressed violence of letting the poor old woman’s son die. I decided to soothe her with my lies. I am an atheist. My mother never attempted to make me a religious or devout person. She told me that religion was no guarantee for a good life. If you can’t mock your religion, you are never free. Also, if you are always trying to improve your religion, your end would be quite brutal. She was barely thirteen years old when she got married and always regretted that she could not finish her school…”
“Wait, why I am telling you all this? Probably, you are a good man. I know being good does not mean anything. Anyway, let me continue with my story. Did I tell you that I don’t share everything with Shabana, not even the password for my phone? The strong stench of chloroform in the corridor had entered my lungs, giving me strength to tell lies that her son won’t die. All would be fine. Don’t worry, nothing would happen to him-I started blabbering in a fit of silent rage. Feeling drowned in the guilt, I opened the chamber of my professor and opened his computer. I searched about cholera and was surprised that there was no medicine or cure available for cholera as the structures of bacterial protein called pilin were still unknown. Those days I did not know much about imperialism or western powers. The more I searched on the internet, the more restless I became. There was nothing on Cholera. My head was buried in the fluctuating screen, my eyes suddenly started burning, and I did not know my tear glands had suddenly dried up…”
“Oh, did I tell you that my health was always an issue at home? My mother knew my appendicitis problem. But she could not afford me taking a salary cut for non-essential surgery. I felt wronged. My younger brother who worked at TESCO helped me to get my stomach operated. He did not have much saving. Sometimes, in these developed countries credit cards are a big vaccine against insecurities. The only thing you worry about these days is that no one should steal your credit or debit card data. Aren’t you surprised that I could not cure myself? I told you I could only dream of curing people, else I am so powerless. My brother Hani called me and said in a mild but stern voice- do not worry brother, you take my credit card number and pay the hospital bills. Good brother. But you know his affections are often distant; we rarely meet…”
“I remember I heard some voices coming out of the images on the computer screen, written in some form of ancient Hebrew script. I could not understand what they said. But this was the first time I realized I could hear voices of dead people begging me not to let them die. Frightened, I closed the computer and rushed out of the office. I led myself again into the same corridor. This time I found the woman quiet, her body like a sunken boat, writhing occasionally. When I came close to her, I told her son had just died of Cholera. She raised her head. I looked into her eyes; dark, round, beautiful like a Hindu Goddess, but they hated me, I can tell you- her eyes really hated me. Next day, I woke up as if nothing had happened. I came to my lab and filed three applications for PhD admission on the topic of Cholera in the UK universities. You know I always wanted to become a painter. I am now a very accomplished scientist who has solved four protein structures of Cholera. Did it really help people cure of all infections? Or prevent future epidemic? I will tell you tomorrow why I stopped my research on cholera vaccine. Shabana these days tells me she hears suppressed sobs of a woman in the night.”
******
Author’s Note Though this work of fiction is inspired by an accidental conversation with a leading viral researcher in the beach town of Brighton, U.K. in 2015, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Note: --The visual above the text is a photograph of a painting by Jean Charles Meissonier. Private Collection / Gemalde Mensing / The Bridgeman Art Library. Courtesy: Fine Art America.
Ashwani Kumar is a poet, writer, columnist and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai). His major anthologies are ‘My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter’ and ‘Banaras and the Other’. Recently his select poems have been translated for a special volume ‘Architecture of Alphabets’ in Hungarian. He is author of non-fiction work ‘Community Warriors’, and one of the chief editors of “Global Civil Society” @ London School of Economics. He is also co-founder of Indian Novels Collective to promote translation of Indian language novels. He writes a regular book column in the Financial Express. And when his spine shakes with fears of loving wet charcoal fire, he daydreams about befriending ghost cyclones and writing fantasy fiction. More by this author in The Beacon: Autopsychography of Mohandas Scattered Circumstances,Odd Geographies: A Life in Epigraphs. Blurring Boundaries
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