(B1) Chapter 10 Dying Man
Next morning, Kuntal got up late. His head was heavy from sleeping late last night and from excess of drinks. He looked around, saw the broken pieces of the glass tumbler and tried to recollect his drinking session the previous night. His laughter at the idea of removing Rajesh as the hurdle between himself and Sheetal rang in his mind, and he felt guilty at harbouring such wicked ideas about a man who was so decent and so nice to him.
After Rashid’s murder, Kuntal had learnt to live a life of discipline. He enjoyed this style of life, and now he felt uncomfortable at the idea of slipping away from this life of self-discipline.
“O God, why am I so stupid!” he said and got up to brush his teeth. As his image appeared in the mirror above the wash basin, he saw his face and said, “I have lived two-thirds of my life already. Why should I now get back into emotional tangles? She was not destined to be mine. Fate played a role to draw a wedge between us. Now, after years of separation, why I am stupidly trying to undo Fate’s designs?”
He went to the kitchen, prepared tea and tried to make his mind quiet.
Meanwhile, in Rajesh’s house, he and Sheetal got ready to go and enquire after Ganesh Sundar Pillai who was said to be on a ventilator, with his sons from abroad having arrived with their families and sitting around him looking at their dying father.
When Rajesh went in, he saw a number of neighbours, acquaintances and relatives of Ganesh Sundar Pillai already gathered there. Pillai was lying quiet and unconscious on a cot in the hall. He was breathing from the ventilator fitted to his mouth, and his youngest son Doctor Mukund was explaining to his brothers that there still was chance of recovery.
Rajesh and Sheetal sat on the chairs that had been laid around in plenty, as visitors were expected to keep pouring in, and also as the chairs would be needed for mourners if Pillai passed away.
Everyone was quiet for some time. Then Rajesh said, “I came to know of it only when I came back from office late last night. My wife told me that Sir was unwell. Bai told her when she came to clean the house yesterday.”
This was obviously said by way of an explanation for not coming earlier. But no one seemed to give much importance to it. Doctor Mukund’s two brothers, Pillai’s elder sons, had come rushing with their families from abroad. The eldest, Vinayak, who was an executive in Canada reached in the middle of the night and the middle one, Moorthy, who was a software engineer in Canada, had arrived just two hours ago.
No one in the house seemed to make much about Pillai’s condition, except Doctor Mukund, who being a doctor considered it his duty to keep trying to revive a patient till the last moment, and Pillai’s aged wife, Dayawati, who feared she would be left alone after Pillai’s death. She also feared that, after Pillai was gone, no one would be left to find a bride for Doctor Mukund and he might remain unmarried for life.
The two elder brothers and their wives had come in the understanding that they were coming for Pillai’s last rites, and when Doctor Mukund said that Pillai could still be revived, the eldest son Vinayak’s wife, thought, “Is he crazy to talk like this? Why doesn’t he let the old man go? What happens if the old man really comes back to senses? What happens to the huge sum of money we have spent coming here? Shall we go back and hear again after a few days that he is no more!”
When, after a few minutes, she was with his husband in another room, she said, “Certain things, when they happen in their time, should be allowed to happen.”
Her husband could not understand. She explained, “Why is your doctor brother struggling to give your father just a few days more? How will that help anyone? It will only prolong his suffering. And we will be stuck. You have taken just three days’ leave. Children have exams when they go back.”
Vinayak cut her short, “Aren’t you cruel talking all this to me about my father?” Saying this he went out. His wife knew he had not liked her remarks.
By the time Vinayak went out, the conversation had shifted from Pillai and his health condition to the visa rules and how easy or difficult it was to go to America and settle there. Jegan Nath, whose son was in last year of computer engineering, was keen to send his son to the US to do an MS. He couldn’t have had a better opportunity for first hand information about the visa rules and job opportunities in America.
A small boy came and told Vidyanathan that some people had come in a lorry and wanted to unload their things. He told his wife to go and open the door for them. Then he told the others that a party was expected to come and occupy the lower portion of his house on rent.
Vidyanathan was a violinist. His father had been a violinist and so had been his grandfather and grandfather’s father and grandfather’s father’s father. Vidyanathan believed that his ancestors had been violinists ever since violin was discovered. When he was born, the first sound he heard was that of the violin, and he hoped that whenever he closed his eyes to this world, he would die hearing the sound of the violin. He was now seventy six and lived with his wife in the upper portion of his ancestoral house. In spite of their best efforts they could not become parents. This gradually affected Vidyanathan’s mind and his aversion for noise that he had inherited as a lover of music became even more intense.
Vidyanathan called himself a morning bird. He would get up at four and in the quiet of the morning would play most melodious ragas on the violin. He would say, “In the morning the violin is fresh after a long sleep and plays with full energy.”
Whoever heard him talk like this for the first time thought that he was joking. But soon he would find that Vidyanathan really treated his violin as a living being. Another reason why he liked to play the violin in the morning was because there were no noises to disturb at that time. For him, playing violin was a pooja, the worship of the Almighty. One day he walked out of a concert because someone played a popular film song on the violin. He believed that the violin was meant only for the ragas created by Mother Saraswati.
When Vidyanathan’s wife was gone for some time, he began to explain why he must go and see what was happening about the new tenants to his house.
“My house has been lying vacant for more than a year now. No one needs houses on rent in this small town. I have been spending money for white-washing and maintenance from my own meagre pension. I was fed up waiting for someone to occupy the house and finally gave an advertisement in the newspaper. Someone wrote that he has a family of five people who want to come and occupy the house for a monthly rent of ten thousand. I asked him if they are vegetarian. He said yes. I asked him if they are non-smokers. He said yes. I asked him if they are non-drinkers. He said yes. I didn’t have the patience to meet him. I told him to come with his things and occupy the house. He sent six months’ rent-advance yesterday. I must go now and see what is happening.”
He namasteyed everyone with his folded hands, wore his chappals, and walked out. As he took a turn at the end of the street, he saw a lorry in front of his house and a hefty man carrying a huge bag into the house. “Is this huge man the new tenant?” he wondered.
