A Free Man A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi (21 page)

‘What about Kale Baba?’

The old man whose skin was leathery, whose hair was so wiry, whose beard was so crusty that it was impossible to imagine a site at which even the most persistent of infections could take root. The old man who made eighty thousand rupees when his brothers gave him a share of their shop, but drank it away in less than eighty days.

‘They used to say that even death couldn’t kill Kale Baba, but he died on this trip too. Some say it was pneumonia, but Lalloo says it was heartbreak.’

‘Lalloo’s here? Did he finally restart his paratha business?’

‘Ah, Lalloo. We hadn’t seen him for three days and then one morning I found him sleeping on the main road near the chowk. I called out his name; I shouted, “Lalloo, Lalloo,” and he awoke with a start and ran at me with madness in his eyes. He picked up a brick and hit me on the forehead.’

At the chowk, they say he ran down Teli Bara Road to Kalyani’s and asked for the thousand rupees he had given her for safekeeping. He tried to buy some Everyday, but she refused so he swore at her and ran off towards the railway station.

Three days later, some boys from Bara Tooti were riding home in a thekedar’s tempo when they saw a naked man running along Sadar Thana Road chasing cycle rickshaws. They shouted, ‘Lalloo, Lalloo,’ but he kept running, his fists full of money, screaming, ‘Two hundred rupees for the day. Today I want to see all of Delhi, everything. Five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred for the day.’ They tried to get the truck to stop, but they were stuck in the back and the driver in the cab couldn’t hear them. They said they could hear his voice all the way to Bara Tooti: ‘Eight hundred, nine hundred, ten thousand rupees for a cycle ride around Delhi.’

No one ever saw the body. The chikwallahs on Idgah Road told Munna that the police had found a scarred, naked body of a forty-something man who had a steel rod in his leg. His opened fist still had some money in it. There was froth around his mouth. The police took the body and put it in the morgue at Baraf Khana.

They said he died of pagalpan—madness.

7

‘I
’m looking for a man called Mohammed Ashraf.’

The attendant, sprawled out on the wooden bench, sits up and rubs his eyes.

‘This is the Bihari Ashraf?’

‘Yes, I was told he is a patient here.’

‘Bed 32, Narayani Ward, second floor.’

A year on, Ashraf has been diagnosed with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR, as everyone in Narayani Ward at the K.S. Rai TB Hospital in Jadavpur terms it. He was diagnosed in September last year and has since spent the past ten months at the hospital.

I spot him on the balcony; he’s in a clean lungi and a thin cotton vest. He’s lost a lot of muscle on his arms, but ten months of regular meals have given him a rather substantial paunch.

‘Sit, sit, sit.’ He wipes the wooden bench he is sitting on and pulls up a chair. A face mask dangles freely around his neck; he pulls it on, but then takes it off as he starts talking. ‘Where have you been? How was America? How did you find me? It’s so good to see you.’

‘How are you?’ I ask, my questions excitedly tumbling over Ashraf’s. ‘How long have you been here? America was okay. I called up Prabhu the bootlegger. He told me you had TB. I’m so glad I found you.’

The doctors have told me not to stay beyond twenty minutes and to keep my face turned away at all times. But it’s hard to look away and set a time limit while talking to Ashraf.

‘Soon after you left for America, I began to wake up coughing. I ignored it, but it got worse and worse. So I stopped smoking. But it wouldn’t stop. So I stopped drinking, but it still continued.

‘By then Prabhu and Veeru were also getting a little worried. I went to the doctor. I thought, might as well get treatment and go to my death well-dressed and prepared.’

Multi-drug-resistant TB is the ghost of Indian TB programmes past. The earliest cases of drug resistance were noted in 1947 when the TB bacteria displayed a worrying resistance to streptomycin, the first antibiotic treatment for tuberculosis. By the 1960s, strains of the bacteria had developed resistance to newer drugs like Isoniazid; and by the late 1990s, the bacteria had got the better of Rifampicin, a semi-synthetic antibiotic expressly used to fight the disease. A primary cause for the resistance, according to medical journals, was that patients did not complete the full course of their medication—in effect, serving as living, breathing petri dishes for more and more virulent strains of the disease.

‘The problem with the patient is that the bacteria are lodged deep inside the tissue,’ said Dr T. Bannerjee. ‘His tests will come back negative, but in the X-ray we can see the bacteria eating away at his lungs.’ Dr Bannerjee was a slight, neatly dressed Bengali gentleman with a fondness for checked shirts in varying shades of brown. He had a clipped moustache and his hair was arranged around a razor-sharp side parting. Years of interviewing TB patients had trained Dr Bannerjee to sit as far behind his desk as he possibly could, and to face his subject as infrequently as possible. My meeting was conducted entirely in side profile, Dr Bannerjee shooting me quick glances from the corner of his eye as he spoke of Ashraf’s predicament. ‘I hope you can convince him to stay for the full treatment. The MDR drugs are highly toxic and patients like him, with no one to encourage them, often drop out once the symptoms disappear.’

On Bed 32 in Narayani Ward, Ashraf insists he will complete the course. ‘I should complete at least one course of one thing in my life,’ he remarks.

But the medicines are lethal. ‘Your face changes,’ says Kedarnath Misra, the taxi driver on Bed 29. ‘The day someone starts the MDR treatment, everyone in the ward can tell just by looking at him.’

The first week is the worst: every part of the body feels like it is on fire, ‘like an acid eating you up from the inside’. Not many patients can handle the toxicity. They can walk, they can move, but they can’t eat without vomiting up everything forced down their throats. Now in its second month, Kedarnath’s body has grown accustomed to the medicine searing through his veins. ‘It still burns—but in a different way; in a way like I can feel it killing the disease inside me.’

‘The drug is like an electric shock to the brain,’ says Ashraf. ‘One shot and you are finished—ekdum khatam.’

•

The next day, I bring along a game of Ludo. Ashraf, Kedarnath from Bed 29, and Mustafa from Bed 31 put their masks in place and gather around on Ashraf’s bed.

‘We wouldn’t want you to get TB,’ says Ashraf. ‘That would be very sad.’

Ashraf plays red, I play yellow. Mustafa plays green—but he cheats when he throws the dice. As the game goes on, we talk about life in the hospital. The drugs have eaten away Ashraf’s muscles—his arms look weak and flabby; he says he can’t raise them above the shoulder. For a santrash, this is a serious problem.

The tools we bought last year are safe in Prabhu’s theka, but he’s unlikely to ever use them again. He could sell them, or rent them out at two rupees a chenni a day, but he can’t live off that money. ‘I’m thinking of starting a sabzi ka business. Buy seasonal vegetables from the villages near Calcutta and sell them in the city every day. I did that for some time as a child—sometimes lemons, sometimes lauki, tomatoes.’

He seems wistful and far away. He speaks often of death, how it’s hard to stay sane when everyone has relatives who visit, friends who bring food, wives and daughters and sons and brothers who drop by. ‘My daughter’s name was Shabnam,’ he says suddenly. ‘I’ve forgotten my son’s name—he was barely a year old. I don’t know who to live for any more, Aman bhai. There is nothing but sorrow in this hospital. I try to distract myself, but all I can think of is a day when I will try to wake up and won’t.’

‘Think of Kalyani and her high-waisted petticoats. The way she used to lean especially low when she filled your glass. The way she would say “Ashraaaaf bhaaaai” and pout.’

‘I had a real chance with her, no?’ He’s grinning now. ‘She used to give so much lift. I should have done something. But interest nahi tha.’

‘What about in Calcutta?’

‘Here and there. There was this woman I met in Tangra. I was drinking chai and she came up to me and pretended she knew me from before.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Arre, I didn’t know who she was; but what she was I could tell with my eyes closed. I said I have no money and no room; she had a room and offered me a special rate.’

‘What rate?’

‘See, first time, I think she just really wanted to have sex. So it was free, because she wanted.

‘Second time, we just met at the market by accident. I wasn’t really in the mood, but I didn’t mind having sex with her, and she was really sweet, and she didn’t mind having sex with me. So we had sex araam se, and I paid her thirty rupees.

‘Third time, I really wanted to have sex with her—I went specifically to look for her near the chai shop and so she charged me forty-five rupees. After that I got tuberculosis.

‘But she really liked me, you know. The normal rate is at least seventy rupees.’

‘So have you met her since?’

‘I sneaked out once to Ghutiyar Market.’

‘Does she know you have TB?’

‘These things you don’t tell people, Aman bhai. Even once you get cured.’

His loneliness has convinced Ashraf of the need to marry again. ‘At least someone will come to see me if I fall ill again, or something happens.’ He notices me smiling to myself. ‘I still get offers, Aman bhai,’ he says stiffly. ‘There are lots of women who couldn’t get married because of money problems and so their marriage age expired. Once my vegetable business takes off, the offers will come pouring in.’

‘What about Delhi,’ he asks suddenly. ‘How is everyone? Has Lalloo started his paratha business?’

And so I tell him. He takes the news quietly, discreetly wiping away tears from the corner of his eye. ‘Lalloo should have come to Calcutta with me. We could have taken care of each other. Chalo, everyone has to go when their time comes. Today it is Lalloo, tomorrow it could be me—who knows? I’m the last one left, Aman bhai. Everyone else is gone: Satish, Lalloo, Rehaan. But I’m still here, in a TB hospital. Dreaming of marriage; and I’m not even all that old.’

‘How old are you, Ashraf bhai? It’s been five years and we still haven’t finished our timeline.’ I pull out my notebook one last time.

8

1 August 1966—Mohammed Ashraf is born to Sakina in Guraru in Gaya, Bihar. His father works for the railways near Patna, but Ashraf has no memories of him.

1968—Ashraf’s younger brother Mohammed Aslam is born.

1971—Ashraf’s father dies, leaving Sakina with the two boys and a tiny piece of land that she farms and subsequently leases out.

1975—Ashraf is in Patna; he knows this because he remembers the floods of 1975 when the city was submerged for three days. They were living in a jhuggi somewhere on the outskirts of Patna, clinging onto their mother and praying they wouldn’t drown.

1976—Mohammed Ashraf, aged ten, comes to Dr Hussain’s house.

December 1984—Dr Hussain is attacked by Taneja’s goons and dies a few weeks later.

January 1985—Ashraf moves to Calcutta with his mother and younger brother Aslam.

1987—Ashraf marries for the first and only time. Worried that I might track his wife down, he still refuses to give me her name.

1990—Aslam stabs someone. Ashraf, his wife, and his family move back to Patna. Ashraf starts a chicken business with fifty rupees. His wife hates Patna and frequently returns to her mother’s house in Calcutta.

Late 1990—Shabnam is born.

Early 1993—Ashraf’s son is born. A few months later he separates from his wife and leaves for Bombay.

1995—Ashraf leaves for Delhi and loses contact with his family back home.

1998—He returns to Bombay but is unable to find any of his friends and so leaves almost immediately for Surat, Gujarat.

1999—Works as a mazdoor in Surat, but hates it.

2000—Arrives in Delhi.

2007—Leaves for Calcutta.

‘That’s it, Aman bhai. Now you know everything about me—sab kuch. Like a government form: name, date of birth, mother’s name, place of residence, everything. Our faces are pasted in your notebook, our voices all locked in your recorder—me, Lalloo, Rehaan, Kaka, J.P. Pagal, everyone. Now you know everything. What will we talk about if we ever meet again?’

We sit looking out of the first-floor balcony of the TB hospital in Calcutta. It’s late evening; around us, wards burst into light as orderlies move floor by floor through the building, snapping on the lights as they go along.

‘The past is done, Aman bhai. In future we will only talk about the future.’

EPILOGUE

I
f it’s a missed call at six, it must be Ashraf. I have a list of numbers that make up the Cartesian coordinates of Ashraf’s life in Calcutta: Ashraf Mustafa Bed 31 for when he’s in his ward, Ashraf Paanwallah for when he steps out of the hospital compound for his evening walk, Ashraf Dost for the one time he ran away and got drunk. ‘This is a friend of Ashraf’s,’ said a nervous voice on the telephone. ‘You need to convince him to go back to the hospital.’

Soon after he returned to the hospital Ashraf moved to a new ward from where he called me every other day for three months. ‘We have a TV here,’ he said excitedly.

I told him I had moved into a new apartment. ‘How much rent are you paying?’ he asked.

Then Ashraf was told he would be discharged, ‘around November last week’, and I found myself a new job. ‘You should be earning more with your degree from America,’ he admonished.

The calls gathered frequency as the date of his discharge drew near. He spoke of setting up his vegetable business. I said I would arrange the money.

One evening in October, my phone rings at work.

‘Sethi! It’s me. I’m waiting in the rain, but your friend hasn’t shown up.’ It’s Prithvi, one of my oldest and closest friends from Delhi. Prithvi moved to Calcutta last year and has since been helping out with Ashraf.

The previous month, I had pleaded with him to visit Ashraf and see if he was okay. ‘I’ll go to an MDR TB ward, Sethi,’ he said manfully. ‘Just don’t ask me to do this again.’