Rabia screamed at the top of her voice.
"My child ! What happened to her". She darted forcing her way into the crowd, beating her chest and elbowing the people out. She was pale with panic and looked as if her senses had given way. The crowd let her move to the centre, but it was becoming denser forcing inwards.
Rabia forced a heart-breaking scream, with a full blast of her lungs, the tremour of which the crowd could feel. But its sound they couldn't hear beyond the first flutter of the lips. Her throat choked and she stood paralyzed for a brief moment at the ghastly sight.
Nadira, her only daughter, lay there, motionless, rolled in the muddy batter, that emitted a characteristic smell from the paste of buffalo dung, urine and the soil of the street enriched by the effluvia from the toilets and the bathrooms of the houses on either side of the pathway, graciously diverted towards the overflowing, dirt filled nallas or drain channels. Her already dirty frock had turned dark gray with pounds of wet mud. Now, soaked in the darkened blood that appeared to have flown profusely from almost every part of the body and the fresh blood still oozing from under the patch.
Rabia almost fell over the girl. Sat down. Pulled her up onto her lap. Her lips shivered in an attempt to utter something, but remained shivering, refused to close.
The loud noise of confused voices of many men and women, some crying, some giving instructions and some others cursing the fate filled the air, and nobody really moved to do anything; everyone wanted to see and to continue to see – see the dreadful scene. The noise suddenly died as if the wind was taken out of the beings around, when Annamma's shrill voice shrieked in like the sound of a far off thunder. Annamma, the frail bodied health visitor, whom they called ANM, short for Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife, waded through the crowd shouting,
"Move ...., you man, move this side. What are you fellows doing here – watching a tamasha – Some one go and get a cart.... We must take her to the hospital. Ramya, Dhanya, Babli come here and help me carry her to Chand Miah's veranda, the only clean looking place in this dirty street".
"These people have no shame to live like pigs in this dirt" She murmured to herself in her native language Malayalam.
"Deedi (Sister), did you say something ?"
"Oh no, nothing. I said, fate brought me to this filth....... Come on, lift her. She must be cleaned and some first aid given her before she can be taken to the hospital. I assume some life is still left in the poor thing" She said, feeling the pulse.
"The pulse is very feeble, I hope she reaches the hospital safe"
She drew the cross touching her forehead, the heart and the chest right and left, " Lord, be kind to this lass, save her at all cost". She prayed in her own tongue.
The three women tugged in the ends of their sarees in the waist, carefully lifted the girl in their arms and moved forward towards Chand Miah's.
"Amma ! get up. Move over there" Annamma told Rabia.
Rabia sat stiff as though the girl was still in her lap, not knowing what was happening around her, stunned out of her senses.
"Chachi (Auntie) please help her out of this dung"
Annamma asked an elderly lady next to her. A few women took Rabia by the arm, lifted her up with hands in the arm-pits and practically dragged her upto the dry door step of Maya. None would let her into the house without a proper bath, not even into her own house, as she was so much drenched in the dirt.
The girl was laid on a cot in the only room of Nannee, grandmother to everyone in the village, late Chand Miah's fourth or fifth wife, the only surviving one. The cot was made of cotton nevar (belts) tied around the two long members of a wooden frame. Having been used by Chand Miah and his wives for more than half a century, the nevar had become so loose that it sagged with the weight and went so low that the back of the girl almost touched the ground. The crowd closed in to watch her being cleaned up, as that, of course, offered the day's entertainment to the urchins and the striplings.
The door of the house had only the frame and no shutters. The shutters had been missing for quite some time after Chand Miah had gone to live with his last wife, while Nannee was the only other surviving. Nannee brought out an old tattered bed sheet which she gave to someone to hang from two nails on the either side of the wooden door frame. The sheet had two or three large holes, large enough for the guys to peep through even from a distance. Nannee pushed Lachamma in front of the door, in order to cover the holes with her wide body, which she did, though without much success. Nannee got irritated at the persistent attempts of the people to gaze at what was happening inside. She shouted at them:
"Shameless creatures." She pulled a long rod from under the roof .
"Do you want me hit you all; run away, there is nothing inside for you to see"
The boys and girls moved away from the house. They knew she would be worse than a witch if angered. Nannee walked to Maya's across the lane.
"Maya, give her some water to drink... and throw some on her face"
Rabia sat still like a piece of rock, with her back to the wall and her legs hanging from the narrow verandah, the feet resting on the ground. Maya springled some water on her face and washed it with her hands. She remained unmoved, not knowing what was happening.
"Throw the water on her face, with force"
"I say, kick her on the butt.... She must wake up"
"I am sure she had gone mad with the shock"
"Take her to the hospital along with the girl"
Suggestions poured in. Nannee was the only one who really felt the pain at Rabia's condition; for others it was either fun or sympathy. She could not afford the delay any longer. She stood before Rabia, mustered all the strength her old weak hands could gather, and gave a violent blow on her face. Rabia was startled and she screamed "Nadira, My child" and got up to run. Nannee sank with terrible pain in her right hand; she even suspected a fractured arm; but was so glad that she smiled when Rabia screamed.
"Maya, catch her, don't let her run away. We must send her to the hospital along with the girl."
Maya caught Rabia by the arm. She was restless and tried in vain to get released from Maya's strong hands.
"Nadira is safe in the hands of Annamma. You don't worry. Stay here. Let her finish cleaning. The cart must be on its way, we will take her to the hospital soon."
Annamma was trying to remove the large chunks of muddy mixture of dung and clay from Nadira's body, which still lay still. With the help of the girls she wiped off the dirt with moistened cotton wool. A girl poured water with a little potassium permanganate dissolved in it when Annamma exposed the wounds that were oozing blood. Annamma applied tincture iodine to the wounds with cotton buds on splinters – that was all the disinfectant and medicine she had been provided with.
Her clothes have been stripped off and thrown in a corner. Occasional pressure applied to the wounds and the punch of iodine must have activated the nerves that Nadira gave out feeble grudging sounds. She ground her teeth once or twice and twisted the body once.
Nannee's old lahanga, a knee long petty coat, was hanging on the clothe line, a piece of plastic rope tied to two pegs on the wall. Annamma pulled it out and inserted her legs through, the other girls lifting the lower part of the body to facilitate. She could not tie the tape in the waist, or above as there was no place without a wound or a bruice.
Ramya ran home to bring something to cover the upper portion with. She returned quickly with a foul smelling bed sheet with torn edges, which she claimed was clean and freshly washed in the nullah at the border of the village and dried in the sun only a couple of days ago. She spread it on the cot when the other girls lifted Nadira and Annamma pulled away the soiled sheet Nannee had spread earlier. That was the sheet of cloth, a thin fabric with gaudy prints of leaves and flowers, red, green and all sorts of combination colours, which Nannee used to cover her head and body with when she stood for prayers and used as a protection from swamps of mosquitoes when she curled herself to sleep in the night.
Dhanya had started wearing a dhawani, a shawl, over the blouse to conceal her breasts from becoming too obvious to the preying eyes, only a week ago. The one she was wearing was made of course cotton and coloured red. She took it off and spread it on the upper portion of Nadira's body which could not be covered otherwise.
Little Mukka, a hardly eight or nine year old boy, had already arrived with his father's cart pulled by a single buffalo, as tall as he. The boy sat majestically on the wooden cross bar of the yoke, with a flip lash (a single lash - a piece of red cotton rope - tied to the end of a thin wooden rod) in his right hand and the reins of the buffalo, a once white cotton rope, in the left. With the dexterity of an experienced coach-man he moved the rope on either side of the buffalo, and the animal, like an obedient giant, pulled the cart close to Chand Miah's house.
After finishing the first aid, that took about an hour, Annamma straightened her back that ached badly as she had to bend too much to reach the wounds. She came out and in her shrill voice called the young men loitering nearby.
"Raheem Miya, get three or four of your friends and load this cot on to the cart. Hurry up, we must reach the hospital soon."
The boys were all around. They came to lift the cot.
"The door is narrow, you have to tilt the cot a bit. Don't tilt too much".
That was Nannee who had come along with the boys, for she wouldn't trust them even in broad day light.
"She will tumble down the sides. Dhanya, you keep a hand on the cloth on her chest. It should not slip off. It will be shameful"
The cot had to be tilted by almost 45 degrees. Babli and Deena crossed over the half meter tall door step to the veranda ready to take hold when Ramya and Dhanya would release their hands from Nadira's body and the shroud from within. When the cot was out by a little over a third Ramya and Dhanya could no longer stretch their hands to hold on. Babli and Deena took over until the cot was fully outside. Ramya and Dhanya followed the cot holding the body at the legs. They moved with the cot up to the buffalo cart.
The boys standing on the cart's platform received the cot from below and gently set it at its centre. The young men were very considerate to the patient and took the best care to avoid any jerk or a hit. Despite her physical disability her face shone bright and lovely as ever, The young men admired it, as they always did. They couldn't, therefore, afford to hurt her or cause her pain even when she was unconscious!
The transport from Nanny's room to the cart did, however, cause some disturbance to the patient in her subconscious mind and it reflected in the slight twisting of the body, which of course was the only visible sign of life. It could even be the brain's response to the trauma.
"Start my boy, let's go; go slow, don't jump into ditches, Deedi will be hurt. Okey." Mukka said to his buffalo.
It was Okey. The cart moved, the buffalo put each step cautiously and elegantly. Mukka had to take the cart upto the broader part of the village road from where his father, Syed Ali, would take charge. The journey to the hospital some 20 kilometers away, was to be by the Village Administration's Tractor, for which Syed Ali would obtain the consent of the Patwari (Clerk of the Village). By the National Highway it would take about two or two and a half hours, depending on the traffic jam at Hapur.
The entire crowd, men, women, boys, girls, young and old - everyone around moved with the cart, behind it and on both sides. Nannee took care to see that Rabia was pulled along. Rabia moved, assisted by two or three women; but she hardly knew what was happening or where she was going to.
Annamma washed her hands with the water Nannee brought her and dried them on a piece of rag. Picking up the plastic shopper into which she had stuffed her little things like the left over cotton wool, an empty bottle of tincture iodine and a few splinters to make cotton buds and an old pair of scissors she ran to catch up with the cart. That was not a problem for Annamma for in her childhood she used to run after the sprint queen P.T. Usha, she claimed. The truth was that even as a young girl of seven she had to run through the hillocks and valleys to reach her school some five kilometers away within the few minutes she had between the last chore at home and the second bell at school, which she invariably missed.
No sooner than Annamma reached the cart its right wheel plunged into a deep watery hole, while negotiating another similar hole on the left, splashing the coloured liquid on her white sari dabbing it with the maps of unknown continents. Nadira had a big jolt. She might have felt the bang. A mild cry left her mouth. But then she rested quickly back into coma.
Boys struggled hard to lift the wheel out of the ditch as there was little space on either side to firmly put their feet on the ground to push or pull the cart. The buffalo tried its best to pull the wheel out, tears appeared in its eyes, because of the pain in the shoulders due to the hard pulling or did it sympathize with Nadira's pain in a telepathic communication?
Some of the boys got under the cart from behind, applied their shoulders to the axle box and tried to raise the whole wagon while others more animated gave a lift to the vehicle from the back end of the platform. With one loud cry they lifted the cart in unison and the buffalo gave a smart pull to retrieve the sunken wheel from the hole. The boys underneath sank to the ground, lest they should be hurt, and that placed the cart on the road with a bang. Possibly it could have hurt Nadira momentarily. It did, however, cause her body roll twice from right to left and back, as if she was being tossed in a sieve.
In another few minutes they reached the wider part of the village road. Sayed Ali was waiting there with the tractor. Sharoo Miya, a member of the Village Council had already obtained the permission from the Patwari to take the girl to the hospital by the tractor. Patwari also agreed to provide free fuel for the tractor. He made a condition that Sharoo Miya should persuade his collegues on the council to approve the action. He must also convince the Pradhan (Village Council Chairman) when he returned from Gaziabad where he had gone to attend a conference convened by the Commissioner in connection with the forthcoming National (Polio) Immunization Days. Or else he would pay for the fuel himself. Agreed.
The tractor had a trailer which was used to carry the harvested sugar cane and wheat in season, to bring fertilizer from the town and for various odd jobs including taking the buffalos to the vet for treatment or insemination.
Nadira was lifted out of the cot by three or four young men, bearing her across their arms, which Nannee did not like at all but had to keep mum out of compulsion.
She was laid in the middle of the trailer. Ramya, Dhanya, Deena and two other grown up women and their husbands got on to the trailer. Rabia was practically lifted into it by some women.
The tractor moved towards the road-head leading to the National Highway a few meters away. The remaining populace walked behind the tractor for a while. The younger ones and the urchins, some wholly naked and some in their half pants or knickers tied with a jute rope or with flaps tugged in ran after the tractor until it reached the junction where it entered the tarred road leading to the National Highway. Then they returned to where the cart was kept.
Nannee's belly cot had been descended from the cart after Nadira was transferred to the tractor. The urchins took hold of the cot and carried it to the village on their tiny heads in a procession, shouting the slogans they had heard in the recent election campaign. They mingled the slogans with Nadira Deedi Zindabad and Boodhi Nannee Murdabad (Victory to sister Nadira, their playmate and death to the old Nannee). Even Nannee was amused by the slogans and ran after the kids to smack them, playfully.
Returning to the Village, the cot put back in position, the noises suddenly died down. A calm melancholy creeped in enveloping almost every one into it. The children started asking when Nadira Deedi would be back. Grown ups sympathized with Rabia's fate. She had given birth to six children, four died soon after birth, one grew up to be four and died of some unknown disease. And now Nadira, was the only sibling remaining, though crippled with Polio!