Jehangirnagar was a new settlement, at the outskirts of the Naipura village, which spread alongside the highway. It was set up to accommodate a large number of people from a slum spread on either side of the railway track, now reclaimed for laying an additional track on the busy rail route. The families in Jehangirnagar had little in common with the people of the village. Men had been working as head load workers, hawkers and petty traders, while women went around the town selling vegetables. There were construction workers like carpenters, masons and unskilled labourers who went to the town early in the morning, and waited at the Naipura bus station for being hired for casual work. The colony was named after their leader, Jehangir Miah, who spearheaded the resistance against evacuation and ultimately obtained necessary land and funds from the government to properly rehabilitate the slum-dwellers.
Jalaluddin belonged to a respectable family of Unani Hakeems (Traditional physicians who practiced both Unani and Ayurveda systems of medicine). Having failed to make any headway in learning medicine, he was sent to the town of Amroha as an apprentice to Shihabuddin Sui, a Master Tailor, whose father and uncles were the dress-makers to the Nawabs of the pre-independence era. He worked under Shihabuddin for two years and learnt the trade to some extent. Shihabuddin expected him to reach the perfection of a master cutter for sherwanis and suits in another year or so when he would earn on his own and was contemplating to give him in marriage, Fauzia, his eldest daughter. Her mother also liked the boy as he was handsome and hardworking.
Jalaluddin, however, was unaware of the thinking of the master and his wife. He eloped with the girl one night, and disappeared in the crowded lanes of Chandni Chowk, in Delhi. The mother was shocked by the ingratitude of the boy and the shame the girl brought to the family. She fell ill and never recovered from it.
It was some eight years later that Jalaluddin surfaced in Jehangirnagar with his two wives and six children and moved into a one-room plus kitchen portion of a small house as a tenant. He established himself as a tailor in a corner of the room that doubled as a living room for the day and bedroom for the night. His skills had not improved since he left the master's household, but had rather deteriorated.
He did not have to invent any new ways to supplement his meagre income from tailoring. The grand fathers' blood that ran through his veins carried the miraculous genes of medical wisdom with which he could cure any kind of paralysis, particularly the flaccidity caused by polio for which the allopathic system is yet to hit at a remedy.
He would disappear for days together, ostensibly to treat a rich man in Ramgarh or Hoshiarpur or somewhere in a nawabdom of the past, who lay paralysed for long. He would return only after the patient fully recovered; otherwise it was to prepare the concotions or medicinal oils to treat the patient with.
He brought along with him a big load of dried and green roots, leaves and neatly cut stems of shrubs which nobody in Jehangirnagar bothered to identify as jungle weeds or Himalayan herbs. The oilman in the Naipura village supplied him with pure oils of mustard and gingally and that was evident from the dozens of futile visits the supplier made in an effort to realize the cost of the oil he sold to Jalaluddin months ago.
The oils and other medicines prepared by him were enriched with Vitamin D via the ultra violet or infrared rays by exposing the filled in bottles to the sun for 21 or 41 days at a stretch according to the interval he had before the next outing. The array of bottles on his window sill was a warning to the wives and the customers that his disappearance was imminent. Of course that served as an advertisement for his medical service to the poor and needy who could not afford the treatment by the Doctors or Vaids and whom Jalaluddin obliged without fee or cost.
While in Jehangirnagar he was confined to his tailor-shop, which also served as laboratory and work space for chopping and grinding. His wives and children collected the fuel wood required for boiling the herbs from the babul and other shrubs that grew in the way side open land across the highway. They had to be selective in choosing the wood for the quality of the preparations depended on the kind of the fuel-wood burned, the unsuitable pieces being kept for the household use. The entire 2mx2m kitchen was occupied by the 'herbs' and vessels. Jalaluddin, however, was careful not to disturb the kitchen until the containers for Atta and Dhall were empty.
The team of vaccinators had arrived at Jehangirnagar around ten in the morning and were making their rounds starting with the section at the temple end of the settlement. They made good progress and completed almost half the population by noon. The team then settled on the verandah of the Cooperative Society opposite the Mosque, the volunteers went round collecting the children from the Muslim families.
Jalaluddin was watching from his shop-window which opened towards the verandah of the Cooperative Society, as the children were being administered the drops. All on a sudden he rushed out of his shop and jumped up the verandah and shouted.
"Stop it! I say, I don't want these drops. Take another bottle"
"What is wrong with this bottle, I just now opened it, it is full."
"Keep it aside. I want another bottle. Not this." Jalaluddin stood between the girl carrying the child and the vaccinator.
"You can't keep the bottle once it is opened. The medicine will go waste, I must finish this before I take another."
" I don't know all that. I want you to take another bottle" He opened the cold box and picked up a bottle and said "Open this one."
"Are you mad or what? It is all the same. I am not going to waste this one."
The vaccinator was adamant. By then a big crowd formed around them. Jalaluddin turned towards the crowd.
"This is poison. Poison brought for killing our children. I won't allow this to be given to our children here."
"There is no poison. This is polio vaccine from the government." The vaccinator interfered.
"I know this is poison; or else why can't he give from the bottle I chose. It is poison and there is a design behind it. Nobody will take these drops. You go away." He then picked up a few empty bottles and kept the full one with him.
The people took away their children as some started supporting Jalaluddin.
"Master is right. There is already news that the drops have caused even deaths."
"I told you yesterday itself, don't give children these drops, that will be the end of your race."
The volunteers pleaded with them for more than an hour and by then the people had grown more adamant and the women and children disappeared into their homes, never to come out even under coercion. There were at least 300 - 400 children yet to be served.
The vaccine which was opened had by then become useless and had to be discarded. The vaccinator also cooled down. He was now ready to open a bottle of Jalaluddin's choice, but now the attitude of the crowd had already changed. They did not want the drops at all. The elements which had lied low in the beginning were now active and forced the people to refuse to vaccinate their children.
All efforts by the volunteers failed. They needed some external help; some force. But there were instructions not to ask for police help except in a law and order situation.
Dr. Anil Tomar had already talked to Dr. Rajan Babu, the District Medical Officer on Sunday night, when he and Dr. Amanullah met the latter, about the problems caused by the interference of the police. By then news arrived that there was a clash between the police and the resistors at Moradabad where the police was compelled to fire two rounds into the air in order to disperse the crowd and that two persons were reported killed with bullet injuries. Instructions were flashed over the radio and mobile phones to all the medical officers concerned not to involve police under any circumstances, lest it should become a serious political issue; a political issue it had already become though it did not assume serious dimensions.
Dr. Ashok Agrawal was a young physician who had recently joined the State Medical Service. He was responsible for the monitoring of the NIDs at the Taluka level, reporting to Dr. Avinash Patel, the Block Medical Officer. The vaccinators telephoned both Dr. Patel and Dr. Agrawal and gave the details. Dr. Agrawal was on his rounds of the villages in his jurisdiction to oversee the work being done. Jehangirnagar was also on his schedule. On receiving the message he skipped a station or two enroute and rushed to Jehangirnagar.
When he arrived the crowd had already dispersed and the team of volunteers and vaccinators, along with their immediate supervisor Manorama Dixit, were sitting idle under a tree on benches provided by the Madrasa adjacent to the mosque.
Jalaluddin had already been elevated as the hero of the day and was flanked by a group of admirers who encouraged his obstinacy. To him, it provided a glorious opportunity to excel as a 'to be leader', having failed both as a tailor and a medic.
Dr. Agrawal was led to meet Jalaluddin at his shop. He refused to talk on the matter. He said it was the decision of the people to boycott the vaccination. It was for them to change their decision and not him. The fellows around him bluntly refused to budge. The only threat Dr. Agrawal could wield was to say that he would stop all medical facilities to the settlement. The people only laughed at it as they knew very well of its hollowness. A phone call by Jehangir Miah would see the doc out in the bush. In fact Jehangir Miah had already obtained consent from the CMO to put up a permanent dispensary at the settlement !
Dr. Agrawal could not persuade the people with all his appeals and justifications. He talked to Dr. Patel and was asked to wait for further instructions.
In about ten minutes Dr. Patel came on the line. He had discussed with the CMO and was told that Dr. Amanullah is being contacted and the operations could be stopped for the time being to be resumed after getting the response from Dr. Amanullah. It was then that he received the SOS message from Annamma and Fatima.
He asked the two youngsters who brought the message to climb behind him and left on his Hero Honda for Naipura village.
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