Free The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash Page B

stretched out on the cot. Sometimes he’d help make some long-grass rope or husk the bamboo. But his cough got worse and worse, and he was so skinny you could count his ribs. Sometimes it seemed as if he were spewing chunks of his own flesh mixed with the blood. And meanwhile some bigwigs had found a way to have Dr Wakankar transferred to some other district, leaving no one in the hospital who would provide theTB drugs free of charge. Whenever Mohandas went to inquire, he was told to come back next week. Kaba had weakened to the extent that he just lay on the cot staring silently at the ground after each fit of coughing. Insects began to recognise the sound of his hack. Yellow and black ants set off in droves the moment his spit hit the spot next to his bed where he spat. A swarm of horseflies attacked the moment he coughed, nearly giving Kaba a heart attack, and it looked like the end was near. He tried calling out for Putlibai, but was seized in a coughing fit before he could get the words out; finally, he ended up filling his cupped hands with a mass of spit and blood and tissue. Mohandas and Kasturi had been gone for a while looking after the plantings at the river’s edge, and blind Putlibai was the only one at home. She went tripping and scrambling to Kaba’s side, began touching her husband’s body all over, crying. Rheumatism had stiffened her joints over the past year. Kaba lay absolutely still. After a little while after his breathing steadied he began to chastise Putlibai.
    â€˜Hey blindy, why all the tears? I’m not about to kick the bucket yet. First I am going to attend Devdas’s wedding, then send Sharda off to her new husband. After that, I can die. Stop crying!’
    He touched his hand to his wife’s head.
    â€˜Bring me the whittler and some bamboo.’
    ***
    (Let’s stop here for a minute. I bet you’re thinking that I’m taking advantage of the one hundred and twenty fifth anniversary of the birth of Premchand, the King of Hindi Fiction, to spin you some hundred-and- twenty- five-year-old story dressed up asa tale of today. But the truth is that the account I am putting before you, in its old and backward style, manner, and language, is a tale of a time right after 9/11, in the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center in New York; a time when two sovereign Asian nations were reduced to ash and rubble. It’s a tale of a time when anybody worshipping any gods other than the god of the US and Europe were called fascists, terrorists, religious fanatics. Gas and oil, water, markets, profit, plunder: to get all of this, companies, governments, and armies were killing innocent people every day all over the world.
    A time when, if you looked closely, you’d notice that everyone in power was a clone of one another, when everyone was consuming the same brands, drinking the same drinks, eating the same foods, driving the same cars made by the same car companies, bank account in the same kinds of banks. Everyone had the same kind of ATM card in their pocket and same mobile phone in their hands. They got drunk on the same booze, and you could see them on page three of the newspaper on any of the TV channels from 1 to 70, soused, naked, outrageous. Look closely and you’ll notice they all have the same skin tone and speak the same language.)
    ***
    The colour was totally washed out of Mohandas’s blue jeans and checked shirt, and both were covered with patches Kasturi had sewn on. Kaba left his bed only if he had to answer the call of nature, but otherwise slept day and night, coughing and spitting up phlegm. Putlibai groaned incessantly from the pain of her rheumatism. And yet when they were in the presence of theirgrandchildren, Devdas and Sharda, the rickety frames of grandmother and grandfather overflowed with life and tenderness and devotion to the little ones. Devdas jumped up and down on his baba Kaba’s cot while little Sharda stubbornly