Patchwork Prabhakar--2

Continued from here
Seven
Rakesh returned to a tense hostel. There was tension everywhere—he could feel it in the way the watchman stared at him an extra second longer than he usually did; he could feel it in the way the dogs moved about silently, stealthily as though they were afraid of something; he could feel it in the wind—the way it blew, he couldn’t quite say what, but he thought there was something sinister about it; and as he entered the gates he saw it.
There were policemen and that made it obvious that there had been a fight and considering the size of the crowd, it must have been a big one. There were groups of boys standing in circles buzzing like bees, murmuring, whispering; and in the middle, there was the most important group—the principal looking as dead as ever, the Superintendent of Police speaking inanimately but firmly, the Warden looking sleepy and lost, and the President of the Students’ Union.
Rakesh, his eyes elsewhere, walked straight into Bharat, a tall, sturdy friend whose rather purposeful (and angry) strides were abruptly stopped by the collision.
Bharat swore.
“Sorry, sorry” Rakesh hastily apologized, one hand raised and then looking around, he asked “What happened here?”
Bharat swore again and then asked angrily, “Where the fuck were you?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing, mother-fuckers: go back and fuck your prostitutes, don’t come here. We don’t need you people who can’t come when called. There’s a fight going on, and there’s no one to from our side …Where were you?”
“Actually, the signal’s very weak in the hospital and we left in a hurry … “
“Oh! So, nowadays, you do it in the hospital too, eh?”

Rakesh held his calm, and before Bharat could add anything, told him the whole story: how Prabhakar had come to them in the morning, looking a little scared and asked them if they could find people to donate blood for his father. ‘Or you could come yourself, you know’ he had added (‘Hope and fear make a very strange mixture. Strange but potent. When a friend of mine in college once asked me something, a little scared, but with a lot of hope, I had to contend with a whole waterfall of pity!” he’d say often) They had gone, seventeen of them, to the hospital, getting stuck first in a traffic jam and then later in the form-filling. It had taken them four hours for the blood-drawing session to begin. And all the while, Prabhakar and his brother ran, from one doctor to the other, from one room to another, to the laboratory, to the nurses, to pay bills, to collect receipts and submit forms. Prabhakar was resolute, never once breaking down and displayed the same odd dark humour that his mother did (‘I cant go and see my father like this, he had said with a sad smile, when the doctor had told him that his father was stable, but not out of danger, ‘I’ve grown so pale and white that Papa will think only I’ve donated all the blood’)
And when he was done with his tale, finishing off with how Prabhakar chose to stay back with his father and keep him company, the two stayed silent, listening to the perpetual buzz of the students and the crickets around.
“And what about you?” Rakesh asked eventually, “What happened here?”
“Oh, nothing. We just really missed our Ahimsa-preaching peace-maker Prabhakar and to show how badly we did, we fought one another”

Eight
Kapil scanned carefully the throng of people boarding the train. Most of his job was done: he had supervised the chart-making process; overseen personally the loading of the rice-bags in the goods compartment; counseled the engine driver and members of the pantry car; reported to the station master that all was ok. All he had to do now was sit as comfortably as he could manage on his rickety chair, drink his tea and wait till the train left.
He continued looking around: a porter carrying five bags scurried past him, an oldish couple trying hard to keep pace; the lock-seller walked around, crying his wares, trying to tempt a group of college-students into buying one from him; an old, scrappy man just sat on his suitcase on the platform, tiredness etched in every line of his face; and then he spotted a porter and two young men, who first put a wheel-chair, and then carefully, and after some maneuvering, carried an old, frail man into the compartment. The porter came back for another round and he loaded what seemed like some kind of a machine into the train. Kapil was intrigued. He called his assistant and asked him to check what those men were up to.
Two minutes later, as he watched the youngsters (who looked like they hadn’t slept in days) bid a worried goodbye to a couple of women, the assistant came back and reported:
“The old man is dying. And he wishes to die in his village. His youngest son, who looks like he’s just entered college, told me that. Apparently, it’s costing them a fortune to just keep him alive and they’re very very worried he’ll die in the train”
“And what if he does?”
“They’ll travel with the dead body, what else?”
Kapil was disgusted and he made no attempt to hide it.
“What’s with the machine?”
“It’s keeping him alive … “
“These people, I tell you. Taking all that trouble just to fulfill a senile man’s wishes … “
His assistant didn’t hear him finish. The train blew its horn just then.

Nine
In my three years in the hostel, two things stand out about the months of March, April and May: the scorching heat and the constant fear of exams. I remember, that year, the summer was particularly harsh; people walked around dressed even more sparsely than professional wrestlers; coolers adorned every window; the humidity was terrible; and worst of all, I was addicted to alcohol then.
I took alcohol breaks both before and after each of the three sessions in the day: the morning, the afternoon and the night. But, this story is not about me.
I had just finished an exam and didn’t quite know what to make of it. Staring at the question paper, and thinking, and wondering when I’d get back to my room for my drink, I walked towards the hostel, when my phone rang. It was Prabhakar’s brother. Prabhakar didn’t own a phone then, and his brother mostly called at his roommate, Pratik’s cell, but he was in an exam. I, his senior and mentor, was second in line. “Hello” I answered the call.
“Hello, Prabhakar hain?” he asked.
“No, he’s not with me now but I am going to the hostel and he must be in the mess. I should be with him five minutes … Anything important?”
“Can you ask him to give a missed call when you see him? It’s urgent”
“Ok”
And he hung up.
I wondered what it was now. The previous night at around ten’o’clock, he had called. Prabhakar was sleeping: he insisted on waking him up, only to ask him if he had an exam the next day and then wished him ‘best of luck’ when he had already done so in the afternoon. Prabhakar slept odd hours during the exams: he slept after dinner, at around eight and woke up at two in the night. Then, he studied all the way up to the exam hall.
I walked into a near-empty mess—most students had an exam at this time. There was yellow dal and French fries—dry potato-strips that had no taste at all. I spotted Prabhakar sitting alone in a corner, playing with his spoon and the rice, his mind evidently somewhere else. I sat beside him, put my phone in his hand and said:
“Your brother wants you to give him a missed call”
Prabhakar immediately did.
“Hello … Abhi? … Ok, can’t I finish my lunch? … Alright, I am starting now”
By the time the conversation ended, his hands were sweating. The colour had drained off his face. He just sat there, at the mess table, not saying anything, still as the mountains for what must have been a minute, but seemed like an eternity. I asked him, hesitantly:
“Anything important, Prabhakar?”
“I don’t know, sir. Brother wants me to come over, right now. He was saying something about booking a train-ticket …”
And then we both knew it, and without saying it, he had finally mustered enough courage to face it. I put an arm around him, and he stood up abruptly and said:
“Bye”

Four days later, when he came back to give his last exam, Prabhakar described the proudest moment in his life: the time when many, many people from different villages, hundreds of kilometers away come to pay their last respects to his father. “He was a very good man” he said, with no tears or sorrow, just a heart bursting with pride.

Ten
I met Prabhakar just once thereafter. I had already graduated (with a first division) by then and was working in Bombay. Never one to be ever able to resist the advent of the Delhi winter, I took a couple of days off to visit the city, now covered in a blanket of pleasant chill and bathed in mild sunlight during the day-time. The rickshaw-ride into the University, late one evening, was particularly refreshing: the rickshaw-wallahs wore thick sweaters and turbans in colours ranging from the jarringly jazzy to the expressionless dour; students sported jackets and sweaters, hands in their pockets and walked briskly; the trees seemed rejuvenated by the winter wind—they danced with a new vigour; the sky was a mélange of orange and blue—it was the best that Delhi could produce, and coupled with the winter’s magic, it was fascinating; the moon was pale and crescent-shaped and the first star appeared in the horizon.

I smiled at the watchman as I entered the hostel gate and he looked at me for a second longer than usual—he hadn’t seen me in three months and I attributed it to that. The pink bougainvillea still spilled over the walls like overtly gracious hosts, falling over each other to welcome everyone who entered, and as I entered the second, smaller gate that led to the main hostel building, all was a little too quiet and I realized that something was not right. Then, from somewhere, first came a thwack. It was audible, but not very loud, because it was so far away—had I been there, on the first floor, then it would have resounded. It was followed by a roar of tremendous pain—someone was hit and hit hard. And the rest of the hostel was calm, no one made a noise.
And then I heard foot-steps coming down from the first floor, tap-tap and then the plonk of a stick. In the semi-darkness, a figure emerged on to the corridor, carrying a stick nearly two feet taller than him, walking like some demonic warrior. And slowly, the shuffling of feet, students filing in, mostly first years, on the corridors above, all deferentially watching the stick-man walk. Not one talked. It was Prabhakar. And I waited for him to come to me. As I watched him walk with the stick, taking long, but calm strides, I knew there was something about him that had changed. He walked with tremendous confidence, he seemed nobler. He smiled when he saw me: and in that smile, I saw traces of his innocence, but it was shadowed by something more powerful, something commanding, something responsible, something the old Prabhakar never had.
And he said, “Hello Sir”
I embraced him like brothers do. And I looked pointedly at the stick.
“Oh this!” he said, following my eyes and looking at the stick, “Now that I am a senior, I sometimes have to take up the task of keeping peace in the hostel … that’s all!”
Death scars: sometimes irrevocably, sometimes in small ways.