FATAL DECISION (Satis Shroff)
‘Please give me a glass of water,’ said the London-trained Nepalese physician, as he came into the room, where a group of Nepalese people with Mongolian and Caucasian features were gathered, either pitying or wondering what the strange illness could be.
With the glass of water in his hand, the swarthy, thick-set, bespectacled doctor approached the thin, emaciated girl, who'd retreated to a corner of the apartment like a cornered cat, and was having fits. A brown froth oozed out of her thin mouth.
As soon as she caught sight of the stranger with the water, she let out a chilling scream that seemed to echo in the Himalayas.
The physician turned to the girl's father and said, "I'm sorry Mr. Rana, I cannot do anything for your daughter. She has hydrophobia," And with that he packed his black medical bag and left.
Mr. Rana was stunned. The shock of the doctor's poker face, and dry diagnosis hit him with such a vehemence that he reeled mentally.
"But there must be some hope or solution for Sudha, my daughter," he uttered.
He told his wife what the doctor has said, adding that their daughter had no hope of surviving the dog-bite, for Maya Devi spoke only Nepali and no English.
The doctor had spoken in English, as all educated Nepalese did, even among each other.
Sudha was dying and there was no help at hand. Even modern medicine, with all its antibiotics, cortisones, antiferons wouldn't be able to help their child.
"Oh, Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva! Please don't let us down", cried Maya Devi, summoning the Hindu Trinity, with a mixture of fear and worry. And she decided to send for the local shaman, a jhakri, and dispatched a female relative of hers with the nickname 'Bhunti’, which means a fat person, not that she was pregnant or had a pot belly, but because she had a hollow back, with the result that she went through life preceded by her belly.
Mr.Rana had faith in allopathic medicine and didn't trust the traditional medicine or that which passed for traditional medicine, especially the jhakris, dhamis, bijuwas, lamas and others who took to what he called "phuk-phak" methods, which literally meant 'blowing-and-throwing.'
He preferred the old western school-medicine for himself and his family. That was because his brother and grandfather were physicians, having studied at the Grant Medical College in Bombay in the days of the British Raj.
It had almost become a family tradition, and he was contemplating to send his eldest son to this college, despite the astronomical sums that the medical colleges demanded in India in general. They called these criminal sums open-donations, and was a rather done thing.
His wife, being a traditional Tamang tribes-woman, didn't think much of modern medicine and went back to the traditional healers that she knew through her parents and grandparents for they'd lived in the foothills of the Himalayas and had heard only hair-raising stories of the practitioners of modern medicine. Whereas a local shaman was happy with a dozen eggs or a small goat, you had to pay in currency notes to the modern doctor. And currency notes were scarce in the hills of Nepal, where people bartered with natural products.
Maya Devi had seen a sick neighbour receiving a glucose injection with an outsized hypodermic syringe, and that had scared the wits out of her. She didn't know what the thing was, but it certainly looked frightening. The patient, a diabetic, had died soon after.
After that experience she'd decided that she'd definitely not go to a modern doctor.
Her grandpa, who had been a village shaman, had treated and cured the whole village, sometime or other, ever since she knew him. And what's more, he was her grandpa and that meant a lot to her and she had confidence in him, because he'd never do any harm or inflict injury, as was expected of true shamans.
She remembered once asking him how he'd become a shaman, and he'd told her that he'd been picked up in his childhood by the ban-jhakri, a wild, wise man who lived in the jungle in a cave, and who became his guru and had taught him the secrets of the healing plants and profession. Her grandpa had long hair, like that of the Hindu God Shiva of the Snows: unkempt but braided, and it gave him an extraordinary appearance as he'd sit near his house altar, where he had his ritual objects. To her he was Shiva reincarnated.
Maya Devi's husband, an educated civil servant of His Majesty's government, sneered at times about her faith in the jari-buti, as the medicinal roots-and-stems were called.
After what seemed like ages, Bhunti turned up with a lean man, who had Mongolian features. He was thought to be a 'knowing' practitioner of his blow-and-throw trade. He was half Tamang and half Bhotay, as people of Tibetan origin are called, and looked as though he, himself, was suffering from consumption. He was untidily dressed, had blood-shot eyes and stuck his thin black hair under his monkey-cap, and had a pair of drooping moustaches. He was left alone and Bhunti catered to his needs and demands.
First of all, he demanded rice grains to be brought for the blowing part of the ceremony, and then alcohol, since he belonged to the matwali-jat, which means the 'caste-that-drinks-alcohol.'
In the high-caste, ritual purity-pollution thinking Hindu society, it is regarded as a direct affront when one is offered alcohol. But since this was an emergency situation, a matter of life and death in the family, there were no protests. Neither from her otherwise orthodox Hindu husband, not from the relatives and neighbours.
Meanwhile, after gulping some of the raksi (alcohol) as though he was drinking lemon juice, he began the treatment by raising his voice and reciting a mantra and counting the rice grains on a copper plate. After each chant he drew a deep breath and blew his breath thrice in quick succession.
His first intention was to find out whether the child, who was letting out screams intermittently, was seized by a witch in the neighbourhood or a distant demon (bhut), for only then could he apparently begin treatment. After more swigs of the Gurkha raksi, his mantras became unintelligible and he seemed to withdraw within himself.
After a great deal of time, he began shaking and said in staccato bursts, "It's the demon from the othay-khola". A rivulet in the vicinity of the town. 'Othay' means a 'lip' in Nepali.
The diagnosis having been completed, a blood-sacrifice had to be made to appease the concerned river-demon along with a prayer to the Mahaguru: Shiva. It had to be a little red rooster.
Bhunti organised a red rooster in no time, and the jhakri prepared his ritual.
Although Mr. Rana showed respect this time for the traditional methods despite his distrust, he just couldn't help feeling irritated by this particular species of his sort, especially his preference for alcohol at a critical moment in someone's life.
"Perhaps he's just an alcoholic and practised traditional medicine as a quack, a dabbler who could in effect do nothing," he thought. There was nothing he could do at the moment. He had to try it out with this quack too. It was faith healing at its best. Either you believed in someone or not. Take it or leave it. There was no choice. And when you're in a desperate situation, you had to take all the chances that were available to soothe your conscience."
Meanwhile, the thin girl had started seeing double, because her optic nerve was affected, and her brain stem was assaulted by the rabies-virus and she had problems with her swallowing reflex.
Her mother had tried to give her water not knowing the medical implications and her daughter had a spasm of panicky angst and screamed again.
"Oh God, my poor Sudha, what's become of you?" cried Maya Devi as she held her daughter wrapped in a brown blanket. It was pathetic to see a pretty daughter, a girl who was only eight years old, with beautiful black hair and an olive complexion turn virtually into a skeleton, so that even the teeth seemed to jut out, the body growing thin, dehydrating and the psyche a chaos, for she was no longer able to take in the world as it had been.
There was a mighty struggle going on in her nervous system, and it registered through her brown and frothy saliva and her screams of angst and terror, which had seized her. She was evidently losing the fight.
A neighbour suggested that the patient should be immediately transported to Kathmandu for "further treatment." Another thought it would be better to try out a local dhami, a traditional healer, and yet another an ayurvedic practitioner from the town, who wore spectacles and a turban and was from the Punjab. A well-meaning Lepcha neighbour said, "Ranaji, you should call a Lepcha Bongthing who is a mediator between humans and the Spirits. If that doesn't help we could engage a Limbu Yeba exorcist.
Mr.Rana had often seen the Limbu Yeba males going about wearing their ridiculous creased white skirts and turbans, with long feathers, cauri and rudraksha garlands.
"Why not try homeopathy?" said another.
In this lost and helpless state there was nothing to do but to try everything, like a drowning person clinging to the last straw, and so began an odysee of 'treatments' carried out in the hope of saving a child whose body and mind were rebelling and running out of control.
Mrs. Rana's thought wandered to the day when her daughter Sudha had returned with a neighbour's daughter after the bhai-tika ceremony from a distant part of the town. Bhai-tika, the festival during which the sisters proffered various honours on their brothers after a ritual puja, whereby the brothers are blessed with prosperity and protection against the adversities of human existence and unseen evils. And who could think that evil would strike on such an auspicious day?
As is the custom in Nepal, the people have their chicken, dogs, yaks and goats outside the courtyard. The dog, which was a bitch, had let out a few snarls and barks to warn passers-by that they were trespassing her marked territory. The children had been scared by the angry barks and had emitted shrieks of fear, and the bitch had made for the two scared children in a frenzy and had bitten them on their legs after a short pursuit.
The two girls had returned home crying and told their parents about the fierce dog that had bitten them. However, the parents who were entertaining guests in the afternoon hadn't thought anything worse about the consequences of a dog-bite and Mr. Rana had only used the zinc oxide and eucalyptus salve that you find in every household. He had faith it would heal the wound, as in the past against other bites and wounds.
And that had been a terrible mistake.
Whereas the other girl Chitra was immediately sent to a local doctor, who gave her anti-rabies injections, Mr. Rana's daughter was treated with only a smear salve.
"That ought to do the trick," Mr. Rana had thought. "Why spend more money unnecessarily on the doctor? Injections were expensive. And after all, if the salve had the same effect, why not save the money for another purpose?"
Only last Monday the Nepalese Brahmin from Dhankuta had visited them and had predicted something inauspicious in the near future in the family. But in order to counteract that he had suggested making an amulet for his two daughters, with vedic mantras inscribed in them, which were thought to have preventive and protective effects against the bad planets (grahas) that had changed their constellations. The Brahmin was a jotisi, a learned Benaras-returned astrologer, with the ability to interpret and analyse the astrological data of Hindus, for every Hindu possessed a long scroll (janai-patra), which bears all the lucky and unlucky, the auspicious and inauspicious days in one's lifetime, noted according to the constellation of one's zodiac sign, and starting from the date of one's birth.
In the Nepal of yore, this scroll of paper was an important document, and it still is, in the Middle Mountains of Nepal where the Chettris and Brahmins live.
Mr.Rana though a Chettri from birth, didn't think much of the jotisis and other wandering brahmins. As far as he was concerned, they were slimy, garrulous, cunning fellows who went from house to Hindu house talking fancy Sanskrit with the married women who were unfailingly always at home, and departing with a handsome dakshina (offering) in the form of: rice, currency notes and coins, and sometimes even a whole cow. The Hindu religion allowed it, and the priests and astrologers made the best of this belief.
The doctor's words had struck Mr. Rana like a guillotine. It was a death sentence.
A dark, monsoon-like cloud hung over the family. A feeling of mourning, depression and helplessness spread, even though the daughter was breathing, shrieking and struggling with death. Their daughter had developed a hoarse throat and her whole frail body was shaking.
Mr. Rana had heard that it took at least 15 injections to treat the rabies virus. In these days it was even possible to do it with three shots, but what was the use of knowledge? Or when a medical therapy is refused due to the ignorance on the part of the parents who have the money, and therefore the power to decide whether a member of the family should be medically treated or not, through traditional or western healing methods.
The way Mr. Rana saw it, it had been a blatant misuse of power. And he had a terribly guilty conscience regarding his daughter. It had been a fatal decision. One part of his mind accused him and the other seemed to rationalise and shift the blame to the uselessness of medicine, even though man had set foot on the moon and the skies were studded with satellites belonging to the western world.
And Sudha died that night.
ENDS
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About the Author: Satis Shroff is a writer and poet based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) who also writes on ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Science in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and Manchester. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize. Please read his poems and articles in www.google & www.yahoo under search: satis shroff.
Satis Shroff’s bicultural perspective makes his prose and poems rich, full of awe, and at the same time heartbreakingly sad. In writing ‘home,’ he not only returns to his country of origin time and again, he also carries the fate of his people to readers in the West, and his task of writing is a very important one in political terms. His true gift is to invent Nepalese metaphors and make them accessible to the West through his prose and poetry. (Sandra Siegel, poetess, Germany)
