I am at least around !

Carrying my breakfast in a hamper and clutching a copy of Reader’s Digest, I rush towards the II class compartment of the Ajmer bound train. The announcements of the departures and arrivals of the trains are interrupted by the noisy tinkles on the public address system at the platform. Meandering my way through the hold-alls strewn across the platform, unmindful of the routine shouts of “chai Wala chai” blurted out with an overbearing nasal twang, and ‘seeing my own breath’ in the chilly morning, I climb the steps of the compartment. Its dark inside as the sun is still a few minutes away and the cheap raxine berths are bone-chilling. I put my hamper and try to warm myself up by walking down the aisle.

There are labourers cramming the compartment traveling to nearby suburbs. Most of them can afford just an extra vest along with full-sleeved shirts to scare away the cool winds of January. A few lucky ones don sweaters with most lurid colours and most improbable patterns. Shrouded in thick blankets, some of them seat themselves near my hamper. The compartment is soon filled with smoke from the bidis which they consume so heavily. I have got used to these people by now.

So have they. They have been watching me each morning boarding from Jaipur for my daily travel to Ajmer. After returning from my interventional cardiology fellowship in Melbourne, I had joined as Assistant Professor at SMS Medical College, Jaipur only to be transferred to Ajmer a couple of years later. Unable to reconcile to my new posting and to shift there, I have found this Bombay bound train to be a convenient means to drop me at Ajmer before the hospital starts at 9:00 am. The train soon chugs out from the Jaipur platform number 1, layered slippery by the overnight dew. As the train speeds up I watch a group of sweepers cuddling around a bonfire lit along an unused railway track. Shivering in the biting cold a street dog approaches the group wagging itself ingratiatingly.

The leggings and the warmer which I am wearing as also the muffler around my neck are rendered ineffective by the cruel icy winds channeling through the crevices of the window panes.The thoughts of worthlessness once again start troubling me. This is what I had learnt my invasive cardiology and angioplasty for in Australia. Just to travel daily to a city which doesn’t have any facility for these procedures, wile my time there and return in the afternoon by the Intercity express. The ward rounds, the treatments of the patients in Ajmer medical college hold no interest for me as I see my worth going waste in prescribing a couple of medicines even to those patients who have no hope of getting better with them. I have learnt the art of treating heart patients by the most effective and latest interventional cardiology procedures which places me in the elite group of young cardiologists in the country. But now I feel my expertise is going unused. The days have passed by as also have the weeks and the months.

I try to find solace from inspirational stories and quotes in Reader’s Digest. There are real time stories of teachers, doctors and business entrepreneurs who have moved to uncharted lands and tasted success. Is it time for me to do the same? Should I leave the job and plunge into private practice? Should I? Should I not?

I look outside the foggy window as the train slows down. A temple atop a hill appears at the last stretch of my view. Jobner arrives. The fields are verdant green covered with a cloak of yellow mustard waving in the early morning shades of golden shine. The temperatures appear to be lower than in Jaipur. The labourers disgorge from the train and spread out in the vast swathes of lands stretching beyond the lonely railway station of the small town.

I realise a young foreign couple has arrived on the seat across mine. They seem to be talking in an alien language which I am at a loss to understand. Shoving their cumbersome rucksacks under the berths, they drown themselves in their travel books, which I gather are in English.

Opening up slowly, it turns out that they have come from Netherlands and are on their way to Bhuj in Gujarat.

“Why Bhuj,” I ask them. “See I am a college student with special interest in fine arts. We did some research before coming to India and realised that Bhuj is a great centre of historical craftsmanship,” the tall boy says. It occurs to me that both of them are just donning thin wind-cheaters and simple half sleeves sweaters and yet are reasonably at ease in this cold morning.

As the train takes a turn round a bend, the first wedge of sun rays make a fleeting effort to illumine the coupe. It won’t be long. A slew of peddlers make a beeline inside the train. People go for newspaper copies and start devouring them.

“Cha!” the foreign lady calls for the vendor passing by with a cheap aluminium kettle, blackened by soot and grime. “This is the only word I have learnt in the last two days I have been in India,” she says as her eyes sparkle in the fresh morning sun. I also order for one ( कुल्हड़ )for me and settle down with my salted parantha with sweetened tea. “No thanks,” the boy says as I offer them the parantha. “So you are a doctor, a cardiologist? Do you do procedures too? In our country they have started saving lives by way of miraculous operations done within minutes,” the couple is now engaged in intent conversation.

Epworth Hospital, Melbourne, 1996

I heave a sigh of disappointment. Alas! my thoughts travel back to Melbourne, to Epworth hospital, to the shouts of the residents in the Cath lab there, to Ron Dick, the Director of Cardiology and to the late night calls I used to get on the weekends.

The intensive training and the trying schedules had been so much different from the laid back life of Ajmer where I am afraid I may be soon out of touch with modern cardiology. The days are a continuously long drudgery of travelling to a primitive heart care centre in Ajmer, which does not have an angiography lab. How long is this going to continue? I don’t know.

“So the authorities don’t realise that you could be more useful in Jaipur,” the boy contends.

“They could care less,” I conclude.

The greens outside have given way to parched fields and miles and miles of dry arid land sweeps by as the train gathers speed.

The sleek figure bends across the boy as she tries to figure out a sudden gush of activity at the far end of the coupe. A wisp of hair escapes the tight tassels profiling her beautiful face.

Children singing in a train compartment

Soon the noise turns into a disorderly music. A small boy and a girl, probably his sister, come up the aisle singing “Sukh ke sab saathi, dookh me na koi”. Most of the people ignore them but I get carried away by the range and modulation of their singing. To add to the tone, the girl is also carrying a dholak which she conveniently places over her lap and pitches in with the beats of the song. The song peaks at “raja Ho ya runk sabhi ka aant ek sa hoi…”.

Though it’s a daily routine, I always get moved by these lines. The futility of our ambitions and wish-list immediately stare at me.

A few of the travellers take out a rupee or two to give tothe singing duo, but most are nonchalant. In a last ditch effort, the girl performs an amazing acrobatic act by wriggling out of a small metallic ring and is at her begging spree soon after. Her roll on the filthy aisle can’t further soil her already blackened skirt. A weak smile through her chafed lips lay bare her stained teeth.

The two odd hours seem to have swept by as the train rolls into the city of the Khawaja. Thrown back into the stark reality of the lethargic routine of department of cardiology at the local medical college, I walk grudgingly towards the hospital. The excited and the expectant spirits of the foreign couple contrast with my damp and down moods.

They would be reaching their destination by the evening and then indulge themselves in the revelry of artistry laid across the land of Kutch. It was their dream come true- having traveled from far off Netherlands to another far off Rann of Kutch just to delve into what they like best- arts and artists.

And here I am, hating what meets me in the hospital. Two helpings of chai, some customary rounds in the wards, some more talks with the nursing staff, a couple of echoes and it’s time to go back. Thank fully tomorrow is 26th January. It’s a holiday.

I am still cuddling into the all-seeing, all-forgiving razai. Razai which does not banish cold, it simply dissolves it. Once ensconced in it, warmth takes the very places that the cold had seeped into and the world becomes a womb where one loses oneself. Where one’s body ends and where warmth begins is difficult to discern. It’s late in the morning and stirring up all my courage, I step out on the icy cold floor. The winter reclaims my bones with unbelievable speed.

Suddenly, the bed starts shaking, the fans start trembling, and chairs jitter. Before my sleepy mind is jolted into alert mode, everything settles down. The room gets quiet.

Two hours later. The TV channels are through with their commentaries of the Republic Day Parade. What had started as a subtitle running across the TV screens is now the news of the new year. A massive earthquake has hit the nation with its epicentre in Gujarat. Soon the gut wrenching pictures of the cataclysmic event are aired on the screens. The rubble of high rise buildings, the heaps of cement and bricks, the ghostly silence of the towns and the occasional movement of a few lucky ones who escaped the fury of nature are pictures which will stick with my memories years after the event. And then a special correspondent takes over from the ground zero. “This is Vishal from Bhuj….”

Bhuj after the earthquake

The remaining part of the news gets lost in the flow of thoughts which take me to the young couple. My eyes search for them in the places which were once a market, a park, a society building, a school or a hospital. All these places have been levelled and so has been the life in Bhuj.

I am shaken up by this quirk of fate by which God has designed to bring a doting couple from thousand of miles away to a remote corner of India just to meet their end. I am speechless. I thank Him to let me and my family live peacefully even though I have to go to Ajmer each morning, even though I see my years slip away with no addition to my practice of cardiology, even though I am not able to practice angioplasty in Ajmer, even though there is a fear of being left out. I am at least around.

I am around to enjoy the winter sunshine on the luxuriant greens at the Central Park, to hear the Sound of Music from the restless birds hopping amongst the huge trees lining the silent walkways, to relish the whack of the cricket bat when I steer the ball to an effortless square cut and to enjoy the soulful “maai ri, main ka se kahu peer apne jiya ki” by Lata.

“Sometimes blessings come wrapped in ugly wrapping paper,” I ponder.