IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 66- MERA NUMBER KAB AYEGA - Birg PS Gothra (Retd)

Warning -Tragic and sad. Escapists can avoid reading

I am freezing. I can't reach the bell or shout for help. Can’t they see my dripping nose. Oh God, I am in such a helpless state.

"Ankle ji ko marna hai? Kitna thanda kiya hua hai. (You want to kill Uncle ji? The Air conditioner has been put on high cooling.)," I hear the Malayali nurse shouting. Simultaneously she reduces the intensity of the cooling. She wraps a blanket on me and asks the ward boy to clean my nose. The warmth of the blanket feels comforting. Women have a way of knowing how others feel. I remember my mother, wife and daughter. Women truly are a gift to mankind.

"Pata nahin kahan jaan atki hui hai(I don’t know why he is not dead). It has been more than a month that this buddha is in intensive care," mumbles the ward boy as he wipes my nose with full force. It feels as if he is rubbing a sand paper.  His words and actions hurt, but I can’t complain. Perhaps he turned up the cooling high, hoping to hasten my death. He seems unkind, nudging me roughly during sponge baths and not even doing them properly—my body has started to smell. He’s rough while changing my tubes, making it hurt more than it should.

There was a time I would scold subordinates if they forgot to salute me. I used to be so conceited that I would throw out any chipped crockery. But here, my ego is chipped badly, I am hurt and feel insulted every hour and there’s nothing I can do.

I hear someone visiting the patient in the neighboring bed. My own family seems to have forgotten me. I long for my daughter’s visit; her warm hand in mine soothes my soul. I remember the kisses she placed on my forehead when I was unwell at home—it was so comforting. But since I’ve been here in the hospital, she hasn’t kissed me once. Maybe my soul is waiting for that touch before it can finally leave my body.

The doctor can’t see that I’m in pain all day long. I wish I could tell him how much it hurts. I can express my pain by shedding tears, but my pride will allow that.

Life has been good to me. I always said that a successful life requires five things: a respectable occupation, a good spouse, healthy children, good health, and a peaceful death. I had the first four, but now I’m struggling with the fifth. Perhaps this is God’s way of punishing me. I lived virtuously until my retirement, but then I took a job with a businessman who paid me to distribute cash to corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. I earned good money and hid it in a secret place where even my children won’t find it. But that cash might be worthless after the next demonetization. Looking back, I pity myself; was all that dirty work beyond my retirement even worth it?

There’s a commotion. I recognize the sounds of someone on the verge of death. I wait, listening to see if the patient will survive. I’ve come to understand these sounds over time; it's become a sort of pastime for me. It seems the patient hasn’t made it—I hear the nurse on the phone with the mortuary, cryptically saying, “Le jao (Take it away).”

The distraction had pulled me away from my pain. But now the pains return.

All my life, I’ve skipped queues, throwing around the weight of my rank and profession. But now, here I am, standing at the end of the line, waiting my turn for death. As I hear the stretcher of the dead patient rolling towards the exit gate, I tell myself, “Mera number kab ayega!"