Last week, after many years, I dreamed of a horse. To be sure, it was a white horse.
The last time I had touched a horse was when my kid daughter was learning to ride in Haiti twenty years ago. My memory had leapfrogged over that recollection and hurtled into a past, much further.
My mother came from a large family and three of her brothers were doctors. My favorite was a balding, bespectacled man of middle height and professorial mien. He had a large house, named lovingly after his mother, in downtown Bhagalpur, in eastern India, where lived his wife and children.
He spent much of the week, across the river, in a small town called Bihpur, where he had a pleasant ranch-type house with a large orchard and an extensive hospital next to it. His aging mother presided over the house with the able assistance of a mayordomo, Aziz, who was also a capable chef. The hospital was the responsibility of Munshiji, a corpulent mustachioed man, who also acted as the chief pharmacist and was officially called the Compounder.
During summer, while father toiled in the city, mother and I took a vacation with her brother’s family. I loved my aunt, a sweet even-tempered woman, and I enjoyed my high-spirited cousins. Together we went to markets, movies and parks and I had fun. But nothing could hold me in the city. My heart longed for my uncle, his ranch and his hospital across the river. At the first opportunity, I left my mother in the city and took a ferry boat across to Bihpur.
The last time I had touched a horse was when my kid daughter was learning to ride in Haiti twenty years ago. My memory had leapfrogged over that recollection and hurtled into a past, much further.
My mother came from a large family and three of her brothers were doctors. My favorite was a balding, bespectacled man of middle height and professorial mien. He had a large house, named lovingly after his mother, in downtown Bhagalpur, in eastern India, where lived his wife and children.
He spent much of the week, across the river, in a small town called Bihpur, where he had a pleasant ranch-type house with a large orchard and an extensive hospital next to it. His aging mother presided over the house with the able assistance of a mayordomo, Aziz, who was also a capable chef. The hospital was the responsibility of Munshiji, a corpulent mustachioed man, who also acted as the chief pharmacist and was officially called the Compounder.
During summer, while father toiled in the city, mother and I took a vacation with her brother’s family. I loved my aunt, a sweet even-tempered woman, and I enjoyed my high-spirited cousins. Together we went to markets, movies and parks and I had fun. But nothing could hold me in the city. My heart longed for my uncle, his ranch and his hospital across the river. At the first opportunity, I left my mother in the city and took a ferry boat across to Bihpur.
Bihpur was no more than a tiny village, which found a spot on India’s map only because it had a railway station to transport sandstones and limestones from nearby quarries to the cities. Besides that, it had only a small elementary school, a tiny fishery and a few scattered houses, and farm houses in the fields beyond.
Grandma was old and feeble, and seldom moved far beyond her room. Since uncle was mostly at the hospital, I felt like the master of the house. I wandered about the rooms and uncovered their secrets. I explored the room in which special medicines were stocked; the smell made me think of exotic diseases and mysterious medicines. I liked the room where uncle kept old magazines; there were endless stacks of Life, Readers Digest and National Geographic, not to speak of medical journals. A covered verandah ran around the house, with long comfortable library chairs. I felt like royalty as I occupied one with a couple of my books or uncle’s magazines and waited for Aziz to bring me a cup of tea.
My kingdom extended beyond the house, for I could just put on my boots and saunter into the orchard. It had an unkempt look, with all the bamboos at the edges and the cluster of mango trees at the center. It was large enough to get lost in and yet not large enough to stay lost for ever. I loved walking in the utter silence of the groves, hearing only my footfall, smelling the smells I never smelled in the city and watching the colorful birds whose names I did not know.
When I tired of solitude, I just walked over to the hospital. It was always buzzing, with thirty to fifty people. It would not occur to anyone in the village to let somebody go to the hospital alone. Yet it was a remarkably quiet place, for the villagers clearly believed that the doctor should have the peace to do his work well. I often sat unobtrusively in the waiting area, listening to patients talking of their respective pains and problems and watching the children playing together despite their bandages and crutches. Sometimes I sat with Munshiji, see him prepare the red cough mixture and pour it in a bottle marked on the side with the requisite dosage. He would let me prepare the yellow ointment that seemed in great demand and ask me to distribute it into small containers in the right quantity.
Grandma was old and feeble, and seldom moved far beyond her room. Since uncle was mostly at the hospital, I felt like the master of the house. I wandered about the rooms and uncovered their secrets. I explored the room in which special medicines were stocked; the smell made me think of exotic diseases and mysterious medicines. I liked the room where uncle kept old magazines; there were endless stacks of Life, Readers Digest and National Geographic, not to speak of medical journals. A covered verandah ran around the house, with long comfortable library chairs. I felt like royalty as I occupied one with a couple of my books or uncle’s magazines and waited for Aziz to bring me a cup of tea.
My kingdom extended beyond the house, for I could just put on my boots and saunter into the orchard. It had an unkempt look, with all the bamboos at the edges and the cluster of mango trees at the center. It was large enough to get lost in and yet not large enough to stay lost for ever. I loved walking in the utter silence of the groves, hearing only my footfall, smelling the smells I never smelled in the city and watching the colorful birds whose names I did not know.
When I tired of solitude, I just walked over to the hospital. It was always buzzing, with thirty to fifty people. It would not occur to anyone in the village to let somebody go to the hospital alone. Yet it was a remarkably quiet place, for the villagers clearly believed that the doctor should have the peace to do his work well. I often sat unobtrusively in the waiting area, listening to patients talking of their respective pains and problems and watching the children playing together despite their bandages and crutches. Sometimes I sat with Munshiji, see him prepare the red cough mixture and pour it in a bottle marked on the side with the requisite dosage. He would let me prepare the yellow ointment that seemed in great demand and ask me to distribute it into small containers in the right quantity.
Uncle worked in a corner room, talking to patients, sometimes to their parents or siblings to get the full story, then examine them carefully, and patiently explain what needed to be done and how to take the prescribed medicine. He had the strange tic of adjusting his glasses with his left hand while he wrote the prescription with the right, often pausing, with the pen in mid-air, to ponder whether he should add another medicine. When there was a short interval between patients, he would notice me and ask me to come in and talk with him. He never asked me if I was bored – he instinctively knew I was not – but would sometimes introduce me to a villager and ask me talk with him further, about what was new in the school or the railway station.
The biggest adventure was when there was an emergency in another village and uncle had to rush there. Often he combined the occasion with his visit to patients in adjacent villages who needed his attention. There were no proper roads, only mud tracks. Uncle would go on horseback, accompanied by the compounder or an assistant. He had three horses for the purpose, one being the spare. Munshiji, being the heaviest, got the big brown horse; uncle rode the black one, because I – coming along for the outing – had told him that I fancied the white horse.
The biggest adventure was when there was an emergency in another village and uncle had to rush there. Often he combined the occasion with his visit to patients in adjacent villages who needed his attention. There were no proper roads, only mud tracks. Uncle would go on horseback, accompanied by the compounder or an assistant. He had three horses for the purpose, one being the spare. Munshiji, being the heaviest, got the big brown horse; uncle rode the black one, because I – coming along for the outing – had told him that I fancied the white horse.
I loved that horse. He was handsome, especially with a brown patch near his neck. I also imagined he was brave and intelligent. The greatest sign of his acumen was that he took to me easily. He even seemed to nod as I spoke to him when others weren’t there. I thought, with scant evidence, that he loved me as much as I was enamored of him. It was possible that the baby carrots I had stolen from grandma’s kitchen to feed him had made him slightly partial to me. Despite my limited riding skills, mostly acquired under Munshiji’s brief tutelage, at least he never shook me off and appeared to follow my instructions. I rode to the villages happily, with a touch of pride.
The poor villagers received my uncle like an angel, Heaven-sent, and I shone in reflected glory. Uncle was a simple, earnest man, who never accepted gifts or favors from patients. So the villagers insisted on my drinking a cup of tea with them. At first I disliked the tea, because it was made with smoked milk (the only way they knew to preserve the milk), but as I kept drinking their tea, eventually I began to like the smoked taste. Later, when I returned home, I missed it and told my mother that her tea wasn’t as good as what I had with my uncle.
When I finally returned to my city home and was asked about the vacation, I could not say enough of my uncle’s saintly conduct with the villagers. However, I never forgot to mention my triumphant journey on a white horse.
The poor villagers received my uncle like an angel, Heaven-sent, and I shone in reflected glory. Uncle was a simple, earnest man, who never accepted gifts or favors from patients. So the villagers insisted on my drinking a cup of tea with them. At first I disliked the tea, because it was made with smoked milk (the only way they knew to preserve the milk), but as I kept drinking their tea, eventually I began to like the smoked taste. Later, when I returned home, I missed it and told my mother that her tea wasn’t as good as what I had with my uncle.
When I finally returned to my city home and was asked about the vacation, I could not say enough of my uncle’s saintly conduct with the villagers. However, I never forgot to mention my triumphant journey on a white horse.
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