The past week or so, I have been hanging out in the corridors of a hospital. It is one of those hospitals where the nurses can tell you which patient you are caring for by just looking at the flask you carry. They will then admonish you — don’t bring so much; her intake is limited to so and so mg. You nod, and then once again fill the flask to its brim. What if she suddenly feels hungry? Some questions don’t have answers that can be measured in metric units.
Ours is not a culture where people are comfortable with public displays of affection, aka, PDA. My friend and I once shared our awe at a Sri Lankan couple we know; the casual gestures of intimacy — he takes her hand absent mindedly and plants a kiss on her downturned palm, while she continues to chat with us. You too continue to talk, and look at the menu; for their gestures seem as natural as breathing in public.
In the hospital, I realised, you find many such gestures of affection, in full public gaze.
She was in a saree, her bun a bit askew. Somehow you knew that that’s not the way she usually stepped outside of the house; there is a sense of unexpected disarray. He stood there, in a white veshti sattai; his forehead with sandanam lined with the golden rim of his glasses. He obviously came from work; the veshti and sattai have been meticulously ironed. He stood, while she sat, and then suddenly doubled down. When she straightened up again, she seemed unsure if her body could clamp down on the spikes of pain. And that’s when he gently guided her head to his tummy. It was a tummy that arced from his chest, a considerable convex curve draped with his veshti. As her sinuous neck dipped to meet his tummy, those unfinished arcs somehow completed each other. Somehow you knew that this was their way, a practised affection that didn’t have the staleness of custom.
The two women always sat in one corner of the room. I usually liked that corner, it had a good fan above and I could keep a watch on the corridor too — has the doctor arrived, have they completed the rounds, can they give any update now? I think those two women too had the same idea, and before I could lay claim to those iron chairs, they had made it their space. Above the masks, one of them had reddened eyes, that seemed to have burrowed into her cheeks. Her friend sat next to her, sending out waves of this healthy cheer. I didn’t want to look at her much. After a while, the one who didn’t seem well rested her head on the shoulders of her friend. I don’t know why I decided they were friends — they didn’t seem to share features, like siblings. And perhaps, the warmth factor swung more to the side of friendship rather than a familial relation.
Her saree did not quite reach her ankles. The pallu, was like a stick stuck to her back. She stood with a stiffness; as if all the joints had locked in. He stood in front, a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, untucked with a report. He leafed through it, and she kept looking at him. He said something to her. And her hand went to his chest, as if she needed to connect to him to withstand whatever it was that he was telling her. Then her hand slowly stroked him, going past his chest to his torso — it was as if she wanted to touch that wall of support to reassure herself of something. And just like that it was over, and they went and sat down, heavily onto the chairs, awaiting their turn.
—
When I first saw her, she didn’t recognise me. Sodium levels, they said. Now I have a newfound respect for salt; who knew what havoc it could wreak with someone’s head. Yesterday, she was awake, and teasing the nurses. Even the last time she was in another ICU, she made friends with all the nurses. They told her all their dating disasters, delighted to find someone elderly who sanctioned all their confusions and adventures. By the evening, she was a bit confused. Do you want to sing songs, we asked. She said yes. Dee sang a song, and said, now you have to sing with ‘Da’. Dadada-dadada-da-da-da-da, she started, and sand the entire song. Then she sang ‘Maalayil malar solayil’, and somehow it wasn’t the ICU anymore but the home, where we sat around after dinner and she surprised everyone by singing laddoo-laddoo, a song I refused to believe was a real one, which she sang, laughing and giggling at every single line.
On the importance of Antakshari
Delightful read! Were you always this observant or is time at the hospital teaching you to slow down and just be?