| APUPA* | 31st May, 2008 |
From the start of April, each week saw the heat become more and more scorching. At 10 am in the morning the air shimmers above the earth and the roads. All greenery has lost its healthy sheen. Any action results in a fine dust. These are long exhausting, hot months, with daily temperatures that seem to climb and climb and no drop of rain expected until June 1, traditionally the start of monsoon. A cyclone was centred several thousand kilometers away. Kerala was swept by its tail - a mixed blessing. The rain poured from the skies. In less than an hour the streets were under water and near the roads the water formed small rivers. The palm-leaf roofs and termite-eaten mud walls simply collapsed. Huts which should have been repaired last year had been neglected because there were so many other expenses. "Has the monsoon broken out 2 months early?" was heard frequently, after a few days of heavy, almost continuous rains, and in barber shops.... Why anyone had chosen the tree in front of our house I do not know. Dozens of Indian itinerants pass by every month. Men and women. Usually alone. You see them everywhere along Indian roads. Often beggars, but equally often nomadic travellers, psychiatric patients, the slightly mentally disabled, widows or widowers **, surviving on charitable hand-outs of food, sometimes a shirt or trousers or sari. Sleeping rough along the road or under the shelter of a nearby shop. They never sleep more than one night in the same place. Then early one morning I saw him from our terrace. He had probably been sleeping there all night. Old, grey and thin. He wore only a loincloth with an old blanket over his small shoulders and a wrapped cloth under his head. So small, so thin, with his wrinkled face and yet a monument under the tree on the street. He crouched on his haunches in a dry spot between 2 puddles, scratched his leathery naked back and started to suck on an old crust of bread in his right hand. A crushed filthy tin cup next to his feet. I asked Imam to invite the old man home for me. Apupa kindly but firmly refused, took my 20 rupee note (25 pence, 0.3€ or 0.5$), turned himself back into his blanket and continued resting. The tree leaves were still wet and drips fell lightly upon him. When I left the SISP Centre at noon to go home, I took Manu, one of the craft workers in the centre, with me to ask the old man if he'd like some of the rice and curry school lunch. Werner, however, had already ensured that Apupa had had a rice meal. Imam and I saw he had also been given a plastic sheet. Manu wrapped the portion in a newspaper and Apupa set this aside for his dinner. It rained heavily in the evening so again I asked the old man if he'd like to sleep in our home or, at least, under the roof of the nearby shop. His plastic sheet was enough, he said, and he wanted to sleep in the open air. When I went onto the terrace the next morning, Saturday, I saw that Apupa was still under the plastic sheet. Before I went to work I arranged with Werner that Imam would take the old man a rice meal at noon. I told Werner that I would stay at the SISP Centre for two hours extra because I had so many overdue emails to answer. |
When I walked home at 4, however, and our house came into view, I saw in the distance a police car, ambulance and paramedics at our fence. "What in God's name has happened" I thought. You could tell from the way the officers behaved that
it was not an administrative or traffic issue. Naimsha walked towards me and told me that a shopkeeper had become concerned that the old man had remained silent and not moving for quite some time so went to check on him. "One kilometre away from the village, a wanderer was found dead" said the policeman. "The public ambulance will pick up the dead bodies for the department" no names, no relatives "of the large Medical College public hospital. After autopsy the bodies are kept for 6 months in the mortuary for any claim. Then they are cremated." In the pouring rain the small body was shrouded in a sheet and placed in the ambulance. We stared after the ambulance for several minutes after it drove off. None of us thought of opening an umbrella. A few years ago I had to visit that public Medical College as a result of another death. It was a creepy, inhuman and very shocking experience for me then. There had been many blackouts in the cold storage facilities over the past few weeks and the outside temperature was around 40 degrees C. Apupa remained days, even weeks in my mind, so old and so lonely, dying silently along the road. Had our kindness in his last days of heat given him something? Was he lonely, Apupa, or was it a conscious choice? India ... so nice, so sweet and ... often so cruel. Paul, Vizhinjam, May 31, 2008
(*) Apupa:
grandfather |
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