Where is the Babu?
It was an ordinary day in the OPD; perhaps, a year ago. I was seeing patients. I was also thinking of taking a break, go out for a stroll. I tried to finish up quickly with the remaining patients when an old man entered and sat on the bench inside the room.
‘Yes,’ I asked him. ‘What is your problem?’
The old man said nothing and kept on staring at me.
I wrote medicines for the patient who I was seeing at that time and repeated my question to the old man. ‘Tell me, what has happened to you?’
The old man, this time, just shook his hands before him, in a tumbling motion, and mumbled something incoherent.
Does he have dementia? I wondered.
He looked old enough — sixty-plus, I guessed — though age hadn’t debilitated him. He was strong enough to travel to the hospital and get an OPD slip made for himself. And he seemed to have come alone, for he didn’t have the bevy of attendants that usually surrounded a patient. Also, I saw a sly, secretive twinkle in his eyes. The old man wasn’t in pain — the pain that would drive a man to get out of his house and to a hospital. Each patient I saw that day, each one was in some kind of trouble. They looked ill. I could tell from their eyes, their faces. That old man, however, didn’t look like the others.
He looked poor, right, like most of the patients in this mofussil town do. His clothes were simple and dirty, and that was quite normal. He was wearing a dhoti that, had it been cleaner, could have passed off as white; no shirt; and had, instead, covered his torso with another piece of cloth — a gumchha, perhaps, or another dhoti, I don’t remember that well. He was barefooted. He was thin — bones, almost. Average height, stooping slightly, though he didn’t require a stick to aid him in walking. The hair — or whatever remained of it — on his scalp had all turned grey. He had a stubble, but not a proper moustache or a beard. His cheeks were sunken and there seemed to be no teeth inside his mouth. I guessed he might have been quite handsome in his youth.
All patients I saw, I felt for them. I felt sorry, at times going tsk-tsk-tsk. That old man, however, intrigued me. He could come to the hospital alone, but why was he talking in a sign language? Shaking his hands and all? And, I noticed just as I took my eyes off him and reverted to the patient at hand, his shy look. I turned to look at him again but he averted his gaze. He shook his hands once again, and turned his eyes towards the ground.
I felt like laughing, but I didn’t. Who can tell what troubles people come with?
‘Give me your slip,’ I told him again. There was one more patient in the room — a woman. I had to see her before I could attend to that old man.
He tumbled his hands again. This time I laughed a bit.
‘You understand what I am telling you?’ I asked him.
He mumbled something.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘Be louder.’
‘Later, later,’ he said, shaking his hands, not looking at me, turning his clever, knowing eyes away from me.
Ok, so that was it. That old man was asking me to finish seeing all the patients and then attend to him. That was what that tumbling movement meant: Later.
What, I wondered, could be so secretive?
‘Ok,’ I said. ‘Wait outside. Let me see this lady first.’
He hopped out of the OPD, and, I could see, he was peering from behind the green curtain. His eyes knowing like before, a scowl on his face.
I finished with the female patient and called out to him.
‘Yes, you may come in now.’
I was dying to listen to his story, the secret he had — hopefully — to reveal before me.
He shuffled slowly towards the patient’s stool, looking both shy and sly, and I couldn’t tell what he was exactly — a smart fellow, or a man suffering from a secret disease.
‘Sit,’ I addressed him by his name, praying all the while that no other patient entered the room at that time. ‘What has happened to you?’ I asked.
He looked all around the room, moving his lips, sucking in the air.
‘Yes, you can tell me,’ I assured him. ‘There is no one else here.’
He gazed at me, hard. Such was his face that I was finding it hard not to laugh.
Then he brought his mouth close to my face. I recoiled, initially; but then I realized that he might really have some secret to share, so I turned my face a bit and brought my ear close to his mouth.
He whispered into my ear.
‘Mera babu ko ghaav ho gaya hai.’
My babu has suffered a wound.
That was it. He had a babu; a little child, perhaps; because that is how we address little boys: Babu.
‘Where is your Babu?’ I asked him. ‘Haven’t you brought him along?’ I was quite surprised. The old man’s Babu — his grandson, maybe — had a wound, but he had registered himself at the OPD counter.
Where was his Babu? How old was he? Hadn’t he come along?
The old man just shook his head at my questions.
‘How old is your Babu?’ I asked again. ‘Where does he have the wound? Did he fall? Was he playing?’
He kept on staring at me.
‘Where is Babu?’ I asked.
He shook his head.
‘Where?’
‘Here,’ he said, finally. ‘Babu is here.’ He raised both his hands and pointed towards the ground, or — as it seemed to me — towards the stool he was sitting upon.
This time I got a bit nervous. We were talking about a child — Babu — who wasn’t there. And that old man said he was there!
‘Here? Where?’ I asked. There was no one else in the room. The old man kept on staring at me with his huge eyes. I shivered.
The old man looked all around to make sure there was no one else in the room. Then he raised the hem of his dhoti. He wasn’t wearing pants inside. I saw his hairy scrotum. Then he held his penis before me and said: ‘My babu.’
I nearly fell out of my chair. However hard I controlled, my laughter wouldn’t stop. I counted till ten. I re-counted till ten. I closed my eyes and focused on other things. I examined that old man’s babu, prescribed him medicines, and saw him off.
A few days ago, the warden of a local residential school brought some students for check-up. They were small boys — the youngest was aged eight, the oldest was twelve.
I asked one of those boys, a nine-year-old: ‘Kya hua?’ What has happened to you?
‘Ghaav hua hai,’ the boy replied very innocently, not a hint of mischief or hesitation on his face. I have a wound.
‘Kahaan ghaav hua hai? (Where is the wound?)’
‘Babu mein.’ On the babu.
As I turned unbelievingly towards the child, the little boy raised the hem of his loose shorts, took his tiny penis out, and said to me, as innocently as before: ‘Here, my babu.’