Chapter 11: chapter 11

7I was surprised to see Prakash in the Public Gardens. He was a walking pillar of the Osmania General hospital. He was short and was as big as a pillar. The Osmania General hospital was one of the dirtiest structures of old Hyderabad.The mini telephone exchange housed in that hospital was under my charge. The hospital was full of patients accompanied by women wearing purdah. The entrance was like that of an old Palestine palace. The dirt and the dilapidated buildings were proclaiming aloud that it was a government hospital.The people who were working in the exchange would see Prakash before they enter into the labs of the Osmania Hospital for various tests. He would usually give them advice general in nature and also at times would express his views about doctors to be consulted. He would also offer to accompany them if they need help.I also sought his help many times in connection with my knee pain. There was a room where there was a lamp with a high voltage. One had to put one’s knee before it. It was a kind of thermal treatment. It was the worst kind of hell. When the lamp was switched on and when the knee started becoming hot, there would be excruciating pain. If the fluid that accumulated in the knee got evaporated in one sitting, one could feel heavenly bliss. But fluid- accumulation in the knees would happen again and again and there would be swelling like a balloon filled with air. I had to spend my days in severe pain.In 1992, in Hyderabad, when Chenna Reddy was the Chief Minister, there were large scale riots in the name of religion, which lasted for more than a year. Many were killed. Terrorizing people by throwing bombs in some part of the city or other or murdering somebody with a knife became part of daily life. New methods of murdering people were devised such as entering into a house and killing a whole family, stabbing the pillion riders with knives, throwing sharp arrows and intruding or mingling in large numbers in the processions taken out by Lord Ayyappa devotees. It was a usual affair of minor skirmishes during the Bonalu festival or the Bakrid developing into large scale riots. Now also everything began with someone piercing somebody with a knife. Rumours were afoot that the riots lasted long because of the hidden intention that Janarthan Reddy, the leader of another faction of the Congress Party, about who should become the Chief minister.My house was in Secunderabad. Even though Secunderabad was not usually much affected by such riots, there were one or two small stabbing incidents in the Parade Grounds in the early mornings. My office was in that part of the city where there was Osmania General Hospital. The old city was a dirty one filled with dust. I had to attend the office often defying the curfew. There were quite a lot of people admitted in the Osmania Hospital affected by the riots. Newspapers were listing the daily the number of Muslims killed and the number of Hindu deaths, as if they were announcing cricket scores! The Hindus and the Muslims were hell-bent on to set the scores straight. Dead bodies were piling up in the mortuary. The women and the children were the worst affected! They were stabbed and their bodies were mutilated. Old men and children with ears torn off, broken noses and heads were a common sight. It was necessary at that time that the small exchange at the Osmania hospital premises had to function without interruption. During those days, whenever I went to the exchange defying the curfew, Prakash would tell me about the cases who had been admitted that day and whose lives had been wrecked because of the riots. He would also take me to the wards and hospital verandas to see the agony myself. The hospital where patients used come once in large numbers for treatment, now had with heaps of bodies. It was a pathetic sight. I wrote a novel, Nagaram 90 focusing on those riots. It was a short novel that portrayed the environment when curfew was imposed and how it limped back to normalcy taking more than a month. It won a prize in the competition conducted by Kumudam, a popular Tamil weekly and Air India. The prize gave me an opportunity to visit England and other European countries.Whenever I saw Prakash in the hospital premises, Prakash would always look tense. He was so because often he had to take up work other than his usual office routine. He was seen going around in the premises time and again doing some work or other. When I met Prakash in the Public Gardens on that particular day, he looked much agitated. When I asked him why he was so tense, he told me, “I am waiting to meet someone!”But the environment was not conducive to meet anybody. The Public Gardens was overflowing with people that day. On uneventful days, there was enough space to take a stroll to meet and talk with people leisurely. Most of the people were Muslims. They came in groups walking on grass paths. They stamped carefully on the grass as though it were a religious relic. I had seen during some festivals, people lightly piercing their bodies with knives or tips of swords. For example, people would do so, shouting, with their throats fully open, Thiisko, Thissko (take, take) in the Sowdamman festival. It would be very strange to see all that! Most of the people walked on the grass in the park. When I asked a Muslim, why they were doing so, he replied that it was a religious ritual. I asked myself whether those people were Pathans! A section of the Muslims would perform fire-walking during Muharram. I wondered whether walking on the grass was a comforting medication after fire walking. Was it real or did the man whom I had asked wantonly give me a strange reason? Muslims came and went in large numbers. I also doubted that somebody should have told casually of course, that walking on the grass was a good ritual and the Muslims were using the grass paths in Public Gardens that way!Prakash’s face was dark and wooden that day. The night was slowly setting in. I also was walking on the grass as though I was observing a religious ritual myself. The silence was broken by the screeching of beetles. The sounds of the trains moving in and out of the Hyderabad Railway Station was also getting intensified. I started to move out of the park.Prakash was standing still, near the Lalithakala arch that was a bit far away, bathed in the electric light. “The fellow you wanted to meet hasn’t turned up yet, has he?” I quipped.His face became darker still. The way Prakash was standing there was good camera angle for a long shot. I asked him again, “Not yet?”“Not yet!” he replied.“A lady?”“Yes!”Prakash was a married man. I couldn’t guess for which lady he was waiting! After that I had met Prakash in the hospital many times in a year but I never asked him who that lady was who had made him so tense that day!