‘That Man’

Dr Shirali Raina
It was a cold and wet March morning  when I first encountered him. It being a Sunday as well, the household was in a grip of frenzied spring cleaning. My mother had asked me to clean out the shoe cupboard near the door. I reluctantly opened the cupboard and looked woefully at the heap of smelly leather, all shoes looked equally old, ugly and untouchable to me. As I had no intention of getting my hands dirty, I went out in the garden to find a long stick to poke around the cupboard. It was during this Tom Sawyer like dilly-dallying that I heard the main gate creak open.
I stood rooted to my spot as a strange sight greeted me. There was a big blanketed bundle crawling in slowly. To my twelve year old self it was almost fascinating to see the bundle roll in and make his way towards the verandah and when the bundle whispered for alms,I suddenly found my voice, ‘ Mom ! Mom come out quickly’ , I shouted.
Mom took a look at him and asked,’What do you need?’ He pulled the blanket a little away from his face,a pair of sad eyes and a bit of a bearded chin, he conveyed that he was hungry ( bosche,bosche,he whispered in Kashmiri)and that any alms would be welcome. He spoke softly and in broken whispers. Even in that disheveled state, there was something about him that set him apart from a typical beggar. To questions about who he was and where he came from, he offered no answers.
Mom fed him, pushed two bowls of rice in his bag and as it was festival time,handed him some money as well.
Next Sunday, there he was again, doubled down from the waist and making his way in,on his hands and knees. I shouted,’Mom, mom, that man has come again’.
This became a sort of ritual for the Sunday mornings. He would shuffle in slowly, wait near the verandah, take his meal and whatever else that was offered and with a soft shukriya, would shuffle out again. My father,at every visit, tried to ask him his name,his general whereabouts and the reason for his obvious discomfort. He would pull his blanket a little away, only to murmur ‘Gonahpanin’ (my sins) and nothing more.
I,with a child’s natural curiosity, would skip after him till the gate and watch him make his slow progress up the lane. His not going to any of our neighbors’ houses for alms did not strike me as something strange. I had started to look out for him every week now and felt unexplained happiness at seeing my mother give him food and filling up his bag with rice,an odd fruit here and there,a coin or two and sometimes more.
The wet and rainy spring gave way to warmer days of early summer. Dad’s close friend,Mehraj uncle who lived in the city,was visiting us over the weekend.As both of them conversed in the sun, my ‘That Man’, still wrapped up in his blanket,paid us his weekly visit. Dad whispered something to Mehraj uncle who immediately gave an assured nod.
Mehraj uncle held a vey senior and important government post at that time and authority came naturally to him. He called out to the man and asked him to come  nearer. Then in a gentle voice asked him the same questions that my father had been asking of him for the last couple of months. I am not sure whether it was uncle’s gentleness or it was the trust he had gained in our family ,over the weeks, that made him break his silence that day.
He was a carpenter by trade and lived in a village across the river. A few months back, at the onset of winter, he had been repairing a roof when he slipped and fell. He was taken to the hospital with fractured ribs but was discharged soon. The fall had somehow affected his vision too. He was unable to work, felt pain with every breath he took and soon ran out of sustenance in a couple of months time. His relatives and neighbors helped him out for some weeks but soon thinned out. He had no siblings but a family of four to feed. Meanwhile,he had contracted TB in his fragile state,adding on to his woes. Soon, he had no option but to seek help from strangers but could not come to terms with the thought of begging for survival. He felt it to be deeply humiliating to beg for alms especially in his own village so crossed the river in a ferry.
The day he came to our house for the first time,was his first day of begging. He chose our house as it was the first one in the lane ,from the river end.He was overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity shown to him and that gave him strength to wander up the lane and beg for more.Since most of the houses in that lane had fruit orchards and vegetable gardens, he would get a supply of eatables and make his way back to the river, dragging his bagload. He did not want to make his presence talked about so he would go only to very few houses. He never answered my father’s questions because he felt very ashamed of the life he was forced to lead now and did not want the word to travel back to his village at any cost.
Dad and Mehraj uncle were visibly moved by the story of this man,broken in spirit and body,hanging tenuously to his faded days of dignity.
Mehraj uncle whipped out his pocket book and scribbled something on it. He instructed the man to somehow try and reach the main hospital in Srinagar by next Monday with this paper.
That was the last we saw of that blanketed man with broken wings.
Summer gave way to autumn, winter followed and then a whole new year slipped by ; I got busy with my school routine, dad with his college lectures,Mehraj uncle got transferred to Delhi and life went on.
I was in the last year of school now and dad would teach me mathematics at home.Both, he and I, loved the subject so Sunday mornings were spent pleasantly, he sitting in a chair explaining to me and I on the grass with my notebooks strewn around. It was in the middle of one such study morning that we heard the gate open softly. Dad and I were a tad annoyed at this unwelcome interruption of my lesson.
A young man in his early thirties,neatly shaved and dressed,walked across the lawn and stood at a respectable distance from my father.He raised his hand in salaam and smiled shyly. Dad returned his greetings and waited for him to speak. The young man seemed to struggle with his words and then folding his hands in front of him ,said,’ You don’t recognise or remember me but I cannot forget you. I am the injured carpenter who would come to you for alms.’
He was choking on his words as he slowly recalled the last two years.
After he had taken the paper slip from Mehraj uncle, he had made every effort to reach the SMHS hospital in Srinagar. He had sent in the slip to the mentioned doctor and had waited  for a couple of hours,tired and in pain, for his name to be called.
The doctor spent considerable time assessing him and then admitted him to the hospital. Over the next few weeks, he received free treatment for his eyes and his tuberculosis. He underwent physiotherapy for his injured rib cage,gradually regaining his strength and the will to reclaim his life.He came back to his village and started a small fruit business. Over the months, his business grew,his financial condition stabilized and he could start paying off his loans.
As he came to the end of his narrative, he faltered and lowered his tear filled eyes and then suddenly burst forth, rushing his words,’ Please accept my apologies,I have no words to express my gratitude to you and the other gentleman. I have sinned.’
He took a deep breath and told us how his ‘peer’ (spiritual guide)had visited him in his dreams a few nights ago and told him,’ What kind of a person are you that you did not go back and meet the people who gave you a second life?’ He had spent two days in mental anguish,torn by the thought of his ingratitude and had finally summoned up the courage to pay a visit to our family.
I could see him and my parents wiping away their tears. There was silence. Probably there were no words that could do justice to the emotion which had engulfed them.
This morning as I collected my newspaper from the doorstep, I noticed my neighbor’s young kid cradling a small bird in his hands. He smiled at me and announced, ‘ It has broken it’s wing. My mom will feed it and fix the wing. Then it will fly again’. I smiled back and a hazy echo of the words beat in my mind till I was back in my sun filled garden of yore.
I rang up my father to ask him if he ever found out the carpenter’s name.Yes he had but struggled to remember and could not recall now.
It has been forty years since then, he must be in his early seventies now and a grandfather. I wonder if life continues to be kind to him, if he still lives in Baramulla,if he ever sat down his grandkids and told them his tale of despair and despondency and  if he taught them the values of kindness, generosity, perseverance,hope and faith in humanity.
I  do not know at what point my eyes welled up  as I wrote this story of my ‘That Man’ but I know now,why the three of them wept that day in silence.
They were the tears for reconnect,recovery and recalibration of a life.
Beyond mere mortal expressions.
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