No need to explain this to Elli, so good’s her Hindi. “That poor guy,” she says. “How bitter he must be. Maybe I should go across there and take a look at that cough.”
Next day near lunchtime Nisha and I are in the kitchen, preparing food. Her dad is giving the lizard a singing lesson. We can hear him trying a phrase sochha samajha mana meetha piyaravaa over and over again. Comes a knock on the door. Nisha’s hands are floury, so I’ve gone.
Outside is Elli with a serious look on her face. No greeting for me even. “Is Pandit Somraj in?”
“Elli doctress, he’s teaching.”
Says she, “It’s important.” Only then does she give a small smile and ask, “Animal, please fetch him here.” So I’ve knocked on the music room door to deliver the message, in a little while Pandit Somraj arrives.
“Good morning, Pandit Somraj, I need to talk to you.”
“Doctor Barber, good afternoon.” Doesn’t look like he wants to let her in.
“Animal tells me you’re a decent person to whom I can speak openly. As you know I’ve opened the clinic across the road. People are staying away. Can you throw any light on this?”
My god, how devious is Elli. No wonder she showed such an interest in Somraj. Conned me, she’s. Does believe he’s the villain of this affair.
Somraj Pandit looks taken aback. Such a brash approach to discussion, it’s not the Khaufpuri way. Says he, “I’m sorry, I know nothing of your clinic. Was there anything else? I have a student here, we are in the middle of a lesson.”
“Why are people being told not to come? Whoever’s done this, they’ve done a bad thing.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” he says, and starts to close the door.
“You must.” Elli’s sounding kind of desperate. “You must, please. At least tell me why it’s happening. Why do you believe I am connected with that Kampani? I detest it as much as you do.”
“If people are not coming, that is their affair. It is not for me to tell others what to do.” He turns. The lizard Shastri’s in the hall behind, staring. Somraj gives him a nod, I guess he thinks this is the end of the conversation.
“Wait,” says Elli. “I’m sorry, too, but that’s not good enough. I think you know why people are staying away. I think you know exactly why. And you’ve misjudged me. You have treated me most unfairly. I have given up everything to come here and do this work.”
Somraj’s turned back again. The look in his eyes, it seems almost like pain, but could be contempt or pity or any number of shades of annoyance. At last he sighs. “You had better come inside.”
He leads her into the music room, where he was giving Shastri his lesson. There’s a harmonium on the carpet. “Please,” says Somraj. “Sit. Will you have something? Tea? A glass of squash?”
“Look,” says she, “this isn’t a social call. I haven’t come to pass the time of day, or ask after your health, although I have to say you don’t look at all well. In fact if you have any sense you’ll let me find out what’s wrong with you, and you’ll…you’ll stop stopping other people…”
“Stop stopping?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” snaps Elli in Inglis.
All this time Shastri and I are peering in through the door. Nisha’s there too by now, shooting hostile glances at Elli from her big brown eyes. “Dad, is everything all right?”
Says Somraj to Elli, “If you’ve a problem let us discuss it sensibly. Not shouting. All right, I’ll be frank with you. When we heard there was a clinic to be opened by an Amrikan, an Amrikan person about whom nothing was known, people here became fearful.”
“Go ahead,” she says, “I’m listening.”
“Leave us please,” says Somraj to the three of us in the doorway. Two obey, the third, whose head lower to the floor’s not so easy to spot, remains.
“Is it difficult for you to understand?” asks Somraj. “Amrikans don’t have a good reputation in this town.”
“Wait one moment,” says Elli, holding up a hand. “Whatever you’re about to say, I won’t have that dumped on me. I’m not ashamed to be Amrikan, there’s plenty to be proud of in Amrika, there’s good and bad, like everywhere else. In this world there are two kinds of people, those who help others, and those who don’t. Me, I’m the first kind, I can say this because I’m here to help. Yet you, or someone you know, has told people to stay away from my clinic, and that’s a wicked thing to have done. So before you start on about me being Amrikan, you better decide, which kind of person are you?”
“Mrs. Barber…”
“Mrs. nothing,” she interrupts. “It’s Doctor Barber if you must, but since we’re neighbours I’d prefer it if you called me Elli.”
“Doctor Barber, the fact is people here know nothing about you, where you came from, who is funding you, whether you are working for someone. If you understood this place better, you would know why such questions matter.”
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned understanding, Pandit Somraj. Understanding is a two-way thing. Usually it’s the result of something called conversation, which takes two. If you wanted to know about me, you could have come and asked. But you did not. And as for justice, you put me on trial without informing me you were doing so, trumped up stories and played on people’s fears without knowing anything at all about me, you found me guilty of what I do not know, and you passed your sentence. I have put my whole heart and everything I own into that clinic, and I’m not going to let you or any other prejudiced bastard fuck it up.”
“Now please calm down,” he says. As for me, how I am wishing that Elli was saying these things to he who deserved to hear them, not the poor pandit, who although she doesn’t know it is on her side.
“No I will not fucking calm down. It’s about time you heard a thing or two. I know all about your committee. What you might not know is that many of those people, the same people you claim to represent, really want to come to my clinic. Some of them as you well know, are very ill. I tell you, if there is a single death in this neighbourhood that I could have prevented, it will be on your head and your conscience.”
Why won’t he tell her he opposed the boycott? But now there’s an even grimmer expression on the face of that grim man. “Since you are being blunt I will also be blunt. I will not swear at you, as you have at me, but let me tell you that if you collected every swear word in every language, every filthy term of abuse, melted them together to make one word so hateful, so utterly revolting, so devoid of goodness that its mere utterance would create horror and loathing and hatred, that word would be…”
“Amrikan?”
“…No, it would be the name of that Kampani. Have you been to the square where the court is? Yes? You must have seen, no matter what time you go there, that there are always a few people outside, with banners. If the court is in session, they may chant. You have been here long enough to have seen this.”
“I have seen it and I’ll gladly join you in those protests, but what the hell has this got to do with me?”
“Everything,” says he. “It has everything to do with you. You see, the Kampani—” One of those bad coughs begins fighting its way up from his lungs, he struggles to quell it but can’t.
“You should really let me see to that,” says Elli.
“For years,” says Somraj when he’s got back his breath, “the Kampani has been saying that the damage to people’s health has been exaggerated, it would like to have studies which show that things here are normal, that the last effects of the disaster are vanished.”
“Yes,” says Elli, “I know all about this idiotic theory that I have come to do some sort of health survey, but surely you realise that a proper study can’t be done in weeks, it’s impossible, besides which we all know what the result would be. Things are not normal here, anyone with eyes can see that.”