Your Nimmi
TWO DAYS BEFORE
THE COLLAPSE
8
LAKSHMI
Shimla
It’s late afternoon. I’m at the Community Clinic, washing my hands at the basin while my patient buttons up her blouse. Jay is at the hospital next door, seeing to an emergency delivery. He left an hour ago.
Like many of the people in this area, my patient speaks a mixture of Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and her local dialect, but I didn’t need to understand what she was saying to figure out why she had come to the clinic. Years of carrying firewood from the edge of the forest to her hearth has taken a toll on her right shoulder. Even while sitting on the exam table, she is listing to one side, leaning away from the weight of her invisible cargo.
The nun who is helping me today puts warm water compresses on the sore shoulder to relax the muscles before I apply a mixture of turmeric powder and coconut oil to the bruised skin. That should reduce the inflammation. I tell my patient to remove the ointment when it dries, in half an hour, then reapply the warm compress and rub on more of the lotion, which I’m sending home with her. I wish I could command her to stop hauling firewood until her shoulder heals, but she’s a widow, and her children are too small to help her with the task.
Now I dry my hands and moisten them with lavender oil to prepare for the next patient; the scent relaxes patients who might be nervous about coming to the clinic. It relaxes me, as well. I breathe it in.
I hear the receptionist in the outer room say, “Wait! You can’t go in there!”
A boy and girl—ten years old or thereabouts—burst through the curtain that separates the exam room from the clinic’s waiting room. They’re carrying a sheep—the boy holding the front end, the girl carrying the rear. The receptionist follows them, apologizing to me.
“Theek hai,” I tell her. It’s fine.
She looks relieved and returns to her desk.
The sheep is bleeding from what appears to be a nasty gash on its right side. I can’t understand what the girl is saying to me, so I turn to Sister and wait for her to translate. The foothills of the Himalayas are home to many indigenous tribes, and between the staff and me, we can usually manage to work out what our patients are telling us.
My patient with the swollen shoulder, now dressed, jumps down from the exam table. She points at the sheep and says something I don’t understand. It’s clear she’s frightened.
I look for help from Sister, who shakes her head; she doesn’t understand the woman’s rapid-fire speech any better than I do. The girl and boy stare at the patient, their mouths hanging open. The sheep bleats.
My patient grabs the bottle of turmeric ointment I mixed for her and flees the room as if the building is on fire.
Is she frightened of a wounded sheep?
I inspect the gash while the sheep struggles to escape the clutches of the children, but they hold on fast, and I get a good look at the area. The fleece appears to have a clean slit, like a welt pocket on a coat. The wound is underneath the fleece. How could that have happened?
Then I see a coarse thread hanging from the fleece. And uneven stitching at the edges of the slit. It’s like a pocket that has been sewn shut. Working gingerly, with a pair of scissors, I cut the ragged stitching open and peel back the layer of fleece. And now I understand the problem. Underneath the wool, the skin is covered in sores, pus and blood oozing from an open wound.
I’m wondering who would shear a sheep’s fleece in this way, then stitch it back together. Why not treat the wound? Why would a shepherd try to hide these sores? Sheep are as precious to the hill people as gold is to the matrons whose hands I used to paint with henna. No shepherd would leave an injured sheep on its own or, worse, abandon it.
If only Jay were here. Except for his time at Oxford, Jay has always lived in Shimla and speaks many of the local dialects. He could find out if the sheep belongs to the children, and if so, where is the rest of their flock? Where’s the shepherd? Or, if the animal isn’t theirs, where did they find it?
It occurs to me that Nimmi could help. Perhaps she speaks their language or could understand enough of it to clarify what happened. She’s grown up with sheep and goats and might have some idea why this animal’s wounds are so peculiar.
I indicate with gestures that the boy and girl should stay where they are.
In the Healing Garden, I find Nimmi on her haunches, patting down the soil where she must have just sown seeds.
“I need your help, Nimmi.” I tell her. “In the clinic.”
She knits her brows, and I know she must be thinking: You need me at the clinic?
“An injured sheep,” I say. “Two children brought it in.”
Nimmi stands. She still looks puzzled, but there’s no time to explain. I take her hoe and spade from her and put them in the shed while she brushes dirt off her hands and goes to wash them at the outdoor tap.
Inside, the sister on duty is laying a fresh sheet on the exam table. Then she helps the boy and girl gently lift the animal onto the table.
The instant Nimmi sees the wounds on the sheep’s shorn skin, she steps back with a shocked expression on her face. She glances, first, at me, then at the children. She says something to them in her dialect.
The boy just stares at Nimmi, but the girl responds and makes a gesture with her arm.
Switching to Hindi, Nimmi tells me, “I asked them if it is their sheep. The girl says no. She says they found the animal on the trail while they were collecting firewood on the mountain.”
“Without a shepherd?” Having lived in Shimla for a decade, I know that the nomadic tribes would never leave an animal to die alone; it would be too cruel—and the animal too expensive to replace.
Nimmi turns to speak to the girl. The two of them are communicating both with words and gestures. Most of the tribes, whether from the Nepalese or the Kashmiri border, share some common words in Urdu, Hindi and Nepali. Like many North Indians, I speak mainly Hindi with some Urdu words thrown in—but the hill dialects make use of words I’ve never heard, and the sentence structure is entirely different.
“The only sheep they saw was this one,” Nimmi says. “They could hear others farther up the mountain—but they wanted to help this one because she’s hurt.”
I ask Nimmi, “Do you know what might have caused the injury? Did someone do this deliberately?”
Nimmi moves closer to the animal, who is still lying on one side and breathing heavily. She leans forward with her elbow on the table and uses her forearm to hold the animal’s neck and head still while she peels the hide back as far as it will go. She probes the cuts with her fingers, as the sheep jerks and flinches.
“Illness didn’t cause these sores,” Nimmi says. “These are abrasions. Something was irritating her skin, and so she rubbed herself against a tree trunk or a rock—some hard surface—to scratch herself...or soothe herself...or maybe...”
When Nimmi eases her hold on the sheep and starts to examine one of its ears, she suddenly pulls back, and gasps.
The hair on my arm stands up.
Suddenly the air feels heavy, tense.
The children feel it, too. They look at me, then at Nimmi.
I say. “What is it?”
She frowns, staring at the animal, her lips a thin line. There’s something she doesn’t want to say. What?
Finally, Nimmi takes a breath and sighs. She says something to the girl, her hand on the girl’s shoulder. Again, they’re using words and gestures to communicate, and when the girl responds, Nimmi nods.
Then the girl turns to the boy, takes him by the arm, and leads him from the room.
Nimmi turns to me. “I told them we will help the animal. They mustn’t worry.”
I still don’t know what’s going on, but the set of her mouth tells me that she’s not going to tell me what she’s thinking. A bubble of resentment rises in my chest. I’m used to being in control of my exam room, my patients, the Healing Garden. But now even Sister is looking at Nimmi for instructions about what to do next. Sometime in the last fifteen minutes, Nimmi seems to have taken charge of my exam room. But she works for us. She has no reason—or right—to hold anything back. My feelings are hurt; I can’t help it.