Goddess Lakshmi

The waiting days wrenched my nerves. Each minute seemed like an hour, and two hours like a millennium. The kabadiwala, too, had business, and the mochi chipped away at plastics and leather merrily. Empty rickshawalas, not plying to customers’ needs, rushed past frivolously, as if Aishwarya Rai—or someone even higher up the ladder, Sonia Gandhi—were waiting for a ride.

Still, these women had places to go, and yet the rickshawalas were arrogant towards their own bread and butter.

So, to emphasise my point: even the nukad boy crying “bhindi le lo” was involved in an occupation, but not me. Yes, the doctor’s degree certificate, fresh from printing and framing, mocked me: “Go find a better way to while away time than shooing away the third generation of flies born in two months, thriving in the prosperity of an empty clinic!” If this was the mockery spat in my face by the offspring of my hard work, imagine what distantly related inanimates had to say.

“Let the children do some drawings here till I fetch some vegetables.” Once upon a time, Mary went shopping, leaving her little lambs at my idle mercy. The real blow came the next day when she remarked, “Oh, they just loved the empty, safe space to bring out the Picasso in them.” Empty space-the real dagger-minced my ego and made kheema out of it. And even before the kheema was ready, the spectators were too polite to bring their own pav.

On the next auspicious day, my immediate neighbour, the carpenter, decided to abuse my mantra of Live and Let Live. “Madamji, kuch samaan aayega, baarah baje. Main ek order lene ja raha hoon. Please, aapke chaurahe pe rakhne dena. Mention not, Madamji!” Cursing was not part of my upbringing, and “Mother’s son” was a sacred relationship to me. Yet again, the homoeopathic clinic became a babysitter—to wooden babies of a carpenter who was out at work.

Work! Everyone had it, except me. With dewy eyes, I gazed at the labourer sweating it out, digging roads for the nth time in two months, the sun blazing on his brow. Dejected and bruised, I retreated to my cabin for yet another round of silent wailing and mental head-banging.

“Madam, aaoon kya? Dawakhana khula kya?”

She uttered the three magical words-DAWAKHANA KHULA KYA!

Arey, aana. Tere liye toh mere dil ka darwaza bhi khul gaya.

There were two reasons I loved Lakshmi: first, she was my very first guinea pig in independent practice; second, she called my clinic by its real name-dawakhana. Pet names, however cute and mushy, never establish your true identity.

If only I had an aarti thali, I would have done the unfathomable. Lakshmi had deep, dark eyes set in even darker skin that covered her bony oval face. Her hair was flat-pressed and neatly oiled, plait or bun invisible beneath a veil that covered her head almost entirely. A thin rayon saree pallu shielded her from Surya Devta, offering shade over shame. Lean, with curves that could put Indian and Italian beauty alike to shame, Lakshmi did not come alone. Perched on her curves sat the baggage of her bitter young days, and the victim of my sweet pills. The baby smiled gleefully, as if it sensed that it would be treated sweetly rather than suffer punctures on its dusty bum.

“Dekhona, Madamji, kya kha liya hai nalayak ne, ki julab band hi nahi ho rahe!”

The baby stared at its janani, while a dollop of sticky mucus hung precariously from its nasal origins. I desperately wanted to say, “This, my Cleopatra, this unhygienic mouth and habit will make you run to Hippocrates!” But I dared not offend my first visitor, who, days into treatment, would bring the entire digging clan to me.

“Pachaas rupiya!” I proclaimed, after thirty minutes of chest, abdomen, eye, and nail examinations. If Hutchinson is to be believed, I only betrayed the genital examination—otherwise, I had scrutinised the entire territory for a bout of watery diarrhoea. As I manoeuvred my object of gratification, gratification born of five years of struggle to don the colourless white apron. Lakshmi pulled off her veil and settled on the marble floor, basking in the glory of the flapping air-conditioner.

“Itna nahi hai! Ye bees rakh lo, agli baar poora degi!”

Thus began our sojourn of udhaari. Yet the child, innocent and pure, never left without a Parle-G packet from me. Cheap charity, you may say, but it set my practice rolling before moss could grow. Lakshmi brought many women and children from her clan for treatment-leucorrhoea, anaemia, domestic and occupational injuries-all treated with sweet pills. Every visit came with the benevolent promise, “Agli baar poora paisa degi!” And every visit ended with the child receiving a Parle-G. The glee in his eyes was no less than holding a Padma Bhushan, if not a Vibhushan. Whether it was the sweet pills or the biscuits that brought them back remains a mystery from the dinosaur era. But I enjoyed their indulgence in my practice.

Lakshmi taught me Zen meditation. Her conversations enlightened me like Osho; her frugal life made me believe in Buddha and Mahavir. Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh-I worshipped all forms through her tryst with life. The glucose biscuit was a fragile offering to a goddess who answered my prayers for a successful practice. Where she is today, I do not know. I only whisper a silent prayer that those diarrhoea-afflicted bums grow strong enough to keep the veil of respect safely on her head.

Agli baar, with some other sombre practitioner, may she pay the poora paisa. May she, at least in her own name, afford a Parle-G. And if not, may some doctor with a beating heart offer those treats to her grandchildren, bathed in the smog of poverty.

Amen.