Thursday, September 20, 2018
Bombay
Doing Hospital Duty and Attending a Memorial Service for a Former School Mate
Namaste from Bombay!
Today was a more unusual sort of day because in addition to doing regular hospital duty, I also attended a Memorial Service for a friend who passed away, five days ago.
I awoke, as usual, at about 4.30 am and began working right away. It is amazing how much work I can get done in the first four hours of the day when Morning Brain kicks in and kicks butt. I blogged, almost finished proof-reading my Goa book, communicated via email with a host of folks across the world and then stopped to eat my breakfast.
I decided to eat something else for a change and I broke out the Skippy Chunky Peanut Butter and the Nutella that I had carried from the US (only to find, of course, that all these things are available here--although you pay a pretty penny more!). I had multi-grain bread in the fridge that I warmed in my microwave oven. I slathered mayonnaise on one slice and topped it with slices of Britannia cheese--this cheese, by the way, is superb. I love the taste (very similar to the Australian Kraft processed tinned cheese of the sort we ate as kids) and the texture--it is creamier than Amul. One slice received a healthy helping of Peanut Butter and another Nutella with mixed chopped nuts. I dearly dearly missed a toaster at this point and kept imagining how great it would have been to enjoy these goodies on toasted multi-grain bread. Oh well, the bread was not too bad. Hot coffee washed it all down well as I watched Escape to the Continent.
I spent the entire morning at my laptop finishing off the editing of the Goa book and sending my list of corrections to my publisher for the final proofs. At last, it seems as if this book is getting somewhere. I am trying to do the rest of the work with enthusiasm but it is so difficult to muster any since the project has been more than two years in the making.
At about 11.00 am, it felt very drowsy and decided to take a nap. I slept for about half an hour and was hugely refreshed by it. When I awoke, I checked email and responded.
At 12.00 noon, I went in for a shower--there was still banging and hammering next door. This will probably go on for a few days. I can only hope and pray that they will not move on to another room once the kitchen is done. Just my crummy luck! To find a studio I adore just next door to someone who is getting married (great news!) but who then needs to renovate her apartment while I try to work from home (lousy news!)
At 12.30, I had my lunch: very good chicken curry (I am eating more curry in Bombay now than I have done for the last thirty years), eggplant with potatoes and chicken cutlets. I discovered that the Kissan Tomato Ketchup I bought has a stopper that needs to be opened with a bottle opener. I do not have one--shall have to borrow one from my Dad. Lunch was delicious and I ate it while watching Escape to the Continent. The couple searching for a home were in Cyprus. Heavenly!
By 1.15 pm, I was at the hospital and getting an update from Dad on Russel's condition. Overall, today we both found him far more alert and responsive. Dad left to go and get some lunch and rest. I requested him to return at 5.00 pm as I had a Memorial Service to attend. Either Dad or I are constantly at Russel's side--we do not leave him alone except at night when we get home to sleep.
The afternoon passed by quietly as I did some reading. On my iPad, I had dowloaded from my local Fairfield Library, a copy of Julian Barnes' novel The Only Story which is opening up nicely. Lenita, the physiotherapist, came in at 4.00pm and put Russel through his exercises. You can see that he struggles while doing some of them--which means that he is experiencing pain--although he probably has a higher threshold for it than most folks. I also managed to get Russel to turn on his side and to sit up a bit while reading an article in his Charis India. He is resistant but with some persuasion, he co-operates.
I had made plans to meet my friend Shahnaz at the entrance of the hospital at 5.25 pm so that we could attend the Memorial Service at 5.30 pm--which, coincidentally enough, happened to be on the sixth floor--in the Morello Hall--of the same hospital in which I was located.
The Memorial Service was for a classmate named Shehnaz Masojee Pinto, who was one year junior to me at St. Agnes' High School in Byculla from which we had both graduated. Her sister and only sibling, Nilufer, older to her by a year, had been my batch mate. My friend Shahnaz had been the deceased Shahnez's batch mate. It was Shahnaz who told me that Shehnaz had passed away, five days ago. The news was shocking to me in the extreme. I also heard that she had passed away of cancer and had been diagnosed only about three months ago. I guessed immediately that it would have been pancreatic cancer as I have so much experience with this awful illness in the US--two of our closest fiends in Connecticut, Lucy Roberts and Arthur Pinto, had both succumbed to it.
The place was simply mobbed. Crowds far in excess of what the family had anticipated simply thronged the hall. It was truly a fire hazard and I felt afraid when I saw the long lines waiting to condole with the family members. Shehnaz's mother Kamela, now a frail but still elegant 88, was seated to accept condolences as was Nilufer, my classmate. On the other side, were Shehnaz's husband, a cardiologist at the same hospital called Brian Pinto and her two grown-up children, Vikram and Soniya, who bore a slight resemblance to the Shehnaz I remembered from our school days.
The service began with a hymn (David's composition 23 from the Book of Psalms--"The Lord Is My Shepherd"--my own favorite) and included a projected audio-visual segment from the other famous passage from Ecclesiastes--"To Everything There is a Season..." Several speeches followed--from Soniya paying tribute to her mother, from Farzana Contractor, Shehnaz's best friend from school days to the present, who commented on their friendship, from Brian who spoke as a husband of their very happy marriage, from Nilufer who, as a sister, spoke of their mutual love for poetry (clearly, they are gals after my own heart!), from Vikram who broke down when trying to thank a vast range of people who assisted through her illness.
Sitting through the beautiful service I was reminded of my own days with Shehnaz: we rode the same school-bus to school and back during our early teenage years in Bombay Central. I remember her as a quiet, well-behaved teenager with her thick dark hair in two pony-tails on either side of her face. When she and her sister Nilu persuaded their parents to get them a dog, Fluffy, a gorgeous pomeranian, entered their lives and ours. I can remember the two sisters walking Fluffy every morning and evening in our neighborhood. I could remember going over to their lovely flat in Balmad building that was right opposite our Reserve Bank Colony in Byculla where I had grown up. There I would visit with her mother whom I called "Auntie", who was always warm and hospitable, sharp and ultra-intelligent. She too had graduated from our school, St. Agnes', and had left quite a mark on the teachers of her own time--some of whom ended up teaching her daughters!
Shehnaz, like her sister, was extremely bright and a class-topper for her entire school career. Unlike Nilu who emigrated to the US to earn a doctorate in Maths and became a professor of Mathematics, Shehnaz married an Indian cardiologist named Brian Pinto and ran a business in finance and investments. I had last met her about 12 years ago when I had visited her at her office on Perry Cross Road in Bandra and spent about a hour reminiscing with her about the old times and catching her up on my own life.
Tributes to Shehnaz spoke eloquently of her gentility and kindness, her many talents (as home maker, interior decorator, gardener), of her intellect and prowess as a business woman, of her love of animals and birds, of her poise and elegance and of her inner and outer beauty. I was very happy to have been present to participate in a service that included prayers for the repose of her soul.
After the service ended, there were refreshments available and a chance to interact with the many classmates that crowded the place. I felt overwhelmed and needed to find a quiet spot where I could reconnect with so many friends that I had not seen in years. All of them wanted to know when I had come down and how long I would be staying in Bombay. I told them that I was on a Fulbright Fellowship, would be in Bombay for a year and hoped to see more of them in happier circumstances.
Two of my school friends with whom I had grown up, Iris and Nayana, then inquired about my family members and when I told them that Russel and my Dad were just two floors downstairs in Ward 409, they decided to visit them. My former teacher Aruna Fernandes was also present and as she knows Russel, she too came downstairs. Hence, towards the end of the day, Russel was overwhelmed with visitors all of which made him happy and excited and brought some of his old enthusiasm back. I exchanged phone numbers with them all and then said goodbye as it was past the visiting hours by then.
Dad informed me that Dr. Vijay had come by to see Russel but still finds fluid draining from his knee and has decided to continue to keep him under observation for the next few days to see how things pan out. It looks as if Russel will be in the hospital until next Tuesday at least when his stitches will be removed. He seems to have accepted the inevitability of this fact and is more relaxed now.
As Dr. Derrick D'Lima does not see patients on Thursday, we waited until Russel received his dinner and until his night attendant arrived before Dad and I left the hospital--at about 8.15 pm.
Home earlier than usual, I had my dinner while watching Line of Duty and fell asleep at about 11.00pm. after going over the Goa Page proofs once more.
Until tomorrow...
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