By Ganesh Saili
My friend, the author, who has since grown in stature, could not stop laughing, not till the tears were streaming down his cheeks. After a while, we too joined in the raucous laughter, which seemed funnier as the time slipped by.
Professor Sudhakar Misra and I had been colleagues in the local college. His parents were living in Dehradun with his younger brother Kusmakar. This tale begins when Kusmakar was boarded out by the Air Force and has not found employment since. In the 1970s, the family decided that we two would take him (for he did seem slightly touched!) for psychiatric treatment to Noor Manzil in Lucknow. It was the best mental health facility in undivided Uttar Pradesh. The train reservations were made in advance. On the evening of departure, I boarded a bus to the valley. I walked the rest of the way to their home, where Misraji’s mother (God bless her soul!) had the usual tiffin of aloo-pooris ready, wrapped alongside the mango pickle and zingy mint chutney in crumpled newspapers; it was to be our on-board dinner in the train.
Just as we stepped out looking for a tonga to reach the railway station, he went on a walkabout. We searched for him high and low, but all he had to do to avoid us was wait out, stay out of sight for an hour or two, and only when the Howrah Express had tooted out of Haridwar railway station did he return, eat his dinner and go to sleep like most sensible people.
‘Given his gift of the gab, I am sure he would have convinced the shrinks in Noor Manzil that you were the two patients he had brought for admission,’ said the author with a twinkle in his eye and to the sound of more guffaws, adding, ‘In my mind’s eye, I see you two trying to get him admitted! But why are you the ones I see draped in green gowns? Ganesh with a scraggly beard like yours and Misra’s bald pate and leftover locks trailing from the back of his head like a lost story! If you leave it to me, you two look more like perfect candidates for the cuckoo’s nest than he does!’
Pic courtesy: Nilanjana Singh Roy
Then there came the day the college peon knocked on the classroom door, saying there was a call for Sudhakar. Those were the days of the landline. A voice wormed through, saying:
‘This is the Police Chowki in Barlowganj. Are you Dr Sudhakar Misra? Do you teach in a college?‘ asked the stranger.
‘Yes! I am, and I work here.’
‘We have with us a man who says he is your younger brother! We have detained him for nearly causing a stampede by trying to flog a pair of old sneakers for twenty rupees.’
‘Then perhaps you should arrest all the shopkeepers who sell the same shoes for two hundred rupees! That’s criminal! Isn’t it?’ he snapped.
We went down to the ramshackle chowki and brought him home.
Later, when we sat down to lunch, he asked, ‘This tastes so good! Guess where the best food is served?’ A long silence ensued. It was broken by his answering his question with: ‘In Ambala Jail!’
‘What were you doing in Ambala Jail?’
‘Bhai sa’ab, I was once caught travelling ticketless on a train!’
Life moved on, and one day he disappeared into the greyness of India, on what was probably his last walkabout. We searched for him in his usual haunts and even scanned the newspapers. But this time, he had vanished without a trace.
One day, going past the old homestead, I saw Sudhakar seated in a corner reading a newspaper. That was unusual because he had shifted to his son’s flat, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what he could be doing in his father’s old house.
‘This is the only house that my brother knew, and this is where he would return!’ said Misraji. That was ten years ago, and sometimes I wonder if Sudhakar is still sitting there, just in case his younger sibling turned up.
Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. Author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has garnered worldwide attention.
