with Sri Ganesh

Parthy, despite the horror and the filth and the extreme discomfort, kept a smile on his face and insisted that I need not stay, as only one other person could be with him; we managed to somehow get a bed for the two of them to sleep on, hoping Parthy would be given the proper shots soon enough. I left them there, with a heavy heart. During the night, they phoned several times: nothing at all was being done, past the initial shot I had witnessed, and Parthy had a lot of pain… I told him to hang on till morning; there was nothing else we could do… Early morning I phoned Albert, of the AVHC, to give me the address of a good, well equipped hospital in Chennai; I then phoned Selvam who agreed at once to accompany Parthy in a taxi if I decided later in the morning that the G.H wasn’t working… However, by the time I reached there, after seeing to Sri Ganesh and leaving Raju and Frederique to tend the garden, I found that Parthy had steered the course of events already, by managing to walk out of this hellish pit on his own, limping all the way back and out to the street, while Parasu had been busy trying to communicate with some doctor on-duty. He was sitting on the pavement, leaning onto his mother who had just arrived, waiting for me, with big deep eyes, hurting and trusting at the same time… Selvam arrived quickly, we got a taxi and packed Parthy with his brother on the back seat, Selvam in the front passenger seat, and I drove along them till Sri Ma on the ECR Road to get Albert to give some tablets to ease the pain during the journey… Parthy felt somehow reassured that now he would be taken to the right place and he valiantly smiled at me, despite the pain in his now swollen legs, and we hugged and they were off… The Hospital Miot in Chennai had him immediately worked on; his body was on the edge of multiple organ failure; the kidneys and the liver were already badly compromised and the shock of general blood- poisoning was acute. They worked on him for several hours and then told Selvam that they could not estimate Parthy’s chances at more than 10%. This was on the 2 nd of October. This was when a fight such as I had never experienced in this life began, every minute of the many days and nights that followed.) … For a while I have felt as if there was an iron grip holding Parthy and leading him away from life and as if anything on the way, anything anyone could or would do or not do, including every one of my actions and weaknesses, would be somehow turned to that end in an inflexible determinism… I would have kissed anyone’s feet to spare him from this loveless, cunning, bitter purpose…

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