Short Fiction Translated from Hindi

Green Leaf, Yellow Leaf

Written by Dr. Hansa Deep

What do you say when there is nothing left to say? Every last day of your life churns in front of your eyes. One after another, the days appear before you, flash brightly, then disappear. It is not difficult to understand the story of a friendless, helpless old man. It takes even less time to understand how one’s own once-sturdy body slowly but surely starts to feel old. It happened that way with him, too:  Dr. Adam Miller, a noted cardiologist of his time. The one who cut people open, one after another, to reach their heart. The one who, through the new energy of a new heart, gave new life to those who had lost theirs.

Those days are gone now. Nothing lasts forever. It was not clear to him at what point, in the whirlwind of his achievements, his body had been battered in that same storm of life. The more he filled his calendar, the more he was filled with emptiness. As if busy days and empty days competed to see who will spend more time with Dr. Miller.

What remains now is a lonely stump of a man without work or purpose. These days, his body parts are somewhat more loose than they had once been. His body had been reduced to a bundle of bones. It was like someone had wrenched all the flesh from those bones. Or like someone had wrung clothes and put them, sodden, and rumpled, in the middle of a four-poster bed to dry. On the back of his hands, you can see twenty or maybe fifty greenish black veins, like a glimpse of the wilderness inside that is the treasury of his advancing age. The remnants of flesh hanging inside him, and where some had settled, told a story of a lush kingdom whose ruins now lay in a stony pile. This was how the story of the ruins was told: stone by stone, brick by brick.

Having seen many successful turns in his life come to an end, Dr. Miller is now friendless and bedridden, and it is only with difficulty that he even manages to get to the bathroom for his body’s daily routine. There is not just one problem, but a whole pile of troubles to ignore. When he coughs, there is no end to it, like a deluge from the inside, a monstrous noise sounding a warning: “now you will burn to death in this fire.” His nose runs like there is some river originating inside him that comes gushing out to drown him. Ceaseless sneezing, the sound of rot echoing such that people passing through the house scrunch their nose and eyebrows tightly as if they were offended by old age. Every single hour, the wastebasket he keeps close by fills up. Tissue boxes are emptied by the contents of that little nose that never stops. He cannot muster the courage to look at his appearance in a mirror. He wants to hold on to the picture in his mind, the image that identified him as he had been captured on the posters, on the PowerPoint slides, in the eyes of patients: the smiling face of the well-known heart disease specialist Dr. Adam Miller.

A lifetime of stopping the invasions of diseases in the bodies of thousands of patients, but he couldn´t stop his advancing age. Every day before falling to sleep, looking at his extinguished candle, he thought, “Maybe tonight will be the last night.” And he got up thinking much the same: “Maybe this morning will be the final one of my life.” But this type of stubborn thoughts came every day and night without fail, like someone peering in through the window. The day would pass, and then the night would. One more day would tower in front of him, a utterly mountainous day, that he couldn’t but endure one moment at a time.  

He was in this defeated mindset when, one day, a peculiar proposal came before him. There was a small child in a nearby flat. He was maybe a year old? Certainly not older, but probably not much younger than that. His mother was still on maternity leave. His mother’s problem was that when she wanted to take a bath, there was no one to watch the child. A couple of times, she got him to sleep then went to shower, but within minutes, the child was screaming so loudly that the poor woman had to run out still soaking wet.

And hadn’t she read in a newspaper once that a grandmother who was babysitting in New Jersey left the baby while she had a shower, and the child cried so much that the neighbors notified the police. The police came, saw the child alone and crying, and tried to break down the door to get in. Hearing all the noise, the grandmother came out of the bathroom and saw two policemen peering through the screen, trying to quiet the crying baby. This mother did not want such an incident repeated in her own home. She thought of a solution: maybe that bedridden Uncle Miller living next door could look after the baby for a little bit so she could come back and bathe in peace. Do some of the everyday things she needs to get done. With the pretext of a bath, she can steal a little time for herself.

Moreover, she will soon be going back to work, so the child will have to get used to staying at daycare. All year—morning, noon, and night—he has been with his mother, but this period of hanging at the edge of her sari must end. He will have to learn to spend time with strangers. The only idea she could come up with was that Uncle Miller.

With much uncertainty, the mother put this little proposal before Uncle Miller. He immediately rejected it: "No, absolutely not.” Indicating his helpless state, he added, "I don’t know how to take care of myself. How will I take care of a child!"

"You don't have to do anything. I will leave the child sitting in his stroller. He’s belted in, so he won’t fall."

"And if he starts to cry?"

"If he sees no one around, he cries. If you’re right in front of him, he will not cry."

"I see." Hearing this did not reassure him. Looking at her in amazement, he searched for a reason for the child not to be left here with him.

The mother had possibly come determined to try it once and see. If she can get a break of even one hour, she can refresh and get a few things done. She said, "If he gets a little restless, you can shake his rattle or talk to him, so that at least he won’t feel that he’s alone, and he won’t start crying hysterically.”

Uncle Miller thought he could do that much. What was the harm in trying it once? If the child cries, then the matter will end then and there. So the arrangement began. The first day or two, the child fell asleep, but after that, the child started looking at him attentively, sometimes looking at him with a laugh and sometimes trying to talk. But he didn’t cry once.

The child started to come every day. Slowly, he began to find a playmate in Dr. Miller. Sometimes he played 'peek-a-boo' and sometimes he gave his hand to Dr. Miller and gave him some 'gooter-goo’. Every time he said something, the room echoed with his noises. The sound of the child’s voice breaking the silence was like the earth was tasting a rain shower after a terrible drought. If Dr. Miller put up his hand for a 'high-five,' the child would also 'high-five' in dramatic fashion, again and again. The touch of palm to palm was something he experienced within, too: something given, something received. The child did not know how to make his tongue form words, but he tried to say things with half-formed sounds. It was like he was telling his life story, past and present: all the days in his memory and yet to be remembered.

All efforts to establish communication came from the child's side. How long the doctor remained silent, took refuge in silence. One side here had filled his brain with so many pages of medical books, had written however many theses, had written books and research papers, at the same time as the child was just learning the ABCs. One had a treasury of sweet-and-sour experiences of life, and the other was having his first experience going outside the house to be taught something, to express something. One who was just beginning to see the world, and one who already had seen so much.

Eventually, the doctor began to talk—to speak, to tell, to explain his side of things. The child makes a sound in fun, so he says, "You are imprisoned there. I am imprisoned here."

"Am-am-km…!

"There is no freedom for either of us. You cannot have it, and my freedom has been reduced to the space of this bed."

The child also had a lot to say: "aa-aa-eh-eh". With every sound, his hands wave, his eyes speak, and the voice of his thoughts emerges to explain his own inner treasury. Without words, his heart still speaks. The doctor understands the meaning of the unsaid words. He says big words in reply, which to the child are just like "aa-aa-eh-eh," but his eyes acknowledge the reply and give the assurance that he understands everything.  

The doctor keeps saying, "Little one, it is good to stay little; don't grow up."

The doctor wants to blanket the child with his deep wisdom, but the child shakes his head, refuses it, like he is saying, “I want to grow up. I want to get out of this prison. But you are so grown up. Why are you here?”

“I am not here, little one. I am nowhere.” He does not know how to stop his self-pity from coming out.

“But I see you. You are here, right here in front of me.”

“I am not what you are seeing. Once I was Dr. Adam Miller; now I am not.”

“What was there in the name? You are you, and I am me!”

“Yes, but I cannot walk. I cannot go see my patients.”

“You used to walk? I want to walk, too. I want to run. Will you teach me?”

“Well, yes, I can certainly teach, but I cannot get out of this prison, little one.”

“Ok, never mind, teach me to speak. I want to speak, but I don’t know how, I don’t have the words.

“Yes, I can teach you to speak because I can speak. I have a lot of words, but here’s a truth for you: I have no desire to speak. And you are saying a lot even without words.”

“I have a deep desire to speak. How can it be that you can speak but you have no desire to and so you don’t?”

“This is what happens when you speak a lot, and one day no one is there to listen to you, and so it appears it’s a good thing to keep quiet.” The doctor pretends to sew his lips shut, lock them, and then throw away the key. 

The child bursts out laughing. He says, maybe, “How can you say such things! You are so funny!” He laughs. He laughs with his whole heart.  

And then he appears to exert himself. He exerts himself so much that his mouth stretches. Everyone spreads their mouth in this manner when they clear out their stomach. With his exertion comes a sound: pu-prrrrr-prr.

“Did you go potty?”

“Ha ha ha ha! Look, I laugh even after potty.” The child laughs heartily, and his delighted laughter is so absolute that it even makes the doctor happy.

The doctor also laughs heartily, “You little devil, look at you laughing after going potty!”

He sticks out his tongue. “Dirty thing,” he says as the child does the same. To stick out his little tongue, he has to pull it. He scrunches his nose with the “dirty thing,” and then he laughs. The doctor scrunches his nose, and so the child rubs his nose and makes noises. The doctor coughs, and the child goes “kur-kur,” too.

“Look at you are imitating me, you little copying monkey!”

The child does it again, putting his hands on his head. “Copycat!”

Both are speaking with their eyes. Both are laughing. Both an abundance of words and an ignorance of words established a dialogue. The doctor felt good. To hear “I am me; you are you” filled him with peace. As he tries to break out of this delusion about his name, outside the window the sky makes an appearance after many days. It feels like all the knowledge that he has inside is surging: “I will tell you absolutely everything about medical science.”

The child shakes his head. It is like he is preparing himself to hear inscrutable words. But this time, he is saved from the verbal onslaught because his mother comes and takes him away. He does not want to go. As he says 'bye,' he keeps turning to look back.

"Come again tomorrow."

"Thank you, Uncle Miller." It was a big help to the mother. This bit of time was for her a priceless gift, as every day it was otherwise difficult to steal some time for herself amidst the chaos of the child.

Now the doctor waits for tomorrow. The mother comes again at the exact same time and drops off the child. The child and doctor are both enormously happy. Both are laughing. This friendship has given them strength. The doctor has started getting up. He has started walking. For so many days his feet feared to touch the floor, staying submerged in the bed, and now they were on that floor, in motion. The cough is still there, but it’s no longer a sign that he will be burned to death in its fire, but just a body’s basic requirement. The runny nose is also under control. The growing strength of his legs is becoming enough to balance the weight of the whole body.  

One day, the hands followed the feet. The doctor started to take the child out for walks. Now both were independent. Now neither was helpless. Each one’s strength was building the strength of the other. Their circle was a zero from which they started learning their numbers. Who taught whom to walk was not the question; the question was only who learned quickly. Both taught each other not just to walk but how to hold hands for every stumble.

The friendship they have is the friendship of two human beings who belong to each other, meet every day, talk, and learn many things from each other. They are those friends who laugh a lot, burst out laughing even at the littlest things. When they do something new, they laugh, and when they can’t do something, they laugh even harder. The laughter lightens the burden; the laughter helps to accept their disabilities; the laughter gives them the courage to overcome the obstacles. They are two infants, two adults, beyond the mark of any specific age.

The duet of a green leaf and a yellow leaf has given birth to a new colour that was the colour of only happiness—one happy for blooming, and one for ripening.

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