It was unusually quiet at the tea stall. Although, it was only 7AM in the morning, it was in the middle of a hot summer in Kalaburagi - one of hottest places in India. So, the stall generally would’ve had a decent trickling of people by now. Mostly, it was the people accompanying their relatives admitted in the hospital next to the stall. Vivek had been one of those people and he was there today too. The lady stall owner had served him his tea. By now, she was well versed with his routine at the stall. Two cups of tea with less sugar, ten minutes apart. Today, Vivek was sipping tea from his first cup and staring into distance with melancholy. Past few days have felt like unbearingly heavy to him.
Seventeen days ago Vivek’s mother was admitted into the hospital. She was unconcious when she was brought in and she had stayed that way. The doctors had rushed her to the ICU and as part of their efforts to revive her, they had sent in pipes through her nose, put a hole her in throat, drilled through her skull, among other things at regular intervals. They had even performed a surgery on her brain but so far none of it had yielded any positive result and she was seeminly slipping further away on the path of no return.
Since that day, he had always been in the hospital, except for a couple of hours everyday when he’d go home, cleanup and eat a few morsels. He’d sit on the bench outside the ICU or walk around the floor a bit every now and then. Every hour or so he’d pop into the ICU, go to his mother’s bedside, call her a few times and come out in despair. He’d run to the medical store with the zeal of a Swiggy delivery boy in peak Bengaluru traffic, whenever the doctors asked him to get some medicine. When there was nothing else to do, he’d observe people. People like him who have their relatives in the ICU and who are fidgeting while sitting or walking outside. Never the one to be known as conversationist he’d avoid those people furtively. But it was such a small place that even while avoiding conversations you could know a lot about other people.
There was a man in his mid/late twenties whose father was in the ICU. He had worked at a private firm in his early twenties and only recently had started his own little business. As it was just getting settled, his father’s sudden illness had wrenched him out of it. He’d been in the hospital for more than two weeks by now and was hoping to take his father home soon - on a wheelchair, with an oxygen tank and mostly immobile. There was also a prospective bride waiting to meet him. If things had been normal they’d have been at least engaged by now. But now, it was all up in the air. The man’s sheer determination and optimism had rubbed on Vivek and he had made an conversational aquaintance with him. Somedays they sipped their morning tea together at the stall.
Vivek’d also come to know of a lady in her early thirties with her husband, who was much elder to her, in the ICU. She had made these trips to multiple times by now and had given up on any hope of recovery. She was just going through the shitshow because there was nothing else to do and that was what expected of her. She’d start a conversation and go on about praising doctors, blabber philosophy about life and death. The trips had taken a toll on her mental health one could clearly see. She’d detached herself so much from the happenings around her that she’d rent a vacant airconditioned patient room in the hospital to get some sleep in the night now and then.
But Vivek was having none of that. He’d sleep on the floor everynight, next to the main entrance, after they pulled in the visitors’ chairs. It’d be horribly hot during the night and mosquitoes constantly sang lullabies for him. It was not like he didn’t have the means to get a room himself. There were many vacant rooms. But he lacked the motivation. He didn’t have the energy to worry about comforts. It was as if he believed that his austerity would turn into an elexir that his mother would draw from and get better. So by sleeping on the floor he was doing his bit, he felt.
Vivek was pulled out from this melancholic slumber by the tea stall owner when she brought him his second cup of the morning. It was almost 7.20AM now. As he started sipping tea from his cup he heard a giggle of a small child. As he turned around he saw a little girl jumping up and down at the sight of a biscuit packet that her father was holding. He felt a bit cheerful looking at the girl - she was a sight for the sore eyes. The girl even touched him while running around, eliciting a small smile. He had seen this girl before in the Hospital. She’d come with her granny a couple of days ago, he could recall. But today the grandmother wasn’t around. As his gaze turned to the father of the girl, he could see the worried wrinkles on his face. Although he was holding the biscuits for the girl, it looked like he was lost in his thoughts. When the girl came back to collect her biscuit he was brought back to the present and his eyes met with Vivek’s.
Vivek hesitatingly made an attempt for a conversation. Asked the father of the girl, who were they here for? Who was hospitalized? The man answered with a whimper. His name was Narsappa and he had brought his father to the hospital after he had suffered a sun stroke while working in a farm. There was no bed or doctor available for treatment at the govt hospital, so he had brought his father here. It had been about five days since he was admitted into the ICU without many signs of recovery. Meanwhile to pay the bills, he had to sell whatever little gold they had, sell his bullocks that they needed on the farm and even raised quite a bit of debt. Even then it was not enough. He was finding it difficult to feed his mother and child now, as they were in a different town without any relatives. He, along with his younger brother who had stayed back in the village to harvest their crop for whatever it was worth, was preparing to sell a little piece of farm land that they owned. His only wish was that his father should come home, even if it meant just sitting at home and see the granddaughter play. But that dream looked a bit far fetched at that moment bringing in an eerring similarity between Vivek and Narsappa. They both were beggers - begging for their loved ones to come home.
Vivek paid Narsappa about ten thousand rupees to take care of his expenses till he found something else. He was confused whether he was doing it out of sympathy for Narsappa or deeper selfish motive of gaining some good karma. Karma that could save his mother. As a believer in psychological egoism he knew all the good deeds are always motivated by self-interest. Even the one that begin with Sympathy. But self-interest or not, he wanted to help Narsappa. At least financially. So, as he walked back to the hospital, he was plotting a plan to reach out to his friends back in Bengaluru to raise some funds. As he approached the door to the ICU, a doctor came out and told him his mother had breathed her last…