Tau's chronicles

 

Tau Hoshiyar had a minor stroke at the age of seventy-five. Well, that was more than two decades back. As it struck him and he began losing his senses, the entire street panicked and ran helter-skelter to arrange some means to convey him to the town hospital. But extricating him from the stone pillar was a tough job. He thought he was going to die and getting him to the hospital would mean an economic ruin to his farmer son.

‘Don’t ruin yourself by taking me to the hospital!’ he kept yelling. He had strong limbs so it required the effort of a few people to loosen his grip even in that condition. He lay there as a terribly unhappy man on the hospital bed. I went to meet him at the hospital. Finding me having some semblance of education among the work-brutes, the doctor held out the scans of his brain and explained the situation.

Tau stared very hostilely from his bed. To him, every hour spent in the hospital was a sort of plunder. Before this episode, he hadn’t spent even a single night at a hospital in his life.

‘Now anything to do with ghee and hookah is a poison and sure death to him!’ the doctor told me in a loud voice so that Tau would hear the message. Tau was very hostile to the doctor, so the gentleman conveyed the message indirectly. Tau found it a blasphemy against a farmer. Ghee and hookah are the basics of farming religion. After coming home, to take revenge, he increased the intake of both the forbidden items. Now after more than two decades, and loads of more ghee and hookah, he still goes to the chaupal to have a feel of the crowd. Well, human system seems a mystery. Some inner fine-tuning and joy is the wellspring of longevity. I mean staying in wretched mood and proper diet won’t do.

I recall an incident when he had come visiting my house once. We were sitting on chairs in the courtyard and gossiping. His teacup arrived. He put it on the ground by the side of the chair for letting it a bit cooled. A fly committed suicide in his tea. He coolly picked up the cup and took out the dead fly. ‘Tau, don’t drink it. We will get you another one,’ I tried to stop him. But he had his logic hammered on the anvil of a tough farming life. ‘You never know, even a fly mixed in hot tea may work like a medicine on one’s system. Strange are the ways of God,’ he said and drank his tea with much comfort.

Well, I missed to tell about another old Tau who was put in a bed by our Tau’s side at the hospital. He was in his eighties and looked very helpless as if he wanted to run away. I asked his grandson about what happened to the gentleman. ‘He had kidney stone pain. Someone told him that drinking limejuice cuts the stone. So he bought five kilos of lemons, wrung out the juice out of the entire stock and mixed it in a bucket of water and drank it within five or six hours. And now here he is!’ his grandson told me.