I It was late in the afternoon when the surgeons
finished and Dorai was wheeled out of the Operation Room. He was still under
anaesthesia, and Thangam, started weeping again, as the nurses marshalled him
into the ward. The wait and had been long and exhausting. This was his third operation,
and it lasted much longer than the previous ones, but Dr. Karmakar had assured
her that he had done it many times, and it would be the last one. Vaithy was stoic, and held her hand, as they
sat by his bed, while the ward boy fetched tea for them.
 |
| The Statesman 25, June, 1975 |
A couple of months
later, Vaithy was glancing at The
Statesman in the Patiala Peg bar
at the Hotel Imperial in New Delhi. The headlines were all about the
fallout from a verdict by a court in Allahabad. The next day, he woke up to
hear the news of the Emergency on the radio. Soon after, he received a call
from MD, who asked him to drop all further meetings and take the first
available flight back to Calcutta. He sounded worried.
Well home, there were
hurried meetings in the office. The auditor and legal advisor was called in for
consultations. MD instructed some files to be destroyed, and asked Vaithy about
the warehouses in Jabalpore and Faridabad. By now the grapewine was abuzz. The
government was cracking down on trade-union leaders and opposition politicians.
Some traders in Burrabazar [i]
had downed shutters. The sub-inspector and constable arrived one morning, just
as Vaithy was about to ring his contact in the Income Tax office – for the
third time. The policeman was polite. He asked MD and Vaithy to follow them in
their own car to Lalbazar.
The inspector at
Lalbazar sounded weary and offered tea. “Emergency, we have to follow orders.
Very bad times. Please understand. We are arresting here-there-everywhere.” He
threw his hands up in the air. “What can I do? I have got warrant from Customs
& Excise. Hoarding cement is very serious. I have documents, we have raided
your godown.” He tapped his fingers on the file before him. “Only for few days.”
They were taken to Alipore Jail. After
three weeks, they were told to leave. There was no ceremony about it. They were
never produced in front of a magistrate.
 |
| Alipore Central Jail |
The experience changed
him. Thangam noticed that he would sleep less, and become increasingly lost in
thought. During the weeks he was in Alipore, she was allowed to visit him
daily, to bring him home-cooked food, newspapers and fresh sheets. He and MD
were separated, and he shared his cell with three students who had been
arrested for distributing pamphlets. They told him about the refugees who were
still streaming in from Bangladesh, four years after the War had ended. In the
coming years, Vaithy would band together with a group of sympathisers and build
shelters for these needy souls. The impetus for that would come from a chance
encounter.
II The city
had been changing for many years now. Gariahat and the pavements around Chowringhee
became crowded with hawkers. Slums sprouted along the railway line in
Dhakuria, and places like Patuli and Chetla saw large numbers of squatters.
Jute mills were being closed down one after the other, and Vaithy’s order book
in the state dried up. It was a good thing that the firm had had the foresight to
establish itself further afield in the years before.
 |
| Gariahat- Rashbehari Avenue Crossing |
One evening, Vaithy was being measured for a new suit
by Singh at Paris Tailors in New
Market, when the conversation turned to the state of affairs plaguing the city.
Singh mentioned that a woman and child were sleeping rough outside his shop for
the past several weeks. He would help them with food sometimes; they would then
disappear, only to return. The week
after, when Vaithy returned for his trial, he found the woman and her daughter,
not more than four or five years old, huddled under the lamp in front of the
shop. On inquiring, he learnt that she was from Sagardari. She had fled from
her village, along with her husband, who had died along the way. The daughter
Rehana was five, but looked younger.
 |
| Paris Tailors, New Market |
Vaithy was much disturbed when he reached home that
evening. He told Thangam about meeting the girl and her mother. What could they do? They couldn’t very well
take vagrants into the house. His mind kept going back to the child’s face over
the next few days, her face haunting him. He kept thinking that she was about
the same age as the child he had lost. When he went back to Singh’s to pick up
his finished suit, he found they were still there. This time he did not
hesitate, his heart pounding. He took them home and told them to wait as he
went upstairs and told Thangam. They decided to bed them down in the garage for
the night. In the morning, he asked Nandu if he could find accommodation for
them in Kalighat. It was a few weeks before a tenement would be found, and they
could be moved. In the years to come, Vaithy would salvage their lives, making
sure Rehana went to school. Her mother would eventually find a job as a
seamstress, and with Vaithy’s help, make ends meet.
 |
| Rehana and her mother |
III They led
busy lives. There would be no respite for Thangam in the coming years, as she
was given extra classes to teach. Between their activities at the temple,
Vaithy’s heavy burdens at work and his
active association with several causes, they would find themselves increasingly
stretched for time at home. Nandu was now not only the house-keeper, he was
becoming invaluable in the kitchen as well.
Meena was now studying Economics at University and
Chuppan would graduate within the year and enter medical college. Kannan would
leave for Carnegie Mellon later in the year. His departure was not unexpected,
but it left a void in their midst that was difficult to reconcile with. When he
had left to study for the first time, he would come home regularly during
breaks. Now it would become a thing of the past.
On occasional Sundays, they would take time out to
attend morning shows at Menoka cinema. It was their only chance to see the
latest Tamil movies. Vaithy was an early riser, but it was still a struggle to
finish the chores, eat a hasty breakfast and rush to reach the theatre before
the nine a.m. start. Sometimes, the children would want to come along. It was
not always for the best. Thangam would squirm as she sat beside Dorai, watching
the opening scenes of Sila Nerangalil
Sila Manithargal [ii],
fidgeting as the character played by Lakshmi has an encounter in a stranger’s
car. Thangam had wanted to see the film after hearing about it from a colleague,
and finding out that it was the story of a young Brahmin girl.
 |
| Actress Lakshmi in the film Sila Nerangalil Sila Manithargal |
The year Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Prize,
Vaithy and his friends registered the Calcutta Seva Sangh (CSS) with MD’s
father as founding Chairman. In the years to come, CSS would hold out a helping
hand to the city’s indigent and earn the gratitude of many in its teeming bastis. [iii]
 |
| Mother Teresa accepting her Nobel Peace Prize |
Text by: Shankar A. Narayan Photo
credits: The Telegraph, Raghu Rai, Sean McLain and The Nobel Institute.
[ii] A Tamil film directed by A. Bhimsingh, based on the same-titled novel by
Jayakanthan, starring Lakshmi, Sreekanth and Nagesh. It became the first Tamil
film to feature a Best Actress National Award winning performance, won by
Lakshmi for her portrayal of the lead character Ganga.
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