A Farmer's Death
Sri Kissun was my closest friend, so he was the one who came to get me. "Come with me?" he said, seriously. "Bring your box of medicine." I fetched the metal attache case which was the standard issue first-aide kit for Peace Corps Nepal. "There is a man–Laxshman–he is a good man," Sri Kissun said as we went along the rutted village road. My ability to affect rice production was fairly limited, so I was glad when my existence was justified by the first aide kit. The five villages of my panchayat were not the only ones with no medical care available. The weekly bajaar offered nothing in the way of remedies, not even aspirin. The nearest doctor was a twenty-mile walk away, in Janakpur, a place most of my neighbors had never visited. The Nepalese government funded a clinic there with a single doctor, limited medicines, even more limited surgical facilities and practically no bed space at all. I only learned of it through passing past the walled compound on my way to the bus terminal. For Govindapur, I was "Do’tor Sah’b," or no one was.
On the edge of the village, just before the mango orchard, we turned onto the foot-path between close-set houses and my friend motioned for me to duck first under thatch eaves through a door-less doorway. The most important person always went first.
Adjusting from day’s glaring light to windowless dimness was always a challenge to the eyes, so I only gradually made out a small group of people crouched and seated on the floor around a shaking man. I had not met Laxshman before. He was a balding, barrel chested khisaan, a farmer, who had come home the day before in uncomplaining health after having plowed his fields in the heat of the sun. In the night, he developed a fever and by morning his consciousness was lost beneath the back and forth wash of chills and heat. He had his arms wrapped about him as he shook with the fever. His eyes remained closed and he was not aware of my hand feeling his hot forehead. He was unaware of everything and, though I did not realize it, his eyes would never open again. He still had the involuntary strength to curl spasmodically in his struggles, but his breath came in the long, guttural rips that the Peace Corps doctor later told me is called Cheyne-Stokes breathing–one of the signs of death’s proximity. In economical fashion, all farmers had their heads shaved on a more or less quarterly basis. The single lock Laxshman had allowed to grow stuck out three inches longer than the regrowth. This tupi was what God would seize his soul by when he was about to drop through the hole into hell. Sri Kissun let all his hair grow in modern fashion, but insisted that his whole head was tupi.
The family had made space for me to get close to the sick man, so it was from behind me that someone spoke. Village talk could be hard to follow and Sri Kissun was the one who was best able to make me understand. He had a friendly, confident manner and could put his thoughts in ways I was able to grasp. My incomprehension was no embarrassment to him and he was patient and imaginative about re-phrasing his statements so frequently. The mayor or pradhan panch was his older brother and his family owned enough land to be influential without being wealthy. As the youngest of nine brothers, he moved confidently through the village, carrying me along to places I would never have arrived on my own. Sri Kissun told me that the sick man’s family wanted to know if I could do anything for him. The eyes of the huddled women-folk were only briefly hopeful.
My first aide kit was a local wonder, but only by the village standard of nothing at all. And I had no medical training or knowledge beyond whatever general principles having lived in the availability of medical care had allowed me to pick up, partially and incorrectly. Rummaging through the plastic bottles and band-aids did not turn up anything I had not known was there. The only relevant medication was acetaminophen. I snapped open the bottle and shook out two white pills, saying that the women should get them into the sick man, with a little water. I suppose it was his wife who spoke up, saying what Sri Kissun translated for me as her doubt that he could swallow anything. She did not bother to cover her face. Modesty was not a consideration and no one thought that even I was out-caste enough to be having improper thoughts in such a situation. I suggested that they might grind the tablets with a little water and trickle it into his mouth or, failing that, place the pills in his mouth and hope that they would be at least partially absorbed. I worried privately that he might choke, but I had nothing else to offer. It occurred to me that if he did choke to death on my recommendation, I could be in serious trouble, but the situation was too somber for any trouble of mine to seem worthy of consideration.
I knew what it was to be suddenly stricken helpless and confused by fever. Something similar, though less severe, had happened to me a half-dozen times. But I would simply weather the storm and rise after two or three days. That I could have died never seemed real to me. That this khisaan was going to die did not seem possible to me either. In fact, if I had known how easily life can slip the body’s grasp, I doubt now that I would have gone where I was.
The single room of their house combined bedroom, kitchen and store-room. Half a dozen men and women sat silently in the dimness, watching the head of the household and main support of the family fight for his life. The fire was out. No one had a thought for food or tea. They did not weep or curse. They did not offer the man their words or speak much among themselves. None of that would have helped and they knew it. This was the way death came, sudden and ferocious beyond human capacity. No one was ever ready for it, but it was always awaited and never a surprise.
The path of Death is always before our eyes;
For, this is the sum of this world’s scattered elements.
The Urdu poet, Ghalib, was of this culture, for all his Persian-speaking ways and attachment to the court of the last Moghul emperor. He lost his father, uncle, children and nephew to sickness and he wrote the couplet:
Why is the night of grief so dark? Why are afflictions descending?
Will the open eyes of the stars remain turned to that other side?
After a few minutes, I got to my feet, leaving the useless tube of pills as an offering, to allow the family to get on with their vigil.
Ghalib again:
Death is adamant that she will not come today, but that she certainly will come;
I cannot say how many complaints I have against Death.
Sri Kissun came behind. "What will happen?" I asked.
He gestured toward the dozen or so mango trees, which made an attractive shade nearby. "One tree will be cut," he said, "to burn the body."
The heart must have been burnt where the body was burnt.
What is it you are trying to find in these ashes?
Ghalib’s poetry outwears ages because, for him, love was not destroyed by death, but informed by it.
"An entire tree?" I asked, surprised.
"So much is needed."
"But the wood is green."
"It will burn," he said.