The Hour Before Dawn

By Ajaz Ashraf

Four weeks before the Babri Masjid is demolished, Delhi wakes up to accounts of India's Secret History. Appearing daily as tantalizing pamphlets on the walls of the city's residential neighbourhoods, Secret History claims to reveal India's suppressed past. Rhetorical and rhythmic, dark and depressing, violent and vengeful - are these accounts true or fictional? Who writes the Secret History? These questions do not engage Rasheed Halim, who is grappling with the possibility of imminent death and cancer recurrence. He becomes a recluse, waiting to die, popping tranquillizers to get through his days. Not even a night of rioting, in which not a drop of blood is spilt, shakes him out of his melancholy. In desperation, he turns to a helpline, where a mysterious voice kindles in him the desire to live and join a band of people whose mission it is to identify the author of Secret History. The search takes Rasheed into a world where madness masquerades as rationality, suspicion is the impulse of human action, and politics and history are tools of torment forged in the fire of personal suffering. Is redemption possible in this world? What does it mean to return to lost thoughts? Does Rasheed encounter the author of Secret History?Thought-provoking and suspenseful, The Hour Before Dawn is the remarkable story of a terminally ill man's search for meaning and his eventual quest to understand how deep the lust for blood runs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Dec 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9789350297841

Ajaz Ashraf

Ajaz Ashraf studied History at St Stephen's College and is now a journalist, based in New Delhi. In a career spanning over twenty-six years, he has worked for The Pioneer, Hindustan Times, and Outlook. Since the last two years, he has written opinion pieces for The Hindu, Mint, Tehelka, DNA, Firstpost and The Hoot. He has a weekly column in Nepali Times and his pieces are translated and published inVijay Karnataka every fortnight. Random Harvest is his first novel.

Book preview

SECTION I

2 November to 8 November 1992

In the days to come, during the suffering that was to befall him, Rasheed Halim would often recall the seven minutes he spent at The Library of Free Thinkers before his life skittered away into chaos. It was undoubtedly an odd point to begin his recollection from, for the story of his torment did not originate in that wink of time. Yet, those seven minutes signified to him the implausibility of disentangling the past from the present, and underscored the irrationality of a life of ordinariness transitioning into one of terror.

That day, 3 November to be precise, he stood before the rack lined with author names that began with the twenty-second letter of the English alphabet. These names were on spines of different colours – black, white, orange, yellow, even violet – beckoning him. Rasheed Halim had already chosen four books—the maximum he could borrow at a time—but still, he sauntered to the back of a long and narrow hall. It was this place that Rasheed enjoyed the most, browsing through books by unknown authors, quieter as the area was than other parts of the library. Borrowers, unless they were searching for a specific title, exhausted their quota of four before they reached the racks V, W, X, Y, Z.

The name V. Varinosky, etched in gold at the top of the book’s black spine and the title, Crime and Punishment and A Happy Death: A Comparison, caught his attention. He put down the books he was carrying and reached for it. A 200-page paperback, its cover displayed a dagger from which dripped drops of blood, shaped as question marks. Raskolnikov of Crime and Punishment and Mersault of A Happy Death – two protagonists who committed murder in different eras, but experienced contrasting emotions. Rasheed decided to glance through its pages before making the final selection.

He picked up the pile of five books and came into the passage leading to the reading room. Dressed in a beige corduroy shirt and blue jeans, his long neck and thin frame made him appear taller than his five foot, eight inches. His face was bony, the nose long and sharp, and the forehead prominent because of the receding hairline that ended in a lank mop at the back. His eyes, enormously large with jet black pupils, settled occasionally on framed pictures of the multi-coloured pansies hanging below every fluorescent tube on the wall alongside the passage. He wondered whether it was indeed true that the dainty flower was the symbol of free-thinkers. Squinting in the brightness of the reading room, he walked to the table nearest to him and pulled out a chair, sitting across a woman with a mole on her left cheek. She was taking notes from a book, which, presumably, could not be borrowed. As he dragged the chair to pull it closer to the table, the barely audible scraping of wood on the floor conveyed to the woman she had company. She looked up, and Rasheed found himself locked on her eyes. He did not open Varinosky’s book. Instead, he leaned forward to reach out for the Guardian, and saw a magazine lying under it.

The headline instantly caught his attention. Change lifestyle. Evade cancer. He dropped the newspaper and picked up the magazine, and the rustle prompted the woman to glance at him again.

Rasheed was what they called a cancer survivor, a badge he did not wear with pride, as he believed his triumph over the disease was happenstance. Three years ago, he had undergone chemotherapy to destroy the rogue cells proliferating in his body. After the cancer was declared to have gone into remission, his doctor had advised him not to become obsessive about the disease, to not let his fear prevent him from leading a normal life. Rasheed Halim indeed tried to follow the advice. He did not compulsively ferret out reading material on cancer, nor did he disclose his medical history to people who he was barely acquainted with, nor join support-groups offering comfort to patients facing life-threatening illnesses. Yet, he always glanced through articles that he happened to come across on the disease.

The magazine lying below the copy of Guardian was Health & Fitness. Below the double-deck headline was a strap-line, Want to ward off cancer? Turn to Page 32. The cover story featured an epidemiological study that assigned twenty-eight per cent of cancers in Britain to habits popularly considered killers – smoking, drinking alcohol, and binge eating. The feature was laid out over several pages with pie charts and photographs of doctors who had been quoted.

On the last page of the article was the box, The Breakthroughs. It explained the new trend among scientists to analyze genes for comprehending why a normal and healthy cell rebels against the natural control imposed on its division and starts multiplying at breakneck speed. Rasheed was horrified to read about Western women with a family history of breast cancer opting for preventive mastectomy. He skipped the paragraphs detailing trees whose bark had yielded potent anti-cancer drugs. As he skimmed across the last paragraph of the boxed story, he noticed the words ‘multiple myeloma’ in the penultimate line and immediately began reading the sentence from the beginning, slowly, as if wanting to commit it to memory.

Multiple myeloma was the cancer Rasheed Halim had suffered from.

He read the sentence again, and then for the third time. On the fourth reading, his lips formed the words: ‘A reputed pharmaceutical firm is close to marketing a drug that should delay the relapse in multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cell.’

‘Delay the relapse,’ he muttered, unable to take his eyes off the sentence.

In the intensity of his gaze, the words seemed to shift and dissolve and reappear. He re-read it for the sixth time, seeking to grasp exactly what the author had tried to convey through the three words – delay the relapse.

‘What does the word delay mean?’ he muttered.

Though his voice was reduced to an indistinct whisper, it reached the woman at the other end of the table. She frowned as she watched Rasheed’s eyes pan across the hall. Back to the page of the magazine, to the penultimate line his eyes returned, and his heart began to beat furiously. His mind homed in on the six words – delay the relapse in multiple myeloma. What did delay mean? Defer, postpone, slow down. He paraphrased the line: A new drug held out the possibility of deferring the recurrence of multiple myeloma.

Rasheed parsed the sentence to understand better the information it contained: a new drug was soon to be marketed, and it was believed it could delay the relapse. The implication was clear: relapse in multiple myeloma was inevitable.

‘No, no, no. Relapse is not inevitable in my cancer,’ Rasheed said to himself as he leaned back and stared at the ceiling. His throat was dry, his face drained of colour.

‘It just isn’t possible,’ he repeated, and sprang to his feet. He pushed the chair back, picked up the book on top of the pile and rushed into the tunnel of racks. It was an involuntary response to the need for recovering his composure, for which isolation was necessary. The book in his hand was Varinosky’s. But Rasheed did not stop at rack V. He walked to Y and Z and tossed the book on a shelf. There was no one around; a fluorescent tube flickered on and off. He shuddered and began to pace between the racks with short strides. Stacks of books loomed over him.

‘It cannot be true,’ he said to himself. ‘Relapse is not inevitable in multiple myeloma.’ Hope, like antibodies, surfaced and tossed up a few pertinent questions: Had he seen this magazine before? Had he even heard of it? Was it credible? Could he rely on the article? It wasn’t the Lancet, was it? In the persistent murmur of these voices he found solace. It bolstered his will to counter his fear. To clinch the argument in favour of his assertion, he cited Dr Vikram Rathore. The doctor had never mentioned the inevitability of relapse; and he should know. He was an experienced oncologist at the best cancer hospital in Delhi.

‘It can’t be true, it can’t be true,’ he repeated, furiously shaking his head. His mind began to retrieve snatches of conversation from his visits to the hospital for periodic check-ups. At the end of every medical test, he had asked the doctor about the possibility of a relapse. On every occasion Dr Rathore had laughed and said, ‘Yes, those damn cells can become cancerous, but cold and fever, flu and dysentery also recur.’ And Rasheed would invariably retort, ‘Cold and dysentery are not the same as cancer, are they, doctor?’ Dr Rathore would chuckle and say, ‘Rasheed, relapse is a possibility. We can’t worry about possibilities. Why, you can be run over by a bus, or roll down a flight of stairs and die.’

Recollection of these exchanges was assuring. Dr Rathore had always talked about the possibility of a relapse, but not its inevitability. Yet, on reading those six words in a magazine published in London, he had panicked. Chemotherapy had not only killed the cancerous cells in him but had also pulled up the roots of his being to shallower depths. He thought his self had mutated, just as the cells of his body had. At that moment the incongruity of walking up and down between the book-racks struck him. He stopped and tried to slow his breathing. He wanted to forget what he had read and slip back into the mood he was in before he had read those six words.

But a voice inside him muttered, ‘Delay means postponement, the pushing back of an occurrence scheduled for a given time, a slowing of the inevitable. When the author writes delay the relapse, he obviously knows relapse in multiple myeloma has to happen.’ This time though, Rasheed did not panic. It was absurd to think Dr Rathore was ignorant about the nature of multiple myeloma. All his patients would have reported the relapse. That Dr Rathore had never alluded to its inevitability diminished Rasheed’s fears and doubts. He needed to silence the voices tormenting him, and harness his mind to thoughts more engaging than analyzing the meaning of those three simple words – delay the relapse.

To take his mind off the article, Rasheed decided to get the four books issued and hurry to the railway station and look for someone who could sell him, at a premium, a berth on the overnight train to Kathgodam. From there, a bus would take him up the road snaking to his holiday destination of Saat Tal in Kumaon Hills. He had already frittered away a day of his fortnight-long leave. No more time should be wasted, he told himself.

Rasheed turned and began to walk to the reading section, where his books were, as was the Health & Fitness magazine. What an unimaginative title for a magazine writing on complex health issues such as modern research on cancer, he thought. What an idiotic sentence to put out on the cover – Turn to page 32. A bunch of idiots who took their responsibility to their readers rather lightly, Rasheed silently railed against them, ignoring the pansies on the wall.

When he went back to the table, the woman with the mole looked at him, curiously, then picked up her pen and started writing. His gaze shifted from one table to another, before it settled upon her. What a chick, he thought. He tried to imagine what kissing her mole and running his hand through her hair would feel like. Minutes passed, minutes in which his confidence about what he knew grew – relapse in multiple myeloma was not inevitable. His confidence sharpened his urge to read yet again the sentence which had triggered anxiety and fear in him. He looked at the magazine cover. It would be best for him to gather his books and walk out. But he remained rooted to his seat, like a smoker trying to kick his addiction, yet keeping a cigarette at hand in case the desperation for nicotine became unbearable. Rasheed arranged the four books on top of the magazine to form a rectangle concealing the headline – Change Lifestyle, Evade Cancer.

He looked at the titles of the books he wanted to borrow: Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, The Good Terrorist, and The Secret History. Perhaps one too many for the thirteen days left of his holiday. It was commendable that the library had procured The Secret History within three months of its release in the United States. Rasheed had read its reviews in international newspapers, and all of them had hailed its plot – college students who kill a friend and suffer the consequences of their act. Shades of Crime and Punishment? he wondered. He enjoyed reading books in which murder was treated philosophically. What was it about murder that held such an attraction for him? He tried to search for an answer.

His effort, though, disrupted his chain of thoughts. ‘Stupid of me,’ Rasheed muttered, realizing that he had not checked if the author of the article was a doctor. He drew the magazine out from under the books and checked the byline. T. Robinson. He wasn’t a doctor. Rasheed was relieved. He revisited the page and zeroed in on the words – delay the relapse.

The meaning was unambiguous: the drug was expected to only delay the inevitability of relapse in multiple myeloma.

A feeling of helplessness swept over him. But a contradictory voice rose up: Who the hell was T. Robinson? He was just another journalist whose knowledge about cancer did not extend beyond the number of days he would have spent in researching and writing the piece. Was Robinson aware of the subtle difference between the relapse that was only a probability and one that was an absolute certainty? He should have written ‘… a drug that should reduce the chances of relapse in multiple myeloma’. In case the relapse was inevitable, wouldn’t Robinson have written, ‘… should delay the inevitable relapse in multiple myeloma’?

He, Rasheed Halim, senior sub-editor in the Mirror, would have inserted the word ‘inevitable’ in that sentence. There was ample space in the last line of that article—which was also the last line of the page—to accommodate a ten-letter word.

Yet, the rationale did not boost his spirit. Rasheed was confused. He covered his face with his palms, as if to block out the menacing glare the font of the text had acquired.

He decided to take a photocopy to Dr Rathore. As he dropped his hands from his face and gathered the four books and the magazine, he did not notice the absence of the woman with the mole. At the counter in the lobby, he had the books issued and a photocopy of the article made. He placed them in the brown leather bag that he retrieved from the shelf, and walked out. Robinson had got it wrong, he repeated, not noticing the dahlias and chrysanthemums aglow in the dazzle of the November sun, nor the woman with the mole at the tea-kiosk in the corner of the garden, not even the traffic humming deliriously beyond the compound wall. To suffer was to become deaf to the thrum of the world and blind to its beauty. All he knew was he had to get to Delhi Cancer Hospital immediately.

It was 10 p.m., six hours since Rasheed had read the notice, in Dr Vikram Rathore’s own handwriting, on the door of his chamber.

I will be available for consultation from the afternoon of 4 November.

Disappointment and dread had overwhelmed Rasheed at the realization that his confusion over the inevitability of relapse in multiple myeloma would not be dispelled immediately. Then he felt a rage at the doctor’s indifference to his patients. How could he not have cared to mention who they could consult in an emergency? As he experienced the changes in his emotions, he noticed two telephone numbers printed on the top left corner of the notice. Against one of the numbers was the letter R in parenthesis and the area code was of Hemant Kunj. Rasheed was surprised. Six weeks ago, Dr Rathore hadn’t been living in Hemant Kunj. The discovery that he had shifted his residence was providential. It had saved him from making futile calls to the defunct number on his medical file. A rush of optimism coursed through him as he scribbled the number on the back of a bus-ticket and returned home.

In these six hours, his hope had been ground to desperation. ‘One more call,’ Rasheed muttered. This was what he had been doing since returning to his flat in Sector XIII of Hemant Kunj – fixing a deadline and, on its expiry, making a call to Dr Rathore, listening to the recorded message in the doctor’s voice on the answering machine requesting the caller to leave his name and number. Rasheed had lost count of the calls he had made. He wished he knew the doctor’s address. He wouldn’t have sat here struggling against the slowing of time, its barely perceptible movement, as every passing minute stoked his anxiety, reminding him of a bleak and menacing future.

‘Another fifteen minutes, one last call,’ Rasheed said, as he ambled around the drawing room. He stopped by the window, squeezing between two cane chairs with rounded arm-rests and curved back-rests. He clasped the iron grill and looked out into the darkness beyond the perimeter wall of Sector XIII of Hemant Kunj, battling with his imagination that sought to compulsively contemplate the horror of a relapse. The babble inside him had drowned out the myriad sounds of the night – cars driving into the colony, the incessant barking of street dogs, the tap-tap-tap of the chowkidar’s lathi as it struck the ground three times before he blew the whistle, and the voices at a party in the adjoining block of flats. He wanted to accept that he could not speak to the doctor tonight, that to emerge from the cocoon of fear he would have to wait till the next afternoon. He decided he would make one last attempt in fifteen minutes. In case he was still unable to speak to Dr Rathore, he would abandon his plan of taking an overnight bus to Saat Tal. A sliver of hope about making the journey still lingered in him, shining in defiance of the less than two hours left for the clock to strike the midnight hour. It would take the doctor a few seconds, and sentences, to allay his fears. There would still be time for him to throw some clothes into the rucksack, take a cab to the Inter-State Bus Terminus, from where a bus for Saat Tal left every twenty minutes till 2 a.m.

The music at the party was suddenly turned up and drunken voices roared in delight. Rasheed recoiled instinctively, pulling the window shut and leaning his forehead against the grill. He began to feel sorry for himself. What a lamentable turn the day had taken, Rasheed moaned. He quickly straightened himself, hoping to stifle the growing inclination to perceive in every occurrence a sign of destiny’s imminent betrayal. Life wasn’t a novel consciously conceived and deliberately constructed. The doctor’s absence was a coincidence, as was the fact that calls to his residence had gone unanswered, as had been his reading of the Health & Fitness.

To quell his restlessness, Rasheed went over to the coffee table on which lay his brown leather bag. He pulled out the slimmest of the four books. ‘Shit,’ he exclaimed as he stared at the title – Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Death was snapping at his heels, chasing him, haunting him, communicating to him, through the crafting of coincidences, its shadowy presence and the inevitability of its assault. He dropped the book on the table and moved away.

‘Why me?’ he asked in anguish, as he walked ponderously around the dining table and its four chairs. The doors of the two bedrooms opened into the space, as did those of the kitchen and the toilet. He had converted one of the bedrooms into what he called the utility room. He entered it, not caring to switch on the light, making out the contours of the furniture from their silhouettes. A writing table and a chair stood to the right of the entrance, against the wall. Next to it, on the rack fixed to the wall, was the cassette deck. On either side of it, on the floor, were the speakers. Music could snap the tether that chained him to the fear of relapse, he thought. He shuffled to the corner, picked out a cassette from the stand placed on a steel trunk. He inserted the cassette into the deck and settled down in the easy chair. A full-size mirror covered one half of the wardrobe on his right. For a moment, Rasheed had the urge to switch on the light and check whether anxiety and fear had left their imprints on his face.

Rasheed Halim pressed the remote of his music system. The strumming of a guitar filled the room. Then followed the mellifluous voice of Simon & Garfunkel: I am a rock, I am an island, they sang. He laughed, a desperate, hollow, mirthless laugh, acknowledging another sinister coincidence. Of all the singers, he had picked them out; of all their numbers, it had to be the one now playing. He hadn’t listened to them for months, and now, on this day of torment, they had surfaced in his random selection.

Did he have to cocoon himself in his own misery, lick the vomit of his thoughts? Couldn’t he reach out to another person and lighten his burden? His sister had moved to Bombay a year ago. Had she been in Delhi, as she had when he was diagnosed with cancer, he would have taken refuge with her. What about Krishna Kumar, or Kris, his colleague and friend in the Mirror? No. Of what use could he be in this circumstance? Rasheed didn’t need any physical assistance or comforting. He required a specialist who could silence the persistent murmur of his doubts. As the voices of Simon & Garfunkel faded away with the refrain, A rock feels no pain, and an island never cries, he rushed out of the room. Furiously, he began to dial Dr Rathore’s number. Yet again, it was the metallic voice droning away.

Damn, he said. Damn, damn.

It was 11 p.m., too late to make another call. He fell back into the cane chair next to the phone, his head bowed, exhausted, devoid of energy, reconciled to the idea of waiting for another day, of postponing his travel plans for another twenty-four hours. Sleep was his only armour against the lacerating blows of his thoughts; it was where he could find the silence he yearned for. So he walked into the bedroom, switched on the television, and then switched it off immediately. He lay on the bed, in the clothes he was in.

Sleep, he ordered his weary mind, breathe in and breathe out, concentrate on breathing, empty out your thoughts. Breathe in and breathe out … He should have been on the bus to Saat Tal … Why the fuck did he have to visit the Library of Free Thinkers … Chronicle of a Death Foretold … so many coincidences in just one day … Sleep … Relapse in multiple myeloma isn’t inevitable … Only if the doctor had been at the hospital …

Rasheed got out of bed and walked to the phone in the drawing room. He dialed the number. He waited for the voice on the answering machine to run through the instructions for the caller.

‘This is Rasheed Halim,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘I have come across a magazine article that seems to suggest that relapse in multiple myeloma is inevitable. Is it true?’ He paused. ‘I am scared, doctor, very scared,’ he mumbled.

He sat in the chair, experiencing the relief emanating from the quietude that had eluded him through the day. It lasted many minutes, in which the myriad sounds of the night were again audible – the snatches of music from the party in the next block, a motorcycle being revved up, the hum of a car engine, followed by a cry of farewell. In the midst of everyday ordinariness, he felt embarrassed at the message left on the doctor’s answering machine, at the voicing of his fears. He wished he had been on the bus to Saat Tal.

Memories came rushing back to him. Of a day in the summer of 1990, when the gulmohars had turned a flaming red and the laburnums had slipped into the colour of gold, a colour they take only once every year, appearing like trees laden with yellow grapes. Their sight had softened the visual harshness of the season and as he consciously replayed those images now, he experienced a gradual change in mood, similar to the warmth and lightness a shot of whiskey induces. That April morning in 1990, close to the date when he was to be discharged from Delhi Cancer Hospital, Rasheed Halim lay in the hospital bed, imagining his imminent return to a life of little joys and ordinary encumbrances with the eagerness of a convict about to take his first step into freedom. He was recovering from the autologous bone marrow transplant he had undergone after five cycles of chemotherapy had reduced his bones to gaping cavities.

Breaking into his reverie, Dr Vikram Rathore walked into the small room, dapper in black trousers and white full-sleeved shirt with gold-coloured cufflinks. His flabby body and chubby face made him appear shorter than his height of six feet. Dr Rathore did not ask him the question most doctors on their morning rounds customarily do. Instead, he sat erect on the stool next to Rasheed’s bed, placed his podgy hands on his thighs, smiled and started to talk.

‘Your first response to your illness must have been, Why me? Am I right?’ Drumming his fingers on his thighs, he continued, ‘Let me see whether I can tell you the precise moment when you asked that question.’ He reached for the bottle of water on the table and took a swig from it, adjusted the sleeves to bring the cufflinks in line with his thumbs.

Rubbing his hands together, he continued, ‘You ignored the back pain at first because it was just a mild discomfort. You attributed it to long hours at the desk. There was always a reason to postpone your visit to the doctor – and, anyway, the pain invariably lessened in response to the painkillers you took. There was also the exhaustion you periodically experienced. You ascribed it to the hectic pace of work. You took off from work for three or four days, slept and read and watched TV. But before long, the pain became intense enough to arouse you from sleep; your body seemed out of control, writhing in its own madness.’ Rasheed nodded.

The doctor went on. ‘Rasheed, human will can endure pain, not alleviate it. The visit to the neighbourhood doctor could no longer be postponed. He wrote out a prescription. Unfortunately, he was on the wrong track: his experience had not taught him to read the warnings of insurrectionary cells.’

Dr Rathore paused to fiddle with the cufflinks. In an accusatory tone, he said, ‘But what were you doing, Rasheed, when those cells were defying control and multiplying? You wanted to silence their needling and prodding, as senselessly and quickly as the state retaliates against citizens who become hostile.’

Then dramatically, he lowered his voice, ‘One fine morning the pain was so acute you thought an invisible pair of hands was gradually squeezing the life out of you, breath by breath. The cell rebellion was full on.’

The preceding sequence had been predictable. Patients were prone to misreading signals of pain from cancerous cells as skeletal or muscular in nature. From here, Dr Rathore had to factor in Rasheed’s personality to construct his story.

He paused long enough to play on Rasheed’s curiosity. Then he started, ‘Once you managed to impose a semblance of control over your body, you rang up your sister. She was aghast. You sounded like a dying man. She and her husband took you to their home. The doctor they took you to frowned at the painkillers administered to you and was puzzled by your body’s failure to respond. He consulted me over the phone. I suggested blood tests and an X-ray of your back. The lab results confirmed our suspicion: the monoclonal protein level was high, as was the plasma cell count. There were lesions in the vertebrae. It was multiple myeloma.’

A faint smile played on Rasheed’s face. He was enjoying the mind-game the doctor was playing with him. It intimated to him a life that awaited him. Through those months of enduring treatment he hadn’t had a normal conversation. There were always anxious relatives and friends inquiring about his condition, his feelings, or assuring him that he would survive the battle against cancer. But their sombre faces betrayed their voices and they knew, as he did too, his survival was a matter of chance. This conversation with the doctor was the first glimpse Rasheed had of what he thought was the essence of normal life: small talk that was amusing yet ostensibly meaningless.

Dr Rathore turned the cufflinks to align them with his ring finger. ‘When I saw your reports I told your brother-in-law that I wanted to examine you.’

From the cot, Rasheed said, ‘They told you all this.’

‘Just about your condition. He skipped the tricky parts.’ He smiled, looking at Rasheed with gentleness. ‘Like who broke the news of cancer to you. You made their task easy. You sensed their despair. Your sister was morose; your father had rushed to Delhi. Your brother-in-law had suddenly become garrulous.’

Almost as if changing tack, he asked, ‘Your sister and her husband live in a flat, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any children?’

‘Two,’ Rasheed replied.

‘Age?’

‘The girl is eight, the boy is six.’

Yet again the doctor shut his eyes. ‘In a flat, silence becomes oppressive. You sensed it too. The phone was always answered softly, the TV was rarely switched on, the children weren’t allowed to invite friends over, and their grandfather didn’t indulge them. The daughter came and complained to you, didn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘She asked you, why is everyone so sad? Her remark reinforced your suspicion. You waited for the night to confront your sister. Somehow we tend to become more honest at night,’ Dr Rathore said with a chuckle. ‘When she came to check on you before retiring, you asked her straight, What’s wrong with me? She ran out of the room. They had to tell you then. Correct?’

‘Yes,’ Rasheed said, nodding.

‘It was your father who told you it was multiple myeloma. You’d never heard of it before. He explained the immune system, the antibodies, and their function of attacking and destroying viruses and bacteria. In your body, he said, plasma cells, the soft sponge-like material in the bone which produce the antibodies, are multiplying chaotically and causing you severe pain. Their growth has to be arrested, he said to you.

‘Rasheed, it took a while for your father to come out and say that multiple myeloma is a type of cancer. And before the word could sink in, before you could react, he turned philosophical, talking about life and death, about fate and divine will. He explained the treatment - chemotherapy, its side effects, violent vomiting, the loss of hair, the sleepless nights because of a ball of fire shooting up and down the veins. But he said, it is not as bad as amputating a person’s limb to save him.

And because Rasheed did not interject, Dr Rathore continued, ‘A little later, when you were alone in your room, the information began to sink in. For the first time you saw and felt fear. You wondered what it was to not breathe, to die. That’s when you screamed silently, Why me, God? Why me? This is so unfair. At that precise moment, Rasheed, your suffering was catapulted beyond the physical plane.’

Dr Rathore clapped his hands. ‘There! The end.’

‘But how could you tell my story?’ Rasheed whispered .

Dr Rathore laughed lightly, ‘It comes with experience, you know.’ Fiddling with the cufflinks he continued, ‘The initial response to suffering is more or less the same. But at that point when the patient asks, Why me? innumerable and varied responses are noticed. I’ll let you into a secret, Rasheed. I try to guess how my patients will deal with their illness. Will they, because of their suffering, become bitter? Or will they learn to deeply love life?’

‘What do you think will happen to me?’

Dr Rathore replied, ‘To me, you do not seem to be someone who is likely to worry about his illness. You know, like those who spend a lot of time researching their malady.’ He paused and added, ‘No, you won’t. I can see that.’

‘I won’t,’ Rasheed said.

‘Good,’ Dr Rathore responded. ‘Don’t allow the illness to become an obsession. You will have to go through periodic tests. There’s always the possibility of relapse. But the tests would ensure immediate treatment. Learn to live without fear. Fear is the antithesis of normal,’ he said. ‘It changes all of us, often for the worse, because it works subconsciously. You think you are normal, but you are not.’

He came closer to the bed and said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘Here’s another secret. It is possible for a person recovering from a crisis, say, a life-threatening illness or loss of job, to measure his normalcy through what I call ROLT.’ He paused and added, ‘It is an acronym for the Return of Last Thoughts.’

The concept was complex, even arcane, and what Rasheed would remember were the essential contours of the concept of ROLT. Underlying it was the assumption about the human mind – its nature ensured it ceaselessly produced thoughts, often of its own volition. The mind skipped from the present to the past, danced into the future, and hopped back to the present, creating a pattern of thoughts without a preconceived design, stimulating varying emotions – joy, anger, regret, hurt, fear, suspicion, sadness, etc. In Dr Rathore’s view, every thought corresponded to a particular emotion. Consequently a person’s personality depended on the proportion of different emotions his daily thought-pattern generated.

‘A crisis,’ Dr Rathore said, ‘or illness, in your case, disrupts the natural thought process of the mind. Instead of churning out thoughts randomly, it concentrates on countering the crisis or contemplates its implications. The consequence of such a focus: worry and anxiety.’

‘I see,’ Rasheed said tentatively, not sure whether he had grasped what was being explained to him.

Dr Rathore continued, ‘At the ebbing away of the crisis, or on its resolution, the person’s mind usually returns to producing thought-emotion patterns as before. In many, though, the traumatic experience alters their thought-emotion pattern and they don’t even realize it.’

‘Why?’ Rasheed asked.

‘I suppose because we have a tendency to repress unpleasant thoughts. Yet your fantasies, dreams, without your realizing it, get infected by fear and lose their earlier robustness. You become a fatalist or pessimist.’

‘So what can I do?’

Dr Rathore smiled and patted his thigh. ‘ROLT,’ he said standing up. ‘You need to become conscious of your thoughts. The closer you get to replicating the thought-emotion patterns you had before your cancer was diagnosed, the more normal you will be.’

‘And what if I don’t?’

‘You will realize that you haven’t been healed, and you will strive towards it,’ Dr Rathore said. He paused and stood up. ‘It is important to know whether the last thought-patterns have returned. He who has passed the ROLT test knows that he has healed completely and becomes normal.’

Rasheed noticed the sky had turned the colour of slate, as he walked down the road lined by eucalyptuses, past the quadrangle ringed by laburnums and gulmohars, towards the double-storey circular building of Delhi Cancer Hospital. He climbed the stairs in the porch to enter the reception, and turned left into a hall. On either side of it were cubicles, each identified by an alphabet, from A to S. Directly above the doors of the cubicles were electronic boards that flashed the serial number the reception had assigned to patients. Each number was a combination of numerical and alphabet – A5 or B6 or P12 and so on.

He handed a slip of paper to the peon outside the cubicle in which Dr Vikram Rathore was. On it Rasheed had written: Meet me for a brief chat. Please. He looked around restlessly. In the middle of the hall were two parallel rows of blue bucket seats mounted on iron rods cemented into the floor. Around him, there were patients accompanied by anxious relatives exchanging notes about the doctors and the facilities. Rasheed paced up and down the hall, still in yesterday’s clothes and looking unkempt. Minutes later, a new number flashed and the peon entered Dr Rathore’s cubicle. Rasheed walked briskly to the door, and took the slip from the peon as soon as he came out. Below his note was the doctor’s squiggle: ‘Heard your message on the answering machine, minutes before I was to leave for hospital. Good you are here. Wait in my chamber and I will join you soon.’

Clutching the brown leather bag, Rasheed went down to the hall, past the reception, and walked through a glass door that opened into the waiting area outside the radiation therapy department. There were a number of people sitting there but their silence contrasted with the din of the hall. He took the passage to the right, glancing at the slip of paper in his hand. The message was cheerful, not like that from someone about to dash the hopes of another human. Good you are here. You wouldn’t say this if you were going to give the person some tragic news. Dr Rathore had not called immediately because he was presumably running late for the OPD. One doesn’t have to wait so long to hear bad news, he told himself, as he waited outside Dr Rathore’s chamber.

He saw the doctor striding towards him, dressed, as always, in black trousers and white shirt. Seeing Rasheed he smiled and ushered him inside.

‘Sit,’ Dr Rathore said, walking around the table to take the chair across his patient.

Through the window, behind the doctor, Rasheed saw that the clouds had become thicker, the sky greyer. Putting the brown leather bag in the chair next to him he said, in an apologetic tone, ‘I only wanted …’

Dr Rathore interrupted him, ‘Let us have coffee.’ He ordered two cups of coffee over the intercom. He reached out for a round glass paperweight, and started tossing it from one hand to another. ‘It has been hectic, you know. I shifted to Hemant Kunj last week and …’

‘I know,’ Rasheed said enthusiastically. ‘Your telephone number suggested that. Which sector?’

‘Sector XIII,’ the doctor replied, putting the paperweight down on the table.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Rasheed exclaimed, ‘That’s where I stay, in Flat No. 700.’

The doctor did not say anything.

‘Imagine, I rang you up so many times last night,’ Rasheed continued. ‘I could as well have walked over to your place. What’s your flat number?’

‘Seventy-two,’ the doctor said, fiddling with his cufflinks, a dark square ringed with gold. ‘You wouldn’t have found me home last night.’ He paused and added, ‘I was in Bombay, only returned at noon today. I’d been there for a conference, took my wife and children.’ Shaking his head, he smiled. ‘To feel so exhausted in two days, I must be getting old.’

‘You look young,’ Rasheed interjected.

‘The conference was exhausting and boring. The only session I enjoyed was conducted by a voluntary organisation on the rights of cancer patients.’

‘Rights of cancer patients?’ An involuntary shiver went through Rasheed. The breeze had turned cold, as if it was about to rain.

‘Yes, rights of cancer patients,’ the doctor repeated, drumming the table lightly. ‘A woman activist came to the dais and raised the issue of the patient’s right to be informed and educated about his or her illness. She accused doctors of not explaining the complexities of cancer to patients who live in perpetual fear of dying.’

Dr Rathore’s hands had become still. His voice was steady. He continued, ‘These patients, the activist said, find their experiences confusing: there are relatives holding out hope, there are drugs so potent and painful that there is born in them the desire to live. And there are doctors who tell them of their improved response to treatment. They want to clarify their doubts, ask questions.’

Contrary to Rasheed’s expectations, Dr Rathore did not seem to be in a hurry.

He continued. ‘But the activist accused us of brushing aside their queries with grunts and monosyllabic replies; at best we mouth meaningless phrases – don’t worry, trust us, everything will be fine. Doctors prefer to talk to the relatives of patients, she alleged. It is to them the patient’s illness is explained, and it is in consultation with them that important decisions are taken. It’s wrong, she said emphatically, to assume that just because they face a life-threatening illness, they are incapable of taking decisions.’

Dr Rathore picked up the paperweight once again. ‘We appreciated her concern for the patient. But, Rasheed, she went on to suggest that every cancer hospital should institute a committee to supervise interaction between doctor and patient!’ There was a hint of disbelief in his voice.

It was embarrassing for Rasheed to listen to the doctor talk about the patient’s obsession with information. He had not explicitly used the word obsession; Dr Rathore was too civil for such candour. Yet the message had been subtly conveyed. He should have been patient, Rasheed thought; he shouldn’t have barged into the hospital without an appointment.

‘The suggestion to institute a committee provoked the audience. She was booed. The younger doctors told her they would be left with little time if they were to also address the fears of their patients. They have a point. Believe me. They can’t possibly attend to the emotional needs of patients. Our hospitals don’t lay emphasis on this aspect of patient care. You know the kind of pressure we work under, don’t you?’

The boy from the canteen brought the coffee and placed it before them. Outside, Rasheed noticed, the breeze had gathered momentum. As soon as boy left, he said, ‘Sorry doctor, I didn’t mean to …’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Dr Rathore interrupted, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. His face had turned taut, in apprehension of the question Rasheed was about to ask. A sudden gust of wind wrenched open the door and slammed it shut. Dr Rathore got up to close the window.

‘It’s unusual for Delhi to have rains now,’ Dr Rathore said, wiping the drops of rain water from his face.The ambience in the room seemed transformed. Perhaps it was the weather or the way Dr Rathore sat in the chair, statue-like. Rasheed took out the photocopy of the story from the bag. Spreading it on the table, he said, ‘Here is what I wanted to check.’ He had used the highlighter to mark the sentence which had traumatized him. He pushed the copy towards Dr Rathore and added, ‘Read the sentence.’

‘What does it say?’ Dr Rathore asked.

Rasheed did not have to read from the photocopy. He remembered the sentence verbatim. ‘A reputed pharmaceutical firm is close to marketing a drug that should delay the relapse in multiple myeloma.’ He smiled sheepishly and added, ‘The sentence seems to suggest that relapse in multiple myeloma is inevitable. That got me worried, scared.’

Dr Rathore took another sip of the coffee, evading eye contact. Rasheed pleaded, ‘Read the article.’

Rasheed pushed the photocopy further down the table. ‘I knew it could not be true,’ Rasheed continued. ‘But doubts and fears, one is helpless against them.’

Dr Rathore cleared his throat. There was a flash outside, followed by a rumble. He reached out for the copy. As he glanced at the sentence, highlighted in red, Rasheed said, ‘Delay the relapse in multiple myeloma. Those few words kept me awake through the night.’

Dr Rathore put the sheet of paper on the table.

Astonishment flickered in Rasheed’s eyes, as they darted around from the window to the table and back to the doctor. Dr Rathore had not yet thrown his head back and laughed. Instead, he lowered his eyes and said, ‘Your father, didn’t you talk to him?’

‘Father?’

‘Rasheed, your father … we thought …’ the doctor mumbled, now looking into Rasheed’s eyes. For a while, the only sound in the room was that of the rain beating against the windowpane.

‘It can’t be true,’ exclaimed Rasheed, finally.

‘Well, you know, relapse in multiple myeloma …’

‘That sentence on multiple myeloma, it is true, isn’t it?’ Rasheed’s voice was hoarse.

Dr Rathore nodded.

‘But you told me …’

‘Just give me a minute,’ Dr Rathore pleaded, sensing the anger and desperation in the man opposite him.

‘But you told me,’ Rasheed repeated.

‘Your father thought I should not … Relapse can occur in any kind of cancer.’

Rasheed felt his body go limp.

‘Rasheed,’ the doctor said again, ‘Relapse doesn’t mean death.’ He wanted to explain a few medical facts to him. He raised his voice, trying to sound optimistic, ‘With your prognostic factors, judging from the last medical test, relapse, I think, is likely to happen in another six months. But it doesn’t mean death, you know.’

Rasheed continued to stare at him.

‘Relapse can be treated effectively.’

Rasheed remained silent.

‘Your father did not want you to live in the constant fear of death,’ Dr Rathore said. He got up and walked around the table, still evading eye contact. ‘Your father thought you wouldn’t be able to handle it, that …’

From the chair, Rasheed glanced at the doctor, crestfallen.

‘I wasn’t in agreement with your father but he insisted … I am sorry,’ Dr Rathore said, finally.

His apology roiled Rasheed. He believed it was a ploy to break him. He is back to playing his mind games, Rasheed thought, something he’s been doing from the beginning of our relationship, deriving a perverse pleasure from the hold he exercises over me. Rasheed sprang to his feet. With arms akimbo, he glared at the doctor.

Dr Rathore took a half-step back.

Rasheed exploded, ‘You go around showing fucking concern for your patients, but … but … you are …’ He couldn’t go on.

Dr Rathore quickly regained his composure. He had been through ugly scenes before, of patients turning hysterical at the news of imminent death. But Rasheed’s case was different. Death from multiple myeloma was not inevitable; only the relapse was. He was sure Rasheed would understand this vital distinction if only he would calm down and listen. The doctor put his arm around Rasheed.

‘Give me a chance to explain,’ he said. ‘Your father wanted you to live a normal life. Had you been told the truth about multiple myeloma, you would have spent all your time worrying about it. And relapse …’ the words gushed out.

Rasheed perceived in those words a hint of condescension, a deliberate slight from the man whose enormous power he had come to accept – and