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  Most of the patients brought in for vasectomies were eighty–ninety-year-old poor men; the agents probably found them lying by the roadside clutching their palpitating hearts and brought them in en masse to be sterilized. Men of all ages are usually similar in their fondness for their family jewels. Women, regardless of age, made up the majority of the patients in the camp. I learnt about women who were willing to be sterilized after enduring the physical strain of bearing nearly six or seven children but were unable to do so because their husbands were not allowing them. The husbands usually had one reason—children were a gift of Allah and to do anything to refuse that gift was an insult to Allah Himself. I learnt about families who made so little that they were unable to feed their children twice a day, let alone educate them—yet they would have children every year but refuse to get sterilized for fear of upsetting Allah. Their answers to the agents were the same: ‘Allah is granting us children; He will feed them.’

  I learnt about women who were being forced into pregnancy for the seventh or eighth time because their husbands were waiting for a male child. I also noticed how many women came for a ligation simply because they wanted the sari and the cash incentive of 120 taka given as gifts by the government. I learnt that despite laws forbidding women who did not have at least two children, of whom the youngest was not yet five, from undergoing ligation, many came nonetheless to the camp and lied about sterilization because they were too poor and wanted the handouts promised to them in exchange for the procedure. I became aware of touts at the family planning centre demanding a cut from even this paltry amount of 120 taka. I realized that some of the women who were claiming to be thirty or thirty-five and the mother of two children were in fact childless and barely sixteen or seventeen. They came to the camps to get sterilized for life in exchange for a cheap cotton sari and 120 taka.

  I discovered my country’s poverty in these camps. I trembled and I wept.

  Particulars

  CS and I became friends during the last few months of college. CS had two distinct qualities—her sense of humour, which was intensely attractive, and her constant anxiety about things, which was equally repellant. Suppose someone in class was found studying liver diseases; CS’s anxieties would increase swiftly. Why was the girl reading up on liver ailments? Perhaps there would be questions based on that in the paper! Immediately CS would begin staying up nights reading up on the same. Or perhaps someone was to mention that staying in a hostel was far more conducive to studying than staying at home. CS would immediately pack her bags and set off for a hostel despite facing no issues whatsoever at home. Her study partner had been a boy with the reputation of being a good student. When some other boys became more known for their academic performance CS began sulking because she did not have them as her study partners! Nothing seemed to satisfy her.

  A native of the city, she lived with her mother, who worked at Agricultural University, in the old Bombay Colony, near the jail that was right past Khagdaha. Her father had abandoned them long back. Hailing from Chapai Nababgunje, her mother had travelled all over with a transferable job before finally settling down in Mymensingh. I used to feel a surge of respect whenever I met the woman—I have hardly ever known a more self-reliant and confident mother. CS graduated from Vidyamoyee1 and Ananda Mohan2 and got admitted as a medical student. Despite being from the city she used to talk in the Rajshahi dialect, far cleaner and sweeter than the one we used in Mymensingh. The staccato beats of our verbs—‘aibam’, ‘jaibam’, ‘khaibam’—were too difficult for her to get used to; she was still stuck on the plain utterances—‘ashbo’, ‘jabo’, ‘khabo’. Be that as it may, it suited her best when she was being herself. Although only a couple of inches taller than me, in mass and bulk she was way ahead and could easily overshadow my reputation as the tallest girl in the class. It was something that hardly ever affected me.

  Other than the occasional visits to the camps, my job at family planning usually involved a lot of waiting. So CS and I began to meet often and the conversations gradually grew longer. None of our other batchmates were working out of the city; CS was at the clinic for the disabled on Boundary Road and she didn’t have any work either. Usually if there was a big hospital in the city most people would never go to the smaller clinics. We were of the last batch of doctors from the medical college to have gotten government jobs right after graduating; the rules were changed from the following year and doctors no longer remained eligible for an immediate posting after finishing their degree. Many new doctors did the rounds of private clinics while others had to sit for the BCS exam in order to get government employment. This peculiar exam, meant for anyone seeking a government job, had previously exempted the medical profession, but the new rules overturned all that and supplied a further caveat—even those already in government jobs would have to pass the exam!

  We could not help but wonder why despite already having government jobs we still had to appear for the test. It was explained to us that we needed to take the test to make our posts permanent. I had never heard of an impermanent government job; thus far we had always known that government jobs were the only things that were permanent. CS, as usual, got anxious. Soon enough a big fat BCS guidebook was procured and she had sat down to study. I procured a book too but scarcely managed to turn the pages. I had no desire to practise close reading and write essays on cows like girls in the fifth grade, and the BCS exam was a giant quagmire of everything from Bengali, English, Mathematics, History and Geography to Home Science and General Knowledge. I wanted to be a doctor and it was enough that I knew how to do that well. Why did I have to take a plunge into this mess! The government was in a bind; it was no longer able to employ new doctors and this was simply a ploy to get out of that problem. If the BCS exam turned out to be unsuccessful, perhaps there would have been a 400 metre race with the promise of government employment for the final winner! It was as if the country had been overrun by doctors, and there was no longer any space left to accommodate new ones. Expectedly, an excuse was extended that there were no funds left in government coffers. There was barely one doctor for every few thousand citizens to share and yet the government could not pay for doctors!

  CS and I travelled to Dhaka to appear for the BCS examination. If not about cows we at least had to write about goats. Charting new mathematical frontiers, inventing a fictional date of birth for Kazi Nazrul Islam, answering a unitary method problem—if the milkman mixes 2 litres of water to every 5 litres of milk how much water would there be in 28 litres of milk—with the confident answer of ‘three buckets’, and boldly proposing that Lake Baikal was in Bagura, we managed to pass both the written and oral exams to ensure a final seal of approval on the permanence of our jobs. Our work remained the same as it had been before the exam. In fact, the ones who failed the exam didn’t face any issues with their jobs either.

  Two things happened in CS’s life around that time. She and her mother left their place in Bombay Colony to move to the teachers’ quarters in Agricultural University; and CS fell in love. The second was a rather remarkable incident, especially because it was her first tryst with the emotion—she fell for a doctor named M. He was married and so was CS. Her husband used to live in Moscow. Right after finishing our degrees, seeing the other girls in the batch getting married to doctors and settling down, CS had characteristically gotten anxious. This had led to the realization that if others were doing it, marriage must not be too bad a thing and that she should get married too. The catch had been that one needed a groom to get married to. CS, try as she might, could not bring herself to like any of the doctors left around her—this thing or that, there was always something wrong with each of them. If at all there was someone she liked, she would go around asking other people about them; if someone ended up saying something unpleasant, it would promptly deflate her enthusiasm. Finally, one day she had asked me, the concern apparent in her voice, ‘What do you think I should do? There is no one that I can marry!’

  ‘Why do you have
to get married right now? There are so many who still haven’t yet,’ I had replied. This succeeded in mollifying CS for a few days, but only till she received the news that the homeliest girl in the batch too had gotten hitched. I had still tried persisting with a few more examples of attractive girls who were yet to find grooms, especially mentioning Halida in the list. Scoffing at the mention, CS had replied, ‘Don’t talk about her. She has already said she does not wish to ever get married.’

  Eventually, after much indecision, CS had managed to locate a first cousin—an aunt’s son—who was of marriageable age. As was the need of the hour she had immediately begun to think of ways she could find out more about him. As it turned out, the man in question lived in Moscow where he had gone to get his orthodontist’s degree. CS had been quick to act: ‘Do you think I should write to Humayun? Should I tell him that I want to marry him?’

  ‘You saw him last when the two of you were children. Would you be compatible now? Think about it carefully,’ I had advised again.

  CS had indeed taken my advice to heart. She had thought about it long and hard. Humayun was only a dentist, but he was a dentist in Moscow. That was not such a bad thing at all! Usually doctors for human beings don’t really pay too much attention to dentists and veterinarians. But CS had grown so desperate that she had written a letter to Humayun in Moscow. Without any prevarication, based essentially on whatever faded fascination Humayun may have had for her a long time ago, the letter had been quite forthright in voicing her intentions: ‘I want to marry you.’ When Humayun had agreed CS had seen no reason to waste further time. She had taken a flight to Moscow, gotten married there, spent two months with her husband in his hostel and then come back home pregnant with his child. Her child was delivered under the care of Zobayed Hussain who had taken one look at the newborn and declared, ‘An elephant’s given birth to a rat!’ CS had named her newborn Ananda.

  While Ananda was happily growing up in his grandmother’s care, CS’s life went on as usual, with her job and her growing closeness to M. He had a son too, Hriday. I must confess that I had been rather surprised by the choice of name given the sort of person M was. He might have been handsome, his body might have been tough and lean, but his speech betrayed the provincial character innate to Mymensingh, which stood in stark contrast to CS’s clean utterances and pronunciation. Besides, neither did he share any of CS’s literary or cultural interests. In fact, when M used to zoom around the city on his motorcycle—two inches shorter than CS with the dark, stocky build so unique to Mymensingh—it would have been difficult to convince anyone that he really was a doctor and not a goon. His eyes especially were particularly bovine, the sort of eyes that do not really go very well with a masculine face. Perhaps that’s why, precisely because of the softness of the eyes, the hardness of his body was never immediately apparent.

  CS seemed to have forgotten everything—that she had a husband who could have come back any day, that he could have nurtured dreams of settling down as a happy family with his wife and son. She was not worried about Humayun, she was concerned only about M and whether he truly loved her. She would ask me what I thought about whether he loved her, although I had no clue about it whatsoever. I had only met the man once when CS had introduced us and he had abruptly cut off her introduction with ‘Oh yes, I know her’. With an all-knowing sideways glance at me and a passing remark—‘Dr Rajab Ali is your father, isn’t he’—he had looked away to glance at CS’s face and then again at a piece of paper in his hand; a mere scrap but it had been so very interesting to him at that moment. CS had been smiling sweetly while beads of sweat clung to his forehead; he should have wiped them away but he hadn’t. While I could never be certain if M truly had any feelings for CS, their affair gradually spread beyond the confines of the office. CS’s footsteps frequently began to find their way to Abakash and M’s red motorcycle routinely began to trample the grass on the field.

  In the beginning their conversations would take place in our living room—all their arguments, bellyaches, anger, laughter, tears, jokes, fights and meeting plans for the next day. Soon, M’s motorcycle found its destructive way right up to the field of the housing cooperative of Agricultural University where CS lived, putting the grass there through the same torture and crushing the life out of it for good. By then their relationship had become unabashedly sexual. M would return home from her quarter late in the night. Her mother would usually be in the next room, a silent witness to everything, the roar of the motorcycle as well as their cries of pleasure. She had never interfered in her daughter’s life and her daughter too had categorically told her that she was no longer interested in any physical intimacy with Humayun; that her husband had never been able to sexually satisfy her. CS had given me a blow-by-blow account of her husband’s performance in bed—he would climb atop her and be done even before she had time to grasp what was happening. CS was no longer willing to waste her body on Humayun.

  Even after Humayun’s return to the country for good, her affair with M continued. M kept visiting their house and CS could not help getting close to him, joking and laughing with him and whispering in his ear with her husband right in front of them. Try as she might she could not keep her fiery passion for M a secret and her desire would reveal itself brazenly irrespective of who was with them. At night she would go back to her husband’s bed and they would sleep beside each other like siblings; let alone Humayun touching her, even a passing shadow of his hand on her body would trigger her anger and exasperation.

  Soon after, Humayun left to set up a dental clinic in Rajshahi. Such was her obsession with M that CS was not willing to expend even a passing thought on him. M had promised her that he would leave his wife and marry her; CS had believed him. What she had not known about was his rather decent relationship with his simple, god-fearing wife Shireen, also a doctor, and that he had another doctor, Anu, on the side as his mistress. He exploited three women every day telling each of them that he loved them, while CS failed to recognize the one single kernel of truth in all this—that he loved only himself. I had come to find out about M from Yasmin who had heard all this from her classmate Milan, M’s younger brother. Was there any better proof than that? Once, Milan had even met CS and on hearing this M had flown into a screaming rage. ‘Why did you go to meet her? She’s a bad woman. She would make a pass at you too.’ This was who M was, someone who made promises of love to CS while calling her names behind her back.

  I warned CS, asked her to control herself. I told her M didn’t love her, that he only wanted to exploit her.

  ‘But he told me he loves me,’ she protested.

  ‘He lied to you,’ I countered.

  CS never lied and so it was unfathomable to her that other people did.

  ‘He sleeps with you, then goes to Anu’s house to have sex with her, and then goes back to sleep with his wife Shireen.’

  ‘M has told me that he is not sexually involved with anyone else other than me.’

  Eventually, CS set out to find the truth. M had sworn on the Quran that he had nothing to do with Anu. Let alone speak to her, he had claimed they did not even run into each other. Although CS did not believe in the Quran, M did and she was convinced that a believer would never lie in the name of the holy book. One fine day CS decided to do something outlandish. Donning a black burqa she took a bus to the Muktagacha Health Centre where M and Anu used to work. Standing in the queue with the other patients she kept an eye on the pair from behind the veil, observing their laughter and banter. The objective was not simply to observe them; it was as much about a surprise reveal. Reaching M and Anu, CS abruptly ripped off her veil in front of a flabbergasted M. Their relationship should have perhaps ended right then, but it didn’t. M managed to grovel and snivel his way back into CS’s confidence.

  What I could not come to terms with was how much CS had changed—the same girl who used to watch every step and fret about the smallest things! While doctors our age were busy preparing for the FCPS exam, stayin
g up nights to study, CS remained completely unperturbed by it. She had stopped eating and one could see it progressively taking a toll on her body, her beautiful face marked by dark lines. She used to have a hearty laugh and loved making other people smile with her sharp sense of humour. Instead she would sit around like a tree felled by the storm, her vacant eyes staring fixedly at the paint peeling off the walls and occasionally weeping desperately for M. The resolute and self-confident girl I had known was allowing herself to be abused by a dishonest gold-digger. Meanwhile, M had opened a new chamber by the river. He had also employed rickshaw-pullers and local touts at the Gudaraghat jetty to prey on patients who travelled from the villages to the city in search of doctors. These hapless patients were brought to his chamber and there he prescribed them a series of unnecessary blood, stool and urine tests, simply to siphon a lot of money off them. CS knew about everything but still chose to remain silent. Neither was she concerned about all that people were saying about her and everything she was doing. All she wanted, at the expense of everything if need be, was M. M, for his part, had kept deferring his promised divorce from his wife Shireen for well over a year. Did CS not know anything? She must have known that he had been lying to her, that he would never leave his wife for her! I felt nothing but annoyance at her senseless love for the man.