“SUN LIGHT!”

“SUN LIGHT!”

In 1925, when Andrew and his mother came to Calcutta (it was not Kolkata then!), he was only a boy of 5. When they arrived at the Howrah Junction railway station, one of the oldest and largest stations in British India, Andrew’s maternal grandfather, Mr. Watson, who served in the East India company was in attendance to see the sight of his grandson for the first time. Mr. Watson was apprehensive of how his grandson would react when he meets him for the first time. However, amidst the raucous voices of hawkers and hagglers, Mr. Watson was pleasantly taken aback when he heard little Andrew rushing towards him shouting, “Grand Paa!” Yes, the little boy had recognized him from the portraits he had been shown by his mother back home in Manchester.

Andrew’s father, Mr. Samuels, who was originally from the Scottish descent, served as a commander in the British army. However, as had happened with many European families during that time, the World War-I had left Andrew’s mother a widow. With nobody to fall back on, Andrew’s mother, Mrs. Scarlett had decided on the advice of her father, Mr. Watson to take Andrew with her and come to Calcutta where he served in the East India Company. It had been a long travel. They arrived by ship to Bombay and from Bombay it took them another 3 days to reach Calcutta by train.

A few days after arriving in Calcutta, little Andrew took ill and despite trying all the limited medicines available in those days, his condition kept on deteriorating. An Indian fakir suggested them to take Andrew to higher altitude, to a hill station with clean air which would help Andrew recover from the infectious bug he had caught while playing on the filthy streets of Calcutta.

Scarlett was a broken woman. She had recently lost her husband in a war and now she was scared if she would lose Andrew too. She was ready to even climb the Mt. Everest if that would save her son from what was appearing to be an incurable illness.

Sensing no other alternative, Mr. Watson permitted his daughter Scarlett to take Andrew to Darjeeling, a pristine hill station 600 km to the North of Calcutta where he had a few friends who would take care of them.

Mrs. Scarlett could not have found a better place than Mr. Holding’s wood house on the top of a little hill which presented the most alluring view of the valleys and the mountains. Mr. and Mrs. Holding who ran a small English medium missionary school in Darjeeling were good friends with Mr. Watson before they left Calcutta and arrived in Darjeeling 10 years back. When they came to know that Scarlett and her son were coming to their place, they were more than happy to treat them as a part of their family. Mr. and Mrs. Holding had no children of their own and when Scarlett arrived, they started treating her as their own daughter and Andrew, as their grandson.  

It was almost miraculous that Andrew began recovering slowly, his fever started receding and soon he was up on his feet playing football in the warm winter sunshine in the tea gardens of Darjeeling. Was it the air of Darjeeling or was it the natural course of the disease which helped Andrew recover? Andrew’s mother thought it was the former rather than the latter and she was soon in love with Darjeeling. It was hard not to fall in love with Darjeeling.  She immediately wrote a letter to her father Mr. Watson informing her of improvement in Andrew’s health and told him of her plans to stay back in Darjeeling for some more time. Scarlett, who was a lover of literature would always carry her books wherever she went. It was no different in Darjeeling. Every morning, she would read Andrew a story as they would snugly sip hot tea sitting on the steps by the verandah with sun kissing their cold feet and the giant Kanchenjunga offering a golden smile in the distant foreground.

As days passed into weeks and weeks passed into months, many new books arrived and Scarlett took up the job of English teacher in the school run by Holdings. With an excellent teacher like Scarlett at the job, many parents who were earlier skeptical, started sending their wards to the school in Darjeeling from as far as Calcutta. Far away from the hustling bustling British Indian city of Calcutta, the little hill station of Darjeeling was the closest British families living in Calcutta could provide their kids of the European weather- clean air and cold climate.

Scarlett and Andrew took to Darjeeling like fish to water and it was only later that they realized Darjeeling was going to be their home for the rest of their lives. As years rolled on, Andrew went to Kolkata and got his masters in literature from University of Calcutta and began writing short stories for some reputed magazines in India. In the years that followed, India gained independence from British rule, many families left the Indian shores and also took away the students from the school. Holdings too decided it was time to shut the school and leave for England but Scarlett had different ideas. She had nothing to go back to England and decided that she would take over from Holdings and continue to run the school. Andrew who had now grown up to be a young man in his 30s had grown passion for writing and tea plantation. With the money that his grandfather, Mr. Watson had left him in his will, he purchased the ownership of a large tea estate in Darjeeling and decided to help the locals in developing the flourishing business by providing employment and modernizing the tea plantation industry. Andrew decided not to marry and dedicated his life for the upliftment of tribal communities living in and around Darjeeling while Scarlett decided to continue with her mission to educate the locals. Her classes were unique. They had no classrooms but only open garden beyond the verandah of their home, no walls but only tall pine trees all around, no blackboards but only Kanchenjunga in front of their eyes. And she would sit in the center with a book in her hand, reading it out loudly to the inquisitive pairs of ears around; Shakespeare one day, Shaw the other and Tolstoy the next, Charles Dickens the next and so on..

It went on like this for many years. Mrs. Scarlett gingerly stepped into old age and with the wisdom of all the years behind her, she grew into a beautiful old lady.

One day, when Andrew was working in the fields and his mother Scarlett was reading stories in her open-air classroom, she suddenly stopped speaking mid-sentence and fell to the ground. Afraid, one of the kids called Andrew out from the fields. When Andrew arrived, he saw his mother lying supine with a Charles Dickens book by her side, palms open to the sky and tender sunlight playing on her smiling face. He checked her pulse, her heart had stopped beating. Tears rolled down his cheek.

Tears roll down his cheek once more as he reminisces the scene now lying on his bed in one of the most advanced intensive care units of the country.

It is Christmas of 2010. Andrew had a heart attack 3 days ago, and his condition has since been deteriorating. He had lost orientation for some hours and in a state of dizziness had tried removing the intravenous line following which he has been kept under restraint by tying his hands with bandage to the cold steel rail of his bed.

Since this morning, he has been feeling severely breathless. It is becoming difficult for him to utter even a single word. He squirms on his bed as he realizes his lungs can take no more. The pulse oximeter beeps loudly as his oxygen saturation levels begin to fall. A nurse comes running to his bed with his file. She sees Andrew whispering something through the oxygen mask on his face.

“Some light!”, she hears him say. Frantically, she keeps his file on his bed and rushes to the switchboard to switch the lights on.

The monitor beeps once more.

Supine position, windows closed, an ICU room instead of the open verandah, a bed instead of the comfortable green grass, restrained hands instead of palms open to skies, an oxygen mask on the face instead of a smile, an artificial LED light flickering on his face and his case file instead of Charles Dickens by his side.

Andrew has breathed his last.

“Sun light!”, were his last words.

-         DR. DEVASHISH PALKAR.