“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.
