by Ratan Ghosh, W.B, Bharat

 

 

‘Hello Ma…!

Can you hear me?

Am I audible to you?

Perhaps, you won’t see me. It is ruined! entirely ruined! Many of my friends fled this evening. I don’t know where are they? but I couldn’t…Mrs. Jennings is with me. I couldn’t leave her alone. I am here in the HDU. Yet, we are safe. Don’t know how long we can survive? Just a few yards ahead of our hospital a terrible explosion darkened the whole area. We are just fortunate enough but we don’t know when another Missile is coming down to ruin us all. After a long struggle I got this mobile phone from the HOD of my department. He didn’t leave. He is still here.  I am allowed to talk for five minutes. The entire area is dark, full of dust and poisons.  I will call you again from this number if I survive. Just wait for my call. One of my room-mates has taken away my mobile phone inadvertently. Utter fear disrupted the entire city.  After the missile attack they fled like the defeated soldiers. I don’t know where they are now. They told me they were leaving for Indian Embassy. I could leave these beds, especially bed no twenty Nine but my heart pained and my legs seemed unwilling. I saw the helpless faces looking at me from the cabin beds. They are scared of death, Ma. They know they will die before their death. I can’t leave them, Ma. I will sleep with them and die. They are innocent. They are innocent, Ma.’

A student of a medical college was talking to his mother in a single breath. She was speechless and her throat was trembling in fear. After a long pause the lady started weeping and said in her fearful voice,  

‘Oh my goodness! What will I do now, Baba?” She started wailing and wiping her tears. “He is worried! he is worried, Baba! He is too shocked to overcome the shock. The news headlines nonplused him. Do you want to talk to your father?’

Yes, Ma,

She called her husband aloud. He was lying in the next room. He was too shocked to respond in her call. He ran fast to her and took the receiver,

Hello Baba, are you okay?  Are you okay, Baba? I couldn’t think of anything except you throughout the day. I waited for your call only. I tried to connect to the Indian Embassy but it was hopeless. Are you okay? 

Yea, I am okay now.  I have no time to talk long. Don’t worry, Baba. I will come back as soon the war is over.’ 

She took the receiver from her husband and began, 

 Hello Baba, I won’t eat anything till I get your call again. I am waiting for your call. We are worried; quite worried Baba.  

‘Don’t worry, Ma.’ he replied in his all-time mild voice. I am quite okay. 

‘But, Baba, my tears forgot to stop since my eyes fell upon the news channels. I couldn’t move my eyes from the Television Screen. I am sitting by the phone receiver and I feel my throat is trembling. Your father too was as speechless as a deaf and dumb. Hope, he will take a mouthful of rice now. Baba, we aren’t hopeless. The blessing of Lord Krishna is always with us. He saved you from this imminent danger and I pray Him to save you. He won’t be so cruel. He will never allow to drown my son, my heart in the dustbin of hungry warmongers. He is with us. He will save you! He will save us all! Just pray to Him. He is always merciful to all of us. He will listen to my prayer. He can’t be so unkind to us. Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna!’ 

She was sobbing. Her throat was trembling in fear. She was somehow able to control the fathom of her deep cry. The call from her only son, her last hope, added fuel of emotion to her heart. Her eyes fixed upon the news channels again. He felt that his mother was sobbing. His throat too stopped for a while since his eyes fell upon the fainted faces of the hospital beds. The earth stooped down for a while. He forgot all things except the eyes lying on the death beds. He knew where he was standing; he was standing between life and death. This might be the last call. The Giant angry missile might befall and take them away in a world of dust. The dark heavy and suffocating air already fell upon the hospital to seize the rest. He visualized the face of his old parents in them. He moaned,

Okay Ma, after a long pause.

‘Time is over now. I can talk no more. It’s dark here; full of dark and bleak. Nothing is visible even from two yards distance. Smoke darkened the roads, overshadowed the trees and grass and almost engulfed the windows outside. The electricity died out of fear. We don’t know when it will wink and be available. Sir may abuse me, Ma.  Now I have to drop off this call! I may call you! I might call you in the late hour of this night! I am stepping to Mrs. Jennings. She is of your age. She is panting desperately. Perhaps, I have to hike the Oxygen level. I might call you…!’

Roni dropped off the call and ran to bed no-21

Ranatosh Chatterjee, people call him Roni is a bright, talented and soft hearted medical aspirant came to Ukraine to study medicine with full energy and ambition. He came to fulfil the dreams, his parents weaved for decades. He was weeping and calling to his age old mother standing in the gate of life and death. He is like Everyman looking for someone to accompany him to the road of heaven but none was there with him except the good works he was doing in the HDU of Bukovinian State Medical University on the mid night of 25th February, 2022 when the entire area around him was darkened, disrupted and disordered in a second. He didn’t know what was about to happen. All his intern friends fled from the hospital soon the Missile dropped and ruined the nearby busy buildings but his heart denied to follow their steps.  

‘Hello, Mrs. Jennings, let me hike the oxygen level. I am with you. Don’t worry. Everything will be normal soon. Don’t lose hope, Mrs. Jennings. Hope, you are as confident as before. One who served for years in many important national and International sensitive areas can’t be hopeless, I believe. I am not leaving you all. You see! Just you see the rest.  They are not so scared of the situation’

Mrs. Jennings seemed speechless. Her cold, silent and fearful eyes read the spirit of a young medical Intern for a while; the spirit of an Indian young man. Tears drenched her cheeks. Her lips were trembling like the lips of an old, lean and thin helpless man. Roni’s eyes noticed her tears but he couldn’t read the story behind them. They touched him but not his sense of responsibility. He slowly stepped to the rest of the patients. He talked to them and poured bed full of hope with words of love. 

 ‘Don’t get worried. Nothing is happening to us. God will save us. He is with us always, my Mom told me just a minute before. War, dust, smokes and the debris of civilization are the gifts of the war but we will raise our hand again and fly like phoenix bird’

 His ever green smiling face soon healed the wounds of all the beds. But that old woman Mrs. Jennings was still weeping lying in her hospital bed. The tales of her tears remained unraveled in the darkest evening of the year. None around her could enter into the stories falling with her drops of tears. Roni’s priority he learnt from ethics as an intern was to normalize the war time situation of the emergency unit he visited. He rushed to the rest of the beds. The debris full of smokes, dust, and darkness visible outside of the hospital couldn’t crumble the spirit of this young intern. The darkness of the smokes and the fear of hungry missile stooped down before the service of a humane heart. His smile was as fresh as the morning dew.  Patients forgot missile attack, disruption and death when he smiled.

 Mrs. Jennings was still weeping. No one even Roni could know why she was weeping. What else she could do lying on her bed? She recalled those years when she worked as the chief advisor of many foreign policies of her government. She recalled how she wrote a speech for her country’s Ambassador on Kashmir issues in UNO. She recalled the days when her country condemned nuclear test of a country like India. She was saddened to recall the time when Ukraine signed a treaty of arms with a country promoting terrorism for decades. She saw the smokes approaching to engulf the whole except that smiling face of Roni working for hours in a valley of death.

‘Mrs. Jennings how are you feeling now?’ he asked coming from other patients. She was still in drowsiness. It seemed as if the young intern hypnotized her. She was still walking in her memory lane. Her tears were dripping down from her cheeks. This astonished him and he looked to and fro. He didn’t know how to manage this emotional situation. 

‘Mrs. Jennings you are weeping still? Oh God! Stop weeping Mrs. Jennings! We are now out of danger. It is said that the UNO is interfering this issue. Our Prime-Minister is requested to talk to the president of Russia over this issue. Here lies the hope. Hope, tomorrow will be a different morning. We will live again in a war free earth. War gives us nothing except the debris of life’ he said.

Mrs. Jennings was unmoved. She was walking in her memory lane. She saw how the drops of her tears telling the story of a decades old culture in front of her eyes. She saw another world of humanity in a medical intern who was taking care of her when the dust of war was dashing the soil of Ukraine. She wanted to kiss him but the shadows of invisible sin stopped her. She wished to whisper in him what lesson she learnt that evening but she couldn’t. Memory lane slowly began falling from her tired eyes. She all of a sudden held his hand and dragged him to sit by her for a few minutes. He was quite surprised at such behavior of an old woman. He sat close by her. He took his handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped her cheeks and face like a true son. He put his palms upon her forehead and began caressing like a son to his mother. He felt his mother was lying in his arms. She envisioned, how Jesus was sitting so close to her. The son of heaven was caressing her. Dust and smokes of that evening slowly died down in the light of love. Tears touched him and told him to emerge like phoenix bird from the debris of war.