The Hungry Tide - Amitav Ghosh [62]
Leading Kanai through the hospital’s entrance, Moyna ushered him to a door. Then, speaking in a voice hushed with pride, she announced, “And this is the Maternity Ward.”
Hospitals were not, as a rule, of much interest to Kanai, but this was an exception: he could not help being impressed by the impeccable maintenance of the wards. Every part of the hospital seemed to be spotlessly clean and even though it had only forty beds, it was, for its size, well equipped. The equipment had come from donors, Moyna explained, some Indian and others foreign. There was a diagnostic laboratory, an x-ray room and even a dialysis machine. On the top floor lived two resident doctors, one of whom had been in Lusibari for ten years. The other was a new arrival who had just completed his residency requirements at the prestigious medical college of Vellore. They were both, Moyna said, prominent and muchbeloved figures on the islands. Every patient who came to the hospital made it a point to leave an offering at their door — a coconut, a few kewra fruit, a fish wrapped in leaves, sometimes a live chicken or two.
Such was the hospital’s reputation, Moyna said, that people now came there from great distances. Many who could have traveled more conveniently to Canning or Kolkata chose to come to Lusibari instead: the hospital was known to provide, at a nominal fee, a standard of care that could not be had elsewhere even at exorbitant rates. This traffic, in turn, had led to the growth of a small service industry around the hospital’s perimeter. Over the years, a number of teashops, guest houses and stands for cycle-vans had taken root and flourished. Directly or indirectly the hospital now provided employment for the majority of Lusibari’s inhabitants.
On the upper floor Moyna pointed out Nirmal’s single contribution to the hospital: a large ward specially equipped to withstand cyclones. The windows had thick wooden shutters and the doors were reinforced with steel. Although he had rarely interfered in anything to do with the Trust, when the hospital was under construction Nirmal had taken the trouble to find out if any anti-cyclone measures had been provided for. He was horrified to learn that they hadn’t: did nobody know about the tide country’s history of catastrophic cyclones? Did they think that Lusibari was the one place where history would not repeat itself ? It was at his insistence that this ward was built.
From a veranda on the second floor, Moyna pointed to the stalls and clusters of huts that ringed the compound. “Look over there, Kanai-babu,” she said. “Look at the shops and stalls that have come up around the hospital. See how many there are?”
Kanai was touched, moved even, by Moyna’s evident pride in the institution. “Have you ever brought Fokir here?” he said.
She answered this with a small shake of her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
She pulled a face. “He doesn’t like to come — he feels out of place.”
“In the hospital, you mean? Or in Lusibari?”
“Both,” she said. “He doesn’t like it here.”
“And why is that?”
“Things are different here than they were in the village.”
“In what way?” Kanai asked.
She shrugged. “Over there he was always with Tutul — our son,” she said. “Because of my work with the Trust I was out of the house a lot, so Tutul was with him on the river all day. But after we came here I had to put a stop to that.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because Tutul has to go to school, doesn’t he?” she said sharply. “I don’t want him growing up catching crabs. Where’s the future in that?”
“But that’s what Fokir does.”
“Yes, but for how long?” she said. “Mashima says that in fifteen years the fish will all be gone, what with the new nets and all.”
“What new nets?”
“These new nylon nets, which they use to catch chingrir meen — the spawn