Johnny nodded his agreement, and Jeetendra wagged his head from side to side.
"Old Sarabai is having a first-class cure for snorings," Prabaker informed me. "She can take one very sharp pieces of bamboo, about same as long as my finger, and push it up inside of your nose.
After that, no more snoring. Bas! Kalaass!"
I sat up on the blanket, and stretched the stiffness from my back and shoulders. My face and eyes were still gritty from the fire, and I could feel that the smoke had stiffened in my hair. Lances of morning light stabbed through holes in the walls of the hut.
"What are you doing, Prabu?" I asked irritably. "How long have you been watching me sleeping?"
"No so very long, Lin. Only for the half hours or so."
"It's not polite, you know," I grumbled. "It's not nice to watch people when they're sleeping."
"I'm sorry, Lin," he said quietly. "In this India we can see everybody sleeping, at some times. And we say that the face, when it is in sleeping, is the friend of the world."
"Your face is so kind when you are sleeping, Lin," Johnny Cigar added. "I was very surprised."
"I can't begin to tell you what this means to me, guys. Can I expect to find you in the hut, every morning, when I wake up?"
"Well, if you really, really want, Lin," Prabaker offered, jumping to his feet. "But this morning we only came to tell you that your patients are ready." "My... patients?"
"Yes. Come and see."
They stood, and opened the door of the hut. Sunlight splintered into my burning eyes. I blinked, and stepped through, following the men into the brilliant, bayside morning to see a line of people squatting on the ground outside my hut. There were thirty or more of them forming a queue along the length of the lane to the first turn.
"Doctor... doctor..." people murmured and whispered when I emerged from the hut.
"Come on!" Prabaker urged, tugging at my arm.
"Come on where?"
"First to toilet," he replied, happily. "You must make a motions, isn't it? I will show you how we make a motions, into the sea, on the long cement jetty. That is where the young men and boys make their motions, every morning, into the oceans-motions into the oceans, isn't it? You just be squatting down, with your buttocks pointing on the oceans. Then you wash your good self with a shower, and you have it a happy breakfast. Then you can easily fix up all your patients. No problem."
We walked along the length of the queue. They were young and old, men and women. Their faces were cut, bruised, and swollen. Their hands were blackened, blistered, and bloody. There were arms in slings, and legs in splints. And at the first turn, I saw to my horror that the queue extended into the next lane, and was longer, much longer.
"We've got to... do something..." I mumbled. "They're all... waiting."
"No problem, waiting, Lin," Prabaker replied, airily. "The people are waiting more than one hour already. If you are not with us, they would still be waiting, but waiting for nothing only.
Waiting for nothing, that is what kills the heart of a man, isn't it? Now the people are waiting for something. Waiting for you, they are. And you are a really something, Lin-Shantaram, if you don't mind I'm saying it to your smoky face and sticking-up hairs. But first, you must make it motions, and then washing, and then breakfast. And we have to get going--some young fellows are waiting down there on the jetty, and wanting to see you make your motions."
"They what?"
"Oh yes! They are a fascinating for you. You are like a movie hero for them. They are dying to see how you will make your motions. And then, after all these things, you will return, and fix the patients, like a really hero, isn't it so?"
And in that way was my role in the slum created. If fate doesn't make you laugh, Karla said, in one of my first conversations with her, then you just don't get the joke. As a teenager I'd trained in first-aid treatment. The formal course of study had covered cuts, burns, sprains, breaks, and a wide range of diagnostic and emergency procedures. Later, I'd earned my nickname, Doc, by using my training in CPR to pull junkies out of overdoses, and save their lives. There were hundreds of people who only knew me as Doc. Many months before that morning in the slum, my friends in New Zealand had given me the first-aid kit as a going-away present. I was sure those threads-the training, the nickname, the first-aid kit, the work as unofficial doctor in the slum- were all connected in some way that was more than accident or coincidence.
