Lost In Transition

Jamal stared blankly at the hundreds of heads ahead of him, wondering where to begin his search. The sweat-soaked sweater and his greasy palms with sweat and mud made him quite uncomfortable. The chilly November air wasn’t comforting him. He felt like he was on the world’s laziest, endless railway platform, waiting for a stupendously delayed train.   

His lean figure stood still against the wall of the common hall precincts. At the other end of the hall are a few children fighting over two bun loaves and rolling on the dirt-sand floor. It wouldn’t be easy to wriggle through the pool of humans without stepping on a few here and there. On another day, picking up a fight with anyone would have been a regular affair, but today he did not have the heart to indulge in it. He took a deep breath and stepped down from the footpath to move towards his right. That’s his lucky side.

The sudden drop in his inches barely allowed him to see above the shoulders. He adjusted his mended tote bag onto his shoulder and walked straight up until he touched the last queue manager. His eyes rolled sideways with a tense and yet hopeful mien. He looked around to see if anyone’s watching over and crossed under the yellow belt. The yellow queue manager was a namesake boundary between those who arrived at the shelter last evening and earlier than that. The congregation of so many in the shelter home was unforeseeable but innocuous in the beginning. Who knew the novel virus could open a Pandora’s Box and was capable of affecting the lives of the strongest and weakest alike. 

This side of the camp was less tumultuous. Still, humans of all shapes, sizes, and races were sitting on the grass, the pedestrian walkways, on the fountain ring, and wherever they could find a place till eyes could stretch, waiting for their turn to get out and feel normal again. The mixed-up smell of medicines, the sweat, the stored food, and the dust were becoming increasingly repugnant. 

It felt like a war without borders. 

He walked briskly towards the tin-shed stop-gap shelter’s office. The officer in charge had come today after five days to map and distribute the essential supplies of the home and to record cases of infection for quarantine. Drums of food supplies stacked along the temporary wall of the office were ready to be handed over to all the sheltered people. Distribution was just midway, and two groups of boys started fighting like cats and dogs over the supplies. 

Jamal crawled through the scrimmage over the minuscule weekly supplies of eatables and landed on to the desk of Mr. Jatav. Strange faces with weary looks and even the famished children watched Jamal trying to make sense of the hullabaloo.

‘My mother’s name is Savita. Around 50. She wore a grey salwar kameez. She has been missing since the last Sunday. Help me find her.’ Jamal said to Jatav.

Eager to get out of the premises than to entertain queries, the man glanced at Jamal’s mournful eyes and reluctantly replied, ‘Check the list on the door. All sent to quarantine are listed there.’ 

Jamal scampered to see the list stuck on the temporary wall. The piece of paper had got stripped from the middle in the scrimmage. He narrowed his eyebrows and peered to search through whatever was left. Savita’s name wasn’t on the list. Jamal closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. 

He turned to the officer and said, ‘Name not mentioned.’ Officer responded, ‘then she must be somewhere on the campus. Or else she must have run away leaving you here.’ Jamal’s face grew red with this indignation. He knew too well that Savita wouldn’t have left him. ‘Her heart of gold was difficult to fathom by lesser mortals,’ he murmured to himself.

Bewildered Jamal took a few quick steps, his speed increasing with every couple of steps and rechecking every nook and corner he knew in the shelter. The shelter had been the premise of an erstwhile government college that sprawled across 15 acres during its glorious days. It wasn’t the area but the number of rooms and nooks that would have to be checked bothered Jamal. He didn’t have time. If he failed to find Savita by tonight, he may never find her again among this influx and outflux of patients. 

He checked the medical room, the lobby, the dormitories, the washrooms, the dying garden, and wherever his memory could take him. He checked once, twice, thrice, till he lost count.

‘Did you see a woman in her fifties, wearing a yellow-white salwar kameez?’ He asked almost every available soul on the compound. ‘Is anyone lying inside unconscious?’ Jamal checked with women outside the ladies’ washroom. Jamal didn’t rest his foot until late in the night. 

Hunger pangs and angst were competing within Jamal. He rolled his eyes till the horizon in vain, put his hand inside his bag, and foraged to find the last pack of biscuits he had saved. 

The night descended a strange silence. The mournings of the morning, clashes of the day dissipated into the dark. The shelter was overburdened and didn’t have enough beds to accommodate all. Many lay on the thin sheets they could secure on the floor. Jamal found a place to sit in the passage, opposite the lobby.

A couple of meters away from where he sat wondering what’s next, he could see a little boy asleep, oblivious of the mess, with his head on his mother’s lap. The mother watching over her baby all through. 

He squatted on the pavement, folded his arms over his knees, and leaned his face to the left. His gaze fixed on the little boy. Tears rolled down his tanned cheeks as he went down his memory lane, revisiting how Savita had saved him from a bus stand and raised him as her son. Had he not been angry with Savita, had he not left her alone in this crowded place, this moment would not have happened. His heart was steel, weighed down by the evocation.

He had lost the only mother he knew. His heart vacuumed to depths. ‘Will I ever find her again? I will never be angry with her again. God! Help me.’ He wished he had prayed more often so that God could answer his prayers quickly. He could barely move now. Jamal waited for the dawn, never so eagerly. 

The bright morning sun touched Jamal’s swollen eyes and broke his sleep. He didn’t know for how long was he asleep. He rubbed his eyes, and through the corner of his half-opened eyes, he saw some men and women flock towards the main gate. Hope flickered in his heart. He sprang to his feet and ran with all his might towards the heavy metallic entrance gate. 

Several ambulances, buses were parked outside the gate. He saw health workers, wrapped from head to toe, in some kind of protective gear, calling out names to take them to quarantine. He stood at a little distance from the gate, with his fingers crossed. His eyes moved rapidly scanning the faces at the gate. His shoulders drooped with every minute’s despair.

While he waited in vain to see Savita again, he caught a glimpse of the woman from last night. Her child was not with her. She was fighting with all her strength and screaming that she wasn’t unwell. ‘I came here because you called for my name. There must be someone else named Babli who is unwell’ she shouted. The authorities seemed to have turned a deaf ear. They were convinced that this was the Babli they were looking for and least bothered to verify the facts. 

The hullabaloo started making sense to him. On relentless requests of the woman, one of the workers repeated the name ‘Babli’ on the microphone but not one surfaced. 

Jamal found his way to find his mother. 

The workers repeated the name ‘Babli’ again for the third time, on the microphone. Jamal walked towards the gate and said to the worker ‘I’m Babli. It took me little time to walk down.’ 

The health worker looked at him skeptically. No one could have proven it otherwise. The chaos was already too enormous to fix. 

The worker released the woman and put Jamal on the bus that would take him to the quarantine block. The woman gave a grateful look and walked away slowly towards his son. She turned around to catch a glimpse. Jamal was already on the bus, looking out of the window, untroubled.