Chapter 1 - Epidemic
1896, Bhagur, Nashik tehsil, Bombay Presidency
Thirteen-year-old Tatyarao had been at the window all afternoon. Now as twilight fell, he showed no signs of moving from his perch.
The screams from the opposite house grew louder and louder with each hour, and the falling darkness increased his dread. The lamplighter had stopped coming two days ago; he had been stricken by the plague too. Tatya shivered.
Annarao, his father, had brought him back from Nasik. It was just three hours by horse-cart.
“I do not feel you are safe anymore in Nasik with the spreading plague,” his father had exhorted him and Babarao, his older brother. He had also sent for their sister, Maina, to join them, as her town an hour away by horse-cart was also stricken with the plague. His youngest, six-year-old Bal, would be delighted with everyone back home.
Tatya was only too happy to come back home. While his father had sent him away to Nasik to go to the most prestigious school there, he had been sorely disappointed at the quality of his fellow students. They were more interested in cricket than in books, and would rather eat a live frog than read a newspaper.
Babarao had fit right in, however, and Tatya had been glad for his tutelage as they played marbles on the street and roamed the narrow winding lanes of the city. As fun as it was to spend afternoons with a bunch of rowdy boys, he had felt less and less like himself and had been eager to return to Bhagur. It had also been an eternity since he had spent time with Maina. All of eighteen, she had been married a year ago and was busy with her own household, and rarely came to visit. But most of all, he had missed Yashodabai, Babarao’s wife. Barely fifteen, she had been the closest thing to a mother he had had in a long time.
But their family reunion was not to be. Within a month of Annarao’s exhortations, the plague had reached Bhagur too.
That morning, Maina arrived. And then the Dandekars across the street had found a dead rat.
“Must be a cat” they said breezily, as they cremated it. But at this point, everyone knew.
The nights had been wracked by screams and wails all week, as neighbors and relatives suffered with the fevers, pains, and unquenchable thirst of the plague. And today, the grandmother in the Dandekar household was stricken.
“I ought to make a will,” Tatyarao thought, watching the Dandekar daughter-in-law run herself ragged tending to her mother-in-law through the bars of the window, “So if I die of the plague, my family will know to contact my friend Govind, who can publish my poems. Maybe they will be worth more after I’m dead.”
His heart heavy with fear, he awaited the comforting presence of his father.
Annarao, against all advice, had been going to the local hospital and helping tend to the plague victims. The hospital was very short-handed. A big chunk of the able-bodied in Bhagur had been killed or weakened by the plague, had fled, or had barricaded themselves at home.
The Sessions Court where Annarao practiced as an advocate was sparse these days. Cases mostly involved those who had been arrested for not registering the plague deaths in their family, and not following orders on staying in the segregation camps, or any of the activities that had newly been designated crimes by the Epidemic Diseases Act.
The segregation camps were poorly maintained, with tiny, ill-ventilated quarters. It was difficult to find medical care, or supplies there. People feared being consigned to them; everyone knew of someone who went in perfectly fine but died there of the plague. Hence, few joined the camps voluntarily after a family member had died of the disease. More often than not, the officers from the newly set up Plague Commission showed up at funerals, arrested the head of the household for not registering the death, and then dragged away the mourning family members, often stricken with the plague themselves, to segregation camps. Their humble mud houses would get dug up in the name of looking for dead rats, and be rendered unliveable. Women would be stripped publicly to check for signs of the plague.
Annarao had fought a handful of such cases, trying to get redressal for destroyed homes and lighter sentences for transgressors, before he had to care for a sick client whose entire family had been wiped out in the epidemic. When he had taken him to the hospital, he found it woefully understaffed, with wailing patients getting stronger and stronger doses of morphine to control them, instead of medicine. He had taken off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and worked alongside the two overworked doctors, a handful of barely-trained young nurses, and orderlies. And he had gone back day after day.
He would come home tired and angry, and sit in the front yard, away from everyone, and talk to them only from afar. Tatya had been looking forward to his father’s animated renditions of the stories of Emperor Shivaji and the Peshwas of Poona, but his father had only smiled wryly when he had asked.
He only made an exception for Bal, his six-year-old son. Bal always clung to his father whenever he was home, and Annarao indulged him. After his wife had passed away, everyone urged him to remarry, but he was determined to be both mother and father to his children. Bal curled up next to him in bed every night, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
But this evening, Annarao had only one thing on his mind. He washed outside hurriedly, and strode straight up the stairs, past the tea Yashodabai was bringing to him and shut his door.
“Tatya!” his voice boomed from upstairs.
Something was not right, Tatya thought.
“Coming!” he called as he went up the stairs.
Ordinarily, he would be worried about his father finding out that he was eating jilebis from the street vendor in the market. But the wailing, the dead rat, and the darkness had him on full alert.
“Yes, father?” he said.
“Tatya,” Annarao said, his voice quivering, “My thighs ache.”
“No!” Tatya said before the thought had even registered.
The plague had finally stricken their household.
“Yes, Tatya,” Annarao said, tears streaming down his face, “It appears that I, too, have the plague.”
“No, father!” Tatya said, crying himself. His mind uncomfortably harked back to when his mother had said she felt tired as she swept the house. Not long after, she had fallen unconscious. She had not woken up.
“No, my boy, please don’t cry. You must be brave for your brothers and sister,” Annarao said.
Tatya didn’t need to be told that. Babarao had been distraught when their mother hadn’t woken up. He, Tatyarao, had to run to the neighbors for help. Only when Annarao had returned from work had he allowed himself to cry. In moments like that, feelings didn’t matter. Only duty did.
He felt nothing.
“Tell me what I need to do, father,” he said, his tears drying on his cheeks.
“Absolutely do not let Bal come in here,” Annarao said.
“Okay, father.”
“Do not give me water, no matter how much I beg, order, or implore you,” Annarao said.
Tatya didn’t know why they were not supposed to give plague patients water. But now was not the time to ask why.
“Consider it done, father.”
Tatya went downstairs. In a quiet voice, he informed Maina, Babarao, Yashodabai, and Maina’s husband Bhaskarrao. They were aghast but immediately busied themselves. Babarao opened all the windows. Yashodabai and Maina went into the kitchen and busied themselves making poultices for pain, and compresses for fever.
“Father?” Bal called as he toddled up the stairs, “Father!”
“Bal!” Tatya thundered, “Where are you going? Come here. You are not to go to father! He is sick and resting!”
“Bhau,” Bal said, his voice a tiny squeak, “My thighs hurt. I want water.”
Tatya’s eyes bulged in horror.
“Vahini!” he cried, addressing his sister-in-law, “You take care of Bal. I will tend to father!”
“Bhau!” He said to Babarao, “You please rest now. Take over from me in the wee hours when I tire and fall asleep.”
Babarao obediently went into his bedroom and lay down.
“Mai,” Tatya now turned to Maina, “Father asked you here so you may escape the plague. It is not a good idea for you to stay. It is still early. If you leave now, you will reach home before it gets properly dark.”
“Mehna,” he said, addressing his brother-in-law, “please go to the hospital on your way, and tell them father is sick. They will send us medicines as soon as they can.”
Bhaskarrao nodded. He and Maina picked up the bags they had not yet unpacked and left.
With his family busy, Tatya trudged back up the stairs with a poultice and a cool compress in his hands.
“Water!” Annarao was calling, “I am so thirsty! Give me water now!”
It was kicking in already, Tatya thought, appalled at the pace of this disease.
“No, father, please lay down,” Tatya said firmly, putting the poultice and compress down.
“His father lunged at him, delirious with pain and thirst.
“Bhau!” he called out to Babarao, as he attempted to hold back his tall, strong father with his thin wiry arms.
Babarao ran up the stairs, and the brothers managed to get their father to lie down, and secure him to the teakwood bed with some old dhotis. They watched helplessly as Annarao gnashed his teeth and thrashed his arms as hard as his feverish body would allow.
Tatya put on the compress, and massaged his father’s arms and legs, hoping hopelessly to ease his pain.
Annarao’s thrashing and groans grew smaller over the next hour. Tatya fell asleep sitting up, his hands still gripping his father’s feet.
A mosquito bit him awake. Tatya shook himself alert. It was still dark outside, though wailing still rent the air. His father, however, lay still. Too still.
“Father,” he said, touching his forehead. It was very cool.
“Father,” he said again, feeling under his father’s nostrils.
He felt nothing.
He hesitated to touch his father’s chest.
He closed his eyes and chanted the Durga Saptashati for courage.
He breathed. Okay. They couldn’t allow the Plague Commission’s officials to drag them away to a segregation camp. They would all die there. What Bal needed was a good hospital.
They had to get to their uncle’s in Nasik. They could stay in his outhouse, while one of them stayed with Bal at the hospital.
They ought not to take a horse-cart. Not only did they not want to spread the disease to a poor driver, but that might also be illegal with the new laws. They had to walk.
But they couldn’t walk very far at once. They would have to rest at the Kali temple, and then at the Shiva temple on the way. If they couldn’t make it to the Shiva temple before nightfall, they would have to stop at the open ground close to the cemetery where wolves howled all night. He shuddered for a second.
They also had to be wary of dacoits. Yashodabai ought to give Maina all her jewelry for safekeeping.
But first, they had to keep the funeral quick and small. Bhaskarrao needed to be sent to register the death immediately.
Death.
He gingerly put his small, pale palm on his father’s chest.
He felt nothing.
Thank you for reading this first chapter. Writing about famous historical figures in their vulnerable moments is challenging to do well. Which is why I would love your help with it.
Inauthentic depictions of cultural details can be quite jarring to read. I don’t know Marathi language or culture too well, so if you do, please comment with your thoughts on how to make this more accurate and authentic.