Three Thousand Stitches Read online

  My father held the baby upside down, gently slapped her and instantly, the baby’s strong cries filled the room. When the men outside heard the baby cry, they opened the door and instructed him, ‘Doctor, get ready to leave. We will drop you back.’

  My father cleaned up his patient, gathered his instruments and packed his bag. The old lady began cleaning the room. He looked at the troubled young girl and said, ‘Take the baby and run away from this place if you can find it in your heart to do so. Go to Pune and look for Pune Nursing School. Find a clerk there called Gokhale and tell him that RH has sent you. He will help you get admission in a nursing course. In time, you will become a nurse and lead an independent life, with the ability to take care of your own needs. Raise your daughter with pride. Don’t you dare leave her behind or else she will end up suffering like you. That’s my most sincere advice for you.’

  ‘But, doctor, how will I go to Pune? I don’t even know where it is!’

  ‘Go to the nearest city of Belgaum and then from there, you can take a bus to Pune.’

  My father said goodbye to her and came out of the room.

  An old man handed him one hundred rupees. ‘Doctor, these are your fees for helping the girl with the delivery. I warn you—don’t say a word about what happened here today. If you do, I will learn of it and your head will no longer be attached to the rest of your body.’

  My father nodded, suddenly overtaken by a sense of calm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I think I forgot my scissors in the room. I will need it tomorrow at the clinic.’

  He turned around and went back inside and saw the young girl gazing at the sleeping newborn with tears in her eyes. When the old lady’s back was turned towards him, my father handed over the money to the girl. ‘This is all I have with me right now,’ he said. ‘Use it and do what I have told you.’

  ‘Doctor, what is your name?’ she asked.

  ‘My name is Dr R.H. Kulkarni, but almost everyone calls me RH. Be brave, child. Goodbye and good luck.’

  My father left the room and the house. The return journey was equally rough and he finally reached home at dawn. He was dead tired and soon, sleep took over. The next morning, his mind wandered back to his first patient in the village and his first earning. He became aware of his shortcomings and wished he was better qualified in gynaecology. However, his current shortage of funds made him postpone the dream for another day.

  A few months later, he got married and shared his dream of becoming a gynaecologist with his wife.

  Time passed quickly. He was transferred to different places in Maharashtra and Karnataka and had four children along the way. By the time he turned forty-two, the couple had carefully saved enough money for further education and my father decided to pursue his desire. So he left his family in Hubli and joined Egmore Medical College in Chennai, and fulfilled his dream of becoming a gynaecologist surgeon. He was one of the few rare male gynaecologists at the time.

  He went back to Hubli and started working in Karnataka Medical College as a professor. His sympathetic manner towards the underprivileged and his genuine concern for the women and girls he treated made him quite popular—both as a doctor and as a teacher. The same concern reflected in his liberal attitude towards his daughters and he allowed them to pursue their chosen fields of education, which was unheard of in those days.

  My father was an atheist. ‘God doesn’t reside in a church, mosque or temple,’ he would often say. ‘I see him in all my patients. If a woman dies during childbirth, then it is the loss of one patient for a doctor but for that child, it is the lifelong loss of a mother. And tell me, who can replace a mother?’

  Despite his retirement, my father’s love for learning did not diminish and he remained active.

  One day, he went for a medical conference to another city. There, he met a young woman in her thirties. She was presenting cases from her experience in the rural areas. My father found her work interesting and went to tell her so after the presentation. ‘Doctor, your research is excellent. I am quite impressed by your work,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Just then, someone called out to my father, ‘RH, we are waiting for you to grab some lunch. Will you take long?’

  The young woman asked, ‘What is your name, doctor?’

  ‘Dr R.H. Kulkarni, or RH.’

  After a moment of silence, she asked, ‘Were you in Chandagad in 1943?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doctor, I live in a village around forty kilometres away from here. May I request you to come home right now for a brief visit?’

  My father was unprepared for such an invitation. Why was she calling him to her house?

  ‘Maybe some other time, doctor,’ he replied, hoping to end the matter.

  But the woman was persistent, ‘You must come. Please. Think of this as a request from someone who has been waiting for you for years now.’

  My father was puzzled by her enigmatic answer and still refused, but she pleaded with him. There was something in her eyes—something so desperate—that in the end, he gave in and accompanied her to the village.

  On the way to the village, both of them exchanged ideas and she spoke animatedly about her work and her findings. As the two of them approached her residence, my father realized that the house was also a nursing home. He walked in through the front door and saw a lady in her fifties standing in the living room.

  The young woman next to him said, ‘Ma, this is Dr RH. Is he the one you have been waiting for all these years?’

  The woman came forward, bent down and touched her forehead to my father’s feet. He felt his feet getting wet from her tears. It was strange. Who were these women? My father didn’t know what to do. He quickly bent forward, placed his hands on the older woman’s shoulders and pulled her up.

  ‘Doctor, you may not remember me but I can never forget you. Mine must have been your first delivery.’

  Still, my father couldn’t recognize her.

  ‘A long time ago, you lived in a village on the border of Maharashtra and Karnataka. One night, there was a heavy downpour and you helped me—a young, unmarried girl then—through childbirth. There was no delivery table in the room, so you converted stacks of paddy sacks into a makeshift table. Many hours later, I gave birth to a daughter.’

  In a flash, the memories came flooding back and my father recollected that night. ‘Of course I remember you!’ he said. ‘It was the middle of the night and I urged you to go to Pune with your newborn. I think I was as scared as you!’

  ‘You gave me a hundred rupees, which is what my family paid you for the delivery. It was a big amount in those days and still, you handed it all over to me.’

  ‘Yes, my monthly salary was seventy-five rupees then!’ added my father with a smile.

  ‘You told me your last name but I couldn’t hear it because of the deafening sound of the rain. I took your advice, went to Pune, found your friend Gokhale and became a nurse. It was very, very hard, but I was able to raise my daughter on my own. After such a terrible experience, I wanted my daughter to become a gynaecologist. Luckily, she shared my dream too. Today, she is a doctor and is also married to one and they practise here. At one point, I spent months searching for you but with no luck. Then we heard that you had moved to Karnataka after the reorganization of the state departments in 1956. Meanwhile, Gokhale also passed away and I lost all hope of ever finding you. I prayed to God to give me a chance to meet you and thank you for showing me the right path at the right time.’

  My father felt like he was in a Bollywood movie and was enchanted by the unexplained mystery of life. A few kind words and encouragement had changed a young girl’s life.

  She clasped her hands together, ‘We are so grateful to you, doctor. My daughter wanted to call you for the inauguration of the nursing home here and we were very disappointed at not being able to reach you then. Time has passed and now the nursing home is doing very well.’

  My father wiped his moist eyes and lo