Sometimes (most of the time) Fridays are usually very hectic days where I grind the hours at. Then sometimes it loosens up and then a man has to keep himself pretty engaged; maybe reading up a little medicine or his favorite subject; this and that.
Thus was it this particular Friday. The serenity was however shattered when the early afternoon registered an inexplicable bustle of activity. Man, it was like Monday morning all over again. But a man's got to put in hours.
You will meet some of the most strikingly smart people in the most unexpected of places. This is not news; what is news is that in the morning they will be wasting away their immense brain power drinking bitter liquors brewed along open sewer lines. In the afternoon they will sit by the shacks, silently watching the unending wheel of life going on by them. They register all this and mutter some pointed observations about what they see. In the late afternoon they will drink some more and by evening they are laid a complete waste; splattered all over the dirty pavements, unceremoniously locked away by the potent brews of the alleys. Thus ended is one day. Tomorrow is day one all over again. Vicious cycle.
The particular bustling Friday shoves one such fellow my way. Poor fellow is however a new admission to the community of the downtrodden.
He smells like a tramp and he talks animatedly like he is possessed. His one stand out appeal even before I get down to his actual problem is "daktari kindly help me, daktari kindly help me". Of course I am so used to this sort of thing but still alarmed by his stance and insistence noting that he is not drunk then. Sometimes when I meet fellows of his ilk I just let them vent and ventilate out as they give you some very startling perspectives on issues. But you have seemingly intelligent men wasting away their lives in the dungeons of dark and sad alleys overwhelmed by squalor and misery to change a thing about their existence. That is the great tragedy. The ghetto is the social black-hole; once you willingly slide down it's bowels you hardly make it back out whole or alive for that matter.
So I ask him what help he wants. He launches into a tale. His wife of twenty years kicked him out of his home. "But where do I come in?" I curiously ask him after he is done. You can talk to her so that she lets me back in, I am leading a very despicable life now. I have neither bathed nor changed my clothing for five days, I owe my stranger hosts some money, all I do now is survive on drink, left-overs and crumbs and as you might guess they are in very short supply there. It is only the drink that flows freely.
Though you hear gripping tall tales like these with a surprising frequency, this one was somehow believable. His lips are dry and cracked, his eyes sunken and cheek bones beginning to show prominence. I give him a small amount of money and he breaks into innumerable thank yous. He steps out after we are done with the consultation which happened to be rather long. He has a spring in his step and a glow on his face.
Sometimes a total stranger will astonish you with their faith in your ability to solve a pressing problem they have. This must be the special relativity of humanity; problems gravitating towards solutions! And so he comes back after his meal; more convinced that I am the man to crack his complicated domestic situation-
That one man can descend from home owner status to a homeless vagrant beggar is not strange. It happens pretty often. If the man is going to willingly lose the sight of his life mission's compass then something like this might be the outcome. But the reasons are many.
Man had severe bronco-pneumonia; so severe that I was initially convinced it was open tuberculosis. Subsequent tests however ruled out TB and this perhaps saved him from his predicament (his wife had insisted to be told whether it was TB because then there was no way she was taking him back in) So we had given him proper treatment and given him temporary admission. Later a little drama would ensue involving his wife, his mother, his uncle, his aunt and a family pastor friend all who had to be called to arbitrate. Turns out our man was even lucky to be freely roaming the streets. He had caused a grievous injury to his wife after a domestic misunderstanding, then he had bolted.
Long after my colleagues had gone home I was still stuck in a delicate mediation process which mostly involved rebuking our man for he owned up to turning into an moron after he lost his job which was in itself caused by his drink. His uncle had secured him another position but what does he do! He gets into a vicious confrontation with his new supervisor and is cut loose almost immediately. When our man had gone back to his uncle's house for just the chance of a meal he had been sent scampering to safety by his machete wielding uncle. He could not take any more of his grown nephew's bullshit!
Now here we were trying to reconcile the parties each with a bagful of grievances.
Two things had prompted me to meddle in this matter; the condition of his chest and his expressed intention to board on the hospital coaches which he deemed a great deal better than his current lodgings. He had even broached the subject of me taking him in. And I have seen so many cases of hospital abandonment to treat these threats lightly. Privately he had told me that he had seriously contemplated jumping just to end it all. With the little cash I gave him he had debated with himself whether to buy a cyanide laced poison. The only thing that held him back was that his wife was listening to me. However this had not been an easy task. She had been greatly embittered by his guts to even think about calling her. What she had told me was that she would even be very happy to hear a car had fatally knocked him down. He had relatives and they should assist him. My pitch had been plain; he remained her husband and whatever differences they had were best addressed conclusively. But that now he needed help and we had gone over our limit in aiding him.
When uncle had been informed he had said nothing. It was thus a surprise when he showed up and and in tow his wife, a family pastor friend, our man's mother and two other acquaintances. Uncle had to be restrained from delivering a thorough thrashing to our poor fellow. Then wife had also come and I had wondered whether I had thought this through well. I had however given them conference space and they had a bitter family exchange with some very private details that will remain private. My moderation pitch was however singular; they were the people to provide a solution to all this drama. Family was family and I was even out of my mandate to intervene in a matter of this sort.
But after all the tugging and high emotional points it had ended well. Reconciliation had been achieved and the man had been pardoned first by his wife and then by his uncle. Peace had triumphed. "I will not drink again, I will hustle harder, I will stop wasting money and time on trivia", a man will say things like this in a situation like this. His wife had gone with him to his 'benefactors' to settle accounts. What had initially been four hundred was hastily doubled after all the hidden costs like 'loss of business' were laid bare. Lucky happy chap now had one last request for me; he badly needed a job!
Saved from the jaws of pneumonia and the savagery of the harsh cold streets it was kind of hilarious to see him offering to carry his wife's handbag; the complete gentleman! He could not believe this turn of events.
Happy ending hopefully-
A man who is on his death bed already has enough going for him as it were. A soul in peril. The state of his public and private affairs. His private scruples to deal with. It thus would be in the natural order of things to have his burden made light by all those close to him; family and stranger, friend and foe alike.
This man had terminal cancer of the liver. "The man you see lying there was a man indeed", these had been his sisters words to me. We had sat at the nursing station discussing his condition, then the issue of his first wife had come up. The only time she had been to the hospital was when she had first brought him for admission. Then she had disappeared.from the picture.
So this had been partly the subject of our small talk with his sister. What was to be done about it? The confidence that we sometimes get is surprising.
"So it came about that Napoleon frequently would steal out by a little side door at night, with a soft hat pulled over his eyes, and, accompanied by one of his intimates, really betake himself to some fair lady who was expecting him, or else stroll about the great city as of old, passing through streets of the kind which an Emperor hardly sees outside a fairy tale, and breathing the atmosphere of might-have-beens."
How had matters come to this point with our couple here. When the holy flame of marital bliss flickers, cools down and eventually dies out then all that had been is quickly forgotten and what was once the warmest of a felicity turns into the coldest resentment and even hatred. He had been a man of means. Then what had befallen Bonaparte III had come home to him. A complex set of situations had led to him eventually marrying a second wife. Many situations might trigger this tumultuous cascade. His first wife had colluded with her brother (whom he had entrusted with the running of one of his enterprises) to divert a size-able chunk of funds from the same to their own private uses and thus badly compromising the financial position of the business. How do you go on about a situation of this nature? But he had talked fondly of her saying that it was all nothing.
The wife had eventually come after some days and as luck would have it we bumped into each other. I asked to see her briefly. She grudgingly consented and we stepped into an office. "But where have you been ever since that day that your husband was admitted?", "Is that all you want to know?" She had roughly retorted.
"But it's important because in his condition the presence of family counts for much".
"What you are doing is meddling and I strongly warn you to stop it henceforth, I am not in the moods to discuss such a matter with anyone. Do you have any idea what I have been through? Keep to your treatment of him and please excuse me". She had walked out and gone off. I had remained there temporarily rooted to the spot, feeling completely the idiot. But she was right; what business of mine was it? What right had I?
Some months later I happened to meet the sister of the late man and out of interest asked him how it had ended up between the estranged couple. "Badly with a lot of embarrassing drama but we are all trying to forgive and let go".
I believe I have a stronger motivation to keep to my lane. As it is the demands of this job are already too weighty for a soul! Men and women will always love each other and with the same vigor torment and scorch each other, that is the nature of our existence...but I wonder what Socrates would do..
