Book Review | Covid patient muses about state of the nation

To start with, the story idea is just plain terrific. A Hindu father, whose only daughter fled his house because she wanted to marry a Muslim, lies in hospital, ill with Covid. Fearing that he will die soon, wanting to make amends, he tries to reach out to her. He has many fond memories of her, for her mother died young, and he brought her up.

He is a scholar, a former teacher, erudite and thoughtful, and has traveled all over the world. For all his learning and experience, however, it’s taken the approach of death to get him to conquer — partly, if not fully — his aversion to having a Muslim in the family.

The daughter, Nisha, too, has memories, some of which are not fond: She remembers being driven to academic achievement by her father, and letting him down. She has a daughter of her own now, and there’s an air of mystery surrounding the child. Part of the mystery is a thirty-second video clip of the daughter’s daughter, half by day, the rest by night. That half-minute takes up a significant part of the old man’s days.

In the intensive care unit of the hospital, the professor has a senior nurse, Shiny, to look after him. She has her own concerns, notably a daughter who has failed to make it to medical school and is of what she considers a marriageable age. Her clumsy but well-intentioned attempts at matchmaking, her commitment to her work, her gentleness with her patients, all shine through very well.

Since it’s the time of the pandemic, there’s chaos all around. Bodies float down rivers. Hospitals run short of oxygen cylinders. Labourers, some with their families, walk hundreds or even thousands of kilometres to get home through the heat and dust and eerie silence of the lockdown.

From the confusion spring tragedy and hope. A migrant worker in Kolkata, who has brought his young son along with him to the city so he can get a schooling not available in their native village, is fired from his job. He is given two months’ pay as severance after twelve years of labour. He sets out to walk home with his small and playful son, and they spend the first night of their journey and the end of a bridge, with tragic results.

There are the beef tragedies — news of a man being lynched for the suspicion — just the suspicion, mind you — that he’s been eating beef. But there’s also the watchman at the hospital, a former teacher of mathematics, who has an easy job compared to those of the watchmen at the mall nearby. This watchman keeps track of his expenditure, watching every penny — in the chaos he lives so simply that half his salary goes to his family in their hometown. And in this simplicity he manages to find some kindness...

It’s simply written — there’s hardly a word to make you reach for a dictionary. There’s also a lyrical quality to the writing, a rhythm to the words: it’s a characteristic of Mr Jha’s work, evident in the first of his books that I encountered, though it’s inconsistent. For all the simplicity, however, the editing is patchy at best. A dangling participle lingers on page eight: “At forty-seven kilograms, the disease has nibbled me down…” Further on, of a person asleep, “She hurtles through the hours, unmoving…”

Then there are the unfortunate gimmicks. Mr Jha has a trick of using a phrase from the last sentence of each chapter to open the next. Chapter 14, for instance, ends with: “...overwhelming sense of happiness she hasn’t felt in years.” Chapter 15 begins with: “She hasn’t felt in years.” The implication of a false continuity grates, to say the least. There are the notes, numbered 1 to 60, notes to the professor from his daughter and yet-to-be-seen granddaughter. There are the occasional photographs, black and white, ever so slightly out of focus, that don’t really fit.

But then, making up for some of flaws, is the description of the complete video, over two minutes long, thirty seconds of which we know about. This comes along near the end, leading to a conclusion that’s deeply disturbing yet perfectly fitting. I put the book down with a sense of regret, for though this book is a good read, addressing its flaws could have made it great.

The Patient in Bed No. 12

By Raj Kamal Jha

Penguin

pp. 254, Rs 599