Atmaram Harbhaji by Ankur Betageri (India)

Atmaram Harbhaji was 5 bits when he was born. His mother Sanskritibaen collected them all and grew them into separate pieces. She hid him in an elaborate gown, so that all through his life people recognized him as one compact person. Atmaram too forgot that he was made 5 bits by looking at himself in the large dressing-mirror again and again.

One day Atmaram Harbhaji fell ill, and he was taken to the hospital. The doctor Samaratantra Sahu had gone out for tea, and so Atmaram was treated by the lean, gentle nurse Lubareyana. Lubareyana had a little rainbow arching over her head. It was radiated by the hair-clip, which she wore over her bun.

Though she looked extraordinarily gentle, her handling of patients was extraordinarily rough. Atmaram in his cloak was dashed on the rubber-sheeted bed. ‘I have to check his temperature and give him a sponge-bath, please open the cloak,’ she told Atmaram’s mother Sanskritibaen, who was leaning anxiously over her sick child.

‘Aaahahaha, no, no,’ protested Sanskritibaen hysterically. ‘You check him as he is; and bath, you can bathe him just as well in his cloak.’

‘Dhurjatti bantor falti!’ surged the nurse in an unknown tongue. ‘Bhindias filtor dhot.’ Sanskritibaen didn’t want to understand or argue, for first she wanted her child treated. Atmaram just blinked from the pillow and saw the rainbow on miss Luberayana’s head glitter and fume.

‘Bhildati faltor djkeha!’ the nurse uttered the curse again. ‘Bonus bhanti bantror frrisk. Adeyatreva trimboka, bhrian
sirk vyan sya truka.’

‘Bambadi Bonjeka, first treat my child,’ shrieked Sanskritibaen now. She could not tolerate her scolding in the unknown tongue any longer.

Suddenly Samaratantra Sahu, the doctor who had gone out for tea, appeared.

‘Sorry ma’am, you didn’t understand her,’ he said referring to the nurses’ curses. ‘She was speaking the medical jargon. She was asking you to leave the room but sadly you did not understand.’

Sanskritibaen left the room and the nurse lifted the tired Atmaram, and flung him on the bed, so that he now fell on his back. She held the needled syringe against the tube-light, and spilled a few drops to get the exact dose. And after some cumbersome search for Atmaram’s bottom through the cloak, she gave an unbelievably painful injection.
Then she took a large, lily-smelling soap and began to scrub wildly on his leathery old cloak. ‘Brainstorm ee piltu,’ she said as she scrubbed. Then she began to sing:

There the author who looks all ye
is mad, maad, maaad.

Atmaram suddenly looked up at the dusty vacuum-breathing ventilator and saw himself peeking from there. His heart, like a shuttle, suddenly shot into his head. ‘Baap rey!’ he realized that one of his 5 bits had escaped, unable to bear the scrubbing Miss Lubareyana gave

Drunk minds are pullin me
will you pull me too?

Sang the nurse, and Atmaram, mad with terror, saw two of his gnome-sized bits tugging at Luberayana’s skirt, and grinning.

’Altafalt, my despair bekaar,’ Atmaram slapped the middle of his face with his marble-white palm and grimaced.    ’Iltooria jamoo, sleep my mamoo,’ the nurse half-sung and half-spoke. And this time Atmaram saw his fourth bit unwind the nurses’ grand-looking hair bun, and swinging to the lush lock of hair, swoon under its dense sensuality.

Even as he called this dreamy fourth bit back, the impatient Sanskritibaen flung open the purple door of the room, and seeing the fourth bit swooning under the nurses’ locks with her rainbow clip in his teeth, shrieked such a shriek of disbelief that the red ceiling overhead turned blue with cold.

‘Bapparey bapu!’ Sanskritibaen lifted the enormous cobwebby broom and began to pound the gnome-sized bits at sight. She chased them around the nurses’ heels, and broke a leg of the bed.

‘Mamma, mamma, I am here,’ Atmaram in the cloak went on crying with a heartrending weariness. He lifted his failing left-hand and waved madly, but even the moth, which was fluttering around the tube-light, didn’t notice this.
Sanskritibaen chasing the gnome bits shattered the glass-table and slashed the thin curtains.

‘Brentilokki futchimma,’ Lubareyana cried aloud, her hair flying in rage and her white-dress starched with shock. Samaratantra Sahu suddenly stumbled into the room and stood in cruel silence, while his scholarly eyeglasses glinted violently, reflecting the tube-light.

‘Alibee stryunk,’ muttered the poor-looking Luberayana as if under the spell of Samaratantra Sahu’s void-like silence. Samaratantra walked silently to the table, and pulling out his drawer, took his black pistol. Sanskritibaen too had stopped her pounding, and with the broom held across her legs, was gazing at Samaratantra with a single-minded, steadfast paranoia.

Lubareyana jerked noticeably, and something in her squeaked like a little mouse lost in a long and intricately designed electronic maze. Next moment, she was fluttering towards the bathroom, but before she could close the purple door behind her, Samaratantra had shot three bullets into her back.

‘Didn’t know she was a black-magician,’ Samaratantra said, and added after a pause. ‘Sorry for what has happened to your son.’

Sanskritibaen, honest to the core, broke into a frightening fit of laughter, and whacked the doctor down with her broom.

And after twenty days of search, she caught the four missing bits, and stuffing them back into the cloak, walked the forever-sick Atmaram Harbhaji back home.

Ankur Betageri (b.1983) is a bilingual writer and poet based out of Bangalore and New Delhi. He has two collections of poetry in Kannada and one in English. He holds a Masters in Clinical Psychology and is presently working as Assistant Editor of the literary journal Indian Literature published by Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters.

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