Dadi Kaku

 *************************************************************************************************************

Dadi Kaku

1980: IIT KGP:

Bengalis have a penchant for nicknames. For the first twenty formative years of my life I lived in AP but now I don't recall any abiding nickname given to anyone then. But the moment I landed at KGP, there were many that stuck in my memory. If you quit Bengal after living there for decades and didn't acquire an apt nickname (like me), then you are a very ordinary chap with nothing to distinguish you.

Bengalis not only like nicknames but are proud of them. During the very first week of my stay there, I caught (hold of) a severe cold and was advised to visit the campus B C Roy Hospital. The Doctor wrote a prescription and asked me to give it to Dadi Kaku in the Dispensary. I didn't understand the meaning of either Dadi or Kaku. So I thought it was his real 'school' name. And went over to the window titled Dispensary and asked for Dadi Kaku. A hefty, swarthy, bearded gent guffawed and took my prescription and doled out the three sets of tablets and spelt out the instructions: "Eta shokal, boikal or rathri belai ekta kore..." 

I left the Counter baffled but curious.

He was then about thirty, with a dark trimmed beard and a booming voice and full of good humor and joie de vivre. And he remained so for the next forty years except that his trimmed beard changed colors progressively like the leaves of the banyan tree do from Spring to Winter. I asked many what his real name was but few could tell me...it didn't seem to be frightfully important. But I am stubborn and got to know it from himself later on by when we became friends, although I rarely visited BCR again.

It was like this: 

A few weeks after my wife married me, she discovered that her hubby was a gem of a chap except that he was as poor as a Texas Millionaire...keeping his head just above the water level repaying two PF loans and one Credit Society loan. And she was born with a stainless steel spoon in her mouth. And she was used to shampooing her hair with Clinic Medicated Shampoo every Friday, burning a big hole in my pocket. I didn't say anything but one day, unbeknown to me, she bought a Shikakai Soap ten times cheaper than that Shampoo. The Campus then had a terrific water scarcity and every lady in the house used to keep all her taps open and listen watchfully to the whistling whoosh of air first, followed by gurgles, followed by the weeping sound of a thin stream of water. And that wintry day it happened around 8 in the night. She rushed into the bathroom and emerged ten minutes later, wiping her wet hair with a towel the way they typically do...twisting, squeezing, winnowing, blowing...

As I was watching the ritual enchanted, her fair face was turning redder and redder till it looked as if it were a burnished copper vessel. And within minutes she was itching and scratching and crying. And, being a medico, she said she was having an attack of virulent allergic dermatitis and needs to be given an injection or two of Avil on an emergency basis. And let out the story of her 'budget cutting'.

And it was 9 in the night. There were no telephones, the campus was deserted, I had only a WWII rusted pushbike and all rickshawallas gone home and the lone medical shop at the Tech Market would shut shop anytime. In such situations, the male mind wants to fly away and escape first and think later. So, I took out my bike and raced towards the Salua Road without a plan in mind. As I was crossing it, I saw a figure cycling and singing in the darkness and I recognized the booming voice of Dadi Kaku going home after his duties at the BCR. And I stopped him and told him my predicament.

He at once turned left and ordered me to rush to the Tech Market while he would rush to my Qrs C-1/97 and start 'boiling' his syringe and look after my wife. Rest is simple...one vial of Avil cured her within minutes and Dadi Kaku stayed back an hour or more to watch if there was any 'reaction' to Avil. And she slept like a child.

I then took his hands in mine and said nothing could compensate the godly help he rendered but I would be happy to pay his fees...And he blew his top and said in Bengali something to the effect that he would never have charged anyone stuck in such circs and more so a medico. And asked for a cup of chai which I made and we two shared the hot drink in cold weather.

And then on we became friends and I discovered that he was a Chakrabarty and proud of it. Later on I came to know why, when we started visiting the Campus Durga Puja Pandal. For those five or six days, Dadi Kaku was 'deputed' to the Pandal to act as Purohit and preside over the Puja Rituals with as much devotion and dedication as he dispensed to patients at BCR. And I couldn't recognize him till my wife spotted him and said it was Dadi Kaku over there in his new avatar, clad in dhoti and displaying his hirsute chest and chanting mantras and dancing with the arti in his hand.

It was a treat to watch and recall...

*************************************************************************************************