Happiness, incidentally

Nidheesh Tyagi

For a long time there was no job. He tried hard sending his resume, showcasing his academic qualifications, reiterating his objective in every photocopied double-spaced computer typed application of how he wants to do his best given an opportunity, how keen and positive he feels to take up challenges and rise to the occasions. Everyday he prayed to his god to get him a job, checked mails, fasted two days in week, wrote his old parents back home that things were bright and looking up. Its only a matter of time, he kept mentioning to his wife, he was married to in a Bundelkhand village while he was still doing his Masters in anthropology from Barkataulla University, Bhopal. She was living in her parent’s home, counting his promise of bringing her to Bhopal as soon as he lands into a job.

While he was doing this, the employment bureau had long stopped facilitating a job for anyone, except who were working in that office. These were the times that spelt end of the Public sector, Nehruvian economy, Government monoliths, trade unions, employment exchange. He was lucky. Lucky to get a job from employment bureau. In these times.

He was the new night shift in charge of the mortuary in Bhopal Gas Relief Hospital made by the compensation given by the multinational Union Carbide for gassing the city of erstwhile Nawabs. The old Incharge was sacked after he was found drinking in the mortuary and misbehaving with a nurse in inebriated state. The salary wasn’t much but he had a job in hand. And that was all he prayed for. Moreover it was a semi-government job, almost permanent.

So he had a reason to be happy, finally. Wrote to parents about getting a job without clarifying the exact nature of his job. Wrote to his wife to join him in his one room- kitchen- shared toilet ramshackle living arrangement in an old Bhopal neighborhood. She took a month to come but she smiled seeing him at the station. She was proud, her eyes told him. After such a long time.

Sometimes he felt sad. About the gas disaster. The long line of burqa clad women in the morning OPD and the coughing old men, when he leaves his work for the day early morning. When a little girl in a tiny fragile bony frame was brought to mortuary the other day, he almost could not stop his tears and looked away. Then there was this pregnant woman who was brought in after she succumbed on a stretcher on way to operation theatre.

He had a chair to sit and one table to write and maintain his register, a side stool to keep a water jug and a glass, a 250 volt bulb in the room and a ceiling fan, which creaked more than fanned. The ceiling was high but the room was small and poorly ventilated. It was very hot in that close almost cubicle office in that concrete building.

Some nights he would sneak into the mortuary. It had a working 3 tonne air conditioner of American origin assembled in Malaysia. And the chill really made him feel good. In that cool breezy feel of the air-conditioned mortuary, all his sweating of hot Indian summer night will vanish. He felt fresh. Free from stink and sweat. He thought he would never need any other job. He felt lucky to have this job. He smiled. Outside the heat wave was still roaming in the streets, the earth still perched, the concrete roofs and floors still emanating heat.

Outside the hospital, there were these power cuts in the town. Afternoons were dry, hot, sweating, which he had to spend at his home. In the small room, after they eat their lunch together, he lies next to his wife using a handheld plastic fan on the cot. They talk about the air conditioner. The cool breezy feel. They don’t talk of mortuary. Not of the child or that pregnant woman. Someday he would show her around, he tells her. In that power cut. The state radio was playing movie songs of the last decade in the background.

© nidheeshtyagi 2004