Ants

Ratul Ghosh

Home was a point in time for me.

In the early hours of half-night-half-dawn, when I was half asleep and half awake, my thoughts intermingled with my dreams like wisps of smoke. When the alarm rang I wasn’t sure if it was in my dream or in the real world. I just lay there, weighed down, as it were, under a blanket that was so heavy that I couldn’t move even if I wanted to; made heavier by the fact that I did not want to.

I chose to return to the mixture of thoughts, imagination and dreams while it lasted. I thought of that time when this house was my home. I was a child on the rooftop, running barefoot, wearing shorts and a Spiderman vest, bouncing a worn-out rubber ball against the wall where it marked dull-red circles, waiting with my sister for Baba to come home. “Do you think Baba can carry us both on his shoulders?”, she asked. “Yes, but he will only carry whoever meets him first at the gate”. The sun was setting, the shadow of the gulmohar was lengthening and our ears were trying to catch the sound of Baba’s scooter. Over time, every vehicle in the neighbourhood had aged into its own unique sound. Our scooter had a tinkling clattering sound that came from a loose nut in the spare tire, and a distinctive crunch-hiccup from the engine when the gears changed. My sister often heard it first but I ran faster. There was the smell of Rajasthani cooking in the air from the houses around, and the smell I imagined was the first I remembered from my childhood - the metallic, warm smell of my mother ironing clothes downstairs. The sound of returning parrots pierced the air, as they flew in huge troops, tails stretched straight under golden clouds.

Ma was calling out to me - this sounded like the real world - and I tried to focus on my imaginarium, willing it to last -  but this was about Baba. His heartbeat was above 250, the oxygen-saturation was fine but he was sweating, should we call the doctor? I willed my eyelids open - each weighing a ton - as my ears still strained to hear the shrill horn, the tinkling loose nut - and maybe I just about heard it as the last of my dream evaporated. I was awake. His sugar was 220. Ma was wailing by now. I noticed the drooping daisy plant on the window sill as I jumped out of bed. It needed watering. Where were my slippers?

My father was fine last night. His appetite was better for a change. He had taken all his medicines - for sugar-control, prostate, blood pressure, appetite, and the vitamins. His last chemo was ten days ago. God knows what was wrong now. I sleep-talked through calling the doctors - I knew the routine - I knew what I would say and what they would say to that and what I would say to that. Yes, yes, thank you. We will monitor the blood pressure, oxygen, pulse, sugar, fever - we will get back when there’s a red flag. Ok thank you Doctor.

What if there wasn’t a single large red flag in the end? What if death did not ride in on one huge buffalo but on thousands of tiny ants that crept silently under the door as I kept my eye on the peephole?

I remembered another one of my earliest memories. 

I had seen a beautiful, bright, metallic, shiny beetle in the grass - upturned and floating magically across the grass while all of its limbs were still. It was so disappointing to discover, when my sister pointed it out, that the majestic, magical bug was dead, and it seemed to move because it was being carried by tiny red ants to their anthill. What could look like royalty being carried on a palanquin by tiny slaves was really death, carrying its dinner

*

The inevitable surprise had struck about six months back.

What raised its head as a breathing difficulty turned out to be a chest-full of fluid and collapsed lobes in the right lung. Bronchovascular markings were prominent. Reticulonodular opacities were seen in bilateral lung fields, suggestive of early interstitial lung disease. None of it made sense then - it was like mugging-up for a biology exam the night before. The extracted fluid tested negative for tuberculosis but positive for ‘abnormal cells’. I was in a daze as terminologies engulfed me - cytology, cyto-pathology, immuno-histochemistry, biopsy, histopathology, lymphadenopathy - it could have been a sarcastic poem if it wasn’t about my father. If it wasn’t about death.

Baba became an indexed file with prescriptions, reports and bills. Maybe the reports were trying to be nice. ‘Poorly differentiated atypical cells’, ‘suspicious’ for carcinoma was designed to leave some room for hope. But there wasn’t much in our hearts. Once it appeared, it coiled around us, squeezed our breaths out and began the death-roll. ‘Favour adenocarcinoma, stage-4, metastasis in the bones and pancreas’ - was a convoluted way of yelling ‘Checkmate’.

I remember running, and being numb. From phone call to appointment, to the billing counter to the waiting room, to the weighing machine to the blood-pressure station, to the doctor’s chamber, to the sample-collection-room to the path-lab, to radiology and the reports section to the internet to more calls and appointments. A pigeon that knows that all the windows are closed, and what looks like air is really glass, will still flap from room to room. I did not feel like a clueless pigeon though. I felt what Abhimanyu might have on the thirteenth day of the war, stepping into the Chakravyuha knowing how it ends. Every time I crossed a smiling lady in the hospital who asked if she could help, I felt a row of soldiers close behind me. But I had to keep moving. It was the rule, and the destiny. I was prepared, in hindsight, from the moment I saw the white lung on the lightbox. I recognised the ants - but I wasn’t afraid as long as I was running, and not still.

I was prepared for the confusion, the weight of decisions. Should we get a chest tube inserted for drainage? It’ll make him feel like a patient. Do we ignore cholesterol for now? What can frothy stools indicate? When do we switch to palliative care? Will immunotherapy work even if the PDL-1 was 0%? Were we treating the reports or the patient? I kept asking Baba what he wanted, but he said nothing. I couldn’t read his thoughts. Ma was so nervous that I had to shut her out. My sister found it too hard to bear and just forwarded me articles on miracle cures. Everyone advised, no one helped. There were days I did nothing - standing frozen on a traffic island with blinding headlights and deafening honks from all sides - just trying to make sense. I knew that the weight of these decisions would be on my shoulder long after the, well, ‘situation’ passed. This constant worrying had become a constant, throbbing headache.

What I was less prepared for was the stalemate. I knew death more as the bullet that hits you when you are running from another - as the drug overdose, as the clot that blocks blood to the brain, as the heart that fails - like it almost did four years ago for Baba - or as the truck that rams the motorcyclist in the night, on the wrong-side at full speed with its headlights off. I was less prepared for the slow, by-a-thousand-cuts version, the kidney that stops working, the cancer that keeps returning, the dementia that just worsens. Look, we aren’t celebrating my daughter’s birthday this year. I’ll have to miss the office outing, then a meeting. Then I’ll step down from my job. We’ll all shift to Jaipur. It is temporary.

The cancer crept in insidious ways till it filled our lives. The house smelt of it - of medicines and disease, and that dank urine-in-the-carpet smell that malaise has - of rot and ailing dogs. My phone was full of reports, scans and prescriptions. I was cleaning bedpans. The kid got shouted at more often. The house-help left. The tap dripped. The garden was dry. The broken bolt never got fixed. Everyone was tired and on a short fuse. We lived under a black cloud that never parted and kept getting heavier. The parrots stopped coming by, or we didn’t hear them anymore.

I still haven't told my daughter everything. Of course you can have his magnifying lens - he won’t mind, I’ll tell him - and his coin collection. You can read his old books, but be careful. Dadu will be fine. He is ill so he is sleeping. Once he is better, he will tell you stories again. And then they lived happily ever after. Then people become stars. Then he goes to heaven and is forever happy. He does not grow thinner in the meantime till his thighs are the width of my wrists and his skin hangs in empty dry folds. He does not get weaker and sicker and smellier till he can’t push his stools out or keep his piss in; and he is no longer himself - till one day he does not recognise you or me. He hallucinates. The doctors call it an altered sensorium. The sense of time goes first, then of place and then of person. Maybe this is nature’s way of making it easier to deal with - when the person who passes away does not resemble the person one remembers.

Every now and then I have to take a break and step out onto the balcony because I don’t want to cry in front of my child. I’m lying. Dadu will not be fine. It’s dust to dust, and the dust always wins in the end.

I envy those who lost their parents suddenly, in their sleep - turned to hard, cold wood in the morning. They tell me I’m lucky I have time. But they haven’t compared that to this. There are no nostalgic heart-to-hearts. Baba mostly stares into space. He resists medicines. They are at the door but they haven’t knocked. The armies of ants wait on wiry feet, antlers waving, for what will be theirs in the end. I am tired. I let the armies close behind me and I let them bite off chunks. I can feel them crawl up my feet and I don’t swat them off - or perhaps this is just pins-and-needles from sitting still.

I have that dull headache again. Baba was very weak today but I decided against hospitalising him. We’ll wait. I’m scared of taking a wrong call, or any call. I can’t sleep and yet I’m scared of being asleep when the moment comes.

I long for distractions. I long for my mundane office days spent bitching around the coffee machine, making business plans and presentations. I pine for shallow conversations with drunk friends - about women and money, about geopolitics and drugs, asshole bosses, financial planning and other pointless things. I want to get a drink and a smoke - just this once - even though ‘Dad’s cancer is lung primary’. I want to get away even if it is for a while. There’s some whiskey in the cabinet. I stare at the clock. I long for sleep, and oblivion, or a gun. Baba groans and gesticulates. He is imagining someone at the door whom he’s inviting in. I feel his papery, furrowed forehead - he does not have a fever. His shoulders are thinner than a sparrow’s. I want to shake him up but I also want to soothe him to sleep. I creep into the bed beside him and I hear his strained breathing. I want a giant wave to crash on us and wipe everything away.

*

When I wake up, the house is still and silent. But I am not sure if I’m fully awake yet. Maybe it is over. I don’t know. The headache is gone. Maybe I just dreamt Baba was ill and the alarm will ring any moment now.

The bed has a crumpled hollow where he slept. Maybe he has managed to go to the toilet by himself. There’s still that deafening silence that follows a bomb blast - but for a tinny ringing in my ear. I can’t remember the thoughts that kept me awake last night. There’s the taste of either salt or blood in my mouth. It lasts for a long time, or perhaps just some moments. Eventually the noise of the world floats in again. I can now hear dogs barking in the distance. Everything will be fine. When the wave recedes, we will start building our sand-castle again.

There’s a daisy nodding beside the window. There’s a faint smell in the air, like something burning. Do my fingers smell of cigarette smoke? It could be someone ironing clothes but it’s probably my mind playing tricks. I drift into sleep again.

I hear Ma shouting at my daughter - it seems she has been burning ants in the sun with a magnifying glass. 

***

About the Author

Ratul Ghosh spent most of his left-brained life in the C-Suite across boring conglomerates and clueless startups. In the time he had left, he managed to play the guitar, write songs, belong to unheard-of bands and write the odd word or three. He loves the poets, from Elliot to Bukowski and Leonard Cohen; and the writers who mix the real and imaginary, like Pratchett, Gaiman and Murakami. He has been a columnist for the Economic Times and his short story was one of the winning entries for the Deodar Prize 2023. 

This story is part of a collaboration between Hammock and The Deodar Prize, and was selected as one of the winners at the Bangalore Literary Festival earlier this month.