Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

"Damn lucky!" Prabaker summed up cheerfully, when Qasim Ali had called the tally. His round face was so blackened with soot that his eyes and teeth seemed almost supernaturally bright. "Last year, in the last big fire, a full one-third of the zhopadpatti was burning up. One house from every three houses! More than two thousand houses gone! Kalaass! More than forty people dying also.

Forty. It's too many, Lin, let me tell you. This year is a very lucky fire. And our houses are safe also! Bhagwan have blessings on our brother, Raju."

Shouts from the edge of the sombre crowd drew our attention, and we turned to see one of the search teams pushing their way through to Qasim Ali. A woman from the team was carrying a baby they'd rescued from the smouldering rubble. Prabaker translated the excited shout and chatter for me. Three adjoining huts had collapsed in the blaze, falling on a family. In one of those inexplicable quirks of the fire's action, the parents of the child had suffocated and died, but the child, a baby girl, had survived.

Her face and body were untouched, but her legs were severely burned. Something had fallen across them at mid-thigh, and they were black, split, and cracked. She was screaming in pain and terror.

"Tell them to come with us!" I shouted to Prabaker. "Lead me back to my hut, and tell them to follow us. I've got medicine and bandages!"

Prabaker had seen the large and impressive first-aid kit many times. He knew it included bandages, salves, and creams, disinfectant solutions, swabs, probes, and an array of surgical instruments. Grasping my meaning at once, he shouted a message to Qasim Ali and the others. I heard the words medicine and doctor repeated several times. Then he grasped my sleeve and dragged me with him, jogging back to the hut.

With the kit open on the ground in front of my hut, I applied local anaesthetic cream to the baby's legs in a thick smear. It began to work almost at once. The baby settled down to a quiet whimper, and cuddled within her rescuer's arms.

"Doctor... doctor... doctor..." people said, all around me.

Qasim Ali called for lamps to be brought as the sun set on the Arabian Sea, and the long Bombay evening finally succumbed to warm, star-filled night. By the yellow flickering lamplight we tended to the wounded slum-dwellers, using my first-aid kit as the basis of our little open-air clinic. Johnny Cigar and Prabaker worked with me as translators and nurses. The most common injuries were burns, cuts, and deep gashes, but a great many people were also affected by smoke inhalation.

Qasim Ali Hussein watched us for a short while, and then left to supervise the erection of emergency shelters, the rationing of remaining water supplies, the preparation of food, and the dozen other tasks that would fill the night to morning and beyond. A cup of tea appeared beside me. My neighbour Radha had made it and brought it to me. It was the first thing I ate or drank in the slum, and it was the best chai I ever tasted in my life. An hour later, she forced her husband and two other young men to drag me from the injured people to eat a meal of roti bread, rice, and bhajee. The curried vegetables were deliciously spiced, and I cleaned the plate with the last bite of roti. And again, hours later, after midnight, it was Radha's husband, Jeetendra, who pulled at my arm and drew me into my hut, where a hand-crocheted blanket had been spread out on the bare earth.

Unresisting, I collapsed on the blanket for my first night of sleep in the slum.

Seven hours later-hours that passed as if they were minutes-I woke to see Prabaker's face hovering in the air. I blinked, and squinted, and realised that he was squatting on his haunches, with his elbows on his knees, and his face cupped in his hands.

Johnny Cigar was squatting beside him, on his left, and Jeetendra was on his right.

"Good morning, Linbaba!" he said, cheerfully, when my eyes settled on his. "Your snorings is a fabulous thing. So loud! Like having a bullock in this hut, Johnny said so."

Johnny nodded his agreement, and Jeetendra wagged his head from side to side.

"Old Sarabai is having a first-class cure for snorings," Prabaker informed me. "She can take one very sharp pieces of bamboo, about same as long as my finger, and push it up inside of your nose.

After that, no more snoring. Bas! Kalaass!"

I sat up on the blanket, and stretched the stiffness from my back and shoulders. My face and eyes were still gritty from the fire, and I could feel that the smoke had stiffened in my hair. Lances of morning light stabbed through holes in the walls of the hut.

"What are you doing, Prabu?" I asked irritably. "How long have you been watching me sleeping?"

"No so very long, Lin. Only for the half hours or so."

"It's not polite, you know," I grumbled. "It's not nice to watch people when they're sleeping."

"I'm sorry, Lin," he said quietly. "In this India we can see everybody sleeping, at some times. And we say that the face, when it is in sleeping, is the friend of the world."

"Your face is so kind when you are sleeping, Lin," Johnny Cigar added. "I was very surprised."

"I can't begin to tell you what this means to me, guys. Can I expect to find you in the hut, every morning, when I wake up?"

"Well, if you really, really want, Lin," Prabaker offered, jumping to his feet. "But this morning we only came to tell you that your patients are ready." "My... patients?"

"Yes. Come and see."

They stood, and opened the door of the hut. Sunlight splintered into my burning eyes. I blinked, and stepped through, following the men into the brilliant, bayside morning to see a line of people squatting on the ground outside my hut. There were thirty or more of them forming a queue along the length of the lane to the first turn.

"Doctor... doctor..." people murmured and whispered when I emerged from the hut.

"Come on!" Prabaker urged, tugging at my arm.

"Come on where?"

"First to toilet," he replied, happily. "You must make a motions, isn't it? I will show you how we make a motions, into the sea, on the long cement jetty. That is where the young men and boys make their motions, every morning, into the oceans-motions into the oceans, isn't it? You just be squatting down, with your buttocks pointing on the oceans. Then you wash your good self with a shower, and you have it a happy breakfast. Then you can easily fix up all your patients. No problem."

We walked along the length of the queue. They were young and old, men and women. Their faces were cut, bruised, and swollen. Their hands were blackened, blistered, and bloody. There were arms in slings, and legs in splints. And at the first turn, I saw to my horror that the queue extended into the next lane, and was longer, much longer.

"We've got to... do something..." I mumbled. "They're all... waiting."

"No problem, waiting, Lin," Prabaker replied, airily. "The people are waiting more than one hour already. If you are not with us, they would still be waiting, but waiting for nothing only.

Waiting for nothing, that is what kills the heart of a man, isn't it? Now the people are waiting for something. Waiting for you, they are. And you are a really something, Lin-Shantaram, if you don't mind I'm saying it to your smoky face and sticking-up hairs. But first, you must make it motions, and then washing, and then breakfast. And we have to get going--some young fellows are waiting down there on the jetty, and wanting to see you make your motions."

"They what?"

"Oh yes! They are a fascinating for you. You are like a movie hero for them. They are dying to see how you will make your motions. And then, after all these things, you will return, and fix the patients, like a really hero, isn't it so?"

And in that way was my role in the slum created. If fate doesn't make you laugh, Karla said, in one of my first conversations with her, then you just don't get the joke. As a teenager I'd trained in first-aid treatment. The formal course of study had covered cuts, burns, sprains, breaks, and a wide range of diagnostic and emergency procedures. Later, I'd earned my nickname, Doc, by using my training in CPR to pull junkies out of overdoses, and save their lives. There were hundreds of people who only knew me as Doc. Many months before that morning in the slum, my friends in New Zealand had given me the first-aid kit as a going-away present. I was sure those threads-the training, the nickname, the first-aid kit, the work as unofficial doctor in the slum- were all connected in some way that was more than accident or coincidence.