Read Online Hillstation by Robin Mukherjee - Free Book Online Page B

What I suggest you do is eat lots of Chapatis which are excellent for binding.’
    â€˜You mean, like roughage?’ she said.
    â€˜That’s exactly the word,’ I said, feeling that we had, by now, developed something of a rapport.
    â€˜Okay,’ she said, ‘but don’t you have tablets or anything like that?’
    â€˜Tablets?’ I smiled, waving my arm at the pill store. ‘We have many tablets for all sorts of things. But we can’t just give them out willy nilly for no reason.’
    â€˜My stomach?’
    â€˜Um, yes,’ I said. ‘That might qualify as a reason.’
    I got up and walked to the shelves. Pharmacy is largely a science but also, to some extent, an art. Sometimes I arranged the medicines alphabetically and sometimes according to the anatomical regions with which they were concerned. Thus headache remedies were kept with dandruff ointments, verruca pads with corn plasters and so on. I had, quite recently, sorted them according to colour, which was visually harmonious if clinically a bit confusing. But if it is both a science and an art, then it is also, in some unquantifiable way, a matter of luck. There, among the white boxes with green lettering, was a small carton the text of which promised to ‘Stop Diarrhoea Fast!’.
    â€˜It seems,’ I said, ‘that we have just the thing.’
    I popped the package into a little bag and handed it to her.
    â€˜So, what’s the dosage?’ she said.
    â€˜In the box you will find a neatly folded piece of paper with extremely tiny writing. This will tell you what you need to know in as many languages as you need to know it in.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ she said. ‘Is that it?’
    â€˜For the moment,’ I said. ‘I’m sure we’ll have a lot more than roughage and diarrhoea to talk about over the coming years.’
    â€˜I remember from school,’ she said, standing up.
    â€˜Remember what?’ I said.
    â€˜Roughage and all that. We had to draw a picture of a meal and write about vitamins.’
    â€˜Ah, yes,’ I said, ‘vitamins are very important.’
    â€˜Yeah, that’s what they said.’
    I pushed my chair back and stood up. She looked at me for a moment then rustled the bag.
    â€˜Well,’ she said, ‘thanks.’
    â€˜Making people better,’ I said.
    â€˜I beg your pardon?’
    â€˜The clinic motto,’ I explained. ‘Or it would have been if the elders hadn’t decided that it overstated our importance.’ I shrugged, beginning to get the feeling that we were both, as they say, skirting around the subject.
    â€˜Right.’ She rustled the bag again and moved to go.
    â€˜Do you know,’ I said, ‘that you have not told me your name?’
    â€˜Oh, yes’ she said. ‘Of course. Sorry. It’s Martina. Martina Marvellous.’
    â€˜That is a marvellous name,’ I quipped but the words had already sunk into the core of my soul, their warm vowels and lilting alliteration like a joyous gasp, a sunny morning waking up together.
    â€˜It used to be Norma Stopley,’ she said, moving towards the door. ‘But hey.’
    â€˜I think we ought to acknowledge,’ I said, ‘that because of your father’s affliction there is a high probability that our children may have to wear glasses.’
    She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t fathom and was gone.

3
    My little office had never felt so empty, nor so still. Even the hands of time had stopped, though the ‘Twelve Things You Need To Know About Flatulence’ wall clock had a tendency to do that anyway. I’d once asked a holy man about the feeling you get when a ceremonial elephant passes you on the High Street. ‘It is not the parade,’ he had answered, ‘but the silence it leaves behind.’ Which I didn’t appreciate at the time, poking my tongue out thinking him too saintly