DR. RAJENDRA

1

He had the most elegant hands of any Indian doctor Mary Margaret ever seen when she met him at the height of the flood season. It was a wet mid-September morning, in the year 1937, in our district of Chatam. Dr. Rajendra had carried a mug of the famous country “bush tea” that his fiery-tempered wife, Padma, had given him. On that morning, he was rushing to visit a patient.

“She’s on her death bed…Come quickly…,” the note said when someone slipped it under his door; and in his moment of dedication, Dr. Rajendra put on his raincoat, and went on his way.

On that wet morning, Mary Margaret had gone to gather fallen “pears”* from Busher Parson’s fruitful acres. At that precise moment, as she was stealing her last batch of pears, Dr. Rajendra was crossing the tiny running river beneath the slope of the tree. Mary Margaret heard the splash of his water boots but had not seen him. She jumped at the chance of hiding behind the tree-trunk just in case it had been Busher Parson.

With the swift eyes of an eagle Dr. Rajendra saw her act of trespassing and passed by minding his own business.

“Don’t giv' wey mi secret now!” she scolded from sheer guilt as she gathered the pears quickly and tucked them away into the flare of her sprawling bandana* skirt.

She rushed from the scene quickly. For one week Mary Margaret clasped her hands as a holy gesture, hoping that Dr. Rajendra had not given away her secret.

2

So fate had it that Mary Margaret and Dr. Rajendra met face to face in a fruit stall in the center of town one bustling Saturday morning. She greeted him with courtesy—hoping to seal with silence, the knowledge of her trespassing and theft from Busher Parson's land. Dr. Rajendra showed no sign of remembering the incident, and that put Mary Margaret at ease. She offered him her best fruits, at the cheapest of prices, and added a gigantic “pear” as a final complement to his purchase.

When Dr. Rajendra took his purchase of fruits from Mary Margaret, he felt a nervous tingling sensation running through his body. The warmth of Mary Margaret’s smile and the rhythm of her sturdy African body put him at ease.

“Thank you,” he said upon taking the pear.

“Yuh can hav' anytin' yuh want to buy. I'll giv' it to yuh at ah cheaper price!”

“Thank you,” he said quite simply again, with an innuendo of a hidden tenderness.

He felt embarrassed having a physical attraction to a black market woman because it was a taboo. Race and class separated them but their hearts belonged.

Mary Margaret felt such tenderness too as they touched—flesh to flesh—in exchange for the purchase. She absorbed the delicate flamboyance in the squareness of his jawlines, with the sunken dimple in the middle of his chin. His laughter appeared silly and nervous, as he took his purchase and went on his way.

“Wait!” she said, in an attempt to draw him close to her once more. She then and handed him another pear.

That Saturday, Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal had gone on his regular route to escape from his wife’s ritualistic bickering. Padma’s “spirit had been crossed,” he would later reveal to a neighbor, and she had belted out more than her usual share of undesirable words. Padma amassed a handful of his clothing and flung it behind his departure.

“Go and sleep outside in the abandoned shed-- away from me!” she shouted behind her husband.

It was after a bitter argument. Dr. Rajendra had picked up the clothes with his skillful hands, and taken them to the shed. An instant of contemplation caught him, and he wondered why he agreed to marry such a bitch of a woman when he had the upper hand. Padma schemed to win his affection, and he had welcomed it cheerily because he had never seen such audacity in an East Indian woman. He took Padma's hand in marriage, only to live to regret it every day after the first year of their union.

After ten years of marriage, Saturdays became Dr. Rajendra’s way of escaping Padma’s sharp tongue. If he did not go to the races dressed in his trademark corduroy pants with brown rubber slippers, he would go fishing with the black boys in the village.

“Why would a grown man of your station run around with those fassy*-footed, nega peasants?” his wife, Padma, would often ask.

“It's just a case of curable yaws,” he'd say to Padma while walking away. “Leave us alone!”

After noticing Mary Margaret on that particular Saturday, he inadvertently changed his route, and kept going back to keep the melodious rhythm of his heart pounding. Mary Margaret had seen him too and the attraction was instant.

“Dis coolie* man jus' keep lookin' at mi,” she mentioned to her friends, and listened as they laughed at her with scorn.

“Dem a dutty* people. Dem nuh wash dem hands before dem eat!” mentioned June, one of her 'higgler' friends.

Her secretive heart, however, felt the bias of her friends, for what she saw in Dr. Rajendra was a certain man of social refinement that she had been searching for all her life. The comeliness of his wet, shiny and slick, horse-black mane defined the prominent squareness of his strong jaws.

“An' mi God!” she exclaimed, in a moment of speaking to herself that that dimple, placed so carefully in the center of his chin, “was planted by ah Hindu goddess” to drive her insane.

His aura of antiseptic-cleanliness had drawn him to her, made her want to kiss him for hours, without stopping.

That Saturday morning Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal went to Grenadine Market place, hoping to cement a bond with the woman he met briefly during her act of indiscretion. But as he stood in her presence, however, the aura she exuded when selling the fruits tantalized him and caused him to take notice. She was a haggler, but contrary to their usual coarseness, Mary Margaret displayed such poise as she took down a basket of fruits from her head. The slight tilt of her head formed the perfect angle to slide the wicker basket off with ease. Dr. Rajendra stared at her with an easy smile upon his face. She felt his glance at a distance and turned towards him to meet his penetrating gaze.

“Hi,” he said with a boyish grin, after their eyes met.

They smiled at each other and dismissed the slight attraction.

Dr. Rajendra had always been a man of great caution. The thought of his attraction for a mere “higgler,”* especially one of African descent would have smeared his reputation in the village of Chatam. It would have especially angered the East Indian women, and promulgate his name among the men of his race, as the romantic hero who had quenched the insatiable carnal appetite of a nega* woman. So, therefore, it was with great caution and discretion that Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal met Mary Margaret in the pitch of blackness of a Chatam night, amid the twinkling of peenywallies* and the apparition of duppies,* to cement the unspoken bond between them.

The branch of the myrtle bush that he had broken off from the sprawling tree of a neighbor’s yard had scented the air, with its severe fragrance of camphor and peppermint. For the rest of her life, Mary Margaret would always associate that specific scent with Dr. Rajendra. That intoxicating aroma of clean crispness had caused her to trust all his refined actions of love without a hint of repulsion.

“Dr. Rajendra, mi darlin',” Mary Margaret whispered after he finished his love repertoire, “Com' back soon.”

He soon took off like lightening, finding his familiar trail in the blackness of the Chatam night.

The famed hands of Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal became a legend among the Chatamites. The magic in his touch when curing a child with delirium, yaws, or even calming the aches of relatives who watched their loved one die, had transformed him overnight from “the coolie doctor,” into one worthy of respect. He had barely been in Chatam for a year, and during each malady that afflicted the villagers, many people waited in queues just to receive his instrument of cure.

“Dat ‘coolie’ doctor is de best ting dat eva happen to us,” he once heard an old lady muttered at the height of his illustriousness.

He became offended at being referred to as a mere“coolie,” due to the fact that he was a gentleman and had never been a common laborer. Gradually, as he experienced the warmth and genuine love in the gifts, given by the common folks, Dr. Rajendra realized that they meant him well. He went on to develop a great affection for the black people of Chatam while Padma dismissed them as a swarm of “tough, loud-mouthed, foul-smelling peasants.”

“Remember the only difference between you and them is the big house you live in!” snapped Dr. Rajendra, in anger.

Padma looked at him, cast her eyes and turned up her nose.

It might have been the love of Mary Margaret’s people that brought her and Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal together more frequently because after their first moment of tenderness, their love affair blossomed into an intricate love triangle. She would go to the mound under Busher Parson’s sprawling pear tree at midnight sharp. He would arrive four or five minutes late, never earlier or later, emitting that peculiar aroma of the myrtle shrub. He would take her tenderly in his arms and kiss her softly, then he would ask her about her day at the market. She, in return, would sit on the mound and watch him as he stooped down beside her, then comment about her day.

Mary Margaret’s days at Grenadine Market place had always been one of haggling and tiresome bargaining with her difficult customers. Wednesdays were exceptionally long and severe because Busher Parson would stop by for a quick purchase, unknowingly buying produce from his pear tree. On seeing him, she would sell more fervently, eliminating all possibility of any exchange of words between them. He had always been rich and miserable, trotting around Chatam with his “red” skin and turned-up nose. He owned thousands of acres of fertile land with an abundance of fruit trees and sugarcane. He would also become quite outraged when he would spot any of his hundreds of peasant tenants profiting from the waste produce.

“It’s my land and I never tell you to pick up the pear the rain beat off,” he had told Mary Margaret on one wet morning, a year before. He stood tall and strong, in front of her, with his hands akimbo.

“Bbbuut Busha,” Mary Margaret had hesitated, “Ah foun’ them on de groun’ an---” He interjected before she could finish her sentence.

“You know I’ll call the police on you Miss Mary. You know I don’t like you people profiting from my land.”

“Neva mind, Busha. Yuh don't hav' fi call de constable. Let mi jus put dem back.” Mary Margaret released the pears that were tucked snugly into the hemline of her skirt and watched them fall to the ground. She then walked away from the scene with her head held high, never looking back at Busher Parson.

Dr. Rajendra entered Mary Margaret’s life at the precise moment when she needed comfort—an escape from the harsh world in which she lived. In fact, for the past several years, her life had been filled with the sheer lack of solace, brought on by the severity of survival. She needed to feel, once again, the gentle soothing palms of a lover stroking her up and down, rejuvenating the senses she had forgotten.

So Mary Margaret and Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal slowly brought back the life into each others bodies. The solitude of their midnight meetings, upon the vast acres of Busher Parson’s land, enabled them to lose their senses in love. Caressing and kissing, weeping and pleading for some two years until Mary Margaret slowly began to realized that their love was too powerful to be kept a secret, and asked Dr. Rajendra to go public.

“Mi cyann tek this sneakin' 'round behind yuh wife's back anymore!” Mary Margaret told him doggedly. “ Mi give yuh mi passion and deserve better than this?”

Dr. Rajendra handled the situation with maladroitness. On their last night, in their usual frenzied passion, he held Mary Margaret in his arms and declared his undying love, hoping this would calm her some.

“De seymour* grass ah no mi mattress, an a not goin’ to lay on it anymore!” she had retorted. She twirled out of his arms and walked away.

Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal went into a semi-catatonic state two weeks after she left him. It was his vacation, and usually he would rent a reclusive cottage by the sea. Mary Margaret would occasionally join him, for two days, and they would make insatiable love. After finishing, he would hold her in his arms whispering kind words but never promising marriage. It had become somewhat apparent to Mary Margaret that her randy Indian lover might be ashamed her, but it never crossed her mind that he was just a weak individual. And so for his two-week vacation, Dr. Rajendra stayed in his secluded shed, beyond the great house and wallowed in his lament. Once, Padma dropped in and had found him laying on his back, in his bed, with a cigar between his fingers.

“I swear, one of these days you are going to burn down the shed,” she had screamed. She grabbed the cigar from his hand and dipped its embers into his ceramic basin on the dresser. Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal did not make a fuss, only turned on his side and went to sleep.

Padma, unaware of his affair with Mary Margaret, had never seen her husband so emotionally down-trodden and questioned him about it.

“It’s one of my patients. I think I’ll be loosing her soon and I can’t bear the thought that I cannot do anything to help her,” he confided in Padma. It was at this point that Padma took him by his hands and kissed the magnificence of them.

“You’re no God, only a man and you have always given your best,” she explained.

You see, it had been the love of medicine and business, never passion, that they shared so well. And despite their months of not conversing, such uplifting words from his wife broke the ice between them. The passion had not resurfaced, only transmission of thoughts as it first did within the first year of their marriage.

“Raj,” Padma whispered, let’s make a go of it again. I do miss you so.” It was at this point that Dr. Rajendra got up and held her tightly—squeezing out the pain that Mary Margaret had planted into his heart.

The ending of Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal’s romance with Mary Margaret triggered the desire to try with Padma once more. Furthermore, they had built a reputation on respectability and business acumen. He had no carnal desire for her though, and at times would lay emotionally limp with her in their bed. Forcing himself to respond to her touch, he would feel the flimsy crawl of her hand gripping his groin and would scream at its insipidity. Padma would smile to herself at the thought of pleasing her husband once more. The fact of the matter had been sadder for Dr. Rajendra. Had he not been such a weakling, the woman he loved would have been publicly sharing his bed. Yet his chosen fate had not willed it that way; and so he became, once more, trapped in purgatory—never quite reaching the epitome of happiness he had once experienced with Mary Margaret.

About six months after Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal reconciled with his wife Padma, the mighty landowner Busher Parson, announced that he would be giving a village dance. Padma was the one to receive the invitation and was exhilarated by the thought of the whole affair. She went into the city and purchased a frumpy frilly silk frock and had brought it back to their great house in secrecy, hoping to wet her husband’s appetite before the dance. As usual, Dr. Rajendra remained calm before these affairs and chose just a simple navy blue suit for the sole purpose of not showing up naked. That week before the dance, Padma’s excessive buying and eliminating of items had nearly caused a rift between her and Dr. Rajendra. She became a big show off handing out her hand-me-downs to the village peasants with condescension. Her constant self-absorption almost caused her husband to retreat into his shell again. On realizing the slight withdrawal of his character, she changed her course swiftly only to prevent the loneliness she had experienced when they lived apart.

Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal always lived with emotional distance from his wife, Padma. As a couple, the years of uproar spent between them, proved that theirs was a marriage brought together for the sake of appearances only. And what a splendid sense of showmanship she displayed, on his arms, as they arrived at Busher Parson’s dance in the heat of that August night. Though dowdily attired, Padma smiled at the other guests, and made whimsical small talk—displaying an air of grace that had long been associated only with the well-bred. Her partner, Dr. Rajendra looked on uncomfortably, sparodically adjusting his arms in his ill-fitted suit, however, secretively feeling proud of Padma’s capability.

Busher Parson’s dance had been in motion for two hours when Wellesley McIntyre showed up with Mary Margaret on his arms. Busher Parson had looked on at the couple with such contempt—exhibiting in his countenance sheer disapproval at the fact that his trusted friend had taken a black woman who had constantly stolen from him. On seeing the two of them together, Dr. Rajendra’s heart sunk into oblivion at the obvious fact that Mary Margaret went on with ease while he remained in misery. The greatness of her African body in a royal blue dress with a revealing décolletage had Busher Parson’s guests enthralled.

Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal stood spellbound as he stared at Mary Margaret in the sweltering heat of that August night. He realized for the first time that he made a blunder for not giving in to his heart’s desire. The game he played of discretion had not come to fruition. He remained a weak man—voiceless and perturbedly silent.

The heart of the matter had always been that Dr. Rajendra was unconsciously ashamed of the social station Mary Margaret possessed in life. He failed to see the real woman who was able to turn on and off the charm to conquer life. As a “higgler” at Grenadine Market Place, at times, she exhibited such uncouthness to make a sale; but that had always been the life of a “higgler.” He was afraid that his friends in high positions would have failed to see her true self. In reality, however, it was he who failed to understand the woman. Their midnight encounters of fervid love-making, on Busher Parson’s mound, had consisted of little awkward conversations. Those years of sadness, spent between them—without the presence of a genuine mate, had been the cause of those gushes of passion. After the embers in the fire had started to dim, and the time had come to add more substance to keep the flames burning, Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal had chosen, out of sheer weakness, to put out the fire.

On that August night, as he stared at Mary Margaret, his mistake became apparent especially when Mr. McIntyre spun her around in his arms with ease, as if they were gliding on the moon.

“Is there something wrong, Raj, my dear?” Padma asked him upon noticing the intensity in his stare.

“No, my love,” he replied with watery eyes. “The Chatam heat gets to me sometimes.”

Padma had not known that the bodacious black woman in the stunning royal blue dress had been Dr. Rajendra’s lover. Had she known, such a scandal would have been grounds for her to walk away from her husband at his betrayal. You see, she once confided in Dr. Rajendra, at an earlier time in their marriage, that such an act infidelity would be the ultimate betrayal.

“We must stay together,” she had whispered several years before. Dr. Rajendra was happy then and uttered to her, “Until death do us part.” That was the bargain he made with his wife Padma. The optimistic air of a first marriage could blind a man to the possibilities of the future. Padma, however, throughout the years had taken advantage of his promise by shunning her marital duties; and this was unheard of for an Indian woman.

Well, it so happened that Wellesley McIntyre announced his engagement to Mary Margaret in that sweltering August heat at Busher Parson’s dance.

“I can't believe that you're marrying that woman!” said Busher Parson, screwing up his face in a knot of pain.

“'That woman?'” asked Mr. Wellesley curiously. “That black woman will be my wife!”

The thought of one of his trusted friends marrying a simple, coarse, black market woman gave Busher the shivers. He had dared not try to stop such a union, from fear of feeling the wrath of his newly acquired enemy. So therefore, it was Dr. Rajendra Mohan Dalal who walked away, with his hermetical secret, disguised by a bleeding heart.

THE END

Vocabulary notes

1-Pear tree- An avocado tree.

-Coolie- The traditional Jamaican epithet for East Indians. It is not considered polite today anymore than the term “ nega,” but it is still used widely in rural areas.

3-Higgler- A person, primarily a woman who buys and sells goods that they have imported into the country.

4-Nega- Nigger.

5-Peenywallies- A kind of large firefly, actually a type of flying beetle.

6-Duppies- Ghosts.

7-Seymour grass- A type of grass used among peasants to stuff their cheaply made mattresses.

8- Fassy-eczema-like scratchy sores on the skin;
also a verb meaning to cause oneself to be covered with fassy by scratching.

9-Bandana- The 'bandana' is a plaid cotton material with main colors of read, yellow and white- is an undeniable part of Jamaican heritage. It is regarded as the unofficial national fabric. It was originally used to make the head tie and apron of female Jamaican farmers and vendors in the markets.

S. D. Brown is a postcolonial writer born in Kingston, Jamaica. She holds a B.A. from The New School for Social Research and an M.S. from Adelphi University. Her work has appeared in Anthurium, Sargasso, Two Thirds North, The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Lemonwood Quarterly, and The Caribbean Writer. She is the author of The Roar of the River: Slave Stories Inspired by Thomas Thistlewood Diaries, 1750-1786 and Let me Hold Your Hand, both published on Amazon. She is a member of The International Women’s Writing Guild. Her story, "Planter's Punch," was recently shortlisted for the 9th Adelaide Literary Prize. More information can be found at: postcolonialauthorsdbrown.com.