war. Against all the odds. But my mother always said there were no two ways about it. Ranjit was the one. And if she could fall in love with a man with his body all smashed up and the possibility that he’d lose a leg, then wasn’t that a pretty good test of love? Setting aside the other matter that had nothing to do with the war.
‘Let me tell you something else. For nearly ten years my father was a hospital porter. You won’t catch me talking down to a hospital porter. Then he rose to the dizzy heights of hospital administration. I mean he was a clerk, lowest grade. With his education. Having fought at D-Day. And all of that because it was all he could get. And that only because of some string-pulling from his nurse wife—and no doubt from Dr Chaudhry too.
‘But he accepted it and stuck with it. Because, I have no doubt, he thought it was worth it, because he thought it was a small price. And for the same reason he began gradually to realise that he’d never go back to India. It was how it was. His home was in England now. His family, his mother and father in Poona—he’d probably never see them again.
‘He once told me that he looked at it like this: he might never have gone back anyway. He might have been killed in France. Or in Italy. And hadn’t he done a fine thing anyway, even in the eyes of his family? Married a British lady. Perhaps he was right. He’d been blown up and he’d become somebody else.
‘And this of course was the time—just before I was born—that India got home rule. Home rule and partition. We cleared out—the British cleared out. India was divided and terrible things happened, and all this while there was this other division my father had made between India and himself. It can’t have been easy. He got his leg and he got the girl, but he lost something else. They say that amputees never stop feeling the “ghosts” of their limbs.
‘But of all of this, too, you could say it was a pretty good test.
‘And do I have to tell you the rest? Do I have to tell you that the man who saved my father’s leg, Dr Chaudhry, became a sort of second father to my father? And like an uncle to me. He became a friend of the family. And do I have to tell you that it was because of Dr Chaudhry—his name was Sunil—and with his encouragement that I set my sights on taking up medicine too? I was born in 1948. I was born along with the National Health. I was fated to spend my days in hospitals.’
Dr Shah’s smile, now more like a triumphant beam, would indicate that his story was over. He’d look distinctly young, even though he was over sixty and was even mourning his father.
‘But you are free to go,’ he’d announce—if he were speaking to one of his recovered patients. He’d hold out his hand, his brown hand with its fine dexterous fingers.
‘At this point I always like to say I hope I never see you again. Please don’t take it the wrong way. Take it the right way. Remember my father and his leg.’
There were things he might have added, but didn’t, things only to be inferred. He didn’t say that, though he’d been born into the Welfare State, he’d certainly known, once upon a time in Battersea, the ‘disadvantages’ of which his father spoke. He didn’t enlarge on the fact that, though he’d been encouraged by Dr Chaudhry, he hadn’t gone into orthopaedics, but cardiology. And he didn’t say that in becoming a doctor himself, not to say eventually a senior consultant, he’d become, too, like a sort of second father to his own father and—there was really no other phrase for it—had gladdened his father’s heart.
Cardiology, back in his days at medical school, had certainly become the glamour field. Everyone wanted to be a heart surgeon, in spite of the fact that the heart is only an organ like any other. No one gets worked up about a liver or a lung or a lower intestine. Or even perhaps a leg.
He’d held his father very gently, but wanting to hold him as
‘Let me tell you something else. For nearly ten years my father was a hospital porter. You won’t catch me talking down to a hospital porter. Then he rose to the dizzy heights of hospital administration. I mean he was a clerk, lowest grade. With his education. Having fought at D-Day. And all of that because it was all he could get. And that only because of some string-pulling from his nurse wife—and no doubt from Dr Chaudhry too.
‘But he accepted it and stuck with it. Because, I have no doubt, he thought it was worth it, because he thought it was a small price. And for the same reason he began gradually to realise that he’d never go back to India. It was how it was. His home was in England now. His family, his mother and father in Poona—he’d probably never see them again.
‘He once told me that he looked at it like this: he might never have gone back anyway. He might have been killed in France. Or in Italy. And hadn’t he done a fine thing anyway, even in the eyes of his family? Married a British lady. Perhaps he was right. He’d been blown up and he’d become somebody else.
‘And this of course was the time—just before I was born—that India got home rule. Home rule and partition. We cleared out—the British cleared out. India was divided and terrible things happened, and all this while there was this other division my father had made between India and himself. It can’t have been easy. He got his leg and he got the girl, but he lost something else. They say that amputees never stop feeling the “ghosts” of their limbs.
‘But of all of this, too, you could say it was a pretty good test.
‘And do I have to tell you the rest? Do I have to tell you that the man who saved my father’s leg, Dr Chaudhry, became a sort of second father to my father? And like an uncle to me. He became a friend of the family. And do I have to tell you that it was because of Dr Chaudhry—his name was Sunil—and with his encouragement that I set my sights on taking up medicine too? I was born in 1948. I was born along with the National Health. I was fated to spend my days in hospitals.’
Dr Shah’s smile, now more like a triumphant beam, would indicate that his story was over. He’d look distinctly young, even though he was over sixty and was even mourning his father.
‘But you are free to go,’ he’d announce—if he were speaking to one of his recovered patients. He’d hold out his hand, his brown hand with its fine dexterous fingers.
‘At this point I always like to say I hope I never see you again. Please don’t take it the wrong way. Take it the right way. Remember my father and his leg.’
There were things he might have added, but didn’t, things only to be inferred. He didn’t say that, though he’d been born into the Welfare State, he’d certainly known, once upon a time in Battersea, the ‘disadvantages’ of which his father spoke. He didn’t enlarge on the fact that, though he’d been encouraged by Dr Chaudhry, he hadn’t gone into orthopaedics, but cardiology. And he didn’t say that in becoming a doctor himself, not to say eventually a senior consultant, he’d become, too, like a sort of second father to his own father and—there was really no other phrase for it—had gladdened his father’s heart.
Cardiology, back in his days at medical school, had certainly become the glamour field. Everyone wanted to be a heart surgeon, in spite of the fact that the heart is only an organ like any other. No one gets worked up about a liver or a lung or a lower intestine. Or even perhaps a leg.
He’d held his father very gently, but wanting to hold him as
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