Tryst with New England

While both the maid's baby and I recovered, this was not to be the end of my tribulations. A neighborhood child was struck by chickenpox a week later, and I had high fever, and a rash erupted all over my body, after I had been to their house to investigate as usual.

My mother was alarmed. It was necessary, she told my father, to obtain information before prescribing a home remedy or sending for a doctor; that she couldn't do it herself as women of the family couldn't go visiting without observing the customary formalities; that both servants and her own children ran an equal risk of infection; and to expose the servants, and not her own children, to possible harm would be reprehensible; and, lastly, the fact of my contracting infection within hours of a mere touch was incomprehensible.

She was debating the dilemma when I fell asleep and dreamt of the enigmatic old man touching my forehead again. Incredibly, both the child and I had been restored to health by next morning.

But my mother looked visibly upset when I came down with sickness in the same manner for the fifth time in a month. I knew that one did not contract infections as instantly as they were affecting me; but how could one come upon a rational explanation of how and why things were happening to me the way they did? And it was both in suspense and in dread that I persuaded myself to test the old man's touch-in-dream-recovery correlation once more. It turned out to be a wrench on this occasion. The child had typhoid and both of us went through three harrowing days. Until I had the dream!

The mind harked back, after I had fully recovered, to an incident of not very long ago, which I reckoned might provide a clue to the happenings of the recent past.

It was one of those hot days of summer, a year ago, when the west winds had parched the earth and vegetation, and I rode from my village to the family townhouse. A few miles from the village, and the sun made me dizzy with nausea and a headache, and I watched helplessly as the horse straggled and limped as its hoofs seared on contact with the burning sand underneath.

Suddenly, and on its own prompting, the horse veered away from the track for a while and stepped inside a mango grove in search of relief. And there emerged an old man with a long gray beard and kindly face from behind the trees. He helped me dismount, felt the fire in my forehead with his palm to some incantation, gave me water to drink from an earthen pitcher and a bucketful to the horse. I felt sound and wholesome in a matter of seconds, as if cured magically.

I could, while recalling this incident, see the correlation so clearly that I couldn't help sharing the assumptions with the formidable rationalist that was my mother. But she watered down my fancy by insisting that recent bouts of illness had rendered me feeble in the head, and that a daily game of football and double the quantity of milk and fruits in my diet would cure me of my sick thoughts.

Aggrieved that mother's response did not match my level of disquiet, I spoke to an indulgent Muslim member of my father's retinue, largely because he often told us stories about the mysterious and the unseen. He couldn't provide the answers himself, and took me to a fakir who was known to possess some wisdom on such phenomena.