The Trail to Spring

Chapter 31

"One day during the monsoon, I returned to find Tulsi down on his bed.

I touched his forehead. He had a slight fever. We both thought it was nothing and hoped that he would get well soon.

But he didn't.

The next day, he was very weak but he still went to work. You see, we were paid on a daily basis and taking a day off meant that not getting your wages for that day. Neither of us could afford that. Although the people in the slum were more than friendly, the surroundings were far from healthy. There were garbage in the oddest of places and the roads were filled with puddles and mud. I knew that this environment was not ideal for a sick person. But where else could we go?

As days passed, Tulsi became weaker and weaker and his fever won't go away and he continuously complained about headaches and a nauseating feeling. That was when I understood that something was wrong. I took him to the nearest public hospital. The doctors checked him and diagnosed that he had dengue. But still, we knew that dengue is not deadly and he'd of course recover.

During the days Tulsi was in hospital, I did his part of the job as well. I would visit him every evening in the hospital and play him the harmonica while he recovered from his illness. It was the only thing that he looked forward to while his body compelled him to stay in bed. I guess, it reminded him of the better times that we had spent together.

Every other day, some person or other from Basanti came to visit him and they'd tell him about all the things that had happened in the slum while he was away – how Hari kaka had made an idol for Viswakarma Puja, how the children broke another window of Burima while playing street cricket, how we had cleaned up his place spick and span for the time when he would return. Tulsi always enjoyed listening to us. But despite all this, he was not recovering from his illness and that had started to worry me. I asked the doctors countless times to check him but they always assured me that he'd improve soon enough and left it that.

One evening, while I sat beside him playing the harmonica, he started reminiscing about our times in the orphanage and wondering what had happened to the others.

"You know, Rakesh," he said to me, "I never really expected to become famous or rich in my life. I was never afraid of death and I never will be. I only wanted to do something, you know, big before dying. I just wanted to do something worthwhile."

"You will," I said, "Why are you talking rubbish? You'll get better and we'll visit your 'tulsi' plant again beside the pond and I'd play my harmonica and you'd whistle. And we'll do something worthwhile together, Tulsi. You just get better."

He nodded but stayed silent. At around eight when I was preparing to leave for that day, he complained of a severe pain in his stomach and even puked a bit. He was practically writhing in pain. I was scared to leave him like that and so I went to call a nurse or a doctor to look after him. But nobody was free. I knew that my friend was lying in bed and in pain. Finally seeing my desperation, a doctor agreed to see Tulsi but asked me to wait a moment as he was checking another patient. So I waited for him outside his office.

Half an hour passed.

An hour passed.

With every passing moment my fear for Tulsi was increasing manifold as I pictured his lean, small figure convulsing as I stood here doing nothing.

The doctor finally came back two hours later and I pulled him to Tulsi's room as fast as I could. I ran like my friend's life depended on it because this time it actually was true. When I entered his room again, he had stopped convulsing and seemed to be sleeping peacefully. I heaved out a sigh of relief. However, when the doctor checked him I saw everything in his face but relief. He immediately made arrangements to move Tulsi to another room in the hospital. I didn't know what room it was but I later figured it must have been the ICU.

I stayed outside his room the whole night. Nobody told me what was happening inside. Was he alright? That was the only thing that I needed to know at that moment and that was the only thing that I didn't know.

Finally at around three o'clock in the morning, the doctor came out of the room. I tried to enter the room but he stopped me. I struggled and peeped inside. There he was, my friend Tulsi lying down on the bed, sleeping peacefully. The doctor pushed me back.

"Let me see him," I had said as I tried to go past him. But he didn't budge.

"He died, kid," he said, "He died of internal haemorrhaging."

I didn't know what haemorrhaging meant but I knew what 'died' meant.

I ran out of the hospital. I couldn't believe that Tulsi had died. I ran and ran and ran until I came up to the neem tree that he had sown beside the pond. The tree stood there silent and motionless, not a leaf stirring. I went and dropped down under the tree. Its branches were more spread out than ever before and it seemed to be wrapping me up under the protection of its caring hands as a friend consoles another. If anyone could have known my grief then it would have been Tulsi's neem tree. The tears never stopped that night.

I left my job the next morning and walked out of the slum. I spent a few days roaming around the city, thieving, begging or scrounging from the garbage. I started to search for the others- Lokesh and the twins. I feared that they had fallen under the same fate. I hated to be alone and I needed someone.

One night as I sat on the footpath, hungry and tired, a car stopped in front of me. And out came Mr. Aparesh Barui. He welcomed me into his house and fed me the best variety of food that I had ever eaten for a long, long time. And then he offered me to stay with him. I was initially suspicious about this but it turned out that Pops had lost his wife and son in a car crash and I reminded him of his son.

So, in the next few years, I obtained a high school diploma and got a major in Physics from CU. Once I was of age, I hired an apartment with the little money that I had of my own and decided to live my life on my own terms. It was around this time that I started to do an amateur detective gig as a hobby, having spent countless hours before in the streets just observing people walk past me. I started helping people find their valuables and lost items and kittens with the minimal skills that I possessed.

It continued like this for a while until one day, Pops handed me the case of the murder of a politician and soon after that, you came to me searching for your missing brother."

The detective smiled.