Vaccine (Writing Nepal 2021, shortlisted story)

Bijay Prakash Upadhyaya | February 18, 2022

He thinks Jestha is a funny month. It lies at the cusp between the hot summer and the relief of monsoon. So, if it doesn’t rain today, he will be due for another scorching summer day. In any case, he requires an umbrella to deal with nature’s arbitrariness at this time of the year. And the pandemic, which he likes to think is also one of nature’s many quirks and whims, has made everything worse.

He unfurls his umbrella. It’s an old umbrella, the kind where the ribs and trestles are a little longer and thicker and with canopies that can accommodate two persons easily. A little heavy on the shoulders, but very durable all the same. There is a price you pay for availing things that protect you. You have to carry the weight of the umbrella if you want it to protect you from rain or heat. Likewise, he thinks, this arduous journey on a scorching summer day is a price too that he has to pay to get access to the vaccine. Apparently, if there is one thing that can save you from the wrath of this virus, it is the vaccine.

The government is rolling out vaccines and he knows that he isn’t supposed to get one. At least, not yet. The vaccines are for the older folks, the doctors and nurses at the hospitals, the bankers, and the sarkari babus. Everyone but him. They say younger people like him are less likely to catch this dreadful illness. It’s a tricky thing actually. Whenever words like ‘likely’ are used you have to understand that there is a catch somewhere. If a madman with a gun enters the bazaar and starts shooting people at random, and somebody tells you that the bullet is less likely to hit you, it doesn’t mean you won’t run away, right? ‘Less likely’ or ‘More likely’, you will run for your life. You can’t expect probability to be your saviour. You are a fool if you do so.

He is not a fool.

Anyways, who doesn’t want to give a shot at living?

So, in a funny way, this journey that he has endeavoured, this journey which has a starting point – his home – and a destination – the Sabha Griha assembly hall where they are giving out the vaccines – is his way of running for life. Whenever you see someone run for their life you see chaos and disorder and anxiety. You don’t see a carefully planned journey. You won’t see the destination. And sure enough, you won’t see an umbrella. But his version of running for life consists of all these things. And a plan.

So what’s his plan? There is a thousand rupee note in his wallet. That’s his plan.

It is indeed very hot. Umbrellas can save you the sun rays from directly hitting you. But not from the heat in the air. He regrets not bringing his cycle along. Somebody told him that if you walk and cops stop you and interrogate, you could always say your home is just around the corner and you are heading back to your place. You cannot say that when you are on a cycle. Also walking shows humility. Riding a cycle or a motor cycle in lockdown shows arrogance, it shows you are a show-off.

The last time he visited the Sabha Griha was during the election. There was a long queue and he had to wait for his turn to cast his ballot. He voted for the party of the comrades because that was what he was told to do by another comrade in his locality.

‘There will be roads, and schools, and hospitals…’ The comrade had declared.

But few days back, when he asked the comrade about the damn vaccines, there was no answer. He wanted to know if the comrade could pull some strings and get him a jab. The comrade replied that even he hadn’t got a shot and hung up the phone. He doesn’t understand why the comrade not getting the vaccine is an explanation for why he hasn’t got one. He thought what if the prime minister told the same thing? Will that console desperate people like him? But the prime minister, clever man that he is, has surely taken the vaccine.

The prime minister is a funny person, to be honest. And he is a comrade too. He once suggested coughing and blowing your nose can ward off the virus. And he also somehow linked the pandemic with the mountains and told how our mountains will ensure that the virus won’t be our nemesis. Nearly twelve thousand people have died since. Because of the virus.

‘This country has got a lot of mountains,’ he thinks. ‘We have learnt to hide behind them whenever we have to confront our own incompetence.’

He ups his pace because he knows the mountains won’t save him from death. The vaccine will. And comrades who cannot procure vaccines will always bring up the mountains – or the Buddha for that matter – or hang up their phones. A breeze of fresh air passes across his face. It soothes him, brings down his anxiety. He wishes some air would find way around his groin too. It’s burning there.

Will thousand rupees suffice though? ‘It should,’ he thinks. The plan is quite simple actually. He will pull whoever authorizes the vaccines to a corner and offer the bribe. And if the scheme of things hasn’t changed during this pandemic, he should get a jab easily. He smiles. He thinks the plan is brilliant, actually. This is how things work in this country.

The street where he is walking now lies dry and desolate. A bird is chirping nearby. There are few houses on either side. One has a front yard where a lychee tree stands out with bunches of red and juicy fruits hanging from its branches. They bring out the thirst in him. It’s funny how a glance at a few juicy lychees makes you yearn for water more than for the lychee.

When he swivels the lever attached to the gate, it produces a metallic sound.

‘Who is it?’ someone cries.

‘Can I get some water?’ he says.

There is a pause. An awkward one. Because the default response to somebody asking for water used to be a very empathetic, ‘Yes!’ until just a few months ago. The virus has changed things.

‘No. There is no water here.’

But there are lychees, he wants to say, but stops. When you ask for water but no one offers you some, you are not going to feel good about it. He doesn’t either. But it is what it is, he thinks. Even if the virus is ridiculously tiny, it makes itself visible in funny ways. When somebody knocks at your door and asks for water you don’t think of a thirsty person. You think of person riddled with the damn virus. You think it is the virus itself knocking at your door and asking for water.

‘It’s fine,’ he says to himself. ‘It’s okay.’

He should have carried a water bottle, he thinks.

By the time he reaches the Sabha Griha, he is panting. The place is bursting with people and activity. He finds it hard to believe that these people are gathered here to get rid of the virus and not catch it. A crowd has huddled in front of a window. People are brandishing their identity cards and citizenship cards. Few, who have already taken the shots, are rubbing their arms and drinking Mango-Frooti.  An old man has just snapped at a woman for cutting him in line. ‘It was my turn,’ the woman says. ‘No, it was mine,’ he says. Somebody reminds the old man to pull his mask up from below his nose and cover up. The old man is enraged. ‘Even if I die, it will be my death, not yours,’ he says. The others remain quiet. The mention of death has apparently reminded them why they are here.

‘So this is where the magic happens,’ he thinks. For the first time he feels the weight of his wallet protruding from the back pocket of his trousers. He has to find somebody who can take the thousand bucks and cut him into the line.

But there are many men and women at work. And everybody seems to be equally important. And everybody seems to hold equal authority. There are few who are at the computers across the window. A young man is stacking IDs and slipping them inside. A few are doing clerical work at a table in a corner of the hallway. Across the hallway, inside a small room, he can see one or two people, cloaked in gowns and giving the actual jabs.

For some reason he thinks the folks doing the clerical work on the table are more likely to get him through the mess. ‘Likely,’ as we have seen earlier, is a fallacious word. He pins his hope on the thousand rupee note to fix the fallacy. He approaches the clerics. One looks at him.

‘Are you a health worker?’ He asks.

‘No, sir. Actually…’

‘Did you register yourself? Over there?’ He points towards the window across which he had seen people working on big dusty computers.

‘No.’

‘So?’

He understands from the way this person is talking that he hasn’t got much time left. He has to come straight to the point. He takes off his mask because he thinks showing your real face while you are about to strike a deal shows that you are serious about it.

‘Sir, I have got some money,’ he says, his heart pounding in his chest and in his throat.

There is again a long pause. Again, an awkward one. Because, you see, when you offer a bribe to a babu at a table, the default response used to be… You know what it used to be.

They say everything is fair in love and war. Everything is fair in trying to save yourself from death, too. What is not fair, he thinks, is the rationing of the salvation. Everybody needs to be given a fair chance to save themselves. He feels like everything that he has seen and felt has culminated to this junction between the babu at the table and the thousand rupee note in his wallet. Everything from his birth, to the place where god sent him to be born, to the political ecosystem of the place, to the geography – if the mountains didn’t exist, would the prime minister perhaps have taken the virus a tad more seriously? – to the regimes of power that have governed the place, and to the choices he has made in his life – why didn’t he take science in high school? Because that would have paved a way for him to become a doctor, and that would have got him the vaccine. Or, why didn’t he do a BBA? Because that would have made him a banker and that too would have got him the vaccine – and also to other more recent and less profound choices, like why did he approach the clerks and not the people at the computers for this clandestine job? Everything, he feels, everything has somehow culminated to this juncture where, at first glance, only two people seem to be involved, but the way he sees it, it is the whole universe that is getting involved. What the babu says next will give meaning to this culmination.

Only the babu doesn’t say anything. He just waves his hand and beckons somebody. It’s not a good sign. People who are keen on taking bribes don’t call others to the scene. He turns around. A cop is walking towards them. He understands what will happen if he doesn’t run.

He runs for his life. And this time his running-for-life exhibits chaos and disorder and anxiety. It resembles the normative method of running for life. He came to the Sabha Griha running for dear life and he exits it doing the same. He doesn’t turn back to see if the cop is following him. Only after what it feels like miles and ages of running, he turns around. There is no cop in sight. Also, he realizes he has dropped his mask.

And slowly, as his heart beats lose their panicky pace, and torrents of sweat stream from his forehead and arm pits and inner thighs, he realizes he is thirsty as hell. He looks around. There is no sign of water. He thinks he is going to die. But the prospect of dying doesn’t bother him anymore. It is the price you have to pay. Like the weight of the umbrella. For being born in the wrong country, or for not choosing to graduate with a BBA. The prospect of not having to bother about death hasn’t come from a place of assurance that you are insulated from death, but has come from a place of realization that you can do nothing about it. There is just no point in worrying.

A motorcycle stops by his side. There is a cop on it. Not the one who chased him, though.

‘Why are you outside?’

It is the question even gods wouldn’t dare to ask him now. But somehow this cop does.

‘Can I get some water?’

‘Why are you panting and where is your mask?’ the cop asks.

‘Sir… Please… Some water’

The cop gives him a bottle. He opens the lid and takes a few gulps. Water had never tasted so good, he thinks.

‘Do you know how much fine you have to pay for wandering outside during the lockdown?’

A pause. An awkward one.

‘Two thousand rupees.’ The cop has declared it as if it is the ultimate truth of the universe.

‘My house is just around the corner, sir. I was heading towards my place.’

‘Which house? I live here too.’

He knows he is in for a ride now.

‘The one with a lychee tree in the front-yard. And a brown metal gate,’ he blurts.

‘Don’t lie,’ the cop says. ‘That is Padma Sir’s house.’

Cops these days. They know everything from which house is whose and how much fine you have to pay for wandering outside, that too during lockdown, that too without a mask, and that too panting and huffing.

There is no point in pushing this further. If the day has taught him anything, it is to not push things when they cannot be pushed any further.

‘I don’t have two thousand rupees on me.’

‘How much do you have?’

‘A thousand.’

It is at this moment he realizes that the junction where everything would come down to culminate and gain meaning wasn’t at the Sabha Griha as he had imagined. It was right here. And that if the thousand rupee note he carried in his wallet wouldn’t give him protection from death, it surely would give him freedom.

The cop nods. They have reached a deal. He has bought his freedom.

He resumes his walk with the umbrella casting its weight on his shoulder and its shadow on the ground. It has been an interesting day. He broke laws and common decorum. But everything he did, he did to give a shot at living. Who doesn’t want to live? He figured out a way to do that. It’s a different thing that it didn’t work. But he tried. And if he has to die tomorrow because of the virus, he could always look at its face and say, ‘I tried.’

He feels light.

‘It’s okay,’ he says to himself. ‘It’s fine.’

 

 

Twenty days later, on one fine Sunday morning, he woke up with a fever and excruciating headache. By the afternoon he had a cough. What happened to him in the next seven days, I won’t say. Because that’s not the point.

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Photo by Krizjohn Rosales/Pexels

 

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