‘Thirst’, by Sarat Chandra Goswami, translated from the Assamese by Gayatri Bhattacharyya

“Water, water, Mother, a little water … water.”

He was the only child, and he had been suffering from fever for the last ten or twelve days. It fell on me to treat him. After passing my medical examinations, I worked in this place as a house surgeon. Now, I’m posted back here as an assistant surgeon.

I discovered that the boy had typhoid, and I knew that there could be many complications. The chief among these was acute flatulence, and drinking too much water would only aggravate the condition. So, I gave strict instructions to all: “Be careful. He will feel very thirsty, but you must not give him any water. A few pomegranate seeds, maybe, or one or two spoons of sago water mixed with a little milk or a tiny bit of sugar candy – that’s all. But if you give him any water to quench his thirst, remember, it will be disastrous.”

The sick child’s throat, indeed, his entire body, seems to dry up with thirst. In a thin and strained voice, he says, “Mother, water, please, a little water.”

The suffering of her child pierces the mother’s heart to the core; she seems to dry up too. Her entire body speaks of the restlessness of her tortured mind. But the doctor has forbidden water!

“My son, my baby, get well first, and I will give you all the water you want.”

Tears overflow her eyes and run down her cheeks, drenching the sick bed. Seeing his mother cry, the child keeps quiet for a while.

But again, a violent thirst wracks him, and he becomes restless. Somehow, managing to turn over in his bed, he again pleads in a weak voice, “Only one small drop of water, one drop.”

Dear God! What great sin in my past life had made me choose a doctor’s profession!

All the scriptures know that doctors, or any other medical practitioners, cannot ever give life. But can they take a life?

Those who care know!

Some years passed; I am not exactly sure how many. Also, I can hardly keep track of the number of different places I was transferred to in those years.

One morning, at about nine o’clock, I was at the hospital when some young boys brought in an extremely thin and haggard-looking woman. I saw that she was insane. She was lying by the roadside, almost half dead, when the boys found her.

“Oh, my baby, come, drink some water – son, water.” She says these words over and over again in a thin, weak voice, and tears flow down her cheeks, drenching her torn clothes and dripping down to the ground.

It was not difficult to recognise her. God, is this your way of punishing me? By sending me this poor, demented woman whose son I murdered through my medical learning?

I treated her as best I could. But there was no suitable place in this world for this living symbol of selfless motherly love. She refused to drink even a drop of water, and one day, she, too, died of thirst.

And now? After having murdered two innocent people, after having ruined two soft and loving souls, science, that evil science of medicine, says, in typhoid fever, give the patient as much water as he wants! Do not obstruct nature.

Accursed be science for its arrogant stupidity!

‘The Lake’, by Rimi Nath

There was a lake not very far from the hotel where I was staying on a business trip. The lake wasn’t particularly beautiful: its water murky.

Having nothing to do, one evening, I took a leisurely stroll and ended up sitting on a bench by the lake. There weren’t many people around the lake, only two boats floating. In one of the boats sat three people, among them a young woman. She was so beautiful that I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The other two, I guessed, were her parents. I kept stealing glances at her as I sat there. Her hair was ruffled by the sweet summer breeze, making her even more charming. On the other boat sat two young men in their late twenties. About my age.

I had no friends in the city. Anil, my former classmate, used to live here, but last month he shifted to Bengaluru. Sitting in the hotel room was so suffocating that I just had to come out. I didn’t understand why people would choose a place like this for recreation. The water was muddy; the hyacinths had invaded half the lake. I thought it was good that Anil wasn’t in the city. I never liked his voice. It always irritated me.

In the midst of my reverie, I suddenly saw the girl in the water. Their boats had collided and overturned as they were trying to disembark. I jumped to the rescue. I helped the girl and her parents to the shore, but I couldn’t see the two young men anywhere. I learnt later that one of them was the girl’s brother, and the other, his friend. It surprised me that the girl was more concerned about rescuing her hair clip, which had gotten stuck in the hyacinths, than worrying about her brother and his friend. Her parents, too, were relaxed and even smiling. They all made their way to the restroom up the path. I was bewildered; I followed them.

In an agitated tone, I asked the girl’s father how he could be so unperturbed when his son had just drowned in the lake. The girl looked at me as she washed her hair clip in the basin. The father smiled and said, “The water of this lake does not take anything. It gives back whatever it takes.” I was dumbfounded.

I quickly walked away from them, only to bump into the two young men walking in, smiling from ear to ear.

I ran back to the hotel.

Excerpted with permission from ‘Thirst’ by Sarat Chandra Goswami, translated from the Assamese by Gayatri Bhattacharyya in Lapbah Volume I: Stories from North-East and ‘The Lake’ by Rimi Nath in Lapbah Volume II: Stories from North-East, edited by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and Rimi Nath, Penguin India.