Perhaps a "not-so-well scripted" story of Vikas Dubey’s escape, surrender and encounter, following a raid in which the police party was thoroughly outmanoeuvred leaving eight of them dead, made me go back to my childhood days in Kanpur. For all practical purposes, I was born and brought up there, since immediately after my birth in the holy city of Benaras, my parents shifted to Cawnpore (now Kanpur). During the initial 15 years of our stay in that city, we were first floor tenants in a property located on a huge corner plot on one of the crossroads of the Sisamau locality.
My story began one day in early 1950s when an overly affectionate cousin of my mother pulled me up and made me sit on his lap, while partaking of tea and snacks equally affectionately served by my mother. After a little while, however, he put me down on the ground and announced that my mouth was emitting foul smell. That was a bit embarrassing for all members of the family, to say the least. After the "uncle" had left, I was put to a great deal of questioning and my brushing habits and hygiene came under stricter scrutiny, but to no avail. To add to my tribulations, some blood used to ooze out of my left nostril. I grew up as a sickly child, who was afraid of approaching people.
When home remedies failed to yield any result, my father took me to the civil surgeon of the government-approved Hallett Hospital (now Lal Lajpat Rai Hospital), where Vikas Dubey was taken to. After a cursory examination, he declared that I was suffering from tonsillitis and hence required to be operated on. The operation was performed under general anaesthesia and, therefore, I have no memory of what happened.
When I came out of the induced stupor, I felt as if I had lost my voice. The doctor and my parents told me not to try to speak, till further orders. During the operation, I had accidentally lost my epiglottis, adding a new dimension to my existing ENT catastrophe, in the bargain. In due course, I came home and got back to daily routine, but the problem refused to go away. Mouth continued to smell, the nose bled and I continued to be a sickly child.
On the advice of a doctor friend, my father took me to a reputable ENT specialist. He peered into my nose with the help of a special torch and declared that there was a foreign body lodged in my left nostril. With the permission of my father, he took a pincer and pulled it out. The foreign body was the size of a cherry stone.
Later, my mother recollected that as a small child of about three, she had taken me to her parents’ place. While walking around in the spacious garden of my maternal grandfather, who was the Diwan of the Samthar princely State, I tried to smell a particular seed-filled bud a little too strongly. The maid accompanying me reported it to my mother. I was taken to a doctor who removed some of the seeds, but one apparently eluded him. After about eight years, it had come out, having gathered a lot of mucous and dirt in the meanwhile. After the extraction, breathing through both nostrils after a long gap, I blew up like a balloon, a legacy I have carried ever since.
Other trials and tribulation I put my parents to during my childhood were amply visited on me by my younger son, who put a chalk piece in his nose as a child and then, as a teenager, couldn’t quite swallow a 25 paise coin, which got stuck in his gullet, requiring an operation, but without general anaesthesia.
My most abiding memory of Kanpur, which the Vikas Dubey episode has revived, is of a bloody fight between two groups, in which a hapless youth was repeatedly stabbed and left bleeding on the crossroads of Sisamau.
The author is a former Secretary-General of the Rajya Sabha
