Faith healing

"My child is sick,very sick. " Anju said , as she always did , with little or no preamble , her hands elbow deep in sink and dishes.

You are usually expected to ask , "What ? why?How? " in varying degrees of surprise and outrage . If it entails absence from the workplace , it is all the more an opportunity to grieve. Genuinely. More severe the illness , longer the absence , greater the misery for the mistress of the house . 

Compassionate steps are taken , and the Anju is referred to the doctor of the house , who luckily happens to be at home , at the time of this said episode . History , signs and symptoms are gleaned after several linguistic hurdles have been crossed . Punjabi-Hindi-bhojpuri, back to Punjabi -hindi-english - some medical jargon . It is decided that the said child is suffering from a bout of recurrent pneumonia and that he should be administered injectable antibiotics .Which being the state of affairs , is impossible . Hence a leave of two days and an advance of some money is made , so that the kid may be looked after in a hospital/OPD setting . 

Two days later , the triumphant and beaming Anju arrives to a grimy , dusty house , with overflowing garbage cans and kitchen sinks stacked high with stinky dishes with two days' old dal drying on them . In other words , she is surrounded by squalor , and is happy , why ? 

The answer should have been written in chaste bhojpuri to get across the lightning bolt effect . But to render it mellow , if not slightly scratch-the -head quizzical, here is the english version. 

"That money you gave me , I didn't waste it on the doctors and medicines we were treating him with "

She said with a grin that revealed betel scarred teeth. The heart sank , as this conversation was entering an all too familiar , and dismal , terrain . 

"Where did you go then ?" I swatted a fly , knowing the answer before it was spoken . 

"I went to the Holy man ."

"Ahem"

"He took a ghost out of him , out of my boy." 

"Okay , what ghost?Kaun?" 

Apparently , a young mother had passed away in their vicinity , not many days ago , and the distraught husband took to sharing Anju's husband's happy hour . The theory goes that this young mother's spirit , being very much around, decided to enter Anju's baby boy. Why the deceased spirit chose this hapless boy is a mystery. By all accounts, the deceased was a battered soul at the hands of her drunkard husband. If there was someone she should vent her ire on , it should be this arrack-sodden being .

Well, to cut a long story short , the boy has returned happy , and is playing quietly around in the dirt , outside the home , a visible sign of recovery . He no longer sought Anju's lap .

Hence Anju has happily left him rollicking in mud with his siblings , while she dusts , cleans and sparkles other people's homes .