Banana Bag Lady

The florist outside Holy Trinity hospital doesn’t stock those apology/condolence/get-well-soon roses. You know the kind choking inside cheap cellophane? Instead, he has tall green buckets of ocean lilies, gerberas, tulips and camellias. And in January when it’s breezy, their scent mingles with the sterile hospital smell creating sick-sweet pockets of air. I used to think his flowers cushioned words like ‘diabetes’, ‘B12’ and ‘mortuary’ within their fragrance. Those flowers really made me think all sorts of things.

And it wasn’t just me, everyone paused to look at them stacked in a long row outside the hospital gate. But no one from the hospital ever bought them. They were so bright, fragrant and alive, that they must’ve seemed like obscene gifts for those languishing inside Holy Trinity Hospital. The flowers were bought by people hurrying to birthdays and anniversaries, both remembered and forgotten. The guiltier the buyer, the larger the bouquet.

When I was admitted there, I could see the flowers from my window. Some of them anyway. During my first few days in the ward, I had hoped that the view from my window would improve my stay there. Back then, I felt fortunate compared to the other residents of my ward who were either distracted by relatives hovering around their bed, or forced to stare at the peeling, seepage-stained walls.

But the more I stared at those flowers, the further I was reminded of my contrast to them. So I took to looking at the insides of the hospital, at those just as miserable or worse than myself. And it was then that I finally noticed the lady with the banana bag.

On day three, I woke up to the sound of her voice coming from the bed next to mine. I couldn’t see her face as she was standing with her back to me talking to the woman occupying the bed. I assumed that she was related to the elderly cancer patient, who had been admitted for her low BP.

“Offer the postman water and he will always remember you,” I heard the lady saying. She was neatly dressed in a printed blue nylon sari but wore her hair in a scraggly, frizzy braid that curled at its end in a delicate half-circle in the middle of her back. A plastic bag of bananas dangled from her fingers. “Someone should remove these decorations now,” the woman continued, unbothered by the fact that the lady on the bed wasn’t responding to anything she was saying.

She was not wrong because even though Christmas had ended, it haunted the ward in mournful decorations. Four thermocol trees clutched the walls in peeling duct tape, while a faded red bunting that read “erry Christmas” sagged over the door. On one of the ceiling fans a ghoulish, deflated balloon with a Santa hat and drawn on smile zoomed in a dizzy circle.

In no time, the elderly woman began to snore and the woman with bananas took it as her cue to leave. I watched her go, surprised to note that she’d taken the bananas with her.

Soon after that, someone in the next ward died and the nurses seemed more flustered than usual. “A woman came to my bed yesterday, who was she?” my old neighbour asked the nurse.

“Who was who?” the nurse Bindu enquired in that infantile voice people tend to reserve for four-year-olds and the elderly.

“The one who came yesterday…”

“Do you miss having someone to talk to? Your son is in Delhi na, how will he come? If there’s anyone else you can call, just give one of us the number, OK?” the nurse told her.

The old woman didn’t reply and the nurse being far too busy didn’t probe any further.

There were ten beds in the ward, mine being the fifth and last one on a side of the room. The person in the bed directly opposite mine looked like a college student, and according to the nurse Bindu, had tried to take her own life. Bindu didn’t say why, just how. The girl had tried to asphyxiate herself with a plastic bag tied to her head. It seemed like a needlessly elaborate choice. If it came to taking my own life, I’d go with more traditional methods- razor to wrist, rat poison in tea, drowning, jumping off a high rise -all of them immediate and effective.

From what I could see of her, (I was still too sick to sit upright) the girl looked fine to me. She had either recovered from her attempt to die or she wasn’t too badly affected by it, I assumed she was being kept in the ward for observation.

“Have you eaten?” I heard the lady with the bananas ask the girl.

It was a little after lunch time and I was just about dozing off when I heard her voice. I couldn’t see her face this time either, but nothing much had changed, except that she wore a green sari that day. The plastic bag of bananas was still the same blue and her braid was just as scraggly as before with its end in the half-curl of a question mark.

The girl on the bed mumbled, “yes.” Behind her a thermocol tree was finally freed of its duct tape and fell to the ground with a soft thud.

“Are you still in school?”

“First year, college,” the girl replied. “Who are you? Are you with the Mahila Mandal?”

“Would you prefer it if I was?”

“No, I would hate that obviously,” I heard the girl say.

“Good, because I would hate that too,” the banana bag lady sounded like she had a smile growing in her voice.

“Maybe you’re a volunteer or counsellor then. I don’t want counselling, leave me alone.”

“I’m here to help you, not counsel you. See what a lot of drama you’ve created, no wonder no one has come to visit you. Let me guess, was this over a boy?”

The girl didn’t reply. I felt uncomfortable with the banana bag lady’s passive- aggressive questioning.

“Boy? Or marks sheet? Neither are worth killing yourself over.”

Unsurprisingly, there was no answer from the girl this time either.

“Talk to me girl, tell me what happened. I just want to listen to you… there seems to be no one else here to help you out.”

I heard a thin shrill sound rent the air and saw the banana bag woman leave. It took me a while to realize that the girl on the bed had been screaming.

Two days later, even though the ache in my bones hadn’t subsided I finally had the strength to sit up. And from this improved position, I noticed that the occupant of the bed opposite mine was now a hefty woman possibly in her late thirties. The girl who’d tried to die by suicide had been discharged while I slept. I didn’t know whether she’d done it over a boy, a girl or her marks sheet. She’d left no evidence of her distress other than that weak, haunting scream.

The woman who had replaced her spoke loudly on her cell phone, answering what sounded like calls from her employers at least five times a day. “Mai nai aayegi,” (I ain’t coming) she said in the intimate grammar of Bombay. And once, “Mai off bhi ho gayi to tum log sirf bartan ka sochoge.” (Even if I went off you people would only think of the dishes). I thought about how lucky one must be to go ‘off’ as swiftly as a light, drowning everyone in darkness.

My own employers hadn’t checked on me. I worried about how redundant I was, no one wanted me back at work as much as they wanted the lady who worked houses. I had received a ‘get well soon’ text from my superior on the day I got admitted and nothing else after.

When I’d received the lab report with my diagnosis, I’d openly wept in the hallway thinking I’d lose my job if I was sick for too long. Looking at me sob, the lab technician had only said, “maybe you caught it at your hostel.”

I had moved to Bombay just a month before this sickness came over me. I’d lived in a PG accommodation with five other women who communicated in quick nods and tight smiles outside the shared toilet. Sometimes one of the women would split the auto fare with me to the station on our separate ways to work. But I didn’t know anyone well enough to call them a friend.

When my mother called on the phone to check on me, I complained endlessly. “In this city, it’ll take an average of five months to find someone who’ll care,” I whined. Now when I look back, it was this self-pitying aloneness that first drew me to the banana bag lady. She didn’t seem like she’d need five months to start a transaction of concern. Because soon enough, she carried those bananas to the woman in the bed opposite mine.

“Had breakfast Neelima?” she asked the domestic worker in the familiar tone of an old acquaintance.

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m supposed to ask you this,” the banana bag woman answered beatifically. “By whom?”

“Have you eaten?” the banana bag woman persisted.

“If you call what I shovelled in my mouth food, then yes, I have eaten.” “What do you want to eat?”

“Batata wada”

“If I was in a hospital bed, eating poha and daal chawal day and night, I would ask for more than a batata wada,” the banana bag lady said in her smile-growing voice.

“So if I ask for mutton biryani, are you going to get me any? Who are you anyway?”

“So we can’t even dream of anything better, is it? You’d rather settle for something that’s probably available in the hospital canteen…”

“Easier for you to go get me a plate.”

At this point a noisy gathering of visitors entered the ward and I could no longer hear what was being said. Neelima looked agitated and the banana lady somewhere between amused and exasperated. One of the visitors played a tinny Bollywood song on their phone for a patient. And when I looked back at Neelima’s bed, the banana bag woman was no longer there. The nurse came almost immediately and gave me one of those pills that made me too groggy to concentrate. I had no time to think about what I had just heard and drifted off to sleep.

Later, I wondered if the banana bag lady was a “Dream Big, Seize The Day,” kind of person. “Dream of a mutton biryani, don’t settle for a batata wada.” “Kill yourself over a worthwhile cause, boys aren’t good enough.” “Offer the postman water and he will always remember you.” She didn’t seem caring, she reeked of the desperation to do good, to be remembered perhaps.

She didn’t come for two days after that and Neelima seemed restless and bored, as did I. The calls from her employers had all but stopped and no one called me except for my mother. I scrolled down Instagram several times a day and saw nothing but updates that underlined my loneliness. I began to watch ASMR videos of a Korean YouTuber called Hamimommy cook or clean in gentle, rhythmic sounds.

On the seventh day, the banana lady’s voice punctured the soft sounds of Hamimommy’s 10 AM cleaning routine. I looked up to find her sitting at the foot of Neelima’s bed. I could still only see her back from my position on the bed, and I found it amusing to note that the twirl at the end of her braid had now curled up like a startled millipede. Both their voices drifted clearly towards me. “Why this bed?” Neelima was asking her.

“I visit many wards, you’re the one for this month,” banana bag lady replied adjusting herself on the bed, looking for more room.

“But why me and not the others?” Neelima continued shifting herself closer to the wall, so the woman would have more space to settle in. Despite her line of questioning, Neelima seemed to have accepted the banana bag woman’s presence in her life.

“I visit only those who have no one visiting them.”

Neelima was silent for a while after that. “My man is not a bad one…but he’s a drunk,” she finally said.

When the banana bag woman left, carrying her packet as usual, I wondered why she’d never visited me. I had no one either.

There was chaos in the ward that evening, the ward boys were all busy and there was no one to buy me, Neelima, the old lady and someone on bed two our daily dose of medicines. We were the only ones without relatives and were therefore dependent on the ward boys.

“There are a pack of monkeys,” the nurse in the evening shift told Neelima. “The ward boys have to chase the monkeys now, so we nurses will have to somehow find the time to get your medicines.”

“They don’t pay you enough,” Neelima told her apologetically.

I wanted to say something too. “The country is grateful for your professional expertise.” “Nurses are the backbone of every hospital.” Or the banana bag lady’s go-to opener, “have you eaten?”

But as usual I said nothing.

When the banana bag woman came back two days later, she told Neelima that a monkey had bitten her.

“The doctor asked me, ‘where in Bombay did you find a monkey to bite you?’ ‘Nowhere but in your hospital, I said to him.’”

Neelima chortled in those round, loud belly laughs that are characteristic to unselfconscious women. It was so nice to hear her laughter that I felt included in their conversation, in on their joke.

“Are you fine?” Neelima asked her.

“It was hardly a bite, more like a snarl and a few scratches. I think it wanted something from me,” she said patting the bag of bananas.

“Like my husband then,” Neelima said laughing again, if a tad bitterly.

“I heard you’re here because of him?”

“He did me a favour, I needed the rest, who can go to work with a broken knee?”

“I hope they’ll go easy on you when you get back to work.”

“If they keep me on I’ll be grateful,” Neelima told her.

I saw the banana bag woman remove empty tiffin dabbas from a plastic chair nearby and drag it closer to the head of Neelima’s bed. She then procured a slim book from the banana bag and read her a story in a clear, rhythmic voice. The story drifted towards me like a faraway song, where the middle of each sentence was soft and fuzzy but its ends reached me perfectly. After a while, I gathered that it was the story of a bus driver who steals a bus and drives back to his village when he’s denied a day off.

I don’t know how the story ended, but soon enough Neelima had left too. The bed opposite mine was unoccupied for an entire day. A day of stalled sicknesses and lesser tragedies in Bombay, a mostly good day for many perhaps, because in that hospital, empty beds were a rarity.

I was getting better too, but not well enough to walk for long or be left on my own. If I propped up my pillows I could look across the room with an uninterrupted view for a couple of hours a day. And I looked at the door eagerly every day, hoping the banana bag lady would find me and ask me about myself. By then I knew her face well, as she was a regular at the ward, often visiting the old lady next to me and bed number two. But she still hadn’t spoken to me.

I played out entire conversations in my head with her sometimes, where my replies were so engaging that the banana bag woman was just as intrigued by me. I imagined telling her about how I’d never fallen in love. Or perhaps I’d tell her about the day I’d caught a glimpse of Shah Rukh Khan at the Chandigarh airport– he was shorter than I had thought he was. Or I’d just tell her about my father who’d left us. But I had nothing much to say, I had barely lived at all.

Instead, I decided I’d ask her about her.

Banana bag woman: Have you eaten?

Me: Have you eaten?

OR

Banana bag woman: Young people like you work so hard, you forget to forge any real relationships.

Me: Yes, but what are you doing in a hospital talking to a stranger in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon when the nurses aren’t around? Did your terminally ill husband die of negligence by you? Are you coming here to assuage your guilt?

OR

Me: What’s your name?

When she did come, it was on a Wednesday afternoon just as I’d imagined. The blue plastic bag dangled from her fingers as usual, and she wore a cream-coloured sari. I had a very strong feeling that she’d speak to me that day. I stared at her unblinkingly, willing her to stop, willing her to look at me. She did stop at the door for a brief second to look at the beds in my corner (old lady and me) and then at bed number two, wondering which one to attend to.

It turned out that the old lady was fast asleep and unlikely to be any company at all. I couldn’t see very well towards bed two but I noticed that she was reading and probably didn’t wish to be disturbed.

It had to be me then.

I smiled at the banana bag woman, welcoming her, my brain buzzing with things to ask and say. For a split second, her eyes met mine and just as soon as that happened, she went to bed two asking the woman to keep her book aside for just a few minutes so they could talk. I was crushed.

Rejected and vengeful, I complained to the head nurse Regina when she came to assess my vitals that evening.

“There’s a woman who comes to all our beds, a woman with a blue bag of bananas? I’ve noticed her hovering around and asking too many personal questions. None of us know her, why is she always here?”

The nurse denied knowing any such woman. “We don’t encourage strangers here, especially since Covid. The watchmen only would stop them from entering the hospital. There’s no need to worry maam,” she said briskly.

But I wasn’t ready to give up.

“You people ought to keep an eye, there are old ladies like her,” I said pointing to my elderly neighbour, “who could be taken advantage of. And I’ve seen that woman lurking around her bed, ask nurse Bindu.”

I don’t know if my words had any impact on a busy and shifting schedule of nurses who barely had time to eat. But I didn’t see banana bag woman for the next few days. By then I had convinced myself that she preyed on the lonesome and elderly and was up to no good. I had done the right thing, I told myself.

Nurse Bindu sought me out on Saturday to tell me I was being discharged the next day.

“You’re fine now, go home but don’t go back to work for a few days. You still need rest. Here’s your prescription,” she said, handing me a sheet of paper.

I cleared my throat to get her attention.

“What about that lady?”

Nurse Bindu looked at me, confused.

“The lady with the blue bag of bananas?” I persisted. “I had complained to the other nurse about how she keeps…”

“I don’t know re, but doctor wanted me to tell you, we have cut down your medication, the prescription right now is mostly vitamins, don’t forget to have them.” she said, already turning to leave. “And be ready in an hour we have to change the bedding.”

I packed my belongings, my phone and charger, a toothbrush and a book. As I zipped my bag, I felt free of the depleting days I’d spent at the hospital, it was too soon to look forward to the future but I was hopeful about the days ahead. Consequently, I wanted nothing more to do with the hospital and its misery, its forgotten decorations and strange apparitions.

But as I left the building, I felt the urge to buy twelve long-stemmed ocean lilies from the florist outside. At first I bought them for myself, I told myself I deserved them after all that I had endured – the loneliness, the strange rejection, the constant reminder that my life had little meaning in the world outside. But when I took a deep whiff from the flowers I changed my mind. The flowers smelled like rain, like an actress’s perfume, like fresh guilt and sliced fruit – these flowers were not meant for me.

They were meant for someone fighting loneliness with anything she could find, even kindness.

I walked back into the hospital, telling the security guard I’d left something behind- it wasn’t a lie. I made my way up to my ward, even though I knew I had little chance of meeting her. And just as I suspected when I got there all I found was an empty bed with fresh, clean sheets. The new occupant hadn’t yet arrived. Disappointed, I walked closer to get one last look outside the window and that’s when I noticed a blue plastic bag by the pillow, with six bananas inside.

I picked up the bag and left the flowers in their place.