DADU

The name plate on the outer wall of the house says
Dr. N. Mukherjee
B-15/74

Dr. N. Mukherjee is a grandfather and he resides in this house, I tell you
in the photographs on the walls in the drawing room, the tv room, and his bedroom
in front of whichy grandmother, M. Mukherjee
lights an incense stick everyday.

He lives in the medical books now collecting dust on table in his bedroom,
In the cotton and woollen shirts and pants in the almirah,
in the bottles of sorbitrate tablets hidden in various corners like the lining of the sofa, under mattresses, in the fridge, on the dining table
in the event of a sudden heart attack-
he suffered eight heart attacks my mother has told me.

He lives in the broken stethoscopes and other medical instruments on a shelf,
bills stuck for the last ten years, in case he ever needs them, on an iron rod,
his walking sticks, one dismantled, the other resting against the sofa in the tv room.
There are shelves in the kitchen with
empty bottles of Horlicks Lite because he had diabetes.
Tea mugs he drank from, gathering oil and grime- he loved gobhi pakoras in the evening.

In the big closet hangs his sweaters and coats from the loving, dear sisted from America
and batteries, pliars, screwdrivers with which he could fix anything in the house
and playing cards and a plethora of broken, unused things like staples and staplers and paper weights from various pharmaceutical companies on the dressing table and in the drawers.

If you sit in the verandah in the evening
you will sometimes see him walking around the house with his hands behind his back- he is scared to venture out of the house anymore.

Dr. N. Mukherjee lives in this house.