Old knee caps and other cruel jokes

“If you want your words
to be remembered —
Speak in verse.”
From The Proverbs
of Bachchoo

When we were young, foolish and self-centredly uncaring about the effects of our words and actions on others, we played callous games with the regular denizens of our neighbourhood. I should be ashamed to admit it but for the benefit of this argument I will.
As teenagers I and other lads, and very occasionally the bolder tomboy type of girl, would hang around the street corners of Sachapir Street and Sarbatwalla Chowk in Pune. One of the regulars on the street was a well-turned-out blind beggar who was brought there at the auspicious time of the day by his daughter or grandchild and taken away to where they lived at night. We addressed him as Narayan — and he was quite content to be so called — because his one chant in asking for alms and singing the praise of God was “Narayan, Narayan, Narayan-na!” He alternated this repeated mantra with jingling his wood-and-tin-plate cymbals which went “jhink-a-chicking-jhink” between shlokas.
We would ask him, “Fantastic lyrics, yaar, did you write them yourself?” He didn’t quite understand this bizarre sense of humour but was compensated for his patience with a few coins whenever we encountered him. There were crueller jokes. One of our crowd, more shameless than the rest, once idly asked Narayan if he would be an eye-witness in a case arising out of an accident on the chowk.
It was unwarranted. The blind man, not getting it, very earnestly repeated that being blind he hadn’t seen a thing.
And it wasn’t only poor Narayan who was the willing butt of our bantering companionship. There was an old Parsi gentleman who took his walk every day and often greeted us with a “Sahebji dikra” as he limped past with his dragon-handled wooden walking stick. He was always immaculately dressed, sometimes in a three-piece suit with a watch chain in Edwardian style and more often in a Parsi coat and baggy woollen trousers. He would limp and stop now and then and clasp his knee.
He was never tired of telling us, because we repeatedly asked him what the matter was and why he limped, that it was what he called “gootthan ma pani” — water in the knee. We had no idea what this ailment might be, but we would for devilment ask the old man to roll up his trousers and show us, a demonstration which he very willingly, even eagerly, agreed to.
He would roll up the trousers with one foot at a raised level and show us the bony shins, thin thigh and swollen knee. Gootthan ma pani it was! And though we openly sympathised with him time and again, with him never remembering whether he had given us the benefit of the entire performance even a few days previously, we fell to imitating his limp and his rather Churchillian Gujarati accent (he would have pronounced it “akshunt!”) when he had walked away.
Now so many years later the Almighty, fate, natural selection or perhaps just the passage of years have taken their revenge. On me! After years of limping about and telling anyone who asked what the matter was, that it was “gootthan ma pani” whether they spoke Gujarati or not, I subjected myself to medical diagnosis and remedy and have had a knee replacement.
It became necessary because my left kneecap didn’t quite sit where it was supposed to, having grown a bit eccentrically. The operation worked well and “Leg”, as I have named the errant limb, is a bit stiff but doing well. (All this since you asked!)
Until the operation and various scans and X-rays that preceded it, I hadn’t paid any attention to the anatomy of the knee. I had no idea, having lived a long time and enquired into all manner of wisdom and wastage in my life, that a knee was two plastic T-shaped bits shoved upside down into the thigh bone and upright into the one that constitutes the shin. I only saw it pictured when they showed me the X-ray after the operation. I still can’t quite figure out how the whole thing works.
The other strange sensation I am learning to live with or overcome in these two or more weeks after the operation is something akin to people with amputated limbs feeling that the limbs are still there.
Before the replacement, my knee was prone to give way and twist if I put too much weight on it. So going downstairs my mind had adjusted to the infirmity by bending the knee while using my left leg. My brain hasn’t got used to the fact that this is not necessary any more and won’t venture a step down without the bend until I remind it that there is no longer any “gootthan ma pani” and it’s safe to defy that caveat — no dislocation, twisting or falling will take place. Still, my brain doesn’t quite trust this new assurance.
Even 50 years ago no one knew that pieces of plastic and metal could substitute for the human skeleton. There are religious cults which believe that one has to be 100 per cent genetically pure and not be polluted by any extraneous transplants if one wishes to go to heaven. During my operation and after I saw two brandy-bottle-sized containers filling up with drained blood from two tubes stuck in the flesh in the region of my knee. So must one of the great warriors of history have watched his life flowing away.
No such drama. The consultant came in and said I’d lost some blood and they could either pump in some more or I could go on an iron diet to restore my haemoglobin.
“I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, I can’t have blood transfusions,” I said.
“You are no such thing,” the consultant surgeon said, “please stop talking nonsense, Mr Dhondy and anyway, I think the ferrous-supplement route is good for you.”