All about a quack

In his heydays, he was very old. Now he is a fossil of ninety four years, smelling of garlic and ginger that he once used to sell, from house to house. He doesn't do that anymore. He is totally into healing ailments by prayers in Dakkani. Earlier, he used to devote only a part of his time to the healing.It was in the evenings. After a day of selling the condiments.

At twilight, as the cry of muezzin emerged from the minaret, people would throng the small room opening into the road. The room was filled with bags of ginger, leaving little space for the crowd. They overflowed onto the road. They looked anxious like the visitors outside a house, where the dead body lay. He would sit down in the inner most corner facing Mecca. The walls of the room are red from the dust that wrapped ginger. They had to be frequently white-washed. This was sponsored, once a year, as a thanks giving gesture, by one of the healed. They didn't stay white for long. Ginger was loaded and unloaded, and the dust rose painting the walls red again. Matching the ambiance, at times, he used to dye his long white beard in crimson, making it look like a comet's tail.

The word spread quickly. People from distant areas would arrive to seek his healing. Many poor among them, who couldn't afford the clinic in the adjoining road, would wait for hours for a healing spell. He was reasonable, charging only a rupee or two based on the potency. Each healing brought in five other patients. Soon people started thronging the small room with wait times up to two hours.They started seeking spells for a whole lot of goings on in their lives. He would patiently reject most of them, except a few which didn't concern ending a life.He was a harmless experimenter.

As the number of patients grew, he retired from the selling of condiments to a full time healing with a break in the afternoon for siesta.He was seventy five then.He passed off the condiment business to his four sons who all these years were trained under him. They expanded it farther. Soon, patients from all these places thronged the small room, as if the smell of the ginger carried in itself a binding spell.

Years passed by and with them he became more and more sedentary. He could not walk back home for his lunch. One of his grandsons used to carry his lunch everyday and wait till he finished. The four sons by the night would come in a small auto and take their father home.This carried on for more than a decade, when his vision started blurring despite the thick glasses he wore.And one day he became blind. The word spread farther about this blind healer and the crowd increased in number.He still wanted to heal, as many patients, before his day comes. Only now, he groped for the patients in the dark corner of the small room.

That day, at the call for evening prayer people thronged as usual around the small room. He groped a bit for the first patient and uttered an ancient spell. A moment later he couldn't utter a word and move his legs and he slanted to the wall like a bag of ginger. Not to be lifted by one alone. Outside people stared anxiously with eyes flashing like lost sails.