THE EPILEPTIC K N DARUWALLA

Suddenly the two children
flew from her side
like severed1 wings.
Thank God, the burden in her belly
stayed where it was.
The rickshaw-puller was a study in guilt.
It was too much for him : the convulsionary2 and her frightened3 kids
floundering about in a swarm4 of limbs.

A focus in the brain
or some such flap,
the look had gone from the mother’s eyes
the way her children
had flown from her lap.

The husband dug through the mound5
that was her face; forced the mouth wide
plucked out the receding tongue
Warped6 into a clotted wound
and put a gag between her teeth.

The traffic ground
to an inquisitive7 halt. A crowd senses
a mishap before it sees one.
They fanned her, rubbed her feet and looked around

for other ways to summon back her senses.
A pedestrian whispered,
`Her seizures8 are cyclic;
they visit in her menses9’.

She was not hysteric10, she didn’t rave11,
her face was flushed12, abstract, the marionette13-
head jerked from side to side, a slave
to cross-pulls. A thin edge of froth14
simmered round her lips 
like foam-dregs15 left by a receding wave.

The hospital doctors frowned with thought
light words like petit mal were tied
to the heavies, “Psycho-motor epilepsy
a physician pointed out with pride
the ‘spike-and-wave’ electrical activity,
prescribed belladonna and paraldehyde.

Just when he said, ‘she isn’t shaping
too well’, she recovered, bleached white
and utterly raped.
As a limp awareness slouched along her face
I found it was the husband who was shaking.