Bougainvillea
Maya jotwani
When I stepped onto the stage, all I could think about was Dada. My grandfather. He was the first one. With his large, large hands, softer than down feathers, and crinkled with the trials and journeys of an old man. Those hands would unwind the Velcro with a crackle to place the blood pressure cuff when I came to visit. The calming ritual of feeling the cuff constrict, and then release with a sigh. “Very good betta”, he would say, with a pat on the arm. Dadi would be behind us in the kitchen, half-cooked roti lightly smacking the pan as it flipped in the air. As I saw my classmate walk across the stage with his grandmother, slowly, with her cane, I saw my Dada slowly walking from the apartments to Starbucks, on that never-ending sidewalk hugging speeding cars. The light had been red for at least a minute, but the cars patiently waited as he pushed his walker forward on the crossing.
A week later after the ceremony, I found myself in a classroom unwinding the Velcro to place a blood pressure cuff on my classmate. My hands are small, and dry because the Worcester winter is starting to set in. I’m far away from the lands where my grandparents grew up, and their adopted lands where they spent their retirement. I remind myself to moisturize. The cuff constricts and the dial ticks upwards. It releases and I listen in vain. I release the cuff with frustration – where is that systolic?
I was so excited to tell Dadi about my updates. “Dadi, I’m taking the medical school entrance exam”, “Dadi, I’m hoping to be a doctor like Auntie and Dada”. Her eyes, moist and wandering, would look at me and she’d nod and squeeze my hand. I knew she knew what that meant. I got into medical school seven days before she died. I flew to California with my heart in my mouth. “Dadi, I got into medical school last week. I’m going to medical school. I’m going to be a doctor like Dada”. I held her hand, crinkled and thin as she lay. Her exhales took her whole body, her thin frame shook like she was in the wind. I knew that she could hear me. I knew she knew what that meant. Truthfully, I didn’t know what it would mean to enter this medical school without Dadi or Dada. What does it mean when you journey through so much holding the hands of those who won’t be able to see the destination at the end?
It was Dada that I had always thought about on my journey to medical school. But, my uncle told me then that Dadi had been accepted to medical school. It was her dream. But it was the 1950’s, and it was several hundred kilometers away. She became a botanist instead.
Dadi would sit looking at the bougainvillea on the terrace of our eighth floor flat. Their translucent leaves shone bright magenta through the warm Indian light, their roots snaking along the wooden lattices on the perimeter of our terrace. Bombay was a precipitous drop below. The branches grew greedily, racing to get around the terrace, overtaking, crossing, strangling newcomers. Morphing and bulging to bear its beautiful, bright leaves.
I’m in the lecture hall, and we are learning about radiology and imaging. I’m looking at a PET scan on the projected screen. A node turns up bright and radiates out. It is stark against the pitch black, refusing to be dampened. Its cells have forced its way across membranes, its dodged T-cells and B-cells, overtaken old blood vessels and forged new ones. The cells are racing greedily, eating up what they can and hiding in the dark parts of the body. Its morphing and bulging to bear its fruit. I think about the bougainvillea, swallowing the earth in the middle of the air. I think about Dadi discussing the flowers, and slipping a petal into my salty, knotty hair.
Dadi did not go to medical school, but she studied living things and the cruel ways that the living can maneuver to survive. She taught teenagers in high school about photosynthesis and root patterns. Dadi cultivated flowers as they raced up from the earth, as they took circuitous routes, and almost fell off the edge. In her household, she supported a man who dedicated his life to medicine, and she gave rise to two granddaughters now pursuing medicine. She could have never known that 70 years after she gave up her place at medical school, I was just starting to take her back with me.
Maya is a medical student at UMass Chan Medical School. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Pomona College in California. She is from the United Kingdom. She is interested in how writing can deepen our connections with others.
