Kalachand was drenching in the rain in the open: his head uncovered, long hair disheveled, torso and limbs bare, eyes closed. You could not miss the sight of his sitting upright in a yogi position. With only a dhoti wrapped around his loin, he let his bulky and pot-bellied body have a thorough wash in the torrential downpour.

For quite a while it had become a routine workout, almost a ritual for him. Rains, at the height of this rainy reason, were a daily affair now. And when it started – be it in the morning or afternoon – he was always ready to jump into it. In fact, he eagerly waited for it. They say that before him, no one else had discovered the healing power of rain this way. And he got together all the force and faith of his life into it.

Two months ago, Kalachand had a mild attack of jaundice, but he did not care about it and went about his business as usual. After all, he was a guru – a spiritual mentor and guide – to hundreds of people and had a busy life among his disciples in his sprawling ashram in the suburb. He had practically little time to look into such personal problem. But the yellow thing deepened in his eyes and eventually spread all over his skin. One day he got so scared that he had rushed to Paradise Hospital, an upmarket health complex in Calcutta.

Like any modern clinic, the hospital laid more emphasis on exhaustive investigations than clinical examination and treatment. When after some days Kalachand found out that the investigations alone had taken a large chunk off his savings and he was nowhere near the cure, he was skeptical and left the hospital disgustedly, making up his mind to consult his old doctor. But to the surprise of his disciples, he returned to his old home to the fold of his wife and kid son whom he had totally forgotten since his renunciation of family life a few years back. He told them he would be back to his "Ashram" as soon as he would be cured.

Kalachand had called in Dr Ghosh on a drippy afternoon. "Never mind it, doctor", Kalachand entreated him rising from his lying position, his hands duly folded. "I have made the great mistake of not seeing you first and that is why I suffer today". His tone, though contrived, had a genuine remorse in it.

Dr. Ghosh, an experienced general practitioner with keen eyes on details, was
amused by transformation of his old patient who would deal in wooden furniture some years ago. He found Kalachand morphed into an arechetypal Indian guru, complete with long hair and a swell in the middle. Some men and women, his disciples no doubt, were fawning around him.

He checked him up thoroughly and then read through the investigation reports. His face changed from jovial to glum as he was done with them. He got out his pad to write his
prescription.

"Give me the costliest of medicines and cure me as earliest possible," Kalachand begged. "I believe it's only you who can save my life. You are my God!" Then suddenly conscious of the presence of his followers, he further added, albeit in a pretentious voice, "I don't much think of myself as I do of these fellows. They're through a bad patch with me in bed."

But Kalachand's was a hopeless case: an extremely high bilirubin level, a palpable tender liver and ascitis. Then the biopsy report confirmed the malignancy of the liver. There was no chance of his survival, that was for sure, but the question was when and how he was going to die.

Soon after the visit, Kalachand's wife came to see Dr. Ghosh at his clinic. She looked so thin and withered that it seemed as if she, not her husband, was the real victim of the fatal illness.

"It must be liver cancer, doctor!" she began. "He still doesn't know about it, but I know."

"Who told you?"

"Nobody told me as such, but I have got a hunch. And tell me what other disease he can be afflicted with, except cancer? Is not it the right disease for a crook who relinquished his wife and son into a terrible patch, and never bothered about anything else except his own corporeal pleasures?"

After a while she had left Dr. Ghosh, sparing him any embarrassment of confirming the diagnosis.

Like any well guarded secrete, the nature of the disease was revealed in due time to Kalachand - most likely by his vindictive wife. This got him in a state of shock, and he was muted for some time. And then he burst into fury and flung abuses at everything and everybody, his chief target being the doctors who attended on him, especially Dr. Ghosh, who, he shouted, had deceived him with his utterly false assurances. During this time, he threw away all his medicines, tore apart his investigation reports and discontinued the conventional treatment altogether. Then he was calm, inordinately calm…

But here was the monsoon again with all its charm and majesty. And it caught Kalachand by surprise. He found himself watching the rain in an engrossed way, oblivious of his sufferings and woes. How wonderful, this rain in torrent, bursting out of the clouds, he thought, as if he did not know of it before. It’s bliss, benediction, nothing like it.

And one day he had heard it during one such meditative mode. Not once, but over and over again. "Come on, I'll cure you." It seemed like an oracle - the call of the Rain God, as if it was. His heart leapt. A wide, confident smile spread over his lips. And he immediately got into the rain and let his body awash with water.

His first few days in the rain attracted a huge crowd. He allowed himself to be soaked in the rain for hours on end, and withdrew only when the rain stopped. After every session, he examined himself in front of a dressing-table mirror to find out how he was changing into his earlier self. He believed that he was getting rid of jaundice gradually. In reality, however, he had started showing all kinds of bad signs: a withered, frail, almost skeletal body; crumpled pale skin, and his eyes now looming even more ominously yellow.

He could not eat anything now, could not sleep a wink, and whined while talking. But amazingly, he still had energy to carry himself out in the rain and sit upright for a long stretch of time.

Soon Kalachand was struck down with acute pneumonia, developing severe chest pain and shortness of breath.

His wife came rushing to Dr. Ghosh to call in him. "Why don't you take him to hospital?" Dr. Ghosh said to her. "He now needs institutional care."

"It's no use transferring him anywhere now", she reacted in a nonchalant fashion, "By the time you get there, he must be dead. I saw him rattling when I left home."

The doctor had no choice but to see Kalachand again. A really life-threatening situation, and given his health status, the prognosis was only poor. Yet Dr. Ghosh was inclined to take a chance: he tried an aggressive treatment with injections of newest and of course costly antibiotics. And it worked. Two days later, on his next visit, Kalachand was so good as to smile to welcome him. "I'm absolutely fit today; not a trace of cough and cold. You have performed a miracle, doctor and I'm so happy. But tell me, why couldn't you treat my jaundice?"

Dr. Ghosh kept silent, not knowing an apt answer to his question.

"But I have made it," Kalachand boasted with glee. "Just examine my eyes and body: they have turned white. Don't you think I'm free of jaundice now?"

Dr. Ghosh commiserated with him on his illusion. "Well, it seems so," he said, "But I warn you if you get soaked in rain again and catch pneumonia, I'm not coming down to treat you again"

Kalachand listened to his advice, and was less crazy now. Reduced to his shadow, he had very low energy levels now. Gradually, he got to be alone, being deserted by his followers and neighbours, and now to be looked after by his garrulous wife and silent son who were just not good company.

Around this time the truth was out in the air. People started talking all kind of nasty things about him - some of them were going to such length as to suggest that he was a rapist. Some of his women disciples –young ones – came up with allegations that he had abused them regularly by turns and made them drink with him before he satisfied his lust in every which way. They said that he had a sinful life all along and all his sins had now come home to roost.

He was almost insensitive to this buzz, never reeling under its impact. The world, for him, had already cracked and was now only wobbling. He could reckon it now that he was doomed to live the last days of his life miserably and amid an awful solitude. This solitude, he felt, had now menacingly hovered over him, and it seemed like the harbinger of the looming death.

He always sought someone to talk to or hear from, to ward off this solitude, but there was none for him. People now avoided him even more, and pretended not to listen to him when he addressed them from the veranda of his home. Inexorably, he started sinking into a cranky and ignored state.

Then he could not bear it any longer, and hit upon an idea. Unable to sleep, he once rose from his bed at dead of night in one of his desperate moments, flung open the door of his room and went out gingerly to knock at his immediate neighbor’s home. When the neighbor turned up at the gate, Kalachand asked him in an agitated state, "How can you sleep so deeply, all of you, when this poor fellow, your next-door neighbor, can't sleep a wink and keeps awake all night?"He then paused and said in an emotionally charged voice, "Don't you have the slightest feeling for this wretched fellow who has lost in life's race and is now waiting for the death to come? How could all of you be living so selfishly without a thought for one who is part of you, of this community for a long, long time?" He was high on such moral rhetoric, and broke into genuine sobbing.

Since his neighbour was a good fellow and empathised his condition, Kalachand's mission on the first night was quite successful. He carried it on the second night, again on the third and then every night - with a new neighbor each time.

By any standard, his neighbors were of a very tolerant kind, and bore with him without any protest. After all, they knew that Kalachand was a condemned soul, and he was going to die anyway. Some of them offered him tea or coffee despite the odd hour.

Soon, Kalachand's nightly errant became the hot topic of discussion in the locality. While most people agreed that it was an unheard-of nuisance, none of them could suggest any thing to get rid of Kalachand's way. At one point, when the going dragged too long, some of them approached his wife with the request that Kalachand be shut up within doors properly locked from outside at night. But his wife pleaded her inability to do so, because this would only infuriate him in more ways than one, and might even provoke him to commit suicide.

But things assumed dire proportions one night when Kalachand went berserk in course of his nightly jaunt. It was a rainy night, and the simple pitter-patter had just turned into a brisk drumming on the earth. And the man in question was sitting cosily in front of his TV engrossed in watching a late-night film. In the din of the rain and wind outside, he did not simply hear Kalachand who was calling out him and thumping on the gate frantically.

But when he, at last, awoke to the sound of raillery, he recognised Kalachand immediately and hurried up to open the door. By that time Kalachand was totally drenched and bedraggled. When he was let in, he was shivering in cold. His compassionate neighbor was quick to fetch him a towel for wiping him dry and some warm clothes for his wear.

But Kalachand was breathing fire. Now he broke in a sarcastic tone, "How funny! I'm dying and you enjoy a film on TV!"

Suddenly, he stood up, his face contorted with rage and hatred, and hit the TV screen with his walking stick. His neighbour, initially flummoxed, now could not keep his cool any longer. He caught hold of Kalachand's frail body, delivered a weighty punch in his face and shoved him with all the force he could muster. Out there it was pitch-dark and still raining. In his agitated state, he did not care to see what happened next, and slammed the door shut in no time.

Next morning the locality woke up to the news of Kalachand's death. As people thronged to see his body, they were met with an unexpected sight. Just opposite the house where he entered last night, the body lay stiff and cold, under a huge Banyan tree with his face down and buried in a puddle. It seemed as though he fell on his face on his way back home. The general assumption was that he rammed into the trunk of the old tree, and was so hurt that he succumbed to it immediately.

Nobody suspected any foul play.

Late in the morning Dr Ghosh was called in to give a death certificate. When he inspected the body minutely, he had for a brief while suspected that it was not a case of natural death, and thought of sending the body for post-mortem.

But then he had other things to consider. Kalachand had already suffered so much, and it made no sense now determining whether he died naturally or unnaturally. That he at last died was the blessed thing and it came as a great relief to his neighbors.

Then nobody really raised a fuss over how he died. Though a sort of melancholy lined the faces of those who thronged to see his body, they were actually happy. They had an attitude to dispose of the body as earliest possible. They wanted to give a hasty farewell to Kalachand who had long since lost his stature as a man and as a neighbor.

So Dr. Ghosh wrote down the death certificate, citing that the death was the natural culmination of a dreaded disease process.

But before he had left, he could not help gazing at the body once more. Kalachand believed in rain-god's power, and it now seemed that the rain, all through the night, had done a splendid job of washing it thoroughly, purging him of the damned yellow thing at last.