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Description of a quarrel involving a corrupt doctor |
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To Nerhema, about 15 miles, first recounting Garifema, a miserable and cretinous village with a high percentage of necessitous and decrepit wretches. |
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Tofima on my way through, told me I had assessed them at one house too many, but when I asked for their total, they got it hopelessly wrong. So I told them to go and count again. |
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Later on I met a dobashi - very angry, boiling in fact with incoherent rage, and as he could not get at the proper subject, quarreling with his unfortunate wife instead, after the manner of men. Apparently someone had accused him of misappropriating Rs.2/8/-. His point of view was that whereas if he had the chance he might take Rs.100/- and risk being caught and sacked or imprisoned, only the lewdest of the baser sort could be so libelous as to suggest that he would sell his honour at so cheap a price as Rs.2/8/-. The incident reminded me that it was on this tour that I was told (from an unimpeachable source) the true story of Kohazu, Sakhalu and the Doctor Babu. The two first-named had one of their customary rows ending in a rough and tumble. Sakhalu sent to Mokokchung asking to have a Doctor Babu sent out as Kohazu had mishandled his testicles so severely that he was at death's door, and the Doctor Babu was sent to examine him. Unless I mistake me, this Doctor Babu was a cadaverous looking Bengali who had climbed to the top of Empiong and whom both Mr. Mills and myself considered to have done very well in Mokokchung - for the Subdivision, I mean. It seems likely he also did well for himself. Anyhow, sentries posted along the road signalled the Doctor Babu's approach from tree-top to tree-top, and when he arrived, Sakhalu was gasping on a bed of sickness shamming to be in extremis. The Doctor Babu could find nothing wrong at all and wrote a report accordingly. This was carried off by one of Kohazu's minions to Mokokchung and the Doctor Babu received a solatium from Kohazu of Rs.50/-. A little later Sakhalu came to the Inspection Bungalow, demanded a report favouring his story, and offering Rs.80/-. This Doctor Babu at once wrote out a report as to Sakhalu's serious injuries and the danger to his powers of further reproducing his disreputable species, and one of Sakhalu's minions was sent to recover the first report. This he did at Sagami, after which the second report was sent to the Subdivisional Officer at Milomi. Thereafter Kohazu went to Mokokchung and demanded back his Rs.50/- from the Doctor Babu and got it, plus a dinner of cooked fowl as the price of not reporting the affair to the Subdivisional Officer. If only I had known all this when I tried the case! But one never does. |
