Soibam Gourahari looked out of the window weakly from his bed. He could no longer move up to the window and scan the whole view for the Naton Kai. He thought, "It's already time that he should arrive."

Though Guorahari did not have a watch, he could tell the time after hearing the Kangshi of the nearby Govindajee temple. This indeed was a boon that the 'Yeningtha' was located very near from this temple.

Ever since it was opened a few years ago, there had been a very few residents. Gourahari was one of them. This home was a hospice. It was not just a normal old-age home but a home for the terminally ill.

Here, many of the terminally ill cancer patients do drop in for few hours a day and go back home. However, some of them stayed there.

Gourahari waited impatiently for his friend. Suddenly, the net of the outer windows panes made the sudden shudder, as his friend landed from his flight from the neighbouring tree.

Naton kai was there. He was the ugliest of the monkeys: because he did have a cleft lip deformity, probably right from birth. But he was daring and adventurous. This, one could say because, no monkey usually leave the Mahabali Umang even for a foot away from the grove.

If one suddenly does that the monkey would be abandoned and he would have to spend the rest of the life away from his crowd and roam in the neighboring Leikais like a beggar. He would have to miss out the chana and bananas offered by the rich Marwaris on every Tuesdays.

But Naton Kai was different. He would drop in at Yengingtha everyday at around 10 in the morning and that too at that window of the room where Goura was staying.

It is almost three weeks now that Goura came here. He was having NPC (Naso-pharyngeal Carcinoma). The cancerous growth in one of the innermost sinuses have grown notorious. It had grown in size to force one of the eyes out of the orbit and had also spread elsewhere.

Thus Goura could see only through an eye and the bony pain over his back was so excruciating. That day, he was having such pain that though he knew his friend had come he could not force himself till the window.

He could see the rising smoke from the agarbati escaping though the window. He could not move because of the pain. After waiting for few minutes, Naton Kai disappeared very much like the way he appeared.

Suddenly, the door opened throwing all the light into the room. "We are here!" came the shout. Goura weakly turned his face and he saw them. He could see Iboton, the joker, Memchatombi, the Khulang Eshei singer, Hussain, the little Muslim boy, Ram Singh the Nepali helper in the Hospice.

Goura signaled that he was having such extreme pain that he could not move. The residents of the hospice inched in further. As they closed near him, they could hear his heavy breathing full of heave.

Suddenly, he choked and the smiles in their faces went dry and they thought what they feared had come. As they closed near him further, Iboton held the old man's hand to feel the feeble or absent pulse.

Suddenly, the hand flickered and with a choking heave, the hand fell out of Iboton's hands. This sent shudder and there was pin drop silence in that wooden floored room. In that silence, the door opened again, "What happened?" It was Dr Shyamsundar.

"There you are!" came the sudden shout from the bed and the shawl went down on the floor. Goura was alive and licking his lips very much like a kid enjoying his triumph of creating panic among his friends by playing death. Suddenly all of them shouted at him and in their relief hugged him and held their abdomen as they burst out laughing.

Dr Shyam left the room of that building leaving all the patients in that room. As he stood facing East he could see the blue Baruni Hills. As he stood there he remembered his days when he obtained the land from the temple Board. He had to pursue for the few square yards to build that building at the edge of the Mahabali grove to house the terminally ill patients.

Initially, he faced a lot of resistance. He had to fight all odds and his cause became successful when he narrated the purpose. He built it with his money. He had come back from the US leaving a very successful career.

He manages the lodging and fooding of the five inmates, each of them in advance stage of the disease. Today, Dr Shyam was worrying how to still run the show, how he would continue the funding. The laughter was still coming out the 'playing dead' show.

Hearing a distant horn, Dr Shyam turned towards left and he saw a van coming along the road from the other edge of the grove. As the van neared the gate of the hospice

" Yenigntha", he recognized the van. It was the Echel van. Dr Shyam came down to receive the van and their occupants. As the doors of the van opened, there was a small girl on the lap of her mother.

The mother came out carrying her nine year old beauty. Sini, the wife of Dr Shyam came out and lighted a match stick and lit a piece of newspaper and did the "mai okpa" to welcome the beauty to the hospice.

As the two of them sat in the common room, one by one of the entire group trickled in. Last of them to come in was pabung Gourahari, the man who played dead.

To be continued...