The Hall of Healing

They called it the Hall of Healing, though no one agreed who was healing whom. Thirty-five cots gleamed under cold lights, each with its own blinking eye and regulated breath. The attendants were a mixture—forty percent deranged, twenty percent wandering, twenty percent weary, the rest dutiful only by reflex. A census of confusion, a democracy of disarray.

It was Kartik Purnima, the full moon of reckoning, when light itself begins to question what it touches. The Chronicler—sometimes Bopa Rai, sometimes only the Witness—was admitted for one night on what they called the sanity side. The ward, divided by curtains that fenced only sound, was a free-for-all republic of murmurs.

Across the aisle lay the restless wing. Before dawn, a man there ceased to move. By sunrise, his death had been rewritten five times—heart, lungs, fate, error, accident—and even his name revised, as if identity were a stain that paperwork could erase.

The Questioner

Among the restless lay a man with a gleaming forehead and a dimmed front of mind. He kept asking, “How did he die?” Others soothed him with half-truths: You’re thirsty… sleep now… forget. But thirst was not his illness—it was disbelief. Between questions he drifted into gestures of helpless comfort, then returned to the refrain: How did he die?

The Chronicler saw that this was not madness but conscience refusing sedation. Nearby, a ninety-year-old dialled a number. “The line is busy,” said the nurse. He stared in wonder. “Numbers can be busy?” No one answered that either.

The Lady Across the Aisle

Opposite lay a woman pleading for a bedpan. The Keepers of Cleanliness had gone, the Sisters of Order told her to wait. She waited until morning, then relieved herself on the cold tiles before a tramadol-dazed doctor who simply noted the event.

Around her, adolescent attendants giggled, filming on glowing devices; a nonagenarian was coaxed to sing indecent ditties; someone declared that death had been “well managed.” The smell of ammonia and antiseptic merged; shame became sterile.

The Celebration

When dawn broke, two Keepers of the Dead were offered coins to remove the body quietly. They demanded more. Negotiations failed; the Guardians of Law arrived—first local, then senior—and levied bribes on all.

Paperwork multiplied, and through the glass partition the lunatic wing erupted in song. The sane smiled nervously; contagion of absurdity spread faster than infection. Even the Chronicler, calm and silent, was recorded in secret—his composure too suspicious for comfort.

The Unmasking

By mid-morning, scandals surfaced like gas from a swamp: drug scam, ration scam, narcotic scam, in lunch-boxes. The Hall laboured not to cure the sick but to heal its own reputation.

At 11:45 the Chronicler was transferred “for observation.” Behind him the institution throbbed with denial; the line between sanity and lunacy dissolved into applause.

Atonement under the Full Moon

That night, under the pale moon, a few attendants sent their recordings to higher powers. Swift action followed—some punished, some redeployed, others made to sing the same loony songs they had once mocked. Reform was announced; ritual resumed.

“Here, the living envy the dead, and the dead are rewritten until they appear alive again. This is the true Waking of Lazarus—not resurrection, but bureaucracy at prayer. When compassion departs, indifference reports for duty.”

He closed the file. The moon lingered above the Hall—sterile, luminous, and entirely awake.