by Adithi Rao
Pattabhi followed the old man around the side of the house, until they reached a sort of crater in the backyard. The water conservationist peered into it and found some forty litres of rainwater pooled into the large receptacle that had been carved out of the stump of a dead tree. Many fistfuls of dried moringa seeds had been thrown in to purify it naturally and make it drinkable.
Pattabhi looked on in amazement. The old man’s near-toothless grin and naughty, laughing eyes were so lovable that Pattabhi impulsively stepped forward and hugged him. Basavaraj was taken aback and patted the younger man awkwardly.
‘You go ahead, Thatha,’ Pattabhi called over his shoulder as he sprinted back to his jeep. ‘The sort of harvesting that you and Ajji are doing will be good for the soul of this town!’
Every roof in Rudrapura had been turned into a catchment area. Bamboo pipes connected them to wells, borewells or drums. Thanks to Manju and Srikanth’s innovation, the water had even been made potable.
When he drove past the Prasanna Parvati Temple, Pattabhi recognized it at once from the mural on the back of the lorry in Five Lights. He stopped his jeep again and climbed out, eager to explore this place that everyone had spoken about with such pride – Rudrapura’s first harvesting venture, the epicentre of the friendly earthquake that had rocked the town out of its slumber.
Pattabhi walked about, unmindful of the rain. He stood awhile, watching the water from the roof gush out of the end of the bamboo pipe into the well. The sight made his heart sing. The channels leading to the field beyond were neat and skilfully made. From inside the temple, the bells rang and the priest came out to offer prasada to the assembled devotees. Pattabhi stepped inside, wanting to meet the man behind the work. He was a little surprised when he saw one quite unlike the handsome priest painted on the lorry. Had the painter exaggerated the features, then?
‘Swamy,’ he said when the plate was extended to him, ‘you have done a fine job with the channels.’
‘That was not me,’ said the squat, potbellied Brahmin. ‘That was Raghuvir, the priest of this temple. At least he used to be.’
‘Oh,’ said Pattabhi, ‘where can I find him now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Brahmayya, ‘but if you are looking for him, you are not the only one. His wife and old mother and everyone else in Rudrapura are also searching. He disappeared some weeks ago and there has been no trace of him since then. I am only filling in until they can find a replacement for Raaganna. I am actually in charge of the Anjaneya Temple in Chithalli.’
Brahmayya sounded pleased with himself, as if the other information, the one about Raghuvir’s disappearance, was nothing compared to this. But Pattabhi felt disturbed and turned away without taking the prasada.
As he drove to the boy Manju’s house where he had been invited to examine a contraption, he thought, The world moves ahead quickly even when somebody leaves. Life overflows like water into the gaps and fills them until there is no trace of the vacancies. Already they are looking for Raghuvir’s replacement. How unfortunate that in a few short weeks he has become a thing of the past. Or, perhaps he had counted on it being just so?
Pattabhi drove past Shankarnarayana’s house. A young, pregnant woman was standing on the porch, watching the rain from her roof flow into a large drum. He slowed the car. Unaware of his gaze on her, she laughed a little as the rain splashed into her eyes. She held out her hand to the rain, then pressed her ear to the drum to hear the hollow, musical notes of the water plunking into it. Evidently she approved of the melody, for she pressed her stomach to the drum to share it with her unborn child – her baby’s first song.
Pattabhi smiled to himself and speeded up until he found Manju’s house. A man, a woman and their son were waiting for him. When he had been received most cordially and offered coffee over and over (which he refused over and over again), he was given a tour of the harvesting unit in their backyard. The solar pump that sent the water up to the overhead tank was a fascinating piece of work costing almost nothing. The woman whose name was Gayathri told him with shy pride that ‘Suresh designed it from old, throwaway parts from his garage’. The boy’s beautiful, serene eyes came to rest often on the man, Suresh, eloquent with the affection that his mother was too reticent to express.
‘I congratulate you, ma,’ said Pattabhi enthusiastically. ‘Your husband and son are both brilliant to have come up with ideas like these!’
Pattabhi didn’t notice Suresh and Gayathri colour and look away, because he was busy smiling down at the boy. Since Manju’s expression did not change, the conservationist remained oblivious to his own blunder. Instead, he requested Suresh to help him implement the same system in other places when the need arose.
‘Yes, of course!’ agreed Suresh, and the two men shook hands warmly in parting.
Sheshadri had nothing to do with any of this, thought Pattabhi fiercely as he drove back to the home of his host for the night. It has all come from the efforts of these simple, earnest people.
Then Srinivasa Pattabhiram stopped his jeep in the middle of the deserted road and wept, overcome by the miracle that had taken place in an unknown town in a forgotten corner of the world. All because its people had cared. All because they cared.
It was dark now. In people’s homes, the rain collected in buckets and drums and in the hollows of friendly trees. In one backyard, the water had filled, almost to the top, a defunct icebox that had been bought with somebody’s life savings.
A young woman stood in the middle of her field watching the water dance and skip through the channels that her husband and she had built together a lifetime ago. He would have had a song for this, she thought. When he comes back home, maybe he will sing it to me…
In the lonely cemetery behind the old age home, the rain dropped on the silent grave of a hockey player, making the wild flowers around it dance. And a mango tree in a magician’s garden stood tall and heavy with fruit, while its leaves clapped and quivered in the falling rain.
Acknowledgements
Through his travels (on some of which I went along), my friend Karthik led me to discover Rudrapura and its people within my imagination. Left from the Nameless Shop simply followed. To Karthik I owe Rudrapura’s existence. To Mr Shankar Nag’s outstanding televised rendition of Malgudi Days and Anant Nag sir’s moving portrayal of Jaganna in ‘The Vendor of Sweets’, I owe much of the inspiration behind the stories that populate it.
Sudeshna scolded, suggested, and finally put me in touch with my publisher Udayan Mitra at HarperCollins. I am grateful for her gentle bullying (there are some things only a friend can pull off with grace!) and for stepping in at the right moment.
Prema Govindan, my editor at HarperCollins, read my stories where everybody else brushed them aside (short stories, sadly, don’t sell) and pulled out all the stops to convince her team that they were worth making into a book. But for her faith and effort, Left from the Nameless Shop would have remained another Word document buried inside my computer.
Many thanks to Krishna for this beautiful cover, and to Mansoor for reading the book and giving me a quote for it. The one through his art and the other through his words, captured the essence of the stories to perfection.
My daughters Pratyangira and Achala tirelessly listened to my stories and loved them blindly, as did Gauri and Tejas. All four kept my faith firm in the face of countless rejections from literary agents and publishers. Praveen, Sabir and Chatura stood by me like the proverbial rock, putting up with my madness, believing in it. To them and to my three sets of parents – Vimala and Bhaskara Puthu, Sudha and Mahesh Rao, Sheila and Suresh Rao – I owe a lifetime of love.
About the Book
‘A heart-warming and reassuring celebration of the small and the relevant’
– Mansoor Khan, film-maker and author
A boy communes with the gods by talking to a pillar. The Hibiscus Girl has her head in the clouds and feet gently planted in her husband’s home. Two women, married to the same man, find a s
trange camaraderie binding them together. The whole town gathers to save the friendly neighbourhood shopkeeper’s ice cream from spoiling in the heat. Short-tempered Sheshadri hides a terrible shame in his outbursts. A grandfather passes on the magic of self-belief to his grandson.
Reminiscent of Malgudi Days, Adithi Rao’s debut, Left from the Nameless Shop, is a charming collection of interconnected stories set in the 1980s featuring the residents of Rudrapura, a small, fictitious town in Karnataka. This is a place bubbling with energy and the sense of community – one you probably lived in and loved while growing up. These are stories of the life you have left behind. One that you hope to return to.
About the Author
After a BA in theatre from Smith College, Massachusetts, USA, Adithi worked as an assistant director on the award-winning Hindi film Satya. The rights to her film scripts have been bought by Aamir Khan Productions Ltd, and Excel Entertainment. Her short fiction appears in the American literary journal Longshot Island (www.longshotisland.com/?s=Adithi+Rao).
Adithi has written Shakuntala and Other Timeless Tales from Ancient India and Growing Up in Pandupur for children. Her stories have been published across anthology collections by various publishing houses, and in English text books across India.
When she isn’t writing, Adithi conducts writing workshops for children, takes long walks, and cooks food that her family politely enjoys.
You can find her at www.adithirao.com.
Praise for Left from the Nameless Shop
‘In a world overdosing on speed and size, Adithi draws us into the endearing lives of simple folk with human-sized goals in a community-sized world. A heart-warming and reassuring celebration of the small and the relevant, which is the need of the hour.’
– Mansoor Khan, Film-maker, Author
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First published in India by
HarperCollins Publishers in 2019
A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
www.harpercollins.co.in
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Adithi Rao 2019
P-ISBN: 978-93-5302-325-6
Epub Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 978-93-5302-326-3
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Adithi Rao asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.
Cover design & illustration: Krishna Bala Shenoi
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