Marginal Man

by Charu Nivedita

  I will narrate three more incidents to you, all of which occurred close to a decade ago. I have them recorded in my time-yellowed notebooks.

  Scene – 1: I was traveling by bus and I had no coins. I handed the conductor a ten rupee note, apologizing for having forgotten to carry change in my pockets. “Do you have brains or shit?” he asked me hotly. “Would you forget to eat for one day? Get off this bus!”

  Scene – 2: Another bus, another conductor. A passenger hands him a fifty. The conductor politely asks him to pay the exact amount. Hell broke loose. The passenger barked filth at the cowering conductor and, like that wasn’t enough, he attempted to strangle him. It was only after the conductor had begged him with folded hands that the passenger relented and released his hold on the man. The passenger was around twenty-five and the conductor would have been his father’s age. Despite the brouhaha, the bus continued on its way and the conductor carried on issuing tickets like nothing at all had happened.

  Scene – 3: A friend, who worked as the general manager for the telephone department, was an IAS officer and a literature aficionado. His position was like a king’s, but it did not thwart his simplicity. One day, he went to the post office (on foot, as he did not need the prestige of a government vehicle and did not like asking errand boys to run around for him) and asked for an inland letter.

  “Not available,” came a brutish voice.

  “Alright, could you give me an envelope, then?”

  “I told you it’s not available! Are you deaf?”

  “Um, sorry,… You told me that you had no inland letters. I never knew you meant the envelopes too.”

  “Shut the hell up and get out of here. Who wants to give ear to you and your damn explanations? Go get what you want from another post office.”

  Had he made a twenty-second call to the officer in the postal department, the face that owned the voice would have been slapped and handed a letter of dismissal immediately. But my friend was a sattvik.

  “You can’t say when and where the blow will come from,” he told me sadly. I still remember the quiver in his voice as he spoke those words.

  Kokkarakko tells me that the temperament of the Tamils is determined to some extent by the natural landscape and the climate of the state. The ocean rages and rants relentlessly, the sun scorches the earth and all it touches. We experience four seasons elsewhere, but only three in Tamil Nadu – the hot season, the hotter than hot season, and the hottest of all seasons. Here, a man is drenched in sweat even when he is having a bath.

  In between the hot, hotter and hottest seasons comes October and November, bringing with them a spell of rain accompanied by cyclones. The rainy season always reminds me of Nagore where rain usually portends fierce and destructive thunderstorms. The storm that blew in 1952 was called the “Big Tempest.” Just as time is chunked into B.C. and A.D., the births and deaths of people, and other significant events in Nagore, are dated with reference to the Big Tempest. I was born a year after its destruction. One of reasons why the storm had etched itself into the memories of Nagore is because it took down the huge kalasam of the dargah’s minaret and swept it across the town.

  When I read poems in praise of the rains, I get peeved. For the dwellers of Nagore, the rains brought memories of war. My mother used to talk about “war reels.” In her salad days, the British government screened news clips of World War II in the theatres, just before the main feature. The war reel featured scenes of battlefields, tanks, fighter-planes and bombings. The audience regarded these clippings with the same awe and enthusiasm with which they watched M.K.T.’s films.

  Even after the British had left India, the free Madras Government continued this practice of screening government-related clips before the films. They still called it a “war reel.” When the Tamil Nadu Government introduced the red triangle logo of the family-planning program, my mother called that a “war reel” as well. Then, she tut-tutted in disapproval, saying, “They screen such dirty war reels nowadays. The end of the world is near.”

  Mother’s preparations for the rainy season gave me the impression of an impending war. The monsoons lasted only three months, but she had to toll for the other nine to prepare for these three. Cooking fuel was the biggest issue. She would begin collecting cow-dung to make raatis which would be stored in the house. They resembled very large plates and every house in Nagore was equipped with them. To ensure that the fire would burn well, women would add some hay to the dung as it was being trampled upon to make patties. Some folks even sold the cakes. But the stove wouldn’t burn with dung-cakes alone. Firewood was a prime requirement if food had to be cooked for eight people. Babul trees that abounded in the village supplied us with all the wood we needed. We would cut branches and halve them and quarter them. We would then dry them in the sun and store them at home. The biggest challenge was to collect the branches without getting our flesh torn as the trees were full of thorns. Slippers had to be worn, else the thorns would prick our soles. If an unbroken thorn was lodged in the flesh, it was easier to extract when compared to a splinter that got embedded in the flesh and could not be easily extracted. There lay the possibility of the wound becoming infected and pus would form. One would have to see a doctor, and even after treatment, one would be rendered unable to walk until the wound was completely healed. There were certain women who could expertly extricate thorns from under the flesh with safety pins, no matter how deep the thorn had traveled. Whenever such an “extraction surgery” is done to me, I have not been able to resisit a hard-on. If the thorn could not be removed with a safety pin, the women would smear some coconut oil over the area and cauterize it with a heated glass shard from a chimney lamp.

  The firewood would be stored at the back of the house where it was proofed from the rain. Scorpions, centipedes and snakes would take refuge among the logs, so one had to be careful when handling them.

  It rained cats and dogs in Nagore. It was a town on the seashore, and when it rained, one might have thought there was a pillar of water between the sky and the earth. It would rain for days on end. All the ponds and lakes, swollen and bursting, would join forces with the Vettar and transform the town into one surging mass of water. It was also a time for old people to die, so the stink of burning flesh in the neighboring cremation ground would assail our nostrils on most days.

  Our house was tiled, and during the eighteen years I lived in it, I don’t recall the tiles being replaced even once. Bottle gourd vines covered the tiles. The gourds were plenty and mother would distribute them to others free-of-charge. When she was short on money, she would gather the gourds and put them into a large sack and send them to market. Ramu, who had a fruit shop at the market (that sold only bananas), would choose a couple and send the rest back. Vegetarians were only a few in Nagore, so the demand for vegetables wasn’t exactly high. At least there was Ramu to buy a couple of bottle gourds every once in a while. But the irony was that we found it harder to sell chickens. The owners of the biryani shops around the dargah would examine the chickens and return them saying that they were diseased, or they would give me chump change. I would go home and ask mother about the chickens and she would confirm that they were diseased. She would finish off with: “So what if they are? They’ll still taste fantastic.” She would then cook them for us. I would go red in the face if my schoolmates caught sight of me trying to sell the chickens. I was the only boy in the class who did not come from an affluent family and although I wasn’t discriminated against, my social status stigmatized me.

  If I failed to get a good price for the chickens, mother would tell me I wasn’t clever enough. I knew she wasn’t berating me as her tone suggested sadness. I would hear her mutter to herself, “It’s a pity that I have to send a schoolboy on such errands.” Come to think of it now, I feel that my mother is the one to be held responsible for my arrogance and overweening pride.

  During the rains, water would leak from the old tiles on
the roof. Vessels had to be placed at strategic coordinates to collect the rain water that dripped from the ceiling. Every room would have at least a dozen vessels collecting rainwater, and Mother would line the floor with gunny sacks to regulate the dampness.

  We had stocked up on dung-cakes and firewood, but in that downpour, what were we to eat? Of course, leave it to mother to have everything planned and executed. She would buy a goat, feed it, kill it and pickle it before the rains set in. She would plant two sticks in the earth, tie a rope between them and on it she would hang pieces of goat-flesh marinated with turmeric, chili powder and salt. After the strips had dried in the sun for three days, she would transfer them to a plate, dry it again under the hot sun and to prevent it from becoming desiccated, she would store them in an airtight pot. These salted pieces of goat-meat, which would last a year, kept us going during the monsoon. Now, this food is but a relic of the past.

  Though life could be difficult during the rains, there were two pastimes children significantly enjoyed – catching fish with a piece of cloth by holding the ends and passing it through the water, and the making and sailing of paper boats.

  Since the Nagapattinam port was not very deep, I had never seen a ship though I had seen catamarans. I always found ships to be more fascinating than planes. Many centuries ago, the Tamils had braved the seas on sailboats. Perhaps this knowledge is the reason for my interest in seafaring vessels.

  My love for ships had intensified after I had watched Sivaji Ganesan’s Kappalottiya Thamizhan. I was inflamed with the desire to work on a ship and fish. Long, long ago, a Tamil, A. K. Chettiar, traveled across the globe on ships. Now that air travel is the preferred means of going places, I have no idea if and when my dream will be realized.

  It so happened that a ship once ran aground on the beach in front of my house in Mylapore. It pulled a huge cellphone wielding crowd. As for me, I was stunned to see the ship. I felt like it had dropped anchor on my doorstep. When the ship began to flounder, the captain ordered everybody onto the lifeboats. An engineer had lost his life and five had gone missing. The corpses were recovered one by one. The survivors had been rescued by the local fishermen and the coast guard.

  Part – III

  There used to be a time when cows were accorded the respect due to the woman of the house. Every house in the village had a cow – a Meenakshi or a Kamakshi – and the household subsisted on its milk and dung. It was said that if a house had a cow and a drumstick tree, its members would never know starvation. So now, after appraising this outstanding creature to you, I bring you to the question: is it possible – or even thinkable – to kill a cow and eat its flesh? The pitiful sight of cows crammed into trucks bound for Kerala like sardines in a box can move even a stone-hearted man to tears. The butchers slaughter them with a pickax – one blow to the center of the forehead and the poor animal drops like a sack of potatoes.

  Again the burning question: should we, or should we not, eat the meat of the cow?

  Twenty years ago, a counter-culture movement that shared traits with the American Beat Movement, reared its head in Tamil Nadu. I was part of it. We had decided to eat beef to register our opposition to the Hindutva-Brahmin hegemony that was sinking its teeth into the state. At the end of our conference, beef curry was served, but when dinner was wrapped, we realized that no one had touched the beef curry. The people at the forefront of the movement belonged to the middle-class. In terms of caste too, they occupied the middle ground. Having never eaten beef before, they were unable to bring themselves to sample the curry, let alone eat it.

  In retrospect, I realized how foolish and cruel we had been. Vallalar sang that it ailed his heart whensoever he beheld a plant wasting away. His words, though not strange to the Tamil man, were handled like hollow superstition and cast aside.

  It was among Perundevi’s tasks to water the plants, trees and vines in our house. A spiritual conference removed her to Bangalore for three days. On the first day, I was too busy to tend the plants. In the afternoon, I did have some time on my hands, but it was too hot. The next day, there was a downpour. When Perundevi returned home, she told me, “I prayed that the clouds would water the plants if you couldn’t for some reason.”

  In the present day and age, you might, with a roll of the eyes and a flick of the hand, dismiss all this as some kind of lunacy. Ten years ago, I would have too, but some marvelous experiences transformed my manner of thought.

  In Pollachi, I had a friend named Sridhar, a toddy-tapper. Now the toddy-tappers do not tap just any tree. If there are ten thousand trees, a certain number of trees is allotted to each tapper, and for the rest of his days, each man will tap toddy only from the trees that had been earmarked for him.

  The toddy-tappers’ world is a microcosm replete with its own rove of stories. The tappers start their climbing at two in the morning as the toddy has to be loaded into the dispatching lorries by four if it is to reach the shops in Kerala for distribution by six or seven.

  I met an eighty-year-old man named Marimuthu. (These days, one might consider an eighty-year-old man a bald, toothless, woebegone shell of a human being.) Marimuthu – prepare your youthful pride for a blow – climbed forty trees a day. In his youth, it used to be a few hundreds. He had recently married an eighteen-year-old girl. Sridhar told me, in Marimuthu’s presence, that toddy and pussy comprised his world. Intrigued, Kokkarakko had a long conversation with him. An excerpt follows:

  Kokkarakko: They tell me you don’t sleep without a pussy. Is it the same pussy or a different one everyday?

  Marimuthu: So long as it’s pussy, who the fuck cares?

  Kokkarakko: So, you do fuck women other than your wife, huh?

  Marimuthu: The hell I do if I’m lucky.

  Kokkarakko: How do you find pussy everyday?

  Marimuthu: I just approach some petticoat and ask her if she’d like to come with me.

  Kokkarakko: That’s all? Unfortunate bastards like us have to make complicated plans and chase bitches like dogs for years!

  Marimuthu: What else must I ask them? If they say no, I just keep my eyes open for another one. Why waste time over pussy that doesn’t want cock?

  Kokkarakko: Do they come readily when you ask?

  Marimuthu: Some do. There are others I might have to ask four, maybe five, times.

  Kokkarakko: Where do you screw them?

  Marimuthu: In some grove or bush, where else?

  Kokkarakko: No offense, but, do you give them anything for their, uh, services? Money, trinkets…

  Marimuthu: I sometimes buy them a bit to eat.

  Kokkarakko: Is there any chance you remember how many women you’ve had till date?

  Marimuthu: I don’t know! I don’t keep account for such business.

  Kokkarakko: Was there ever one woman you fancied and chose to keep with you?

  Marimuthu: There is one. She has a boy and I pay for his education.

  Kokkarakko: Has there been a woman who loved you but couldn’t live with you?

  Marimuthu: Yes, there was a hopeless, lovestruck woman who committed suicide.

  Kokkarakko: What happened after?

  Marimuthu: I felt terrible. Almost went crazy. Didn’t touch pussy for a whole month!

  Kokkarakko: Do you have anal sex?

  Marimuthu: I told you already. I do it every which way possible.

  Marimuthu had never seen the entrails of a hospital. There was this one time he fell from a tree. Instead of relying on medicines in labeled bottles and blister packs of tablets, he treated and healed his injuries with a self-prepared paste of herbs. He did not climb his trees for a week. Another tapper did in his place, but the toddy he had collected lacked its characteristic taste and even the shopkeeper complained about it. Marimuthu’s machete simply couldn’t be used by another. It was only after he had returned to work that the toddy’s flavor was restored.
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  I told Marimuthu that I wanted to see his machete and he obliged me. I extended my right hand to take it, but he said that it should be received with both hands. “I do not let anyone touch my vettukaththi. I conceded only because you’re a writer,” he said.

  I was reminded of the movie Kill Bill – the scene where The Bride meets Hattori Hanzo to buy a sword. When she extends her right hand to receive it, he tells her she is to receive it with both hands, adding that the sword would kill even God if he appeared before her.

  When Ismail’s affair became known to his masters, they decided to build him a separate room in the garden, and for this purpose, they drained the fish pond. Ismail gave the koi hatchlings to Perundevi which meant we had to rear them in the house. There were other varieties too, and they were housed in three separate tanks on the first floor. There was a pair of flowerhorn fishes, and also some blood parrot cichlids, goldfish and sardines. Cory catfish were customarily kept in fish tanks as they were cleaners, stationed at the bottom of the tank for the most part, motionless. Despite the catfish, the water had to be replaced once every half-month. It was no easy task – one had to remove the fish using a net and temporarily hold them in a bucket of water while the water in the tank was being replaced and the oxygen tube checked. Warm water was introduced to kill the flatworms among the pebbles at the bottom of the tank. They came from food scraps and posed a threat to the fish.

  There is another fish culturing method called the “sea aquarium” in which a mini-sea was created, plants and corals and all, and the water needed replacement only after two years.

  My friends who kept fish told me that the two-hour load-shedding in Chennai made it impossible to rear fish as a continuous supply of power was required for the oxygen tube.