by Anita Nair
Now close your eyes and listen to the sounds that come from the trees. Do you hear that? The tuk-tuk sound? Don’t you wonder who the aerial carpenter is? It is the maramkothi. Are you wondering what a woodpecker has to do with raudram? Listen. Do you hear it? The notes like a drum roll. Slow at first, then intense, as if driven by fury. And yet, the fury is not such that it makes earth crumble or blood fall. This is the fury of passion. For, while other birds have mating calls to attract the mate, the woodpecker has only its drumbeat with which to beckon and call. It is a quiet fury, not any less intense or raging in its power, but locked within you, so that only you know it. For only you hear it in your heart. Such is the fury of a passion that rules you.
Shyam
I lean forward and tug the curtains aside. I wonder if I should get up and wash my hands. God knows what has been wiped off on these thick ugly curtains—tears, snot, grease from food, chewing gum …I repress a shudder and look through the glass. I feel the wheels of the train beneath me, the crunching and grinding, the slow movement. The platform begins to recede. I think I see a face I recognize, but it is hard to say as the tinted glass in the window is grimy.
The door opens and a gust of warm air comes pouring in. Two pesky children walk down the aisle, giggling and pushing each other. They have a banana, a giant bar of chocolate, a packet of chips and a cup of Coke each in their hands. What are they preparing for? A siege? With them is a man wearing shorts and sunglasses, clutching a bag and a bottle of mineral water. Out of towners, I decide. I hope their seats are at the other end of the compartment. A baby wails from somewhere behind. A woman laughs. The wheels of a trolley bag squeak. There is a rustle of biscuit wrappers. Then the hum of the air conditioning resumes.
I like trains. I always have. When I sit in a moving train, I feel a great sense of hope. An energy that isn’t mine is leading me to a destination. In a train, my mind races along and only my body remains where it is. Seat 12 A.
At home, I am never allowed a moment of respite. There is always someone around. Asking a favour, soliciting a comment, stating an opinion, demanding my attention. Some days, when I would like to just let my mind wander, I hide behind a newspaper. It is during these aimless wanderings that I have my best ideas, but who is there to understand this?
Once, Radha shot me a look that could have been interpreted as amusement or disgust, and said, ‘Have you learnt to read upside down? Look at how you are holding the newspaper. What plots are you hatching behind it?’
I look around. The compartment is almost empty. Schools have opened and it isn’t yet the season for Sabarimala pilgrims to fill roads and trains. Moreover, the monsoons have begun and very few people would want to travel by AC chair car now. It is, after all, the month of karkitakam. The month of penury.
I think of M.T. Vasudevan Nair’s story ‘Karkitakam’. I am not a great reader, but this is one of my favourite stories. The little boy Unni could have been me. Perennially hungry. Perpetually proud.
When my mother and I were living on the crumbs Radha’s father tossed our way, my mother wouldn’t tolerate my using the words hunger or pride. I was not allowed to speak of either need.
If I ever asked my mother for food, she would snap, ‘How can you be hungry? Didn’t you eat some hours ago? Aren’t three meals enough?’
My mother rationed our food carefully, but I was a growing child, and all day and sometimes at night, hunger with rat-like teeth gnawed at my intestines. My mother dosed me for worms and said I must have monsters living within me, who demanded to be fed all day and night. My poor mother did her best to make ends meet, to make do with what was offered to us. My hunger threw her planning asunder, and the only way she could deal with it was with fury. ‘Hunger? What kind of demonic hunger is this? It’s the kind of hunger that reduces a clan into a family, do you hear me?’
My mother might have lacked for food to feed my hunger, but she was never short of folk wisdom. As her desperation grew, so did her repertoire of sayings, each more viciously deprecating than the one before. And yet, it wasn’t that she was an unkind or callous woman. She was a woman forced to take on a man’s responsibilities and her impatience stemmed from the fact that she was burdened with financial worries and the guilt that she was not doing her best for me. Apart from me, there was my grandmother to take care of. ‘Do you see this?’ She would show me a piece of paper on which were written the household accounts. ‘Where is the money?’
I can still see those little scraps of paper she did her accounts on. They are pasted forever in my memory. Rations, kerosene, electricity, school fees, medicines; little scraps on which she wrote and crossed out, juggled and moved sums this way and that …coping, coping, surviving.
I was too young to help her out or even shoulder some of the burden. Instead, my young pride reared its head and all she could do was nip it so that we could survive. In retrospect, I understand. But I never did then, and sometimes my fury at her insensitivity was so laced with bitterness that I wished she had died instead of my father.
Some days Amma would have me milk the cow and take the milk to the teashop. At first, I refused. My fragile ego balked at the thought. ‘I can’t be seen doing this,’ I protested in my quavering adolescent voice. Those days, everything in my life seemed ruled by chaos, including my voice; it was like a length of garden hose. Unwieldy, slithering, and beyond my control.
There were four or five louts who occupied the bench outside the teashop, keeping tabs on all who came and went. I was a special object of ridicule for them ever since my mother in an argument about a broken length of fence told our neighbours that she didn’t care for their menfolk walking through our garden. ‘We may be able to mend the fence only next season, but that doesn’t mean your men can use my garden as a thoroughfare. We are poor, but we have a noble lineage.’
The neighbours didn’t like the implied slight. They thought we were pretentious. One of the louts outside the teashop was the neighbour’s son. And he exacted revenge any which way he could.
‘I can’t take the milk to the teashop. I’ll milk the cow. Can’t someone else take it? Nayadi can, can’t he? I just can’t …’ I tried to explain.
My mother’s face darkened. ‘Nayadi has enough to do in the fields. What is wrong with you? Why can’t you take it? Do you think you are too high and mighty to do so? People who have nothing can’t afford pride. Do you hear me?’
The louts guffawed when they saw me with the milk can and said, ‘Look who is here. The Maharaja of Cochin. His Highness Shyam. And what is this in his hand? A sceptre …oh no, it is a milk can.’ They slapped each other’s backs and laughed at their asinine joke.
Every day, they had a new comment to toss my way and injure my self-esteem. I had neither the brawn to beat them up nor the wit to match their quips. So I did the only thing that was left for me to do: I pretended not to hear them. Maharaja. What was I king of, except my hunger and pride?
The louts work for me now. Perhaps they don’t remember that they made my teenage years a torment. They probably don’t connect that timid stuttering boy with me, their modalali, their lord and master, but I know, and that is enough.
A vendor stops by my seat. His tin tray rattles me out of my reminiscences. I know many people who talk of their childhood fondly. A wave of nostalgia creeps into their voice as they talk of times gone by. When I think of my childhood, all I feel is relief. The kind you feel when you finish watching a horror movie everyone has been raving about. Now that you’ve endured it, you don’t have to put yourself through it again. Thank god I have got past those years. Thank god I will never have to live them again. I am happy to be an adult and in control of my life.
The vendor looks into my face and bleats, ‘Masala dosa.’
The train stops. We are in Thrissur already. The door opens and a man comes in. He looks familiar. He takes a seat in the row ahead, across the aisle.
I wave the vendor away and stare out of the window. The rain continues to beat its
rhythm.
The kitchen smells from the vendor’s uniform linger in the air. Why is it, I wonder, that perhaps more than any other of our senses, it is the sense of smell that propels us through time and distance? The smell of oil heating, of deep-fried gram flour, stir up the past. Memories line up again.
I was fifteen when Amma came bearing the news of the army recruitment. ‘Janu’s son Murali is going. I suggest you rush there and get all the details from him. You will have to start at the bottom, as a sepoy. But the army is a good mother. It’ll take care of you. That’s what your father always said.’
I stared at her. Did she really believe that? But perhaps the army was not to blame. My father died before he made anything of himself. I thought of him then, of Subedar Gopalan. With a red stripe on his shoulder, a single star, and a wristband that proclaimed his rank. His boots shone, his buckles gleamed, his khaki rustled with starch, and when he died my dreams went as limp as his body.
‘Sepoy,’ I growled. ‘I don’t want to be a bloody sepoy.’ My voice emerged shrill and high.
‘Nothing wrong in starting off as a sepoy. What do you know of the army anyway? Your voice hasn’t even formed.’
‘I am not going,’ I said.
‘What do you plan to do then? I can’t afford to send you to college. Where is the money? At least with the army you have a future. No point in letting go of what’s in your lap, trying to catch what’s in the sky.’
‘A future in which I have to salute every Chathan and Pothan,’ I said, matching her ire with an aphorism.
‘Do you prefer to live off your uncle for the rest of your life? Go join the army, son. It is for people like us who can’t aspire for more. When we have nothing, we can’t afford pride.’
I walked away. I knew I had to do something. If I didn’t resolve my future, my mother would force me into a life of salutes, brass buckles and eternal sepoydom.
There was no point in asking my sister for help. Her husband was only a clerk in the railways and they had three children. That evening I went to see my aunt Gowri. I chose an hour when I knew her husband would be away. My mother was right, after all. My pride would take me nowhere. I threw away pride and asked my aunt for a loan.
‘My mother would like me to join the army. Become a sepoy. But I know I can do better. I believe that. And I promise to pay back every rupee.’
My aunt reached across and patted my shoulder. ‘Is that all? How much do you need?’
I showed her my calculations. I had learnt well from those little scraps of paper that festooned my childhood. I had worked it out to the smallest detail, checked and rechecked the figures. Fees. Bus fare. Books. I had been very stringent and allowed myself only the barest of necessities.
‘I will give you the money,’ she said. She looked at me with an expression that many years later I fathomed to be prescience and said, ‘But …’
My hopes dangled from that word. I thought of all the excuses she could make: I must ask Radha’s father. We have had great losses this year. Your mother will be furious.
‘But what?’ I asked.
‘But you will have to work for it. I will ask Radha’s father to find you something to do during the vacations. I don’t want the money back, but I want you to understand that you mustn’t expect anything for nothing. And likewise, give nothing till you are sure you will receive something in return. The money, the object, whatever it is, will acquire greater value and respect then.’
I agreed, and to this day I have done as she said. I give nothing till I am sure I will receive something in return, and I ask for nothing till I am sure I have something to offer.
It was the month of karkitakam. Like Unni in MT’s story, I feared the onslaught of the monsoon. It wasn’t getting wet that terrified me. I had sandals made of recycled rubber tyres that would easily survive a soaking in the puddles, and polyester shirts that dried on my back. What I feared was my craving for a cup of tea and a piping hot bonda from the Mudaliar’s tea shop adjacent to the college. As it is, one little act of extravagance would to ruin my monthly budget. The Mudaliar’s bondas were the best I have ever eaten in my life and during the wet month of karkitakam, I scrimped on bus fares and college guides and indulged my hunger for the bonda and tea as often as I could. For the rest of the year, I feasted on the memory of that meal.
I would sit on the bench, sipping my tea and punctuating every sip with a nibble. The gram flour covering was crisp and golden and the stuffing of potatoes and onions perfectly cooked. I savoured every mouthful, willing it to go on and on.
I kept my eyes on the food. I didn’t want to meet anyone’s eye. I made no friends and chose not to. Friendships at college demand sharing, doing things together. In my first year at college, the student unions came to me soliciting membership. The Students Federation of India. The Kerala Students’ Union. There were at least three or four unions, each professing to make student life better. You have to belong to a party for an identity, they said. What are your politics, they asked. Survival, I said. Will joining your union help pay my fees, I asked. But there are other benefits, they said. Leave me alone, I said. I am not interested in student politics.
My university years passed without adding to my memories, save that of Mudaliar’s bondas.
Once in a while I encounter a batch-mate or a junior, and then it occurs to me that I studied in the same college. A batch-mate is the president of a panchayat nearby. I see him now and then in Shoranur. Another one, a girl, is a writer. Her books have been translated into many languages, I read. I see her face in the newspaper and wonder if she too sat on Mudaliar’s bench. In a newspaper article, she once professed a great fondness for his bondas. Neither of them will know me, the man I have become. I wear only linen, and even on the wettest of days, I shod my feet in leather. I have an AMEX gold card and a cellphone with Bluetooth. In the mirror, and in other people’s eyes, I see a man who doesn’t fear hunger or suffer the indignity of having to swallow his pride.
A vendor pauses beside my seat. ‘Pazham pori,’ he cries in a strangled voice.
I snap out of the golden brown casing of memories and eye the banana fritters. They look very tempting. Plump, with knobbly bits of batter fried golden crisp.
I see the man across the aisle look at them, too. I know I should recognize him.
Another vendor arrives. ‘Bread omelette,’ he cries, in yet another version of that strangled call all railway vendors seem to fashion their voices into.
I look at my watch. It is a lower end Rolex, but it is a Rolex. Another hour to Kochi. Lunch was a long time ago. My stomach rumbles. I point to a fritter and then ask the other vendor for a bread omelette. ‘Ask one of the tea boys to come here,’ I say.
The vendors rush off to do my bidding. I feel the man’s eyes on me, and on the plates and paper napkins laid out on the tray. Then I realize who he is.
How could I have not recognized him? He is a finely built man with a face like the moon’s surface. On the movie screen, you see each one of these indentations magnified. A crater for every contact his foot has made with the ball, I think.
I.M. Vijayan. The football hero turned movie star. I have seen him play and I have seen him act. He is brilliant on the field and competent on the screen, but what I admire most about him is his tenacity. He is a survivor.
I was there in the stadium that hot day in Coimbatore when he was playing against Kerala in the Santosh Trophy. I was with a group of salesmen, all baying for his blood. Those days I covered the Tamil Nadu region.
‘He is a traitor,’ one of them growled.
‘How can he play against Kerala?’ another snarled.
‘Give the man a chance,’ I said. ‘He must have left the Kerala team for a reason.’
‘What reason could he have? Greed, that’s what it is,’ someone else said.
‘Do you call a man wanting to better his prospects greedy?’ I asked, incredulous. How could they be so judgemental?
When he failed to shoot a
penalty against Kerala, my companions rose in excitement. Vijayan had failed. The traitor was punished. They booed and jeered and thumped each other’s backs. I joined them. To not do so would have been to incur the crowd’s wrath. But I felt pity for the man. I watched him stand there, his eyes downcast. Just for a moment he looked up, unable to comprehend this mass hatred. What did I do wrong, his eyes seemed to ask the crowd. This is a game, not war. I am a football player, not the enemy.
I look at his profile. Should I introduce myself to him?
Perhaps I could invite him to the resort. I wonder how I should address him. Vijayan would be too presumptuous. Sir would be too servile. I glance at him. His eyes are closed. I decide not to bother him. There is time enough.
My phone beeps. A business call. I settle it with a bark. ‘We’ll talk when your quote is more realistic.’
I eat my snack slowly. My mind churns. Is this making of plans what Radha calls ambition? Is this looking ahead what my business partners term acumen? If I didn’t have either, the resort would have had to close down, like so many enterprises in the region. I will never let that happen. My resort is my kingdom.
Four years ago, when I heard the summer palace by the Nila was up for sale, I rustled up the money to buy it. I put in all my savings and borrowed as much as I could. I have a loan liability that would cripple ordinary men for the rest of their lives. But I manage. I always will. I am a survivor. From an old issue of Reader’s Digest, I forged a mantra that I start my day with. I stand in front of the mirror every morning and as I peer into the eyes of my image, I mouth, ‘Every day and in every way, I am getting better and better.’ I believe it. I have to, or I will go under.
I wonder what the next couple of days will be like. I have several things to attend to. A meeting with a tour operator. A discussion with a website designer. A preliminary discussion about advertising on-site at the Nehru Boat Race. A meeting with Sankars, the book people. They used to have a bookshop in a hotel in Palakkad and there is a new one now, on MG Road in Ernakulam. We don’t have the room or the custom for a full-fledged book shop, but a kiosk would work very well. And then I have to attend an introductory lecture on the Art of Living.