I looked around, ‘Where da?’
Kanna was right behind me, and I saw him pointing his little fingers at two young girls clad in traditional PATTU PAVADAI. Pattu means silk and paavadai means the lower gown or long frocks that run until the ankles. Typical Tamil beauties, I thought.
‘Dei! Slow down, too old for you,’ I shot down my cousin, ‘follow me.’
Kanna silently followed me; he knew I was in command there. He would call me Thalaiva, just like everyone else. Thalaiva means the leader of the herd. I was leader for my cousins and my friends. I posed a threat to all my rivals. Nobody rebelled against me at school either. I was the hero for everyone, and now I was the hero for my family too after having scored the whopping 96 percentage. I was indeed Thalaivar! By the way, they also called me Thalaiva because I was a huge fan of Rajinikant, who is the Thalaivar of the world of Tamil cinema.
We passed few grown-ups and finally arrived near that door where the two girls were standing. One of them was dark skinned, fat nosed and not attractive while the girl with her was fair and gorgeous. The fairer one caught my attention and I really wanted to sweep her off the floor and carry her away from there. She had a beautiful and innocent facial pattern that matched the sweetness carried by Sreedevi, the greatest female actor. It was as if Goddess Lakshmi had herself descended on earth. The long dark thick patch of hair touched the floor while her carbon black eyes sparkled under the glow of camphor wavering in front of her. As I inched towards her, I could feel my heart pounding even faster than it was pounding a week ago, while Kuruppu’s German shepherd was chasing me.
How would I start it, the conversation? Should it be a preplanned dialogue from one of Thalaivar’s romantic movie or should it be spontaneous and original.
I was just a soul away from her, before anyone could notice; I swished my aviator glasses back on my eyes. In a moment’s invigoration, I pulled the trigger to my mouth, ‘Vanakkam! Girls’ I said.
The two girls replied by staring at us, rather at me.
Kanna posed to fit into the contraption, ‘This is Thalaivar, this year’s 10th board topper. Thalaivar is our topper.’ He could never be better; He knew exactly what would impress any South Indian girl or her parents and said the holy words ‘Topper’.
The expressions on the girls’ face changed; the one that of hostility was now those of incessantly ardent admiration.
‘My name is Iyer, Krishnaprasad Iyer,’ I threw the red carpet, then glanced at Kanna, ‘and that is my cousin Hariprasad’, well yes, Kanna’s real name was Hariprasad Iyer. The girls looked at each other, trying to convince the other one to introduce her first. Finally, the darker one, whom I wasn’t not even interested rolled out, ‘I am Kaveri. I am the bride’s niece.’
Did I really care about that? I was only interested in knowing the fairer girl’s name and other significant details that I could fetch from this incidental meeting. I tried to look through her, well I had been staring at her since the moment Kanna had pointed them out to me. That was my style, never forget to give away the fact that you are indeed looking at a girl because you are interested in her. It always worked. Therefore, I kept on staring at her, almost drooling into the honey-like sweetness of her golden face.
She kept looking at me and when she would notice that I was looking at her, she would look at the floor. After few seconds, she would again look at me to see if I was still looking at her, and again she would look back at the floor for I had not taken my eyes off her. The fluctuation of the eyes continued for a moment that seemed far more than just a few minutes. Meanwhile, I forgot that the other girl, Kaveri was still introducing herself. I got back to her, she was still explaining, now in a bit more friendly tone, ‘and I like to sing Keerthanams and perform Bharathanatyam…’ My God! She had not completed yet. I had to stop her, ‘Oh Fascinating!’ I forced a smile on my face, turned back to the other girl, the fairer one! Did I miss her name, had Kaveri mentioned her name while I was fused in that deep trance? Whatever! I had to take my chance now, this was so much different from other weddings, from the other girls we had met, more specifically, and maybe this was her!
The girl from my dreams.
The girl of my dreams.
‘I forgot, what was your name again?’ I asked.
Kaveri tried to reply, but I pushed my right arm signaling her to stop. The other girl must have shivered. Yes, indeed she did. She prepared her lips to open up and let the sweetest of Thirumadhurams ooze out in the form of words. The lower lip tenderly sliced out from the intersection it shared with the upper lip and the sound of bilabial friction almost shook my whole world.
‘Pa…’ I could only hear that much, just the first syllable of her name when I heard something terrible roar out my name.
‘KRISHNA!’
That was my father’s voice; the hungry lion must be looking for a prey to pounce on. Oh my God! Had he caught me hitting on young girls? Before I could answer, I felt a thump on my back, I slowly moved around. There he was standing tall and wide like a mammoth. I am sorry I referred to him as a lion two sentences ago, but mammoth is a much more appropriate word to describe his physique and lion for his command over all of us.
‘Yes, Appa’ I recoiled. We, Tamilians, address our fathers as Appa. That is the word for father in Tamil, Appa.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Nothing…I...I.’ Goddamn! I could not think of an excuse, ‘Kanna and I here were…’
‘Kanna? Where is he? He is not here.’ Appa shouted, well, that was his normal mode of speech: yell!
I looked around; Kanna was nowhere in sight. Damn! Naayi!
‘These girls here, Appa, did you meet them? They are the bride’s relatives, very close ones’
‘So?’ He moved his palm up towards his moustache. The thick brushy moustache! Unlike our other relatives who kept a clean shave, Appa loved to keep thick bushy moustache.
‘So, they were lost. I was helping them find their mother.’ Finally, I made up something gullible, hope it would work on my father.
‘hmm…’ He nodded, ‘See, I told you Mr.Venkatachalam that my son is a gem! He is not just a topper but also smart and helpful. He is an all-rounder.’
Mr.Venkatachalam was a fellow teacher at my father’s school, who also happened to have a 15-year-old, studying in class ninth. Maybe, it was Appa’s way of telling everyone; hey, my son is the best. Appa moved closer and stood next to me, he placed his thick dark hands on my back and once again, the impact made an ear shattering sound. He smiled heartily and said, ‘My son is an all-rounder, an all-rounder!’, and as he smiled, I tried to put up a smile on my face too. However, deep within myself, I was sighing in and out. The girls behind me were giggling; I could hear it, though I did not have the courage to turn around. Their giggles and murmuring were fading out; maybe they were slipping into the crowd.
In the far corner, near the sanctum, I spotted Kanna. He was peeping out of the sanctum. I made an angry expression with my mouth; he understood that he was going to receive a heavy dose from me later.
Nineteen
Mr.Venkatachalam was also smiling; he asked me, ‘What’s your plan now? What next?’
I wanted to say I was interested in Films and wished to look forward towards a carrier in acting, but before I could open my mouth, somebody else filled in for me, ‘He is going to be professor of Mathematics! Just like his Appa. No.! Better than his Appa. Isn’t it son?’ He looked into my eyes and they bore deep into my emotions. For the second’s sake, the question was addressed to me. Why was he answering it? Moreover, did he even know what I wanted? Mathematics? No way! Somehow I struggled hard to find a way out of it and again he was going to push me back into it! I wanted to rebel. Nevertheless, something deep inside asked me to be patient and requested me to stay silent.
However, little did I know then, the price I would be paying for that brief moment of silence?
Twenty
Two years later, May 1995
Early morning…
I walked on the shores of the Bay of Bengal with a cheeky teenager who was constantly looking at the glowing cigarette in my mouth. Finally, he asked, ‘Thalaiva! Give me one puff. Just one.’
I passed the cigarette.
He quickly took a deep puff, he felt the concoction of tobacco smoke mixing up with the moisture on the walls of his throat as it travelled down his wind pipe,
‘Aah!’ The short boy unwound as he exhaled a pack of scintillating smoke, his dark eyes projecting the reflection of glowing cigarette that was placed in his mouth.
I peered into the ocean waves on my left, felt a deep urge inside to speak out my heart. I looked at the cheeky teenager who was still counting stars that the puff of cigarette just showed him.
‘You know, Kanna, my results will be out tomorrow.’
He did not reply. He took in another puff from the cigarette. It seemed as if he was not listening.
‘I am talking to you, Kanna!’ I agitated.
‘Thalaiva, I know that too. Why worry about it? You are the best of the best, the All-rounder. You are our Thalaiva.’ He replied. I was a deeper fan of Thalaivar Rajinikant now. He had all the Tamil youth falling head over heels over his enigmatic aura. Thalaiva could do anything! Anyone who had watched movies of Rajinikant knew that. We were no different from the other Tamil folks; both of us were huge fans of Rajinikant and were totally mesmerized by his character in Baasha, just like any other teenager in Tamil Nadu that year.
‘I think…I think I will fail in maths!’ I vomited those words. The sentence was followed by a grave stretch of silence. The expression on Kanna’s face almost resembled that of a bombed Hiroshima.
‘What?’ He croaked after coming back to his senses. He dropped the cigarette from his hand accidentally, ‘Shit! You have wasted my cigarette also!’
‘I do not know. I could not do it! Maths is not my subject da.’ I tried to explain.
‘Exactly! It is your Appa’s subject! Your father is a great mathematician!’ Kanna shouted.
‘I tried my level best, I did ok in the algebra questions, but trigonometry is going to cost me a year!’ I confessed.
‘But you said that you had done well, right after you returned from the examination hall, did not you?’
‘Yes! I lied. I was afraid of Appa’s reaction had I told him that I did not even touch trigonometry for the paper.’
Kanna was shocked to hear that, ‘You did not even cover Trigonometry, but why would you leave it? How many marks was Trigonometry worth?’
‘40’ I shied.
’40? Out of 100?’ he burst out.
‘I am afraid so!’
‘What were you thinking? How could you even pass like this?’
‘I do not know. I just couldn’t get any hold of it!’
‘And you did not ask Appa? He is an expert in trigonometry.’
‘It’s not that, I just can’t do it. I do not want to do it! That’s it!’ I declared.
‘Do you know what will happen tomorrow? I mean, if you fail?’
I stopped walking, turned towards the blistering Bay of Bengal, gazed at the rising tides, ‘I am leaving this place. I have my dream with me, the dream of becoming an ACTOR. The next Thalaivar of Tamil cinema,’ I paused to take in a deep breath of fresh air coming from the blue waters at the cost of the bay’s distress, ‘Madras is calling me. I feel it. If I stay here, I will go crazy under Appa’s strictness. Have you seen this place? It’s like a rotting jail!’ I erupted. I looked at Kanna; he was not much shocked at this for he always knew about my craze for Cinema and Rajinikant.
He maintained his silence.
I continued ‘My dreams run in a direction of uncertainty and mystery. While my Appa’s expectations run in the opposite direction. I cannot travel both ways. It’s either my way or his.’
Kanna finally spoke, ‘so, it is your way, I guess?’
I nodded ‘Hmmm…’
He had a tear in his eye, ‘What if the results are out, and luck brings a twist in your tale? What if you pass by luck?’
‘I do not know what to do! I want to tell Appa that I do not want to study maths anymore. I want to join a film school.’
‘What if he doesn’t agree? Which I am sure, he would not.’ he said.
‘Then I guess I will have to make my own way.’
Kanna tightly hugged me as he burst into tears, ‘I will miss you Thalaiva. I wish you all the luck and I am sure, in a few years, I will be watching the first day first show of YOUR FILM. I will be the first one to stand up in ovation and shout your name out loud in obeisance and celebration.’
There were tears in my eyes too, because it was difficult to let go of the things that made me, the things that defined my very existence. Kanna was one of them, and so was this coastal town! I will surely miss them. However, success demands sacrifice. All great men had given up the greatest pleasures to achieve greater success. What am I then?
‘I will talk to Appa tonight, once we are back from Anita akka’s wedding. Let him be free.’
‘Amma and I are not attending the wedding because she feels that our religion will be corrupted by attending her wedding.’ Kanna revealed sadly.
‘She’s afraid if you find inspiration in Anita’s love story and find a lover like she did.’ I tried to lighten up the mood.
But that wasn’t enough to cheer him up. He knew things were about to take a steep turn and then they never be the same again.
Never again.
Twenty One
These two years after class tenth were nothing more than fantastic on a personal level as I discovered my inner self, the passion I had in life. I realized that I wanted to be an actor. I went on to do many stage plays at school level and everybody knew that I was the best actor in Tuticorin. However, on the domestic front, things could not get any worse. My father did not like the very idea of me doing plays; neither did he embrace the fact that my academic performance was dipping an all-time low owing to my participation in extra-curricular activities. Of course, he would not, especially when my cousin Kamakshi, whom I had defeated by a couple of numbers back in tenth, was getting a scholarship in the United Kingdom.
It was the age when boys grew arrogant and were eager to pull up arguments against their fathers just to prove their view is the right one, while fathers will not give up their age-old conventional thinking even if they knew they were wrong. It was a matter of our respective egos. This happened at my place as well; there was too much tension between Appa and me. I had started publically displaying my affinity against mathematics, which further aggravated my Appa’s anger. After all, I was the son of an ardent mathematician!
I never gave away any chance to mock the validity of mathematics in front of others neither did Appa leave out any chance to insult my ill-concerned attitude towards academics. In almost every social function that took place in the neighborhood or far and near family, Appa and I would get into some kind of a heated exchange which would go on to become the highlight of the function or ceremony. People who were attending these events would often forget that there was a wedding going on somewhere under the same roof. Such is the lure of petty family fights. No wonder Mahabharata had such huge following.
With just a day left for the announcement of my board exam results I was sure I would fail in mathematics and might just manage to pass by one or two marks in Physics. Deep inside I wanted to tell Appa about my concern regarding the results, but I was afraid to do so. As always, I was afraid to confront Appa. Men grew sane with age, but this particular man had grown horns, red-hot horns straight out of hell.
If I told him that I had no interest in Science and mathematics or in becoming a mathematics professor; he would throw me out of his house. Furthermore, if I told him that I wanted to be an actor; he would shoot me with that rusty old gun that’s been hanging on our wall for decades. Either way, I knew that soon, I would have to bid farewel
l to the paternal bonds that had been keeping me under the blanket until now. However, it was going to be sooner than I had expected. In fact, the trigger was about to be pressed in a short while.
The occasion had been the wedding of my youngest aunt, Anita Saarangam. Well, she will not be called Saarangam anymore, not after she is married. This was not like all the other weddings that had happened in our family. This one was quite a treat for us youngsters while dirt stirred casually in the eyes of the elders. The reason: my aunt was the first person from our entire lineage of orthodox Brahmins to get past the shackles of Traditional ARRANGED MARRIAGES. She had successfully persuaded her parents to allow her to marry her lover, who by the way was a Muslim – Imtiaz.
However, she was not the first one to be involved in a love affair, but yes, she was the first one to get married to her much coveted boyfriend. This event aroused great anger and was a matter of argument and disregard among all the elders. For three or months after the matter was leaked out, the entire family condemned Anita for crossing the line and her parents were blamed for giving too much freedom to her just because she was their only daughter. Although, her father was a man with modern outlook. Despite being pushed away by everyone, he never stopped counting on his daughter. He knew she was wise enough to find a good man for herself. After almost 3 months of hanging the decision in midair, finally, my great paatti, that is, my grandmother nodded in approval. God knows what had got into her at that moment when she approved of the marriage. I wish she would be so generous with all of us too (just in case). Imtiaz’s family agreed to the match on the condition that their wedding would follow pure Islamic traditions. Eventually, everyone agreed. They had to. So, here I was at Anita maami’s wedding, a Muslim wedding, something to which I wasn’t accustomed to.
I was excited because there were lots of new faces and unseen customs. Some of them were beautiful and others wore long beards, while some looked just like my relatives. I was not interested to see the bearded men. But strangely enough, I wasn’t eve chasing either. Perhaps the fear of failing in mathematics had withheld the Casanova in me from getting out of his enactment area.
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