He stood there speechless. He bounced out of shock, but by that time, I had pushed aside a few uniformed men and was running my ass off towards nowhere. I kept on running. I knew my joints would give up soon, but I decided to use this energy as long as possible so that I could get far away from that police station. And in that haste, I couldn’t hear any whistles or yelling policemen charging after me. I simply kept running.
I took a few turns and before I knew it, I was standing in front of a plain horizon. A great sea poised its Azul in front of my weary eyes. I dropped myself on the sandy shore. I had run miles, maybe for hours with that single burst of energy. I fell on my knees. It had started hurting again, but before it could stagger me with pain, I started losing my consciousness.
I was hearing something; in fact, I was hearing many things. I was seeing faces.
I kept hearing and seeing them one by one.
They were flashbacks. I was hallucinating.
‘Krishna, I can very well understand your frustration, but you have to stick to your dreams. Try harder. That you are. A big mess, but you still have time, loads and loads of time. You can always go back, start afresh. For once in your life be smart, think wisely.’ Padma said with a bifocal spectacle rested on her nose, with a ruler in her right hand. She was reading them out from a book. I was being lectured. She continued tutoring, ‘Complete your graduation, and get a decent job. Secure your future. Once you are working somewhere, you will have some money and then you can go for auditions.’
‘1986, Madurai? You remember some little girl trying to throw a varamaala around your neck. Insisting you to marry her? ’ A little girl revealed her face from a veil. Her teeth were strewn sparsely across her mouth. She looked cute though and she was holding a garland of flowers in her hand.
‘I am short listing you, young man. You have the potential to be the next big name in Tamil Cinema. We will call you if you are selected. A short man said. There were other people around me. Some of them carried very serious faces, while others had no faces at all. The words kept on echoing inside my ears with each rising decibel.
‘Thalaiva, Look at this. Super-figures, Thalaiva!’ exclaimed a joyous Kanna, whom I had not heard from in a year. I realize that he had grown a beard on his face. Has he grown older than I have?
‘How dare you use your force on your father?’ my father grunged against something. He lifted a lathi stick and charged it over my naked buttocks.
‘This boy will never come back to MY HOUSE… TO ME until I am alive, if he comes to my house, he will have to walk over my dead body. Let him come the day I die, to do away with my funeral.’ The old man grunted. Everything around me started burning.
‘I will make sure that I come back to your dead body! Goodbye!’ There was an explosion. That is all I heard, all I saw.
Soon everything started fading out. Maybe I was dying.
Maybe I had fallen asleep.
I had found myself a new place to sleep.
Twenty Eight
1997-98
Madras
That incident got me on all four. I decided that I must find some kind of work for myself, a job to keep myself from starving. I had to keep myself alive. I had a dream to rebuild, a dream that had been shattered into tiny pieces. I kept away from the Railway Station and its surroundings. I would be careful every time I came across a police officer. I did not want to be caught. I did not want that old constable to catch me and dispatch me back home. I often wondered if he had informed my parents about my whereabouts. I hoped he had not.
I walked into several interviews but nobody was interested to hire an under graduate. Even worse, nobody was willing to hire an 11th pass runaway. However, all those interviews were for office jobs. Therefore, I decided to loosen my stiffness and try for lesser jobs, jobs that demanded more of physical labor and less of mental strain and a heavy sacrifice of one’s ego. The kind of jobs where uneducated people would be preferred over graduates. Where graduates would not even think of sending in an application.
Frustration grew inside me and being jobless had started attracting some really bad people. But I kept myself away from them. I had started smoking too.
The beach where I brought myself to sleep was the hub for smugglers and drug addicts at night. I fought hard to keep myself clean. I had three options open wide in front of me. First was the blue Bay of Bengal. She would always call out my name, asking me to merge myself in her untamed depths. Thus, putting an end to all miseries.
The second one was to join one of those people who were selling drugs, become an addict myself and take temporary relief from this material suffering by infusing myself into the world of intoxication.
And the final one was to go back home, which I would never do. Not because of my ego. The circumstances had killed and buried my ego deep within those sandy shores of Madras. It was the fear of losing my father. Every time I wished to go back, those words would repeat themselves inside my mind’s jukebox.
I will make sure that I come back to your dead body! Goodbye!
I missed my family, my mother, Kanna, all those people and last but the most, My Appa. I wanted to call Kanna and ask how things were going, but lacked the courage to do so.
I was lying aimlessly on the beach one night. Foamy waves from the ocean swept my feet, keeping me alive. There were very few souls on the beach that night. Nevertheless, I loved the isolation. Loneliness gave me company. I looked at the bright moon hovering in the dark sky. So beautiful it was, more so because it was alone in the sky. There was not a star to accompany the patchy white sphere that night. I felt myself in the heart of the moon. Some writer had written in his masterpiece that everything had a soul. The Earth and the moon also had souls. I wondered if my soul could talk to the moon’s soul and find some kind of a company there.
A few minutes later, a couple arrived at the spot where I was resting. The couple consisted of a middle-aged man and a woman, presumably his wife. They sat there at a distance of 6 feet from me. I guess they had not seen me. They were talking.
The man put his right hand around his wife’s shoulder and pulled her closer to him. He spoke in a guttural voice, ‘I think I will miss him a lot. I wish I could have saved him’, the tone was one that of brief sorrow.
‘You were unaware, his time had come. He had to go. You tried your level best to save him.’ She consoled him; her voice was thicker, unlikely for a woman of her kind.
‘Yes, after working ten years with him. I feel as if I wouldn’t be able to start another day without him.’ He sighed.
‘People die. You got to move on.’ She replied in the manner of a wise man.
He rested his over her head and looked ahead, ‘I do not know whom they will hire now. I hope it’s somebody as good as he is.’
My eyes popped open. All my senses queried outside my body. I had just heard something, which made me rise up suddenly from the ground. The couple was taken by surprise. The woman shouted in fear. The man barked, ‘Who’s that?’
I wiped off the sand from my hair.
‘Somebody is hiring?’ I asked him.
‘What?’
‘Right now, you were saying something about hiring someone. I would like to take that job, whatever that is.’ I offered.
The man was confused, ‘you wouldn’t want to…’
I interrupted ‘I do not care; I will take that job, Please!’ I begged.
‘Okay, fine! Meet me outside the Madras City Municipal Corporation’s Sewage plant at 8 am. I will talk to the supervisor.’
‘Thank you Sir’ I took the hands of that man, shook it vigorously, and saluted his wife, ‘Thank you madam, thank you.’ I jostled. My eyes once again filled up with tears. Unlike previous ones, these were tears of joy. I finally had a job, ‘tomorrow morning 8 am. Municipal Corporation. I will be there Sir, I will be there.’
I started jogging away from there.
The man asked from behind, ‘By the way boy, what is your name?’
I heard him meekly, though I yelled back gleefully, ‘My name is Iyer, Krishnaprasad Iyer’
Twenty Nine
19 December 1997
Madras Municipal Corporation Building
The night passed in a joyous state of sleep. I had never slept so peacefully in recent times. The hope of getting a job the next morning filled me with a kind of rigorous calmness. My life was broken, now I would be getting a chance to fix it. I was awake at five in the morning, the beach felt fresher than ever. The cool breeze from the Bay of Bengal kissed my yawning face. The scent refreshed each living cell inside my withered body.
I had been standing outside the Municipal Corporation building since seven in the morning. The man from the beach had asked me to arrive outside the building at eight. I was there an hour earlier. I wanted to impress him with this act of punctuality.
At around quarter to eight, a thick-skinned blackish male wearing a khaki uniform arrived outside the gate of the building. That khaki clearly was not a police officer’s uniform. I made sure by rechecking. Maybe he was a peon at one of the divisions in the huge building. I had seen the same man at the beach last night. There was no woman with him. He was coming towards me. I smiled at him. He did not bother smiling back. As he came closer to me, he pulled out a folded page and handed it over to me. I quickly received and unfolded it.
It was a form.
‘Fill up the form quickly and give it back to me.’ He commanded as he produced a packet of local beedi from his shirt’s pocket.
‘Okay, sir!’
‘And yes, attach a passport size photograph with the form. Do you have one?’ He looked at me while lighting the beedi with a matchstick.
I bristled through my wallet, there had to be a photograph there somewhere. I kept a couple of my photographs all the time in my wallet. There it was, a rusty black and white photograph of mine, taken when I was in class 10th. The inseparable smile on my face cast a shadow of irony over my bewildering face of the present. I wondered if the very same photographs were displayed on notice boards in police stations of Tuticorin too, among the list of MISSING PERSONS. I handed the photograph over to the man in khaki.
‘Fill it up fast. We have to report downstairs by 8 am.’ He blurted among blusters of raw tobacco fumes. He coughed lightly.
‘Well, yes, of course!’
It was a government job’s application form. Proudly I filled it.
‘Very good!’
He started going through the form that I had just filled up. I added meticulously, ‘I can also speak English and Hindi.’
He fortressed with a rising hand as if asking me to shut up, ‘You do not need to know any of these to do what we do here.’
I was confused. The man blew in another ounce of smoke from the handmade beedi. He started walking towards the rear side of the building. He gestured me to follow him. I kept pace with his short strides; I did not over take him. I was right behind him.
There was a wooden door few feet away from us, but startlingly the man with me was not going that way. He did not stop at the door; instead, he stopped a few feet ahead. He had stopped in front of a hole in the concrete floor. He called me over. I had stopped walking after reaching the door, so I started moving towards the man in khaki upon his gesture. A look of amusement eclipsed my face that he ignored that. He kneeled down and then with a small careful stride he stepped inside the hole. I moved closer and kneeled down. It was an entrance to the world below. A foul smell hit my face. I placed my hands around the perimeter of the hole and slowly pushed my right foot into the hole. There were steel steps embossed into the walls of the ground below. The staircase to hell, I assumed and started my journey downstairs. The smell kept growing in foulness, and so did the pressure of the stinking air inside the hole. They would always say that hell was a rotting place to be. This must be it then. The sound of flowing water ascended as I descended. What was this place?
The smell of beedi was successful to some extent in keeping the stink from blowing up my nose, but now it was not helping either. I looked at the man who was descending just under me; he had thrown away the beedi. I wished that he would light up another one.
Few minutes later, we were all standing at the zone. The man pulled off a yellow safety helmet from the hanger on the wall. He wore it on his grizzly haired head. He threw another one towards me; I caught it and wore it. He walked towards me, put a hand on my shoulders and spoke, ‘It’s unlikely that people take up such jobs. People like white-collar jobs and they get paid more. We do the real thing of cleaning up the city for such low pay. It is a dirty job, only desperate people end up here. I talked to the supervisor; he agreed to keep you for fifty rupees a day. Ten hours duty.’
‘But what exactly do I do here? I still did not understand! I thought it to be some office job, like on the ground floor and all.’ I demanded elusively. The smell of some kind of weird gas blocked the smelling path of my nose.
‘We refine sewage waste down here.’
‘Refine?’
‘We clean shits of the entire city. Janitors.’
‘But…but…I signed up for some government job, you only gave me that application minutes ago, remember?’
‘What do you think this is? Some kind of a multinational private venture? Hell, we are government servants working for the Municipal Corporation of Madras.’ He woofed into the smelly air.
‘You did not tell me that I was going to clean shit!’
‘I was trying to, but you did not let me finish. You were too desperate. You were willing to do any work, remember?’
‘Yea… But this. Oh my God! Can’t you get me any other job? Don’t you have friends upstairs?’ I suppressed.
‘Yes, they either ask for certificates and entrance tests or demand lump sum in bribe for blinking an eye. You got either of that then you may try upstairs. I know few guys who can help.’
‘Huh! What kind of a choice is that? I do not even know if I have passed 12th or not. How can I sit for their tests?’
‘This one’s dirty, but at least you will have something to do. It’s difficult to live in the big city, why don’t you pack your bags and go back to where you came from.’
‘I am from this city.’ I lied to the man.
‘Of course and I come from America,’ He grinned sarcastically, ‘look here, boy, people arrive in packs in this city every day to try their freaking lucks. Few of the lucky ones find their dreams, few find some other way out, few go back unsuccessfully while the left ones go berserk in desperation. The choice is yours. I saw desperation in your eyes last night’
‘Was not it too dark for you to see?’
‘Was that a joke? Anyway, I talked to the supervisor and got you in because I thought that you needed this work. At least you had not decided to take up wrong kind of jobs, yet. However, it is your choice, you may decide against it. I won’t force you; I will tear off your application and throw it away into this flowing sewage water.’ He pointed to the stream of dark viscous liquid flowing behind him.
That was where the smell and the sound were coming from. It would have formed a beautiful sight if there had been no litter residue in that incoming stream of water. I thought for a moment. I needed silence to think. The noise under the earth was surprisingly soothing to the ears, there was the kind of silence I needed. I began pondering over things.
I had no money, no work and could not go back. Sometimes words said had lightening effects and I did not want such words to come true. I did not want to see my father dead. I could work there in that dirty rotting hell until the time I was selected in a film. I could save some money too, enough money to bribe one of the friends upstairs. Alternately, I could get out of here, go back to Marina beach and lay there until some miracle happened and I became the king of the world! Maybe this was another test that I had to pass.
My father’s curse.
I had made up my mind.
I had decided.
Once again, I had made my decision; I wished tha
t it would not falter like the previous ones. I fixed the helmet on my head and requested, ‘Can I start now?’
The man smiled and pushed his right hand forth, ‘Welcome to the team, I am Thangaraju Vincent.’
I shook his hands, ‘My name is Iyer, Krishnaprasad Iyer’
Thirty
1998 - 2010
Madras
Life took a turn that I had not expected. The boy who rebelliously ran away from home to become an actor in the big city became a janitor. Fate forced me to refine sewage water. I worked every day, did not skip it. In the beginning, it seemed difficult and tacky. The smell and sight of live fecal matter and rats running below my feet gave me nauseating fits. Nevertheless, it became part of my life. However, few months later, I was used to it. It grew in me and I no more worked hurtfully. During my early days, I would give auditions on Sundays but as usual, they never followed up. I grew tired of giving pointless auditions; maybe I was not an actor material at all. I started skipping auditions and started travelling around the city on Sundays. I would work on Saturdays too; it gave me an extra day’s pay. I was no more sleeping on beaches and railway stations. I had a bed of my own in a tidy room filled with bachelors. They accommodated me at the staff quarters. Though small, the room was a satisfying enough for my pesty needs. I had made new friends, they liked me and I liked them too. As time passed, I forgot my dream somewhere. I almost bumped into Padmavathi a couple of times in the city. I masqueraded. I did not want her to see me, ask me how I had been doing and what. I had an answer, which would put her on the seat of victory. She had asked me to go back, I did not and now I was a nothing, she had definitely won that covetous bet. Whatever happened, life had to move on and it did.
I had worked there for two years as a janitor when one of my roommates came up with a public scheme. The State Government of Tamil Nadu was encouraging undergraduate public servants to take up correspondence graduate courses. Courses were offered in B.A and B.Sc. Completion of such a course would make the candidate eligible for higher posts in the State Government’s offices under some kind of reservation that I could not understand then. I signed up for B.A English and worked hard for the next three years. I dribbled physical labor in the daytime and mental labor at night. I blocked all sources of entertainment. I had to graduate and find a job upstairs.
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