God had given me a second chance.
Finally, I graduated in 2002. I was the only one to graduate in the first lot out of 35 others who had tried with me.
It was celebration time.
In 2003, I got a job upstairs. I passed a clerical test and appointed the clerk in the mayor’s office. There was a change in routine life. I got freedom from the stinking nether worlds of Madras. Oh Sorry, I mean Chennai. Madras had changed into Chennai now, just the way a rebellious egoistic teenager from Tuticorin had changed into a satisfied young government employee.
I had changed. I missed my family, Kanna, my mother and above all my father. But I was afraid to go back. I was completely satisfied, but deep inside this one thing strangled my satisfaction. I had not told anyone around me about it. They knew about my past but I never gave them any hint about my fear. I buried it deep inside my mind, maybe it will fade away one day, just like my dream of becoming an actor had faded away. I had heard no news from their side, neither was I in touch with any of them. I had completely forgotten about Padma. She was no more the part of my vague memories even.
I had moved on.
Thirty One
May 20 2011
Municipal Corporation Building, Chennai
12:00 noon
I had piles of pending files open wide on my desk and half of them were dusty and decades old. This was one of the moments when I wished that I had never become a computer operator at a public office. I should have never gone for that computer course in 2007. Because of that additional qualification, I got promoted to the post of computer operator and was responsible for feeding all manual data entries into the computer database. What was worse is the deafening fact that some of those entries were made prior to the independence of our great nation, centuries before that fateful day of 15 August 1947. My fingers showed some kind of reaction after touching some of those really old files.
I was working on a file from 1987 when Thulasidas, one of the peons, came to me. He was from Palghat, Kerala and hailed from a Tamil Brahmin family just like me. Though he was quite fluent in Tamil but he often carried a colloquial Malayalee accent especially when he uttered bilabial syllables, typical of those who spoke Malayalam.
I had not called him, so I raised my pencil and asked him to leave. He did not leave. I stopped typing on the computer and looked at him. I raised my eyebrow in an interrogatory style.
He answered in his colloquialness, ‘Yaaro ungale meet panre vandu irrukku Saar’
‘Yaaru?’ I replied in Tamil.
‘Oru couple Saar. Oru paiyyan, oru madam. Ungale teriyumnu sollerei.’
‘enge? Where?’ I asked trying to figure out who that would be.
‘Inge ninthu Caféku poyaachu. Ange wait pannere avar.’
‘Avargalude per yenna?’ I asked.
The young peon scratched his head, ‘Saary, Saar. I forgot to ask, Saar’ He apologized in typical Palakkadan accent.
‘Okay, you may go. I will check.’
The peon walked away from my desk. I yawned and slowly got up from my seat. I started walking towards the exit.
Yaaro ungale meet panre vandu irrukku Saar. The peon had said that a couple had come to meet me, but who could they be? I only had friends from the city; they would generally call me up on my cellular phone. Who would come to visit me at my office? I was not in touch with any of my relatives or people from my long gone past.
Could it be Padma? Had she found out about me? A Couple? She must be married by now, had she come here with her husband? Why would she want to see me if she was married? Maybe she was only engaged and she was here with her fiancée. They must have come to invite me to their wedding.
My gut tingled. The dumb peon had forgotten to ask the person’s name. Saary Saar, he had replied when I asked him the person’s name and identity. None of us Tamilians got it right, the whole of India said Sorry and Sir while we still pronounce Saary and Saar. Hope the coming generation would rectify our accent. As for the mystery, who were they? Why was a couple waiting for me at the cafeteria? Slowly my heart started beating faster, the blood was trumpeting through my nerves.
My heart, as fast as it could, it kept beating. Heavier by every passing second and when it was on the verge of exploding, something vibrated above my ribcage, just where my heart was pumping. I thought that was it! My heart had given up, exploded! But why was it singing enna thavam seithane? It was the ringtone of my cellular phone. I stopped walking, sighed and exhaled. Then inhaled a deep breath of air. I pulled out the ringing phone from my shirt’s pocket.
Martin calling.
It was my insurance agent, Martin. I was getting my motorbike insured.
‘Macha, Where are you?’ the voice blasted on the phone.
‘At the office…’ I responded coldly.
‘I am waiting for you at the Café, when are you coming down?’
‘What? You… at the caf…Wait a minute!’ I juggled my thoughts back to where it all began, ‘You sent the peon? He said some couple was here to see me, waiting at the café.’
‘Yes, I reached here, had been trying for your phone, but it would not connect. Therefore, I caught one of your peons. I had to get you down here somehow, did not want to disturb the decorum of your office by coming in. I told him that I was your insurance agent.’
‘Did you? He said he forgot to ask! Damn it, that idiot. I am coming there in a minute. Man you got me killed with tension. Too bad you weren’t covering my life insurance.’
‘Hahaha…Ok, come down quick!’
‘Ok Macha, coming. Bye!’ I hung up the phone and started striding at double pace.
Thirty Two
The Café, Chennai
12:12 noon
Martin was standing at the entrance of The Café. We shook hands. I was not expecting Martin that day at all. I blurted out what I thought, ‘What are you doing here? We had to meet next week, right? Is… is everything all right?’
Martin followed me inside. He walked towards the last table in the corner on the right hand side, four chairs around the table. Somebody was already seated there.
It was a woman. She had her back towards me. Martin had already taken a seat; he sat facing the two people. Suddenly that vague enigma crept back inside me as I paced quickly towards the table. I wanted to see who that woman was. I reached the table, crossed the seated woman and turned around. Now, I saw her. My heart once again pumped blood at four times the normal rate into my veins.
A tanned face, splendidly sliced pair of lips running pink to crimson naturally, hair cut short to form bobbing curves around the neck. And the eyes, thick black in an ocean of white surrounded by thick and long eye lashes. I knew those eyes; I could never escape the earthy gaze of those beautiful eyes. My heart froze for the next few seconds, this was her. However, initially I had predicted it to be her but after receiving Martin’s phone call, I had ruled out all the evident possibility of it being her.
For a moment, she had made a comeback into the world of my thoughts and here she was, right there sitting in front of me, clad in a golden brown saree and red sleeveless blouse, the woman who was the girl whom I once loved.
‘Padma!’ I chanted unwittingly as if I were speaking in a trance under the effect of a hypnotic spell. Indeed, I was hypnotized. Enchanted by the sudden appearance of this gorgeous woman. The woman whom I had craved for a long time in my life. She had not lost it at all, in fact, she had only grown better in beauty; add to it a reckoning sense of style.
Martin woke me up from the trance, ‘Hey, why don’t you take a seat?’
I nodded and pulled out the chair and sat down on the chair next to Martin. I was facing Padma. I noticed that she had grown a tint of seriousness on her face for she was not smiling at all. I tried hard to start a smile but to my astonishment, I found my lips and the muscles around my mouth to have paralyzed. I could not move them. What was I feeling? Happy? Confused? Shocked?
Yes, I was confused. What was she doing here? What was
Martin doing with her?
Finally, I gathered all the nerve I could and sustained a sensible query, ‘So? How long has it been?’
‘Fourteen years!’ came a blunt answer from the woman sitting in front of me. Her voice had thickened. She was not that 17-year-old girl anymore. She was 31. The sreedeviness still lingering around her lips clashing between the brows of her eyes.
‘How… how are you?’ I jittered word by word.
‘What an incredible journey life has been! Hasn’t it?’ her tone had changed; no more did it sound blunt. A sudden sharpness had crept in. There was anger in the voice that followed, ‘a young boy, everyone expecting him to be something, runs away from home. A rebellious young boy chasing his dreams!’ She scolded. I kept examining her for signs of marriage, any kind of rings or mangalsootra. I did not find either of them. Was she still unmarried? Meanwhile she continued chiding me, ‘then all of a sudden he decides to cut off from everything and everyone. There is no news of the boy. No news of the boy for fourteen long years! What does he think he is? Lord Sri Raama?’
‘What?’ I choked.
‘What are you looking at? You are no Raama, got it? But there is someone who deserves to be summoned as Bharata today.’
What was she talking about? She made no sense at all. Why was she pulling in characters from The Raamayana? I was not on an exile for fourteen years because I was never going to go back home. This was my home now. Was she about to call herself Sita?
‘Look, I …’ I stuttered but I was interrupted.
‘Anna!’ A voice caressed me from behind. All the hair on my body racked up, juices poured in from the adrenal medulla. My eyes opened wide in astonishment. That tone and that sweetness could only come from one person. I stood from the chair and turned around slowly.
Thirty Three
Kanna.
There he stood. He was not a little boy that I had left behind in Tuticorin, 15 years ago. This Kanna was a man, broad shouldered, tall and stoutly built.
I baby-stepped towards him, he was taller than I was. I was six feet tall; he stood an inch or two higher. My eyes filled with tears. If they were happy or sad, I had no idea, as there was a sudden rush of emotions. With trembling hands, I touched his cheeks. Thick blades of uncut stubble kissed the inner side of my palm. His dark skin shook with an unbearable sensation of finding a lost one.
‘Kanna!’ I finally gave a melodramatic whisper.
He nodded and then broke into tears. How much more could I retain myself from giving up? I gave up and hugged him tightly.
‘Anna, why did you do this? You could have at least thought about me, of all the good times we had.’
‘What are you saying? I think about you all the time, every moment, every second and with every breath. I just did not have the courage, Kanna.’
‘I wanted to come earlier, much earlier, but I did not want to hurt your feelings in any way by breaking my promise.’
‘How did you find me?’ I enquired as I released the young man in his mid or late twenties.
He looked at Padma and explained, ‘You remember Padma akka, don’t you? We met her years ago. At a wedding’
‘Yes, yes!’ I nodded, but little did he know how much more had we known each other, at a level persona.
‘Well, Amma had asked me to contact akka’s parents if they could look for you in Chennai. We were all hoping that you would be in Chennai only. Since akka’s family had settled in Chennai for a long time, we thought that they could help us. Though our hope was infinitesimally minute, but still we hoped. Rest was her mission.’ He smiled at Padma with sparkling eyes.
Martin had shifted to the seat next to Padma so that I could sit with my cousin, Kanna.
We sat down.
Padma continued explaining from there onwards, ‘The first thing that I did after getting Hari’s request was something anyone would do, give a MISSING PERSON advertisement in local newspapers. We used your old photo there. I was quite sure that sticking up an outdated photo would hardly help people in identifying you. Especially, since you have changed so much physically.’ She looked at my face and then turned towards Martin, who was sitting next to me, ‘Luckily, one of the readers of Chennai Sethikal recognized the name and details of this particular person who had run away from Tuticorin around fourteen years ago. Someone who had access to all the personal details of the great Krishnaprasad Iyer, and that someone is sitting right here in front of me, Mr. Martin Gonzales. He called me.’
I looked at Martin; he was smiling shyly as if he had been acknowledged for tracing the most wanted criminal of the world. He tried to justify his action, ‘Hey! I was in two minds after I read that piece of news. And I was really shocked; you never told me that you ran away from home!’
I did not reply. I know he was trying to put back the blame on me. Of course, I was worth the accusation.
He continued speaking, ‘I tallied the few details that had been given in the advertisement with the insurance papers that you had filled in last week. They matched- The address, father’s name, mother’s name, date of birth etc. At first, I was a little reluctant to give out your location but then I had a weird intuition. What if these people had some terribly strong reason for seeking you?’ He crossed his hands and sharply fixed his gaze on me, gargled his throat and said, ‘and unfortunately I was right.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked quaintly.
Martin did not reply. He fell silent and so did everyone. Padma tried to look the other way when I turned towards her.
Finally, I bent myself on the one whom I could always count on, Kanna. His face was dipped in syrup of heaviness. I could now clearly read the seriousness behind their intention to seek me after such a long gap of fourteen years. He looked down at the top of the table and then raised his dark mature face towards me, those dark set of eyes charged with salty tears. With a very heavy monotone, he revealed the reason, ‘Anna! Your Appa, he is not well. After you left, he had taken to drinking like anything. He got expelled from school for teaching under the influence of alcohol. He spent all his property and money on alcohol.’
I was shocked to hear this; I knew my father was one of those people who would never even touch alcohol in their life. This was all because of me. I had not just left Tuticorin; I had left my father hapless.
I wiped the sigh on my face and asked, ‘Why didn’t you get to me earlier?’
‘We wanted to, but he had clearly stated that if any of us tried to bring you back, he would hang himself. He still held on to his words seriously. Remember those last words you had said to each other at that wedding?’
MY HOUSE… TO ME until I am alive, if he comes to my house, he will have to walk over my dead body. Those words echoed around me. Just like his son, ardent on his words.
‘Shit!’ I cried.
‘We thought that you might come back someday, but neither of your egos wanted to lose this battle!’
It was not my ego. I was scared to come back. I said in my mind. I could not say that outside because no one would ever believe me. My heart had started beating at double rate once again. It pounded hard against the walls of my chest. The thumping sound could almost rock the tables around me. I felt the pulse in my ears too.
Kanna continued, ‘Six months ago Appa had a stroke, the doctors were able to get him back to life. They had asked him to detain himself from drinking again. However, he was not done with punishing himself. Two weeks later he was drinking again, worse he had started smoking too. Anna, your house lost its peace forever. Last week he was found lying unconsciously in his room, he would not wake up at all. We all were scared to death. We took him to KMS in Tuticorin. They detected some weird condition of his health because of heavy drinking.’ The tears started flooring down from his eyes.
‘I left my father to be dead!’ My heart started giving up too. I was praying that Kanna did not push away all chances of hope now by saying that he was indeed dead.
‘He isn’t dead. KMS people asked us to mo
ve him to Medanta in Gurgaon, near New Delhi. Only they could take this case up. It is a rare kind of surgery which is performed in only two or three hospitals in the Indian subcontinent itself.’
I sighed, closed my eyes and breathed in and out.
‘When are we taking him to Delhi?’ I asked him.
‘He has been admitted there already. But they wouldn’t carry on the surgery unless we pay them. The insurance cover was used up in his last stroke.’
‘How much is it?’ I started calculating all my savings and bonds that were about to mature. I believed I could come up with a good figure. I had saved for an apartment in Chennai.
With a heavy heart, he embarked ‘Eight lakhs!’
‘What?’ I blew out of the water. I had not assumed anything that would exceed two lakhs. This was four times more than what I had assumed. I had made such an assumption after carefully calculating every paisa that I had with me.
‘Your Appa had no money with him; your Amma sold all the ornaments that were left with her. Most of us contributed but still are falling short by 6 lakhs. Many of our uncles simply backed out because of the fact that he had been very rude to them lately. They said that he had no right to live anymore because even if he was saved this time, he will keep drinking and again he will be admitted. It was better to let him pass this very time. But Amma insisted upon saving him. She believed that you might be able to help her out and so, we are here.’ He thrust his hands on the table.
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