The Soul of Truth

by Shaji Madathil

  Ruby’s smile! The innocent smile that made me her slave. The smile that conveyed her love for me. The smile that embodied everything good in the world.

  An incident just before we broke for Onam holidays sealed our love forever.

  Lunch break was a favourite time for the students. It was a slice of freedom in the midst of a monotonous schedule. Some of us boys used to go to a vacant house near the school to eat our lunch. It was an adventure. The owners of the house were abroad, and the caretaker allowed us to explore it in return for small favours like cigarettes and tobacco. The house was large and sprawling with fields all around. In the backyard was a big pond, full of fish.

  I loved watching the fish. I used to have an aquarium at home. Once Achen had presented me that aquarium with some goldfish in it. How I loved those gorgeous beings. When I fed them, they would swim up and get the food from my hands, as if they knew me. I grew very attached to them. Then they contracted some disease and died one after another. I was so devastated that I never again attempted to rear any more fish. The aquarium then sat empty in one corner of my room.

  When I saw the fish in the pond, I was reminded of the fish I once had. I forgot all about the heartache of losing the goldfish. I wanted to have my own fish as pets again. At home, I washed the aquarium and made it ready for the fish with beautifully rounded gravel and little plants.

  The next day, during lunch, I caught some fish, with the help of a friend, in my lunchbox before hurrying back to the school for the afternoon classes.

  The first lesson was Malayalam; the class was taken by Namboothiri sir, a teacher who was notorious for his short temper. He was already in the class by the time we reached there. We sneaked in, trying not to attract his attention. But in that anxiety, the lunchbox with the fish, which I was hiding behind my back, bumped against the edge of a desk and fell down with a clatter. The lid flew open, spilling the water and the fish on the floor.

  I was frozen. The whole class erupted into laughter and jeers and calls of ‘fish’.

  Namboothiri sir was livid. He grabbed the cane on his table, strode over to me and beat me mercilessly. I don’t think I even felt any of those beatings. I was transfixed on the gasping little fish on the floor, dying right in front of my eyes. When they stopped gasping, I started to cry. In front of the whole class!

  That act, the reason and the result became a defining feature of my life.

  In the evening, Ruby waited for me at the gate and walked home with me. She tried her best to make me feel better. But I was feeling too sorry for myself and my dead fish to listen to her. She touched my hand a few times. Even that softness didn’t register on my consciousness.

  Finally, just before leaving me at the turn to her home, she said, “Please Uthaman, don’t be so sad. I can’t bear it. When the master caned you, it felt as if he was caning me. I felt the pain more than you.” She looked at me with tears in her eyes and walked away. I stood spellbound. Ruby had just said something that I couldn’t even dare to imagine—that she loved me more than herself. Oh, in an instant, I forgot all about the pain from the beatings and the loss of the fish. If I had seen Namboothiri sir at that moment, I might have even kissed him—after all, he was the reason for my girl to confess her fierce love to me.

  From then on, the days and nights were our own. The days buzzed with dreams and the nights were sleepless. Our own secret. How we struggled to keep it safe from everyone.

  And our love took on words. We realised the joy of penning our thoughts in letters, and we realised the limitations of language.

  The letters we wrote… About anything and everything. I could never have enough of her letters. As I finished one, I craved for the next. She had a way with words. Even the tiny flowers that bloomed in her garden were important characters in the love story we weaved for ourselves. A rainbow of words, dancing like a peacock, added vivid colours to our love.

  Love.

  How can anyone describe it?

  It has to be lived. Savoured.

  How unfortunate are those who have never loved.

  The rain. The love and the lover. The drizzling softness and the fierce embrace.

  For me, love was a new discovery. Sometimes, I was consumed by anxiety. At others, I was at the pinnacle of ecstasy.

  How easily her dimpled smile unlocked the door to my heart. All my turbulent emotions had just one face—Ruby’s.

  Those letters from her, written in the ink of her dreams, are all still in the trunk in my room. One day Radhika might discover them and read them… “My heart beats just for you. Your love is the light filling my life. I am surrounded by that rainbow of not just seven, but seven hundred hues. I will always be yours. You can never leave me. I won’t let you! Or, if you do, I will follow you to the ends of the world, and beyond!”

  Intense, deep love, phrased in beautiful words. I struggled to match her feelings and vocabulary. She could make me feel so inadequate and yet so invincible. Sometimes, I felt weak with love. Even my bones felt rubbery and infirm. Is love a disease?

  I had started keeping a diary. Penning down my thoughts and feelings. Sometimes, they took the form of snippets of poems. I shared the good ones with her and waited eagerly for her replies.

  Puppy love. Immature love. Blind love. Dismissive words used for young love that is very real for the lovers. We lived in a dream world, insulated from reality, a world that ran on tracks parallel to our dreams, never to converge. There were times when my mind kept haranguing me, to return to reality, urging me to realise that even if love and life met, they might never have a happy coexistence. I hated my mind then. And willfully ignored it.

  For me, love was a soft, fragrant bed of roses. I chose to ignore the reality of thorns. The turbulence in my mind was put to rest when I was with Ruby. I was thrilled when she was near me. The first sight of her every morning was the high point of my day. Every evening was a bereavement.

  Onam holidays approached soon. For the first time in my life, I hated Onam. How could I survive without seeing her everyday? But she surprised me on the last day of school. “Uthaman, study well during the holidays. I will acknowledge that you love me the most only if you score good marks. Don’t let our love spoil your studies. You should top our class.”

  I was amazed. What a special girl she was! She was equally at ease with dreams and reality. So mature for one so young. She was also very sensible not to let our love become a scandal. My love and respect for her increased manifold. She had subtly changed the way I viewed life. I was in love with the whole world and respected all life with a renewed faith.

  After Onam, we were very happy to be back to our regular routine. Christmas holidays seemed to come too early that year. That was the time we discovered our own postal service. The hollow in the tree in front of her home. We carefully deposited letters there and furtively retrieved them after dusk. The sense of guilt and danger added to our excitement and love. Now the holidays, too, were our own. Even the long summer holidays flew by in our love and anticipation.

  Ruby had grown. She was looking more beautiful everyday. Like a blushing bud impatient to bloom into a gorgeous flower! Our love matured into inseparable friendship. We felt we knew each other better than we knew even ourselves. But we still took care to make sure that we were not seen together by others. For everyone else, we were just good friends, and we preferred to play up to that charade.

  What a charade our life turned out to be…

  The squeaks and groans of the night. The fluttering bobs of fireflies, fading with the coming dawn. My memories, too, are slipping. My loss. My body. The vessel that held all these memories. Now in eternal sleep.

  I had committed sins in my life, knowingly and unknowingly. I used to burn with guilt and shame and profound sadness. But even with all that, nothing can compare to the life we are gifted with on this earth. Wasn’t that my heaven? To be chained by love. To be pained by loss. From generation to generation.

  Now, for the lonely journey.
/>
  I was too busy. Saving up. For what? For this loneliness? I feel weak.

  A dead leaf floats down noiselessly from the tree.

  The Twenty-Third Night

  The evening light filters through the trees and the soil. Birds are returning home. For me, one more lonely day awakens into a night busy with thoughts.

  Will man never be free of the stranglehold of thoughts? That whirlpool that sucks at the living and the dead. If man lacked the ability to think, to worry, wouldn’t our lives have been simpler? Easier? Now, we are perpetually stressed, thinking of tomorrow, dreaming of the future—forgetting to enjoy today and in the process, weakening our bodies and inviting death sooner, putting an end to all those dreams.

  I was never short of questions. About anything and everything. They would suddenly pop up, maybe at the sight of a flower or a fallen leaf. And my friends, who were mostly at the receiving end of such questions, thought I was weird. When they teased and laughed at me, I didn’t take umbrage but laughed with them. That way, I kept my friends and my doubts. But in solitude, I pondered constantly, and sometimes questioned my own sanity.

  My friends gave me a nickname: Plato. I wore it as a badge of honour.

  “We have so much to study from the textbooks as it is. Why are you wasting time trying to learn even more, Uthaman?” Karim used to ask me frequently. He was my good friend. Pale, thin and quiet with a shy smile, he normally didn’t take part in any of our banter. His taciturn attitude earned him ample teasing from our naughty gang.

  “Hey, Karim, why are you looking so grumpy? Don’t you like your lunch? Or did you quarrel with Zeenat?” That was Ravi.

  Karim looked irritated. He didn’t like to answer any of those questions. His father was an alcoholic and didn’t care much about his family. His mother worked all day at a convent nearby to help bring up the children. On most days Karim didn’t bring lunch. But he was too proud to share our lunch, even when we offered it. He hid his helplessness and brazened it out behind the mask of a ‘don’t care’ attitude. Zeenat was a beautiful girl in our class. Sweet and friendly with everyone, she was sympathetic to Karim’s plight. And we, his friends, used that to needle Karim.

  Karim didn’t show much interest in studies. In most classes, he sat with a blank look and couldn’t answer the teacher’s questions. The teachers, who would have normally scolded such students harshly, made an exception for him since they knew about his situation. Some of them even tried to help him financially. But he didn’t like to accept charity. The teachers understood and mostly left him alone.

  Our principal was a legendary disciplinarian. Every afternoon, during the lunch recess, he used to emerge from his office and majestically survey the school. The school would suddenly go eerily silent around him. Running footsteps slowed to sedate walks, shrill voices muted to whispers.

  That afternoon, the principal decided to take such a stroll. When he passed our class, Karim was singing at the top of his voice. The rest of the class saw the headmaster and went quiet. Karim, not having seen him, kept on singing. The principal walked into our class and in typical style, tweaked Karim’s ear.

  “What is going on here? How many times have I said in the assembly that students shouldn’t make a noise during recess? Do you think the rules don’t apply to you?”

  Karim went red.

  “Have you finished your lunch?” The principal asked him.

  “No.”

  “Oho, so you enjoy singing on an empty stomach! Why haven’t you eaten lunch yet?”

  “I didn’t bring lunch.” “Why is that?”

  Karim was silent.

  “What did you eat for breakfast?”

  “Rice water,” Karim whispered.

  “Didn’t your mother cook anything?”

  Karim stayed quiet. The principal looked at him for a long moment and then turned to us.

  “How many children are there in this class?”

  “Forty-two.” Somebody answered promptly.

  “Forty-two students! Forty-one of you had brought lunches with you. Couldn’t one of you have shared your lunch with this boy?”

  The class was absolutely quiet.

  The principal’s eyes fell on me. I was the class monitor.

  “Uthaman!”

  “Sir.”

  “You are the class monitor. And you are named ‘Uthaman’— the perfect one. That name doesn’t suit you at all.” There was a quiet fury and great disappointment in his voice. I knew that I had to speak up to clear my name.

  “Sir. Everyday I try to share my food with Karim. Not just me but other kids have offered to share their food with him too. But he always refuses.”

  “Is this true, Karim?” The principal turned to him.

  He didn’t answer. His head seemed to bow further with shame.

  “Stand straight!” The principal almost shouted at him. “Are you too proud to share food with your friends?”

  I summoned the courage to speak again.

  “Sir, Karim has many problems at home. He doesn’t like his friends to know about them. He just says it is his fate, and he has to live with them.”

  The principal looked disturbed. His voice was very kind when he spoke again.

  “Everyone has problems. But most problems have solutions. And we should try and solve the problems, if possible. You are all children. And a class is like a family. Remember the pledge you take every morning in the assembly? ‘All Indians are my brothers and sisters.’ That is not said in vain. We have to live that pledge. If one of you is in trouble, the others will have to help him.”

  He gently put his arm around Karim and said, “From now on you shouldn’t stay hungry during lunch time. If you do, then Uthaman will be reporting to me.”

  The students were smiling now. “Yes, sir,” we chorused.

  Savitri, who was Karim’s neighbour, piped up. “Sir, Karim’s father is an alcoholic. He comes home very late every night and then shouts and abuses the family. We can always hear loud noises from his house. Some days, Karim and his family have to sleep with the neighbours to be safe from his father.”

  The principal looked shocked and was quiet for a while. Then he held Karim close to him and asked gently. “Is this true?” All this was too much for Karim. He started crying in earnest. The principal quietly guided him out of the classroom and took him to his office. Karim missed the next class, but when he returned, he seemed at peace with himself. From that day on, he had no problems sharing our food whenever he came to school without his lunch.

  Karim, Ravi, Babu and I were a gang during those days. And once we got into some serious trouble with the principal.

  We were attending a weekend camp in our school for the Bharat Scouts and Guides. Many kids from other schools had also arrived for the camp. After a day of hectic activities, we retired to different classrooms for the night. The girls, including Ruby, were sleeping in the classrooms upstairs and the boys in the ones on the ground floor. Ours was the room adjacent to the principal’s, and we settled for the night on benches laid out together, with our camp master, Joseph sir.

  I was deep in sleep when I felt someone shaking me.

  “Who is it?” I asked, startled awake.

  “Uthaman, it’s me, Karim.”

  “What is it? Why did you wake me up?” I was irritated at being woken up.

  “I feel funny in my stomach.” Karim looked at me plaintively.

  “Oh, are you sick? Should I call Joseph sir?”

  “No. I am hungry!”

  I stared at him blankly.

  Just at that moment, Babu and Ravi woke up hearing our whispers.

  “What is it, Uthaman?” Babu asked.

  “Karim here says he is hungry,” I replied.

  “But it is midnight. And I had seen him gorging mountains of food at dinner!” Ravi exclaimed.

  “I am always hungry.” Karim was looking at us hopefully, expecting us to find a solution.

  “What is wrong with you? Normally, you re
fuse food, and now in the middle of the night you want food?” Babu was getting angry.

  “Shhh… Joseph sir will wake up.” I tried to quieten them.

  Ravi suddenly brightened up.

  “Hey, I had seen a ripe jackfruit on the tree in front of the school this morning—the crows were pecking at it. Maybe some of it’s still left. We can get it for Karim.”

  I tried to be the voice of reason. “Who will climb the tree in this dark? And what if somebody sees us? The school is full of people today.”

  But Ravi was always ready for an adventure. “Who is going to be up at this time? Everyone will be sleeping. That jackfruit is only going to be wasted anyway. Let Karim have it.”

  Ravi’s voice was a bit loud. Joseph sir turned in his sleep. We all ducked. When sir started snoring again, we looked at each other.

  “Come. Let’s go.” There was no stopping Ravi. Babu followed him with a grin. I looked at Karim. He was looking worried now. He probably didn’t expect his hunger to be taken so seriously. I was thinking of the terrible consequences if we were to be caught. What will Ruby say? How will the principal punish us? He is sure to do it in front of all the school at the assembly.

  But nothing mattered now. Ravi and Babu were already out the door. Karim and I followed them quietly to the jackfruit tree. In the dark, we looked around. A bright light was shining on the upstairs verandah, in front of the room where the girls were sleeping. A window in the principal’s room opened out to this courtyard; it looked dark; he was almost certainly asleep, but what if he woke up and looked out?

  Ravi and Babu were scouting the tree, trying to figure how to climb up safely. Babu produced a plastic bag from his pocket. Where did he get that, I wondered. “To collect the fruit.” He grinned at us.