I woke up, to the shrill railway siren and loud cries of the vendors and hawkers on the platform, as the train slowly ground to a halt. We had moved into Kerala, I realized, leaning my head against the train's window sill, trying to sniff Onam* in the air, looking out eagerly for the flowers that bloom just for Onam and trying to pick up notes of Thiruvathirakkali* and Onapattu* . This year though, I was alone, as Krupa, my eight-year-old daughter couldn’t come along, as she had gone with her father, for a scholarship exam near our house in Nagpur.
My attention was diverted by the voice of a young boy, around ten years old, singing an old folk song. I watched him, with his hollow eyes and emaciated frame, hobbling on his one normal leg and his other polio-crippled leg, as he made his way through the compartments. He tapped with his fingers on his aluminum vessel, providing musical accompaniment to his song; and extended it towards each passenger as he sung, to which very few people obliged by dropping a coin or two.
The sight of him awakened something in me. Memories I believed were buried beyond recollection. Around thirty onams ago. The same hobbling walk. The same malnourished body. The uncanny facial resemblance. Way back, when I perhaps, was as about old as my Krupa, or even younger.
I first saw Murali, on a similar Onam morning, while my mother was attending to him, putting a soaked cotton cloth on his forehead. He had sought shelter under the huge teak in our compound, during the heavy rains of the previous night, and mother had found him in the morning; drenched, feverish and unconscious. My mother had lived like a queen, in the midst of luxury, till my father, who was a premier liquor contractor, had passed away when I was just one. Even years afterward, mother couldn't refuse if someone came to her for help - even in times where she and us, her three daughters, struggled to manage three square meals a day and had to satiate ourselves with the meager supply potatoes and tapioca that we cultivated in our compound.
Murali stayed on with us, running errands, tending to cattle and helping mother with her household chores.Radhachechi* and Padminichechi, my elder sisters and their circle of friends paid no attention to him, not even as much attention that they would have paid Veeran, our dog who sometime back, had died of a snake bite. They used to go after the hobbling Murali, teasing him with chants of “Uruli* ! Uruli”, all of which, Murali would suffer in silence. They never used to include me too, considerably younger, in their games, with my thick lips and short hair being their most common object of ridicule. Inevitably, being birds of the same feather, Murali and I befriended each other.
The Onam season that followed, still, remains the most unforgettable one of my childhood, for reasons more than one. Murali and I would sit together under the trees in our compound, telling each other stories, our fears and our anxieties. He told how he and his twin sister had no mother; and they just had a cruel uncle who would beat him up daily. When I told him that every child has a mother, and that all my classmates had one, he disagreed and maintained that they never ever had a mother. I used to tearfully tell him, how my sisters would never let me play along with them, and how my birth was told to be a bad omen that had led to my father’s untimely death, which in turn, led to our family's current plight.
We had our moments too, though.Murali would seat me on a tree-skin and drag me at a great speed through our compound as if he were operating a speed boat, would pluck ripe fruits for me before the crows started nibbling at them, and would make tiny, cute trinkets for me from cardboard shreds and coconut leaves. I thoroughly enjoyed the looks of admiration from the other girls, when Murali, would stand with me on the swing, describing huge arcs in the air and would bite off the edge of a leaf from the adjacent mango tree when the swing began its downward journey, from mid air. My sisters, by then, had dropped their high-handed air and would plead Murali to do the same for them too, but Murali wouldn't agree, unless he got my nod of approval . I became an instant celebrity, so did he.
My short curly, un-girlish hair had been the thing that I most disliked about myself. Sometime back, before Murali's arrival, I had once met old Ramla, widely rumored to be practising chathanseva* .Though my mother had forbidden me from talking to her, I asked her about how I could grow long hair in a short time.Ramla pointed to a lotus at the centre of the pond. The stem of the lotus which grows right in the centre pond had to be taken, and kept for a full night between your hair, for the hair to grow thick and long, said Ramla.
This, had then seemed unattainable, but with Murali around, nothing seemed impossible. I went in search of him, and found him sitting in a corner, and was to my surprise, crying. He had dreamt that his sister was sick, he said, and he wanted to go home. No one should know, he said, he had to leave in the night. Our little heaven had lasted for a few months then, and as all good things do, it had to come to an end. And it did.
I wondered whether he had the money. Of course, he had'nt.Then we made a deal. I would give him my gold bangle in the evening, and he would pluck me the lotus from the middle of the pond.
There is a special sanctity to it, when pacts are made between children. Under no conditions, is the pact expected to be broken.
As decided, we met at the pond that evening, unaware of the dangers involved, and as decided, Murali dived into the pond and swam for the lotus, as I waited at the shore, my heart thumping furiously. Things happened far too fast. Murali missed a trick, and was soon drowning. I ran to my uncle, who immediately ran back to the pond with me and pulled Murali out. He lay motionless, as my uncle pulled him out of the pond.Sometime then, I fell unconscious.
When I woke up the next day, I found the anxious faces of my mother, uncle and sisters looking down at me. I enquired first about Murali, to which my uncle replied that he was alright and had gone home. I insisted that I wouldn't believe it unless I saw Murali, and was in tears again. He had funded Murali's trip, uncle said, and he off to see his sister. Finally,I trusted uncle.We would never hear from Murali again.
As the memories came up, tears welled up in my eyes. The surprised passengers looked on, as I hugged the stunned boy and pressed a hundred rupee note, into his hands. Staying close to me, he let out a smile.The smile gave me a shock. Something made me feel that Murali himself was standing right before me. Two front teeth in the upper row were broken, leaving a triangular gap in between. Exactly in the same way, that Murali’s teeth were broken.
At my age, I don’t give a thing for talks of rebirth or reincarnation, or any such superstition. Maybe it is due to my experiences in life, or my education, or my ten-year old relation with my husband, who is an atheist. But when I saw the smile, I, somehow, felt convinced, my worst fears confimed - that Murali wasn’t alive, that he never survived that night. Each passing moment ,with the boy in front of me seemed to reinforce the same.
The train started to move again, he released my grip, ran and hopped off onto the platform. As the train picked up speed, and as the boy on the platform faded away from my sight, I buried my face in my lap, and wept.
PS: For non-Mallus . I felt obliged to use these in my post, mainly because this is Onam time !
-onam is the national festival of kerala
-onapattu means onam songs
-thiruvathirakali is a kerala dance form,performed during onam
-chechi means elder sister
-uruli is a round vessel,sounds phonetically similair to murali
-chathanseva is devil worship a.k.a witchcraft
