A Love Story

Leaning back on the bench, unsteady from the pegs of whisky he had downed, Walter watched Mary, standing with her back to him. The hair was unusually done up into a bun at the back of her head, and was adorned with golden beads arranged in a circular pattern. The yellow window-glass imparted a distinct hue to the beam of sunlight which trickled in through it and illuminated her ear-stud and her flushed left cheek.

And for Walter, who watched her, the sight turned the clock back, to four years back, when she had joined their office.

They had joined together, four ladies, and among them one would never notice Mary, unless he looked a second time. Lips set in a tight line, gaze fixed at her toes, hip-long hair braided plainly and unfashionably, there was some unsettling about her. He had liked her understated beauty initially, Walter recollected, but he couldn't remember precisely when he had started falling for her - but a similar sight, on an early June morning was still fresh in his memory. On his twenty-fifth birthday.

Mary and himself had been the first to reach office that morning. Her hair was wet, and was uncharacteristically let down, cascading to her hip and the sunlight had fallen on her cheek, spreading golden dust on it and lending it a cherubic charm, as it did today. She had come up to him, a rare smile playing on her lips, and wished him a happy birthday. He never had a way with women, did Walter, and the moment - her abrupt beauty and the unexpected birthday wish - had completely swept him off his feet. It was since then, that he, neither at ease with girls in general nor particularly handsome, started trying to catch her attention, albeit unsuccessfully. Mary went back to her normal self and seemed genuinely unaware of the affection that her colleague secretly harbored within.

For the smitten Walter, expressing his feelings for Mary was a struggle. He would rehearse conversations at home and reach office prepared, and either would end up deciding against it or would burn with envy at the sight of someone else talking to her. Almost a year passed before he decided that enough was enough, and come what may, he would go ahead with a proposal. Three tense days and two tossing-around-in-bed nights and a hell lot of deliberation, Walter remembered, was what it had taken him to summon the gumption to let her know.

He smiled to himself and craned his neck, looking over the tall man who sat in front of him. He could see Mary better now. She had turned sideways, her profile visible to him.

"Are you already engaged?", was what he had asked her then.
"Yes", came the reply.
"You know why I am asking this, I hope?", he had asked her, hoping that she knew all the while.
"No, never", she had replied, her eyes widening. "I never saw you that way, Walter. You have been a good friend. Always."

Since then, they grew closer. Walter found himself talking more freely, once he had let out his feelings for her. Mary too, when she talked to Walter, dropped the unapproachable air that seemed to surround her like a shroud. They found themselves talking to each other much more, and in one of their conversations Mary had told him something.

She wasn't engaged, she had admitted, and was smarting from a broken love affair. She had been in love with a guy, for three years, and had planned to marry him, but being unable to convince his parents, the guy had backed out of marriage. She had vowed never again to venture into an affair, she had told Walter and that she could never recover from the blow that the experience had given her.

Even then, he couldn't love her any less.

Instead, with each passing day, his obsession kept growing but he could never bring himself round to broach the topic again in their conversations. Status quo remained, till one day, he, excessively drunk and spirits buoyed by his drinking-mate’s tale of how he had won his girl over with his persistent proposals, had telephoned Mary late into the night. After a breathless drunken speech, he expected reproach from her, but the answer that she gave stunned him.
"I am okay with it", she had said, "but I need to talk it over at home". She wanted a week to talk it over, she said.

As the week passed on; Walter had waited, his own optimism both exciting and scaring him. He tempered his optimism with his own fears about how her conservative family would react to his proposal, and waited.

The bad news came soon from Mary. Her family wouldn't even consider taking up his proposal and spurred by it, had started arrangements to find a suitor for her at the earliest. He had tried to convince her, persuading, coaxing and cajoling but she wouldn't act against her family's will. He had given up, but still felt queerly contented. At least, she was ready he consoled himself; it was just her family who stood at loggerheads. If not for them, she would have been his girl.

He had been downcast for a few days, but had started to recover and life was getting back on track, when he had decided to pay a visit to Mary's apartment. They had tea together, and he loitered round the apartment, when a leather-bound book, with a pen kept inside to mark the pages caught his eye. It was her diary and he flipped through the pages. And a small note, scribbled on one of the pages, had left him shell-shocked.

“I like Walter.” Mary had written. “But I would never bring myself to marry him. I can't love anyone else in my life again. But I just can’t disappoint him anymore. After a week, I will tell him that mom and dad couldn’t agree to his proposal. So yesterday, I lied to Walter. I told him that I was ready to marry him, if Mom and Dad allowed me to. But I didn't. I know, anyhow, that they wouldn’t agree. Sorry Walter.”

She had written it on the day after he had made his drunken proposal. He had felt sick, and his mouth went dry. He hurried out quickly, bidding a quick good-bye to Mary, making it quick so that his face would not betray him. He never let her know that he had seen the diary, never when they talked afterwards.

He had felt cheated. All the way, she never intended to marry him. And even if it was for those few days, he had made castles in the air, day-dreamed; all for nothing. He had felt an intense loathing for himself. Slowly, he shook off the disappointment, and later, when she had invited him for her marriage, he had wished her good luck in the cheeriest way he could. She had to give in to her parents’ pressure, she had said.

Remembering all this, Walter smiled. Still, he realized, he couldn’t love her less.

Mary stood ahead on the dais, now facing him. He fought off the whiskey-inspired urge to walk up to her and proclaim his love once again; and instead clutched the armrests of the chair and remained seated.

The hitherto seated crowd now got up on their feet. The priest finished his prayers and the bespectacled, suit clad guy, who stood beside Mary slipped the wedding ring onto her finger. As the wedding bells tolled, he watched the old lady next to him; her eyes closed and lips quivering as she said her prayers.

Then, Walter got on his feet, crossed himself, closed his eyes and muttered. “God Bless”.

Twin murders and a kid's penance

That Sunday afternoon was a typical one, the two-day-holiday cushion diluted by the impending Monday blues. I squatted on my haunches in our compound, all my attention focused on the green, shiny skinned grasshopper, sitting motionless on our home’s whitewashed wall. Only the two antennae on its head moved. That too, ever so slightly. The rest was still.

“It is not moving. You sure we can catch it?” six year old Winnie asked, watching excitedly by my side.

“Shhh…” I hissed, pressing my index finger against my lips. “If you make any noise, it will fly away.”

Silenced, she squatted by my side, pouting, as I stealthily moved my fingers around the grasshopper. She let out a squeal of delight, when it was between my fingers, trapped, struggling, legs flailing and wings fluttering wildly.

“Hold it tight, Yippee!!”

Paying scant attention to her, I methodically removed the two antennae on its head. Black blood trickled out, and stained my fingernails.

“Oh poor thing! Why do you do that?”

“To make it obedient”, I said. “They will jump away unless you take their horns off.”

We had kept aside a translucent lid of a cough-syrup bottle, with the letters ‘Cipla’ on its top and ounce measurements on its sides, to enclose our prey in. The lid lay on the portico, its Cipla side upwards. As Winnie gingerly lifted the lid, I put the insect inside, and replaced the lid in a flash.

The trapped grasshopper stood inside, as if ruminating over its Cipla cage and the lost antennae.

“It looks lonely.” Winnie said.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t we catch one more? So that he’ll have company?”

Then we set off, to find another one, squatting down again, waiting, like hungry lizards do on walls and rooftops for their prey. Several would-have-been prisoners came and went, and all were either very smart or very lucky, until one finally fell in our trap. He was brown, the color of dead wood, and had an ugly mottled design over his back.

“It is so ugly”, she screamed. “We can catch another”.

“It’s tough to get another, Winnie”, I said, carefully plucking off the antennae from the new grasshopper’s head.

We got him too under the Cipla cup.

“They won’t be friends”, Winnie was still complaining, “They don’t match at all.”

“They will fight”, I said. Winnie’s eyes widened. Fights always thrill children. We weren’t any different.

“They will? Really?”

“Yes. They will. You just wait and watch.” I said gravely.

“Who will win?” She continued to chatter.

I had not thought of that, but then, the conventional filmi wisdom must have come to the fore. The good looking one should be the hero and the ugly one, the villain.

“The green one.” I replied.

A handsome hero. A loathsome villain. The stage was so nicely set. Both of us knelt down, elbows resting on the floor, faces cupped in our palms. Two pairs of eager eyes glued fast to a Cipla lid.

The grasshoppers transmuted into sparring gladiators in our imaginations. One armored in brown and the other in green. Raring to go at each other. The Cipla lid became a Roman amphitheatre.

But the insects, trapped, together in their misery, had other ideas. They faced away from each other, desolate, showing no intention to fight. They didn’t even move an inch, and stood there, bottoms pressed against each other’s and the antennae-less noses rubbing against the lid’s inner walls. Having watched for sometime, Winnie lost patience, got up and walked away.

I still waited, hoping for something to happen. For quite some time, nothing did. Exasperated, I took a round pebble, lifted the lid, and smashed the pebble down twice onto the brown grasshopper. Our supposed villain.

Snap snap. Broken wings. Cracked head. Black blood. Gnashed flesh. It briefly slashed out with its frail legs, before dying a quick death.

I chose to subvert reality: ‘The green one killed the brown after a fight’. Then I yelled to Winnie, to come and see for herself, how the fight and the result had panned out in exactly the same way as I had said. But contrary to my high expectations, Winnie found the scene too gory, and stomped off. Unimpressed and queasy.

Not having got the adulation that I expected, I disposed the dead brown one, forgot about the green one sitting alone in the lid, and kept myself occupied with other similar, silly games. It was an hour later that I set my eyes on the Cipla lid again.

I had not replaced the lid properly: A part of the green grasshopper’s legs stood outside the lid; so did a part of the feathers on its rear-side, and the weight of the lid pressing down on its body had enervated the insect rather badly. Almost fatally.

I took the lid off. The insect could not move. Feet crushed under the weight of the lid, it was crawling on the floor. The wings had been broken too. I tried to set it free, but each time it started to fly or to jump, it landed back on the floor with a dull, sickening thud. I felt sick. After a few moments of deliberation, sure that it could not survive anymore, I put an end to its suffering – in the same way which I had done with the other grasshopper. With a pebble.

For the entire afternoon and the night, the dead grasshoppers flitted about in my consciousness, stirring up guilt and remorse. I just could not shake it off. By the next morning, I had almost forgotten about the incident, preoccupied with thoughts of school, when I saw something – a fleet of ants, as if in a funeral procession, carrying the rotten carcass of the green grasshopper across our compound. The insect ghosts started to wake up once again within me.

I had come to know recently from Mom, that God forgave sins till kids were seven. Beyond that age, the sins would be recorded in ChitraGupta’s register, and depending on the intensity of the crime, we would roast in hell, in stygian furnaces of varying temperatures. Greater heat for greater crimes. And I was nine years old. Two more than seven.

Starting to feel sick and guilty again, I skipped breakfast, slung the schoolbag over my shoulder and walked off, ashen-faced, to school. I walked, absent-mindedly, the hellish fires in my mind and in my eyes, tripped over a rope and fell down. My knees landed on a rocky ledge, and got badly bruised. Blood ran down my legs, soaking my white socks and canvas shoes in red. My parents came running over, lifted me up and carried me home. I stayed at home that day, wounds bandaged and dressed.

For the entire day, I was confined to my bed. But, even as the searing pain crept up my thighs, even as the vitriolic antiseptic burnt its way through the wound, even as its strong pungent smell crept up my nostrils; what I felt was not pain. There must have been pain, but more than that, what still stays etched in mind was the queer sense of relief that I felt then. Of justice being done.

Perhaps, this could be how I had to atone for my little sin. Moreover, ChitraGupta might pardon me and score my name off his dreaded register – I had already served my punishment. Thankfully, the flitting, restless grasshopper ghosts never reappeared again to ruin my dreams.

I remember, it was then, as a kid all of nine years, that I got my first idea of penance. And as a matter of fact, I haven't played an insect torturing game ever since.

NumbSkull Country Goose

We had a bit of trouble locating Vinayaka Nagar.Several of the bylanes in our locality had recently been re-tarred, renovated and renamed, and once we had located it, I realized with amusement that, it was the road which led to our school, the same road through which we cycled every morning, right from my fifth grade to my twelfth. House-number Ninety-four, we were told. We had to meet the old man who stayed there, we were told, offer him financial help, and an admission to the old-age home nearby, on behalf of our charity organization, Jyotis.

Finding Nintey-four was easier, and took us just under five minutes. It would have been even easier, if I had known that it was NCG's house. But, what I saw stunned me. The house looked like a ghost of what it was ten years back. The bricks on the walls were chopped at the edges, with cracks running criss-cross, covered by green, sticky moss all over. The old electric post beside the house, which used to present a striking, stark, ugly contrast to the spotless cleanliness of the walls, now seemed to blend seamlessly with the dirt which covered them. The post, in comparison, now looked cleaner and better groomed. The granite name board, which read " N.C.G.Panicker ", swung from a screw at it's one end, like a disoriented pendulum, with a hole at the free end where the other screw which had held it against the wall.

It took a while for NCG to answer our knocks at the gate. And when he did, it gave me an even bigger shock. Everything about him had changed. As the three of us sat with him on the run-down verandah, NCG recited ruefully about how he had lost his job as an insurance agent and all of his wealth in unending litigation, over a property dispute, with a construction firm. Even the house and property was under mortgage, he said.

I observed him, making sure that there were no signs of recognition on my face. He seemed to have degenerated, as his house had. His skin had sagged, and hung like loose sausages from his neck and cheekbones. The once-black, perfectly manicured sideburns and moustache had grayed and were overgrown, merging with his long and untidy beard. Only one thing had withstood change; the ever-present scowl on his face. It was with this trademark scowl, that we saw him for the first time, at a Resident’s Association function, while we were still in our school-going years.

My friend Naveen and me, had watched intently as NCG sat by our side, during the function, reading his magazine ( His initials were printed on the cover of the magazine, in clumsy, roundish letters).He had been comparing the results of a lucky draw, and both of us stole surreptitious glances into the magazine and the paper-bit which he held in his hand. As he compared the numbers, his scowling eyes moved from the paper-bit to the magazine, and back again. He realized that he had lost the draw, and angrily crumpled up the paper bit, and threw it to the ground. The violent reaction tickled our funny bones, and though I managed not to laugh, Naveen couldn't, and first let out a loud squeal, and then a giggle.NCG's quick fiery glare, blood-shot eyes from beneath the thick eye-brows and sideburns, had then subdued us into silence.

As I noticed my mates from Jyotis trying to convince NCG about the nobleness of our intentions, and into accepting our help and joining the old-age home, I remembered how our paths had crossed once again, while we were still in school.

Both of us used to play a game, while on our way back home; we would pick pebbles and aim them, five in a batch, one by one, onto the dirty post adjacent to NCG's squeaky clean walls. The post was squarer, and a good two-inch wider than the usual electric posts, making it a perfectly aimable target. None of us had a particularly good aim, and on average, atleast two out of every five missed the post, eventually creating a spotted design on NCG's super-clean walls, stretching his wafer-thin patience to its limits.

Getting proactive, NCG soon started a daily-evening vigil on his verandah, with his scowling eyes fixed at us, bringing our game to an abrupt end. He just glared, never uttering a word to us, and the one who talked, as if on his behalf, was the lady who stayed next door, in a curious mix of English and Malayalam. We had assumed then, that she was NCG's wife. “By chance, Aarude enkilum thalayil kondalo*?” she had asked, sounding concerned. The heavily accented English words struck a jarring note, followed by her rustic, local Malayalam. We instantly nick-named her By-chance.

Christening NCG took us a bit longer. I contributed Country for C and Goose for G, but we needed something catchy for N. It was then, that Naveen, the founder of the stone-throwing game, seething with anger at his game's sudden demise, finally came out with his masterpiece. NumbSkull for N. Thus, our bitter enemy stood baptized. NumbSkull Country Goose.
Mr Numbskull Country Goose and Miss By-chance. The nicknames stayed, and the names became a big joke among all our schoolmates who stayed nearby. We laughed behind their backs, invented funny rhymes about them, leaving them puzzled and irritated. We would regret our prank, sooner than we imagined, on a rainy June evening.

The rains had come lashing down, catching us off-guard, on the way back from school. We had no umbrellas, and as we stood, bedraggled, struggling to get our feet out of the way of the brick and logs which came hurtling down the slope along with the gushing water, we saw Miss.By-chance running towards us with an umbrella. NCG watched from his compound. We had gone in, along with her, and had a tea which warmed our shivering insides, thanked them and left, once the rain had subsided. We felt guilty and our relationship then grew better. Though NCG still scowled and never talked, By-chance gave us an occasional smile, and our paths rarely crossed.

I had been lost in my thought for quite some time, when I realized something. It was the first time, since I first saw NCG, that I ever heard him talk. I started listening, as his frowning face surprisingly softened, and eyes grew tender. He was talking about his sister, whom, he said he had lost to cancer. It took a while for me to realize that he was talking about By-chance. For us, she might have been his wife, or his servant, but it had never occured to us that, she was his sister.By then he had decided, after his hour-long conversation with my Jyotis colleagues, to join our old-age home, and had started to fill in the admission paper.

I stood by the side, watching him filling the papers, when he stunned me, still looking down into the paper, by asking where Naveen was now. I hadn’t expected the least that he would recognize me, was wonderstruck that he still remembered us. I let him know our present whereabouts, to which he nodded in acknowledgement, still looking into papers. At the end, as he was about to fill in his full name, which I watched curiously. I even half expected him to write Numbskull Country Goose Panicker, as I watched him fill in his name.

As I stood beside him, peering into his papers, he wrote, in his clumsy, roundish letters, which like him, appeared to have withered with age as well – ' Naledathu Chandra Gopan Panicker '.

PS:
By-chance's dialogue meant :- * what if the stone hits someone on the head? "

The Second Coming

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