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

Sita

I took some toothpowder in one palm and a steel mug in the other hand and walked out into the courtyard, sucking in the cool, fresh, invigorating village air. Mom and aunt were near the well, involved in an animated discussion, glancing occasionally towards a shack which had been propped up just outside the farthest end of our compound. I walked up to the well and half-heartedly listened to their conversation, while cleaning my teeth.

"She surely deserves this ", Mom murmured through clenched teeth.

"Quite true ", seconded Aunt,” After all the miseries she put you people through."
Mom nodded, in agreement.

" I treated her just as a member in the household, just like one of my kids. And what did she do to me? ".She fumed."Not even a word before she left the home. And to think of all the events which followed."

“These kind of people, sister, you should keep them at a distance”, advised Aunt. “And at the same time, keep an eye on them. Never trust them.”

“Let it pass”, said Mom, shaking her head with an air of resignation.
“Let her suffer. Who cares?”
With that, both of them turned back, cautioning me to stay away from the well's sides, as it was slippery from the heavy rain which had fallen last night. Them gone, I stood, index finger stuck between my teeth and cheeks, wondering who the 'she' was.

Every time I visit this place, where my dad's family lives, I make it a routine to brush my teeth and then go cycling through the un-tarred, dusty roads with paddy fields, plantations and scattered tenements on either side. This time though, I went the opposite way, bisecting the courtyard, jumping over the fence into the road. I walked down the road, towards the shack and was no farther than ten meters from the shack, when a clay pot came hurtling out through its front door and landed on the road.

I moved to behind a tree and watched. The clay pot was followed first by a steel plate and then by a dark, swarthy, red-eyed guy. Obviously drunk, he had another clay vessel in his hand which he promptly smashed to the floor, shouting loudly at someone inside. A woman, around thirty, apparently his wife, appeared at the door, carrying a frail, sick boy, perched on her frailer, sicker frame. There was more bellowing from him, murmured apologies from her, and then a resounding slap which struck her square on the cheek, after which he stomped out of the place. The mother and the son sat on the doorstep, weeping.

It was the first time I ever saw Sita in tears. Ever since she had come to our house as a seventeen year old, to help Mom with the chores and to take care of me and my sister( as Dad, undergoing treatment for asthma, was then in hospital), she was always bubbly and cheerful. And pretty too - in an innocent, village belle sort of way - with dark honey colored skin, an uninhibited smile, twinkling eyes and long hair reaching down to her hip. I still remember my sister and me, returning from school, each of us holding Sita's hands on either side, each of our school-bags slung over her either shoulder. She was our main playmate, teaching us games that they often play in villages, and was our constant companion in watching movies, and recollecting excitedly the action sequences and punch lines in every movie that we saw on television.

Being bought up in a village, I guess she got too enthralled by the amorous ways of the city. While returning from school, clad most often in her bright yellow duppatta, she would respond encouragingly to cat-calls of "Manjakkili"* from guys perched on roadside walls, and in the evenings, she would communicate eagerly with her hands and eyebrows to the overtures of guys who stayed at the Law-college hostel, opposite our house.This, I remember was a problem that Mom had to address with an iron hand. It was something which she thought she did well, but it ended up with mixed results,as we would soon realize.

And one fine Sunday evening, while Sita and me were returning home from the flour-mill, she stopped by a shop, and bought me a toy-jeep,one with a steel chassis and shiny wheels,and asked me to go back home, adding that she would be back soon. It became my favorite toy, and I remember I played with it, pushing it around the house for almost two years since then. Thrilled by the toy, I obliged, and ran back home. We didn't realize then, that it was a farewell gift, till nine in the night, after the Sunday evening film on television. We noticed then, with considerable alarm, that she hadn't returned.Sita's home and my Dad were informed, and Dad took a forced discharge from the hospital.

If there ever is something called hell, I guess the week that followed would come closest to it.Sita's relatives chanted slogans and squatted on our courtyard, demanding that we return their daughter without harm. Policemen questioned us in and out.Dad, whose health kept worsening, exerted considerable governmental influence to keep us from being put behind bars. With police investigations going nowhere, we hired an advocate, a shrewd old man who peppered everyone endlessly with questions. Having got nothing of interest from my parents, he turned to me. His eyes gleamed with interest when I told him about Sita's dilly-dallying with the guys-on-the-roadside-walls. He thought a child's testimony would have enough innocence to convince the police about Sita's immorality and wanted me to recite the same to the police, with a few additional Sita-maligning inputs from his end.

I had learnt his testimony by-heart (as thoroughly as I would learn a poem at school) and had reached the police station with him and my parents, when we got the shock of our lives.

Sita stood there, all smiles, in full bridal attire, accompanied by the man with whom she had fallen in love and had eloped ,the same man who would be beating her to pulp everyday, a few years later. They had registered their marriage and the police got the news from the response to a man-missing ad that we had filed in the newspapers.Sita looked composed, having defied my Mom's iron hand, Mom and Dad stormed off in a rage, and I, sad at the realization that she would never return home, turned back tearfully, and met her endearing smile.

I watched him walk away, and stood there,unsure of what to do.A part of me wanted to go up to her and offer some help,though I didn't have the faintest idea about what help to offer.The other part of me didn't want to embarrass her in her current state of decrepitude.I thought I would walk away, but by then she saw me .I felt I saw a small sign of recognition,but could never be sure,because,as soon as she looked up and saw me,she picked up her son, turned back, went inside the house, and slammed the door shut .



*Manjakkili : A teasing expression - 'Manja' means yellow in Malayalam and 'kili' means bird