An eagle and a dove

An Eagle and a Dove

By

R.Paul Mohan Roy

Outside our house, forest winds create sounds that keep changing from time to time, every moment we hear a new one finally merging into a camouflaged silence. The house is mostly made of wood and erected aloft on stone pillars. It’s a Sunday morning, the time we play a game of chess or watch birds building nests. The one-legged security on day-duty has come. He’ll sit at the outside door comfortably and sleep with his vintage rifle slung across his chest, keeping his crutches on the floor.

Suddenly we hear a screeching noise made by a fast moving jeep. An old tattered four wheeler comes straight towards us and halts near the first pillar of the house.

It’s a strange and unusual sight, never experienced before. The driver in a military fatigue jumps out, walks towards me with a piece of paper in his hand. His expressionless face announces some danger is waiting for me. I felt fear gripping me. I look at my wife. She nods, for she understands what to do if I’m taken a prisoner or hostage. The man makes quick steps and reaches the ladder. Again we exchange glances meaning the list of things to do and the persons to be contacted that we have rehearsed several times. Is he bringing news from the President? Chances are remote though, we are always ready to leave the country in a minute’s notice.

Leaving the jeep’s engine running, the man gets down, climbs up the steps, ignores the presence of my wife, walks straight towards me and hands over the paper. He almost throws it on my face. My hands begin to shiver. Rarely does an engineer from Mumbai disappear in the African forest or taken hostage. The paper bears a one-line command, “Come to the Palace. President”.

Nine months back, from the Goma Airport to this sleepy outpost on the border between Eastern Congo and Rwanda, I was taken in a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser through a different road. Now the jeep takes a less-travelled narrow and muddy one I haven’t seen before. There are long stretches of tiny huts. En route to the palace I see ill-clothed black children playing soccer. They do not bother to notice me.

I don’t know when I’ll be back or whether I will ever join my wife again. I read the note from the president for a second time. ‘President’ is euphemism for the chief of the tribe who holds control of the mines and logging rights, the ‘palace’ his hide-out-headquarters deep inside the jungle. Frequent clash between prominent tribes, followed by liberal blood shedding, is only news to us.

The work force does not know for which tribal chief they are working. The natives who work in the mine are always silent. But they could hear the noise under their feet that foretells the marching of an enemy tribe. Here, death by violence is so casual that it’s the head-count that would dethrone a sitting president. A new president occupies the palace for a year or two, takes few more wives and changes the palace guards. Seized by his relentless greed he would denude the forests, or lease the land illegally to foreign mining companies, stash the stolen money in foreign banks and run away at the opportune moment.

The world outside does not know their unethical rule and their unlawful activities. It is here the two chief raw materials—-Coltan and Cassiterite—-used in the third generation tiny wireless devices are unearthed. They are critical elements in the miniaturization of electronic circuit boards to razor-thin chips. The Presidents and their men believe they are leasing out the land to dig out uranium. The ore processing personnel know the truth: inside every mobile phone in the world there is Congolese blood.

On reaching the palace, two men take charge of me. They motion me to follow them. I obey meekly as they lead me in. Their uniform in dark khaki belongs to a private militia. When an erring native is taken like this, his usual prayer is a wish for swift death by a single bullet. When death is certain and it waits close by, a quick one is more welcome. I begin to think of the cruelties a militia can bring on their enemies. Amputation is a casual one for a simple crime like spying for another company or uttering a few words against the management. Their hospitals have paramedics who are specialists in doing amputation with clinical precision. I shudder at the thought of walking in prosthetics.

Now I’m taken to a hall. Two smart young guards stand to attention and open the door. One of them signals me to take a seat in the corner. No one talks to me. A middle-aged lady, a Mulatto in appearance, perhaps a personal assistant or secretary to the president, is sitting behind a long well-polished mahogany desk. There is no telephone or calling bell. She is busy with a handful of papers and a pencil on her left hand. She has straight hair in half brown colour with unenviable big bosom. Her long strides announce her authority and her proximity to the powers inside.

My eyes survey the whole setting. The place looks like a conference hall bereft of matching furniture. There are symptoms of luxury in the interior painting and wall hangings. There is a door leading to another ante-chamber, which I guess may be the president’s office. Here stands another guard looking for instructions from the lady. Now and then she walks to the door and hands over a paper and returns back to her seat. But for the annoying sound made by her high-heeled foot wear there is absolute silence—-a silence created by an unseen human power. It is so oppressing that it makes the inexorably moving time to stand still.

Just above the door, through which men enter and leave the president’s room, I see a large portrait of a man—-must be the president. His typical African face is morphed against a group of soldiers, all holding their guns up in the air. The coat of arms at the bottom bears an image of a flying eagle spreading its wings on air. There is a strange charm in his face. Below the beret pulled down to his right eyebrow, he looks full of terror and confidence. No wonder he holds a territory to plunder and a militia to command.

Few more, like me, are brought in and asked to take seats next to me. The whole atmosphere is charged with mystery, secrecy and gloom. Now I see two officer-looking men in army fatigue enter the hall along with a man in handcuff. They stand to attention before the lady and hand over a paper. No words are spoken. She glances at the paper for a brief second and directs them to the president’s room. One of the two sentries lets the officers in along with the handcuffed. They quickly return, now without the man, and leave the hall through the main entrance.

What is happening? Is it a day of judgment, presided over by an African god of cruel justice? I don’t know why or what for I’m made to wait this long. A reward or punishment is waiting for me, I am certain. The long waiting itself has become a loathsome punishment I don’t deserve.

I felt thirst and hunger. I’m sitting glued to a chair almost for five long hours. I summon some courage, stand up and am about to move towards the woman and ask her why I’m brought. She sensed my intent. Without even looking up or seeing my face, her left hand rises, and with her index finger directs me to move back and sit. I obey implicitly, now my face reflecting more fear.

Hours tick by. The one-act tragic drama continues without intermission. Now the time is half past four in the evening. The lady takes a brief munching of something off from a silver plate. The insides of my stomach churn and swirl with a rolling noise I only could hear.

I now replay the scene I ran into in a job fair in Mumbai. The placement service chief goes through my resume carefully, marks in red the place showing my graduation in mining in second division. He says the job market in central Africa can offer me a middle level executive post to supervise laborers in a mining or logging industry. This is how I come to work for a mining company on the border between Eastern Congo and Rwanda. From the day one we are destined to court silence and loneliness. The two natives, a maid and a security man, are all that we have for company. Six days-old news papers, delivered on Saturdays, are the only source of information about the outside world. All foreigners are struck by the extremes of Africa-—nature in her grand exuberance with stretches of forests and the resource-rich land being exploited by a few tribal leaders.

All of a sudden there is some flutter of activities in the hall. I notice two new men emerge from the room and walk towards me. I think my turn has come to be taken to the president. I stand up readying myself to follow them. They take no notice of me, brush past my shoulders and leave the hall. The lady, glum and tight-lipped as she is, again motions me to sit. This time I don’t fail to notice a sense of toughness in the way she raised her hand.

What has brought me here, I question myself. I look up at the ceiling for an answer. My eyes meet the man’s in the portrait. I feel I’m helpless and forgotten—-a little prey in dovecote watched by an eagle, flying above and ready to swoop down.

Now a new man enters the hall with a tattered brief case in hand. He walks straight towards the woman and salutes. The woman responds in a casual way. The man unzips the case and pulls out a thick paper cover and hands it over to the woman. Will it contain a dossier on me? The woman opens the cover looks into it, pulls out a slip and reads its contents for a few seconds and puts it back into the cover. I’m watching every move she makes.

The whole proceedings are fearfully awesome, exhibiting brute tribal power in the raw. Is waiting a punishment calculated to break my insides without touching me? Or am I asked to meet the president just to discuss some technical problem that I could solve? The atmosphere becomes suffocating beyond my endurance.

At last, she looks at me and her eyes command me to come to her desk. I’m undone. I start smelling my own sweat. My pants down to the socks and shoes get drenched. Immediately I get up and walk towards her desk. I have no time to gaze at or admire the thin silver cross on her neck, dangling on her partially white massive cleavage. Two new guards walk simultaneously towards her. She may hand me over to be taken to the president’s chamber. She gives the cover to the guards. Now, without looking at me she speaks for the first time, “Yes, you can go. Follow them”. Unceremoniously she waves off her hand and buries herself again into her work, her left hand toying with the pencil between her thick lips and the papers on the table.

Are they taking me to a gas chamber? I move towards the door over which the president hangs in picture. But the guards stop me and direct me to the door to the outside world. I look back in confusion. The lady, her face downcast, resumes her work shuffling the papers. No formal glances. No formal exchange of words. Things move in signs and gestures, but in mechanical accuracy.

Tired and worn out, I follow the guards. They take me to a waiting Land Rover. They help me to get in, and one of them speaks to the driver. As I sit properly and put the seat belt, he gives me the cover more courteously. The van revs up and takes speed.

With shivering hands I open the cover. Lo! There I see a couple of air tickets from Goma to New Delhi via Nairobi, and American dollars equivalent to a month’s salary and bonus. I check the date and time of the flight. I have another twelve hours at my disposal.

I see my wife standing at the steps clinging to a suit case and her hand bag. She is smart enough to read the situation.

“Quick, get in. We’re leaving for good. Come on”, I shouted. I look at her handbag enquiringly. She nods to mean that the passports are safely tucked in.

At Goma Airport we eat our last meals in Congo. We’re eight hours ahead of check-in time. My wife looks at her watch now and then and the illuminated flight timings scrolling on the board. Unlike the day we arrived, the airport looks mysteriously silent and less crowded. The security personnel are unusually brisk walking from one end to the other. I sense something is amiss.

We’re seated at the middle row in the Boeing bound for Nairobi. Next to me is an African of heavy built in smart three piece suit and a blue tie. He is wearing a broad black sun glass and begins to doze off. When the plane takes off I felt a sigh of relief.

As the plane rises up the man next to me takes off his dark glasses, looks at me and smiles as if I’m his a long lost friend. I remember I’ve seen him before. On the left side of his coat I see a crest showing a white bird—-a charming little dove. He smiles at me for a second time. It is meant to ask me, “Haven’t we met before”? Yes, we’ve met before, not face to face. I smiled back. The eagle now sits in a dove’s garb. He takes his mobile phone, punches some keys, an SMS perhaps to his confidant waiting for him. I’m sure tomorrow’s news paper will carry a story on the eagle’s flight to a new territory.

Vikatan Stories 2 Do Mountains Ever Listen to Man’s Murmurings?

Do Mountains Ever Listen to Man’s Murmurings?*

By

R.Paul Mohan Roy

[* Based on a short Story in Tamil published in Ananda Vikatan, August 4, 2010]

Last month one Sunday evening, I was walking on the sands of Marina and I stumbled upon my childhood friend Raman. Early in our youth we were neighbors in a small village abetting the Southern Ghats. We studied in a school known for its nineteenth century discipline.

Raman was the last of a large orthodox family of six children with parents and grandparents. Unlike his elder brothers, who sported tuft on their half-shaven heads, Raman’s hair style—-his hair being combed back neatly with no central or side parting—-was the envy of the boys. For a boy he was tall and handsome.

We spent a couple of hours swapping notes on our life and work after the school. Raman, after graduation from St. Joseph’s, I learnt, had spent larger part of his life as an academic in universities in the North, in places like Shillong and Kashmir. Strangely enough, he had not mentioned anything about his family (if he had one) or his present retired life in Chennai. But he was keen on enquiring about me and my mother and father.

My professor friend Raman now suggested that we go on a holiday to a tourist destination in the midst of lush green forests of South India. It was almost an invitation I can’t decline. Another common bond that united us was our love of trekking in the forest roads near our village. His was deeper in the sense that he found forests offering him endless opportunities to interpret nature. He told me about his strange fascination for waterfalls in forests. His sensibilities, I understood, were so attuned to hear music in wind or see tragedies in waterfronts.

The story-tellers, professor Raman was one among this tribe, have a way of keeping company alive for hours. From the moment we boarded the Pothigai Express, he spoke of our days in the village, the friends we had had and their rural hospitality, the day Dr. K.S. Krishnan of Babah Atomic Research Centre visited our school, The Hindu High School, his alumni. Raman made an intimate recollection of our teachers and those foreign missionaries who sipped cream less filter coffee in his brother’s roadside hotel. He reminisced with gusto our first school excursion to Mahalingam Hills by walk, where Jaganathan broke his leg. Raman believed that Jeganathan, later his classmate in St. Joseph’s, Trichi, now settled in the US would have narrated this event to his American wife to the point of boredom.

I, on my own, began recollecting those days of calf-love I dated in reverie and the little errands I did to the senior girls. Raman understood the meaning of the mild rays of joy reflected on my face.

“Now you are thinking of those Gokulashtami days and our visit to all neighborhoods around our house”, Raman hissed into my ears with a boyish smile. The pranks I played on the girls, he did not mention. Thank you, Raman.

Seventy is the right age to replay one’s youth, I was thinking.

Raman skipped the topic, for we might trespass into each other’s sacred territory, held secret or hidden.

After a night’s journey from Chennai to Tenkasi and an hour’s pleasant drive on a newly laid road snaking through tall green coconut groves, we reached the place. We checked into a lodge where Raman used to stay. He said he had a room reserved, in the top floor, his regular preference in all his previous visits, having a window through which one could see a picture-perfect-post-card view of the white waterfalls in wide angle. Yes, it was true.

“An August evening is the right time to be here”, said Raman, climbing to the terrace through a narrow staircase, littered with damp mass of dead leaves. He was silent for a while, watching the sunset. We saw the Red Crescent dip into the mountain cleaves, throwing its last golden rays to light up the clouds yellow. I looked at my friend and the clouds alternatively. The sight filled me with peace. But behind Raman’s exterior happiness, I could see a sheaf of sadness stacked one over the other, lurking under his heart. The milk-white water falls was seen coursing down with a strange but rhythmic sound of different drums.

“Memories have weight”, Raman said throwing his glances skyward. “Even they have color and smell. They are always fresh and alive, however old they are. They have the buoyancy to emerge from the deep, as they never allow you to disown them”, said Raman. What kind of memories he would unleash to a passive listener, I was wondering.

“This place, these tall mountains and green forests, with a smell of new rain and the constant noise of the waterfalls remind me that they offer a mystery to the visitors. They even signal danger”, the story teller suddenly became serious.

I wanted to bring him to the reality of the evening and the dinner waiting for us downstairs. “I always find beauty in nature”, I side tracked his thoughts. “Look, how the white clouds change colours and sail past the green mountain. We’re on a tour to relax. Don’t you agree with me?”

“Do these clouds and their interplay offer us any message from nature?” asked Raman. I had no answer. I found the story teller in Raman, had a way of describing events and situations in his own inimical style.

“Do you find any meaning in their grandeur”, he continued. “If you could sit on these clouds, what would you see below? Won’t we feel insignificant at seeing our own clan down in miniature? We would see meaningless movements signifying nothing but sorrow and uselessness”.

“I’ve seen innocent bystanders looking intently on the falls and slipping into the water only to court death. Was it a suicide or an accident, would be debated for days on end. Some lovers and newly married couples, after visiting this falls fall apart and break their bond for no ulterior reason. Why? I find no answer. The more I reason, the more I feel emptiness in our life”.

“Watch these mountains at the dead of a night. You’ll hear the wind making an eerie sound raising its pitch that would pierce through the insides of your bones and make them chill. It’s a warning—-nature’s warning—-pleading us to leave it to its own roar”. Raman became serious.

A bearer from the restaurant sneaked in and said, “Sir, Dinner?”

“Oh, I forgot to leave an order for our dinner”. Turning to the man Raman said, “Beer. Chilled beer. Make it two large glass. Dry Chapattis and Chicken Masala. That’s all. We prefer a light dinner”.

When did Raman become a Boston Brahmin to take drinks and meat?

Raman read my surprised look and answered, “It was only your mother who gave me the first taste of roasted chicken and bread stuffed with eggs. Don’t you remember we took lunch in your house after celebrating India’s third Independence Day in the school. You don’t know how I relished those servings, watching the Last Supper hanging on the hall opposite to your dining room”.

*** *** ***

Now it was ten in the night. After dinner we came to the terrace again, and sat on the same parapet wall, both facing the waterfall. But for the sound of the falling water there was absolute silence, disturbed now and then by the screeching noise of an owl, the ominous bird of night. Moths and tiny insects fluttered around. Years back I had seen fire flies twinkling against the dim white of the falls. Now, as we saw none of them, I presumed that they have joined the list of extinct species.

Raman lit a cigarette and inhaled a long puff, looked at the sky and let the smoke go in rings through the thin hole of his pouted mouth. There was a kind of manliness and a sign of power in the way he held the cigarette and smoked it with a relish. When he made another puff, I noticed his face in the glow of the butt. With his pencil-thin white moustache, Raman, he must be in his early seventies, still looked handsome. But traces of intense sadness were seen playing on his face.

Raman said that this place has a history of sorts-—of religion mythology, power and even untouchability peculiar to our society. The stream up in the mountains, before it gathers momentum, meanders through hundreds of medicinal plants, native to Indian soil. According to Hindu mythology this is one of the five places on earth, which Lord Shiva chose to display his dancing prowess, and hence sacred to Shaivites. Here, there is a temple where Shiva denied Dharsan to a group of our own people, labeled untouchables. They were made to stand at the door and stare at a God who was so near and yet far way. Till 1930 it was the white man’s privilege to bathe in the falls, guarded and protected by the Indian police. That it was pax Britannica went unchallenged and accepted by our forefathers. There was a pit downstream, a 20 by 40 water log where the natives could bathe in the water that had washed the white man’s sweat of the day. No white man or woman was ever washed away in flash floods, whereas every season, till date, it claims a handful of Indians. A choice set of medicinal and flowering plants of this area were taken to England by some British botanists. There they did not take roots. The British rule lasted barely for two centuries. But this waterfall in the Southern Ghats is here for thousands of years, witnessing each passing phase of history.

“To some tourists it is a place reminiscent of sorrow and separation”, Raman Said. “Call it a mysterious power or magical spell, or an intimate call by death, these hills have it. Once I’d seen a bystander looking intently on the waterfall and slipping into the water only to be traced breathless next hour. Last year, I saw a Japanese couple, who had rented a room next to mine, quietly sitting on a rock, far away from the falls and watching the Indians bathe, woman fully dressed and men in their assorted inner garments. They looked neither happy nor sad. But they were there for more than an hour, keeping their Canons and Nikons covered in the pouch. Next day I saw one of them in the train I was travelling back home”.

“This Lodge stands on a piece of land first assigned to a white man, a high ranking police officer of Scottish origin. He had plans to erect a big bungalow with windows overlooking the water falls. When the Indian Independence became certain he regretted to have his home built away from the British Empire. He made preparations to leave India. He wrote to his father explaining his love of this hills and how he was forced to drop his project and sell away the land. The father wrote back: the land, be it in India or Britain, does not belong to us; it’s to the land we all belong for our final rest”.

Raman had more to say about the darker side of the falls. There was a young British man by name Ashe, more precisely Robert W. D. E. Ashe. He was the Collector of this district in the 1910s. He used to frequent this place often. In one of his visits he must have had a premonition of death waiting for him. What else would have made him to cut short his holiday and return, only to receive an assassin’s bullet right on his chest and die on a railway platform? The assassin, one Vanchinathan Iyer, who lived just a kilo meter from this place took himself another bullet to escape arrest. Ashe was buried in the Military Lines Church cemetery followed by a brief funeral service. The conspiracy to its last detail was hatched here in this forest.

The assassinated and his assassin became martyrs in their own way. To the rulers Ashe’s death was proclaimed as supreme sacrifice for the cause of British rule in India. To the extremists in the freedom movement it was the first act in the bloodiest drama of the colonial history. The white man’s widow, who bore the loss silently, was promptly shipped back to England, where she committed suicide in the fond hope of joining her husband in the world of spirits. People say the Ashe couple still roam these jungles and frighten the descendants of Vanchinathan.

During his last visit, Raman had seen a little girl standing alone and crying near the main falls. There were tell-tale-things of a mother—-a dirty sari and a small bag nearby—-having gone for a quick bath. As the hours wore on, no one turned to pick her up. The girl started crying. She was not crying for her mother. It was due to hunger and thirst, for she was not fed the previous day and night. The fault of being a girl caused her to be abandoned and made to fend her way for herself. The mother must have believed that someone would care for her daughter, if left alone in a crowded tourist centre. Police took her, fed her and gave her away to an orphanage, the Parker Home on the plains. The hills were silent, witnessing our collective joy and sorrow. Though placed in a silent mode, willingly, I could feel the emotional debris in Raman.

“Have you heard of the famous Indian playwright, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, brother of Sarojini Naidu?” asked Raman. I least expected a question like this in the middle of a night on a holiday in a forest lodge.

“I haven’t read his works. Has he written about this waterfall”? I asked.

“He has not written anything about this place, but it had a strange connection to his life and marriage. He is known for his plays. They are subtle commentaries on Indian life, some even bordering Shakespearian grandeur. How the Indian society offers a golden gage to our women folk is the one underlying theme in most of his plays. We revere our women in private. But their place is always a cage. Their wings clipped and movements curtailed they are chained to traditions. Our national leaders used to quote Harindranath whenever they speak about women liberation”.

Raman waxed into an eloquent display of his acquaintance with literature and Harindranath’s portrayal of Indian women

Why Raman was speaking so much about a playwright who lived decades ago in a far of place, no way related to our present holiday.

“What brings you to refer Harindranath now?” I asked him hesitantly.

“There is a connection. This place has a role in his life. It happened in the 1930s. He courted a teen-aged widow by name Kamaladevi, who was then studying in Madras [now Chennai], married her and took her to this place for honeymoon”. Raman gave a pause to the narration, lit another cigarette and looked at the sky as if he was telling his own story in flash back.

“Do I need to dwell in detail how a couple would have spent their first days and nights in a place like this. All day they roamed around the hills and walked along the streams, looked for an early dinner, and in the night they gave shelter to each other’s bodies. After a week’s stay, they wound up their honeymoon and left. What evil spell befell on them, no one knows. On reaching Hydrabad, they became strangers. The bonds of love built under the shades of forest trees began to fall apart. They were not on speaking terms though they lived and travelled together. No more they lived as husband and wife. Theirs was the first mutually accepted legal separation in India. A famous writer who fought for women’s liberation could not live with his wedded wife”.

“Why?” I asked, “What happened?”

Raman shook his head. Lifting up his hands, he drew a blank in the air and said, “No one knows to this day”.

“Are those plays were written before his marriage?” I asked.

“I know for certain his plays were written after his visit to this place, I mean after their years of undeclared separation, but living under the same roof. His friends said it was a closely guarded secret between Hirendranath and his wife”. Raman gave another moment of silence to intercede. “I’m just thinking of the strange codes our society has imposed on man-woman-relationships”, he continued.

He looked at the stars as if to find an answer from the heavens. Why he chose to retrace this strange life of a playwright and tag it with a comment on society.

Did this story of love and separation bear any connection to Raman’s?

I wanted to shift the topic to our home turf, more familiar to both of us. I recalled the life of our neighour in our village, Krishna Rao, who was remembered for his constant quarrel with his wife of forty years. “You remember he had a good brood of twelve children and yet fought with his wife on every flimsy ground”, I said.

“Hi! Man, you mean Krishna Rao and his progeny”, Raman said with a sneer. “It had nothing to do with heart or emotional compatibility. It was all about hormones—-the interplay of t over e”.

“What”, I asked in utter confusion.

“My dear friend, it was testosterone seeking estrogen”.

Raman laughed loudly and joined me in recollecting Rao. Every morning, for Rao and his wife life started with a quarrel throwing vessels at each other uttering words most foul on earth. It was a wonder how they sired that many sons and daughters though they lived in total discord. I’d seen Rao’s wife always pregnant and having a child perched on her broad hips. Raman even recited the names of all the children in the order of their age. An incredible memory, Raman had.

“You know they never quarreled in the nights”, said Raman. He repeated it giving a mild stress on the word nights. We had a good hearty laugh for a minute.

“There was a song, Raman reminded me:

Where were you, my dear?

When the lights were out

sung by the American youth hinting their love making when there was a power outage in New York one Saturday night. Ten months later, the population curve showing the birth rate in NY pointed a sharp jump, corresponding to the day they had that unusual power failure”.

“When the lights are switched off, the desire of the body, be it the Rao’s or his wife’s, kept the quarrel at bay. Their house always smelt of babies, as much as their parents were in peace in the nights. In their first twenty years of married life they produced eleven children, and at their twenty-fifth they added one more to bring the brood to a dozen. He was just fulfilling our biological obligation to nature. Paul, did not your God give an injunction: go and multiply, and fill the earth? Rao obeyed it faithfully and kept his routine-—spending the day in full-throated anger and hugging his wife in the night. In their daily quota of quarrel, both had equal share and showed the same amount of force and the same kind of words to abuse each other, while the siblings remained mute spectators. But life went on, inside the cage, never wanting to call it a day”.

“Is it not strange?” I made my comment that kindled Raman further.

“They’d given a free rein to their hormones. Their genes”, Raman said, “were so conditioned to live together, quarrel and beget children. More appalling, Krishna Rao and his wife bore no emotional scar. For them nature is no more than the saucepans they throw on each other. If they had divorced, they might have had freedom. But freedom they did not want. Freedom is not the be-all in their life. Inside the cage, they wanted to stager through its lanes and bye lanes that lead to cozy nights. They would have drawn their own rules of life dictated by passion and not by emotion. Their marriage, though built on friction and discord had survived while the Harindranaths’ went awry”.

As we descended downstairs, I was thinking of my friend Raman. Why he remained a bachelor was always a riddle to me. Why did he not visit his ailing parents; why he did not come to light the funeral pyre, as the custom warranted, when his father died. I kept asking myself. If I were to give credit to our village rumour mill, Raman had had a dalliance with a cute little thing while he was doing his college studies. The village gossip had several strands─-that the girl he was in love with was not a Brahmin (true), that she was of low birth (may or may not be true), that one day he took her to his ancestral farm house at the edge of the forest (subject to verification), that he secretly married her (highly doubtful), that he deserted his parents and never returned (of course, true)-—the gossip had enough weight to shatter an orthodox landed gentry of the day. They, his mother in particular, were shuddered at the thought of bringing in a non-Brahmin daughter-in-law. The wall of justification that they raised was: how could an untouchable become part of a touchable household?

Raman looked back at the parapet wall. I thought he was looking for his pack of cigarettes. There was none.

I asked, “Looking for the pack“?

“No. I’m searching one part of myself. I left it here years ago. The wind washed it away. I couldn’t retrieve it back”.

Seasons keep changing, but nature never bothers to know man and his plight on earth. Winds keep blowing and it never lets men to track its secret journey. When or where it will strike next is not left to man’s guess, Raman tried to tell me.

“Yes, the wind has a power to brew into a storm and uproot trees. But it can’t reformat your memory”?

On reaching our room downstairs, Raman said, “Tomorrow we’ll trek up the mountains. There are small streams. They sprout from springs no one had seen. The streams carry water pure as white crystals, all through the year. They turn into a brook that runs slow, and then joins this thunderous falls. It never bothers to read man’s thoughts”.

Do mountains listen to man's murmurings? I spent the night engrossed in searching an answer my friend could not find.

The Lonely Lamp

The Lonely Lamp

By Puthumai Pithan[1947]

[Translated from Tamil by R. Paul Mohan Roy, Journal of South Asian Literature (East Lansing, MI) 13, nos.1-4 1977-1978 211-212]

There at the corner of the lane stands a street lamp. Fixed on a stone pillar, it feeds on a mixture of oil and kerosene. It is being maintained by the village panchyat. Dutifully enough, it dispels darkness in the nights. It will burn till the last drop of oil lasts, usually till 3 in the morning.

Birth and death are not meant for living beings alone; their domain extends to things inanimate as well. On its short journey on earth, the lamp now has reached its last stage, readying itself to join hands with the dead.

The stone pillar dons a slant Pisa-like look; the square shaped glass cover, one day, becomes a victim to an errant boy’s target shooting with his catapult. Is the boy aware of the lamp’s service? Does he know how it would have felt being stoned?

The wind begins to blow, throwing up all dead leaves on the face of the lamp. It causes the flame to tremble. Does the wind know the lamp gives a glimpse of light to the passersby? The wind becomes damp and cold. It brings little drops of rain that tries to snuff out the flame. On cold nights without its glass cover, shaken by the wind, the lamp plays dice with death. The wind and the raindrops, it looks, are out to extinguish the flickering lamp. They are simple instrument in the process of change.

The lamp has a friend, an old beggar in tattered clothes, for friendship ferments among people of equal age and status. To the old man, the lamp is the resting place, the only comfort and luxury he can count upon. Often they are seen together, inseparably bonded by thin threads of friendship. Once in their youth they are proud of being respected; now it is an old story. Everything in their lives, joy or sorrow, is the same. The youthful look fading out every day, age has brought irreversible marks on them. And they now wait for the inevitable entry into the oblivion.

How does the old man know they have decided to knock down the stone pillar and remove the oil lamp? How does he know they are going to erect a new kind of lamp post?

Next evening a man comes with a spade and crowbar. He uproots the stone pillar, breaks it to little blocks and takes them away, leaving no trace of a lamp having ever stood there.

The old man feels the loss of someone close to him. The staff he is carrying all these days is broken at the middle of his life’s journey, he feels. Darkness comprehends. There is no stone pillar to lean upon and rest. With no light to trace what little cherished things he has heaped there, he begins to feel his growing blindness. Without his ‘friend’ life seems meaningless and empty, a long stretch of happenings of which he has little control.

Peace to the old man?

Where from he would expect? The broken lamp on the stone pillar, the comfort his last days is dismantled and taken away. Next day the old man is found lying on the place where the lamp once stood, motionless. They say he is dead.

Now there stands a new lamp pegged to a wooden post. Unlike the old one of the past, it burns bright all night. And it gives more light. They say it works on electric power. Under the dazzling light of the new lamp, children play merrily and waltz round. The oil lamp and the man who lived underneath are left buried on time’s remote grave. Do they know they too will, one day, wither and be vanished in the minds of the present?

The electric power, in future, may be replaced by solar power, or perhaps, who knows, maybe by atomic power. The children do not know; as they play hide and seek or read under the new lamp they know only the present. The old will die and disappear from their eyes.The recent past and the dead past—-both have acquired the quality of being one dead ‘past’. They say a new order is always waiting to replace the old one.

VikatanStories 1

Hey! Guy, You’re Telling Me a Lie*

[*A Short story in Tamil by Thamira published in Ananda Vikadan, February 25, 2009. Translation by R.Paul Mohan Roy]

It’s almost midnight, the hour of confidence, loneliness, and intimacy. Save the two of us and one last bartender, the place is empty. There are few drops rolling at the bottom of the wine glasses we are holding. They can’t be licked out unless we add more to gulp them neat.

I look at the friend appealingly. It means I’m not sufficiently drunk to turn into a creator. The friend understands my need. People in a pub strike a quick friendship the moment you stand for a second drink.

“Am going to create a god”, I repeat my refrain. The friend doesn’t laugh. He takes it as if I’ve said I’m going to draw a boat.

“You’re not kidding, I know. You look serious.

Are you a sculptor? What experience you have? How many gods you have produced?” the friend asks.

“Yesterday I produced a sea, complete with clouds, white and dark, sailing on a blue sky”, I reply in right earnest.

“Ok friend. Go ahead and create a god of your taste”, the friend encourages me, raising his hand towards the waiter. His thumb points to the two empty glasses on the table. A new bottle is brought and opened. Our glasses are filled to the brim. There is a rhythm in the sound of wine being poured. I like the poise and the sense of sanctity shown by the waiter when he puts ice cubes. An artist perhaps!

“So you’re going to create a god in the corner of a wine shop”, the friend continues. “Don’t we have enough gods to take care of us? The gods have their own disputes. I’m told they are busy fighting for their ranks. And you say you’re going to add a new designer god to the pantheon”.

“I don’t believe in the common gods whom everyone worships. I’m an agnostic. All that I need is a personal god—an exclusive one for myself. At my god’s feet I should be the only devotee”. I take the last sip and push the glass to my right.

“Nice tipsy talk. You know how many gods we have. Add them to the Roman and the Greek ones. Thousands there are—-male, female, half human and half animal. We have one for each village, and one for each profession”.

“I don’t like any one of them. I want a special god exclusively for me—a god or goddess in my wave length”. I’m firm in my desire.

“I don’t get it. What type of personal god you’d create”? The friend insists to know my preferences.

“I want to customize a god who would remain friendly—friendly to me alone. Finally my god or goddess should have no other devotees”.

The friend offers to play god and says,”take me your god. An offertory of two bottles of wine a week is enough. I’d bless you seven long days”.

If I stay another hour, the friend will abort my very idea of having a personal god.

”Well, you’re a creative genius; your eyes tell me so. Go ahead. I wish you succeed”.

“Let me know what type of god you are going to create, male or female, young or old?” are the last words the friend flings at me.

We part at this design stage, but the friend’s parting words ring in my ears. I take the cue and start giving a shape and form to the god I’ve conceived in mind. I’ve the cast ready. In the comfort of the soon-to-be-born god of my choice I sleep.

*** **** *****

Next morning fragrance of fresh jasmine wakes me up. I see her sitting on the edge of my table. She wears the girl-next-door look, a picture-perfect pretty woman, young, youthful and strangely charming. Her face reflects innocence, pure and unalloyed, of the pre-fallen Eve. Is she not the god of my own creation, complete in ways I’ve wished my god to be, I ask myself. I sense she is reading my thoughts.

“You’ve summoned me and I’m here before you”, my god speaks to me for the first time.

I’m amazed to have a woman—a young woman at that—as my god. What’s your name, I do not venture to ask. I’m lost, totally lost in this artistic creation I’ve materialized. I start admiring the woman in her. I like the way she looks at me. Again she reads my thoughts and desires, even those ones which I try to keep hidden, unsuccessfully, in the inner recesses of my heart. Does she look divine? No, she is divine, I tell myself. But why she looks this much beautiful like a mortal, I question. I find no answer. I’ve no words to communicate with my goddess.

I sit lost in wonderment, eying her curiously. Her eyes are focused on mine, first questioning and then doubting my curiosity. Have I ever wished my god to be a woman, I begin to doubt.

The god I’m longing for is no more distant or remote. Here she is, sitting in my room, sitting on the edge of my table, dangling her ivory legs in the air, and leaning against my book case. She walks towards me. There is fragrance in the air, of a woman emerging from her bath, with drops of water still dripping from her dark hair.

“Come on. Get up. Wash your face”, this is the first command my goddess gives me. “I’ll go with you to your tea shop. Let me join your morning tea”, she throws her first invitation. I obey implicitly, and I’m waiting for more commands. I watch her through the corner of my eyes.

We begin to walk, side by side, to my tea joint. The road is narrow and slippery due to the previous day’s rain. She walks like a little deer sauntering in measured steps. Her arm brushes against mine. She takes no notice of her being touched, done more intentionally by me. My hand begins to grab her palm, and our fingers knit. I’m unusually happy as I’m walking along with a woman. I’m beginning to forget she is my goddess.

Does the tea man watch our coming towards him? I wonder why he fails to notice my new companion, a woman holding my hand and beaming with a smile. How will he ever know his customer is taking a goddess to his lowly place?

My goddess looks at my face and smiles. Closing her eyes for a second she keeps her index finger across her mouth. It’s another command to keep the tea man away from our company.She makes a sign to turn back to the room. We walk silently, though I hold her hand and feel the warmth and softness of her body. Now I have nothing to talk. But I have plenty to watch and enjoy seeing her walk with me. I lit a cigarette.

“What’s that? Give me one”, she says.“It’s a cigarett

e. A goddess should not smoke”, I tell her the mortal’s privilege. I convey this with my newly assumed authority over her.“O! Then you don’t do that”, she hissed softly into my ears. I feel a peculiar sense of bondage in being commanded by the woman walking by my side. Giving her third command, she pulls the cigarette off my lips, gently, and tosses it with a twist. The cigarette flies with sparks and she watches it with a curiosity of a little girl in play. I feel happy to come under a complete spell of my little goddess. As we walk back our shoulders brush, now and then, but mildly enough to be felt by her. My fingers search for hers, clinch them and count one by one. She does not mind or respond to the warmth of my nibbling.

“I remember I’ve seen you”, I tell her a lie.“When did you see me?” is her reply.

“Was it yester day or day before yesterday, may be a thousand years ago”, I add new dimensions to my lie. “I remember I’ve seen you when I was young; you do not age; you look the same”, I complete the imagined meeting.

My mind is busy composing poetry.

Goddess of my own making

No altar or sanctum she has.

She smiles and speaks in songs

But recite no Vedic verse.

Though a holy blend of all elements she is

No God like hers I see on earth.

“What is this”, she asks me, laughing loudly.

It’s an ode in celebration of our meeting, I do not say.

“It’s a hymn in praise of my goddess. A devotee should have a special one to sing”, another lie from the poet in me.

“I don’t like this”, she says, suddenly increasing the phase of her walk and freeing her hands from my grip. A first disagreement has sparked.

“Why you don’t like this”, I question her.

“I don’t like your ode. Should I explain why?” she retorts and walks fast a few steps ahead of me. Back to the room we walk, now silence being my second company.

On reaching the room she looks at my table, pulls out a book and starts reading. A hand on her chin she looks more of an angel posing for a master painter.

“You’re an angel right from the heaven” I tell her. You are a woman, my heart says.

“Tell me, am I an angel or a goddess”, there is a note of mild anger in her question. Again my heart says she is a woman, though I don’t dare to utter. I haven’t expected this sharp retort from my goddess.

“Why blink? Tell me, guy, whether I’m your god or angel”.

I think for a minute to fish out a compromising answer.

“An angelic goddess”, is my timely reply in a belief that she’d like the new status I’ve conferred on her.

“Hey! Guy you’re telling me lie”, pouting her lips, she winks at me. She has come nearer to truth, my heart confirms.

I don’t want to lose my goddess so easily. A kind of new love and affection blossoms in me, with added courage. I feel I’m a male Andal pinning for his lady love, the goddess.

I fall prostrate and touch her feet singing a new hymn. She steps back and avoids my hands touching her.

“I don’t like your falling at my feet”, says she. I infer a change in her tone.

‘You’re my god and I, as a devotee, have the right to touch your feet. It’s the beginning of my worship. Aren’t you my god”?

“Repeat your ode and let me hear it again”, she wants to test me perhaps. I do repeat, this time with a voice and cadence of a singer she may like. Almost like a pious and genuine devotee I recite my ode appealing to her feminine godhood. She closes her eyes and listens. I see a smile spreading her face. Before I recant the ode for a third time as a refrain, she jumps, rushes closer and hugs me tight with a kiss on my cheek. I win back my goddess, I tell myself.

*** *** ***

It begins to rain outside. We come out and watch drops of water bulleting down. The breeze carries the smell of rain and earth right into our hearts. All strange desires it kindles in me. She stretches her hands as if to caress the rain, her face beaming with childish happiness.

“Sing me a song about rain. I want to dance and get drenched. She cups her hands, catches rain drops and splashes them on her face. I’m lost in watching the simple pleasures of my goddess.

“Do you hear me? Just sing a song. Compose one if you don’t have it ready. I’d love to hear you sing a song on rain”, she insists.

Our hushed-up kisses

Remembrances of our late night duels

Little unarmed fights

Made wet by the rain

Now melt before my eyes

She jumps up, and her arms embrace me tight, showering kisses on my cheeks. I’m shell-shocked and remain frozen for one long second. My arms respond with a reflex, two bodies trying to merge into each other.

“Watch this”, she points to her cheeks studded with glossy drops of rain. “They won’t dry. The rain can’t steal them away”.

Yes the rain continues. It’s a special rain summoned by my goddess to keep her spirit and body wet.

Evening comes. My friend steps in to take me to the temple, an evening ritual I share with him every day. I tell him I live with my god. My goddess bursts into laughter. “Why you laughed”, I ask when my friend left.

“Is it a secret that you live with your god? If you tell him I’m here by your side, won’t he think you’re mad? Won’t he laugh?”

“How would you call me, give me a name”, she turns to a new subject.

“Yes. A goddess must have a name—Kaali, Marri—something like this”.

Before I finish she interrupts. “Give me a name, a good name for your goddess”.

A hide-and-seek game starts. I have to search and choose a name for a woman god. I start recollecting names of women I remember. Names have peculiar association with the exterior. We love or ignore a name; it’s the degree of intimacy that decides our choice.

“Brida Coelho”, is my first choice.

“Who is this”, she asks.

“It’s an immortal character in a novel. She is a beautiful young girl on a long journey in search of knowledge. I like her”.

My goddess is not happy about the name. With a swish of her hand cutting the air, she rejects. I search for another name more attractive than an imaginary character. My name dictionary gets exhausted. I make a rapid scrutiny of names of woman against the features of the one standing before me.

“Madonna”, I jumped with a tone of finality.

“Who is this? An artist or an actress?” she asks.

“Neither. She is a singer; a beautiful woman”.

“How would you call me”, she questions.

“I won’t dare to call my goddess by name”, I feigned to steal a place in her heart.

The meanings and undertones I’ve packed into the name, I only know. Here is a devotee suggesting a formal name to his god. I wish the conversation to prolong. But I give her time to read my mind, scale its depth and find out my affection for her. She is silently watching me. I have nothing more to convey except that famous name I mentioned. I look at her patiently. It’s the look of a beggar with outstretched hands.

“So you want me play a singer”, she laughs when she utters this casually. I’m stunned. I feel I’m slipping into a world of rejection—back to my old world of loneliness. Her looks are piercing.

“I’m in need of a god, a friendly personal god. I never meant a goddess”, I’m about to tell her the truth.

“Hey! Guy you’re telling me a lie”. She says. “All that you need is not a god. You need a woman and you want her to shower you with love. Go. Search for your Madonna and marry her”.

She does not wait for my reply. She treads soft, leaves through the window and merges with the air. Her footprints, I’m left to bear on my heart.

*** *** ***

Midnight rendezvous in the bar is the last item in my day’s schedule. I meet the friend to whom I confessed my plans to materialize a god. I stand for the first round of drinks, followed by old stories often talked about in bars. He has conveniently forgotten our meeting previous night. I tell him about my god’s visitation in the form of a young woman, her earthly beauty and the poetry I’ve recited. As a gentle man and a responsible drinker he listens to the description of my goddess.

Placing the glass with a mild thud on the table, he says, “Hey! Guy, you’re telling me a lie”.