Flower-girl

The flower-girl approached the ladies in the group of foreign tourists. She addressed the elderly as Amma (mother) or Ammamma (grandmother); the kindly ones of indeterminate age as Mami (aunty); and, those who looked young or appeared desperate to be so as Chechi (elder sister). The Europeans on their part seemed to be familiar with these expressions. Their well-thumbed travel books could possibly take credit for that. Or, it was the young girl’s friendly and reverential nature which conveyed the meaning.

‘Amma, carry flowers to temple… fresh from mountains. God of the cliff will give peace and joy for this.’

 That girl, of ten or so, probably younger or certainly no older than twelve, with round innocent eyes and an open smile, used some version of that sales talk with each lady. She managed to say that in English, haltingly, but with confidence.

‘How much is it?’ The lady would ask, charmed by the smile on that guileless face, and, of course, touched by the lingering sadness of poverty and hardship.

‘Fifty rupees,’ the little girl replied to each, without any change in expression or, when she allowed it, only to look more forlorn as if it pained her to charge them for those flowers. Each bouquet had a dozen or so flowers – hibiscus, jasmine and a few wild ones. She had no trouble selling her stock. After the group of tourists left for the hike up the hill to the temple on the cliff, the girl skipped and hopped towards the tea-shop, her plaited hair flopping around along with her loose limbs.

I was sitting outside sipping tea. I looked at her with stern eyes and admonished her, ‘Those flowers are from behind the shop, right? And you charged them so much? Don’t you know that guests should be treated like gods?’

She stopped in front of me, unsure for a while, probably wondering if she should reply to a stranger, and then retorted, ‘They don’t have a problem. I don’t have a problem. Why do you have a problem?’

I tried to make my face look more serious. She frowned and then stuck out her tongue before moving past me to the inside of the shop.

‘Monkey…!’ I shouted at her, trying hard not to smile at the imp.

I watched her go to the tea-shop owner Rajendran. He was standing near Vishnu’s table. She patted his arm. He turned around with an angry, irritated look. He gave her a hard whack on the shoulder. I looked at Vishnu. He returned my stare and shook his head to indicate that I should not interfere. I could not understand how he could sit there, unperturbed, unfeeling.

‘Why aren’t you in school?’ Rajendran asked the girl harshly.

‘I’m going. It’s only half past eight,’ she replied.

‘Can’t your idiot mother keep you in the house? Of course, how can she?’

I could make out the tears welling up in the little girl’s eyes. She held out the money towards the man.

‘You give that to your mother,’ he barked. I was beginning to hate that uncouth lout who stank of country liquor and the smoke of heady beedi (local cheroot). I was sitting outside the shop to avoid that stench. Vishnu didn’t seem to have a problem, smoking one of those pungent beedis himself.

‘Amma told me to give it to you,’ the girl said. After a brief pause, she continued, ‘Appa (father) will take it.’

He took the money from her and without counting slipped it into a box beneath the counter. He then went to the kitchen and returned with two parcels, a small one loosely covered with paper and the other, slightly larger, in a plastic bag. Without any change in his surly countenance, he gave her the small one first.

‘Don’t break the bangles,’ his voice still harsh. He then handed over the bigger parcel, ‘Give this to your mother, it’s some chicken curry from last night. Don’t let your father have a bite of that.’

The girl accepted both seriously, nodding her head vigorously. He raised his hand again, as if to whack her once again, ‘Now, go to school and stop fooling around.’

‘Yes, Raju Mama (uncle).’ Her broad smile came back on. She then turned to Vishnu and, pointing at me, asked with a whisper too loud, ‘Vishnu Mama, who is that?’

‘A friend,’ Vishnu made that sound real bad.

She skipped and hopped to the outside, past my bench. When she was at a safe distance, she showed her tongue at me once again and greeted, ‘Friend monkey Mama.’

I feigned as if I was about to throw my glass of tea at her. She laughed and I watched that little girl run away. Rajendran and Vishnu were still talking to each other, a little louder and a lot more agitated, and I heard the last part of their conversation.

‘Her mother came to me yesterday. That bastard husband of hers wants to send the kid to the Gulf, as domestic help,’ Rajendran said.

‘But she’s just a kid,’ Vishnu objected.

‘Not just that…’ the tea-shop owner did not complete.

Vishnu stared at the other, disbelief and anger writ on his face.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Rajendran said.

Vishnu thought for a while before saying, ‘I will talk to Natarajan.’

‘You…?’

‘If not me, someone he will listen to…’

‘Who…?’

‘I will do it, I said, right?’ Vishnu sounded irritated.

‘Natarajan is out of town. I heard he’s gone to the city.’

‘We will wait then…’ Vishnu looked at the pre-occupied Rajendran and asked, ‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yes, yes, we will wait,’ the other mumbled. His mind was quite clearly elsewhere.

Vishnu paid for his tea and then with a pointed look at me paid for mine too.

‘What was all that about?’ I asked Vishnu when we were walking back to his mother’s house.

‘Nothing,’ he replied. We were still not on the best speaking terms.

‘Nothing…? Ok, nothing,’ I shrugged, as if I didn’t give a damn.

That took place on my fourth day in Vishnu’s village.

I saw the little girl again on the sixth day. She did not greet me. She did not even look at me. Some time in between, life had left those eyes.

In Vishnu’s village Kadalil, the locals believe that pain and nightmares should be told as stories. They think that ghosts lose power when the important and the unimportant details are packed together and exiled to the make-believe, banished from reality. I prefer to think of these stories as mummies preserved in a pyramid, embalmed bodies together with entangled lives or souls sent well to a better after-life beyond. That is supposed to explain why I am writing this tale.

These events happened last September when I gate-crashed into Vishnu’s holidays. We were having a lean time in office. Vishnu took leave to visit his village. I had nowhere to go and decided to surprise him. He took the long route with heavy nostalgia – a day and a half by train from Mumbai via the coast and then half a day in a bus. I left on the same day as Vishnu, but without his load and without informing him, of course. I took a flight to the capital and then a taxi to his village, and reached his mother’s place a day earlier than him. He looked rough and tired when he got there. Nostalgia has that effect on people. He showed little manners when I welcomed him into his own house. I brushed aside his displeasure. His mother and Sarada, the attractive and rather mysterious neighbor, seemed to be fine with my presence and they were the ones serving me handsome meals. Sarada introduced herself as Vishnu’s childhood friend. She said little else about herself or her four year old kid or her absent partner. During my stay, I realized that she was much more than a neighbor to Vishnu and his mother. But let me not digress too much since she has little to do with this particular tale.

On my third day there, the day after he landed, Vishnu took me on a long hike exploring the village and that was not out of amity. He knows that physical exertion is not my preferred state of action. When he decided to sulk less, he also briefed me about the village’s history or stories. The village itself may not be germane to the main plot but let me pack in that irrelevance too. This is what I found on the Net about the village.

“The ideal place to start in this village is at the temple on the cliff. The official name of the village (as given on maps) has changed thrice in the last two decades with every generation of politicians following the whim and fancy of the masses without. For the villagers, the name has always been Kadalil (In the Sea) and the pedantic amongst them use the unabbreviated version Kadalil Thazhvaaram (Valley in the Sea). Standing near the temple on the cliff, it is easy to understand that name.

The cliff extends like the rim of a cup around the valley. On one side of the cliff, there is the blue expanse of the sea; and on the other side, there is the green carpet of the valley. On bright sunny days, due to some strange mirage, the sea seems to rise to the level of the rim and the valley appears like a sunken island precariously waiting to be flooded.

There is a single path, about three-man wide, from the temple to the beach. The path takes a winding route through a deceptive mixture of sandy slopes, rocky ledges, thorny bushes and waist-high grass. The rustling of the growth along with the whisper of the wind, the scratching and the scraping of small animals and reptiles, and the fluttering wings or the wild erratic flight of birds and their insistent calls accompany one from the bare rocky top to the beach. The variegated beach extends an alluring invite with its white sands striped strangely with red and black as if a painter had slashed the white canvas viciously and repeatedly in a fit of rage. The sea lies like a lagoon, the color changing from light blue to turquoise and then dark opaque blue and the depths seem amenable for a long walk into the sea untroubled by the deep. An old wooden board explains that this appearance is fickle and warns of rapids, undercurrents and swarms of poisonous jelly-fish. The villagers claim that that there used to be fishing villages all around and that the beach was pristine white then but now, it is a lovely long but strangely deserted variegated beach.

On the other side of the cliff, there is the village in the valley. From the temple, it is a gradual descent through deep and thick forests interspersed with rubber and spice plantations. Descending further, those plantations give way to agricultural plots with coconut, palm, betel and fruit trees and then, paddy-fields, tapioca and vegetable cultivation. A river flows bisecting the valley, winding, meandering and losing itself in the hills beyond where there are deep caves, mines and tunnels, some still active with the search for precious stones and minerals. In the main part of the village, agriculture has given way to some small industries, shops, hotels, bars, medical facilities and educational institutions.”

…from the blog BuriedGods by New Nonentities

That last sentence about the main part of the village is an exaggeration. There is a single narrow road. From my vantage point at the tea-stall, I could survey the whole scene.

When one moves away from the hill with the temple on the cliff, there is a budget hotel, on the right, with half a dozen basic resting-rooms and a drab restaurant serving non-negotiable meals with a fixed menu. Next to that, there is Miss Anila’s establishment – a mean and very profitable monopoly consisting of a tailoring shop on the ground floor and separate beauty salons for men and women on the top floor. She is the village’s champion crusader, forever in the middle of an evangelical sermon against tobacco, liquor, corruption, prostitution and all the other human ills that plague that quiet village.

Adjacent to her building is the ‘English medicine’ doctor’s clinic. Then, there is the shack of the quack boasting ‘new-age’ ayurveda massage and homeopathy palliatives. A medical shop catering to ‘English’, ayurveda and homeopathy prescriptions is next in that line along with a ration outlet. A small lane separates those and the government hospital, a decrepit building in a shabby compound, with two wings for ‘in-patient’ and ‘out-patient’. That lane leads to a shed behind the hospital which serves as a mortuary.

A few paces further down the main road, the garrulous but genial Maryamma has her fish and meat shop. She is usually found outside her shop, spitting betel-juice or cursing the powers that control the prices and the customers. The stinking abattoir behind her shop shares a wall with the mortuary. During the last local elections, Maryamma was pitted against Miss Anila who accused the former of mixing meat from the two joints. Maryamma responded to that allegation with expletives and promises to start such a business after murdering her opponent. She defeated her bête noire quite comfortably in those elections. Though the result surprised outside commentators, it reflected the common sentiment amongst the villagers, ‘Priests and politicians are best when they mirror the masses.’

The government school and its playground are a little further ahead on that side of the road. Opposite to the school, on the other side of the road, there is a college and polytechnic run by the liquor baron Yeli (rat) Natarajan. He gained that sobriquet in his early days when he used to distil spirit with all kinds of scrap, including dead rats. Even looks-wise, he has an affinity towards rodents but, he is definitely far less lovable. His business dealings, at its best, exhibit a mixture of a banker’s sliminess and a lawyer’s sense of right and wrong. At his worst, he and his two close henchmen make Torquemada and gang seem like a bunch of gurgling babies. Only his weary eyes could endear him to anyone. Like those of a messiah leaving a job half-done, his too seems apologetic and tired for not offering more of his services which include nearly every illegal trade except drugs, terrorism and the under-aged. His tentacles also extend to most of the legal businesses there. He owns most of the land on that side of the road, including a sprawling resort spanning both banks of the river that runs through the village.

Still sticking to the left side of the road, opposite Maryamma’s shop, the bus depot, the village market and other small shops share space. Rajendran’s tea-stall leans against the depot’s wall. Then, there are three drinking establishments doing brisk business from nine till midnight catering to nearly the same clientele. The government outlet is right opposite the clinic, and the bar for ‘foreign’ liquor and the toddy-shop offering local stuff are on either side of that, as if to give support. Those two belong to Yeli Natarajan. After these bacchanalian joints and back near the foothill, there is an unobtrusive two-room police station and behind that, the village office. The occupants of these and the locals rarely trouble each other.

On my fifth day in the village, the day after the flower-girl called me ‘Friend monkey Mama’, I went to the tea-stall earlier than usual, around seven in the morning, but my visit was not for tea.

I got up with the lazy sun that morning. Standing a little away from the window, I peeped at Sarada next door. She was sweeping her courtyard. At some point, she looked towards my window, smiled at me and waved. I managed to raise my hand in greeting and also returned a sheepish smile before vanishing from there. I went to the kitchen and accosted Vishnu’s mother who gave me a glass of black coffee.

‘Where’s Vishnu?’ I asked her. His room, like mine, was on the first floor but in the opposite wing. On my way downstairs, I had checked if I could spoil his sleep but found only his well-made bed.

‘He’s gone out.’

‘So early…?’

‘Yes, he left at six.’

‘Where’s he gone?’

She did not reply. I guessed that Vishnu must have told her to keep me in the dark. He could be childish, most of the time.

I persisted, ‘Where…?’

She gave up, ‘Rajendran… the tea-shop guy?’

‘Yes…?’

‘He died last night.’

‘How…?’

‘Someone found him in the quarry…’

‘What happened? Did he fall?’

Her shrug indicated that a fall would be the most agreeable explanation. I left for the shop soon after.

Vishnu was not there at the tea-shop. The road and the depot were deserted. Nearly all the shops, except for a few market stalls and Maryamma’s shop, were still closed at that early hour. Maryamma was standing outside her shop surveying the area with a scowl. I went up to her and enquired if she had seen Vishnu. She told me that she had seen Vishnu darting between the mortuary and the police station. I decided to wait at the tea-shop.

A group of tourists came at eight, as usual. The little girl was not around to greet them. At nine, I saw Vishnu coming from the mortuary. He gave me a brief nod before racing towards the police station. I remained seated there on my bench. The place came alive gradually and people went about their business hardly acknowledging that one amongst them had died. At ten, like a daily ritual, there was the next installment in the fight between a man and his wife. The man stood swaying outside the bar with bloodshot eyes hardly open. His wife came onto the scene and asked him if he had taken her money yet again. She complained loudly that he had taken the money kept for their kids’ school-fees or medicines or whatever. The volume of her lamentation increased with each passing minute. When she started to beat her own chest and head, the man raised a hand and slapped her face. I nearly stood up to intervene or, at least, protest. But a hand on my shoulder restrained me.

I turned around to see Vishnu standing behind me, looking tired but otherwise impassive.

‘That bastard deserves a thrashing,’ I indicated the drunkard with a jerk of my head.

‘It’s not your fight,’ Vishnu said, disinterested.

I stared at him wondering how he could remain unbothered by the sight of that drunkard slapping his poor wife. I decided not to argue with him about that then and reverted to the main issue,

‘So, what happened to Rajendran?’

‘It seems he fell and smashed his head in the quarry.’ Vishnu didn’t sound convinced. ‘That’s what the police are saying… and the preliminary medical report agrees with that conclusion.’

‘What was he doing in that quarry?’ I asked.

‘Who cares…?’ Vishnu swore.

I decided to leave the topic for the moment. We had lots to do and Vishnu asked me to help him get stuff from the market for the last rites. Vishnu had to get the body released and then take care of the cremation, too. Sarada and a few other friends also pitched in. One of those friends, and not Vishnu or Sarada, told me that they – Vishnu, Sarada, Rajendran and the other friends there – had studied in the village school around the same time.

Rajendran was a bachelor and the only family he had was his sister, that little girl’s mother. I saw Rajendran’s sister before the cremation. She seemed to be in shock, silent, tears pouring down her thin face. A few mourners or curious observers gathered there raised the required wails and such. But that did not last long and an eerie quiet lay like a shroud over the place. I did not see the little girl anywhere, or her father.

We got back home around seven, took bath and had the first proper meal of the day. After that, we sat outside in the cool night air. Sarada faced her own courtyard where her son was playing. I sat between her and Vishnu’s mother. Vishnu lay on the ground with his hands behind his head.

Sarada asked Vishnu, ‘What happened?’

‘I don’t know for sure,’ Vishnu said. ‘I told that idiot I would talk to Natarajan. Why couldn’t he wait? I told him that I would talk to him about Parah (rock) Suresh.’

‘Parah Suresh…?’ I enquired.

‘That’s the girl’s father, Rajendran’s brother-in-law,’ Vishnu replied.

‘Parah…?’ I repeated.

The others remained silent for a while. Sarada then explained, ‘He uses a rock to bash the head of anyone who stands up to him… an animal.’

‘Was Rajendran killed?’ I asked Vishnu.

‘Then what…? He just fell in that quarry…?’ Vishnu retorted angrily.

‘Well, he used to drink, right?’ I tried to reason.

‘Yes, he used to drink,’ Vishnu said, ‘but even so, why should he go to that quarry five kilometers away… what for? To fly…?’

‘Did you tell the police about your suspicion?’ I asked.

The other three looked at me as if I had said something stupid.

‘Does Natarajan know?’ Vishnu’s mother asked her son.

‘He is out of station, expected back only tomorrow.’ Vishnu then looked at Sarada and I saw her responding with a brief nod.

During that stay, I learned quickly that much of the communication that took place around me was not meant for me. It was also clear that I was not supposed to quiz them about all the stuff they would not say in simple words. For example, why did Sarada seem to be the link between Natarajan and Vishnu? Normally, I would not have left it at that. Some people believe that others would do what is decent. I prefer to believe that if I left matters to others’ discretion, I would remain ignored. But just then, at the end of an exhausting day, I thought it would be prudent to let them have it their funny way.

We retired a short while later. I lay awake for a long while thinking about Rajendran and his niece. I made a mental note to ask Vishnu or Sarada about the girl. I drifted off to sleep cursing myself for forgetting that till then.

Next morning, after breakfast, we were back in Rajendran’s closed tea-stall. Vishnu had a few errands to take care of for his mother – rubber sheets to sell, money to be deposited in the co-operative bank and such. I waited at my seat outside the tea-stall watching the same old play on the same old stage. Life went on as usual. Like clockwork, the drunkard appeared outside the bar around ten in the only way he could face the world any day, swaying and inebriated. His wife too entered the scene at the right cue. The pleading gave way to loud wailing and the beating of the chest and the head ensued, as if by rote, and his slap too. It was all too much for me. I just couldn’t allow that show to go on.

I got up from my seat and approached the couple. I shouted at the man and gave him the full sermon within me. It took a while for him to shift his dazed drunken gaze towards me. He looked at me as if I was a madman. I focused on the man and I did not notice when his wife stopped wailing. I should have kept an eye on that aggrieved party and I realized that quickly when my back suffered a barrage of hard slaps. I turned around to face her flailing arms. She multitasked effectively, beating, shouting loudly and berating me. She accused me of abusing her and trying to harm her dear life, namely, her husband. It was my turn to have a dazed look. A highly amused crowd gathered around us. The woman refused to give up, and even seemed to gain in volume and indignation. I kept on moving backwards, trying to avoid her. I tried to reason with her. Or to be factually right, as I started on that endeavor that frail woman gave me a firm shove. I, along with my reasoning, went into free fall. I tripped and fell back into a shallow pit by the side of the road. It wasn’t much of a fall and I should have escaped with just an injured mind. But, caught unawares, I landed heavily and clumsily, feeling every pebble that greeted my backside and worse, twisted my ankle too. It would have been better if I had hit my head and passed out with a concussion. I would not have had to see that woman’s rather happy face before she walked away with her equally blissful comrade-in-arms. The crowd didn’t give up that easily. I really tickled their funny bone. Vishnu’s head also appeared in that milieu. I was kind of glad to see that he was not laughing, like the rest, though his disgruntled and irritated look was hardly comforting.

I raised my arm towards him and with much reluctance he stepped forward to help me get up. I stood up rather precariously on one foot. He half-carried me to the government hospital, muttering all the while how inconvenient and stupid I was and that I purposefully did all that I could do just to spoil his vacation. I told him to stop nagging. He nearly dumped me on the road.

At the hospital, it took a while for me to get the required tender loving care. I learned from an attendant that there were two doctors on duty and that one was attending to ‘an actually serious case’. I did not like the insinuation about my injury and I liked the situation even less when Vishnu refused to take me to the other available doctor. Finally, when I threatened to hop over on my own, he gave in and roughly carried me to that doctor’s room, as if he was trying to drive home some point with his callousness.

The other turned out to be a lady doctor, a dusky beauty who seemed even more attractive because she kept glaring rather viciously at Vishnu. They looked like two dogs baring their fangs at each other. I cleared my throat to get some attention. I explained about my delicate ankle. She did not seem terribly impressed with my delicate nature. In fact, she hardly asked anything. But she did manage to convey her thoughts with the way she treated me. She was competent at her job but some of her prods and squeezes were definitely unwarranted and so obviously malicious that it managed to extract a manly wail from me. Vishnu stayed rooted near the door, with his back towards us. I understood her need to vent anger at that insolent back and I would have been more sympathetic and even supportive if she had chosen some other way to attack.

Much later during that trip, I got to know from Sarada a little about the history between those two. That lady doctor is Natarajan’s daughter and in the distant past, she and Vishnu were lovers. They were intimate till the death of her brother.

‘Was it because of that goon, her father?’ I asked Sarada.

‘What about him?’

‘Did he put a stop to their affair?’

Sarada laughed and said, ‘You watch a lot of movies, huh? Natarajan isn’t the kind who settles grievances through his daughter. Further, his daughter is definitely not the type to get cowed down by a father.’

‘Yeah, that fits with what I experienced…’ I grimaced at the memory, ‘then, what happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sarada replied.

‘Oh, come on… don’t black me out on that too.’ I was quite fed up of being left out on all the interesting stuff.

‘No, really, I do not know. Do you think Vishnu or that girl will talk about that with anyone?’ she asked.

‘Hmm…’

Sarada noted my sulk with amusement. She offered, ‘I think they had a confrontation after her brother died. Probably, she abused him like her father. I guess you know that those two hate each other.’ She quickly gathered that I had been kept unfairly ignorant about the details of that affair too, ‘Well, Natarajan thinks that his son died because of Vishnu.’ She refused to divulge more about that but continued with the earlier thread, ‘Well, you know Vishnu… he is not really the benevolent, understanding type, right? He lashed back at them, without considering their loss. If I am not mistaken, he never tried to mend fences. She didn’t give him much time either. She married, and that of course made him hate her even more.’

I had to support my friend, ‘Ah! She deserves that hate then. Hope she married some oaf.’

Sarada seemed surprised with my response, ‘A nice loving guy actually. They have two kids. But, she is still the same volatile stuff. My guess is that she hates Vishnu even more because she has a lovely family.’

‘Crazy… and all very complicated.’

‘I agree.’ Sarada laughed. ‘But then, the interesting ones are always so, right?’

If I had known all that when I was in the doctor’s room, it would have helped me to remain calm and amused when the doctor tortured me firmly and slowly. Vishnu left the room after some time leaving me at her mercy. To be fair, she was good at her job and she mellowed down in his absence. In a jiffy, she had my leg immobile in plaster and then, dismissed me with a curt nod and the bare minimum in words. She managed a smile-cum-snarl when I thanked her. That half-smile was probably brought on after seeing me exit hopping on one leg. I expected Vishnu’s helping hand outside. I saw him leaning against a pillar in the front corridor, browsing through some leaflet. He looked up, saw me and continued to read his leaflet. I hopped over to the pillar. He gave me his usual irritated look. He left me leaning against that pillar and went to the pharmacy-cum-cashier to settle the bills.

When he returned, he looked as if he had seen a ghost. He looked worried, angry and agitated. His wild-eyed daze was unsettling. I think I saw tears too. I knew that that could not be because of me. I looked around.

I saw the little girl, Rajendran’s niece, standing at the end of that corridor, nearly hidden from my view. She was wearing a new, bright, gaudy dress. She was not smiling. There was lipstick on her mouth and some cheap makeup on her face. I looked at Vishnu, seeking some explanation.

‘Her mother is in the ward, thrashed black and blue…’ Vishnu managed to say through clenched teeth. His hands were trembling. I had seen that anger once before, when he faced a rotten real-estate goon in Mumbai and crazily challenged that man and his half-crazy mob to go ahead and kill him. His anger had seemed suicidal then and I sensed that it was building to that same state there. I felt a presence behind me and turned to find the lady doctor near us. She too was watching Vishnu. 

This tableau took place in the crowded front corridor of the hospital. It was interrupted when a man entered the hospital compound. He stood near the entrance, staring at the little girl.

‘So, there you are, you rascal,’ he shouted at the girl. I guessed that that man was her father, Parah Suresh. ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay put at the resort? And I had to learn from the guests that you had run away, you good for nothing.’ That man did not look at us or anyone else there. Those in his vicinity moved away.

Vishnu climbed down from the corridor and approached the man. I heard the doctor shout from behind me, ‘Vishnu, don’t…’

The next scene just rolled out as if in fast motion, crazily driven by adrenalin or some latent instinct of wild animals. Vishnu charged flinging himself against Suresh, catching the man unawares and the two went down in a heap. They rolled in the dusty courtyard, grappling for a hold, scratching, gouging and trading body blows. The man broke away from Vishnu’s hold, rolled away and then, they got up staring at each other.

Vishnu had clear disadvantages: a head shorter, twenty kilos lighter and also, without a lifetime of violence and sheer use of brawn. But Vishnu managed to impress me with his repertoire of punches and feints. As a friend, I wanted to step in and help him. Maybe, without a foot in plaster, I would have had fewer excuses not to; or, I would have told myself that it was not just Vishnu’s fight. I stood there embarrassed, feeling guilty about not doing anything about my own rage and feeling sad in a pathetic way while I watched Vishnu give and take blows. I also knew that an ineffective intervention could work against Vishnu because the brute could feel threatened and become even more vicious.

At first, Vishnu managed to use his agility and small build to parry and evade. But the blows he received started to have effect. He was tiring faster than his brawny opponent. The bigger man then used his bulk to good effect. He rushed Vishnu and crashed into him in a flying tackle, letting Vishnu’s torso bear the man’s full weight. Vishnu fell over backwards and his head hit the ground with a sickening thud. I closed my eyes and hoped that the big man would ease off and leave Vishnu alone. When I opened my eyes, I was glad to see that Vishnu was still breathing and conscious. But he was still down, curled up like a foetus, and the brute was giving brutal and savage kicks. Then, Parah Suresh stopped, and looked around the compound. He walked towards a small garden patch, dislodged a heavy rock from the garden’s boundary and came back with that. He gave Vishnu’s chest another kick. Then the brute squatted on one knee, raised the stone, ready to crush the skull before him.

‘Enough…!’ That order came from behind the crowd, in the direction of the compound’s entrance.

In the early stages of that fight, I had noticed when the lady doctor left her position for a short while. But later, while watching Vishnu get pulverized, I had failed to notice the arrival of a car with a middle-aged guy and two other men. Those two could have been mistaken for accountants but something in their eyes or their walk said differently. One seemed old, shriveled like a prune, stooping and disconcertingly slow in movement and the other was bespectacled, young and hefty. From the way the crowd parted for those three, I guessed that it must be Natarajan and his men.

Parah Suresh got up and moved away from Vishnu. He dropped the rock. Natarajan went up to the prone figure of Vishnu. He studied the bloodied face and beaten body with a great deal of amusement and satisfaction. He prodded Vishnu’s body with a foot,

‘You should stick to your pens and books, useless wimp,’ Natarajan snarled with hardly disguised hate and an equal measure of glee.

Vishnu showed a bit of life and spat out blood towards the older man.

‘Bastard…!’ Natarajan then looked up and found his daughter standing near me. He shouted at her, ‘Did you call me to save this piece of shit? What for…?’

Meanwhile, his two men had been talking to a person in the crowd, a man I did not know by name but who I had seen at Rajendran’s tea-shop. The two henchmen approached their boss. The older man whispered whatever they had learned of the situation. Natarajan took in the information and stood silent for a while. Then, he walked up to Parah Suresh. For a man so slight, his backhand slap seemed to have surprising power. The brute moved back and it was rather remarkable watching that bigger man fall to his knees, sniveling, crying and begging for mercy.

‘You want mercy…?’ Natarajan asked before giving the kneeling man another resounding slap. His two aides went to his side. The older one touched his boss’s elbow. Natarajan turned towards him. The older man shook his head slightly and that seemed to restrain Natarajan from taking on the task himself. He looked at his two aides and with just a brief turn of his hand indicated that they should take away Parah Suresh. That man continued to beg for mercy and hardly protested when the two men dragged him away.

Natarajan turned away and shifted his attention to Vishnu. The hate or dislike was still there on that face but there was something else too; maybe, that’s what respect for one’s enemy looks like. Under the watchful eyes of the doctor, Vishnu was taken inside on a stretcher. Vishnu was hardly in a position to protest about her presence near him but I think he still managed to snarl at her.

Natarajan’s eyes then shifted to the tiny form of the girl who had watched the whole episode impassively. His shoulders stooped and his eyes looked wearier than usual. He ran his hands over his face and hair, as if he was trying to rub away some ache there. He then turned around and walked away from there, head bowed, shoulders drooping and with heavy steps.

I stayed in that village for three more days. Vishnu was discharged from hospital after two days. He seemed rather glad to hear that I was leaving and made Sarada reserve a taxi to take me to the city airport. I told him that he looked best shaken, stirred and pulverized. I got to know from Sarada that the little girl’s mother would survive. I asked her if Natarajan would help that mother and kid. She shrugged and evaded the topic. That again was not for a passive onlooker like me to know.

On the ninth day, I left Kadalil. As I went past that main street, I saw the little girl sell flowers to a set of tourists. I shook my head and the mirage vanished. Her eyes followed me, the eyes of that girl who called me ‘Friend monkey Mama’, and the eyes of that girl left even more lifeless than dead.