Some kids get to play
with building blocks, dollhouses and train sets. I got my mother’s village. My
father never took me there. But, not a week went by without dredging or
touching up that past.
‘It’s four hundred and seventeen steps from your mother’s
house to the river,’ he said, and I paced those in some rain-washed fantasy,
feeling my toes curl away from sharp stones or sink into mud. I played
spy-games, a spook in a spooky double-life, familiarized myself with the shortcuts
through paddy fields and rubber plantations, the best spot to swim and the people,
at the market, at the temple, my family. His stories invariably revolved around
my mother, even when he talked about the other woman who could have been my
other mother. Instead of fairytales with knights and monsters, I grew up with the
demons he faced there, the uncle who stole from my mother or the man with three
ears, and the many-headed ghosts that banished him, us, from that place.
A month after my
father died, I went there. Violating the tacit agreement to leave that past
alone was not easy. But, the vacuum left by him, or the depressing loneliness, made
me want to reclaim that part of me I never had.
My father was in his
mid-twenties when he was transferred, as a junior officer, from the city to the
village’s lone bank. He married my mother in his second year there.
‘Ours wasn’t a love
affair in the strict sense,’ he admitted. Could not have been a strictly
arranged affair either – his pedigree hardly matched with hers. I am not sure if
they even talked to each other before marriage. But, he was hopelessly besotted
with her.
‘I behaved like a
love-struck teenager,’ he recounted with a shy laugh. ‘When I went past her
house, I walked on tiptoes, peering over the compound-wall, just to catch a
glimpse of her. Every evening, at the temple, I shamelessly stalked her,
pretending to pray to every God that wasn’t there.’ He gave me his boyish grin
before adding, ‘How I was tempted to follow her to the river when she went
swimming… but I did not.’ I would not
be surprised if he was being less than candid with me. We were indeed close but
he was painfully prudish when it came to discussing such matters with his
daughter.
Luck came his way
through hard times brought on by a bad monsoon. My mother’s father faced a severe
cash-crunch because of a few trades gone wrong. He approached the bank’s
manager for a loan. As expected, the manager was not keen on disbursing loans then
when default seemed certain. My father took an active interest in the loan-application,
managed to convince his boss that there was sufficient collateral and facilitated
timely loans to my grandfather. He gained the trust and respect of my mother’s
family, and eventually, got her too. Only her eldest brother, the uncle who later
stole my mother’s share, opposed the match but his protest did not amount to
much then. A year later, my mother died giving birth to me. Her death plus
mounting financial losses left my grandfather shattered. My uncle quickly
assumed control of family matters and we, my father and I, became outcasts.
My father requested
for a transfer and, left the village with me and his meager belongings. The
details of the days that followed are sketchy. We lived with his relatives or
friends. My father struggled with me, his job and, correspondence courses on
corporate finance and portfolio management. When I was five, he got a job offer
from an investment bank in Singapore. Our life became a lot easier. We moved from
south-east Asia to Europe and then to the US, further and further away from my roots.
We lived comfortably.
He could have left me in the capable hands of nannies and other support staff. But
I had his clumsy housekeeping and awful cooking. I had to tuck in that tired
storyteller who slept before me, and put up with ill-tempered tennis games which
neither of us liked to lose. He came late for PTA meetings and stood like an
errant schoolboy in front of my teachers. They were actually quite fond of him
and also admired his efforts as a single father. I did not realize that he was
burning too much fuel. I should have noticed the slouch and the breathlessness
in the last few years before his early and sudden death at fifty.
I am twenty three and
I feel lost without him, without his deep rumbling voice to comfort me, without
him to lean on. I miss his stories, his quirky ways and intriguing contradictions.
He claimed to be an atheist but he prayed after bath every evening. To or for what
he prayed I never knew. I did wonder if he was praying or reliving an old
memory. He was pragmatic and quite rational but, at the same time, he refused
to keep photographs or diaries.
‘Nothing like the
brain to store stuff,’ he said.
He did not have
photos of my mother or her village. Whenever I sulked about that, he gave me a
bear-hug and said that I look a lot like her. I think he was just trying to
make me happy.
He hardly talked
about his family. His parents died when he was in his teens.
‘You got half that
trait from me,’ he mentioned in some wistful moment. ‘My side isn’t into marrying,
and most are single and anonymous in nameless places.’ I think I have that
trait too. My mother’s family is the exact opposite – large and attached, with
all its flaws, but still attached. Maybe, that is why I went there.
I hired a car at the city-airport
and stayed in a hotel the first day. I hardly slept that night. I got up early
the next morning, forced myself to have a muffin with two cups of strong coffee
before leaving at half past seven.
I got to the village junction
around nine. I did not have to ask for directions. The market looked the same. I
spotted the changes – half a dozen brightly painted houses, a hardware store, a
reading room and couple of rubber traders. The old ration shop has become a
large provision store. Otherwise, the junction seemed as it was twenty five
years back when my father was there. The teashop’s ancient glass case displayed
thick dosa, banana fritters and puttu. The ‘fancy’ store exhibited bangles,
stationery, dresses for kids, buckets, plastic and aluminum vessels. Only the plastic
covers for mobile phones that hung over the counter indicated that the shop has
moved with time. The Muslims still live near the market, by the roadside, on
the border of my mother’s family property. I wondered if the tension between those
two sparring parties has reduced with time. My father had tried to be an
intermediary. He told me that the fight started when a cow strayed from the
Muslims’ side to the other property, and that the situation had worsened with a
dispute over a common path. The Muslims were, in fact, the first customers he
roped in for the bank. That’s also how, and when, he met that other woman. ‘That wasn’t easy at all, but I tried…’ He did not elaborate. That crush
lasted for a few months, till he was totally crazy about my mother.
I turned left at the
junction. People stared at me and young men on the road took their time to make
way. My mother’s family property at one time stretched, for a mile or two, from
the junction to the temple and to the paddy fields lying further to the south. To
the east, it extended till the river and the boundary to the west was the
village school where my mother studied. The market area too used to be theirs.
Some generous grand-uncle or great-grand-uncle gifted that land to the village.
With each passing generation, as the family-tree grew dense, the family
property got partitioned and sub-divided. The dependents and the workers were also
given their share. Every house on that route must belong to some relative. I
was tempted to stop the car at each house, step out, introduce myself and
gather relatives. But I stuck to my plan, to be a tourist there to visit the
temple.
I parked the car near
the temple. I had taken care to dress in a traditional churidaar outfit, with just an inconspicuous bindi and a simple gold chain, leaving behind my nose-rings and
ear-rings. I did not want to attract attention. I entered the temple. I am not
religious and prayers have never been a part of my daily routine. There, I
prayed the way my mother must have done, a pose my father had often imitated
and not too difficult to copy.
I was startled when I
felt a sweaty palm on my arm.
‘Sarasootty…’
I recognized the
half-wit who helps at the temple. He has aged but the thick lips and the kind
puppy eyes of my father’s portrayal were unmistakable.
He repeated, ‘Sarasootty…’
He got agitated and
his hands jerked nervously. He then left my side and ran towards the temple’s office.
I was watching him when another voice addressed me from behind, from within the
temple.
‘Kutty (kid), where are you from?’
My father used to
fume about that query, ‘Do they want to know who I am or can they figure that
out if I tell them where I come from?’ I had tried to reason with him that they
just wanted to know his roots, to figure out his lineage. ‘Is that the sum total of who I am?’ I could
understand his frustration – without a recognizable lineage.
I turned around to
face an unfamiliar middle-aged temple priest. Earlier, I had thought that the
mumbling from within the temple was part of the morning prayers. Seeing him
tuck a mobile phone at the waist, in the folds of his mundu (dhoti), I guessed that that prayer had been to a terrestrial
subject.
I said, ‘A friend
told me about this temple, and since I was passing by this village…’
‘Is this friend from
this village?’ he probed.
‘I think so. She
lives in the city. We work together.’
‘Lots of people from
outside come here these days. Even I am not from here,’ the priest said.
‘How long have you
been here?’ I asked.
‘Two years.’
The half-wit returned
with a large dollop of payasam (sweet
offering) on a banana leaf. He offered that to me, still chanting, ‘Sarasootty…
Sarasootty…’
‘Hey, stop that… what
has got into this fool?’ the priest scolded the half-wit, ‘Whenever he sees a
woman he likes, he goes on like that…’
How could I tell him
that ‘this fool’ Achu, short for Achuthan, used to call my mother ‘Sarasu-kutty’
or ‘Sarasootty’? Her name was Saraswathi. Achu was a few years older than her,
son of one of the maids, and he grew up in my mother’s house. I held Achu’s
hand. He looked thrilled. I too was very happy, to be mistaken for my mother. I
barely managed to hold back the tears.
I left the temple
after a few mandatory rounds around the sanctum sanctorum. I took the steep downhill
path towards the paddy fields. The other road to the east would have taken me
to my mother’s ancestral house. I was not yet ready for that. While walking, I had
the payasam, eating straight from the
leaf, unabashedly licking it clean.
There are no houses near
the temple, around the upper part of the path. That area must still be with my
mother’s family. They gifted the land near the paddy fields to their
work-force, long before my father’s time in the village. I am not sure if the workers returned the
favor with loyalty. With land of their own, electricity connection, television,
mobile phones, other modern appliances and, most probably, a family member in
the Middle-east, old allegiances must have been easy to forget.
The situation was a
lot different a century back, when the upper-castes on the other side of the paddy
fields controlled the area and the workers were landless laborers. Those upper-castes’
days were numbered, thanks to their lavish lifestyle, imprudent ventures and
senseless in-fighting. Creditors fed on them like vultures and they had to sell
their property cheap. My mother’s family was one of the few who did not try to
benefit through such ‘cursed’ deals. But only when they were destitute did the upper-castes
visit my mother’s house. They still sat like lords, refusing to drink or eat, but
took home ‘gifts’ of rice, coconuts and other produce. They borrowed jewelry
from my great-grandmother for rituals and festivities they refused to give up.
‘People will never
change,’ my father commented, ‘they will always find someone to bow to, someone
to trample on.’ He told me that, even during his time, the workers, though they
were treated very well, never entered my mother’s house and had their meals
served outside the house. Without any background to boast about, he too must
have been an outcaste or outcast by way of caste or class, till he turned out
to be useful for my mother’s family.
I walked past those workers’
huts and took a path that cut through the paddy fields. Kids stopped their
games to watch me. Their parents must have paused too. Maybe, one or two must
have said to each other, ‘Who is she? She looks so familiar.’
I made way for a
group of women who crossed me on the same path. They smiled and I reciprocated.
I could make out the curiosity in their eyes. I am sure that their first
question would have been, ‘Did you come here today?’
My father used to list
the villagers’ rhetorical questions. Near the river and with a wet towel in his
hand, they asked him, ‘Have you been swimming?’ Close to the market, carrying a
bag of shopping, ‘Did you go to the market?’ When he got off the bus, after a
trip to the city, ‘Did you come back by bus?’ Though we laughed at that, I
could sense that he was not making fun of them, just sharing happy
reminiscences of my peculiar lot.
I followed a path eastwards
towards the river. A good part of the paddy fields has been reclaimed for
tapioca, banana, rubber trees and houses. How long will those green swaying
fields last? Farming must be difficult even for my mother’s folks, without
their old loyal workforce. I daydreamed about returning to my roots, to be one
of those tech kids who fashionably shift to farming. I nearly laughed out loud.
At the periphery, an
old lady sat outside a house, hunchbacked with age, watching me closely as she made
a betel quid for herself, expertly handling the betel leaf, tobacco, slaked lime
and arecanut. She called out to a person inside. An old man came out, looking quite
fit for his age, smoking a beedi
(local cheroot). They looked at me as if they had seen a ghost. I recognized
them. They are cousins of my grandparents. He used to have a tea-stall, and
played volleyball with my grandfather. I smiled at them and walked away
quickly. I did not want to hear them call me, ‘Sarasu…’
I took a muddy path,
opposite that house, leading to the river and then walked upstream along the
bank to the stone steps at the old bathing spot. The river seemed strange. It
has receded a few meters, as a result of illegal and indiscriminate
sand-mining, and the once-serene flow seemed treacherous with rapids,
undercurrents and unknown depths. Instead of the old sandy bathing spot, I
found an ugly mound of rock, weeds and wild grass. I watched men pile sand from
the bottom of that ravaged river on to a boat. Even the plot next to the
bathing area was not being spared, excavated for clay, and left looking like an
ugly pock-scarred face. I remembered that that property belongs to the man with
three ears, the brute with whom my father had a big fight. He controls the
sand-mining business in that area. I took a few photos, with my phone-camera,
of that sad wretched place. I wish I had photos of the paradise it once was.
Two men on that boat
shouted at me. I ignored them. I sat on those steps, head on my knees, lost in
my thoughts. I thought about my father and mother swimming there.
I was brought out of
that reverie by those two men. They had taken a route through the property of the
three-eared man, circled behind my back and caught me by surprise.
‘What are you doing
here?’ one of the men asked harshly. Both looked like thugs, bare-bodied except
for a lungi (colored dhoti or sarong)
worn low at the waist, the lower part folded up and obscenely hitched high till
upper-thigh. They came closer.
‘What are you
photographing?’ the other asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Give that phone to
us. Let us look at your nothing.’ They reached for my mobile. I moved
backwards.
‘What’s going on
here?’ a voice interrupted their advance.
I turned to that side,
relieved. But that relief did not last long when I realized that I was staring
into the mean eyes of the man with three ears. I stared at that large, dark, sweaty
face. True to my father’s description, his ears and nose were similar and incongruous
on that head – small, round, puffy, like cauliflower florets. That’s why my
father called him the man with three ears.
‘What are you two up
to with this girl?’ he asked.
‘Sir,’ they drawled,
‘she was taking photos.’
‘Let her take, no?’
‘She must be a
journalist. A troublemaker…’
‘And, what if she is?
Are you going to throw her in the river? Now, get lost, you two…’ The thugs
went away sulking. The man turned to me, ‘So, are you a journalist?’
‘No,’ I replied. I knew
that journalists and the police hardly bothered him, having politicians and the
local administration in his greasy hands.
‘Who are you then?’
the man asked.
‘I am a tourist,’ I
said. He seemed amused. I wanted to wipe that smile off his face. ‘Someone told
me that this used to be a beautiful place.’
‘Yes, it was,’ he
admitted, and even looked sad for a brief moment, before the old cunning look
returned, ‘So… who is this someone who told you that?’
‘My father,
Rajaraman,’ I said. I wanted to remind him of a person who stood up to him. ‘He
worked in the village bank, about twenty five years back.’
‘Are you really
Rajaraman’s daughter?’ the man asked, smiling broadly.
I nodded.
‘How is he?’
‘He died a month
back.’
‘Really…? That’s
sad.’ Strangely, he sounded earnest.
‘He told me about
you…’ I said.
‘Did he…? Lovely chap
he was… so full of life. He used to come here every day. We used to have swimming
races, you know. He swam well…’
I nodded. I knew what
he was up to – whitewashing the past.
I gathered courage
and prodded, ‘He told me that you had started your business just then.’
‘Hmm… that’s right…’
I decided to disrupt
his pensive mood, ‘Didn’t he argue with you about this?’ I tried a dramatic
sweep of my hand to indicate the sad state of affairs.
He spoiled the act,
still refusing to be the villain, ‘Oh yes, not just him, everyone was against this
project at first, even me! Everything seemed so uncertain then. But, people quickly
realized that they could earn in a year what they could not dream of gaining
through decades of farming. Lots of people in this village benefitted, you
know… what’s the phrase? Ah yes, climbed ashore instead of drowning. Your
father was always after us, to open accounts or to put fixed-deposits in the
bank.’ He laughed. ‘We used to run from the scene whenever he showed up. But,
he was a jolly chap, and straightforward. People here really liked him.’
I should have felt
proud and pleased, or disgusted. I did not like the way he had airbrushed
history. I excused myself from that man’s company and left the spot, running up
those stone steps and not stopping till I was on the road, panting, breathless.
I could see my mother’s house from there, about four hundred and seventeen
steps away.
According to my
plans, I was not supposed to visit them on that first trip. But the meeting
with the three-eared man somehow made me feel a need to enter my mother’s
house.
The house has been
renovated. But the cowshed was still there, to the left, at the back, behind
the well, even though there are no cows now. My mother had a calf she called
Unni. There was no one outside. I opened the gate, went up to the door and rang
the bell. I heard slow footsteps. The door opened and I knew, without a doubt, that
I was looking at my uncle, the one who stole from my mother.
‘Yes…?’ he asked me.
He was tall, fair and fit. He must be my father’s age. He stared at me,
unblinking, like a serpent.
I did not know how to
introduce myself. I tried a partial truth, ‘This is my first visit to this
village. A friend told me about the temple and that I should meet you.’
I should have said,
‘I am Saraswathi’s daughter.’ But, I did not want to be chucked out without a
chance to enter my mother’s house.
‘Come in,’ he said
kindly. I felt uncomfortable with his courtesy.
I entered my mother’s
house. An elderly lady and a younger one came to the drawing room. I recognized
my aunt but not the cousin. They smiled and remained silent. My cousin went
back within. My uncle took the old armchair that used to be my grandfather’s.
He showed me to a sofa. My aunt sat next to me. He mentioned some details about
the temple. I hardly heard what he said. My cousin returned with a glass of
lemon juice and plates of savory. I thanked her. She smiled shyly and stood
next to her mother.
I blurted out, ‘I am
Rajaraman’s daughter.’
He looked surprised, and
sounded confused, ‘Rajaraman…?’
I wanted to shout,
‘Yes, the brother-in-law you chucked out.’
I managed to say
calmly, ‘He was a junior officer in the bank. About twenty five years back…’
He pretended to think
for a while. ‘Oh yes, I remember Rajaraman.’ He slapped his lap, and laughed,
‘How can I forget him? Where is your father now? Still with that bank…?’
‘No, he died last
month.’
My uncle lowered his
head and remained silent for a while. I think my aunt let out a sigh, or a low
moan. I saw my cousin shake her head sadly. My uncle said, ‘He was here for two
or three years. Twenty five years back! How time flies…’
Having decided to
unsettle the man without any delay, I asked, ‘Was the village facing a tough
time then because of a bad monsoon? My father mentioned that he had to arrange
large loans...’ and, after what I considered to be a pregnant pause, I added,
‘for everyone…’
‘Loans…? I don’t think we ever needed that.’ He looked smug and slightly irritated too. ‘I thought the
manager dealt with loans. Wasn’t your father a junior officer then? I don’t mean any disrespect, of course…’ That, of course, sounded as
if he meant the exact opposite. He quickly added, ‘I remember that period very well
because we celebrated my sister’s wedding on a really grand scale… and, we
wouldn’t do that with loans, would we?’
I wanted to stop him
and ask him about his sister.
But he continued, ‘You
see, I was a young man then, studying in the city and gave two hoots for this
place. Whenever I came here, during vacations, my father exhorted me to learn
from Rajaraman. Your father was absolutely in love with this place, so
fascinated by everything. I think he knew each and everyone in this village. We
used to joke that he knew the village better than us… though, that’s probably
true… we really don't give a damn about each other.’
I wanted to scream,
‘Stop this nonsense. I know what you are trying to do. Do you really have to
block us out… totally?’ I remained silent, nodding my head as if I was taking
in all that he said.
‘He and his camera
were inseparable,’ I heard my uncle say.
I thought of replying,
‘Don’t you know that he hates photos?’
‘Come, see these
photos,’ he stood up and pointed at some framed photos lining the wall. I got
up too, feeling a little faint but still holding on. ‘He took these… he was quite
a good photographer…’
He pointed at a photo
of himself, another of a wedding, and then, that of the lady in the wedding
photo, standing alone. Next to that were photos of my grandparents. The last three
had fresh garlands around the frame, like bouquets on a gravestone.
‘Who is that?’ I
pointed at the third photo.
‘That’s my sister, Saraswathi,’
he replied, ‘she died a few months after her wedding.’ His voice was choking.
‘I think your father was here then.’
I looked at the
wedding photo. That lady was putting the wedding garland on some man I could
not recognize. The lady did not look like me. Or maybe, she did.
‘How did she die?’ I
asked.
‘There were some
complications during pregnancy and her blood pressure shot up. We didn’t get
her to the doctor fast enough.’
‘And the baby…?’ I
asked.
‘My sister died in
the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy.’
I could not take any
more of the falsehoods. I remember sitting there for some more time, the man discussing
whatever. Then, I left that house. In the car, staring blankly at the closed
temple, I wondered about the lies that floated around me. How can they change the
past like that? Did she die in the fifth month or after childbirth? Who was the
father of that child? Did my father leave the village with that child? Even to
me, that sounded like the plot of a B-grade movie.
I decided to make one
final stop in that village. I drove to the junction, and turned right. I ignored
the same old curious stares, feeling less friendly towards the whole lot. I
stopped at a house after the market. I had to meet that other woman who could
have been my other mother.
I knocked at the door
of the old house. A lady in her fifties opened the door. She was Jasmine’s
mother, a jolly character, talkative, very curious and asked lots of questions.
I told her that my father used to work in the village bank and that he had talked
to me about Jasmine and her father. I got to know from her that her husband
died a year after Jasmine’s wedding, and that, after marriage, Jasmine lived in
her husband’s house further down the road.
We were standing outside,
in the courtyard, while we talked. I noticed with interest that there were breaches
on all sides of the compound-wall.
She followed my stare
and remarked jovially, ‘Our cow keeps going there. Now, how can you tell a cow
not to break a wall, huh? And, whatever the dumb animal does, they have to do too…
to go to the market, they say… as if there’s no other way but through here. First,
them on the right…’
‘But, those are
Muslims… aren’t they?’ I interrupted.
She laughed, ‘Why…
they can’t be stupid? They were the first. Then, the others joined in…’ she pointed
towards my mother’s property, ‘all copying our stupid cow. What can one do?
That’s been going on for ages, even when Jasmine’s father was alive. Ah! That’s
what neighbors are for, is that not so?’
She laughed again.
Put that way, I could do nothing other than laugh with her. When I took leave,
she cautioned me about Jasmine’s husband and mother-in-law, ‘they are very
strict and orthodox’.
I walked to Jasmine’s
new home. I covered my head with the dupatta
(scarf). Her mother-in-law was haggling with a worker. When I asked for
Jasmine, she dismissed the worker and called for her son who later called for
his wife after I explained to them that my father used to be a friend of Jasmine’s
father. Jasmine came outside. She looked young, more like mid-thirties rather
than the mid-forties I had expected. Her husband and mother-in-law stood on
either side of us.
I asked her if she
remembered her father’s friend, a young bank officer. She shook her head at
first. Then she went inside and returned with an old steel box. She took out a
bank passbook from that, and handed it over to me.
‘That’s my first
passbook. My father opened that account for me,’ she said shyly.
I opened it. I
recognized my father’s signature within. The passbook also mentioned that
Jasmine was a minor at the time of opening the account, and that her father was
the guardian of the ten-year-old. Then, Jasmine took out an old photo. It was that
of Jasmine, a cute young girl with pigtails and a bold smile, sitting on her
father’s lap.
‘The bank officer
took this photo,’ Jasmine said.
‘He was my father,’ I
told her.
‘Oh, really?’ that’s
all she had to say. I had exhausted my questions. I thanked them.
I returned to the car
and left my mother’s village.